And from each of them we partake of an answerable Nature As is the Earthy such are they that are earthy even all of us in our fleshly state having earthy bodies from an earthy Adam and natural bodies from the natural Adam And as is the heavenly such are they that are heavenly for Christ makes men like himself even first gracious and then glorious as Adam begets us like himself that is natural and sinful And therefore all those that have followed Christ in the Regeneration shall follow him into Glory and having conquered by him shall reign by him and with him and having received the holy nature here which is the seed of glory they shall receive the glorious nature there which is the perfection of that Grace And so as Christ hath an heavenly spiritual body and â—â—â— an earthy natural body so shall his Members have that they may be like him And as we have here born the image of the earthy in having first a natural fleshly body we shall also bear the Image of the Heavenly Adam in having a spiritual body that is not fleâ—â— Now lest any doubt of it saith the Spirit of God this I say that Flesh and Blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God neither doth Corruption inherit incorruption 1 Cor. 15. 42. to 51. Object If there were but as much likelihood of a Resurrection as there is of the Reviving of the plants in the Spring I could believe it for there is a life remaining in the Root or Seed but the body of man hath neither Root nor seed of life and therefore it 's contrary to nature that it should revive Answ 1. If it be above nature that is all it is not contrary to it Or not so contrary as to be above the power of the Lord of nature Will you allow no greater works for God than such as you can see a reason of and can assign a natural cause of what did Nature in the creation of nature It was not certainly any cause of it self If Christ rose without a natural cause even so shall we 2. But why may I not say that the dead body of man hath a living Root as truly as the plants in winter The soul is the Root of the body and the soul is still alive And Christ is the Root of the soul and he is still alive For though we are dead yet our Life is hid with Christ in God and when Christ who is our life shall appear at the Spring of Resurrection then we shall also appear with him in Glory Col. 3. 3 4. And though there be no Physical contact between this living soul and the body yet there is a Relative Union and a deep rooted Love of the soul to its body and inclination to it so that it is mindful of it and waiteth with longing for that hour when the command of God shall send it to revive that body It is not incredible that a silly snail should by its natural life and power make for it self a beautiful habitation Or that the life of a Rose-tree that was buried in the root should fabricate a sweet and beauteous Rose by which it may make an ostentation of its invisible self to the world In how small a room doth the life of a silk-worm lie of which I spoke before in the winter That little grain or seed is such as yields no sign of life to the beholder yet doth it form it self a larger body and that body spin its silken web out of its own substance and in that house it self in a husk and take to it self another shape and thence become a winged Fly and so generate more But nearer us in the generation of man the vital principle in the seed doth quickly with concurrent causes form it self a body The warmth of the body of the Hen or other Bird can turn the egge into a Chicken Why then may not the living sâ—ul that is the Root and life of the body in the dust be the instrument of God to reform its own body as certainly it will be the principle that shall reinform it But you say the body being dead hath no natural root nor way of recess to life again because the privation is total To which I answer First the Relative union between the soul and it and the souls disposition to the Return into its body is as potent a cause of its reviving as the natural union of the Root and branches if withal you consider that Christ is the Root of the soul Rational agents if perfect will work as certainly as Natural For natural causes do nothing but by a Power communicated to them from an Intellectual cause even God himself Why should Nature do any of these things but because God that makes and ruleth all will have it to be so Now Jesus Christ is the Political Head of the Church The body in the grave hath its own Relation to him Christ is still living and resolved and engaged by promise and enclined by Love to revive that body And as Christ is the life of the soul so the soul is the life of the body and this soul as I said is waiting to be sent again into it And when the hour comes what can hinder The Love of the soul to its body and its desire to be reunited is a kind of natural cause of the Resurrection A candle not lighted is as far from light and as much without it as a dead body is without life And yet one touch of a lighted candle will light that which never was lighted before And so may one touch of the living soul that 's now with Christ put life into the body that lieth in the dust And as the lighted candle makes the other like it and communicateth of its own nature to it so doth the glorified soul communicate a new kind of excellency to the body which it never had before even to be a spiritual glorious incorruptible and immortal body In the first creating of man the new formed body as to the matter of it was no better than the body of a Beast or any common piece of earth But the soul made the difference when a Rational Soul was breathed into that Body it advanced the very body to a dignity beyond the bodies of brutes even such as the natural body of man had before sin When Christ was about to repair faln man it was the spirit of Christ informing the soul that caused the renewed soul to communicate again a dignity to the bodies of sanctified men above other bodies And so when the body was dead because of sin having the root of sin and death within it and being mortal therefore yet the spirit was life because of Righteousness being the Root of holy and Righteous dispositions and the new life in man himself Rom. 8. 10. For Christ the principal root of life and the spirit and holiness are first in order of nature in the soul and but by
that is but gainful be it never so unjust and will not believe but it is lawful because it is profitable for they suppose that gain is godliness 1 Tim. 6. 5. Hence it is that so many families will be so far Religious as will stand with their commodity but no further Yea that so many Ministers have the wit to prove that most Duties are to them no Duties when they will cost them much labour or dishonour in the world or bring them under sufferings from men And hence it is that so many Carnal Polititians do in their Laws and Counsels alwaies prefer the interest of their bodies before Gods interest and mens souls Yea some are so far forsaken by common reason and void of the Love of God and his Church as to maintain that Magistrates in their Laws and Judgments must let matters of Religion alone as if that self even carnal self were all their Interest and all their God and as if they were of the Prophane Opinion Every man for himself and God for us all or as if they would look to their own cause and bid God look to his From the Power of this selfishness it is that so many ☞ Princes and States turn persecutors and stick not to silence banish and some of the bloodier sort to kill the Ministers of Christ when they do but think that they stand cross to their carnal interests And if you will plead the Interest of Christ and souls against theirs and tell them that the banishment imprisonment silencing or death of such or such a servant of the Lord will be injurious to many souls and therefore if they were guilty of death in some cases they should reprieve them as they do women with child till Christ be formed in the precious souls that they travail in birth with so their Lives be not more hurtful by any contrary mischief which death only can restrain which is not to be supposed of sober men yet all this seems nothing to a selfish Persecutor that regards not Christs interest in comparison of his own ☞ Self is the great Tyrant and Persecutor of the Church 10. Observe also how few they be that satisfie their souls in Gods Approbation though they are mis-judged and vilified by the world and how few that rejoyce at the prosperity of the Gospel though themselves be in Adversity most men must needs have the Hypocrites reward Matth. 6. 2. even some commendation from men and too few are fully pleased with his eye that seeth in seret and will reward them openly Matth. 6. 4 6. And hence it is that injurious censures and hard words do go so near them and they make so great a matter of them Those times do seem best to selfish men which are most for them If they prosper and their party prosper though most of the Church should be a loser by it they will think that it is a blessed time But if the Church prosper and not they but any suffering befall them they take on as if the Church did stand or fall with them Self-interest is their measure by which they judge of times and things 11. Observe also how eagerly men are set to have their Own wills take place in publick businesses and to have their own opinions to be the Rule for Church and Common-wealth and then judge by this of their self-denial Were not self predominant there would not be such striving who should Rule and whose will should be the Law but men would think that others were as likely to Rule with Prudence and Honesty as they How eager is the Papist to have his way by an Universal Monarch How eager are others for one Ecclesiastical National Head How eager are the Popular party for their way as if the welfare of all did lie in their several modes of Government And so confidently do the Libertines speak for theirs that they begin now to make motions that our Parliament-men shall be hanged or beheaded as Traitors if any should make a motion in a free Parliament against the General Liberty which they desire Wonderful that men should ever grow to such an over-weening of themselves and over-valuing their own understandings as to obtrude so palpable and odious a wickedness upon Parliaments so confidently and to take them for Traitors that will not be Traitors or grosly disobedient against the Lord Self-denial would cure these peremptory demands and teach men to be more suspicious of their own understandings 12. Lastly Observe but how difficult a thing it is to keep Peace as in families and neighbourhoods so in Churches and Common-wealths and judge by this of mens self-denial Husbands and Wives brothers and sisters masters and servants live at variance and all through the conflicts that arise between their contrary self-interests If a beast do but trespass on a neighbours grounds if they be but assessed for the State or poor above their expectations if in any way of trading their commodity be crost you shall quickly see where self bears Rule This makes it so difficult a work to keep the Churches from Divisions Few men are sensible of the Universal Interest because they are captivated to their own And therefore it is that men fear not to make parties and divisions in the Church and will tear it in pieces to satisfie their interest or selfish zeal Hence it is that Parties are so much multiplied and keep up the buckler against others because that selfishness makes all Partial Hence it is that people fall off from their Pastors or else fall out with them when they are crost in their opinions reproved for their sins or called to consess or make restitution and perhaps that they may sacrilegiously desraud the Church of Tithes or other payments that are due Hence it is also that members so oft fall out with one another for foul words or differences of judgement or some point or other of self-interest Nay sometimes about their very seats in the place of Worship while every man is for himself the Ministers can hardly keep them in Charity and Peace And is any of this agreeable to our holy Rule and Pattern No man can think so that hath read the Gospel but he that is so blinded by selfishness as not to understand what makes against it And here besides what is largelier spoken after let me tell of a few of the evils of this sin and the contrary benefits of self-denial 1. The Power of selfishness keeps men strangers to themselves They know not their Original nor Actual sins with any kindly humbling knowledge The very nature of Original sin doth consist in these two things Privatively in the want of our Original Love or Propensity to God as God I mean the Privation of the Root or Habit or Inclination to Love God for himself as the Beginning or End of us and all things and the absolute Lord and infinite simple inestimable Good And Positively in the inordinate Propensity or Inclination to our selves as
of self-denyal 2. As God was mans ultimate End in his state of innocency so accordingly man was appointed to use all Creatures in order to God for his Pleasure and Glory So that it was the work of man to do his Makers will and he was to use nothing but with this intention But when man was faln from God to himself he afterwards used all things for himself even his carnal self and all that he possessed was become the provision and fuel of his lusts and so the whole creation which he was capable of using was abused by him to this low and selfish end as if all things had been made but for his delight and will But when man is brought to Deny himself he is brought to restore the Creatures to their former use and not to sacrifice them to his fleshly mind so that all that he hath and useth in the world is used to another end so far as he denyeth himself than formerly it was even for God and not himâ—elf 3. In the state of Innocency though man had naturally an aversness from death and bodily pains as being natural evils and had a desire of the welfare even of the flesh it self yet as his body was subject to his soul and his senses to his Reason so his bodily ease and welfare was to be esteemed and desired and sought but in a due subordination to his spiritual welfare and especially to his Makers Will So that though he was to value his Life yet he was much more to value his everlasting life and the pleasure and Glory of his Lord. But now when man is faln from God to Himself his Life and earthly felicity is the sweetest and the dearest thing to him that is So that he preferreth it before the Pleasing of God and everlasting life And therefore he seeketh it more and holdeth it faster as long as he can and parteth with it more unwillingly As Innocent Nature had an appetite to the objects of sense but corrupted nature hath an enraged greedy rebellious and inordinate appetite to them so Innocent nature had a love to this natural earthly life and the comforts of it but corrupted Nature hath such an inordinate love to them as that all things else are made but subordinate to them and swallowed up in this gulf even God himself is so far loved as he befriendeth these our carnal ends and furthereth our earthly prosperity and life But when men are brought to Deny themselves they are in their measures restored to their first esteem of Life and all the prosperity and earthly comforts of life Now they have learned so to love them as to love God better and so to value them as to prefer everlasting life before them and so to hold them and seek their preservation as to resign them to the will of God and to lay them down when we cannot hold them with his Love and to choose death in order to life everlasting before that life which would deprive us of it And this is the principal instance of self-denyal which Christ giveth us here in the Text as it is recited by all the three Evangelists that recite these words He that saveth his life shall lose it c. And what shall it profit a man to win all the world and lose his soul By these instances it appears that by self-denyal Christ doth mean a setting so light by all the world and by our own lives and consequently our carnal Content in these as to be willing and Resolved to part with them all rather than with him and everlasting life even as Abraham was bound to love his Son Isaac but yet so to prefer the Love and Will of God as to be able to sacrifice his Son at Gods Command And the Lord Jesus himself was the liveliest Pattern to us of his Self-denyal that ever the world saw Indeed his whole life was a continued practice of it And it hath oft convinced me that it is a special part of our Sanctification when I have considered how abundantly the Lord hath exercised himself in it for our example For as it is desperate to think with the Socinians that he did it only for our Example so it is also a desperate Error of others to think that it was only for satisfaction to God and not at all for our Example Many do give up themselves to Flesh-pleasing upon a misconceit that Christ did therefore deny his flesh to purchase them a liberty to please theirs As in his Fasting and Temptations and his sufferings by the reproach and ingratitude of men and the outward Poverty and Meanness of his condition the Lord was pleased to deny himself so especially in his last Passion and death As I have shewed elsewhere he loved his natural life and peace and therefore in manifestation of that he prayeth Father if it be thy Will let this Cup pass from me But yet when it came to the comparative practical Act he proceeded to choose his Fathers Will with death rather than life without it and therefore saith Not my Will that is my simple love of life but thy Will be done In which very words he manifesteth another will of his own besides that which he consenteth shall not be done and sheweth that he preferred the pleasing of his Father in the Redemption of the world before his own life And thus in their measure he causeth all his Members to do so that life and all the comforts of life are not so dear to them as the love of God and everlasting life 4. When God had created man he was presently the Owner of him and man understood this that he was God's and not his own And he was not to claim a Propriety in himself nor to be affected to himself as his own nor to live as his own but as His that made him But when he fell from God he arrogated practically though notionally he may deny it a propriety in himself and useth himself accordingly And when Christ bringeth men to deny themselves they cease to be their own in their conceits any more Then they resign themselves wholly to God as being wholly his They know they are his both by the right of Creation and of Redemption And therefore are to be disposed of by him and to glorifie him in body and spirit which are his 1 Cor. 6. 19 20. Rom. 14. 9. To be thus heartily devoted to God as his own is the form of Sanctification and to live as God's own is the truly Holy life 5. As man in Innocency did know that he was not his own so he knew that nothing that he had was his own but that he was the Steward of his Creator for whom he was to use them and to whom he was accountable But when he was fallen from God to himself though he had lost the Right of a Servant yet be graspeth at the Creature as if he had the Right of a Lord He now takes his Goods his
How loth soever you are you are sure to die You may turn you every way and look about you on the right hand and the left to all the friends and means in the world and you will never find a medicine that will here procure immortality nor ever scape the hands of death It is appointed to all men once to die and after that the Judgement Heb. 9. 27. And no man can change the Decrees of Heaven And seeing all your turnings and unwillingness cannot avoid it is it not better to submit to it willingly than unwillingly God doth impose it on you as a necessity Your willingness may make a vertue of Necessity and out of Necessity extract a reward but your unwillingness may turn your suffering into your sin and a Necessary death unto an unnecessary misery now and hereafter if you be not true believers as Paul saith of his Ministerial labours 1 Cor. 9. 16 17. If I do this thing willingly I have a reward but if against my will a dispensation is committed to me for necessity is laid upon me So I may say in the present case If you give up your lives willingly in the love of God you have a Reward but if you do not Necessity is upon you and die you must whether you will or no. You may scape the Reward by your unwillingness but death you cannot escape And me thinks you should see that it 's little thanks to you to give up that life which you cannot keep And yet this is all that God requireth Perhaps you think that though you cannot keep it still yet somewhat longer you may keep it But you be not sure of that The next hour may God deprive you of it And O what a dreadful thing it were if as soon as you have denied God your lives he should snatch them from you in his fury and cast you into Hell and if he should distrain for his own as soon as you have denied it him and you should die as enemies that would not die as Martyrs and as his Friends And in this sence hath my Text been many a time fulfilled He that will save his Life shall lose it 8. Consider also that it is upon terms of the highest advantage imaginable to your selves that God calls you to resign and lay down your lives It is not indeed to lose them but to save them as my Text doth promise you He that loseth his life shall save it No more than you lose your cloaths which you put off at Night and put on again in the Morning Or rather no more than you lose your lousie rotten rags when you put them off at Night and are to have in the Morning a Suit of Princely attire in their stead Will any man say these rags are lost At least they will not say that the man is a loser by the change That is not lost that is committed to God upon the ground of a promise Nor that which is laid out in his Servive at his command Reason will tell us that no man can be a loser by a course of submissive Obedience to God You cannot be at so much cost for him or offer him so dear a service which he is not able and willing to satisfie you for a thousand fold God will not be beholden to any man You cannot bring him in your debt beyond what he doth by his bountiful promise But if you could he would not continue in your debt You 'l make nothing of your death if you do not either undergo it for Christ or bear it submissively by the power of heavenly love constraining you Meerly to die whether you will or no as a fruit of sin is common to the most ungodly men But if the love of God can make you voluntarily submit to death whether natural or violent from persecutors what a glorious advantage may you make of it You will 1. Put your salvation more out of doubt â—han any other course in this world could do For whosoever perisheth it 's most certain that such as these all be saved 2. And therefore you may die with the greatest confidence and joy as having seen the matter of your doubts removed and dying in the very exercise of those graces that have the promise of salvation and in such a 〈…〉 as hath the fullest and most frequent promises in the Gospel 3. And then the Crown of Martyrdom is the most glorious Crown You will not have an ordinary place in heaven These are that part of the Heavenly Host that si and nearest to the Throne of God and that praise him with the highest joys who hath brought them through tribulations and redeemed them by his blood If a man should make a motion to you to exchange your cottage for a Palace and a Kingdom you would not stick at it as if it were against you because you must leave your ancient home And how much less should you be against it when you are but moved to step out of your ruinous cottage into glory when it would shortly fall upon your heads and you must leave it whether you will or no for nothing 9. What reason have you to be so tender of the flesh Is it the greatness of its suffering that you stick at Why you put poor Beasts and Birds to as much and so do the Butchers daily for your use and they must suffer it And why should the body be so dear to you for the matter of it what is it but earth and wherein is it more excellent than the beasts that perish I think God hath purposely clothed your soul with so poor a dress that you should be the less unwilling to be unclothed and might learn to set more by your souls than by your bodies and to make more carefully provision for them It seems he hath purposely lodged you in so poor a cottage that you should not be at too much care for it nor be too loth to leave it You have its daily Necessities and Infirmities and pains and somewhat of its filth and lothsomeness to tell you of its meanness And why should you be so loth that so poor a cottage so frail a body should be turned to dust Dust it is and to dust it is sentenced When the soul hath left it but a week men can scarce endure to see it or smell it And should the breaking of such an earthen Vessel be so unpleasing a thing to you And for its usesulness though so far as it is obedient it was serviceable to your souls and God yet was it so refractory ill disposed and disobedient that it proved no better than your enemy Many a temptation it hath entertained and cherished and many a sin hath it drawn you to commit Those senses have let in a world of vanity Those wandring eyes have called in covetousness and pride and lust Those greedy appetites have been so eager on the bait that they have too oft born down your faith and
reason and drawn you to excess in meats and drinks for matter or manner for quality or quantity or both Many a groan those sins have cost you and many a smarting day they have caused you and a sad uncomfortable life you have had by reason of them in comparison of what you might have had And this flesh hath been the Mother or the Nurse of all You were engaged by your Baptismal Covenant to fight against it when you entred into the Church and if you are Christians this combate hath been your daily work and much of the business of your lives And yet are you loth to have the victory see your enemy under feet Do you fight against it as for the life of your souls yet are you afraid lest death should hurt it or break it down Have you fought your selves friends with it that you are so tender of it when you are the greatest friends to it it will be the most dangerous enemy to you And do not think that it is only sin and not the body that is the flesh that is called your enemy in Scripture For though it be not the body as such or as obedient to the soul yet is it the Body as inclining to creatures from which the sinful soul cannot restrain it it is the body as having an inordinate sensitive appetite and imagination and so distempered as that it rebels against the Spirit and casteth off the rule of Reason and would not be curbed of its desires but have the rule of all it self Was it not the very flesh it self that Paul saith he fought against and kept under and brought into subjection lest he should be a cast a-way 1 Cor. 9. 26 27. Why should sin be called Flesh and Body but that it is the Body of Flesh that is the principal-seat of those sins that are so called If ye live after the flesh ye shall die but if ye through the Spirit do mortifie the deeds of the Body ye shall live Rom. 8. 13. If ye sow to the flesh of the flesh ye shall reap corruption Gal. 6. 8. That which is first in Being is first in sin But it is the Flesh or Embryo endued with sense that is first in being Be not therefore too tender of that which corruption hath made your prison and your enemy Many a time you have been put to resist it and watch and strive against it and when you have been at the best it hath been hindring you to be better and when the spirit was willing the flesh was weak And quickly hath it caused your cooling declension Many a blessed hours communion between God your souls that flesh hath deprived you of And therfore though still you must love it yet you should the less grieve or be troubled at its sufferings seeing they are but the fruits of its sin and a holy contentedness shold possess your minds that God should thus castigatorily revenge his own quarrel yours upon it 10. But yet consider that were you never so tender of the body it self yet faith and reason should perswade you to be content For God is but preparing even for its felicity His undoing it but to make it up again As in the new birth he broke your hearts and false hopes that he might heal your hearts and give you sounder hopes instead of them so at death he breaketh your flesh and worldly hopes not to undo you and leave it in corruption but to raise it again another manner of body than now it is and give it a part in the blessedness which you hoped for If in good sadness you believe the Resurrection what cause is there for so much fear of death You can be content that your Roses die and your sweetest Flowers fall and perish and the green and beauteous complexion of the earth be turned into a bleak and withered hue because you expect a kind of Resurrection in the Spring You can boldly lie down at night to sleep though sleep be a kind of death to the body and more to the soul and all because you shall rise again in the morning And if every nights sleep or one at least were a gentle death if you were sure to rise again the next morning you would make no great matter of it Were it as common to men to die every night and rise again in the morning as it is to sleep every night and rise in the morning death would not seem such a dreadful thing Those poor men that have the falling-sickness do once in a day or in a few days lie as dead men and have as much pain as many that die And yet because they use to be up and well again in a little time they can go merrily about their business the rest of the day and little fear their approaching fall How much more should the belief of a Resurrection unto life confirm us against the fears of death And why should we not as quietly commit our bodies to the dust when we have the promise of the God of heaven that the Earth shall deliver up her dead and that this body that is sown in corruption shall be raisedin incorruption It is sown in dishonour it is raised in glory it is sown in weakness it is raised in power it is sown a natural body it is raised a spiritual body So great and wonderful the change will be as now is unconceivable we have now a drossie lâ—mp of flesh an aggravation of the Elements to a seed of life which out of them forms it self a body by the Divine influx Like the Silk-worm which in the Winter is but a seed which in the Summer doth move attract that matter from which it gets a larger body by a kind of Resurrection But it is another manner of body I will not say of flesh which at the Resurrection we shall have Not flesh and blood nor a natural body but of a nature so spiritual sublime and pure that it shall be indeed a spiritual body And think not that this is a contradiction and that spirituality and corporeity are inconsistent For There is a Natural Body and there is a Spiritual body The root of the fleshly Natural body was the first man Adam who was made a living soul to be the Root of living souls The root of the spiritual Body is Christ who being a quickning Spirit doth quicken all his members by his Spirit which Spirit of Grace is the seed of Glory as from an holy and gracious Saviour we receive an holy and gracious nature so from a Glorified Saviour we shall receive a glorious nature we are now changed from glory to Glory in the beginning as by the spirit of the Lord But it is another kind of Glory that this doth tend to Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual but the natural and afterwards the spiritual The first man was of the Earth Earthy The second man is the Lord from heaven
communication and secondarily in the Body But contrarily sin made its entrance first by the Body and hath its Root and Seat first in order of nature in the body it is so communicated to the soul Thus sin comes in at the back-door even at the wrong end and by the baser part But Grace comes in the right way by the Nobler part sin hath its Root in the viler part but Christ hath his seat first in the better part And yet I must add 1. That sin is not ripe till it reach the will though it enter by the flesh and senses it is not formed nor to be called sin till it reach the will and as there it is scituated but yet the thing it self is first in and by the flesh 2. And the will is truly the seat of Original sin it self as well as the sensitive part but not the first Root of the corruption Though sin be Worst in the Rational part because the corruption of the best is the worst yet it is not first there But Holiness is first also in the soul and so communicated to the body And so also Glory it self will be And therefore take notice of the wise and gracious providence of God that taketh the soul to heaven before-hand that it may be first Glorified and so may be fit to communicate glory to the body And so as the Natural Soul dignified the Natural Body and the Sanctified Soul did Sanctifie the body so the Glorified Soul by reunion with the body shall communicate its Nature to the body at the Resurrection and so it will be made spiritual immortal and incorruptible by the soul and soul and body are made such by Christ So that by this time you may see that there is more Reason for the Resurrection for all the body is turned to earth than there is Reason that a Candle that 's gone out should be lighted again by another or than there is Reason that I should put on my cloaths in the morning which I put off at night It 's true those cloaths have no power to put on themselves nor is there any natural necessitating cause of it but yet there is a Free cause in me that will infallibly if I live and be able produce it For nature disposeth me to abhor nakedness and desire my cloaths and therefore in the morning I will put them on And so nature teacheth the separated soul to desire a reunion with its body and therefore when the Resurrection morning comes it will gladly take the word from Christ and give that vital touch to the body that shall revive it and so put on its ancient garment but wonderfully changed from fleshly to spiritual from dishonourable into glorious And now I hope you see that you may put off these cloths with patience and submission and that it is no wrong to the flesh it self to be put off but tendeth to its highest advancement at the last Though the first cause of sin and the nest of sin shall be so broken first that it shall first be seen what sin hath done before it be seen what Grace will do and the fruit of our own wayes must first be tasted before we shall fully feed and live upon the blessed fruit of the grace of Christ 11. Moreover as there is a Resurrection for the body it self and that to a more perfect estate than it can here attain so the whole nature shall be perfected beyond our present comprehension This life was not intended to be the place of our perfection but the preparation for it As the fruit is far from ripeness in the first appearance or the flower while it is but in the husk or bud or the Oak when it is but an acorn or any plant when it is but in the seed no more is the very nature of man on earth As the Infant is not perfect in the Womb nor the Chicken in the shell no more are our natures perfect in this world Methinks for the sake of the body it self much more of the soul if we are believers we should submit contentedly to death While you are here you know that creatures will fail you enemies will hate you friends will grieve you neighbours will wrong you Satan will tempt you and molest you the world is changeable and will deceive you all your comforts are mixed with discomforts the body carrieth about with it calamities enough of its own to weary it What daily pains must it be at for the sustentation of its self in its present state and yet what grief and sorrow must it undergo Every member hath either its disease or a disposition thereto What abundance of passages can pain and sickness find to enter at and how many rooms that are ready to receive them As every member hath its use so every one is capable of sorrow and the sorrow of one is at least as much communicated to the whole as the usefulness is The pain of the simplest member even of a tooth can make the whole body a weary of it self What is the daily condition of our flesh but weakness and suffering with care and labour to prevent much worse which yet we know cannot long be avoided The sorrow of many a mans life hath made him wish he had never been born and why then should he not wish as much to die which doth ten thousand fold more for him if he be a Christian than to be unborn would have done Not a Relation so comfortable but hath its discomforts Not a friend so suitable but hath some discordancy nor any so amiable and sweet but hath somewhat loathsome troublesome and bitter Not a place so pleasant and commodious but hath its unfitness discommodities Not a Society so good and regular but hath its corruptions and irregularities And should we be so loth to leave whether naturally or violently such a life as this When the fruit is ripe should it not be gathered When the corn is ripe would you have it grow there and not be cut When the spirit hath hatched us for heaven should we be so loth to leave the shell or nest When we are begotten again to the hopes of immortality should we be so desirous to stay in the womb O Sirs it is another kind of life that we shall have with God They are purer comforts that stay for us above But if you will not have the Grapes to be gathered and prest how can you expect to have the Wine Me thinks our fleâ—h should have enough e're this time of sickness and pain and want and crosses and should be content to lie down in hope of the day when these shall be no more Little would an unbeliever think what a Body God will make of this that now is corruptible flesh and blood It shall then be loathsome and troublesome no more It shall be hungry or thirsty or weary or cold or pained no more As the stars of heaven do differ from a clod of
not as certainly now as he shall do in his sickness And yet in health these wretches will not be awakened so much to fear it as may restrain them from sin and help them to prepare for it It 's troublesome precise talk with them to talk of making ready to die Either they slight it or love not to hear or think of it And yet the same men when death is coming and they see they must away are even amazed with fear and horror And I cannot blame them unless they were in a better case But this I must blame them for as most unreasonable that they can make such a lamentable complaint when death and Hell are near hand and yet make so light of it all their life time CHAP. XXXIX Answer to their doubts that fear death BUt because this is the hardest part of self-denial and yet most necessary and the particular subject of my Text I shall stay upon it yet so much longer as to resolve a question of some doubting Christians and to give you some Directions for the furtherance of self-denial herein Object If it be a necessary part of self-denial to deny our own lives I am much afraid that I am no Disciple of Christ as having no true self-denial For I find that for all these Reasons I cannot be willing to die but when you have said all that can be said death is the most terrible thing in the world to me Answ I pray you lay together these following particulars for answer to this great and common doubt 1. Death as death is naturally dreadful to all and the best men as men are naturally averse to it and abhor it No man can desire death as death nor ought to do it If it had not been an evil to nature it had not been fit to be the matter of Gods punishment and to be Threatned to the world Threatnings would not do their work if that which is threatned were not naturally evil or hurtful and dreadful to the subject To threaten men with a benefit is a contradiction as much as to promise him a mischief and more 2. It is not therefore a simple Displacency or Averseness to die that God requireth you to lay by Self-denial consisteth not in reconciling us to Death as death For then he might as well perswade us to become Angels as to deny our selves and Preachers had as hard a work to do as to perswade men to cease to be men Death will be an enemy as long as it is death Even the separated soul hath so natural an inclination to union with its Body that the separation is part of the penalty to it And though heaven be their joy and Christ their life and fulness yet the separation from the body which they have even with Christ is a penalty and they have not that perfect measure of Joy and Glory as they shall have when they are joyned in the body again So that separation as such is penal to the soul in blessedness And even the separated soul of Jesus Christ that was more blessed than ours was as separated in a state of penalty when his body was in the grave Of which see my Appendix to the Reformed Pastor about the Descent into Hell 3. That which you have to look after therefore in your souls is not a love to death or willingness to death as death which no man hath or should have but it is 1. A Submission to it as a less evil than sin and Hell and the Displeasure of God and a choosing rather to die than wilfully to sin and forsake the Lord. 2. And a Love to that glory in the fruition of God which death is the passage to Seeing we cannot obtain the end of our faith and patience by any easier passage than death you must rather be content to go this strait and grievous way than miss of the state of eternal blessedness Let death be never so odious and dreadful to you if you had but rather die than forsake Christ by sin or miss of everlasting life with God you have that true self-denial even of life it self which is required in my Text. 4. And yet even a gracious soul may be so much unprepared as to desire to stay yet longer on earth though he be absent from the Lord while he is present in the body that so a better preparation may be made And also the love of God may make a man desire to stay yet longer for the service of the Church or to be with Paul in a strait between two Phil. 1. 21 22 23. 5. Have you not such pleasant apprehensions of the New Jerusalem and the coming of Christ in glory and the blessed state of the Saints in heaven as that you could most gladly enter into that blessed state by any other way than death And had you not rather die than miss of that felicity At least when you know that die you must had you not rather die sooner even a violent death by persecution than miss of your eternal life by saving your lives a little longer 6. And for your unwillingness to die as death is the last enemy to be conquered by Christ at the Resurrection so the fears of death and the power of it is the last evil that we shall be troubled with and you must not expect to be fully freed from these fears in this life for death will be death and man will be man But yet let me tell you that before you die God may very much abate your fears and very ordinarily doth so with his servants 1. By giving them that grace that is suited to a dying state and 2. By the help of sickness and pain it self And that is one great reason why sickness shall usually go before death that pain and misery may make the flesh even a weary of it self and make the soul a weary of its companion and both a weary of this miserable life And now I shall briefly name some few Directions which if you will practise you will more easily submit to death CHAP. XL. Directions to be willing to die Direct 1. BY all means endeavour the strengthening of your Belief of the Reality of eternal life and the truth of the promise of Christ concerning it For if you Believe it not you cannot die for it nor chearfully submit to a natural death through the hopes of it This is the sum or principal work of the Christian faith to Believe the everlasting life as procured for us by the love of the Father the Obedience Death Resurrection and Intercession of the Son and the Sanctification of the Holy Ghost It is the unsoundness or the weakness of this Belief that is the principal cause of our unwillingness to die Direct 2. By all means endeavour to get and maintain the Assurance of your Title to this Promise and Felicity Get sound evidence and keep it clear Expunge all blots without delay Take heed of such sin as woundeth Conscience
comfort it will be to your soul in Hell to be extolled and well spoken of on earth Will you cast away your souls to leave a Name of renown behind you And how unsutable will such Honor be to your condition surely if you be there acquainted with it you must needs be more tormented both to remember that you were seeking the fame of the world instead of the eternal glory and to consider what a miserable wretch it is that men are praising and magnifying on earth Ah then you will think with your selves Little do the poor inhabitants of the earth know what I am suffering while they are extolling me Is the applause of mortals sutable to a poor tormented soul Alas that at one and the same time men should be extolling me and Devils tormenting me How little ease do all their acclamations afford this poor distressed soul How honorable are the names of Alexander the Great Caesar Aristotle here on earth but alas what cause have we to fear that they are lamenting their misery while we are speaking of their glory 5. And the sin is much the greater because it is not a mis-chosen means but a mistaken end that your souls have fastened on For it seems your very hearts are set upon your Honours and deeply and desperately set upon them when you dare contrive the continuation of them when you are dead Were it not a matter exceeding dear to you undoubtedly you durst not lay such a design for it 6. And consider whether there be not a Love of the deadly sin of Pride and a final impenitency implyed in this ambition of a surviving name For you â—â—a design that is supposed to be executed after death And as if you desired an eternity of wickedness because your Pride it self can live no where but with your self you would have it leave those tokens behind it by which the world may know that you are Proud and the effects of it you would have perpetuated on earth And had not the world enough of your Pride while you were alive and had not you enough of it Is this your Repentance that you would leave the Monuments of your Pride unto Posterity as if you were afraid there would be no surviving witness against you to condemn you This is a certain transcendency of sin The common wicked ones would fain die the death of the Righteous and wish their last end were like to his But these men would have their Pride to live for ever and when they themselves are in another world they would have the demonstrations of their iniquity survive them 7. And I beseech you consider what a fearful thing it is to die in contrived beloved sin when men have none but a death-bed Repentance we have much cause to fear lest it be but fear that is the life of their Repentance But when they have not this much but are desirous to leave the Monuments of their vice to all Generations from whence then shall we fetch our hopes of their forgiveness And O what a power hath Pride in that soul where the thoughts of Death it self will give no stop to it but still they are desirous that Pride may over-live them One would think that the serious thoughts of a grave much more of our passage into another world should level all such thoughts of a surviving honour even in an unsanctified soul But I much fear lest it be infidelity it self that is the root of all and that men do not soundly believe an everlasting life with â—…d which makes them desire to have somewhat like 〈…〉 Immortality here on earth 8. And consider what a silly immortality you desire The honour can be no greater than the persons are that honour you nor no longer And it is but poor mortals that will magnifie your Names and what can they add to you and it will be but a very little while for it is not long that the world is to continue 9. And consider what a wickedness is here commonly included Proud men desire to be thought better than they are and spoken of accordingly They limit not mens estimation to the truth of their deserts Otherwise if the best and greatest of you all were thought no better or greater than you are alas how far would men be from admiring you what would you be thought but worms and sinners and such as after all your glory cannot forbid a crawling worm to feed upon your face or heart and such as deserve no less than hell and have many a secret sin that the world was unacquainted with But it is not a true but false Esteem that the Proud desire They care not how great or how good or how wise and learned the world and succeeding ages think them And thus they desire to cheat mens understandings and to leave a false History of themselves on earth and to have all men believe and report untruths to magnifie men whose souls it 's much to be doubted are in hell or if they be not must needs abhor such doings And thus every Proud and selfish man would be a false Historian and cheater of the world 10. Yea which is yet the worst of all they would continue sacrilegiously to rob the Lord of his honour even when they are dead It is an undue honour which is stoln from God which they so much seek for For were it but such as is a useful means to his honour he would not be offended with them And when the Saints say Not unto us Lord but unto thy name give the glory these sinners are not content to rob God of his honour as long as they live but they would do it even after death If we had not certainly known the truth of it we should have thought it an incredible thing that ever any man should come to that impiety pride and madness as to desire to be worshipped as a God when he was dead Much more that the most of the world should be so far distracted as to do it And yet so it hath been and so it is in too great a measure And truly the wicked or Proud disposition that is predominant in the hearts of all the unsanctified doth take up no snorter where it hath but hopes of success to actuate it Not a man of them but would be honoured as Gods when they are dead Though I know those of them that feel not this much in themselves will hardly believe it Consider what an hainous injury this is to God and to the souls of men that you should leave your Names as Idols to the world to entice so many thousand men to sin and to be a standing enemy to the honour of God by encroaching on his right and turning the eye of mens observation and admiration from him to you 11. Consider also how that by these desires of earthly honour to your selves and making this the End of your endeavours you corrupt abundance of excellent works materially considered and
A TREATISE OF Self-Denial By Richard Baxter Pastor of the Church at Kederminster Phil. 2. 20 21. I have no man like minded who will naturally care for your estate For all seek their own not the things which are Jesus Christs LONDON Printed by Robert White for Nevil Simmons at the Princes Arms in Saint Pauls Church-yard 1675. A PREMONITION Concerning this Second Edition READER I Take the Love of God and Self-denial to be the sum of all saving Grace and Religion the first of the Positive part the second of the Oppositive or Negative part And I judge of the measure of my own and all other mens true piety by these two And it is the rarity of these two which assureth me of the rarity of sincere Godliness O how much selfishness and how little Love of God are too often found among those contenders for supposed true Doctrine true Worship true Discipline and the true Church who can say that their Zeal for these things doth eat up themselves their Charity their Peaceableness and their Brethren The same men that will not abate an opinion a formality a singularity for the Churches Peace and Concord or for the interest of Love and the healing of our wounds will as hardly abate a jot of their Wealth their worldly honour their carnal interest or selfish wills which shews that their zeal and seeming Orthodoxness and wisdom as in them is not from above but from beneath Jam. 3. 15 16 17. O that men knew what hearts-ease self-denial bringeth by mortifying all that corrupteth and troubleth the souls of sinners And if that part of Religion which seemeth hardest harshest be so sweet what is our Love and Delight in God but the foretaste of Heaven it self But the soul is seldom fit to relish this Doctrine aright till some special providence or conviction have made all the world notoriously insufficient for our relief But he that in or after sharp affliction will still be selfish in a predominant degree is next to hopeless I remember that one accounted of eminent wisdom a little before he forsook the Land of his Nativity made this the first word that ever he spake to me I thank you especially for your Book of Self-denial And when we are going out of the world we shall all be much fitter to relish and understand the Doctrine of Self-denial than now we are But though undeniable reason thus presented by the grace of God do much cure some particular souls yet alas the World the most of the Church visible the Land is so far uncured as that selfishness still triumpheth over our innocency piety and peace and seemeth to deride our hopes of remedy Were Profession as rare as true Self-denial I should be of their mind who reduce the Church into a much narrower room than either the Roman the National the Presbyterian or Independent Alas how few are those true Believers whose inordinate SELF-LOVE SELF-CONCEITEDNESS SELF-WILL and SELF-SEEKING are truly conquered by FAITH and turned into the LOVE of GOD as GOD and of the PUBLICK GOOD and of their NEIGHBOUR as themselves and into a HUMBLED UNDERSTANDING conscious of its Ignorance and into a humbled submissive WILL which is more disposed to follow than to lead and to obey than to be Imperious and domineer and into a LIFE entirely devoted to God and to the Common good But this complaint was made before But what we most feel we are most inclined to â—…r and to press that on others which we find most necessary to our selves And I must say that of all the Books which I have written I peruse none so often for the use of my own soul in its daily work as my Life of Faith and this of Self-denial and the last part of the Saints Rest One little thing I will here tell the Reader that no Book of mine except the two first had ever the word Dedicatory joyned to the Epistle by my consent but I have very oft prohibited it in vain whether by the oblivion or self-conceit of the Booksellers or the Printers I cannot tell Not that I condemn the word in others but that my Epistles were still of so different an importance as did require a different Title R. B. To the Honourable Colonel JAMES BERRY c. SIR PRovidence having deprived me of the opportunity of nearer converse with you which heretofore I have enjoyed yet leaving me the same affections they work towards you as they can and have chosen here to speak to you in the hearing of the world that my words may remain to the ends intended when a private Letter may be burnt or cast aside Flattery I am confident you expect not from me because you know me and know me to be your friend And yet my late Monitor hath made many smile by accusing me of that fawning crime I am told what it is to bless my friend with a loud voice Prov. 27. 14. I have learnt my self that Open rebuke is better than secret love and that faithful are the wounds of a friend but the kisses of an enemy are deceitful Prov. 27 5 6. And therefore I shall do as I would be done by Faithfulness and Usefulness shall be the measure of my message to you And they have commanded me to set before you this lesson of Self-denial and earnestly to intreat you and again intreat you that you will faithfully Read and Learn and Practise it Though I judged you have learnt it long ago I think it not needless to mind you of it again my soul being astonished to see the power of Selfishness in the world even in those that by Confessions and Prayers and high Professions have frequently condemned it Yet this is the Radical-mortal sin Where this lives all sins virtually lives Say that a man is Selfish and in that measure you say all that is naught of him as to his inclination That Selfishness is the summe of Vice and the Capital enemy of God of Common-wealths of Order and Government of all Grace and Vertue of every holy Ordinance and Duty especially of Unity and Brotherly Love and of the welfare of our neighbours and of our own salvation I have manifested to you in the following Discourse But alas what need we words to manifest it when the flames of discord and long-continued divisions among Brethren do manifest it When hatred strife variance emulation backbiting violence rebellions bloodshed resisting and pulling down of Governments have so lamentably declared it When such havock is made by it before our eyes and the evil spirit goes on and prospereth and desolation is zealously and studiously carried on and the voice of Peace-makers is despised or drowned in the confused noise Presumptuous are they self-willed they have not been afraid to speak evil of dignities 2 Pet. 2. 10. To speak evil was that the height of presumption and self-willedness then Alas how much further hath it proceeded now even under the Cloak of Liberty and
If selfish interest led them not to this and if they were more tender of the Interest of Christ than of their own and of mens souls than of their flesh it would not be thus But the same argument that tempts the sensual to Hell doth tempt such Magistrates to set up Liberty for drawing men to Hell The wicked sell their souls to spare their flesh and let go Heaven to enjoy the Liberty of sinning and run into Hell to scape the trouble of an holy life And such Magistrates sell the peoples souls to spare the flesh of the deceivers and in tenderness and mercy to their bodies they dare not restrain men from seeking their damnation Is faith and holiness propagated by perswasion and not by force Surely then Infidelity Popery and Ungodliness are propagated by perswasion too Again I tell you self-love doth make such Rulers wiser than to grant Commission or Liberty to all that will to tice their souldiers to mutinies or rebellion their wives to Adultery their children to prodigality or their servants to thievery But the love of Christ and mens salvation is not so strong as to satisfie them whether men should be hindred from raising mutinies in his Church and from destroying souls Forsooth they tell us that Christ is sufficient to look to his own cause Very true and they shall one day know it But must he not therefore teach or rule by men Is not Adultery Murder Theft Rebellion against the Cause of Christ and his Laws as well as Popery and Infidelity And must they therefore be let alone by man Christ is sufficient to Teach the world as well as to Govern But doth it follow that men must be no Teachers under him Nothing but selfishness could cause this blindness And because I know that this stream proceeds from the Roman spring and it is their great design to perswade the world that it belongs not to Magistrates to meddle with Religion but only to cherish them that the Pope approveth of and to punish those whom the Pope condemns and that Christ must Govern and judge of matters of Religion himself that is by his pretended Roman Vicechrist I shall only now say this that if Rome were acquainted with self-denial and if the selfish carnal interest of Riches and Rule and worldly greatness had not blinded them they could never have believed themselves that Christ did appoint the Pope of Rome to be his Universal Vicar and that Princes and Magistrates in their own Dominions have not more Power to judge who is to be tolerated or punished by the sword than the Pope of Rome when no Priest or Prelate upon earth as such hath any thing to do with such a judgement no not in the places where they live All that they have to do herein is to judge who is the Heretick or offendor in order to his censure and excommunication But it's Magistrates only that must judge who is the Heretick or effendor in order to corporal punishment or restraint And this I undertake to make good against all the Papists in the world much more that the Roman Tyrant hath no such Power at the Antipodes and in all the Christian Nations on earth Remember in all this that I speak not against a Toleration of Godly tolerable men Episcopal Presbyterian Independent Anabaptist c. that will walk in Charity Peace and Concord ☞ we shall never be well till these are closed But do we not know that Papists have Italy and Spain and Germany and France at hand to help them And that if we grant them such a liberty as shall strengthen them and make way for their power we give away our own liberty and are preparing faggots for our martyrdom and giving away the Gospel that by wonders of mercy hath been till now preserved and I hope shall be preserved in despite of Rome and Hell Nor yet do I plead for any cruelty against a Papist but for a necessary Defence of the interest of Christ and the souls of men and the hopes of our posterity True Humanity abhorreth cruelty Did Magistrates well know their dependence upon God and that they are his officers and must make him their end they would not take their flocks to be their masters though they may take them for their charge nor would they set up a carnal interest of the multitude against the pleasing of God and mens salvation nor would they think so highly of mens conceits and wills as to judge it a matter of so much moment to allow them in Religion to say or do what they list If allowing a mans self in the practice of Known sin is inconsistent with a state of grace and a sign of a miserable slave of Satan I leave it to you to consider what it will prove to allow others even Countries and Nations in Known sin And if Rulers know not that setting up an Universal Vice-christ and worshipping bread though they think there is no bread with Divine worshp and serving God in an unknown tongue with other points of Popery are sin and that opposing and reproaching the holy Scriptures Ordinances and Ministry are sin wo to such Rulers and wo to the Nations that are Ruled by such O what a blessing is a holy self-denying Magistracy to a Nation If one could have told you twenty years ago that you and such as you should be Rulers in this Land how confidently would you have promised an universal encouragement to godliness and a vigorous promoting the cause of Christ and a zealous suppressing of all that is against it Little would you or I have thought that after Professors of godliness were in power so many years should have been spent in destroying Charity and Unity and cherishing almost all that will stand up for the Devil and plead his cause against the Doctrine and Discipline and Worship and Churches and Officers of Jesus Christ And that in their dayes it should have been put to the Question whether the Ministry it self should be taken down And that men in power should write for Liberty for all that will call it self Religion even Popery not excepted nor I think Infidelity or Mahumetism it self and that those that write so should be men in Power My heart would have risen against him as an odious calumniator that should have presumed to tell me that such men as have attempted this would ever have come to such a pass and I should have encountred them with Hazaels question Are they dogs that they should do so vile a thing and exercise such cruelty on souls and seek to bring back the people of God to the Romish vomit and set up the greatest tyranny on earth and all under pretence of a Religious Liberty But alas it is not Magistrates only that are so wanting in self-denial Ministers also are guilty of this crime Or else we should not have been so forward to divisions and so backward to the cure nor would men of this profession for
we should take Liberty to contradict them and to speak for Christ and the souls of men till they have deprived us of tongues or pens or lives And they must expect that we obey God rather than men and that as Paul did Peter Gal. 2. 11. we withstand them to the face and that Satan shall not be unresisted because he is transformed into an Angel of Light nor his Ministers be unresisted because they are transformed into the Ministers of Righteousness nor the false Apostles and deceitful workers because they are transformed into the Apostles of Christ 2 Cor. 11. 13 14 15. Nor must they think to do so horrid a thing as to weave their Libertinism Toleration of Popery into a new Fundamental Constitution of the Common-wealth which Parliaments must have no power to alter and that the ages to come shall curse us for our silence and say that Ministers and other Christians were all so basely selfish as for fear of reproaches or sufferings to say nothing but cowardly to betray the Gospel and their Countrey If the rattling of the hail of persecution on the tiles even on this flesh which is but the tabernacle of our souls be a terrible thing how much more terrible is the indignation of the Lord and the threats of him that is a consuming fire If you can venture your life against an enemy in the field we are bastards and not Christians if we cannot venture ours and give them up to persecuting rage as long as we know that we have a Master that will save us harmless and that the God whom we serve is able to deliver us that he hath charged us not to fear them that kill the body and after that can do no more c. and that he hath told us that we are blessed when men revile us and persecute us and say all manner of evil against us falsly for his sake bidding us Rejoyce and be exceeding glad for great is our reward in heaven for so persecuted they the Prophets that were before us Mat. 5. 10 11 12. and when we are told that he that will save his life shall lose it and whosoever will lose his life for the sake of Christ shall finde it Mat. 16. 25. and when we know that we own a cause that shall prevail at last and resist them whose end shall be according to their works 2 Cor. 11. 15. And what though this be unknown to the opposers That will not warrant us to betray a cause that we know to be of God nor will the ignorance of others excuse us for neglecting known truth and duty If the souls of private persons be worth all the study and labour of our lives and we must deal faithfully with them whatever it shall cost us surely the safety of a Nation and the hopes of our posterity and the publick interest of Christ is worthy to be spoken for with much more zeal and we may suffer more joyfully for contradicting a publick destroyer of the Church than for telling a poor drunkard or whoremonger of his sin and misery Hither to I have permitted my pen to express my sense of the common want of self-denial in the Land Now give me leave as your most affectionate faithful friend to turn my stile a little to your self and earnestly to entreat of you these following particulars I. In general that as long as you live you will watch against this common deadly sin of Selfishness and study continually the duty of Self-denial We shall be empty of Christ till we are Nothing in our selves Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven Self is the strongest and most dangerous enemy that ever you fought against It is a whole Army united and the more dangerous because so near Many that have fought as valiantly and successfully against other enemies as you have at last been conquered and undone by Self And conquer it you cannot without a conflict And the conflict must endure as long as you live And combating is not pleasing to the enemy And therefore as long as self is the enemy and self-pleasing so natural to corrupted man that should be wholly addicted to please the Lord Self-denial will prove a difficult task And if somewhat in the advice that would engage you deeper in the conflict should seem bitter or ungrateful I should not wonder And let me freely tell you that your prosperity and advancement will make the work so exceeding difficult that since you have been a Major General and a Lord and now a Counsellor of State you have stood in a more slippery perillous place and have need of much more grace and vigilancy than when you were but Baxter's Friend Great places and employments have great temptations and are great avocations of the mind from God And no errour scarcely can be small that is committed in publick great Affairs which the honour of God and the temporal and spiritual welfare of so many do in somesort depend upon These times have told us to our grief what Victory and Prosperity can do to strengthen the selfish principle in men They have swallowed Camels since they were lifted up that would have strained at Gnats in a lower state The Ministery and Ordinances and Holy Communion that once were sweet to them are grown into contempt Centaury and Wormwood are excellent helps to procure an appetite and strengthen the stomach but marrow and sweetness breed a loathing The Vertiginous disease is not so strong with them that are on the ground as with them that stand on the top of a steeple I had rather twenty times look up at them that are so exalted than stand with them and have the terror of looking down Had not professors been intoxicated by prosperity they had not believed and lived so giddily I have often seen mens reason marr'd with a cup or two too much but seldom by too little And too many I have known that have wounded conscience and sold their souls for the love of Prosperity and Wealth but none that ever did it for Poverty For a rich man to be saved is impossible to man though all things are possible with God Matth. 19. 26. Luke 18. 27. For my own part I bless God that hath kept me from greatness in the world and I take it as the principal act of Friendship that ever you did for me that you provoked me to this sweet though flesh-displeasing life of the Ministry in which I have chosen to abide I had rather lie in health on the hardest bed than be sick upon the softest And I see that a fether-bed maketh not a sick man well The sleep of the labouring man is sweet The plow-mans brown bread and cheese is more savoury to him and breedeth fewer sicknesses than the fulness and variety of the rich This Country Diet doth not cherish Voluptuousness Arrogancy Vain-glory Earthly-mindedness Uncharitableness and other selfish diseases so much as worldly
say others Miracles say others and indeed it 's what the Interest of selfish men doth dictate to the accusers O that they would tell us what is the due Call and where is the Ministery on Earth that hath it if we have not If they would have all laid by that work not Miracles we may see what they would have done to the Church If we are not what they would have us be and do not what they would have us do why do they not come in charity and meekness and shew us the course that we should take If we are fools or besides our selves it is for them The God whom we serve that will shortly judge us is our witness that we have chosen the Calling that we are in for their salvation and for his glory and that we labour in it in season and out of season toplease Christ and to profit them rather than to please or accommodate our flesh You brought me into the Ministry I am confident you know to what ends and with what intentions I desired it I was then very ignorant young and raw Though my weakness be yet such as I must lament I must say to the praise of the great Shepherd of the slock that he hath since then afforded me precious opportunities much assistance and as much encouragement as to any man that I know alive You know my Education and initial weakness was such as forbiddeth me to glory in the flesh But I will not rob God of his Glory to avoid the appearance of ostentation lest I be proud of seeming not to be proud I doubt not but many thousand souls will thank you when they have here read that you were the man that led me into the Ministry And shall I entertain a suspicion that you will ever hearken to those men that would rob you of the reward of many such works and engage you against the King of Saints Is it gain or ease or worldly advantages that continueth me in this work Let me speak as a fool seeing it is for the Lord in imitation of Paul that was no fool Was I not capable of Secular and Military advancement as well as others that are grown great Did I ever sollicite you so much as for my Arrears which is many hundred pounds You could scarce do the thing that would gratifie my flesh more than to silence and depose me from the Ministry Might I consult with the flesh I should be more against my own employment than many of my enemies are Did I but turn Physitian I â—â—uld get more worldly wealth And my Patients would not be so froward and quarrelsome and unthankful as most Ministers find their carnal Auditors to be When men come to me for Physick for their Bodies how submissive are they and how do they intreat and what thanks after will they return But when we would help their souls what cavils and quarrels and unthankful obstinacy do we meet with We must be much beholden to them to accept our help and all will not serve surn My Patients that have bodily Diseases will pay me if I would take it But if by giving them twice as much as I receive I could satisfie and further the cure of diseased souls how joyful should I be And must we deny our selves and all things in the world for our peoples sakes and after all be reproached as if we were a mercenary generation and sought our selves O how will God confound this ingratitude when he comes to judge Something they might say if the Ministers of England had the provision of the French and other Popish Clergy I will not presume to compare now our Calling fidelity and maintenance with Magistrates Judges and men of other professions Should I suppose the Magistracy epitomized in you and the Ministery in me I should give you an undue advantage For I suppose there are far more Ministers better than me than there are Magistrates better than you And yet I think you would not judge of me as the Ministers are judged of As there are no such Commissioners for ejection of scandalous insufficient negligent Magistrates as are for the ejection of such Ministers so if there were I should not doubt but you would quickly see which part were liable to more exceptions But when I took on the faithful Ministers round about me how many of them could I name with whom my conscience tells me I am not worthy to be compared in Holiness I am then amazed at the ingratitude of the Apostates of this age How constantly and zealously do they preach in publick at home and abroad some of them many times a week How diligently do they instruct the ignorant in private from house to house How unblameably and meekly and self-denyingly do they behave themselves And are men that once made profession of Religion become the enemies of such a Ministry O my soul come not thou into their secret unto their Assembly mine honour be not thou united Gen. 49. 6. I had rather be in the case of Turks yea of Canibals than of those men I know that many think our very ignorant Dividers to have more illumination and that the Pastors of the flocks are carnal ignorant men As the blind man that rusht against another and asked him whether he were blind that could not go out of his way But I have long tryed the spirits and I have found that these Cameleons have nothing within but lungs and that straw and little sticks may make the quickest and the lightest blaze but will not make a durable fire as the bigger fewel doth A Bittern hath a loud â—â— voice than a Swan or Eagle And in some one thing a bungler may excell a better work-man And what if one Minister excel in one gift and another in another and few in all Is not this like the Primitive administration You be not angry with your Apple-tree that it bears not Plumbs nor with your Pear-tree that it bears not Figs But I have been too tedious I beseech you interpret not any of these words as intended for accusation or unjust suspicion of your self God forbid you should ever fall from that integrity that I am perswaded you once had But my eye is on the Times with grief and on my Antient Dearest Friend with Love And in an age of Iniquity and Temptation my conscience and the world shall never say that I was unfaithful to my friend and forbore to tell him of the common dangers Dear Friend take heed of a glittering flattering world Remember that greatness makes few bad men good and few good men better As Seneca saith The Carkase is as truly dead that is embalmed as that which is dragg'd to the grave with hooks And this I say the time is short It remaineth that they that weep be as if they wept not and they that rejoyce as though they rejoyced not and they that buy as though they possessed not and they that use this world as they
that use it not for the fashion of this world passeth away 1 Cor. 7. 29 30 31. And when the soul of the worldly fool is required of him then whose shall all their Dignities and Honours and Riches be In the mean time God judgeth not by outward appearance as man judgeth nor honoureth any for being honoured of men Solus honor merito qui datur ille datur These Truths well known to you I thought meet here to set before your eyes not knowing whether I shall any more converse with you in the flesh and also to desire you seriously to read over these popular Sermons perswaded to the Press by the importunity of some faithful Brethren that love a mean Discourse on so necessary a subject Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation I rest Your Friend Richard Baxter Sept 12. 1659. THE PRFFACE Readers I Here present to your serious consideration a Subject of such Necessity and Consequence that the Peace and safety of Churches Nations Families and souls do lie upon it The Eternal God was the Beginning and the End the Interest the attractive the confidence the desire the delight the All of man in his upright uncorrupted State Though the Creator planted in mans Nature the principle of Natural Self-love as the spring of his endeavours for Self-preservation and a notable part of the engine by which he governeth the world yet were the parts subservient to the Whole and the whole to God And Self-love did subserve the Love of the Universe and of God and man desired his own Preservation for these higher Ends. When sia stept in it broke this order and taking advantage from the natural innocent principle of Self-love it turned man from the Love of God and much abated his Love to his neighbour and the publick good and turned him to Himself by an inordinate self-love which terminateth in himself and principally in his Carnal-self instead of God and the Common good so that Self is become All to Corrupted nature as God was All to Nature in its integrity Selfishness is the souls Idolatry and Adultery the sum of its Original and increased Pravity the Beginning and End the life and strength of actual sin even as the Love of God is the Rectitude and Fidelity of the soul and the sum of all our special Grace and the Heart of the new Creature and the life and strength of actual holiness Selfishness in one word expresseth all our Aversion Positively as the want of the Love of God expresseth it Privatively and all our sin is summarily in these two Even as all our Holiness is summarily in the Love of God and in self-denial It is the work of the Holy Ghost by sanctifying grace to bring off the soul again from Self to God Self-denial therefore is half the essence of Sanctification No man hath any more Holiness than he hath Self-denial And therefore the Law which the Sanctifying Spirit writeth on the heart doth set up God in the first Table and our neighbour in the second against the usurpation and encroachment of this Self It saith nothing of Love or Duty to our selves as such expresly In seeking the Honour and Pleasing of God and the Good of our neighbour we shall most certainly find our own Felicity which nature teacheth us to desire So that all the Law is Fulfilled in Love which includeth Self-denial as Light includeth the expulsion of darkness oâ— rather as Loyalty includeth a Cessation of Rebellion and a rejection of the Leaders of it and as conjugal fidelity includeth the rejection of Harlots The very meaning of the first Commandment is Thou shalt Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart c. which is the sum of the first Table and the Commandment that animateth all the rest The very meaning of the last Commandment is Thou shalt Love thy neighbour as thy self which is the summary of the second Table and in General forbiddeth all particular injuries to others not enumerated in the fore-going precepts and secondarily animateth the four antecedent precepts The fifth Commandment looking to both Tables and conjoyning them commandeth us to Honour our Superiours in Authority both as they are the Officers of God and so paticipatively Divine and as they are the Heads of humane Societies and our subjection necessary to Common good so that self-denial is principally required in the first Commandment that is The denying of self as opposite to God and his Interest And self-denial is required in the Last Commandment that is The denying of self as it is an enemy to our neighbours Right and welfare and would draw from him unto our selves Self-love and self-seeking as opposite to our neighbours good is the thing forbidden in that Commandment and Charity or Loving our neighbour as our selves and desiring his Welfare as our own is the thing commanded Self-denial is required in the fifth Commandment in a double respect according to the double respect of the Commandment 1. In respect to God whose Governing Authority is exercised by Governours their Power being a beam of his Majesty the fifth Commandment requireth us to deny our selves by due subjection and by honouring our Superiours that is to deny our own aspiring desires and our refractory minds and disobedient self-willedness and to take heed that we suffer not within us any proud or rebellious dispositions or thoughts that would lift us up above our Rulers or exempt us from subjection to them 2. In respect to humane Societies for whose Good Authority and Government is appointed the fifth Commandment obligeth us to deny our Private interest and in all competitions to prefer the publick good and maketh a promise of temporal peace and welfare in a special manner to those that in obedience to this Law do prefer the Honour of Government and the Publick Peace and welfare before their Own Thus Charity as opposed to selfishness and including self-denial is the very sum and fulfilling of the Law And selfishness is the radical comprehensive sin containing uncharitableness which breaks it all And as the Law so also the Redeemer in his Example and his Doctrine doth teach us and that more plainly and urgently this lesson of self-denial The life of Christ is the pattern which the Church must labour to imitate And Love and self-denial were the summary of his life Though yet he had no sinful self to deny but only natural self He denyed himself in avoiding sin but we must deny our selves in returning from it He loved not his Life in comparison of his love to his Father and to his Church He appeared without desirable form or comeliness He was despised and rejected of men a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief he bore our griefs and carryed our sorrows and was esteemed stricken smitten of God and afflicted he was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities the chastisement of our peace was laid upon him the Lord laid upon him the iniquity of
by Christ And therefore it is past dispute that none but the self-denying are sanctified and therefore none bâ— they do truly take the Holy Ghost for their Sanctifier and truly believe in him So far as men are in Love with the disease it is certain they will not use the Physitian Reas 5. No man is a true Christian and in a state of salvation that denyeth renounceth or rejecteth the word of God But all men that have not self-denyal that hear the word of God do renounce deny it or reject it and therefore no man without self-denyal is a true Christian or can be saved In the Scriptures it is that we have eternal life it s they that must make us wise to salvation the man that will be blessed must meditate in them day and night Psal 1. 3. And it is not the hearers but the Doers of them that are blessed But nothing is more clear than that the voice of Scripture calleth aloud on all men to deny themselves and that the scope of it is to cry down self and set up God in Jesus Christ It is the very drift and meaning of it from end to end to take down self and abase men in their own eyes and bring them home to God from whom they are revolted Reas 6. No man can be a Christian or be saved without saving Grace But no man without self-denyal hath saving Grace For it is the nature of every Grace to carry man from himself to God by Christ It is the work of godly sorrow to humble proud man and break the heart of carnal self It is the work of faith for a self-denying soul to pass out for hope and life to Christ It is the work of Love to carry us quite above our selves to that infinite goodness which we love it is the nature of holy fear to confess our guilt and insufficiency and to suspect our selves and dread the fruit of our own ways Confidence doth bottom us upon God and Hope it self doth imply a Despairing in our selves Thankfulness doth pay the homage to him that hath saved us from our selves And every grace hath self-denyal as half its very life or soul And therefore it is certain that no man hath any more grace than he hath self-denyal Reas 7. They that reject the Ministry and the fruit of all the Ordinances of God are not true Christians nor cannot be saved But so do all among us that have not self-denyal For the use of the Ministry is to call home sinners from themselves to God The use of every Ordinance of God is to get or keep down carnal self and exalt the Lord. Confession is nothing but self-abasing and he must confess that will have the faithful and just God to forgive him for he that covereth his sin shall not prosper 1 John 1. 9. Prov. 28. 13. Prayer is a confession of our own emptiness insufficiency and unworthiness and a flying from our selves for help unto another In Baptism we come as condemned prisoners for a pardon as it were with ropes about our necks and strip our selves of the rags of our filthiness that by the blood of the lamb we may be washed from our blood and our sins may be buried as in the depth of the Sea In the Lords Supper we renew the same Covenant and receive the same renewed pardon and still fly from our selves to Christ for life and renounce our carnal selves by solemn Covenant as a people coming home to God So that never was any Ordinance of God effectual and saving on the soul of any further than it brought them to self-denyal or preserved exercised or manifested it Reas 8. He that can do no work sincerely nor go one step in the way of life is no true Christian nor in a state life But this is the case of all that have not self-denyal For self is their Principle Rule and End and he that hath either a false Principle Rule or End cannot be sincere in any of the means much less when he is out in all of these A selfish man is seeking himself in his very Religion and is serving himself when he seemeth to be serving God And indeed he doth not any service sincerely unto God because he makes not God his End And therefore cannot be accepted Reas 9. No man is a true Christian or can be saved that sticks in the depth of his natural misery in his lapsed state But so do all men that have not self-denyal for it is self that they are faln to and must be saved from Reas 10. No man can be a true Christian and be saved that is not a member of the Holy Catholick Church and the Communion of Saints But so is none but the self-denying for every true member of the Church hath a publick spirit preferring the Churches interest to his own and suffering with fellow members in their suffering and having a care of one another 1 Cor. 12. But the self-seeking unsanctified person is a stranger to this disposition Reas 11. He that is led by the greatest enemy of God and his own soul is not a true Christian nor in a state of life But so is every man that hath not learned to deny himself For self is the greatest enemy of God and us Escape but your own hands and you are out of danger All the Devils in Hell cannot destroy you if you would not be your own destroyers Reas 12. Lastly It is a plain contradiction to be saved without self-denyal For as its self that we must be saved from both as our End and Means and greatest enemy so to stick in self is still to be lost and miserable and therefore not to be saved So that the case is as plain as a case can be that no man can be a true Christian or Disciple of Christ without self-denyal and consequently none without it can be saved I have been the briefer upon the Arguments because the matter of some of them may come to be fullier opened anon in the Application CHAP. III. Use 1. A general complaint of the Prevalency of Selfishness Use 1. AND now we have seen from the words of Christ the absolute Necessity of self-denyal and that there is no true Christianity nor salvation without it let us next take a view of our selves and of the world and Judge of our condition by this certain Rule Look well into your selves and into the world and tell me whether you find not cause to lament 1. That true Christianity is so rare a thing even among the professors of Christianity seeing self-denyal is so rare 2. That Grace is so weak and small in the most of the regnerate seeing self-denyal is so little and imperfect O if the name of Christians would prove us Christians and the magnificent Titles we give to Christ would prove that we are his true Disciples if reading and hearing and outward duties and a cheap Religiousness would serve turn we have then great
the matters of salvation But see what self can do If the same men have but their tithe to gather they will not think it a needless thing to go or send to every family and speak with them all about their own business At least if it were any considerable sum they would not lose it for want of speaking for Our neighbours do many of them think it much that we should call them to be personally Instructed or Catechized and they will not come at us but say What needs all this ado have we not teaching enough at Church Its Children that must be Catechized and we are past Children You see how little interest God and their Ministers and their own salvation hath in them But will you see what carnal self can do more Had I but money enough I would undertake to make them come to me and follow me as a horse will follow his provender Had I but ten pound a piece to give them yea or but ten shillings I do not think I should have any refuse to come and fetch it unless it were those that now are the forwardest in seeking relief for the wants of their souls Had I but the estates or lives of all these men in my power how easily would they be ruled and how diligently and submissively would they attend that now for God and their everlasting life disdain to come and seek instructions And yet these men would scarce believe you if you should tell them that self and the world is made their God and that God himself is denyed and rejected by them Moreover a long time I have been perswading all the families in the Town and Parish to read the Scripture and daily call upon God together I have proved it their duty from Scripture and this doth not prevail But see what flesh and self can do If these men were but sure of ten or twenty shillings a time for every Morning and Evening that they pray together I warrant you what ever the heart did the lips should be taught to do their part O how busie would all the Town and Parish be to learn to pray that now look not after it I do not believe that there is ever a house among them all that would not very shortly set up prayer if they were but paid for it after these rates Judge now whether God or self bear sway among these men and whether soul or body be more regarded Moreover we have too many drunkards in the Town that no means that we can use will restrain and keep sober They love the drink and they cannot forbear and tell them of Gods word that doth threaten them with damnation and they will for all that be drunk the next day But if one of these wretches might have but ten pound a week on condition he would forbear I do not think for all this but he could forbear Or if he were sure that for every cup of drink he should drink after it a cup of piss or gall I warrant you he would soon begin to abate We have abundance of ignorant sensual men that for love of sin refuse Church-Government and will not come under it But if the Magistrate would but make a Law that all men shall he members of a particular Church and submit to discipline or forfeit but twenty shillings a month how few refusers should we have in all the Town or Country We have many that seldom come to hear in the publick Assemblies but let the Parliament make a Law that they shall pay for their resusal and how readily will it bring the most of them unless they have hopes that the Law will not be executed And judge now whether self or God have greater Interests in these mens hearts I see but one piece of self-denyal among this sort of people in this Town and that this Though the officers are to give the money to the poor which they have from swearers drunkards unlicensed and abusive Ale-sellers prophaners of the Lords day c. yet that sort of the poor themselves do hate those officers that are zealous in their duties This is strange that the love of money doth not change them But whether it be that they can deny their flesh for the Devil though not for God and in enmity to godliness though not to further it or whether it be that the officers do use to give their mony to an honester sort of poor and these have none of it I cannot well tell And having given so many sad instances of the power of self and scarcity of self-denyal in others I hope the Magistrates will not take it ill if we help them to discern this enemy in themselves nor be offended that they come last unless it were in a more honourable cause I hear the best and wisest men that I can meet with complain that in most places Ale-houses flourish under the Magistrates Noses and that whoredom swearing prophaning the Lords days shall seldom be punished but when they are very much urged to it nor then neither if it will but displease a neighbour or friend especially if it be a worshipful swearer or drunkard that is to be punished We see in most places that it s more than the Justice can do to put down one Ale-house of many that they consess should be suppressed and I doubt but few can keep them from increasing Men say that there is so much ado before they can have Justice from many of them and those that seek it are counted but for busie troublesome fellows that many are ready to let all alone And whence is all this that men in Power can do so little against those that have no Power to resist them Why Alas the cause is plain Self is against it They have none but God and Ministers and a few precise fellows to perswade them to it and they have no greater motives than what is fetcht from Heaven and Hell to move them to it and these are but small matters with them I speak of the unsanctified It must be one that hath greater interest in them than God that must perswade them to it It must be more powerful matters than the promises of Heaven and the Threatnings of damnation that must prevail with such moderate Gentlemen as these And who is it that can do this that God and their salvation may not do Why even self carnal self If you know but how to engage their own self-interest in the business I warrant you it will go better on Let but every informer be well pâ—â—d for his pains and every Justice have a hâ—â—drâ—d pound from the Exchâ—quer for every due execâ—â—ion of such laws and how roundly would the work go on Then they would not say We cannot do it or We are not bound to look after them Do you think I wrong them or speak without proof I will leave it to your judgement when I have given you but these few instances Let but the Plague
break out in the Town and infect but a quarter as many houses as here are infectious Alehouses that harbour tiplers and drunkards and see whether the Magistrates of this or any Town will not a little better bestir themselves and send to search after infected places and nail up their doors and write on them Lord have mercy on us that all may take warning and keep away They will not here be offended with Informers nor say Am I bound to look after them And why are they not as zealous against sin as against the plague Great reason Self is for sin and God only is against it but self is against the Plague because it is concerned in it sin doth but hurt the soul and bring men to Helfire but the plague destroys their body and this is the greater matter with them because they have flesh and sense to judge of it but they have not faith to believe the other Again let but one house in the Town be on fire and all are up to quench it and the Bell is rung and the Magistrate doth not think that he wants a Call himself to look after it And when the fire of Hell is kindling in an Ale-house that 's nothing but must be let alone there 's no such zeal nor no such haste And why so Why one they see in good sadness and perceive that it is fire indeed but the other they believe in jest as if it would prove but a painted fire Again let but an ungodly fellow slander the Magistrate or call him all to naught especially if he give him but two or three boxes on the ear and see whether he will let that man alone But let the same man abuse the name of God and break his Laws and with too many he may be let alone unless they be urged to do Justice And how comes this difference Why self is toucht in one and it is but God But God! O Atheists that 's touched in the other Self can do more with them than God can do Remember still when I say that self can do more with them than God that I speak not of what God could do by his Omnipotency if he would but of the final Causality or the small interest that God hath in their hearts by holy Faith and Love Again let but a servant rob the Magistrate and carry his money and goods to an Ale-seller to reset and try whether he will look after him and the Ale-seller And why not as soon and as zealously when Ale-sellers reset mens sons and servants and drown mens understandings and turn them into beasts Why because in one it is but God and mens souls that are concerned a matter of nothing but in the other it is self a greater matter with them Shall I give you but one instance more that the Ale-sellers themselves will take my part in so far as to bear me witness that its true Here are Farmers of the Excise that have power to know what Ale-houses are in the Town and their gain lyeth on it and there shall scarce a man in Town or Country sell Ale so secretly but they will know it nor sell a Barrel but what they are acquainted with They do not say I am not bound to go search after them nor that they be not able to discover them and to bring them to pay Excise But the Justices too commonly can overlook abundance that the Excise-men can find and they cannot make one of twenty pay when the other can And what 's the matter Why one works for self and money and the other works but for God and his own and other mens salvation a small matter See then beyond denyal what self and money can do with such men when God and mens salvation can do next to nothing But I must desire you not to mistake me and think I speak this of any honest godly Magistrate and abuse the good by joyning them with the bad No far be it from me to be so injurious For its evident that they can be no good men nor have any true Love of God in their souls that are such in a predominant sense as I have here described It is not in my thoughts to lay this blame on any honest Godly Magistrate for none but the ungodly would do as I have mentioned and prefer themselves before the Lord and the bodies of men before the souls And alas if the Soveraign Powers of the Nations of the world were not too sick of the same disease gain would not be accounted Godliness but Godliness the greatest gain and carnal Policie would not go for Piety but true Piety would go for the surest Policie It would not be so common in most Nations to have the Truth and Cause of Christ disowned and his servants persecuted and their lives and blood to be made a sacrifice to carnal Self and worldly Interests Nor would the breaches of the Churches be so long unhealed and grow wider and wider and few much regard them but all have their own work to do which must be looked after Yea and the Cause of Christ and the Gospel must be trod down if it stand in the way of their own And the Churches must be set on fire by their wars and contentions for their selfish Interests And if Self were not too strong among us we should not have had such connivence at doctrinal and practical abominations nor so much delay or neglect of healing the discomposed Churches and uniting the divided Christians or attempting it more effectually than we have done But because I desire to speak to none but those that are within my hearing I will return home to our selves The holy ordering and instructing of families and suppressing sin in Children and servants is one of the most effectual works for the building up of the Church and the glory and stability of the Common-wealth O if Parents and Masters would but sanctifie their houses to the Lord and teach their families the will and fear of God and do their best by punishment when instruction will not serve to hinder sin how fast would Reformation then go on And what hindreth why carnal Self If it were but for wordly commodities they would do more Would you have me prove it Let experience speak Let a servant or child go prayerless to their work and few regard it but they will not go without meat or drink or cloaths The Master will suffer them to neglect Gods service but if they neglect his own and should do him no more or better service than they do to God they should soon hear of it and be turned out of door and they were no servants for him They will teach their children to do their own work or set them Apprentices to learn it but the work of God and their salvation they shall for them have little teaching in how plainly soever God hath commanded it them Deut. 11. 18 19. 6. 6 7 8. Ephes 6. 4. Let
a servant or child reproach his Master or Parent or call them all to naught and they think not fit to put up that nor indeed is it but let them swear by the name of God or break his Laws and they can patiently bear with it and a cold rebuke like Eli's will serve turn They can get them into field or shop to work together but they cannot get them before and after to prayer together And why is all this Why one is for Self and the other is for God One is for the body and the other is for the soul So that you see what Self can do and how commonly it is the master of Families Towns and Countries because it is the master in mens souls God must be loved above all and our neighbour as our selves But if God were allowed but so much love as a very neighbour should have it would not be all so ill with the selfish world as now it is But because I have been so long on this first discovery of the power of Self and the scarcity of Self-denyal I will be shorter in the rest that follow CHAP. V. The power of Selfishness upon mens opinions in Religion 2. ANother instance Discovering the Reign of selfishness in the world is The great Power that it hath to form mens Opinions and Conceptions in Religion Though the understanding naturally be inclined to Truth yet a selfish by as upon the soul especially on the will doth commonly delude it and make the vilest error seem to be Truth to it and the most useful Truth to seem an error The Will hath much command over the Understanding and when selfishness is become the very habit the byas the nature of the will you may easily conjecture how it will pervert the understanding But what need we more than experience to satisfie us Do you not see that where self is but deeply engaged the judgement is bribed or overmastered and carried from the Truth So that as the eye that looks through a coloured glass doth see all things as if they were of the same colour as the glass So the understanding that is mastered by a selfish inclination thinks every thing is truth that savoureth his self-interest And here I shall offer you some more particular instances 1 We all see that almost all the world is of that Religion or Opinion which hath the countenance of the Government that they live under and the persons that have greatest power on their reputation or at least which is consistent with their safety if not rising and prosperity in the world The Turks are commonly Mahometans the subjects of Rome and Spain and Austria c. are generally Papists those in Denmark Sweden Saxony c. are generally Lutherans those of Scotland England Helvetia c. are commonly Calvinists as they are called I know the power of education is great and hearing evidence only on one side may byas a well meaning man But Papists and Protestants as to the learned part have the Books of the contrary-minded at hand And therefore that Opinions should run in a stream and whole Countreys almost be of a party must needs be much from the power of selfishness because they are swayed by them that have the power of their reputation and estates and liberties in the world 2. Moreover when a man is by custome grown self-conceited or by the power of Pride is wise in his own eyes how hard a matter do we find it to convince such men by the clearest evidence They will not see when they can hardly wink so close as to keep out the light It is their opinion and therefore shall be so and they will hold it because it is their own 3. Especially if it be an Opinion of a mans own invention which is doubly his own both as he is the contriver and possessor how close will he stick to it too commonly beyond the evidence of truth because that self hath so greâ—â—â—n interest in it 4. Yea if a man be but deeply engaged for it either by laborious Disputes or confident owning it or any way so as that his credit lyeth on it how tenacious will he be of it because of the powerful interest of Self 5. And if it be but an Opinion that seems to befriend any former Opinion that we have much engaged for how much doth selfishness usually appear in our inordinate propensity to it 6. Also if we live in dayes of persecution how easily do we receive those Opinions that would keep us from prison and fire Or if any suffering lye upon it we commonly take that side to be right that is safest to the flesh except when self would be advanced by the occasion of sufferings And in prosperity if there be any controversie arise which our gain is concerned in how easily believe we the thriving opinion If any Oath Engagement or Duty be imposed on us by those that have Power to do us harm the generality are for it be it what it will In all these cases it is commonly Carnal Self that is the Judge And how far Self commands in such cases you may see by these discoveries following 1. In studying the case mens thoughts run almost all one way They study what to say for their own opinions and how to answer all that is against them but they study but very little what may be saâ—d on the other side They sit at their studies with a byassed will inclining or commanding their understanding what to do even to prove that to be true which they would have â—o be true whether it be so or not 2. And hence it is that the weakest Arguments on their own side do seem sufficient if not invincible and they stand wondering at the blindness of all those men that cannot see the force of them But no Arguments seem to have any weight that are brought against them And all this is from the power of self 3. Yea sometimes when they are silenced and know not what to say for their opinions nor how to answer the Arguments for the contrary yet they can say We are of this mind and we will be of this mind And why but because it is espoused to them and their own 4. And hence it is that if a man be but an admirer of us or of our own opinion in other things we are readier to receive an opinion from him than from another 5. And hence it is that Disputations do so sâ—ldome change mens minds because they take it to be a dishonour to be changed by another unless it be a person of great renown we envy to an Opposite the glory of altering our understandings But if we may have the doing of it our selves by the power of our own understandings and studies we will sometimes yield to change our minds He is a stranger to the ungodly world that seeth not how much self-interest doth to master their understandings and turn their hearts from the holy
doctrine of Christ and how much it doth to make them like or dislike their teachers or any point or practice in Religion And he is a stranger even among Divines themselves that seeth not the sway that self doth bear in their judgements and disputes and course of life and the choice of their party or society to which they joyn themselves CHAP. VI. Mens great aversness to costly or troublesome duties 3. ANother discovering instance of the rarity of self-denyal is this The great aversness of men to any costly or troublesome or self-denying duty how necessary soever how plainly soever revealed in the Scripture and how generally soever acknowledged by the Church As if self had a Negative voice in the making of Laws for the Government of the world and none must be binding without its consent I shall come down to some more particular instances 1. The great duty of charitable relieving our brethren in necessity to the utmost of our power is commonly made almost nothing of in the world And men cheat their souls by thinking they are passed from death to life because they love the brethren with such a cold and barren love as will neither lay down estate for them nor venture life for them but think they are sure Christians because they can say as the believers that James mentioneth Depart in peace be you warmed and filled but give them not that which is necessary thereto James 2. 16. Though it be told them plainly by Christ himself that it is not a fruitless uneffectual love but that which causeth them to feed and cloath and visit the Saints that must stand them instead at judgement Matth. 25. and the Apostle asketh them How the love of God can dwell in that man that seeth his brother have need and shutteth up the bowels of his compassion from him 1 John 3. 17. Yet do men think that by dropping now and then a penny they have discharged all this great duty And when they see many wayes by which they might promote the Gospel and help the Church and serve God with their estates yet self will not let them see the meaning of the plainest Scriptures that do require it 2. When men should practise the great duty of forgiving injuries trespasses and debts and of loving our enemies and blessing them that curse us and praying for them that hate and persecute us how stubbornly doth selfishness resist these duties What abundance of words may you use in vain with most men to perswade them to any of this work No they must have their right and that which is their own though it be to the undoing of their brother Passion and revenge even boil within them and the thoughts of an injury stick in their minds and if they do take on them dissemblingly to forgive it yet they cannot forget it nor heartily love a brother that displeaseth them much less an enemy And all this is from the dominion of self and shews that it prevaileth above God in the soul and therefore shews a graceless heart 3. When the Ministers of the Gospel themselves should be painful in their great and necessary work and should watch over all the flock Acts 20. 28. warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that they may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus Col. 1. 28. condescending to men of the lowest sort and teaching them in season and out of season what reasonings and shifts will self bring in to resist so great and excellent a duty and prove it no duty and that God will give them leave to spare their pains and all because of the Powerful interest of self 4. And let the same Ministers have a disordered flock that hath scandalous members especially if they be great ones or many and how rarely will they do their duty to them in plain reproof and in case of impenitency and continuance in sin by Publick Admonition and Rejection what shiftings and cavillings will they find against this displeasing work of Discipline even when they will reproach a man themselves whose Opinion is against Discipline and when they have preacht and written and disputed so much for it and almost all parties are agreed of the necessity of it in the substance yet when it comes to practice it cannot be done without procuring mens hatred and opposition and laying us open to much incommodity and therefore self doth perswade us to forbear and whether God or self have the more servants even yet in a reformed Ministry I leave you to judge as your observation of the congregations through the Land shall direct you But were it not for self I should undertake to do more for discipline and personal Instruction with most Ministers by one Argument than I have done by a volume and you might see an unanimous concurrence in the work and consequently a great alteration in the Churches 5. And whence is it but from selfishness that plain and close Application in our Sermons is taken to be an injury to those that think themselves concerned in it If a Minister will speak alike to all and take heed of medling with their sores they will patiently hear him but if he make them know that he meaneth them in particular and deal closely with them about their miserable state or against any special disgraceful sin they fall a railing at him and reproaching him behind his back and perhaps they will say They 'le hear him no more O saith the selfish ungodly wretch I know he meant me to day had he no body but me to speak against As if a sick man should be angry with the Physitian for giving directions and medicines to him in particular and say Had he no body to give Physick to but me Were there not sick men enough in the Town besides me When Christ told the Despisers of the Gospel of the certain and dreadful destruction that was near them Mat. 21. 41 44 45. its said that When the chief Priests and Pharisees had heard his Parables they perceived that he spake of them A hainous business and therefore they sought to lay hands on him but that they durst not do it for fear of the multitude 6. Nay let a Minister preach but any such doctrine as seems consequentially to be against Self and to conclude hardly of them and they are ready to say as Ahab of Micaiah I hate him for he prophesieth not good of me but evil 1 Kings 22. 8. Let us but tell them how few will be saved what holiness and striving and diligence is necessary though we have the express word of God for it Heb. 12. 14. Mat. 7. 13 14. Luke 13. 24. 2 Pet. 1. 10. yet because they think that it makes against their carnal peace they cannot abide it Plain truth is unwelcome to them because it is rough and grates upon the quick and tells them of that which is troublesome to know Though they must know their sin and danger and misery or
upon the affairs of Nations and the wars of Princes and their confederacies and see who it is that rules in all how little will you see save here and there but carnal self It is self that makes the cause and manageth it It is self that maketh Wars and Peace Come down into our Courts of Justice and whose voice is loudest at the bar but selfs and who is it commonly else that brings in the Verdict at least who is it else that made and followeth on the quarrel How many causes hath self at an Assize for one that God hath Come lower into the Country and who is it that plows and sows who is it that keeeps House or Shop but self I mean what else but carnal self is the Principle what else but carnal self is the End what else but the will of self is the Rule and what else but selfish commodity or pleasure or honour are the matter or some provision that is made for these and consequently what else but self-respect is the form For the End informeth the means as means and therefore all that is done for self is self-service and self-seeking In a word as God is all in all to the sanctified so self is as all in all to the ungodly And alas how great a number are all these 3. Consider that it is a sin that is nearer us objectively than any other sin And the nearer the more dangerous Alas that a man should turn his own substance into poison feed upon it to his own destruction If you have drunk poyson you may cast it up again or nature may do much to work it out but if your own blood and humours and spirits be turned into venom that should nourish and preserve your life what then shall expell this venom and deliver you 4. Moreover it is the most obstinate disease in the world No duty harder except the Love of God than self-denial O how many wounds will self carry away and yet keep life and heal them all How commonly do we convince some carnal Gentlemen that One thing is needful and that its a better part than Earth and honour and sensuality that must be chosen or else they are undone and that the more they have the more they must forsake and the more self-denial is required to their salvation and that all their lands and wealth and honours and all their wit and parts and interest must be at the service of their Maker and Redeemer and that when they have all in the world that they can get that all must become Nothing and God must become all their treasure must become the dross and dung and Christ must become their treasure or they are lost I say how oft do we convince men of all estates of these important evident truths And yet this self is still alive and keeps the garrison of the heart and all that we can have from most of them is as the rich man Luk. 18. 23 24. to be very sorrowful that they cannot have heaven at easier rates and that Christ will not be a servant unto Self or they cannot have two Masters They go away sorrowful but away they go because they are rich which makes Christ say upon this observation How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God But when the Disciples were troubled at his observation he lets them know that it is Self and not Riches that is indeed the deadly enemy It is the selfish that trust in Riches and love and use them for themselves and deny not themselves and devote not all to God that will be kept out of Heaven by them Or in Christs own words Luk. 12. It is he that layeth up treasure for Himself and is not rich towards God Conquer self and Conquer all 5. Moreover self is the most constant malady the sin that doth most constantly attend us Many actual sins may be laid by and we may for the time be free from them But selfishness is at the heart and lives with us continually It parteth not from us sleeping or waking It goes to the worship of God with us it will not stay behind in the holiest ordinance It will not forbear intermixing it self in the purest duties but will defile them all So that above all sins in the world it s this that must have the strictest constantest watch or else we shall never have any peace for it 6. Yea this self doth lamentably survive even in the sanctified soul among the special graces of the Spirit and lamentably distempereth the hearts and lives of too many of the godly themselves Not that any godly man is selfish in a predominant sense or that self is higher or more powerful in his heart than God for that 's a contradiction such a man cannot be a godly man without Conversion But yet the very remnants of conquered Self what a smoak do they make in our Assemblies and what noisom scent in the lives of many godly men what a stir have we sometimes with those that we hope are godly before we can get them to an impartial judgment to lament their own fowl words or other miscarriages and to humble themselves or freely to forgive another that hath wronged them especially to confess disgraceful sins in any self-denying manner How close stick they to their own conceits how lamentably do they improve them to the contempt of Ministers trouble and division of the Church How wise are they in their own eyes and how hardly yield they to any advice that crosseth Self How hardly are they brought to any dear and costly duty How much do they indulge their appetites and passions and how cheap a Religion do many think to come to heaven with we can scarce please some of them they are so selfish either because we cross them in their opinions or in their wayes or because we allow them not so much special countenance and respect as self would have or deny them somewhat which self desires If they have any use for us if we leave not more publick or greater work which god hath set us on and allow them not that part in our time or labours or other helps which God and Conscience will not allow them they are offended take it ill that self is not preferred before God and the publick service Their selves are so dear to themselves that they think we should neglect all to serve them Let the most useful Minister live in a place that hath the plague or other contagious mortal sickness and most that are visited will take it ill if the Minister come not to them though they know that his life is hazarded by it and that his loss to the whole Church is more to be regarded than the content or benefit of particular persons and it is not the pleasing of them nor their benefit by him then that will countervail the Churches loss of him What is this but too much preferring self I
say were it not that these step in and cross self and hinder its designs you might fore-see in self-interest the changes that are made in humane affairs Consect 3 And so Potent and common is the Dominion of self that it may warrant an honest moderate incredulity and jealousie of almost all men in cases where the interest of self is much concerned Let him be never so ingenuous let his parts and profession be never so promising let his former engagements to you be never so great let him be your own Brother yet be not too confident of him if his carnal self be concerned or engaged against you For you shall see by experience as long as you live that self will still bear Dominion in the most Consect 4. Above all every wise and godly man should herein maintain the greatest Jealousie of his own heart Keep the heart above all keepings and keep out self above all sins whatever Take heed of selfishness as ever you would be Christians and live as Christians and have the Peace of Christians And to that end be alwayes suspicious of every cause opinion controversie or practice where self is much concerned The very names of SELF and OWN should sound in a watchful Christians ears as very terrible wakening words that are next to the names of Sin and Satan and at least carry in them much cause of suspition And this hath led me up to the next Use of the Point CHAP. XI Use 2. To try our self-denial the sincerity of the least degree Use 2. Of Exhortation BEloved hearers I have now before me as great a sin and danger to deter you from even selfishness and its effects and as great a Duty to offer to your entertainment even self-denial as any save one that I am acquainnted with in the world The raising up the soul to God is indeed the greatest work But the mortifying of the flesh and the Denying of self is surely the next to it being a real part of the change You hear Ministers tell you of the odiousness and danger and sad effects of sin but of all the sins that ever you heard of there is scarce any more odious and dangerous than this and yet I doubt there are many that never were much troubled at it nor sensible of its malignity My principal request therefore to you is that as ever you would prove Christians indeed and be saved from sin and damnation that follows it take heed of this deadly sin of selfishness and be sure you be possessed with true self-denial and if you have it see that you use and live upon it And for your help herein I shall 1. Tell you how your self-denial must be tried and 2. How it must be exercised and 3. I shall give you some further Reasons to perswade you to it and 4. Some Directions for the procuring and strengthening it 1. The trial of your self-denial may be performed by the help of the Signs that have been given you before In the ten particulars mentioned in the beginning you may see what is selfishness and what is self-denial But for your further satisfaction I shall only tell you in a few words how the least measure of true self-denial may be known And in one word that is thus Wherever the Interest of Carnal self is stronger and more predominant habitually than the Interest of God of Christ of everlasting life there is no true self-denial or saving grace But where Gods Interest is the strongest there self-denial is sincere If you further ask me How this may be known Briefly thus 1. What is it that you Live for what is that Good which your mind is principally set to obtain and what is that End which you principally design and endeavour to obtain and which you set your heart on and lay out your hopes upon Is it the Pleasing and glorifying of God and the everlasting fruition of him Or is it the Pleasing of your fleshly mind in the fruition of any inferiour thing Know this and you may know whether Self or God have the greatest interest in you For that is your God which you Love most and Please best and would do most for 2. Which d◠you set most by the means of your Salvation and of the Glory of God or the Means of providing for Self and Flesh Do you set more by Christ and Holiness which are the way to God or by Riches Honour and Pleasures which gratifie the flesh Know this and you may know whether you have true Self-denial 3. If you are truly self-denying you are ordinarily Ruled by God and his word and spirit and not by Carnal Self Which is the Rule and Master of your lives whose Word and Will is it ordinarily that prevails When God draws and self draws which do you follow in the tenor of your life Know this and you may know whether you have true Self-denial 4. If you have true Self-denial the drift of your lives is carried on in a successful opposition to carnal Self so that you not only refuse to be ruled by it and love it as your God but you fight against it and tread it down as your enemy So that you go armed against Self in the course of your lives and are striving against Self in every duty and as others think it then goes best with them when Self is highest and pleased best so you will know that it then goeth best with you when Self is lowest and most effectually subdued 5. If you have true Self-denial there is nothing in this world so dear to you but on deliberation you would leave it for God He that hath any thing which he loveth so well that he cannot spare it for God is a selfish and unsanctified wretch And therefore God hath still put men to it in the trial of their sincerity to part with that which was dearest to the flesh Abraham must be tried by parting with his only Son And Christ makes it his standing rule He that forsaketh not all that he hath cannot be my Disciple Luke 14. 33. Yet it is true that flesh and blood may make much resistance in a gracious heart and many a striving thought there may be before with Abraham we can part with à Son or before we can part with wealth or life But yet on deliberation self-denial will prevail and there is nothing so dear to a gracious soul which he cannot spare at the will of God and the hope of everlasting life If with Peter we should flinch in a temptation we should return with Peter in weeping bitterly and give Christ those lives that in a temptation we denied him For Habitually God is dearest to the soul 6. In a word true self-denial is procured by the Knowledge and Love of God advancing him in the soul to the debasing of self The illuminated soul is so much taken with the Glory and Goodness of the Lord that it carrieth him out of himself to God and as
it were estrangeth him from himself that he may have communion with God and this makes him vile in his own eyes and abhor himself in dust and ashes He is lost in himself and seeking God he finds himself again in God It is not a Stoical Resolution but the Love of God and the Hopes of Glory that make him throw away the world and look contemptuously on all below so far as they are meer provision for the flesh Search now and try your hearts by these evidences whether you are possessed of this necessary grace of self-denial O make not light of the matter Sirs and presume not of it till you find good grounds For I must tell you that self is the most treacherous enemy and the most insinuating deceiver in the world It will be within you when you are not aware of it and will conquer you when you perceive not your selves much troubled with it and of all other vices is both the hardest to find out and the hardest to cast out the hardest to discover and the hardest to cure Be sure therefore in the first place that you have self-denial and then be sure that you use it and live in the practice of it And for this I must give you more particular advice CHAP. XII In what respect self must be denyed II. AND here I beseech you take heed of Self in all these following respects 1. You must Deny Self as it is Opposite to God and a Competitor with him and the Idol of the soul and of the world and this is in all the ten respects which I mentioned in the beginning and therefore shall not now rehearse And this is the principal part of self-denial 2. Self must be denyed as it is but conceived as separated from God and would be an End in a divided sense from God For our selves and all things else are created contingent dependent beings and must not be once thought of as if we were either our own beginning or end or in any capacity but subservient unto God Self becomes a Satan when it would cast off its due subordination to God and would be any other than the workmanship of God depending on him and ruled by him and living to him loving him desiring him and seeking after him and either mourning when we miss him or rejoycing when we find Communion with him 3. Self must be denyed as it stands up against the Truth of the Gospel and blindly and proudly quarrelleth with that word which faith relyeth upon for Justification and salvation Carnal self is both the most incompetent Judge of the word of God and of spiritual affairs and also the most forward and arrogant and audacious for all it is so incompetent And this is the damnable fountain of unbelief That self is an incompetent Judge of the word and waies of God is evident for 1. It is a natural enemy to them and an enemy is no competent Judge Rom. 8. 7. Because the Carnal mind is enmity against God for it is not subject to the Law of God neither indeed can be Deny therefore this enemy the power of judging the word of God Ill-will never saith well Enmity is credulous of all evil and overlooks the good and is accompanyed with false surmises and wresteth every word and suspecteth or maketh an evil sence where there was none there is not a worse expositor in the world And therefore no wonder if such a nature of enmity can find matter of quarrel with the very Scripture it self and with an holy life yea with God himself for it is him especially that the enmity is against 2. Moreover self is a party and therefore an incompetent judge It is self that the Scripture principally speaks against All over the Gospel there are the words of disgrace and the arrows of death directed against the very heart of Carnal self God there proclaimeth and manageth an open war against it And shall a party be the judge shall the traiterous delinquent be the judge A child will hardly speak well of the rod whatever he do by the Corrector but it 's not to be expected that a thief should love the halter or the gallows Gods word is the weapon that self must be slain by and therefore self is an incompetent judge of it 3. Moreover self is quite blind in the matters of God the natural man discerneth them not nor can do because they are spiritually discerned 1 Cor. 2. 14. And the ignorant and blind are incompetent judges 4. And the selfish man is no good student in the Laws of God even when he readeth the letter he doth not mind or savour the spirit of them Rom. 8. 5. For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh but they that are after the spirit the things of the spirit A fair world it would be if every Colliar should judge the Privy Council and the Judges of the Land or if every thief should sit upon his accuser and his Judge and every traitor should judge the Prince And a thousand-fold more insufficient is self to judge the Word of God And yet as insufficient as it is it is exceeding arrogant and steps up into the judgment-seat at every Chapter that is read or heard and if this blind and malicious Judge be unsatisfied forsooth the Scripture must be dark or contradictory or what he pleases This horrible presumptuous arrogancy of self is it that hath opened so many mouths against the blessed Doctrine of Salvation and made so many wretched Apostates in the world and cast so many others into doubtings of that word by which at last they must be judged and which should have been the ground of their faith and hope 4. Moreover self must be denyed as it stands up against the Lord Jesus Christ When Christ is presented in his wonderful Condescension in his Incarnation and mean despised life and in his ignominious death Proud self is offended at so low a Saviour and disdaineth that Humiliation which his own necessities did require and despiseth Christ because he became despised and a man of sorrows in our stead When he is propounded as the remedy of a miserable soul and as our only Life and Righteousness and Hope Self doth seduce the soul to undervalue him It will not easily be convinc'd of so much misery as to need such a remedy it is too well to value such a Physician it is too righteous to value the righteousness of a Mediator It hath too much Life and Hope at home in its own supposed innocency or sufficiency to set much by the Hopes that Christ hath purchased and to Live in him O down with self that Christ may be Christ to you How shall he come in while Self is the Porter that keeps the door How shall he pardon you when Self will not suffer you to feel the want and worth of pardon How shall he bind up your hearts when Self will not suffer them to be broken
the man in Joh. 9. 25. One thing I know that whereas I was blind now I see It 's no self-conceitedness for a man that is brought from the blind distracted state of sin into the light of the sanctified to know that he is wiser than he was before and that he was formerly besides himself but now is come to his understanding again Nor is it any self-conceitedness for the meanest Christian to know that a wicked man is more foolish than he or for a Minister or any man that God hath caused to excel in knowledge to hold fast the truth he knows and to see and modestly oppose the errors of another and to know that in that he is wiser than they God doth not require that we shall turn to every mans opinion and reel up and down from sect to sect and be of the opinion of every party that we come among and all for fear of thinking our selves wiser than they David knew he had more Understanding than his Teachers Psal 119. 98 99. and true believers fear not to say We know that we are of God and the whole world lieth in wickedness 1 Joh. 5. 19. 3. 19. 2. 3. And Paul would not forbear the reproving of Peter for fear of being thought to be self-conceited Gal. 2. some men are so desperately self-conceited that they take every man to be self-conceited that is not of their conceits But when self is mens instructor and chooseth their Text and furnisheth them with matter and nothing is savoury but what is either suited to the common interest of self or which it hath not a special interest in when men are absolutely wise in their own eyes and comparatively wiser than those that know much more than they when self-interest serves instead of evidence to the receiving retaining or contending for a point when men think they know that which indeed they do not know and observe the little which they do know more than an hundred fold more that they are ignorant of doubtless here 's self-conceitedness with a witness and they that will not see it in a lower degree methinks should see it in such a case as this He that will not believe that a man is drunk when he reels and stammereth may know it when he lieth spewing in the streets Well Sirs I beseech you see that self in the understanding be mortified and pulled down It 's the throne of God the Lanthorn of holy truth the temple of the Spirit and shall self Rule there The understanding is it that guideth the soul and all the actions of your lives and if self rule there what a Ruler will you have and what a case will heart and life be in If your eye be dark your Light be dark how great will be your darkness and if it be selfish it is certainly so far dark O believe the Holy Ghost Prov. 26. 12. Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit there is more hope of a fool than of him For a meer fool that is ignorant only for want of teaching hath no such prejudice against the truth as the self-conceited have Nor is it so hard to make him know that he is ignorant nor yet to make him willing to Learn He that knoweth himself to be blind is willing to be led Moreover the self-conceited have much to unlearn before they can be fit to receive the truth in a saving maner O how many thousands are undone by self-conceitedness It is this that keeps out Knowledge and every Grace and consequently all true peace and comfort and this it is that defendeth and cherisheth all sin Let us shew men the plainest word of God for duty and against sin and shew them the clearest reasons and yet self-conceitedness bolts the door against all Yea so wonderfully doth this sin prevail that the ignorant silly people that know almost nothing are as proudly self-conceited as if they were the wisest men They that will not learn and cannot give an account of their knowledge in the very Catechism or Principles of Christian Religion nor cannot pray nor scarce speak a word of sense about the matters of Salvation but excuse themselves that they are no Scholars yet these very people will proudly resist their Teachers though they were the wisest and learned'st men in the Land Let us but cross their conceits of Doctrine or Practice in Religion about their own title to Church-priviledges or fitness for them and they are confident and furious against their Ministers as if we were as ignorant as they and they were the wisest men in the world so that pride and self-conceitedness makes people mad or deal like mad men We cannot humble men for sin nor reclaim them from it till they know the sin and the danger of it and self-conceitedness will not let them know it no nor let them come to us to be taught but they are wise enough already and if we tell them of the sin and danger they are wiser than to believe the Word of God or us They will tell us to our faces they will never believe such and such things which we shew them in the Scripture O the precious light that shineth round about you all and would make you wise if self-conceitedness did not keep it out by making you seem wise already 1 Cor. 3. 18. These men that thus deceive themselves by seeming wise to themselves must become fools in their own eyes if ever they will be truly wise and confess themselves as Paul himself did that they were foolish and deceived when they served their lusts and pleasures Tit. 3. 3. This Pride and Self-conceitedness is like the barm in the drink that seems to fill up the vessel but indeed works it all over This is the Knowledge that puffeth up 1 Cor. 13. like the pot that by boiling seemeth to be filled that was half empty before but it 's empty in the bottom and presently boils over and is emptier than before So is it with the self-conceited that have a superficial knowledge while they are empty at the bottom and by the heat of pride that little they have boileth over to their loss It is the humble that God reveals his secrets to and the hungry that he filleth with good things and the full that he sendeth empty away He will have no Disciples that come not to his School as little Children teachable and tractable not thinking themselves too old or too wise or too good to be taught If you would see the mysteries of the Gospel savingly you must even creep to Christ on your knees and cry Lord be merciful to me a sinner He will not lift up your minds and hearts to heaven till you think your selves unworthy to lift up your very eyes to heaven because you have sinned against heaven And if you were even lifted to heaven should you there but be lifted up with pride or self-conceitedness you should soon have a â—rick in the flesh to
you can have no cure Tell me if you can when ever the Will of God did wrong you when did you speed the worse for the following of his counsel Look back upon your lives and tell me whether all your smart and loss have come from your following Gods Will or your own and which you think you have more cause to repent of 6. There is none followeth self-will to the end but is everlastingly undone by it It leadeth directly to the displeasing of Gods Will and so to Hell But on the contrary there is none that sincerely and finally follow the Will of God that ever do miscarry He is the safest Conductor He never led a soul to hell All that follow him live with him For whither should he lead them but to himself And where God is there is life and glory To obey his Will is to pleas his Will And to please him is our very end It can not go ill with them that please the Lord and Judge of all the word the dispenser of all Rewards and Punishments 7. Your own wills are so mutable as well as misguided that they will bewilder you and toss you up and down in perpetual disquietness though I know you think that is the only way to your content and nothing will content you unless you have your will But you are lamentably deluded your wills are like the will of a man in a sever that would fain have cold water which pleaseth him in the drinking but afterwards may be his death You love that which hurteth you yea that which is no betâ—â—r than poyson to your Souls You would soon undo your selves if you had your own wills It is none of the least of Gods mercies to you to cross your wills and to deny you that which you have a mind to You will not let your Children eat or drink what they will but what you will that know better what 's good for them A patient can deny his own will for his health and submit himself to the will of his Physician And should not you much more submit to God yea you should desire him to deny your own wills when ever he seeth them contrary to his Will and to your own good Had you but the skill of judging aright of Gods dealings I am perswaded that upon the review of your lives you would find that God hath shewed you more mercy in the crossing of your wills then in accomplishing them Be not therefore too eager for the time to come to have what you Love till you are surer that you Love nothing but that which is good for you and which you should love The present contenting of diseased self-will is but the breeding after-disquietness But in the Will of God you may have sull and durable content For his Will is always for good and therefore hath nothing that should cause your discontent His will is still the same unchangeable and therefore will â—ot disquiet you by mutations He knows the end at the beginning and sets you upon nothing but what he is sure will comfort you at the last It belongeth to his will and not to yours to dispose of you and all your affairs And therefore there is all the reason in the world that Gods Will should be set up and in it you should rest your selves content and that self-will should be denied as the disturber of your quietness 8. Moreover Self-will is Satans will stirred up by him against the Lord. How else do you think the Devil rules the children of disobedience but by self-conceit and self-will If therefore you would deny the Devil deny self-will for in being ruled by it you are ruled by him and in pleasing it you please him God himself tells you this in plain expressions Eph. 2. 1 2 3. They that walk in trespasses and sins and so are dead in them according to the course of this world and in the lusts of the flesh fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind these the Holy Ghost there tells you do walk according to the Prince of the power of the air the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience 9. It is the very perfection and felicity of man to be conformed to the Will of God and to rest with full content therein And it is the corruption and misery of man to have a selfish misguided Will of his own and strive against his Makers Will And so far as you stick in your own wills and are set upon them and must have them fulfilled and cannot rest in the Will of God so far are you still unsanctified and unsaved and in the power of your great disease And so far as you are dead to self-will and look up to the Will o God both for direction and content and will that which he willeth even because he willeth it and would have you will it and can rest your souls in this as full satisfaction It is my Fathers Will and therefore best So far are you sanctified and restored to God 10. Lastly let me tell you that it 's best for you to deny self-will in time and give your wills to the Will of God For when you have done all that you can God will have his Will and you shall not have your own will long You may strive against the Will of God but you shall not frustrate it You may break his Laws but shall not scape his judgments You may rebel against his commanding will but you cannot resist his punishing will When you have done your worst it 's Gods will that must stand and such a will as is little to the pleasure of your wills But Self-will is never of long continuance its content is short Now you will have your will let God say what he will to you you Love to please your appetite in meats and drinks you love to be carnally merry and spend your time in vain sports and pleasure you love to be respected and humoured by all and to be honoured and counted some body in the world you love to be provided for for the time to come to be wealthy that you may take out of a full heap or at least not want for the contentment of your flesh and therefore you must have your wills have that you love if you can tell how to get it But how long will you have your wills How long will you have that you love though God forbid it When death comes will you have it then when you lie in pain expecting every hour to appear in another world will you then have your wills when you are in Hell will you then have your wills or that you love O Sirs Self-will is short-lived as to its delights and pleasure But the Will of God is everlasting And therefore if you take up with your own wills how short will be yâ—ur content but if you look for content in the Will of God you will have everlasting content
curiosity is necessary And what is the deformity that you would hide by this Is it that of your mind Why you bewray it more you tell all that see you that you are empty silly souls as plainly as a Morrice-dancer or a Stage-player doth tell folks what he is by his attire Is it the deformities of your bodies that you would hide this way I confess that 's the best excuse that can be made for this excess For apparel will do more to hide the deformities of the body than of the mind But the shape of your clothes is fittest for this so far it is fit to be attempted For the bravery of them will do little but draw mens observation the more upon your infirmity If you say that you have no such extraordinary necessity then I must say that you do your selves wrong to tice people to suspect it 2. And also you make an open ostentation of Pride or Lust or both to all that look upon you In other cases you are careful to hide your sin and take it for an hainous injury if you be but openly told of it and reproved How comes it then to pass that you are here so forward your selves to make it known that you must carry the signs of it open in the world Is it not a dishonour to Rogues and Thieves that have been burnt in the hand or forehead or must ride about with a paper pin'd on their backs declaring their crimes to all that see them So that every one may see yonder is a thief and yonder is a perjured man And is it not much like it for you to carry the badge of pride or lust abroad with you in the open streets and meetings Why do you desire to be so fine or neat or excessive comely Is it not to draw the eyes and observations of men upon you and to what end Is it not to be thought either Rich or beautiful or of an handsom person And to what end desire you these thoughts of men Do you not know that this desire is Pride it self You must needs be some body and fain you would be observed and valued and fain you would be noted to be of the best or highest rank that you can expect to be reckoned of And what is this but Pride And I hope you know that Pride is the Devils sin the first born of all iniquity and that which the God of heaven abhors so that it were more credit for you in the eyes of men of wisdom to proclaim your selves beggars sots or ideots than to proclaim your pride And too oft it shews a pang of lust as well as pride especially in young persons and few are so forward to this sin as they This bravery and fineness is but the fruit of a procacious mind it 's plainly a wooing alluring act It is not for nothing that they would fain be eyed and be thought comely or fair in others eyes somewhat they want you may conjecture what And even married people if they love their credit should take heed by such means of drawing suspicion upon themselves Sirs if you are guilty of folly pride and lust your best way is to seek of God an effectual cure and to use such means as tends to cure it and not such as tend to cherish it and increase it as certainly fineness in clothing doth But if you will not cure it for shame conceal it and do not tell every one that sees you what is in your heart what would you think of one that should go up and down the street telling all that meet him I am a thief or I am a fornicator would you not think that he were a compound of foolery and knavery And how little do you come short of this that write upon your own backs Folly Pride and Lust or tell them by your apparel Take notice of me I am foolish Proud and lustful 3. And if you be so silly as to think that bravery is a means of honour you should withall consider that it is but a shameful begging of honour from those that look upon you when you shew them not any thing to purchase or deserve it Honour must be forced by desert and worth and not come by begging for that is no honour that 's given to the undeserving It is but the shadow of desert and will constantly follow it among the wise and good but never go without it Your bravery doth so openly shew your desire of esteem and honour that it plainly tells all wise men that you are the less worthy of it For the more a man desireth esteem the less he deserves it And you tell the world by your attire that you desire it even as plainly and foolishly as if you should say to folks in the streets I pray think well of me and take me for an handsome comely person and for one that is above the common sort Would you not laugh at one that should make such a request to you Why what do you less when by your attire you beg estimation from them And for what I pray you should we esteem you Is it for your cloaths Why I can put a silver lace upon a mawkin or a silken coat on a post or on an Ass Is it for your comely bodies why a wicked Absolon was beautiful and the basest harlots have had as much of this as you A comely body or beautiful face doth oft betray the soul but never saveth it from hell And your bodies are never the comelier for your dress whatever they may seem Is it for your vertues that you would be esteemed Why pride is the greatest enemy to vertue and as great a deformity to the foul as the Pox is to the body And he that will think you ever the honester for a new sute or a silver lace doth as little know what honesty is as your selves For shame therefore give over beging for esteem at least by such a means as inviteth all wise men to deny your suit But either let honour come without begging for or be without it 4. Consider also that excess of Apparel doth quite contradict the End that proud persons do intend it for I confess it doth sometime ensnare a fool and so accomplish the desires of the lustful But it seldom attaineth the ends of the proud For their desire is to be the highlier esteemed and almost all men do think the meanlier of them Wise men have more wit than to think the Taylor can make a wise man or woman or an honest man or woman or an handsom man or woman Good men pity them and lament their folly and vice and wish them wisdom and humility In the eyes of a wise and gracious man a poor self-denying humble patient heavenly Christian is worth a thousand of these painted posts and peacocks And it so falls out that the ungodly themselves do frustrate the proud persons expectations For as covetous men do not like covetousness in another
because they would get most themselves so Proud persons like not Pride in others because they would not have any to vie with them or overtop them and be look'd upon and preferr'd before them None look with such scorn and envy at your bravery as those that are as silly and sinful as your selves who cannot endure that you should excel them in vanity so that good and bad do ordinarily despise or pity you for that which you think should procure your esteem 5. Consider also that Apparel is the fruit or consequent of sin that laid man naked and open unto shame and is it fit you should be proud of that which is ordained to hide your â—â—ame and which should humble you by minding you of the sin that caused the necessity of it 6. And you should bethink you better than most Gallants do what account you mean to make to God for the money that you lay out in excess of bravery will it think you be a good and comfortable account to say Lord I laid out so much to feed and manifest my Pride and Lust when such abundance of pious and charitable uses did call for all that you could spare Many a Lord and Knight Gallant bestoweth more in one suit of cloaths or in one set of hangings or in the superfluous dress of a Daughter than would keep a family of poor people for a 12 moneth or than would maintain a poor Scholar for higher service than ever they themselves will do And many a poor boy or girl goeth without a Bible or any good books that they may lay out all they have on their backs 7. Lastly I beseech you do not forget what it is that you are so carefully a doing and what those bodies are that you so adorn and are so proud of and set out to the sight of the world in such bravery Do you not know your selves Is it not a lump of warm and thick clay that you would have men observe and honour When the soul that you neglect is once gone from them hey will be set out then in another garb That little space of earth that must receive them must be defiled with their filthiness and corruption and the dearest of your friends will have no more of your company nor one smell or sight of you more if they can choose There is not a carrion in the ditch that is loathsomer than that gallant painted corpse will be a little after death And what are you in the mean time Even bags of filth and living graves in which the carkasses of your fellow-creatures are daily buried and corrupt There is scarce a day with most of you but some part of a dead carkass is buried in your bodies in which as in a filthy grave they lie and corrupt and part of them turneth into your substance and the rest is cast out into filthy excrements And thus you walk like painted sepulchres Your fine clothes are the adorned covers of filth and flegm and dung If you did but see what is within the proudest Gallant you would say the inside did much differ from the outside It may be an hundred worms are crawling in the bowels of that beautiful damsel or adorned fool that set out themselves to be admired for their bravery If a little of the filth within do but turn to the scab or the small pox you shall see what a piece it was that was wont to have all that curious trimming Away then with these vanities and be not children all your days nay be not proud of that which your children themselves can spare Be ashamed that ever you have been guilty of so much dotage as to think that people should honour you for a borrowed bravery which you put off at night and on in the morning O poor deluded dust and worms-meat lay by your dotage and know your selves Look after that which may procure you deserved and perpetual esteem and see that you make sure of the honour that is of God Away with deceitful ornamens and gawds look after the inward real worth Grace is not set out and honoured by fine clothes but clouded wronged and dishonoured by excess It is the inward glory that is the real glory The Image of God must needs be the chiefest beauty of man Let that shine forth in the holiness of your lives you will be honourable indeed Peter telleth you of such a conversation of women as may win their unbelieving husbands without the word And what is it while they behold your chast conversation coupled with fear whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair and of wearing of gold or of putting on of apparel but the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit which is in the sight of God of great price For after this manner in old time the holy women that trusted in God adorned themselves being in subjection to their husbands 1 Per. 3. 1 2 3 4 5. CHAP. XXVII Ease Quietness and worldly Peace to be denied 10. ANother part of Carnal self-interest to be denied is Ease and Quietness and worldly Peace which the slothful and self-seekers prefer before the pleasing of God Both the ease of the mind and of the body are â—here comprehended and slothfulness in Gods nearest service and also in the works of our callings to be reprehended The same fleshly Power that draweth one man to whoredom and drunkenness and covetousness doth draw another to sloth and idleness It is but several ways of Pleasing the same flesh and obeying the same sensuality And because that Idleness and Sloth is so great and common a sin yet made so light of by the most I shall briefly tell you the mischiefs of it and the Reasons that should make you hate it 1. Slothfulness doth contradict the very end of our creation and preservation and the frame of our nature and so provoketh God to cut us off and cast us as useless into the fire Who dare so wrong the wisdom of God as to say or think that he made us to do nothing If a man make an house it is to dwell in if he make a watch it is to tell him the hour of the day and every thing is for its proper use And is man made to be idle what man that is the noblest inferior creature and an active creature fitted for work and the highest work shall he be idle Justly may God then hew him down as a dead and withered tree and suffer him no more to cumber his ground 2. Slothfulness is a sin that loseth the precious gifts of God Our faculties and our members are his gifts and talents which he hath committed to us to use for his service so are our goods and all that we have and shall we hide them in a napkin or idly neglect to use them O what abundance of excellent mercies lie useless and idle
because you are idle that should use them Every hour that you lose in idleness what noble faculties and large provisions are all laid by As much as in you lieth you make the whole creation to be and work in vain Why should the Sun shine an hour or minute for you in vain Why should the Earth bear you an hour in vain why should the springs and rivers run for you an hour in vain why should the air refresh you an hour in vain why should your pulse beat one stroke in vain or your lungs once breathe a breath in vain shall all be at work for you to further your work and will you think that idleness is no sin 3. Moreover Laziness and sloth is a sin that loseth you much precious time All the time is lost that you are idle in Yea when you are at work if you do it slothfully you are losing much of your time A diligent person will go further and do more in an hour than the lazy flesh-pleaser will do in two When the slothful is praying or reading and working in his calling he is but losing half his time which diligence would redeem And is our time so â—…ort and precious and yet is idleness an excusable sin what loiter so near night so near eternity when we have but a little time to work O work while it is day for the night is coming when none can work Were it but for this that sloth doth steal so much of our time I must think it no better than an hainous Thievery 4. And by this means we rob our selves We might be getting some good all the time that we are idle or doubly advantage our selves if sloth did not keep us company in our work The slothful is brother to him that is a great waster Pro. 18. 9. slothfulness is self-murdering men die while they lie still and wish It 's a sin that famisheth soul and body Prov. 21. 25. The desire of the slothful killeth him because his hands refuse to labour It 's the common cause of beggery and want and what comfort can you have under such afflictions which you bring upon your selves If you want food or rayment if your wives and children are in want how can you think that God should take care of you and afford you relief when you bring this on your selves by pleasing your flesh which is his enemy If a Souldier get hurt by trucking with the enemy he may rather look that his General should hang him than relieve him And how should good men be moved to compassionate you If God do improveriâ—h you and you come to want by innocency or a righteous cause they must needs be ready to relieve you But if Sloth or Pride or Gluttony or Drunkenness bring you to it till you repent I see not how they should relieve you at least any further than to keep you alive For if you are set toplease your flesh by idleness must I joyn with you to please it by such supplies as shall cheriâ—â— you in your sin No one flesh-pleaser is enough for one man If you will please it either by Idleness or by Luxury your selves expect not that others should please it by your relief and make provision for your sin If I may not make provision for my own flesh to satisfie its lusts neither must I do it for another But that 's not the worst slothfulness is the common cause of mens damnation when they see a temptation and danger before them slothfulness hindereth them from resisting it When Heaven is offered them slothfulness makes them sit still and lose it They must Run and Strive and Fight and Conquer and these are not works for a slothful person especially when they must be continued to the death So that it 's manifest that most men in the world are undone soul and body by the sin of sloth 5. And by this you rob others as well as your selves You owe the world the fruit of your labours You rob the souls of men to whom you should do good You rob the Church that should be bettered by you You rob the Commonwealth of which you are a member and should have benefit by you You owe your labours to Church and Commonwealth and the souls of men and will you not pay so great a debt You deserve no room in the Church or Commonwealth but to be cut off as an unprofitable member if you bring no advantage to them They say the Bees will not suffer a drone in the Hive Nay if you be hired servants you plainly rob your Masters if you are slothful as much as if you stole their money or goods If you buy an hundred sheep of a man and he let you have but fourscore doth he not rob or cheat you And if a man buy a years or a days labour of you and you let him have but half a years labour or half a days labour because of your sloth do you not defraud or rob him of the other half So that the idle are thieves to themselves to the Church and the souls of men to the Commonwealth and those that they are related to even to their wives and children for whom they should provide due maintenance by their labour 6. And you are injurious to the honest poor in that you disable your selves from relieving them when God commandeth you to work with your hands not only for your selves but that you may have to give to them that need Eph. 4. 28. What if all men should do as you do how would the poor be maintained and the Church and Commonwealth served 7. Yea worst of all you are guilty of robbing God himself It is him that you owe your labours to and the improvement of all the talents which he lendeth you And idleness is unsaithfulness to the God of Heaven that setteth you on work Even in working for men you must do it ultimately for God Col. 3. 22 23. Not with eye-service as men-pleasers but in singleness of heart fearing God and whatsoever ye do do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men knowing that of the Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance for ye serve the Lord But he that doth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done If it be an offence to wrong man what is it to wrong God and if you may not be slothful in the work of a man what a crime is it to be slothful in the work of the God of Heaven The greater your Master is the more hainous it is to be lazy in his service Remember the curse on them that do the work of the Lord deceitfully Jer. 48. 10. All work that you have to do is the work of the Lord. 8. And consider That the Idle forfeit the protection and provision of God even their daily bread For must he support and feed you to do nothing His own rule is that if any man will not work neither should he
eat 2 Thes 3. 10. And if he may not eat we may not relieve him 9. And if idleness had not been an hainous sin the Apostle would never have commanded us to avoid the company of such as if they were unfit to converse with Christians 2 Thes 3. 10. Consider what abundance of work we have to do and of how great importance O what a deal have we to do for our poor souls and for many about us besides all our bodily employment in the world Methinks every man that knows why he is a man and what it is in an inch of time to work for everlasting should never find an hour for idleness in his life but still cry-out How short and swift is time and how great and long is the work A man that had all the Town on fire about his ears or a man that were fighting for his life or a man that were in a leaking vessel ready to sink under him might better be lazy than a man that is at work for an endless life 11. Moreover Idleness is a base kind of vice It is the imitation of a block or a stone that lieth still when that which hath life will be in action 12. And it is usually a Continual sin or at least makes up a great part of the lives of many that are addicted to it A drunkard will not always be drunk and a lyar will not always be lying But a slothful person will be most commonly slothful And to conclude lay all this together and think what a reckoning a slothful person is like to have that by his sin is alway running behind-hand and will have the neglected time and means and mercies of almost all his life to answer for And now you see the greatness of this sin abhor it and awake from it You have much to do and souls to save and the ease of your flesh and fleshly minds is one thing that must be denied before it can be accomplished The slothful is still craving yet a little slumber and yet a little ease and he is still upon delays even when he is convinced of his danger and his duty when he knows that he must turn or die yet he is delaying and putting off till another time And so the vineyard and garden of the sluggard are grown over with nettles and weeds And he hath scarce a duty to do but there is a thorny hedge or a Lion in the way Deny this ease and be up and doing And there are three sorts of persons that have especial need of this advice The first is those that by the flegmatick distemper of their bodies are more prone to heaviness and slothfulness than others The more such are disposed to it the more should they watch against it and resist it The second sort are Beggars and other idle wandring persons that make a Trade of Idleness and worse such also as Ballad-singers Stage-players Juglers Cheaters and most Ale-sellers that spend their time in tipling and talking with their guests and other idle persons that will spend whole hours together in twatling and talking idly and of other mens matters All these live in a course of flesh-pleasing and of hainous sin and must better learn to deny the flesh before they can be the true Disciples of Christ This is not the life that God called you into his vineyard for no nor that he sent you into the world for to waste your short and precious days in potting and piping and prating and other ways of idleness Nor should such be suffered in a Commonwealth The third sort are too many Lords Knights and Gentlemen that think because they have enough to maintain them that it is lawful to live an idle life Or if they do any thing that 's profitable to the Common-wealth it is rather as a recreation than as a Calling Now and then an hour in the midst of their peasures and idleness is the most It is a miserable life that this sort of persons live even in the sins of Sodom which cry for the vengeance of Sodom Pride Fulness of bread and Idleness As if these persons that have most wages should do God the least work and they that have most of his stock in their hands should make the least use of it or those that are obliged to God by the greatest mercies should do least in manifesting their thankfulness or fidelity what incongruities are these Who should be so busie and laborious as those that have the greatest account to make and those that are to be exemplary to the rest Truly Gentlemen I must deal plainly with you that Idleness and the expression of it among the most of you in hunting and hawking and bowling and complementing and visitations and vain discoursings and excess of drinking and tedious meals is become the common shame of your order and must be corrected before your honour or consciences can be recovered And I am so far from any partiality in this censure of you that I must tell you if I knew onē of my own profession that were guilty but of the tenth part of some of your Idleness I would do my best to rid the Church of him and have him cast out among the sensual And you may do well sometime to ask your selves whence it comes to pass that Negligent idle Ministers must be sequestred and turned out of all and Idle Magistrates let alone One reason is because Gentlemen can better cheap compel a Minister to painfulness than themselves and punish Ministers for negligence than themselves And another reason is because all faithful Ministers themselves in love to the Church are the seekers of this severity but Magistrates are few of them so self-denying forward to seek for such severity against the idle and negligent of their own order But doth not your calling require diligence as well as ours It is a brutish ungrateful conceit of any man to think that he may live idly because he is rich The richest men in the world are bound to as diligent labour as the poorest though not in the same kind And yet I can perceive that most of the poor are even of the same mind and when they labour hardest they are idle in Gods account because they would live idly if they could It is no thanks to them that they labour for it is necessity that doth constrain them I can hear them say that they would not work at least but little if they had but money enough God will judge these as Idle persons because he takes the will for the deed You must labour in obedience to God and work as his servants and that with chearfulness and delight and deny that self and flesh that would have ease if ever you would have the heavenly reward CHAP. XXVIII The Delight of thriving and Prosperity c. II. ANother selfish Interest to be denied is A Delight in prosperity and seeing our selves thrive and our designs succeed for worldly things The
holiness more abound If so be not too hasty to censure their Zeal But usually all these dividing ways are the diseases of the Church which cause its languishing decay and dissolution 7. Lastly This selfish zeal is commonly censorious and uncharitable and diminisheth Christian Love and sets those a reproaching and despising each other that should have lived in the Union and Communion of Saints Where you find these properties of your zeal and desire for the promoting of your Opinions or parties in Religion you have great reason to make it presently your business to find out that insinuating self which maketh your Religion Carnal and to deny and mortifie it CHAP. XXXIV Carnal Liberty to be denied What. 17. ANother selfish interest to be denied is Carnal Liberty A thing that selfishness hath strangely brought of late into so much credit that abundance among us think they are doing some special service to God their Country the Church and their own souls when they are but deeply engaged for the Devil by a self-seeking spirit in a Carnal Course For the discovery of this dangerous common disease I must first tell you that there is a threefold Liberty which must carefully be differenced 1. There is an Holy Blessed Liberty which no man must deny 2. There is a wicked Liberty which no man should desire 3. And between these two there is a Common Natural and Civil Liberty which is good in its place as other worldly matters are but must be denied when it stands in competition with higher and better things and as all other worldly matters is Holy when it is Holily esteemed and used that is for God but sinful when it is sinfully esteemed and used and that is for Carnal self I. The first of these is not to be denied but all other Liberty to be denied for it This Holy Liberty consisteth in these following Particulars 1. To be freed from the Power of sin which is the disability the deformity the death of the soul 2. From the Guilt of sin and the wrath of God and the Curse of the Law 3. To be restored to God by Christ in Union Reconciliation and Sanctification and our enthralled spirits set free to know and love and serve him and delight in him Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is Libert y 2 Cor. 3. 17. God is the souls freedom who is its Lord and life and end and all 4. To be delivered from Satan as a Deceiver and enemy and executioner of the wrath of God 5. To be freed from that Law or Covenant of Works which requireth that which to us is become impossible 6. To be freed from the burdensome task of useless Ceremonies imposed on the Church in the times of infancy and darkness 7. To be freed from the accusations of a guilty conscience those self-tormentings which in the wicked are the fore-tastes of hell 8. To be freed from such temporal judgments here as might hinder our salvation or our service of God 9. To be free from the condemning sentence at the last day and the everlasting Torments which the wicked must endure 10. And to be delivered into the blessed sight of God and the perfect fruition and pleasing of him in Perfect Love and Joy and Praise to all eternity This is the Liberty which you must not deny which I therefore name that by the way you may see that it is not for nothing that the other sorts of Liberty are to be denied II. The second sort of Liberty is that which is wicked directly evil which all men should deny And this is a freedom from Righteousness as the Apostle calls it Rom. 6. 20. To be free from a voluntary subjection to God and free from his severe and holy Laws and free from the thoughts of holiness and of the life to come and free from those sighs and groans for sin and that godly sorrow which the sanctified undergo and to be free from all those spiritual motions and changing works upon their hearts which the Spirit doth work on all the Saints to be free from holy speeches and holy prayer and other duties and from that strict and holy manner of living which God commandeth to be at liberty to sin against God and to please the flesh and follow their own imaginations and wills let God say what he will to the contrary to be free to eat and drink what we love and have a mind of and to be merry and wanton and lustful and worldly and take our course without being curbed by so precise a Law as God hath given us to be free from an heavenly conversation and those preparations for death and that Communion with God which the Saints partake of This is the wicked Liberty of the world which the worst of carnal men desire And the next beyond this is a Liberty to lie in the fire of hell and a freedom from salvation and from the everlasting Joy and Praises of the Saints If freedom from Grace and Holiness deserve the name of Freedom then you may next call Damnation a Freedom And it is part also of this sinful miserable Liberty to be free from the Government and Officers and good Laws which rule the Church and Commonwealth And such wretches there are in the world that seriously judge it a desirable Liberty to be free from these They think that their Country is Free when every man may do what he list and they have no King or other Governors or none that will look after them and punish their miscarriages And they think the Church is free when they have no Pastors or when Pastors have least power over them and they may do what they list And indeed if they were rid of Magistrates and Ministers they were free As a School is free that hath shut out the Master or have rejected him and teach and rule one another And as a Ship is free when the Master and Pilot are thrown over-board and as an Army is free when they have cast off or lost their commanders or to speak more fitly as an Hospital is free when they are delivered from their Physician and as the madmen in Bedlam are free when they have killed or escaped from their Keepers As Infidels keep their Freedom by refusing Christ in himself so carnal Dividers and Hereticks keep their Freedom by refusing his Officers and Christ in those Officers For he that heareth them heareth him and he that despiseth them despiseth him and he that despiseth despiseth not man but God Luke 10. 16. 1 Thes 4. 8. And another part of this ungodly Liberty is to be free from the exercise at least of this power of Magistrates and Ministers so far as not to be restrained from sin though they be not free from the state of subjects To swear and be drunk and live as most Ale-sellers on the damning sins of others and make a trade of selling men their damnation and to have no Magistrate punish them no
Officer trouble them and no neighbour accuse them this is their Liberty To game and roar and revel and have no body say to them Why do you so is part of their Liberty To have leave without Restraint to make all others as bad as themselves and if they are Infidels or Hereticks to perswade other men to it If they hold any opinion against the God that made them against Christ against the Spirit of God against the Word and Laws of God against his Ministers his Church his Ordinances against any necessary point of Faith or if they have any false conceit that leads straight to Hell that they may have full power license and authority to bring as many as they can to be of the same mind that they may not be unprofitable servants to the Devil nor go to Hell alone this is a great part of their impious Liberty And because the name of Conscience is become honourable they call this by the name of Liberty of Conscience when indeed it is Liberty of Practice that they mean and not Liberty of Conscience For their Conscience cannot be altered by force nor touched by the Sword It 's they that deprive men of the Liberty of their Consciences whilst by false teaching they put out the eye of conscience enslave it to sinful false conceits And Conscience is science and Error is not science but ignorance And therefore as Error is not Conscience but the destruction of Conscience so Liberty to error is no Liberty of Conscience but a Liberty to destroy Conscience Much less is it Liberty of Conscience to sin against God and draw others from Conscience into error and poyson mens souls and hinder the Gospel and promote the work and Kingdom of the Devil And many of our miserable sottish people take it for a part of their desired Liberty to be free from Ministers Spiritual Oversight and Government not to be Carechised or called to an account or examined about the state of their souls nor questioned about their lives but that they may do what they will and have Sacraments and all Ordinances on what terms and in what manner they will and to have Ministers bow their Judgments to theirs and lay their Consciences at the feet of every carnal ignorant wretch and be but their servants to do what they would have them this is the Liberty that Satans servants do desire And withall that they may be free from necessary payments for the safety of the Commonwealth and from the necessary retribution to God for the Church and poor yea from giving but the Ministers their own all this they take for part of their liberty But they are all such liberties as Christ never purchased and the Gospel never bestowed and never made the Owners happy It is a liberty to starve their own souls and go quietly to everlasting torment and not be molested by Preachers and Puritans but to sin against God and damn themselves and be let alone and have no body tell them of it or ask them Why will you do so In a word it is that liberty that Christ died to save his people from and which the Gospel would take down and the spirit ministry and Ordinances would overthrow and which no wise or good man hath reason to desire it is that liberty which God will save all those from whom he will save from the flames of hell III. The third sort of Liberty is that which is in it self Indifferent or to be reckoned among the common transitory benefits of this life which with Gods blessing is a mercy and well used may do good but otherwise is hurtful or little worth This Liberty is not the Natural Liberty of the will which in regard of its own elicite Acts is nothing but the power of self-determination and in regard of internal imperate acts is nothing but a power or freedom to do what we will For these are so our own if not our selves that no man can take them from us at least the first Nor is it the Ethical Liberty of the soul from sin by gracious Habits for this is ever good as was said before Nor is it a Political Liberty from those tyrannous Laws or practices of men that would root out the Gospel and pull down the Kingdom of Christ and set up iniquity This Liberty must be desired and not denied even when we submit our selves to persecution but it is 1. The Civil Liberty of being from under the Government of others and of having a hand in Government our selves 2. The Liberty of being from under the Government of Strangers Conquerors or enemies 3. The Liberty of choosing our own Governors and having them not by other mens election set over us 4. A Liberty from burdensom payments taxes which are of no necessity to our good 5. A liberty from arbitrary Government and from being liable to the meer will and passions of men 6. A protection from the abuses and injuries of others 7. And a liberty for o foolish conceits that makes imprisonment so grievous to the most It is the same earth that they tread on and the same air that they breath in as before The great trouble is that they have not their wills for when their own wills do as much confine them it is then no trouble I can confine my self to one room to one chair the far greatest part of the year for my studies and why should I not bear as well to be so confined by another if my own will could but comply with it Never grudge at restraint or imprisonment then but find out some imployment in it whereby you may be serviceable to God or at least serve him by your sufferings and then rejoyce in it and bring your minds to your condition and so you may set your selves at liberty in spite of the greatest Tyrant in the world Imprisonment is but a penal restraint and if it be not Involuntary it 's scarcely penal it is therefore in your power whether you will be Prisoners or not because it is in your power whether it shall be involuntary or not Be but willing of your confinement and you are at liberty and though you are not out of the place you are out of the prison The same room that is a prison to the rest is none to the keper that guards them because apprehending it to be for his commodity he is willing of it and their prison is his home And if you do but apprehend how you are called from temptations and have an opportunity of honouring God or at least of being more humbled and mortified and so bring your mind to consent to your habitation it 's become your home and place of freedom however he is unworthy of the liberty of the Saints that cannot deny the liberty of his habitation or bodily abode for the attaining of it And for thethings that men make such a stir about in the world under the name of their â—â—â—il liberties
quiet the mind when it cannot abate the pain of the body and must use to submit to a lesser evil to avoid a greater or to obtain a greater good than it depriveth us of Paul and Silas could sing with their bodies sore and their feet in the stocks To be joyful in tribulation should be no strange matter to a Saint much more with a patient submission to undergo it We may not thrust our selves into the fire nor choose suffering without a call but we must suffer rather than sin and choose the wounds and hurts of the body before the wounds and losses of the soul But because flesh and blood will draw back and make too great a matter of sufferings I shall briefly give you ten Considerations that may perswade you herein to deny your selves and in two cases I desire you to make use of them First in case you have no way to escape suffering but by sinning then deny your selves and choose to suffer Secondly in case of Gods afflictions which unavoidably lie upon you then deny your selves by a quiet and patient submission And for both consider 1. That is the best condition for us in which we may be most serviceable to God And if we suffer for Righteousness we may serve God as well in such suffering as in a prosperous state Or if God himself afflict us we may serve him in our affliction Our patience then is the service that we are called to The sufferings of the Saints have done very much to the promoting of the Gospel and building of the Church Men will see that there is somewhat worth the suffering for in the Christian Religion and see that Heaven is taken by believers for a certain thing when they can let go earth for it They will be moved to enquire what it is that moves you to such constancy and patience And why should we not be willing of that condition in which we do our Master the best service what ever the doing of it shall cost us The commodity of our end is the chiefest commodity 2. That is the best condition for us in which we may have most of God But certainly we may have as much and usually more of God in suffering especially for his cause than we can have in prosperity especially when we sin to escape these sufferings Is it bodily ease or God that you set most by It will be seen by your choice If you prefer your ease before him you must expect to have no better than you choose If you prefer him before your ease and prosperity you must be gladder of God with adversity and pain than of prosperity and ease without him A beast hath health and ease as well as you and yet you will not think him as happy If you are tormented or lose your health for Christ you lose nothing but what a Turk or Infidel hath yea but what a beast hath as well as you But you may have that of God by the advantage of your suffering that none but Saints have And God's presence can make a suffering state as sweet as a prosperous And he hath given you ground in his promises to expect it Isa 43. 1 2 3. When thou passest through the fire I will be with thee 1 Cor. 10. 13. There hath no temptation taken you but what is common to man but God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that your able but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it 1 Pet. 4. 14. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ happy are ye for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you On their part he is evil spoken of but on your part he is glorified ver 16. If any man suffer as a Christian let him not be ashamed but let him glorifie God on this behalf What is the Scripture fuller of than comforting promises to the sufferers for Christ To fly from such sufferings then is but to fly from the presence of God and our own consolations 3. At least these sufferings further our sanctification and make us better And is not that our best condition that makes us best Common experience as well as Scripture may satisfie us that a suffering state doth very much further humiliation and mortification and bring men to a deeper sense of sin help all the truths of God to work and make them more sensible and serious than in prosperity Then we do not only hear but feel that sin is evil and that the world is vain and that the threatnings of God are true Why Christian if thou didst but know that thou shouldst have more of the spirit and its graces and less of sin in a suffering estate than in ease and plenty wouldst thou not even choose it and be glad of it Is not sin worse than suffering to thee and holiness better than ease and peace Alas what senseless careless persons should we be if it were not for the help of suffering Grace useth to work by means and this is the common means 4. Consider that pain and suffering we shall have whether for Christ or not The worst men undergo almost as much by ordinary sicknesses and losses and crosses as the Martyrs do that suffer for Christ sin will bring suffering and it 's better have that which is sanctified by the interest of Christ than that which is not 5. And a Christian that hath so much ado to curb and rule the flesh in prosperity me thinks should the more patiently bear adversity because God sets in by it and helps him to subdue the flesh and tame the body and bring it in subjection And as it is but this burdensome flesh that suffereth which hath been the cause of so much suffering to our minds so our warfare against this flesh which we mannage through the course of our lives goes on more prosperously in the time of its sufferings than in prosperity A weakned enemy is easilier conquered Do not therefore too much take part with the suffering flesh but self-denyingly justifie the proceedings of the Lord. 6. And consider that the pains and suffering will be but short It is but a little while and you shall feel no more than if you had felt nothing And that which shortly will not be is next to that which is not As it makes all the pleasures and glory of the world to be a dream and next to nothing because it 's but a while and they are gone and never return again So it makes our sufferings next to nothing that they are passing away and almost over And then all tears will be wiped from your eyes and pain will be forgotten or remembred only to encrease your joy When you are past the brunt and safe with Christ you will never repent of your sufferings on earth nor will it trouble you then to think of the shame or sickness or pain and torment that here you were put
remember that Heathens themselves have chosen death First in case of some extream torment or other misery which they had no other hope to prevent or end But this was but a choosing a speedier or easier Death before a more grievous death though remote or before a death that had so great a misery for its fore-runner or at least before such a life as is a continual death And so the conquered Heathens would frequently kill themselves to prevent a more dishonourable cruel death from the hand of the Conqueror And so many a one in uncurable misery wiâ—â—eth rather to die than endure it partly because that the suffering is so great as to overcome all the comforts of life For I yield that some degrees of misery with life are more terrible to nature than death and partly because that they know they must die at last however Secondly in a desire of fame that they may leave behind them an honourable name when they are dead But this is not to desire death but life Fain they would live for ever and because they know that it cannot be obtained on earth they had rather die some honourable death a little sooner that their names may live when they are dead than to die ignominiously shortly after Thirdly And some have chosen to die for the publick good of their Country But as it 's very uncertain whether the desire of a living Name were not their greater motive so it was but a choosing a present death for their Country before a latter unavoidable death without any such advantage In all these cases a natural man may venture on death that knows he cannot scape it long but must shortly die whether he will or no. But if they could avoid it there 's very few would submit to death but believers and none but in one of these cases 1. To end or avoid some extream intolerable uncurable misery 2. To deliver their Country or friends 3. And whether any would do it upon their ungrounded hopes of better things in the life to come I leave to consideration But if it be taken for granted that a natural man may love 1. The comforts of life above it self 2. And the good of his Country or the world or his children above his life 3. Or some carnal felicity falsly conceited to be had in another life yet it is certain that none but a sanctified believer can Love God better than his Life or can prefer those spiritual heavenly joys which consist in the holy Love and Fruition of God before his life And therefore he that for these can deny his Life is indeed a Christian and none but be Though it be an ungrateful word to the ears of some I must say it again and none but he For this is the very point in which Christ for instance doth put our self-denial to the trial He that will save his life shall lose it Whether you Love an immortal holy life with God or this earthly fleshly life better is the great question on which it will be resolved whether you are Christians or Infidels at the heart and whether you are heirs of heaven or hell Some Love to God may be in the unsanctified but not a love to him above their lives and in some cases they may submit to death but not for the Love of God But both these set together that is a submitting to Death for the Love of God or a Loving of God above this life is the most infallible proof of your sincerity I confess flesh and blood must needs think this is a very hard saying and though they might consent to acknowledge it a Duty and a Reasonable thing to die for Christ and a note of excellency and a commendable qualification of some few extrordinary Saints yet it goeth very hardly down with them that it should be the lowest measure of saving grace that the weakest Christian must have it that will be saved For say they What can the strongest do more than die for Christ But to this I answer 1. There is no rom for objections against so plain a Word of God It is the wisdom of God and not our Reason that disposeth of the Crown of life and therefore it is his Wisdom and not our Reason must determine by what we shall attain it And if God say plainly that If any man come to Christ and hate not his own life that is love it not so much less than Christ that for his sake he can use it as a hated thing is used he cannot be his Disciple Luke 14. 26. it is too late for the vote of man or all the clamour of foolish reason to recal this resolution The word of God will stand when they have talk'd against it never so long we may destroy our selves by dashing against it but we cannot destroy or frustrate it 2. And whereas men ask What can the strongest do more than die for Christ I answer Abundance more They can die for him with far greater Love and Zeal and Readiness and Joy than the weak can do and so bring much more honour to him by their death Though there be no higher way of outward expressing our Love to Christ than by dying for him yet the inward work of Love may be in very different degrees in persons that use the same expression of it Some may come to the stake with a little Love comparatively and some with fervent hot affections Some have much ado to yield to die and some die so chearfully that they rejoyce in the opportunity of honouring God and passing to him Yea and in the Expressions there is much difference in the manner Some give up themselves with so much readiness as works more on the standers by than their meer patience or the death it self And some are drawn so hardly to it as drowneth much of the honour and fruit of their martyrdom Of this read Mr. Pinks Serm. on Luke 14. 26. Obj. But Nature is of God and Nature teacheth us to Love and save our Lives and is it like that the God of Nature will command and teach us to cast them away and so contradict his own Law of Nature Answ 1. As Nature teacheth you to love your lives so God doth not forbid you But 2. Is it Natural to man to be Reasonable as well as to be sensitive and animate To have a reasonable soul as to have a temporal life 3. And doth not Reason tell us by the light of Nature that God should be loved better than our Lives If it did not yet by the help of supernatural light even Reason clearly tells us this And it is no contradiction for God to bid you Love your lives but love him better And he that bids you seek the preservation of your lives doth plainly except that you resign them to his dispose and that you seek not to save them from him when he commandeth you to lay them down So that it is not simply
any Creature wise enough to order the world and the affairs thereof Is any Creature powerful enough to dispose of the world and all things in it Is any Creature good enough to do it without the communication of its imperfection which would disorder destroy all I know you make no doubt of any of these things No Creature is fit to be God and therefore none is fit to undertake the work of God And therefore it must be God or none that must have the Disposal of your lives and you But I know what it is that self would have You would have the Disposal of your own lives or else have God to dispose of them as you would have him which comes all to one But how unreasonable is this Would you alone have the Disposal of your own lives or would you have all men else in the world also to have the Disposal of theirs If all should have this Priviledge what a miserable Priviledge would it prove No man then would die and then either you must forbear marriage or what would you do with your posterity when there were no room on earth And then you could not punish a Malefactor with death And what a world would it be if all men were Disposers of themselves when there would be as many different ends and minds as men every man would be for himself and an enemy to others and the world would run every man on his own head and a madder confusion than can be imagined would seize on all If you would have every man have the dispose of his own life you would have as many Gods as Men and so have no God and you would have as many Kings or Rulers as men and so have no Ruler and you would have the world to be no world when God were to them as no God And if you would not have it thus with all what reason have you to desire it for your self What are you more than all the world that you should be exempted from the common state of mortals and be at your own disposal more than they and be instead of God unto your selves 5. You think it neither cruelty or injustice that the lives of bruits should be much at your dispose Your poor fellow-creatures must die when you require it Birds and Beasts and Fishes even multitudes of them must die to feed you yea often for your delight to make you a Feast when you have no necessity The most harmless sheep you will not spare The most laborious Ox the most beautiful Bird must give up their lives to satisfie your pleasure And is not God ten thousand thousand times even infinitely more above you than you are above your fellow-creatures Is one creature fitter to kill another and afterwards devour it and becomes its grave than God to dispose of the Lives of all 6. Where could you wish your Lives to be better than in the hand of the most wise gracious God If you may rest content or have confidence in any it is in him You neednot doubt of his Goodness for he is goodness and Love it self And therefore though you see not the world to come that you are passing to yet as long as you know that you are in the hands of Love it self what cause have you of disquiet or distrust And that you know that he is wise as well as Good and Almighty as well as Wise and therefore as he meaneth you no harm if you are his children so he will not mistake nor fail in the performance You need not fear lest your happiness should miscarry for want of skill in him that is Omniscient or for want of will in him that is your Father or for want of Power in him that is Omnipotent You may far better trust God with your lives than your selves For you have not wisdom enough to know what is best for you nor skill to accomplish it nor Power to go through with it Nay you love not you selves so well as God doth love you Did you but believe this you would better trust him You can trust your selves in a narrow Ship upon â—he wide and raging Seas when you never saw the Country that you are gâ—ing to and all because you believe that the voyage is for your commodity and that you have a skilful Pilot. And cannot you commend your souls into the hand of God to convey you through death to the invisible glory as confidently as you dare commit your lives to the conduct of a man and to a tottering Ship in a hazardous Ocean You can trust your lives on the skill of a Physician And cannot you trust them on the will of God If you had your choice whether your lives should be at your own dispose or Gods you should far rather choose that God might dispose of them than your selves As it is better for an Infant to be guided and disposed of by the Parents than by it self A Good King will not kill his own Subjects needlesly And a natural Father or Mother will not not needlesly kill their own Children yea a very brute will tenderly cherish their young And do you think that God who is infinitely good will causelesly orinjuriously take your lives or that he doth not mean you good even in your death Object But how can I think it for my good to die and to have my nature dissolved Answ Paul did desire to depart or be dissolved and to be with Christ as best of all Phil. 1. 23. And did not he know what was for his good as well as you He was willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord than at home in the body and absent from the Lord and therefore groaned earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with his house which is from heaven that mortality might be swallowed up of life 2 Cor. 5. 1 2 4 6 8. When the Hen hath sate to hatch her young ones they must leave the shell as good for nothing and must come into a world which they never saw before And what of that Should they murmur at the breaking of tâ—â—â—r former habitation or fear the passagâ— inâ—â— so 〈◊〉 â—â— wide so strange a place in 〈…〉 â—f 〈…〉 which they were in before No more 〈…〉 the breaking of these bodies and 〈…〉 the 〈…〉 of flesh and passing under the conduct of Angels into the presence of our Lord. God is but hatching us here by his spirit that he may bring us out into the light of glory And should we grudge at this 7. And what if God call you to sacrifice your lives to him as he called Abraham to sacrifice his Son What if he call you to come to him by a persecutors hand or at least to be willing of your natural death He calls you but to give up a life which you cannot keep and to do that willingly which else you must do whether you will or not Willing or unwilling die you must
the burdens that are here upon you which should make you long to be with God One would think the feeling of them should force you to consideration and weariness of them and make the thoughts of rest to be sweet to you Have you yet not sin enough and sorrow and fear and trouble enough Or must God lay a greater load on you to make you desire to be disburdened Every hour you spend and every creature you have to do with afford you some occasion of renewing your desires to depart from these and be with Christ Direct 7. Observe and magnifie that of God which is here revealed to you in his word and works Study him and admire him in Scripture study and admire him in the frame of nature And when you look towards Sun or Moon or Sea or Land and perceive how little it is that you know and how desirable it is to know them perfectly think then of that estate where you shall know them all in God himself who is more than all Study and admire him in the course of Providences study and admire him in the person of Christ in the frame of his holy life in the work of Redemption in the holy frame of his Laws and Covenants study and admire him in his Saints and the frame of his holy Image on their souls This life of studying and admiring God and dwelling upon him with all our souls will exceedingly dispose us to be willing to come to him and to submit to death Direct 8. Live also in the daily exercise of holy Joy and Praise to God which is the heavenly Employment For if you use your selves to this heavenly life it will much incline you to desire to be there Exercise fear and godly sorrow and care in their places but especially after Faith and Love be sure to live in holy Joy and Praise Be much in the consideration of all that Riches of grace in Christ communicated and to be communicated to you And be much in Thanks to God for his mercies and chearing and comforting your soul in the Lord your God And thus the Joy of Grace will much dispose you to the Joys of glory the Peace which the Kingdom of God consisteth in will incline you to the peace of the everlasting Kingdom and the chearful Praising of God on Earth in Psalms or other ways of Praise will prepare and dispose you to the heavenly Praises And therefore Christians exceedingly wrong their souls and hinder themselves from a willingness to be with God in spending all their days in drooping or doubting or worldly dulness and laying by so much the Joy of the Saints and the Praises of God Direct 9. Dwell on the believing fore-thoughts of the everlasting glory which you must possess Think what it is that others are enjoying while you are here and what you must be and possess and do for ever Daily think of the Certainty Perfection and Perperuity of your Blessedness What a life it will be to see the blessed God in his Glory and taste of the fulness of his love and to see the glorified Son of God and with a perfected soul and body to be perfectly taken up in the Love and Joy and Praises of the Lord among all his holy Saints and Angels in the heavenly Jerusalem You must by the exercise of Faith and Love in holy Meditation and Prayer even dwell in the Spirit and converse in Heaven while your bodies are on earth if you would entertain the news of death as beseems a Christian But of this at large elsewhere Direct 10. Lastly if you would be willing to submit to death resign up your own understandings and wills to the wisdom and the will of God and Know not good and evil for your carnal selves but wholly trust your lives and souls to the Wisdom and Love of your dearest Lord. Must you be carking and caring for your selves when you have an Infinite God engaged to care for you O saith self I am not able to bear the terrors and pangs of death O saith Faith My Lord is easily able to support me and it is his undertaken work to do it My work is but to Please him and it 's his work to take care of me in life and death and therefore though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death yet will I fear no evil O saith Self I am utterly a stranger to another world I know not what I shall see nor what I shall be nor whither I shall go the next minute after death None come from the dead to satisfie us of these things O but saith Faith My blessed Father and Redeemer is not a stranger to the place that I must go to He knows it though I do not He knows what I shall be and do and whither I shall go and all is in his power And seeing it belongs not to me but to him to dispose of me and give me the promised reward it is meet that I rest in his understanding And it is better for me that his Infinite Wisdom dispose of my departing soul than my shallow insufficient knowledge I may much more acquiesce in his knowledge than my own O but saith self I fear it may prove a change of darkness and confusion to my soul what will become of me I cannot tell O but saith Faith I am sure I am in the hands of Love and such Love as is Omnipotent and engaged for my good and how can it then go ill with me If I had my own will I should not fear And how much less should I fear when I am at the will of God even of most Wise Almighty Love There is no true Centre for the soul to Rest in but the Will of God It is our business to Obey and Please his Will as dutiful Children and to commit our selves contentedly to his Will for the absolute disposal of us It is not possible that the Will of an Heavenly Father should be against his Children whose desire and sincere endeavour hath been to Obey and Please his Will And therefore learn this as your great and necessary Lesson with Joyful Confidence to Commit your selves and your departing souls to your Fathers Will as knowing that your Death is but the execution of that Will which is engaged to cause all things to work together for your good Rom. 8. 28. And say with Paul I suffer but am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed and I am perswaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day 2 Tim. 1. 12. 1 Tim. 4. 10. Therefore we labour and suffer because we trust in the living God who is the Saviour of all men especially of those that believe say therefore as Job Though he kill me yet will I trust in him Or rather as Christ Father into thy hands I commend my Spirit Luke 23. 46. If the hands and Will of the Father was the Rock and
or within them as to see that which may take them down from being proud of any comeliness of the flesh One would think this should be so easie a part of self-denial as any graceless one might reach by a little use of the Reason that is left them CHAP. XLV Strength and Valour to be denied 5. ANother piece of Vain-glory to be Denied is in the Reputation of strength and valour The witless part of men especially in their procacious humours do use to be carried away with this as witless women with the former Hence commonly are their matches of Running and Wrestling and many exercises of activity and strength yea and hence commonly are their duels and murders It seems such a dishonourable thing to them to be thought a Coward or unable to defend themselves and to be crow'd over by their enemy that they will venture body and soul upon it rather than they will put up such indignities or lie under the dishonour of being Cowards Yea and would one think it some Jesuits are such Carnal Doctors that they teâ—ch men that if they be challenged and their honour lie upon it they may meet the challenger there in a defensive posture and fight with him to defend their honour yea and in many other cases they may kill another for their Honour seeing their honour is more to them than their lives O miserable Teachers and miserable souls that do obey them Christ hath taught you another lesson even to despise the shame Heb. 12. 2 3. â—nd to humble your selves intimateth that such cannot be believers which receive honour of one another and seek not the honour that cometh from God only Joh. 5. 44. It 's more Honor to obey God in suffering than be so valiant as to murder another man The day is near when he will appear the Honourable man that was likest to Jesus Christ that when he was reviled reviled not again when he suffered he threatned not but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously 1 Pet. 2. 23. Blind sinners do you think it more honourable to do hurt than to suffer hurt yea to be like the Devil who is a murderer than to Christ that was a sufferer and came not to destroy mens lives but to save them and lay down his own Can any thing be more Honourable than to be the children of the heavenly Father and if you be such you must Love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you and pray for them that despightfully use you and persecute you Mat. 5. 44. What a Case are those mens understandings in that think it their Honour to revenge themselves when God hath so forbidden it Rom. 12. 19. CHAP. XLVI Wisdom and Learning to be denied 6. ANother piece of Vain-glory to be denied is in the Reputation of Wisdom and Learning The things themselves are very excellent and to be desired and much sought after but not for our own Honour but the Service and Honour of the Lord. And the greater is the worth of the thing the greater is the temptation to vain-glory in them that have it and the harder it is to deny themselves herein This part of self-denial consisteth not in a contempt of Learning or Wisdom nor a neglect of it for this were a sin but in a neglect of self that would make an advantage of it for its own carnal exaltation and in a contempt of the Honour and vain-glory which may redound by it to our selves further than such honour is serviceable to God O how sinful and miserable a liâ—e do abundance of Learned men live in the world Their whole life is but one continued vice and that a sin of a most hainous nature even the exercise of Pride and Self-seeking when yet they take themselves for Saints because they are not such as are accounted scandalous sinners in the world They sacrifice their precious time and studies to their Pride Phansies and not to God Too many hours and years are spent to gain the Reputation of being Learned men Too many disputations are managed yea odious sacriledge too many Sermons are preached and too many learned Books are written to gain the Reputation of being Learned men Ah miserable low unworthy studies Prophane Sermons ungodly labours and poor reward O how it netleth some Proud spirits if they hear that they are taken to be no Scholars And how many take their University Degrees to be meerly the wings of this part of their vain-glory Learning and Degrees and the Reputation of it are all good if they be valued and used but for God But they are so much the worse when they are sacrificed to self and and made the food and fuel of Pride Learn therefore this part of self-denial CHAP. XLVII Reputation of Gifts and spiritual Abilities c. 7. ANother piece of vain-glory to be denied is The Reputation of our Gifts and spiritual Abilities I mean such as Praying and Preaching and Disputing and good Conference to have readiness for words and liveliness of expression and exactness of method to be esteemed in all these a very able man by others is an high part of self-interest to be denied The duties themselves must be denied by none for they are the service of God commanded us by his word But it is the Honour that self presumeth to hunt after in these holy things And it is a double sin here to seek our selves when we are specially commanded to seek God! and where the work is instituted for that end and when we pretend to seek God and to deny our selves The greater are our abilities to do God service the more resolutely and thankfully we should improve them in his service But we must remember that they are given us to save others by our improvement and not to destroy our selves by our Pride Get as great abilities as you can and when you have them thank God for them and use them for him to the uttermost of your Power but take heed lest Pride should sacrifice them to your selves and pervert them from your Masters service The persons that have most need of this advice are especially these following 1. Young unexperienced Professors that are but lately turned to a Profession of a Godly life that have so much illumination as sheweth them much that before they knew not and raiseth them above the vulgar measure but yet hath made them but smatterers and half-knowing men These are they that the Apostle requireth should not be made Bishops or Pastors of the Church because of their pronenefs to this very sin that now we are speaking of 1 Tim. 3. 6. Not a Novice lest being lifted up with Pride he fall into the condemnation of the Devil the spirit of God here intimateth to us that Novices are the likest to be lifted up with Pride and that this Pride is the way to the Condemnation of the Devil 2. And men of great abilities natural or acquired that have
such useless members forseiting their very sustenance then surely he that is such or worse speeds fair if you leave him food and raiment 4. And the great command of doing all to Gods Glory and serving him with our substance will not be obeyed if you leave your Riches and Estates in the hands of such persons meerly because they are your Children No doubt but that is a selfish and unconscionable course and the thing that sets up the ungodly to disturb the Church Lord it over the world while parents furnish them with Riches to do the Devil eminent service with Object But who knows but God may convert them Answ You cannot guide your actions by things unknown You have no promise of their conversion nor much probability when they have frustrated all your Counsels and means of their good education and grace is supernatural and therefore you must proceed upon grounds that are known And for remoter Kindred if they may be as serviceable to God with what I give them as others nature teacheth me to prefer them before others but otherwise Grace teacheth me both to love a godly stranger better than ungodly kindred and to lay out all that I have as may be most serviceable to God CHAP. LVII Q. How we must love our Neighbours as our selves Quest 7. HOw is it that Self-denial requireth us to love our neighbour as our selves Is it with the same degree of Love Answ I answered this on the by before Briefly 1. The chief part of the precept is Negative thus q. d. Set not up thy self against the welfare of thy neighbour Draw not from him or covet not that which is his to thy self and confine not thy love and care of thyself 2. And it comprehendeth this positive and that as to the kind of Love we should love both our selves and neighbours as means to God and for the interest of God and in that respect there is an equality we must appretiative or estimatively love a better and more serviceable man that hath more of Gods Spirit in him above our selves and an equal person equally with our selves with this Rational Love which intendeth all for God 3. But Natural Love which is put into a man for self-preservation will be stronger to self than to another and alloweth us caeteris paribus to prefer and first preserve and provide for our selves And in this regard our neighbour must be loved but as a second self or next our selves 4. But this Natural Love in the exercise of it at least in imperate acts is to be subservient to our Rational spiritual Love and to be over-mastered by it And therefore it is that as Reason teacheth an Heathen to prefer his Country before his life though the instinct of Nature incline us more to life so faith teacheth a Christian much more to prefer Gods honour and the Gospel Church Common-wealth and his neighbours good when it more conduceth to these ends than his own before himself his liberty or life CHAP. LVIII Q. Is Self-revenge and Penance self-denial Quest 8. WHether self-denial require us after sin to use vindictive penance or punishment of the flesh by fasting watching going barefoot lying hard wearing hair-cloth or to do this ordinarily as some of the Papists Monks and Fryars do Answ The easiness of this case may allow a brief decision 1. The Body must be so far afflicted as is needful to humble it and subdue it to the spirit and tame its Rebellion and fit it for the service of God 2. The exercise of a holy revenge on our selves may be a lower end subservient to this 3. It must also be so far humbled as is necessary to express Repentance to the Church when Absolution is expected upon publick Repentance 4. As also to concur with the soul in secret or open humiliation But 1. He that shall think that whippings or sackcloth or going bare-foot or other self-punishing are of themselves good works and meritorious with God or satisfie his Justice or are a state of perfection doth offer God a hainous sin under the name and conceit of a good work 2. And he that shall by such self-afflicting unfit his Body for the service of God yea that doth not cherish it so far as is necessary to fit it for duty is guilty of self-murder and defrauding God of his service and abusing his creature and depriving others of the help we owe them so that iâ— one word the Body must be so used as may best fit it for Gods service And to think that self-afflicting is a good work meerly as it is penalty or suffering to the body or that we may go further herein is to think 1. That we should use our Body worse than our beast for we will no further afflict him than is necessary to tame him or serve our selves by him and not to disable him for service 2. And it will teach men to kill themselves for that is a greater penalty to the body than whipping or fasting 3. And it is an offering God a sacrifice of cruelty and Robbery which we commit against himself and man But I must needs add that though some Fryars and Melancholy people are apt to go too far in this and pine their bodies or misuse them with conceits of merit and satisfaction yet almost all the common people run into the contrary extream and pamper and please their flesh to the displeasing of God and the ruine of their souls And I know but few that have need to be restrained from afflicting or taking down the flesh too much CHAP. LIX Q. Is self-denial to be without Passion Quest 9. WHether self-denial consist in the laying by of all Passions and bringing the soul to an impassionate serenity Answ The Stoicks and some Behmenists think so But so doth not God or any well informed man For 1. God would not have made the Affections in vain It is not the Passions but the disorder of them that is sinful or the fruit of sin 2. We are commanded to exercise all the Affections or Passions for God and on other sutable objects We must Love God with all the heart and soul and might which is not without affection or passion We must Love his servants his Church his Word his wayes We must fear him above them that can kill us we must hunger and thirst after his Righteousness and pant after him as the Hart doth after the Water-brooks We must be angry and sin not A zeal for God is the life of our Graces we must always be zealous in a good matter fervent in Spirit serving the Lord. We must hate evil and sorrow for it when we are guilty and grieve under the sense of our miscarriages and Gods displeasure And all these expresly commanded in the Word are holy Affections or Passions of the soul 3. Yea it is the Work of the Holy Ghost to sanctifie all these Passions that they may be used for God and they are called by
that blemisheth Judges and Justices and Officers with the stains of partiality avarice and injustice It is this that disturbeth the peace of Nations that will not let Princes Rule for God and consequently overthrows their Thrones that will not let subjects Obey them in the Lord but le ts in wars and miseries upon them that sets the Nations together by the ears and so continueth them yea it is self that will not let neighbours live together in Peace that provoketh people to disobey their Teachers and Teachers to be man-pleasers and neglect the people that will not let Masters and Servants Parents and Children Husband and Wife live peaceably and lovingly one with other It is the common make-bate and troubler of the world Nay it is self that causeth most of the new Opinions and practises in Religion that sets up Popery and most other Sects and causeth the Pastors to contend for superiority to the troubling of the Church after all the plain prohibitions of Christ In a word selfishness is the grand enemy of God and man the Disease of Depraved lapsed nature the very heart of Original sin and the old man the root of all the Iniquity in the world the breach of every Commandment of the Law the enemy of every Article of Faith and every Petition in the Lords Prayer and by that time we have added the rest of its deformity you will see whether it be not the very Image of the Devil as the Love of God and our neighbour which is its contrary is the image of God But now on the contrary side Self-denial complyeth with all Divine Revelations and disposeth the soul to all holy Requests and to the observation of every Command of God It humbly stoopeth to the mysteries of Faith which others proudly quarrel with in the dark It makes a man say O what am I that I should set my wit against the Lord and make my Reason the Touch-stone of his truth and think to Comprehend his judgements that are incomprehensible It causeth a man to sit as a little child at the feet of Christ to learn his will and say Speak Lord for thy servant heareth It silenceth the carpings of an unsatisfied understanding and limiteth the enquiries of a busie prying presumptuous wit and subdueth the contradictions of flesh and blood It casteth off that Pride and self-conceitedness that hindreth others from believing In Prayer it bringeth an emptied soul that is not stopped up against the grace and blessings of God It layeth us low in a receiving posture It emptieth us of our selves that we may be filled with God It hath nothing to say against any one of those Requests which Christ hath put into our mouths but subscribeth to them all It is the highest ambition the greatest desire of a self-denying soul that Gods Name may be hallowed and honoured whatever become of his own Name or honour and that the Kingdom of God may flourish in which he desireth to be a subject and that the will of God may be done and the will of himself and all the world conformed and subjected to it And so of the rest of the Petitions Self-denial is half the life of Prayer And it is a dutiful observer of all the Commandments It giveth up our Love to God as his Own and consequently worshippeth him in Love and Reverenceth his name and observeth his time and indeed is wholly devoted to him And it giveth our neighbour that part of our Love which belongeth to him and therefore will not dishonour superiors or encroach upon the possessions of others or injure them for his own ends And indeed what should draw a self-denying man to sin were he but perfect in self-denial when the poise is taken off the wheels all stand still Self-denial doth frustrate Temptations and leave them little to work upon What should move a self-denying man to be Proud or covetous or injurious to others no man doth evil but it seemeth good and for some good that he imagineth it will do him And this seeming good is to carnal self And therefore a self-denying man hath taken off the byass of sin and turned out the deceiver and when Satan comes he hath little in him to make advantage of O how easily may you take sin out of the hands of the self-denying and make them cast it away with lamentation when other men will hold it as fast as their lives O try this speedy way of Mortification Would you but destroy this Original breeding sin you would destroy all All the sins of your lives are the fruits of your selfishness kill them at the heart and root if you would go the nearest way to work What abundance of sin doth self-denial kill at once Indeed it is the sum of mortification And therefore be sure that you deny your selves CHAP. LXV Contrary to the State of Holiness and Happiness 3. MOreover Selfishness is contrary to the State of Holiness and Happiness contrary to every grace and contrary to the life of Glory For it is the use of all grace to recover the soul from selfishness to God that God may be Loved and Self-love may be overcome that God may be trusted and pleased and his service may be our care and business when before our care was to Please our selves And the very felicity of the soul consisteth in a closing and communion with God The soul that will be happy must be conscious of self-insufficiency and must go out of it self and seek after life in God It must forsake it self and apply it self to him Men lose their labour till they deny themselves by going to a broken empty cistern and forsaking the fountain of living waters The nearer men are to God and the more fully they are conformed to him and close with him and know him and love him the happyer they are Glory it self is but the nearest and fullest intuition and fruition of God And he that hath most of him here in his soul and in the creatures providences and ordinances is the happiest man on Earth and likest to the glorified And there is no approach to God but by departing from carnal self I know self-seeking men do think of finding more peace and comfort in that way but they are alway deceived of their hopes It is self-denial that is the way to peace and comfort While we rest on our selves or are taken up with anxious caring for our selves we are but tost up and down as on a tempestuous sea and are seeking Rest but never find it but when we retire from our selves to God we are presently at the harbour and find that Peace which before we sought in vain I confess in the too-little experience that I have my self of the way of peace and quiet to the soul I must needs say there is none to this There is none but this Never can I step out but self meets with somewhat that is vexatious and displeasing to it This business goes cross
and that business is troublesome this person is troublesome and that person is abusive and injurious One is false and treacherous or slanderous and another is imprudent and weak and burdensome what between the baits of prosperity and the troubles of affliction the perverseness of adversaries and the weakness of friends and the changes that all States and persons are liable to the multitudes that would be pleased and the labour and the cost that it will stand us in to please them and the multitudes that will be displeased when we have done our best and the murmurings reproaches and false accusations that we shall be sure of from the displeased and which is worst of all the burdensome weaknesses and corruptions of our own souls and the sins of our lives and the daily vexation that our dark and shattered condition doth occasion to our selves I say between all these disquieting perplexities enough to rack and tear in pieces the heart of man I have no way but to shut up the eyes of sense and forget all self-interest and withdraw from the creature as if there were no self or creature for it in the world and to retire into God and satisfie my soul with his Goodness and All-sufficiency and faithfulness and immutability And in him is nothing to disquiet or discontent unless you will call his enmity to our own diseases and unhappiness a discontenting thing And this is not my own experience alone but all that know what Christian Peace and Comfort is do know that they lose it and are torn in pieces while they are caring and contriving for themselves and that Retiring into God and casting all their care on him and satisfying themselves with him alone though all the creatures should turn against them is the way to their content and quietness of mind The Example of David is exceeding observable 1 Sam. 30. 6. When besides the distressed estate that he was before in the City where he left his family and the families of his followers was taken and burnt down and their wives and children carried away all gone so that David and the people that were with him lift up their voice and wept untill they had no more power to weep and to make up his calamity the Souldiers that were with him talkt of stoning him because of the loss of their wives and children in this desolate condition saith the Text but David encouraged or comforted himself in the Lord his God And it is good for us sometime to have nothing in this world left us that will afford us comfort that we may be driven to God for it Till the house be as on fire over our heads and we are as it were fired out of every room of it we will hardly be gone and betake our selves to God our only Rest Try it Christians when you will and you shall find it true that selfish contents do but tice you to straggle away from your true comfort and when you have done all it is in returning unto God that you must find the comfort which you lost by seeking it abroad It is only in the God of Peace that your souls will find peace and therefore away from self and creatures and retire into God CHAP. LXVI Self-seeking is self-losing self-denying our safety 4. MOreover consider that self-seeking is self-destroying and self-denial is the only way to our safety We were well when we were in the hands of God and had no need to care for our selves But we were lost as soon as we left him and turned to our selves If God care for you infinite Wisdom cares for you whom no enemy is able to over-wit or circumvent who can foresee all your dangers and is acquainted with all the ways of your enemies and with all that is necessary to your preservation But if you be at your own care you are at the care of fools and short-witted people that are not acquainted with the depths of Satan the subtilties of men nor the way of your escape but may easily be over-reached to your undoing If you are in your own hands you are in the hands of bad men that though they have self-love yet are so blinded by impiety that they will live like self haters And this experience fully manifesteth in that all sinners are self-destroyers No enemy could do so much against us as the best of us doth against himself Did a man hate himself as bad as the Devil hateth him he could shew it by no worse a way than sin nor do himself a greater mischief than by neglecting God and the life to come and undoing his own soul as the ungodly do Should you sit down of purpose to study how to do all the hurt to your selves that you can and to play the part of your deadliest enemies I know not what you could do more than is ordinary with ungodly men to do except to go a little further in the same way Nothing but sin could alienate you from God or make you liable to his heavy wrath and this no man else could make you guilty of if you did not voluntarily choose to be evil If you could ask any man that is this day in Hell or that will ever be there what brought him thither and who it was long of that he came to such a miserable end he must needs tell you it was himself If you come to any in earthly misery and ask them who brought this upon them If they speak truly they must say it was themselves And this will be a great aggravation of their misery and the fewel that will feed the unquenchable fire to think that all this was their own doing and that they had not been deprived of the heavenly Glory but for their own refusal or neglect It will fill the soul with an everlasting indignation against it self to consider that it hath cast it self wilfully into such misery that when Satan could not and men could not and God would not if he had not done it himself he should be so witless and graceless as to be the chooser of sin the refuser of holiness and his own undoer So that the experience of all the world telleth you how unsafe man is in his own hands the experience of those in Hell may tell us whither it is that self would lead us if we follow its conduct Whither did self lead Adam when he hearkened to it but to sin and death what work hath it made over all the earth Do we not see a whole world of people not one excepted wounded and slain and brought into so low and sad a state and all this by themselves and yet shall we go on in selfishness still Of all the enemies you have in the world pray God to save you from your selves scape your selves and you scape all You will never miscarry by any other hands The Devil and wicked men will do their worst but without you they can do nothing Never will you come
you by God that you may be Accepted by him and offer your selves and all your labors purely to him and to his honour and his will God will take these for honourable services and you are as truly at his work even in your shops and fields as Princes are in Ruling or Pastors in teaching or guiding the flock you that are poor and cannot set so much time apart for reading and other holy duties as some other do see that you neglect no holy opportunity that you can take and then consider that if God set you to do him service even by washing dishes or sweeping channels or the meanest drudgery he will accept it and the more by how much the more humble submission and self-denial is found in it Take him as the only Lord and Master of your souls and lives and all that you have and when you are called to your daily labour look but to your hearts that God be your End and that you can truly say I do not this principally to provide for my self but as an obedient child in my Fathers service because he bids me do it and it is pleasing to him through Christ I do it not principally from self-love but from the Love of God that commandeth me my work and as a traveller that laboureth in his way for the love of his home so I am here at labour in this world in the place that God hath set me that I may in his appointed way attain the everlasting glory that he hath promised I say do but see to it that thus you dedicate your labours to God and you may take comfort in the daily labours of your lives even the meanest and most contemptible as well as Princes and Preachers may in their more honourable works Nay all your labours are honoured and sanctified by this For all is Holy that is heartily devoted to God upon his invitation And thus all things are pure to the pure For it is Gods interest in your work that is the holiness and excellency of them Were servants and labouring people more Holy and self-denying they might have more true comfort in their daily labour than the best of the unsanctified can have from their prayers or other worship of God Not that worship may be therefore neglected but that a Christian must do nothing at all but for God and then he may be sure of Gods Acceptance CHAP. LXX Deny Self or you will deny Christ 8. MOreover the selfish will never suffer as Christians but deny Christ in a day of trial when the self-denying will go through all and be saved Nothing doth so througly try whether self or God be best beloved as suffering for his cause In this it is that Christ useth to try mens self-denial and it is a principal use of persecution When you hear of coming before Rulers and Judges and being hated of all men for Christs name sake then self riseth up to plead for its interest and never maketh more ado than when it seeth the flames The flesh cannot Reason but it can strive against Reason and draw it to its side No Reason seemeth sufficient to it to perswade it to choose a suffering state If you perswade a Carnal man to let go his estate to be poor and despised in the world and to give up life it self if it be called for and all this for the hope of an invisible felicity you lose your labour till God set in and all such reasoning seems to him most unreasonable And what a dreadful case such souls are in my Text and many another passage in Scripture may convince you If you cannot drink of his cup and be baptized with his baptism you cannot be advanced with him to glory Through many tribulations we must enter into the Kingdom of God The pleasing of the flesh is the high way to misery by displeasing God and the voluntary submission to the suffering of the flesh for the cause of Christ is the high way to felicity 2 Tim. 2. 11 12. It is a faithful saying for if we be dead with him we shall also live with him if we suffer we shall also reign with him if we deny him he also will deny us Rom. 8. 17. Yea and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution 2 Tim. 3. 12. The day of trial is a kind of Judgement day to the selfish unsanctified man For it discovereth his hypocrisie and sheweth him to be but dross and separateth him from the suffering servants of Christ But self-denial maketh suffering light and will make you wish that you had any thing worth the resigning unto Christ and any thing by the denial whereof you might serve him For him you would suffer the loss of all things and account them dross and dung that you may win him Phil. 3. 8. He will count us worthy of the Kingdom for which we suffer 2 Thes 1. 5. As the Captain of our salvation was made perfect by suffering Heb. 2. 10. so also must his members by filling up the measure and being made partakers of his sufferings and knowing the fellowship of them 2 Cor. 1. 5 6 7. Phil. 3. 10. And the God of all grace who hath called us into his eternal glory by Christ Jesus after we have suffered a while will make us perfect stable strengthen and settle us 1 Pet. 5. 10. If therefore you would not prove Apostates and deny Christ in a day of trial and be denied by him before his Father aud the holy Angels see that you now learn this needful Lesson of self-denial CHAP. LXXI The selfish deal worse with God than with Satan 9. COnsider also that selfish Carnal men deal worse with God than they do with the Devil and sin it self God offereth them Christ and pardon and eternal life if they will but deny themselves in a thing of nought and they will not be ruled or perswaded by him The Devil offereth them but the delights of the flesh and the pleasures of sin for a season and they will deny ten thousand sold more for this They will deny God their Maker and Redeemer their Lord and Judge their Preserver and their hope though he have the only Title to them and their lives and souls be in his hand They will for the sake of a filthy lust or of a short and miserable life deny him that never did them wrong nay that hath always shewed them kindness even all the kindness that ever they received and that when they know that their everlasting state must stand or fall according to his judgement They will deny the Lord Jesus the Redeemer of their souls They will deny and resist the holy spirit of God They will deny his Laws his Gospel-promises and all his Mercies They will deny his Ministers and all their perswasions and daily labours They will deny their dearest Christian friends and deny their own Consciences and Convictions and deny themselves the Peace and Joy which they might
his soul And now Sirs I must let go this subject as to you that have heard it preacht for we must not be always on one thing but I am exceedingly afraid lest I have lost my labour with most of you and shall leave you as selfish as I found you because sad experience tells me that it is so natural and obstinate an enemy that I have discovered and that you have now to set your selves against I have done my work but self hath not done but is still at work in you I cannot now go home with every one of you but self will go home with you I cannot be at hand with every one of you when the next temptation comes but self will be at hand to draw you to entertain it When you are next tempted to error to pride to lust to contention with your brethren by words or real injuries what will you do then and how will you stand against this enemy If God be not your Interest and the dearest to your souls and you see not with his light and will not by his Will and self-denial be not become as it were your nature you will never stand after all this that I have said but self will be your undoing for ever If you have not somewhat within you as selfishness is within you to be always at hand as it is and ready and constant and powerful to overcome it it will be your ruine after all the warnings that have been given you And this preserving Principle must be the Spirit of God by causing you to Deny your selves Believe in Christ and Love God above all I say again that you may think on it and live upon it The sum of all your Religion or saving grace is in these three Faith Self-denial and the Love of God Departing from Carnal-self Returning home to God by Love and this by faith in the Redeemer is the true Christianity and the Life that leadeth to everlasting life FINIS A DIALOGUE OF Self-denial Flesh Spirit Flesh WHat become Nothing ne're perswade me to it God made me Something and I 'le not undo it Spirit Thy Something is not thine but his that gave it Resign it to him if thou mean to save it Flesh God gave me Life and shall I choose to die Before my time or pine in miserie Spirit God is thy Life If then thou fearest death Let him be all thy soul thy pulse and breath Flesh What! must I hate my self when as my brother Must love me d I may not hate another Spirit Loath what is loathsom Love God in the rest He truly love's himself that love 's God best Flesh Doth God our ease and pleasure to us grudge Or doth Religion make a man a drudge Spirit That is thy Poyson which thou callest Pleasure And that thy drudgery which thou count'st thy treasure lFesh Who can eudure to be thus mewed up And under Laws for every bit and cup Spirit Gods Cage is better than the Wilderness When Winter comes Liberty brings distress Flesh Pleasure 's mans Happiness The Will 's not free To choose our misery This cannot be Spirit God is mans End with him are highest joyes Sensual pleasures are but dreams and toyes Should sin seem sweet Is Satan turn'd thy friend Will not thy sweet prove bitter in the end Hast thou found sweeter pleasures than Gods Love Is a fools laughter like the joyes above Beauty surpasseth all deceitful paints What 's empty mirth to the delights of Saints God would not have thee have less joy but more And therefore shew's thee the eternal store Flesh Who can love baseness poverty and want And under pining sickness be content Spirit He that hath laid his treasure up above And plac'd his portion only in Gods love That waits for Glory when his life is done This man will be content with God alone Flesh What good will sorrow do us Is not mirth Fitter to warm a cold heart here on earth Troubles will come whether we will or no I 'le never banish pleasure and choose wo. Spirit Then choose not sin touch not forbidden things Taste not the sweet that endless sorrow brings If thou love pleasure take in God thy fill Look not for lasting joyes in doing ill Flesh Affliction 's bitter life will soon be done Pleasure shall be my part ere all be gone Spirit Prosperity is barren all men say The soyl is best where there 's the deepest way Life is for work and not to spend in play Now sow thy seed labour while it is day The Huntsman seeks his game in barren plains Dirty land answers best the Plowmans pains Passengers care not so the way be fair Husbandmen would have the best ground and air First think what 's safe and fruitful There 's no pleasure Like the beholding of thy chiefest treasure Flesh Nature made me a man and gave me sonse Changing of Nature is a vain pretense It taught me to love women honour ease And every thing that doth my senses please Spirit Nature hath made thee Rational and Reason Must rule the sense in ends degrees and season Reason's the Rider sense is but the Horse Which then is fittest to direct thy course Give up the reins and thou becom'st a beast Thy fall at death will sadly end thy feast Flesh Religion is a dull and heavy thing Whereas a merry cup will make me sing Love's entertainments warm both heart and brain And wind my fancy to the highest strain Spirit Cupid hath stuck a feather in thy cap And lull'd thee dead asleep on Venus's lap Thy brains are tipled with some wantons eyes Thy Reason is become Lust's sacrifice Playing a game at Folly thou hast lost Thy wit and soul and winnest to thy cost Thy soul now in a filthy channel lies While fancy seems to sore above the skies Beauty will soon be stinking loathsome earth Sickness and death mar all the wantons mirth It is not all the pleasure thou canst find Will contervail the sting that 's left behind Blind brutish souls that cannot love their God! And yet can dote on a defiled clod Flesh Why should I think of what will be to morrow An ounce of mirth is worth a pound of sorrow Spirit But where 's that mirth when sorrows overtake thee Will it then hold when life and God forsake thee Forgetting Death or Hell will not prevent it Now lose thy day thou 'lt then too late repent it Flesh Must I be pain'd and wronged and not feel As if my heart were made of flint or steel Spirit Dost thou delight to feel thy hurt and smart Would not an Antidote preserve thy heart Impatience is but Self-tormenting folly Patience is cordial easie sweet and holy Is not that better which turns grief to peace Than that which doth thy misery encrease Flesh When sport and wine and beauty do invite Who is it whom such baits will not incite Spirit He that perceives the look and sees the end Whither it is that
fleshly Pleasures tend He that by faith hath seen both Heav'n and Hell And what sin costeth at the last can tell He that hath try'd and tasted Better things And felt that love from which all pleasure springs They that still watch and for Christs coming wait Can turn away from or despise the bait Flesh Must I be made the foot-ball of disdain And call'd a precise fool or Puritane Spirit Remember him that did despise the shame And for thy sake bore undeserved blame Thy journey 's of small moment if thou stay Because dogs bark or stones lie in the way If life lay on it wouldst thou turn again For the winds blowing or a little rain Is this thy greatest love to thy dear Lord That canst not for his sake bear a foul word Wilt thou not bear for him a scorners breath That underwent for thee a cursed death Is not Heav'n worth the bearing of a flout Then blame not Justice when it shuts thee out Will these deriders stand to what they say And own their words at the great dreadful day Then they 'd be glad when wrath shall overtake them To eat their wrrds and say they never spake them Flesh How Forsake all Ne're mention it more to me I 'le be of no Religion to undo me Spirit Is it not thine more in thy Fathers hand Than when it is laid out at sins command And is that sav'd that 's spent upon thy lust Or which must be a prey to thieves or rust And wouldst thou have thy riches in thy way Where thou art passing on and canst not stay And is that lost that 's sent to Heav'n before Hadst thou not rather have thy friends and store Where thou may dwell for ever in the light Of that long glorious day that fears no night Flesh But who can willingly submit to Death Which will bereave us of our life and breath That laies our flesh to rot in loathsome graves Where brains and eyes were leaves but ugly caves Spirit So nature breaks and casts away the shell Where the now beauteous singing bird did dwell The secundine that once the infant cloath'd After the birth is cast away and loath'd Thus Roses drop their sweet leaves under-foot But the Spring shews that life was in the root Souls are the Roots of Bodies Christ the Head Is Root of both and will revive the dead Our Sun still shineth when with us it's night When he returns we shall shine in his light Souls that behold and praise God with the Just Mourn not because their bodies are but dust Graves are but beds where flesh till morning sleep's Or Chests where God a while our garments keep 's Our folly thinks he spoils them in the keeping Which causeth our excessive fears and Weeping But God that doth our rising day foresee Pittie 's not rotting flesh so much as we The birth of Nature was deform'd by sin The birth of Grace did our repair begin The birth of Glory at the Resurrection Finisheth all and brings both to persection Why should not fruit when it is mellow fall Why would we linger here when God doth call Flesh The things and persons in this world I see But after death I know not what will be Spirit Know'st thou not that which God himself hath spoken Thou hast his promise which was never broken Reason proclaims that noble heav'n-born souls Are made for higher things than worms and moles God hath not made such faculties in vain Nor made his service a deluding pain But faith resolves all doubts and hears the Lord Telling us plainly by his Holy Word That uncloath'd souls shall with their Saviour dwell Triumphing over sin and death and hell And by the power of Almighty Love Stars shall arise from graves to shine above There we shall see the Glorious face of God His blessed presence shall be our abode The face that banisheth all doubts and fears Shuts out all sins and dryeth up all tears That face which darkeneth the Suns bright rayes Shall shine us into everlasting joyes Where Saints and Angels shall make up one Chore To praise the Great Jehovah evermore Flesh Reason not with me against sight and sense I doubt all this is but a vain pretence Words against nature are not worth a rush One bird in hand is worth two in the bush If God will give me Heav'n at last I 'le take it But for my Pleasure here I 'le not forsake it Spirit And wilt thou keep it bruitsh flesh how long Wilt thou not shortly sing another song When Conscience is awakened keep thy mirth When Sickness and Death comes hold fast this earth Live if thou canst when God saith come away Try whether all thy friends can cause thy stay Wilt thou tell death and God thou wilt not die And wilt thou the consuming fire defie Art thou not sure to let go what thou hast And doth not Reason bid thee then forecast And value the least hope of endless joyes Before known vanities and dying toyes And can the Lord that is most just and wise Found all mans duty in deceit and lies GET thee behind me Satan thou dost savour The things of flesh and not his dearest favour Who is my Life and Light and Love and All And so shall be whatever shall befall It is not thou but I that must discern And must Resolve It 's I that hold the stern Be silent Flesh speak not against my God Or else hee 'l teach thee better by the rod. I am resolved thou shalt live and die A servant or a conquered enemy LOrd charge not on me what this rebel sayes That alwaies was against me and thy wayes Now stop its mouth by Grace that shortly must Through just but gainful death be stopt with dust The thoughts and words of Flesh are none of mine Let Flesh say what it will I will be thine Whatever this rebellious Flesh shall prate Let me but serve the Lord at any rate Use me on earth as seemeth good to thee So I in Heav'n thy Glorious face may see Take down my Pride let me dwell at thy feet The humble are for earth and heav'n most meet Renouncing Flesh I Vow my self to thee With all the Talents thou hast lent to me Let me not stick at honour wealth or blood Let all my dayes be spent in doing good Let me not trifle out more precious hours But serve thee now with all my strength and powers If Flesh would tempt me to deny my hand Lord these are the Resolves to which I stand Richard Baxter October 29. 1659. The laâ—e Lord Chief Justice Oliver St. John See my Reasons of the Christ â—â—â—g since written I may with Tertullian call all our enemies to search their Court Records and â—ce how many of us have been cast out or silenced for any immorality but for obeying Conscience against the interest or wills of some who think that Conscience should give place to their Commands Read the two or three last Chapters in Dr. Holden's Analâ—fidei Read Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Rogers books against me and the souldiers openly thâ—â— calumaiâ—â—ed me and thâ—e in eâ— my death as the said Authors â—eâ—red them to call me to a trâ—al even for speaking and writing against their casting dow the Government of the Land â—â—ing 〈◊〉 themselves and aâ—â—â—pting at once to Vo e out all the â—arâ—â—h 〈◊〉 I know that it hardneâ—h thousands in impenitency to say that Others have done worse and Is the matter mended with you And will it also eâ—se men in heâ—l to think that some others suffer more The Quuakers and other Self-esteemers are reverthemore reconcil'd to us now we have been eleven years turned out of all So common it is for selfish meâ— to make their gain sayers as odious as they can devise that I conâ—eâ—s I wondred that I me with no more of this dealing my self from Papists Anabaptists or any that have turned their stiâ—e against me And at last Mr. Pierce hath answered my expectation and from my own confession not knowing me himself hath drawn my picture that I am Proâ—â—i Lazie False an Hypocrite uâ—just a Reader c. And from this Bolsecks credit I make no doubt but the Papists will think they may warrantably descrâ—bâ— me if I be thought worthy their reâ—embrance in all following Ageâ— though now I have nothing from them but good wordâ— But it is a small thing to be judged by man especially when our â—â—uâ—â— enjoy the Lord. They way-laid the Messengers that I sent Letters by to friends took them from the â— by force seâ—â— them to 〈…〉 to the Council of State to the trouble of those I wrote to though nothing was found but â—â—noâ—ency And this was by my old 〈…〉 who differed from â—â—â— in nothing but â—â—tant 〈…〉 Changes of our Government and yet 〈…〉
it is the best and wiâ—est course and approve of it in others and wish they might but dye in such mens case And yet they will not themselves be brought to practise it They will commend Peter and Paul and the Fathers and the Martyrs for a holy life and as I said keep holy-daâ—es for them and yet they will not be perswaded to imitate them And why so why it costs them nothing to commend Holiness in others but to practise it themselves must cost them self-denyal 6. If another man be so ingenuous as to forsake an old self-espoused opinion which their reputation seems to lye upon and this upon their arguing or in conformity to their minds they will commend his great self-denyal and sincerity But yet they will not do so themselves where the case is perhaps more clear and necessary 7. Take a man that is never so worldly and unmerciful that gives not to the poor any considerable part of his estate nor doth nothing worth the mentioning for the Church and yet this man will consent that another shall be as bountiful and charitable as he will when you can hardly scrue a groat out of his purse he will be content if another will give an hundred And he will commend the liberal and speak well of them when he will not imitate them And why is this why it costeth him nothing for another to be liberal and therefore he can advise it or consent to it without self-denyal but self is against it when he should do it himself 8. Take the most selfish unsanctified man that cannot love an enemy nor forgive a debt or a wrong and he will yet commend it in another and advise them to it and speak well of those that will do so by him And why is this why it costeth him nothing to have another man love an enemy or forgive a debt or wrong but he cannot himself do it without self-denyal 9. Those men that love not to be toucht themselves by the Ministers application can yet endure well enough that others be dealt as sharply with as may be And they are glad to hear any sharply reproved whose sins they do dislike The Covetous man loves to hear us reprove the drunkard and the drunkard is content to have the Covetous reprehended Erroneous professors dividers and hypocrites do hate the Minister that reprehendeth their own sin and can scarce endure to hear him but say he is bitter or a presecutor or raileth at the godly alas that wickedness should have so impudent a plea But they can freely give us leave to deal as plainly as we will with the openly prophane scarce any sect can endure you to speak against their own mistakes but you may speak as freely against the contrary minded as you please How easily can Papists endure one to speak against Protestants or Anabaptists endure one to speak against Infant-baptism And the openly prophane can well enough endure to have Sects and Schismaticks and Hereticks reproved And why is all this but from the Dominion of self and the scarcity of self-denyal in the world To have another rebuked toucheth not Self and therefore may be born The poor man loves to hear us preach against the Vices of the rich and to reprehend the luxury of Gentlemen and the cruelty of oppressors The subject too often loves to hear the Rulers faults laid open The Countryman loves to hear the Courtiers the Ministers but specially the Lawyers faults laid open Here you may speak freely but Self must be let alone upon pain of their displeasure and many a reproach 10. So also in case of personal close reproof those that cannot endure it themselves do think it the duty of others to endure it and expect that others should submit to them and if any will say Neighbour I thank you for your plain and friendly dealing and having so much compassion on my soul as to help to save me from my sins I confess I am a vile unworthy sinner but by the grace of God I will do so no more or if I be any more overtaken I pray you tell me of it and let me not alone in it I say if another should answer them thus and thank them for their reproof they would think the better of him and take it well But yet they will not do so themselves for it costeth Self nothing to have another submit and humble himself So those that are most backward to the admonishing of others lest they lose their love can like to have a a Minister or another do it For that doth not put them to deny themselves 12. Nay take a scandalous professor that is drawn to publick Confession as a Bear to the Stake and if it were another mans case he would think it but reasonable and meet and would perswade him to it If another had committed the same sin against God as he hath done or had slandered or wronged him and would freely without urging confess in the Congregation with tears in his eyes that he hath sinfully provoked God and offended the Church and wronged his Brother and laid a stumbling block in the way of the ungodly and the weak and dishonoured his holy profession and is never able to make satisfaction for such heinous sins and is unworthy any more to be a member of the Church and to have any communion with Christ or them and should earnestly intreat them to pardon him and pray for him and retain him in their Communion and intreat God to pardon him Would not the stander by think this were well done and a better way to his recovery than to refuse it And all is because that self is not touched in another mans case unless he apprehend it like to become his own and then he may be against it and scorn at this as too precise a Course 13. Take also the extortioner or any man that hath defrauded or injured another and that will not be perswaded to make Restitution of all that he hath got amiss and let this man hear of the case of Zacheus and he will say It was well done Or let anothers case be propounded to him and he can tell them that Restitution is the safest way whatever it cost you its fit that every man should have his own Self will give him free leave to consent to another mans Restititution but not to his own 14. Moreover Suppose that persecution were afoot and a man must either knowingly sin against God or lose his Estate and part with all that he hath in the world and burn at a Stake for the cause of Christ The selfish unsanctified person will not be perswaded that this is his duty or at least he will not be perswaded to submit to it He cannot suffer nor burn He will trust God with his soul rather than men with his body as such speak that despise God and reject him and prefer the world before him and call this trusting him But if this were
another mans case they could tell him that its better displease men than God and that its better venture a short life than an endless life and that it is little profit to win all the world and lose his own soul and that it is the wisest way to make sure work for eternity and not to venture on endless misery And they could consent that another should rather suffer than sin Why else do they commend the Martyrs for it And what is the reason of this strange partiality Why Self is the great Ruler and God hath but the name Self is partial in their own cause but not in another mans and therefore they can consent to his suffering without self-denial And hence comes the difference 15. Moreover when Offenders murmur at their punishment ask but the standers by and they are of another mind When the Ale-seller thinks he is wronged if he be put down ask but the poor women whose Husbands use to be drunk there and whose children lack meat and drink and clothes because the Alehouse devours that which should buy them and they will be quite of another judgment and think you love not God nor the Country if you will not suppress them 16. Also when you hear men extenuating their sin and excusing it put but the case as another mans and let them not understand that it is their own and you shall hear another judgment So Nathan came about David and put but a far lower case as anothers about the robbing a poor man of his only Sheep and he could presently say and swear As the Lord liveth the man that hath done this thing shall surely die because he had no pity and his anger was greatly kindled against the man 2 Sam. 12. 5 6. But why was he not as angry with himself for a greater sin O self had got the better in that grievous fall till grace broke his heart by true repentance So when Judah heard of Thamars fornication he commandeth Bring her out that she may be burnt Gen. 38. 24. But when he understood that it was by himself the case was altered 17. Let a man that his provoked by injuries and ill words have as bad by himself done or spoken against another and he can make but a small matter of them or think they should be easily put up or pardoned when yet the same words spoken against him do seem intolerable 18. Let a man speak with others in poverty sickness or any affliction and what good counsel can he give him to submit to God and take all patiently But let the suffering be his own and he cannot take the counsel that he gives 19. Nay more men are not only partial for themselves but for any that are neer themselves or that self is related to Let another mans Son or Servant do evil and you can be content that he be rebuked or corrected But if it be a Son or Kinsman or Servant of your Own the case is altered it s then a wrong to punish him because of his relation to you Let a Stranger do amiss and you can give way to Justice But if the Drunkard or Ale-seller or Swearer be your friend then he must be born with and forgiven and the justice must be intreated for him Let a scandalous or insufficient Minister or Schoolmaster be offered to any place If he be a Stranger you can be content that he be rejected but if he be a Kinsman or Child or Friend of yours what an alteration doth this make in the case then he must be born with or tried and you hope he will mend and his faults are made the least of his virtues more than indeed they are Nay any man that doth but love your selves and honour you and think highly of you shall have a favourabler construction for all his words and actions and intentions than one that you imagine is against you or hath low thoughts of you or is against your interest or your opinion Sirs I have run into abundance of instances but not a quarter so many as might be given and all is to meet with the turnings and windings of this Serpent self and to let you see if light it self can make you see against the blinding power of self how rare self-denial is in the the world and what a large Dominion self obtaineth I would here have added some more Discoveries as 6. From the excessive care and cost and labour that almost all the world is at for self and the little they are at for God or the good of others 7. The large proportion that is expended on self in comparison of God and others 8. The Zeal of men to vindicate self but the little Zeal for God or others 9. The rigorous Laws that are made in the cause of self Thieves and Traitors must die and the remissness of Law-givers in the cause of God Blasphemy Malignity and Impiety is not so roughly handled 10. The firmness of men to carnal self and their great mutability and unfaithfulness to God But I had rather omit somewhat than to be too tedious and therefore I go no further in these Discoveries save only to add a few of those Aggravations that shew you the extent of selfs Dominion as you have seen the sad discoveries of the reality of it CHAP. IX The great Power and prevalency of selfishness discovered ANd that you may see what cause we have for our Lamentation Consider the greatness of selfish Tyranny in these Particulars 1. Consider what a Power it is that self beareth down in the world The Commands of the God of heaven are overcome by it The promises of eternal life are trod under foot by it The threatnings of endless torments are nothing to it It casts by Heaven it ventures upon Hell It tramples upon the precious blood of Christ It will not hear the voice of wisdom it self Nor the voice of goodness and mercy it self It refuseth him that speaks from heaven Love it self is not lovely where self is Judge It quencheth all the motions of the Spirit it despiseth Ministers It turneth mercies into wantonness and sin Like Sampson it breaks all bonds that are laid on it and till it be weakned it self there is no holding no ruling no saving the soul that 's ruled by it 2. Consider also the exceeding Number of its Subjects Truly if there were no other proof that the sanctified and the saved are very few this one is so full and sad a proof that it tempteth me sometime to think them much fewer than willingly I would do Alas how few self-denying persons do you meet with in the world yea in the Church yea among the stricter Professors Look over all the world and see how few you can find at work for any one but for carnal self If you observe the Courts and see whose work is done most there and look into the Armies of the world and see who it is that ruleth there if you look