temptations or to lusts and desires of evil This Point summed up 63â— CHAP. V. Of two other causes of groundless Scruple to good Souls The Contents A second cause of scruple is their uâ—affectedness or distraction sometimes in their prayers Of the necessity of fixedness and fervency in Devotion when we can and of Gods readiness to dispense with them when we cannot enjoy them Attention disturbed often whether we will or no. A particular cause of it in fervent prayers Fervency and affection not depending so much upon the command of our wills as upon the temper of our Bodies Fervency is unconstant in them whose temper is fit for it God measures us not by the fixedness of our thoughts or the warmth of our tempers but by the choice of our wills and the obedience of our lives Other qualifications in prayer are sufficient to have our prayers heard when these are wanting Yea those Vertues which make our prayers acceptable are more eminently shown in our Obedience so that it would bring down to us the blessings of prayer should it prove in those respects defective A third cause of scruple is the danger of idle or impertinent words mentioned Mat. 12.36 The scruples upon this represented The practical errour of a morose behaviour incurred upon it This discountenanced by the light of Nature and by Christianity The benefits and place of serious Discourse Pleasurable conversation a great Field of Vertue The idle words Mat. 12 not every vain and useless but false slanderous and reproachful words this proved from the place 664 CHAP. VI. Of the sin against the Holy Ghost which is a fourth cause of scruple The Contents Some good mens fear upon this account What is meant in Scripture by the Holy Ghost Holy Ghost or Spirit is taken for the gifts or effects of it whether they be first ordinary either in our minds or understandings or in our wills and tempers or secondly extraordinary and miraculous Extraordinary gifts of all sorts proceed from one and the same Spirit or Holy Ghost upon which account any of them indifferently are sometimes called Spirit sometimes Holy Ghost Holy Ghost and Spirit are frequently distinguished and then by Holy Ghost is meant extraordinary gifts respecting the understanding by Spirit extraordinary gifts respecting the executive powers The summ of the explication of this Holy Ghost What sin against it is unpardonable To sin against the Holy Ghost is to dishonour him This is done in every act of sin but these are not unpardonable What the unpardonable sin is Of sin against the ordinary endowments of the Holy Ghost whether of mind or will the several degrees in this all of them are pardonable Of sin against the Spirit Blaspheming of this comes very near it and was the sin of the Pharisees Mat. 12 but it was pardonable Of sinning against the Holy Ghost The Holy Ghost the last means of reducing men to believe the Gospel that Covenant of Repentance The sin against it is unpardonable because such Sinners are irreclamable All dishonour of this is not unpardonable for Simon Magus dishonoured it in actions who was yet capable of pardon but only a blaspheming of it in words No man is guilty of it whilst he continues Christian. 681 CHAP. VII The Conclusion The Contents Some other causless scruples The Point of growth in Grace more largely stated A summary repetition of this whole Discourse They may dye with courage whose Conscience doth not accuse them This accusation must not be for idle words distractions in Prayer c. but for a wilful transgression of some Law of Pieey Sobriety c. above mentioned It must further be particular and express not general and roving If an honest mans heart condemn him not for some such unrepented sins God never will 700 THE INTRODUCTION ROM viij 1 There is no Condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit The Contents Religious men inquisitive after their future State Three Articles of Christian belief cause such inquisitiveness The Articles of Eternal Life and the Resurrection make men desire satisfaction The Article of the last Judgment encourages the search and points out a way towards it A proposal of the present design and the matters treated of in the ensuing Discourse AMong all those things which employ the minds of Religious and Considerate men there is none that is so much a matter of their thoughtful care and solicitous enquiries as their Eternal happiness or Misery in the next World For in Christs Religion there are three great Articles which being believed and seriously considered by a nature restlessly desirous of its own happiness and such ours is must needs render it very inquisitive after some security of its future good estate and they are these The Immortality of the Soul the Resurrection of the Body and the great Day of Doom or last Judgment Whosoever is firmly perswaded of these three as every man is or at least pretends to be who professes himself a Christian he assuredly believes that when this Life is over both his Body and Soul shall live again and be endlessly Delighted or Tormented Comforted or Distressed in the next world according as their condition is when they leave this For by the Doctrine of Eternal Life he is assured that his Soul shall live and be adjudged to an Eternal bliss or misery By the Article of the Resurrection he is perswaded that his Body with all its powers shall spring out of the dust and be again enlivened with its ancient Soul to be a sharer of its state and joyntly to undergo an endless train of most exquisite woes or pleasures And since it is the very frame and fundamental principle of our Natures studiously to pursue Pleasure and to fly as fast from Pain to seek good and to avoid evil These states of future Happiness and Misery are such as no man who sees and believes them can possibly be unaffected with or unconcern'd in But whosoever in his own thoughts views and beholds them must needs find all his faculties awake and through an innate care and natural instinct solicitously inquisitive after that lot which shall fall to their own share Now if this endless happiness and misery both of Soul and Body in the next world were only casual and contingent the gift of blind chance or partial and arbitrary favour then would the belief of it perplex us indeed with fears and misgiving thoughts but never encourage us on to any exact care or diligent enquiry It would be in vain for us to seek what we could never find and downright folly to endeavour after satisfaction and certainty in things which are utterly casual and Arbitrary For what comes by chance is neither foreseen by us nor subject to us And what is given arbitrarily without all rule or reason is as fickle and unconstant as Arbitrary will it self is It cannot be prevented by any endeavours because it doth not
tenderness of love and kindness which should result from the intimate nearness of their relation is estrangedness and as proceeding higher to ill-will and expressions of an imbittered mind as it causes for the present wrangling and debate it is strife or contention and as festring into an habitual displeasure and lasting regret it is hatred or enmity and as breaking out in a proclamation of each others weaknesses evil speaking or publishing each others infirmities 3. As doing no good to each other themselves so seeking none from God which is not praying for each other 4. An avoidance of each others Bed and being false to the Marriage Covenant about it which is adultery But if this unfaithfulness really be not but through the suspicious temper of one side is only groundlesly presumed it is jealousie 2. Such as are peculiar and concern one particularly towards the other either 1. The Husband towards the Wife and here the effects of hatred will be 1. A neglecting to use his power for her benefit through an insensibleness of her wants and regardlesness of what hardships she struggles with either as to necessaries or conveniencies which is not providing for her or not maintaining her or as to injuries and affronts which is not protecting her 2. Vsing all his authority over her by a harsh and magisterial peremptoriness of Command which is imperiousness or by an unyielding inflexibleness of will and pleasure which is uncompliance uncondescension 2. The Wife towards the Husband where it will produce a light and low opinion of him which is dishonour which being joined with a contemptuous and fearless behaviour towards him is irreverence And this will effect 1. A backwardness and utter averseness to do unbidden what will delight and please him which is non-observance or what is commanded by him which is disobedience 2. A refusal or open reluctance in undergoing that restraint which he imposes which is casting off his yoke or unsubjection So that in this relation of Husband and Wife the effects of hatred or Laws forbidding are to both Parties the Law against unconcernedness in each others condition against not bearing each others infirmities against provoking one another against estrangedness against strife and contention against hatred and enmity against publishing each others infirmities against not praying for each other against adultery against jealousie To the Husband towards the Wife the Law against not maintaining her against not protecting her against imperiousness against uncompliance or uncondescension To the Wife towards her Husband the Law against dishonour against irreverence against unobservance against disobedience against casting off his yoke or unsubjection 2. The second domestick relation is that of Parents and Children and in this the effects of Love and particulars of Duty are either 1. On the Parents side towards their Children as are 1. From the extraordinary nearness that their Children have to them being parts even of their own Bodies that most heightened tenderness and kindness which because it is found in all Animals in nature towards their own Offspring is called natural affection 2. From their Childrens helplesness and wants their care over them Which is taken up 1. With respect to this world and that in behalf 1. Of their Bodies by providing for them all due necessaries and conveniencies both whilst they are under them and against the time that they go out from them which is provision maintenance 2. Of their whole persons both Body and Soul by training them up in the best ways they can whereby to render them profitable in their station and useful Members of Society which is good and honest education In the management whereof the using of their power over them not in a rigorous and austere but a tender obliging way is loving Government 2. With respect to the next world and that is by causing them to be duely instructed in Religion and stamped with vertuous impressions which S t Paul calls bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord Ephes. 6.4 And for those things which they cannot procure for them by themselves begging of them from Gods bounty by prayer for them 2. On the Childrens side towards their Parents where besides the Duty of natural affection common to them with the Parents Love effects 1. An opinion of their preheminence and authority over them which is honour and this when it is joined with an awful regard to them and a fear of offending them is reverence 2. Whilst they are under them a ready chearfulness in performing all that they command which is obedience and in bearing and undergoing all that they impose which is submission or subjection 3. When either they are under them or gone from them a readiness upon occasion to requite all their care and kindness in supporting and relieving them which the Apostle calls requiting their Parents 1 Tim. 5.4 4. And in such things wherewith they cannot supply them of themselves entreating God on their behalf which is praying for them So that the effects of Love and instances of Duty in this relation are from the Parents towards their Children the Law of natural affection of maintenance and provision of honest education of loving Government of bringing them up in the institution and fear of God of prayer for them from the Children towards their Parents the Law of honour of reverence of obedience of subjection of requiting upon occasion their care and kindness of prayer for them And opposite to these effects of Love which are so many commanded Duties the effects of hatred in this relation which are so many particular forbidden sins are these that follow 1. In Parents towards their Children it will produce a coldness of heart and unconcernedness for them which is being void of natural affection Which will effect 1. As to their care for them a neglecting to provide for their present maintenance or future support which is condemned by S t Paul under the name of not providing for those of our own house 1 Tim 5.8 2. As to their Government and Conduct of them an untoward exercise and employment of it where there is no just need or a neglect of it where there is For it will produce 1. As to things that are good and necessary for the Children an utter carelesness of them when the Parents neglect to teach and inure them to such things as may render them dutiful to God and useful in Society and contrariwise accustome and bring them up in idleness vanity or wickedness which is irreligious or evil education 2. As to things that are unnecessary and indifferent a great strictness and severity whether it be in commanding or imposing things without reason necessity or convenience or convenient things with imperious harshness or unreasonable rigour only out of wantonness of authority and plenitude of power which instead of exciting them to a cheerful obedience is apt to move in them an irksome regret which is provoking them to anger 3. And instead of praying for
which are delivered in that Chapter are required as part of our walking as Children of the light and proving what is acceptable unto the Lord ver 8 10. Marriage is honourable and the Bed undefiled but Whoremongers and Adulterers God will judge Heb. 13.4 Wives are to be taught to be obedient to their own Husbands that the Word of God or Doctrine of the Gospel be not blasphemed Tit. 2.5 Let Wives be in subjection to their own Husbands For with this in old time the holy women adorned themselves even as Sarah obeyed Abraham calling and observing him as her Lord whose Daughters ye are as long as you do well and imitate her but no longer 1 Pet. 3.5 6. So that all the Laws in this relation are enjoined under the same necessity and confirmed with the same sanction as the former And as for the Particulars of the next relation they are imposed with the same strictness For natural affection the want of it S t Paul affirms plainly makes men worthy of death Rom. 1.31 The Children ought not to lay up Treasure or provide for the Parents but the Parents for the Children 2 Cor. 12.14 And if any man provide not for his own house he hath denied the Faith of Christ which indispensably enjoins it nay despising such a notorious and necessary Precept of mere Nature he is worse than any honest Infidel 1 Tim. 5.8 Fathers provoke not your Children to wrath against you by a harsh and austere Government of them but rule them in kindness and love and bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And ye Children on the other side obey your Parents in the Lord for this is right Honour your Father and Mother that it may be well with you Ephes. 6.1 2 3 4. Which Precepts are of the number of those which he imposes on them as parts of their walking as Children of the light and proving what is acceptable unto the Lord Chap. 5.8 10. If any man have Children or Nephews let them first learn to shew piety at home and requite their Parents for this is good and acceptable to God But if any man provide not for his own especially those of his own house or Family as Parents are in the first place he hath denied the Faith and in his unnatural actions is worse than an honest Infidel 1 Tim. 5.4 8. And thus are all the Laws of this relation likewise established in the greatest strictness and our obedience to them made plainly necessary to our bliss and happiness And as for the particular Laws of natural affection and communicating upon occasion to each other of their Substance in the relation of Brethren and Sisters they are proved to be necessary in the proof of the former For the same places which require them in that relation require them in this also And then as for the Particulars of the last relation viz. that of Masters and Servants they are of equal necessity with all the foregoing If any man provide not for his own house whereof Servants are one part he hath denied the Faith and is worse than an Infidel 1 Tim. 5.8 Masters give unto your Servants that which is just and equal knowing that ye also have a Master in Heaven who will punish your unequal dealing towards them Col. 4.1 If I despise the cause of my man-servant or of my maid-servant when they argue in their own defence and contend with me what then shall I do when God rises up and when he visiteth what shall I answer him Job 31.13 14. Thou shalt not oppress an hired Servant that is poor and needy whether he be of thy Brethren a Jew or a Stranger of the Gentiles At his Day thou shalt give him his hire neither shall the Sun go down upon it for he is poor and setteth his heart upon it Deut. 24.14 15. Weep and howl O ye rich men says S t James for the miseries that shall come upon you for behold the hire of the Labourers who have reaped down your Fields and which is of you keept back by fraud crieth against you and the Cries are entred into the ears of the Lord who hearkens to them and in great Justice will one Day avenge them James 5.1 4. Ye Masters do the same things viz. good whether as to their Bodies in providing for them or to their Souls in religious instruction with a good will in expectation of a reward from the Lord to your Servants forbearing threatning knowing that your Master also is in Heaven who has threatned you if ye neglect this necessary Duty neither is there any respect of persons with him Ephes 6.8 9. Let as many Servants as are under the Yoke count their own Masters worthy of all honour that the name of God be not blasphemed as certainly it would upon their contrary practice And if any man teach otherwise he is proud knowing nothing 1 Tim. 6.1 3 4. Servants obey in all things your Masters according to the Flesh not with eye-service but in singleness or sincerity of heart without fraud or double dealing as persons fearing God And whatsoever you do do it heartily as to the Lord not to men knowing that of the Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance for such your obedient practice for in thus serving them you serve the Lord Christ Col. 3.22 23 24. Servants obey your Masters with fear and trembling not with eye-service as Men-pleasers but from the heart with good-will doing service as to the Lord who commands this of you and not only to men knowing that whatsoever good or ill in this particular any man doth the same shall he receive of the Lord Ephes 6.5 6 7 8. Exhort Servants to be obedient to their own Mâ—sters and to please them well by all manner of observance in all things either as to their reputation in vindicating it when 't is injured or concealing such defects as would stain and fully it or their other interests showing all good fidelity For the Grace of God which brings salvation hath appeared to all men teaching them as ever they hope to be saved by it That denying all ungodliness and worldly lusts whereof the contrary practices to these are the effect and offspring they should live soberly c. Tit. 2.9 10 11 12 13. And moreover these Precepts are part of that sound Doctrine which Titus is required to speak ver 1. in opposition to their Doctrine who in the Verse before are said to be abominable disobedient and to every good work reprobate Servants be subject to your own Masters with all fear or reverence not only to the good and gentle but also to the hard or hasty and froward For this is thank-worthy if for Conscience towards God you patiently endure grief suffering wrongfully This is acceptable to God and likewise
regard them Neither can it be collected beforehand from any fixt rule or reason seeing it observes none And what neither our greatest wisdom can foretel nor our exactest care prevent it is wholly to no purpose to make a matter of our study and enquiry But as for the Everlasting happiness or misery of our Souls and Bodies in the other Life and at the Resurrection they are not left at random nor fall out by accident but are dispensed by a wise hand and according to a fixt and established rule For it is God who distributes them and this distribution is in Judgment and the procedure in that is by Laws and those laws are unalterably fixt for us and most plainly declared and published to us in the Gospel So that now it is no impossible no nor extream difficult thing for us to understand which shall be our own state in the next world For the laws are well known proclaimed daily to every ear by a whole order of men set apart for that purpose their sence and meaning is obvious to any common understanding and the Judgment according to them at that day will be true and faithful God will Absolve all those whom his Gospel acquits but Condemn every man whom it accuses There will be no perverting of Justice through fear or favour no Sentence passed through partiality or ill will but a Tryal every way unbyassed and uncorrupt where Every one shall receive according to the things done in the body 2 Cor. 5.10 And Judgment shall pass upon all men according to their works Rom. 2.6 And thus as the belief of the two former Articles the immortal state either of Bliss or Misery for our Souls and the Resurrection of our Bodies will inflame us with restless desires so if we seriously believe it will this third Article of the great and general Judgment possess us with sure hopes of being satisfyed in this great enquiry which of the two States will fall to our own share And as this belief of the last Judgment will be the most effectual means to encourage so will it be withal the surest to guide our Enquiries after it It chalks us out a method for our search and directs us to the readiest course for satisfaction For if the happiness and misery of the next world is to be dispensed to every man for a reward or punishment according to the direction of those Laws which promise or threaten them then have we nothing more to do in this enquiry but to examine well what those laws are what obedience they require what allowances and mitigations they will bear and what lot and condition they assign us For in that day we shall be look'd upon to be what they declare us and be doom'd to that state which they pronounce for us What they speak to us all now that the Judge of all the world will pronounce upon us all then their sentence shall be his and what they denounce he will execute He will judge us by no other measure but his own Laws those very Laws which he has taken so much care to proclaim to us and continually to press upon us which he has put into every one of our hands and made to be sounding daily in our ears the laws and sanctions of the Gospel Our blessed Saviour Christ the Judge himself has told us this long ago The word that I have spoken the same shall judge men at the last day Joh. 12.48 And his great Apostle Paul has again confirmed it Rom. 2. God shall judge the world at that day according to my Gospel vers 16. If we perform what those Laws peremptorily require they now already declare us blessed and such at the last day will Christ pronounce us But if by sinning against them we fall short of it they denounce nothing but everlasting woes and miseries and those he will execute For he tells us plainly that when he shall come to judgment in the Glory of his Father with his holy Angels he will reward every man according to his works Mat. 16.27 To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and immortality he will give eternal life Rom. 2.7 But to them who obey not the Truth but obey unrighteousness indignation and wrath tribulation and anguish and that upon every man whether he be Jew or Gentile vers 8 9. For all this shall be acted in the greatest integrity without preferring one before an other It is only the difference in mens works which shall difference their conditions but they who have been equal in their sins shall be equal also in their sufferings For at the appearance of Jesus Christ God as S t Peter tells us without any respect of persons judges according to every mans work 1 Pet. 1.7.17 The way then whereby to satisfie our selves in this great matter is this To look well into the Gospel there to learn what we should be and into our own hearts and lives there to see what indeed we are and thence to conclude what in the next world whether in a state of Life or Death we shall be And to shew this to every man and to let him see now beforehand how he stands prepared for the next world and whether if he should be called away presently to the Bar of that Judgment he would be everlastingly acquitted or condemned in it is my present business and design It is to let us see our Eternal Condition before we enter on it and to make it evident to every man who is both capable and willing to be instructed what shall be his endless doom of Life or Death before the Judge pronounce it And since the Rule of that Court whereby we must all be tryed and which must measure out to us either Life or Death is as we have seen none other than the Gospel of our Judge and Saviour Jesus Christ that I may manage this enquiry with the greater light and clearness I will proceed in this method First I will enquire What is that condition of our happiness or misery which the Gospel indispensably exacts Secondly What are its mitigations and allowances those defects which it pardons and bears with And when at any time we fall short of this condition and thereby forfeit all right and title to that happiness and pardon which is promised to us upon it Then Thirdly What are those remedies and means of recovery which it points us out for restoring our selves again unto a state of Grace and Favour and whereupon we shall be reconciled And having by this means discovered what in the great and general judgment shall really and truly determine our last estate what shall be connived at in it and when once 't is lost what shall restore to it I shall in the Fourth and last place Remove those groundless doubts and scruples which perplex the minds of good and safe but yet erring and misguided people concerniâ—â— it And having in this manner cleared up all thâ—se
Of Pardon promised to Repentance Regeneration a New Nature a New Creature The Nature of Repentance it includes amendment and Obedience The Nature of Regeneration and a New Creature It s fitness to produce Obedience Some mens Repentance ineffectual The folly of it Pardon promised to Repentance and Regeneration no further than they effect Obedience In the case of dying Penitents a change of mind accepted without a change of practice That only where God sees a change of Practice would ensue upon it This would seldom happen upon death-bed resolutions and Repentance The general ineffectiveness of this shown by experience Two reasons of it 1. Because it proceeds ordinarily upon an inconstant temporary principle viz. nearness of Death and present fears of it Though it always begins there yet sometimes it grows up upon a principle that is more lasting viz. a conviction of the absolute necessity of Heaven and a Holy Life 2. Because it is ordinarily in a weak and incompetent degree All TRVE resolution is not able to reform Men. Sick-bed resolutions generally unable Such ineffective resolutions unavailing to mens Pardon THirdly That condition which the Gospel exacts of us as the terms whereupon we must hope to find Life and Pardon at the last day is oft-times called Repentance Regeneration a New Creature or a New Nature Christs fore-runner John the Baptist came preaching Repentance for the remission of sins Luk. 3.3 And when Christ himself commissions his Apostles to publish his Gospel over all the world their instructions are to preach Repentance and remission of Sins in his Name to all Nations beginning at Jerusalem Luk. 24.47 And according to this order they practised Repent says S t Peter in his first Sermon and be baptized for the remission of sins Acts 2.38 And again Repent that your sins may be blotted out Acts 3.19 And then as for Regeneration a New Creature and a New Nature they are such qualifications as fit us for Eternal Life and without which we shall never be admitted to it It is says our Saviour to Nicodemus a mans being born again that must capacitate him to enter into the Kingdom of God Joh. 3.3 In Christ Jesus or the Christian Religion saith S t Paul neither Circumcision availeth any thing nor Vncircumcision but a NEW CREATVRE Gal. 6.15 The condition required of all men to Life and Pardon as the truth is in Jesus is this that they put off the OLD MAN and be RENEWED in the spirit of their mind and that they put on the NEW MAN which after the similitude of God is Created in righteousness and true holiness Eph. 4.21 22 23 24. Repentance in the constant and plain notion of the Scriptures is such a vertuous alteration of the mind and purpose as begets a like vertuous change in the life and practice It begins in our thoughts and resolutions and is made perfect in our works and actions It first casts all false principles and foolish judgments of the desireableness of sin and the dreadfulness of vertue all opinions that hinder a good life and encourage wickedness all inveagling thoughts and bewitching imaginations all firm purposes and studied contrivances of evil out of our minds and thereby purges all wickedness and disobedience out of our lives and actions It implies a change of mind as is well noted by the Greek name for Repentance which is very expressive of its nature For it signifies an alteration of the mind a transformation of our thoughts and counsels and is the same that S t Paul calls a being renewed in the spirit of our mind Eph. 4.23 And this God expressly calls for when he summons the wicked to repentance Isa. 55. Let the wicked man forsake his thoughts and turn them from his sin unto the Lord and then he will have mercy upon him vers 7. It includes also an alteration of the life and practice a forbearing to repeat the sin which we repent of And this is a natural effect of the former in as much as our works and actions will still go along with our studies and contrivances our purposes and resolutions Now this part of repentance from sin viz. a leaving or forsaking of it is its prime ingredient and the chief thing which the Scriptures express by it it is the main end whereto the former serves only as the principle and instrument Godly sorrow or the grief and trouble of our minds for having offended God working as S t Paul says that Repentance which will never fail us nor ever need to be repented of 2 Cor. 7.10 And that Repentance includes this alteration of our lives as well as that other of our minds the Scriptures plainly express to us when they stile it a Repentance FROM dead works Heb. 6.1 a TVRNING away from all transgressions and doing that which is lawful and right Ezek. 18.27 30. A CONVERSION FROM darkness unto light Acts 26.18 a putting AWAY the evil of our DOINGS by ceasing to DO evil and learning to DO well Isa. 1.16 17. These two changes a change of mind and a change of practice make up the essence and integrate the nature of a saving Repentance It implies first a change in our minds and tempers and upon that a correspondent change in our lives and actions Now as for the former of these this change of our minds and tempers in new thoughts new counsels new desires and resolutions this vertuous alteration both in our wills and understandings which are those two powers that make up our rational nature is that which the Scriptures call our new nature the begetting of which in us is called our regeneration or our being born again For the tempers and inclinations of our souls are usually in our common discourse called our nature A man of a loving condescensive disposition is called a man of a good nature and one of a sowr revengeful temper is called a man of an ill nature And the change from one to the other is called a change of Nature a making of him a new Creature and a new man And thus we are daily wont to say of any person who from wicked and sinful inclinations is changed to a disposition which is vertuous and holy that he is become a new man And as this is our language so is it the Scriptures too For our putting on the tempers and habitual inclinations of righteousness and true holiness is called our putting on the new man Eph. 4.24 The alteration from an unbelieving and uncharitable to a believing loving temper to a Faith that worketh by love S t Paul calls a New Creature Gal. 5.6 compared with Chap. 6. vers 15. And as for the renovation it self it is called a regeneration or new birth the Author of it a Father and the persons so renewed his Sons or Children All which are expressed to us by S t John when he tells us of all those which have received such vertuous and holy dispositions from God as make them resemble him
worldly lusts we should LIVE SOBERLY GODLY and RIGHTEOVSLY in this present world Tit. 2.11 12. I begin with that which contains all our Duty towards our selves viz. Sobriety Sobriety is in the general Such a regulation of all our actions whether they concern our Bodies or our Souls as makes it appear that they are guided by a sound mind presiding in Flesh and that the animal Body which they flow from is under the Command of a spiritual Reason It is a doing what is becoming and fit for such Creatures as are Soul as well as Body that have a wise and discerning Spirit which should govern and give Laws in this lump of Flesh. So that Sobriety is a taking care and giving what is due and becoming to both the Parts of our Natures viz. our Bodies and our Souls As for our Bodies all the things in the world which affect them are of a limited goodness or illness but yet in their desires and aversations of them they do not of themselves know any Limits So that in their desires and actions that dueness and decency which Sobriety prescribes is keeping within due bounds or moderation And this Moderation is either 1. Of their desires and use of such things as gratifie and delight them whether that inveigling delight which causes such excess of use and desire be 1. In Meats and our desire and use of them both as to their quantity and quality is moderated by Temperance 2. In Drinks and the like moderation there is by Sobriety more particularly so called 3. In other bodily pleasures which are particularly called Lust and our bodily desires and use of them are moderated by Chastity And the ability to contain our selves and to restrain the violence of our desires herein is called Continence 4. In Riches and Honours and the desire and use of these are moderated by contempt of the world and contentedness In our bodily desires and use of all these things by reason of the unbridled temper of our bodily Appetites which stop at no bounds nor ever know when they have enough we are in great danger to exceed and therefore our desires and use of them stand in need to be moderated and retrenched by these Vertues that it may appear we understand and act not as brute Beasts who have nothing else but bodily appetite to guide them but as men who have wise Souls presiding in Flesh to keep within decency and due bounds the exorbitant inclinations of our Bodies Which Souls moreover as we shew by such actions are of an immortal and invaluable nature whose interest therefore is infinitely dearer to us and calls incomparably more for our care and pains than our Bodies either do or in reason ought to call for 2. Of their aversation and avoidance of such things as grieve and trouble them Whether that matter of our bodily avoidance be 1. The troubles and losses that are laid in the way of our Duty and our avoidance of these is moderated by the Duty of taking up the Cross. 2. The irksome pains which we take in going through it and performing it and our avoidance of this is moderated by the Vertues of diligence and watchfulness 3. The great evils which we have already fallen under and are suffering for it and our avoidance and flight of these is moderated and restrained by patience Our hatred and avoidance of all these evils which in themselves are naturally prone to be excessive are so to be moderated and over-ruled by these Vertues that all the world may see we are not acted as the brute Beast by mere sense and appetite which know no Rules of decency nor stop at any limits but know and do as becomes men who are endowed with spiritual and discerning Souls which understand how to give Laws and prescribe Rules of decency to our fleshly Appetites and whose sins are far worse evils than any or all the sufferings which can befal our Bodies So that to keep back from them we will not avoid and fly from these but willingly embrace and undergo them And to enable us the better thus to moderate all the desires and aversations and to keep perfectly under Command and within just bounds these naturally extravagant tendencies and propensions of our Flesh we must curb and keep it in and dead in great degrees not only its immoderate and excessive but also its innocent eagerness and inclinations lest they become a Snare to us and acquire so much strength by our indulgence of them as will carry us on to gratifie them at other times when they are not innocent but sinful which but for such curbing and conquest of them they would be sure to do And this is done by the general Vertues of mortification and self-denial The great matter indeed and principle Object of mortification and self-denial is our sinful appetites and such disobedient actions as we are tempted and drawn into by the untamed inclinations of our Bodies And this S t Paul affirms is an indispensable Duty and a Vertue of absolute necessity unto life If ye live after the Flesh saith he you shall dye but if you through the Spirit do mortifie the DEEDS of the Body you shall live Rom. 8.13 But as our sinful and disobedient appetites are the prime Object of all religious self-denial and mortification and that which is absolutely necessary as the end so likewise are our innocent appetites an inferior object of it and our mortification of them is a necessary means and instrument without which we shall never be able to mortifie the other For a free allowance of our bodily desires in all things lawful and an unlimited gratification of them in all instances whatsoever where they are innocent would certainly prove a Snare to us and betray us into a like indulgence and satisfaction of them in some Cases where they are sinful and disobedient And the reason of this is plain because if we should gratifie them in all things where we may lawfully and never deny them any thing but what is sinful they must needs come by long use and indulgence to rule in us and to have a great Power and Empire over us We shall find it a matter of great difficulty to put them by and a very painful task to deny them any thing so that whithersoever they lead us it is odds but we shall follow them But now as for their Parts they make no difference between an innocent and a sinful enjoyment they do not distinguish things into good and evil they are not moved by Law and decency but pleasure and desire what is delightsom and agrees with them whether it happen to be allow'd to them or forbidden If by a customary gratification therefore and indulgence of them in any thing even in instances that are innocent and lawful we suffer our bodily appetites to grow strong in us and to get the guidance and management of us they will over-rule us in instances that are prohibited as
well as in those that are allowed and make us fulfil them in things sinful as well as in things innocent So that if we would be sure to conquer and subdue them in all such instances as are sinful we must take care that they grow not strong upon us in any instances whatsoever but infeeble them and keep them low and make them tame and governable ready to come or go at our own pleasure And this now is a piece of Command and Mastery which is never to be hoped for in gratifying and indulging them in any sort of instances but only by mortifying and denying them in all For this power of denying them at our own pleasure cannot otherwise be attained but by a long use and custom of denials we must learn to deny and mortifie them in particular Instances before we can in any reason hope to deny them for altogether And this mortification and denial of our lawful and innocent bodily appetites being thus plainly necessary to the denial and mortification of our sinful and unlawful bodily desires and actions our Lord Christ who best understood the necessities of our natures what instruments were most necessary and what means most proportionate for us has enacted it into a Law So that now 't is every mans duty to mortifie and deny not only all sinful bodily actions and desires but so far as is necessary unto that all such as are innocent and lawful also And according to the different degrees of mens progress herein are their different perfections in Vertue and their different measures of security and assurance that they shall continue in it It being only the unmortifiedness of their fleshly desires which can prove a Snare to them and a dangerous temptation Every man as S t James says being tempted then when he is drawn away of his own Lusts and enticed Jam. 1.14 And all the forenamed Vertues viz. Temperance Sobriety Chastity c. are Duties incumbent upon us and implied in that care which this general Vertue Sobriety takes of our meaner Part our Bodies And then as for what more directly concerns our Souls that dueness and decency which Sobriety prescribes in their actions and towards them is either 1. In thinking no better of our selves than we deserve but having a just sense of all our weaknesses and defects which is humility and lowliness of mind 2. In taking all that just care and thoughtfulness after their future good and happiness which their worth requires which is heavenly-mindedness or contriving and designing for the things of Heaven So that those particular Laws of God which command something to be done by us towards our own selves both as to our Bodies and our Souls and which are all comprized under the general Name Sobriety are these The Law of humility of heavenly-mindedness of temperance of sobriety of chastity of continence of contempt of the world and contentment with our present condition of courage and taking up the Cross of diligence and watchfulness of patience of mortification and self-denial And as he has commanded us to exercise all these Vertues towards our own selves so has he as strictly forbid us to act those Vices which are contrary to them as are these that follow First To humility or lowliness of mind is opposed 1. An over-high conceit of our own excellence and preheminence above others making us set our selves and strive to appear above them and contemn and despise them as persons that are below us which is pride 2. An outward expression of this in making a false shew of more excellence than indeed we have whether in religions natural or civil endowments which implies hypocrisie joyn'd with pride and is called arrogance ostentation boasting 3. An industrious affecting in all things by setting out our own praise and exposing our atchievements to get the honour and praise of others answerable to the conceit which we have of our own selves which is vain-glory 4. A restless pursuit of honour and great Places which we conceit our selves to be worthy of which is Ambition And the effects of this pride and elation of mind are 1. In our behaviour a scornful and contemptuous disrespect and sleight of others which is haughtiness And if it go on to an unusual and enormous degree it is insolence And this haughtine's when it is expressed in a commanding way as if we had Lordship and Authority over them is imperiousness Which when 't is shown in exacting their submission to our dogms or opinions is dogmaticalness or impatience of contradiction 2. In our Speeches of others an envious depression and disparagement of them the better to set off our own selves which is backbiting 3. In our conversation a mixture of pride and envy or an envious provoking strife of out-doing others and being better thought of our selves or of hindering their designs lest they should enjoy what we who in our own opinion deserve it better are deprived of which is emulation Secondly To heavenly-mindedness is opposed an over-industrious care of present things or being wholly or chiefly taken up with this World which is worldliness Thirdly To moderation is opposed luxury or excess And as that moderation which sobriety prescribed was either in meats or drinks c. so is this breach of sobriety in excess likewise For First To temperance is opposed intemperance which when it is a Luxury 1. In the quantity of Meat is called Gluttony 2. In the deliciousness or quality of it it is called Voluptuousness Secondly To sobriety or a moderate and undisturbing use of Drink is opposed a stupifying and intoxicating use of it which is Drunkenness And this when it is accompanied with boisterousness unchast Songs and riotous mirth is called revelling Thirdly To Chastity is opposed unchastness and that weakness which betrays us into it viz. our subjection to our bodily Lusts and inability to contain them within due bounds is called incontinence Which issues out and expresses it self 1. In preparatory enticements by an indulgence to provoking gestures touches words or actions which is called lasciviousness or wantonness The particular expression whereof in obscene and shameful words is filthiness And if they be uttered in picquancy of wit and smartness of conceit it is foolish or obscene Jesting 2. In the acting or execution of it which may be done 1. By one person upon their own Body alone and then 't is impurity or uncleanness 2. By two persons each with other Which if they are both men is called Sodomy and by S t Paul Rom. 1.27 Men with men working that which is unseemly and the persons who are guilty of it are called the abominable Rev. 21.8 And the persons suffering themselves to be so abused are called the effeminate But if they be Man and Woman then either 1. One or both are married to another and so 't is Adultery 2. Both are unmarried and so it is Fornication Which if it be 1. By the joint-consent
them not praying at all or using passionate and modish curses or imprecations which is imprecating or praying against them 2. In Children towards their Parents it will cause besides the want of natural affection 1. A low esteem and undervaluing opinion of them in their minds which is dishonour And this if it be joined with a contemptuous disregard and fearless behaviour towards them is irreverence Which is expressed 1. In disowning or disregarding them by reason of their meanness which is being ashamed of them 2. In entertaining their weaknesses and infirmities not with pity and sorrow but with sport and delight turning them into a matter of mirth and laughter This is a mixture of hatred and scorn and is called mocking them 3. In divulging in words and instead of concealing and excusing publishing their faults and defects with reproaching of them and inveighing against them upon the account of them which is malediction or cursing of them 2. Whilst they are under them a spiting and going cross 1. To their Commands by not performing what they require but doing against it which is disobedience 2. To their impositions by not submitting to that restraint and burthen which they lay upon them which is contumaciousness or casting off subjection 3. To their interest by embezilling or secret wasting of their substance which is robbing them 3. When either they are under them or gone from them not recompencing their care and kindness by their relief and service when their Parents need requires it which is not requiting them 4. And instead of praying for them not praying at all or hasty wishing ill to them which is imprecation So that the effects of hatred in this relation or forbidding Laws are to the Parents the Law against want of natural affection against not providing for those of their own house against irreligious and evil education against provoking their Children to anger against not praying for them and imprecation of them To the Children besides that against want of natural affection the Law against dishonour against irreverence against being ashamed of their Parents against mocking them against cursing or reproach and speaking evil of them against disobedience against contumaciousness against robbing them against not praying for them or imprecation of them 3. The third sort of domestick relation that includes some instances of Love that are not due towards all men indifferently but peculiarly towards some is the relation of Brethren and Sisters And these being so nearly allied and partaking of the same blood Love betwixt them will exert it self 1. In a most passionate concern and tender affection for each other which because we seem to be carried on to it by the very force and instinct of our nature without any help of reason or need of being argued up to it is called natural affection 2. And as an effect of this a helping each other by a reciprocal service and when occasion requires by communicating mutually of their substance which S t Paul calls a providing for those of our own Family 1 Tim. 5.8 And in those things which they cannot afford themselves seeking them mutually for each other by prayer And opposite to these are the effects of hatred betwixt them which will effect 1. An unconcernedness for each other or a want of natural affection 2. A not helping of each others needs or not providing for them and not praying to God in each others behalf but making ill wishes mutually which is imprecation So that the effects of Love or commanding Laws in this relation are the Law of natural affection of providing for our Brethren of praying for them and opposite to them the effects of hatred or forbidding Laws are the Law against want of natural affection against not providing for our Brethren against not praying for them and imprecation or praying against them 4. The fourth and last relation is that of Masters and Servants And in this the effects of Love are either 1. From the Masters to the Servants Where Love will produce 1. A care of their Servants as of Members of their own Families both 1. Of their Bodies in provision and maintenance 2. Of their Souls in religious instruction and admonition 2. A Government of them that is not harsh and severe but kind and gentle such as we expect and desire that God who is our Master should use over us which therefore is called by the Apostle our dealing justly and equally with them i. e. so as we would have our Master to deal with us Col. 4.1 In particular observing 1. In our Commands to them Mercy as well as Justice in requiring nothing that God forbids which is unlawful nothing for imperiousness and commands sake only that we may create them work though we our selves receive no benefit which is unprofitable and even where we are advantaged by it nothing lastly which is either above or at least very hard and oppressive to their power and strength which is unproportionable And this is kindness and equity in commanding 2. In our threatnings and punishments tenderness and pity in not threatning and punishing out of will and power or either more or oftener than need requires which the Apostle calls forbearing or moderating threatning Ephes 6.9 3. In our rewards paying them punctually and justly what they have wrought for which is punctual payment of the wages of the Hireling 4. And besides all the kindness which we can do for them our selves whether by rewarding or promoting them procuring moreover all the good which we can for them at Gods hands by praying for them 2. From the Servants to the Masters And the nature of service being a setting over all our powers and abilities for the time to their benefit whom we are to serve the effects of Love in this relation will be 1. An opinion and esteem in the mind of their Masters preheminence and lordship over them which is honour And this being joined with an awfulness and fear of offending him who has both Authority to command and Power to punish is reverence 2. In things which they know he desires and delights in a forward care and ready industry to please him by doing them before they are bidden which is observance And this among other things effects 1. As for his or his Families defects at home concealing or excusing them 2. As for his reputation abroad when 't is injured vindicating and defending it 3. A care of their Masters Goods and carrying suitably to his pleasure always exercising 1. In those things which their Master intrusts them with a true discharge of that trust and the things committed to it which is fidelity 2. In those things which their Master commands a ready performance and execution of them which is obedience The vigorous application of themselves to the dispatch whereof is diligence Which they are to shew not only from the terrour of their Master so long as his eye is over them which the Apostle calls eye-service but from the ready
willingness of their own minds which will make them do it whether he be with them or absent from them which in the same place is called obeying with good will and from the heart Ephes. 6.6 7. 3. In those things which he imposes and inflicts whether they be just or even injust if light and tolerable a quiet and uncontending submission which is patience and subjection 4. And in those things wherein they cannot advantage him themselves commending him to Almighty God by prayer for him So that the effects of Love or commanding Laws in this relation are on the Masters side the Law of maintenance of religious instruction of a just and equal Government of them of kindness and equity in commanding of forbearance and moderation in threatning of punctual payment of the wages of the Hireling of praying for them On the Servants the Law of honour of reverence of observance of concealing and excusing their Masters defects of vindicating their injured reputation of fidelity of obedience of diligence of willing and hearty service of patient submission and subjection of praying for them And opposite to these are all the effects of hatred which will be instanced in these Particulars 1. From the Masters towards their Servants it will produce 1. A carelesness of what becomes of their Servants whether as to 1. Their Bodies in not duly maintaining or providing for them 2. Their Souls in not catechising or instructing of them 2. A Government of them which is cruel and rigorous and this being a dealing otherwise with them than we are willing to be dealt with our selves is unequal Government Which is expressed 1. In the injustice and severity of our Commands when we enjoin what God forbids which is unlawful or what tends not to benefit our selves but only to vex and trouble them which is unprofitable or what is either above their strength or exceeding hard for it which is unproportionable And this is unjustness and wantonness and rigour in commanding which if it be acted in a contemptuous haughtiness and peremptory way is imperiousness 2. In the injustice and hardship of our threatnings and punishments when we use them without occasion or more than needs when there is occasion for them which is immoderate threatning or punishing And this as it vents it self in bitter words and vehemence of vilifying expressions a fault that is incident to proud hasty Folk and lordly Masters is railing at them 3. In the dishonesty and dilatoriness of our Rewards when we either pay not at all that which was covenanted for their service or cut it short or delay it long when their necessity calls for it instantly which is defrauding or keeping back the wages of the Hireling 3. And besides all the kindness which we deny them our selves neglecting to seek for any thing for them at Gods hands by not praying for them or cursing and imprecating them which is praying against them 2. From the Servants towards their Masters where the effects of hatred are 1. A disesteem and contemptuous opinion of their Masters as persons of no worth or preheminence above themselves which is dishonour And this when it is evidenced in a careless and disrespectful behaviour towards them which argues them to stand in no fear or awe of them is irreverence 2. An industrious neglect of such things as they know are pleasing and acceptable to him and venturing upon others that will disgust and offend him which is non-observance two particular expressions whereof are 1. As to his or his families defects at home a publishing and aggravation of them 2. As to his reputation abroad a suffering it to lye under imputations that are undeserved which is not vindicating him 3. An endamagement of their Masters Goods Concerns and Authority by shewing 1. In what their Master intrusts them falseness or non-performance which is unfaithfulness And if it be instanced in making away such Goods or Mony as were committed to them 1. To their own luxury and pleasure by such ways as our Saviour sets down of eating drinking and keeping ill company Matth. 24.49 it is wastfulness of their Masters Goods 2. To their own private profit and secret enrichment it is purloining 2. In what their Masters command a careless omission of it or acting against it which is disobedience Whether this be expressed 1. In questioning and disputing the fitness and convenience of what they enjoin instead of doing and performing it which S t Paul calls answering again or speaking against and contradicting it Tit. 2.9 2. In a slow and lazy application of themselves to it when they do set about it which is slothfulness 3. In a laborious dispatch of what they are commanded only whilst their Masters eye is over them but slackning all again when he is gone from them doing all things out of dread but nothing out of choice and good will which is eye-service 3. In what their Master imposes or inflicts a not enduring or resting under it which is contumacy or resistance 4. And in such things as God is to bestow on them a not seeking to him by prayer on their behalf but praying against them So that the effects of ill will and hatred or Laws forbidding in this relation are on the Masters side the Law against not providing maintenance for his Servant against not catechizing or instructing him against unequal Government against unjustness wantonness and rigour in commanding against imperiousness against immoderate threatning against railing against defrauding or keeping back the wages of the Hireling against not praying for him and imprecation or praying against him and on the Servants side the Law against dishonour of his Master against irreverence against non-observance against publishing or aggravating his Masters faults against not vindicating his injured reputation against unfaithfulness against wasting his Goods against purloining against disobedience against answering again against slothfulness against eye-service against contumacy or resistance against not praying for them and imprecation or praying against them And thus we have seen what are the particular effects of love and hatred both towards all men in general and also towards all in those several relations wherein we stand concerned with one another in the World And in them are contained all the particular Commands and Prohibitions which make up this third Branch of Duty viz. righteousness or our Duty towards our Neighbour All that God requires of us towards other men is only to have a hearty kindness for them and in this manner to express it And all that he forbids is only our hatred of them with all the forementioned effects of it So that in the above-named instances and effects of Love in Justice Charity Peace with those others in the relations now recited is comprized the whole of this last Member of S t Paul's Division righteousness Thus at last we have seen what are all the particular instances of those three general Laws sobriety piety and righteousness wherein if we add two or
and proposed it to us because the necessity of our faith to our obedience shews plainly that it cannot be denied us and because the best men that ever were have not been able to obey without it and yet their obedience has been most graciously accepted First Some respect to our own good and intention to advantage our selves by our obedience is of that nature that it cannot be forbidden us It cannot fall under a Law or be a matter of a Commandment because it can never be performed As for any one particular advantage and self-interest indeed we may deny our selves in it and therefore any Law may very well require it For we have many particular self-interests to serve and they clash and interfere among themselves and so long as we are in pursuit of any one by virtue of it we are able to restrain and deny our selves in any other And thus all men daily deny their Ease for their Interests and their Gain for their Liberty and their Liberty for their Lives And all good men daily over-rule that Love which they have for their Bodies by that higher and stronger love which they have for their Souls and deny themselves in any Temporal Interests to secure their Eternal And because all men have this power of denying their own Self-love in small instances to serve it in greater and of parting with any goods and advantages of this world to purchase to themselves incomparably better in the next God has enacted the denial of our selves in all such particular Interests as hinder our Obedience into a Religious Duty and made it universally obliging to all the world But as for the casting off this love of our selves and respect to our own advantage not only as to some particular interests whilst our eye is upon others but as to all self-interests whatsoever this in the matter of Duty and Obedience no man can perform and therefore no Law can command it For in that Constitution of Nature which God has given us self-love is the first and over-ruling Principle It has a share almost in all our actions and influences all our faculties so that in all that variety of operations which flow from us there are very few wherein we have no eye at our own advantage In some actions 't is true we are influenced chiefly and almost wholly by our love of others which is a noble and a generous Principle For there are several good Offices which we daily do to others in doing whereof we no way prejudice our selves and these our love of others makes us perform and our own self-love doth not withstand it which is seen in all the Offices of humanity and common courtesie And other things again there are wherein we advantage them though it be considerably to our own trouble and our own hindrance and here although our own self-love oppose it self yet our love of them prevails and over-rules it as is daily shown in the Offices of Christian Charity and particular friendship In these Cases our love of others and of our selves are separate our kindness for them shews it self in such things wherein our own self-love is either not concerned at all or wherein it is opposed and over-powered so that here we are not influenced and governed by it And if this were the Case in all our obedient actions there might be more pretence for performing them purely out of love to God without mixing therewith any love of our own selves But in them quite contrary our love of God and of our selves are neither repugnant nor so much as separate but most closely conjoined For God hath made the same things the matter both of our Duty and of our interest so that in serving him we do in the highest measure serve our own selves too And in this Case where our own self-love is so much concerned and has not the love of God to oppose and over-rule it but to jump in and conspire with it it is not possible but that we shall be influenced and acted by it For it naturally issues out upon our own good and here it has an object in the highest advancement and there is nothing to hinder or restrain it So that whatsoever we may do through a bare abstracted love of others without any regard to our own selves in those Cases where our own self-love and it are separate or repugnant yet in the matter of obedience where they are so close conjoined and Gods service is so infinitely our own interest 't is plain that we cannot be wholly free from it For since in obeying we do that which we know is most highly advantageous to us we are not able perfectly to abstract our thoughts but we shall intend whether we will or no to be advantaged by it And since no man can wholly abstain from intending his own advantage in Gods service no Law can require it It is no fit matter of a prohibition nor capable of being retrenched by a Commandment being it is at no mans choice whether or no he shall observe it So that God must work a Change in his own Creation and form us into something different from what we are before he can in reason demand it of us 2. Some respect to our own advantage in performing what God commands is lawful and allowable in us because Gods Laws themselves do authorize and propose it to us God has not required us to serve him for nothing but has offered us an abundant recompence for all our labour and added such allurements to his Laws as infinitely surpass all the difficulties of our Duty He has proposed every thing to us that may any way work upon our self-love and care for our own advantage whether it be the promises of good to intice or the threats of evil to affright us into obedience For thus saith our Law Verily verily I double the Asseveration that you may give the greater credit to it I say unto you He that keepeth my Sayings or Commands shall never see death John 8.51 To my Sheep that follow me and hear or obey my voice I will give eternal life John 10.27 28. Blessed are they that do his Commandments for they shall have right to the Tree of Life and enter in through the Gate into the City Rev. 22.14 But on the other side The wrath of God cometh upon the Children of disobedience Col. 3.6 For at the Day of Judgment when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven with the Guards and Attendance of his mighty Angels then will he in flaming fire take vengeance on them that obey not the Gospel who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord 2 Thess. 1.7 8 9. Thus have we in Christs Laws to omit other things a promise made to us of Heaven and endless joys to induce us to obedience and a threatning of Hell and eternal miserie denounced to us to make us afraid to disobey And these make our obedience to
in worldly things which affects us is present with us and therefore our passions for or against them are raised in us by our sense and feeling But as for spiritual things and those bodily joys and sorrows that are annexed to them for the sake whereof we are sensibly affected with them they are not present with us but future and at a distance and therefore our passion for them cannot be raised by our sense whose object are only present things but meerly by our fancy and imagination But now as for the sensible warmth and violence of a passion it is nothing near so quick when it is excited by fancy as when it is produced by sense For no man is so feelingly affected with hearing a sad story as he would be by seeing of it A man will be moved abundantly less by imagining a battle a murder or any other dreadfull thing than by beholding it And the reason is because the impressions upon our sense are quick and violent and their warmth is communicated to our affections which are raised by them whereas our imaginations are calm and faint in comparison and the passions which flow from them partake of their temper and are more cold and less perceptible So that our passions for worldly things being passions upon sense and our passions for things spiritual with their bodily pain or pleasure annexed being only upon fancy and imagination we must needs be more warmly and sensibly although not more powerfully affected with the things of this world than of the other But that which is to distinguish our passion for God and Virtue above all things else from our passion for worldly things is not the warmth and sensibleness but the power and continuance of it For it must be a prevalent affection which doth more service although it make less noise It must be such a setled and overpowering Love answerable to the prevailing strength and surpassing greatness of its motive as gets the upper hand in competition and makes us when we must despise one to disregard all things else and to adhere to Gods service what other things soever be lost by it What it wants in warmth it has in permanency and power it sticks faster to us and can do more with us than our love of any thing besides For in our affections we must needs prefer God and his service before every other thing when they stand in competition or we have none of that Love with the whole soul which the Commandment requires of us as will be shewn more fully afterwards And because our thoughts and affections have in them a great latitude and in a matter of so high concern every good soul will be inquisitive after some determinate accounts of that compass and degree of them which is necessary to our acceptance before I conclude this Point I will set down what measures of obedience in these two faculties what thoughts and imaginations of our minds and what degrees of love and delight in our affections shall be judged sufficient at the last Day to save or to destroy us As for our thoughts there is one more elaborate and perfect sort of them viz. our counsels and contrivances And when they are employed about the compassing of forbidden things they are our sin and without repentance will certainly prove our condemnation For he that deviseth to do evil saith Solomon he shall be called and dealt with as a mischievous person Prov. 24.8 The machinations of murther are joined in guilt and punishment with murtherous actions themselves Matth. 15.19 And as for that particular sort of Contrivers the inventers of evil things they are pronounced by S t Paul to be worthy of death Rom. 1.30 32. And as for other of our thoughts which are not come up to the height of a contrivance or consultation but are only simple apprehensions some of them also are properly and directly good or evil and an Article of our life or death God has imposed several Laws which he has backed both with threats and promises upon our very thoughts themselves Of which sort there are some to be met with under all the three general Parts of Duty viz. to God our Neighbour and our selves For our thoughts of God are bound up by the Law of honour which forbids us to lessen or prophane him by dishonourable Notions and Opinions our thoughts of our Neighbour by the Laws of Charity and Candour which suffer us not either to reproach or injure him by under-valuing Ideas or groundless suspicions and our thoughts of our own selves by the Law of humility which prohibits us to be exalâ—ed in our own conceits through false and over-high apprehensions of our own excellence Pious and charitable opinions both of God and men and humble and lowly conceits of our own selves are Duties incumbent upon our very minds themselves And all the opposite vices of impious and reproachful Ideas of God of censorious suspicious and lessening thoughts of other men and of proud and arrogant conceits of our own worth are transgressions within the sphere and compass even of our understandings For the exercise of the first is not only a Cause and Principle but a part and instance also of obedience and an Article of life as the exercise of the other is an instance of disobedience and an Article also of damnation As for these Instances then of bare thought and naked apprehension they are essential parts and necessary instances of an acceptable obedience and the wilful transgression of any one of them without repentance is dangerous and damning So that as for all our perfected and studied thoughts of evil viz. our counsels and contrivances and as for all such simple thoughts and â—ore apprehensions as have particular Laws imposed upon them they are not only principles but parts and instances of disobedience and if we are guilty of them unless we retract them by repentance we shall be condemned for them But then there are several other bare imaginations and simple apprehensions which are not under any of these particular Laws that are imposed upon our thoughts themselves but are employed upon things commanded or forbidden by any of the other Laws forementioned And as for all these apprehensions in themselves they are neither sin nor Duty nor a matter either of reward or punishment but so far only as they are causes and principles either of a sinful or obedient choice and practice of those good or evil things which they are employed upon In themselves I say these mere apprehensions are neither sin nor Duty We may perceive sin in our minds and have it in a thought or notion without ever being guilty of it or liable to answer for it For the Sun shines upon a Dunghil without being defiled by it and God sees all the wickedness in Hell but is not tainted with it And so long as we sojourn in a World of iniquity every good man must needs know and behold all the vices
all Piety towards God by complying readily with all his Laws depending upon his Providence and resigning our selves up to his pleasure in all purity and soberness being free from all lust and intemperance all sinfull pleasures and covetous practices in all justice and charitableness doing right and keeping peace and shewing mercy towards all men This sayes S t James will pass for pure and undefiled Religion before God and the Father at the last day if in such instances as these we have expressed not our Opinions but our Obedience by visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction and by keeping our selves unspotted from all filthiness and disobedience of the world But if any man pretends to be religious who is destitute of this obedience that mans religion is vain Jam. 1.26 27. Secondly Another great part and object of Religion is the Doctrines of the Gospel And agreeably another act or instance of Religious Service is Faith or Orthodox Belief And this is intended by God himself as a means to produce the former Faith being the great instrument in working out our obedience For this is that victory sayes S t John which makes us conquerors and overcometh the world even our Faith 1 Joh. 5.4 An obedient practice is all that a righteous faith aims at it is its end and perfection that which consummates and compleats it It being as S t James assures us by works which faith co-operates and concurs to that faith is made perfect Jam. 2.22 And this all the points of our Christian Faith are most admirably fitted to effect in us For in that epitome and compendious account of them whereinto they were contracted by the Apostles and which is usually called the Apostles Creed there is not any one purely speculative Article or point of idle notion and meer belief But every one is influential upon our practice and helps on our obedience as any man of competent skill and abilities may discern by running over the particulars These two then viz. Knowledge and Practice or Faith and Obedience take in the compass and integrate the nature of our Religion Obedience is the chief thing and first in Gods design and Faith or Knowledge is the great means which God has prescribed us whereby to compass and effect it So that Religion in that sense wherein the Scriptures use and God at the last day will reward it is the same as obedience to the Gospel proceeding from a belief of it or in Saint Paul's phrase an Obedient Faith or a Faith which worketh by Love Gal. 5.6 And now let any man who considers this bethink himself and tell me whether the transgression of Gods Laws can ever be called Religion in the Scripture-sense or whether it be possible for men to evidence themselves to be Religious by their disobedience For the making us obedient to Gods Laws is the great design and ruling part of all true and acceptable Religion and the belief and profession of Gods Truth is an exercise and instance of it that avails us only so far as it concurs to and effects this Religion of Obedience So that Religion is not preserved but lost by breach of Duty it is never strengthned by disobedient and sinfull means but is alwayes wasted and destroyed by them Let no man therefore ever dare to make Religion a cover for unlawfull Lusts or dream of protecting it from sufferings and persecutions this way For God will by no means endure such gross mockery and hypocritical pretensions as for men to feign piety in the breach of Duty but if they wickedly transgress his Laws and continue impenitently to disobey him let their Forms and Professions of Religion be what they will he will take severe and endless vengeance on them for their impious and irreligious disobedience If they are scandalized at the Cross that is if they fall off from religious and obedient walking into irreligious transgressions to prevent those crosses that in persecuting times are annexed to a religious practice and profession they are scandalized or offended in him The Cross is to them a stumbling-block and a rock of offence it makes them trip and turn out of their duty because they will disown their Lord and break all his Laws rather than undergo it And this is a most provoking sin and subjects men to a most dreadful punishment For as God will abundantly recompence any losses which befall us through the exercise of an obedient Religion and a pious conscience so will he also inflict such torments as infinitely surpass all those light and present advantages which we may at any time promise our selves from our politick disobedience For whosoever by sinfull means will seek in perillous and persecuting times such as those were to save his life in this world he shall certainly lose it for ever in the next world but whosoever shall lay down his life for Christs sake in taking up that cross which is laid upon a Christian profession and a Christian practice that same man shall save and encrease it eternally Luk. 9.23 24. So that no dangers in obedience can ever render it secure for any man to disobey But that which God indispensably exacts of us in perillous cases is this Fear not them which kill the body but after that is done have nothing more to fright you with being utterly unable to kill or so much as touch the soul but fear him who exacts obedience of you even at such times as your bodies are like to perish for it for he after he hath killed the body which is all that they can do is able eternally to destroy both body and soul in hell Mat. 10.28 No dangers then can make obedience cease to be our Duty nor any sufferings make it cease to be our Interest So that neither Religion nor Prudence will ever allow of sinfull means but every Religious yea every wise man must take up the Cross and patiently bear any sufferings that come upon him for Religion rather than use any breach of duty or unlawfull wayes either to prevent or remove it And this the Saints of God and Religious men alwayes did For no dangers or hazards no pains or sufferings in obedience could ever draw them to seek for shelter by disobeying David was tryed with hazards and persecutions of all sorts but neither sense of present nor fears of future evils could ever chase him from his duty or make him seek relief from iniquity and sin He could not be forced upon it by the most apparent dangers even of the most affecting loss the loss of life it self The wicked saith he have laid a snare for me yet I erred not from thy Precepts My soul is continually in my hand ready to be snatched out of it yet do I not forget thy Law Psal. 119.109 110. He was not grieved or frighted into it either by the pressure of his pains or by the number of his persecutors They had almost consumed me upon earth but
his Gospel Promises they are neither grievous nor extream difficult but a burthen fair and easie to be born His Commandments saith S t John are not grievous 1 Joh. 5.3 And our Lord himself who best knew the measures both of our Natures and of his own Grace declares expresly that his Yoke of Precepts is easie or gracious and favourable and his burthen light Upon which inducement he exhorts all men with the greater willingness to take it upon them and submit to it Mat. 11.30 This then all Religions in the world and we Christians above any either are or may be undoubtedly assured of that no man is indispensably bound to do what no man can do and that those things cannot be injoyn'd which can never be performed But now to live wholly without sin in an impeccable and unerring obedience to go on exactly streight in Gods way without the least wandring and to tread always firm in the paths of righteousness without ever slipping to walk so uprightly as never to fall neither by security or rashness inadvertency or weakness surprize or weariness is more than humane nature can do and is a task not for a Man but an Angel And that some slips and transgressions of this nature are such as no man of what Religion soever whether Gentile Jew or Christian can avoid is plain because no meer man ever yet did avoid them It was an undeniable Argument of Atticus in S t Jerome Give an instance of some man that did it or else confess that no meer man yet ever could do it For since there is both an utter necessity and a severe Commandment requiring it it cannot be but that some of all mankind when they had so much reason and so infinite inducement should have endeavoured to the utmost and have done it if the doing of it had been within the power of humane nature So that if it be a failing inseparable from the practice of every man we must conclude it to be unconquerable by the humane nature also But now as for this inability of performing in every instance and transgressing at no time it has been the complaint of all persons in all Religions throughout all ages of the world For as for the bravest men among the Heathens we have Seneca their great Moralist confessing freely We have all sinned more or less sayes he even of his Countrey Laws For some have sinned in great matters some in little some out of choice and design some through constraint or through the ill example and seduction of others Some have been too easily driven from good purposes and sinned though it were against their wills Nay we have not only transgressed thus far but what augments our misery we shall continue still to transgress so long as we have breath in our bodies Yea if there be any man who has so well cleansed his soul as that no temptation can win upon him yet has he run through a long train of sins before he attained to that pitch of innocence Let us perswade our selves of this in the first place sayes he again that we are all sinners For what man is he that dare say he has broken none even of his Countrey Laws But granting that he had kept all them yet how scanty and defective an innocence is that to have done only all that Good which they oblige to For how many things are required and not performed by the Divine Law of Piety of Humanity of Liberality of Justice of Fidelity of all which whether we keep or break them the Laws of our Nation take no notice And as for the Jews we find David the man after Gods own heart crying out Who can understand his errors Cleanse thou me from my secret faults Psal. 19 12. And Solomon who was the wisest and most knowing man that ever was upon the earth layes it down for an Aphorism of universal observation that there is not a just man upon earth so perfect as alwayes to do good and never sin Eccles. 7.20 Nay even the Disciples of Christ themselves who have the noblest encouragements and the greatest assistances for a most compleat and entire obedience of any men whatsoever could never yet attain to such a state as to obey universally without ever slipping The Holy Fathers in the African Councils felt this by themselves and were so deeply sensible of it from their own experience and from what they heard and presumed of others that they condemned it as a proud errour for any man to think or speak otherwise To say that our Nature is as perfect as ever Adams was and that any man now may live if he will all his life long without sin and has the same free liberty that Adam had in Paradise never to do amiss is an errour that stands condemned by the Holy Councils And what these good men thus ingenuously confessed all others have constantly complained of there being none among them who was ever able to live up so exactly to the Precepts of the Gospel as not to do against them in any instance No that was the sole Prerogative of the man Christ Jesus who in that respect had no other man to whom he could be likened For he was made like unto us in all other things indeed save only in sin which we all had more or less but he wanted Heb. 2.17 and chap. 7.26 And since this state of unerring Obedience is such as in this life no man can because no meer man ever yet did attain unto we may be sure that God doth not indispensably require it But some infirmities the Gospel must of necessity dispense with because according to the present circumstances of Humane Nature we cannot help all some must be pardoned since all cannot be escaped But besides all that has been already said to shew the consistence of some failings with a state of salvation because of the unavoidable weakness of Humane Nature which cannot perfectly get quit of them we may add this further which will evidence it beyond all exception that the best Saints of God and the unquestionable heirs of happiness have alwayes lived subject to them Those very men who are most certainly gone to Heaven went thither with some of these slips and infirmities about them They could not plead an unerring obedience but yet notwithstanding all their errours they had right to all the Promises of the Gospel They died happily although they could not live wholly without offence So that some sins do not in any wise destroy a Saint or subvert the hopes and happiness of a good man but can and do consist with them And in the proof of this the Scriptures are many and plain Holy Job who maintained his own Integrity to be such as God would accept and approve of more stoutly it may be than any man ever did confesses notwithstanding a number of sins for which although God of his abundant Grace and Mercy would not yet
Vriah and adulterating his wife For upon that he felt both these losses which I have mention'd viz. the laying waste of the virtuous temper of his own spirit and the deprivation of the good spirit of God For this sin being so long in acting as it must needs be since it required such a train of wicked plots and contrivances to the consummation of it he must needs feel all the opposition that could be made from the checks of his own Conscience and from the restraints of the Spirit of God And when he had born down both for the satisfaction of his lust and trampled them under foot for the consummation of his sin then doth he begin to feel the want and to be all in fear of losing the habitual rectitude of his own spirit which by so many contrary actions implyed in that one great one he had almost quite destroyed and of suffering the desertion of Gods spirit which by his continued provocations contained in it likewise he had well nigh abandon'd For to this purpose we find him complaining and crying out in his Psalm of repentance for that great transgression whereof at the 14 th verse he makes express mention Create or new make in me a clean heart O God sayes he and renew a right spirit within me And besides that cast me not away neither from thy presence nor take thy holy spirit from me Psal. 51.10 11. So that as for the effect of wilfull sins it is plainly this All wilfull sins whatsoever destroy our state of acceptance with God and put us into a state of enmity and death for the present But as for those among them which lay waste the Conscience they effect not that only but moreover they destroy that virtuous habit and grieve nay sometimes drive away that good spirit whereby we should restore our selves to it for the time to come And because this latter sort have the mischievous effect in making our return thus dubious and difficult they are particularly taken notice of in the accounts of God Thus for instance David had committed several deadly sins for some whereof he had undergone severe punishment as particularly for that proud presumptuous offence of his in numbring of the people 2 Sam. 24.1 10 13 c. But these made no notable decay or devastation in the virtuous temper of his soul for his own heart admonished him of the evil which he had done and he repented quickly and rose again without delay and so was presently restored to what he was before But as for his sin in the matter of Vriah it was a lasting work and took up a long deliberation and contrivance It made his Conscience hard and insensible for his own heart did not smite him into a change nor enable him to repent without a monitor So that his stay in this crying sin was long and his return both difficult and dangerous And therefore in that character which is given of him by the Holy Ghost when all the rest are buried in silence this sin particularly is expresly specified David did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord and turned not from any thing that he commanded him all the days of his life save only in the matter of Vriah the Hittite 1 Kings 15.5 Thus then as for this first part of our enquiry we see plainly of all our wilful sins that they are not consistent with a state of Grace and salvation but that they are all deadly and damning for the present if we dye under them without repenting of them and as for the future that they do all of them wound and weaken but some almost quite destroy that habitual inherent Grace whereby we should recover our selves to the state of pardon for the time to come CHAP. IV. Of the nature of involuntary sins and of their consistence with a state of salvation The CONTENTS Of involuntary actions Of what account the forced actions of the Body are in morals Two causes of involuntariness First The violence of mens passions It doth not excuse Secondly The ignorance of their understandings This is the cause of all our consistent failings and the sins that are involuntary upon this account are consistent with a state of salvation This proved 1. From their unavoidableness The Causes of it in what sense any particular sin among them is said to be avoidable 2. From the nature of God A representation of God's nature from his own Word and mens experience The Argument drawn from it for the consistence of such failings 3. From the nature and declarations of the Gospel It is fitted to beget a cheerful and filial confidence and therefore is called the Spirit of Adoption The Argument from this The Scripture-Declarations and Examples in this matter These Arguments summed up THE second sort of sins are such as are involuntary and unchosen and these are consistent with a state of salvation and such as Christ's Gospel doth not eternally threaten but graciously bears and in great mercy dispenseth with As for the involuntariness of mens actions that which produces and effects it is not any force from without upon our will it self All the things in the material world can never bind and compel the will of man seeing it is no physical bodily thing so as that any bodily force might act upon it Nothing in the world can make us will and like that which we do not like the will of man is liable to no compulsion it has this priviledge above all other things on the Earth that nothing about it can force or constrain it but that still it wills and chuses as it self pleaseth As for the actions of men indeed they are mixt things Because they flow from the whole man both Body and Soul and beginning in the mind or will within are consummate in our outward and bodily operation And as for the last of these viz. our bodily operation it may be forced forasmuch as one Body is liable to the force and compulsion of another Thus for instance a chast Matrons Body may be violently ravished A peaceable mans hand may by the overpowering strength of another man be made the forced instrument of anothers murther The bodily work and operation can be forced seeing other Bodies more powerful than it self can compel it And in this sence the Schools understand the word action viz. only for the action of the Body when they make one kind of involuntary actions to be involuntary by violence or compulsion that being a thing whereto not the will it self but the body only can be liable But now these forced actions of the Body although in Nature they be looked upon as actions yet in morality they are esteemed as none at all That is Laws which are the Rules of good and evil and the measure of mens manners take no notice of them nor look upon themselves to be either broken or kept by them because it is not the Body and Carkass
but the whole man consisting of Soul as well as Body which Laws are given as a Guide to So that a ravished Matron if only her Body suffered and there was no concurrence of her own consent to it is as chast and unpolluted in God's account and in the censure of the Law as is the purest Virgin And therefore it was a great truth whereby Collatinus and Brutus went about to comfort the poor destowred Lucretia in Livy It is the mind say they which sins and not the Body so that in those actions wherein there is nothing of will and deliberation there is likewise no fault or transgression And this Case is expresly thus determined Deut. 22. For in the Case of the ravished Damsel whose will was no way consenting to it but who did all that she could against it it is expresly ordered that to her there is nothing to be done by way of punishment because in her there is no sin worthy of death for like as when one man is slain by another even so is this case she is not acting but suffering in it ver 26. As for him indeed who chose thus to force us 't is true that the Law will interpret what is done by our Bodies as his action because he freely chose so to compel us Our bodily Members which were forced by him were his instruments and not our own for he it was and not we ourselves who ordered and directed them We were the same in his hands as a Sword is in the hand of a man viz. the Instrument only but not the Agent So that what was done by us is not our own but his who was pleased so to make use of us In him therefore the unlawful action being willed and chosen is really a sin and transgression But in us since it was not our own it is looked upon as none There is nothing charged upon our account for it more than if it had never been done because we did not act but suffer it had nothing of our own will and therefore it can be no Article of our condemnation So much of any action therefore as is forced viz. the outward bodily operation in the estimate of good and evil of vice and vertue is of no account to us whatever it be to others because it is not our own For to make any action ours it must proceed not from our Bodies but from our selves who have Souls as well as Bodies it must come from the will within as well as from the body without and as for our will it self 't is plain that it can never be made to chuse involuntarily by force since it is not subject to any forcible violence and compulsion But although those actions which we exert our selves and wherein we are not merely passive instruments in the hands of others cannot be made involuntary by any force from without upon the will it self yet may they become so from something else within us For our wills are not the only internal Principle of humane actions but several others concur with them whereby their choice it self is influenced Our wills indeed chuse and command our actions but then our passions move and our understandings direct and carry away our very wills themselves So that they are set in a middle Station being subject to be acted upon and hurried away by some as well as they are impowered to command and govern others 1. Mens wills are subject to be violently acted by their passions which hurry them on to consent to those things which are both without and against their habitual liking and inclination When any passion is grown too strong for them although they are afraid to act that sin which it hales them to yet can they not withstand it For the Law of sin in the Members is of more force with them and prevails more over them than the Law of God in the mind So that although they have several exceptions against it they are not for all that able to refuse it but they are overcome by it and yield at last to act it though unwillingly and to fulfil it though with trouble and regret Now here is an unwillingness 't is true and things are done which otherwise would not be done because the power of mens lusts and passions is so strong that their wills cannot restrain them For all the interest which the contrary motives of Reason and Religion can make against them is not able to contend with them They can and do effect something indeed so as that the will when it doth consent to them doth it not fully and freely with perfect ease and pleasure but unwillingly with fear and reluctance But yet that which they do is not enough for the other side prevails and the will is not able to hold out but yields at last to fulfil the lust and to act the sin still But now although this be some sort of involuntariness yet is it not that which will excuse our transgressions and make all those sins which we commit under it to be esteemed consistent slips and pardonable infirmities For this state of unwilling Sinners as we heard above is no state of mercy but a state of death It is the state which S t Paul describes in the seventh Chapter of his Epistle to the Romans viz. a state of captivity and slavery under sin ver 14 23 and thereupon a state of misery and death ver 24. All the Grace which Christs Gospel allows to it is a Grace of deliverance a Grace that shall help us out of it and rescue us from it In this state of weakness and infirmity Christ found us For whilst we were yet without strength to help our selves saith S t Paul Christ dyed for us Rom. 5.6 But now since he has dyed for us he will not leave us in it but rescue and deliver us out of it For now he having dyed for us we are likewise to reckon our selves to be dead indeed unto sin for him that it should no longer master and prevail over us to reign in our mortal bodies so far as that we should fulfil the lusts thereof Rom. 6.11 12. And as for our bodily members which are the Stage whereon our lusts and passions reign we are to yield them up now not any longer instruments of unrighteousness unto the service of sin but instruments of righteousness unto the service of God ver 13. If therefore we are truly Christians and such as Christ came to make us upon our becoming which he has procured Grace and pardon for us we are not enslaved and led Captives by our passions but have conquered and subdued them This S t Paul affirms expresly For they that are Christ's says he have crucified the flesh with the passions or affections and lusts Gal. 5.24 But then besides our lusts and passions which although they do make some cannot yet effect a pardonable unwillingness there still remains one cause more which may
stay beyond that time which we are to act in if we do act at all Besides our powers of action especially where there is any strong temptation of pleasure or profit to act for are forward of themselves and ready to spring out upon the first occasion As soon as the temptation is offered to our thoughts our wills indeliberately approve and all our bodily and active powers by an unconsidered emanation start up to pursue and endeavour after it whence thinking and considering is necessary not to raise but to stop and restrain them And then if either our thoughts have been otherwise engaged and so cannot readily withdraw themselves to consider of a new object or if our thinking powers themselves are dull and heavy and thereby unfit to consider of it we presently and indeliberately go on to act the thing without all pausing and due consideration For this other reason of inconsideration also viz. the want of power or indisposition of our thinking faculty it self is not a thing wholly subject to our own will to chuse whether or when we shall fall under it Because in this state of our souls during their being here united to our Bodies they make use of our bodily powers in their use of reason and in the very exercise of thought and consideration and therefore even in them they are liable to be changed and altered just as our Bodies are For in a brisk and healthy Body our thoughts are free and quick and easie but if our Bodies are dull and indisposed our minds are so too A heaviness in our heads will make us heavy in our apprehensions and a discomposure in our Spirits whether through the strength of Wine or of a violent passion will make us discomposed and incoherent in our thoughts also And if there be an utter perverting or blasting of our bodily powers as is often seen in the bodily Diseases of Epilepsies Phrensies Apoplexies and the like there will be the same perversion or utter extinction of our conceptions likewise But now these indispositions of our Bodies which thus unfit our very souls for thought and due consideration are not in our power to order when and where they shall seize upon us For our Bodies are liable to be thus acted upon by any other Bodies of the world whether we will or no. A heavy air or an indisposing accident will work a change in our bodily temper without our leave and when once that is indisposed we cannot hinder our thoughts themselves from being indisposed too And since it is not in our power at all times to chuse whether or no we will pause and consider although we can avoid offending in those Cases wherein we can consider of it yet is it manifest that we cannot avoid offence in all Indeed if we take any particular action and in our own thoughts separate it from any particular time and from the Chain of other particular actions amongst which it lyes we shall be apt to affirm that it is such whereof we can think and consider For take any action by it self and being aware of it we can let other things alone and watch for it particularly and when we do so we are sure to find one time or other when our understandings are disposed for a due deliberation and fit and able to consider of it But then we must take notice that this supposed state of an action as separate from the Crowd of other actions and determined to no time is only imaginary and in speculation For when we come to practise them though in some we have time and power enough yet in others we find that we have not Because either they come in the throng of other business and then our thoughts being hotly employed upon other things cannot so easily be drawn from them upon the sudden to consider of them or if they call upon us when we have time to consider in yet it happens that our faculties are heavy and indisposed and so we exert them still without due consideration When we think of any particular action by it self therefore we take it out of the throng of business wherein it is involved and out of that time wherein we are indisposed and then we are bold to conclude that we can consider of it But when we come to practise it we find that our former speculation supposed false and that it comes mixt with a crowd of other things or in a time when we have troubled and discomposed thoughts So that how subject soever it was to our consideration in that separate state wherein we imagined it yet have we no power to consider of it in that throng of business or indisposition of faculties wherein we find it And this is verily the Case of several of our slips and transgressions For look upon any of the particulars by it self and take it asunder from the rest and then we shall be confident that we may bethink our selves and consider of it But take it as indeed it lyes among the mixt Crowd of other actions or as offered to our indisposed understandings and then we shall find that it slips from us without all consideration And this as I take it is intended by a great man when he tells us of sins of pardonable infirmitie that the liberty which they seem to have when we consider them in special and asunder they indeed have not when we consider them in the general viz. as involved in the crowd of other actions amongst whom they lye and altogether Upon which account of their having in them no choice and consideration he questions whether they contain that which can in strictness and propriety of speech be called sin And indeed if we understand the same by sin which S t John doth when he gives the explication of it 1 John 3.4 viz. a rejecting or contemning of the Law in which sence only a state of Grace is destroyed by it and he who is born of God cannot commit it they have not For men cannot be said to reject and despise a Law when they do not see and consider of it The liberty then which we have about those slips and transgressions which we do not know and consider of is in effect no liberty at all For we neither chuse the disobedient action it self nor the cause of it We do not chuse the sinful action it self because we do not know or consider of it Nor do we chuse the inconsideration because it is not left to our liberty whether in some of our actions we should be inconsiderate or no. And since our slips and failings which are thus involuntary by ignorance cannot be chosen or refused 't is plain that they cannot be avoided And as for all those things which we cannot avoid it is clear from what has been said above that the Gospel doth not eternally threaten us nor will God ever condemn us for them But that these slips and transgressions which being thus unknown
In which wicked action that which moved them was envy and malice but that which prevailed with him was his fear of their calumnies and of the anger of the Roman Emperour For in his own heart he was minded to release him being convinced of his innocence and afraid to have any hand in the Blood of one who called himself the Son of God But because he called himself a King which his own mind could not but suggest to him as the Rabble did afterwards was a Title whereof the Emperour would be extremely jealous therefore he gives him up to their will fearing lest if he did not he should be traduced as no Friend to that most jealous Prince Tiberius Caesar. And when Christ himself comes to pass Judgment in comparison of his offence and theirs He who delivered me unto thee saith he hath the greater sin Joh. 19.11 Those discomposures then of our knowing Faculties which are innocent and fit to excuse our inconsiderate slips which proceed from them are such as spring from an unwill'd sudden grief or anger but especially from an unwill'd sudden fear To make it unwill'd I say it must be sudden for if our fear it self which is a passion that amazes more than all the rest doth not presently effect any thing but stays some considerable time and reigns long before it produces any sinful action then it is a matter of our own choice being it is a fear of our own indulging We give it room and entertainment we feed it or give way to it and that makes our fear to become our sin which can never serve for our vindication For a true Christian must be as bold as a Lyon and fear nothing so much as the disobedience of his God and the breach of his Duty But as for other things which men use to be afraid of whether they be loss of Fame of Estate of Friends of Liberty or even of Life it self though he may justly fear and avoid them when he can innocently yet if they are the burden of the Cross imposed upon the doing of his Duty he must chearfully take it up and not fear and fly from but overlook and contemn them For God will make us an abundant Recompence in the next World for any thing which we part with for his sake in this And therefore he indispensably requires us as in all reason he very well may not to fear and shrink from the loss of any thing even of life it self when he calls for it but in Faith of his Promises and in hope of his Rewards most couragiously to undergo it Persecutions and Dangers which are the great objects of our fears are the chiefest tryals of our obedience for which reason they are so often in Scripture called Temptations and therefore their business is to evidence how much we will part with for obedience but by no means to excuse us when we disobey But in relation to them Christs command is this Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul but fear him who can cast both body and soul into Hell Mat. 10.28 And if we suffer our fears of them to chase us away from the owning of his Religion or to drive us from the performance of his Will his Sentence against us is plain and peremptory Whosoever is ashamed of me and my words and dare not owne them although it be in a Generation that is sinful and adulterous wherein he will be sure to suffer for the profession of them of him shall the Son of man be ashamed when he cometh in the Glory of his Father with his holy Angels Mark 8.38 As for all Fear then which drives us from our Duty it is our fault and if we stand and pause upon it and have time to deliberate and arm our selves against it if we fear still our fear is our wilful and deadly sin and doth not excuse but deserve our condemnation And such was the fear of Peter that made him deny his Lord which cost him so many penitential tears to wash off the stain of it Mat. 26.75 And in an instance of a smaller crime such was the indulged fear of Abraham when to save his own life he exposed his wife Sarah and Pharaoh King of Egypt to the danger of an adulterous mixture Gen. 12.11 12 13 15 c. Concerning which action S t Chrysostome thus discourses He participates in the Adultery of his wife and doth in a manner minister to the Adulterer unto his wife's reproach only that he himself may avoid a present death And this he did because his mind was still subject to the Tyranny of death the sting of it was not yet taken out nor his fears of it subdued but the face of it was ghastly and terrible above his courage And a like sinful practice upon a deliberate fear we meet with in Isaac in the same case who was a true Child of Abraham in his infirmities as well as in his piety Gen. 26.7 But that Fear or Grief or Anger which makes excusable and innocent discomposure must be sudden and surprizing It must seize on us suddenly and disturb our thinking powers unawares and carry us on to transgress before we can recover our selves from the discomposure And when it doth so it is forced upon us and is not chosen by us we are hurried into it without our own consent and cast upon it whether we will or no and since the inconsideration it self is thus involuntary the slips upon it are excusable and such as God will not severely punish but has been always prone to pardon and dispense with David the man after Gods own heart when he received the sad 〈◊〉 of Absoloms being slain was suddenly transported into a most impatient and indecent height of sorrow 2 Sam. 18.33 and Chap. 19. v. 2 4. Samuel who was a person so dear to God that if he could be intreated by any man he tells us it would be by him or Moses standing to intercede before him did yet in an instance that would have drawn him into the hazard of his life dispute Gods command when he should have performed it and question where in duty it became him to obey For when God bid him go and anoint David King which service was sure to draw upon him the cruel and implacable hatred of Saul through the sudden force of that frightful thought instead of obeying he answers again saying How can I go for if Saul hear of it he will kill me 1 Sam. 16.1 2. And a like instance we have of Moses's infirmity when God was for sending him upon an Errand as hazardous and much more difficult viz. his deliverance of the poor oppressed Israelites from the cruel Bondage of the powerful Egyptians Exod. Chap. 3 and 4. And Paul and Barnabas two great Apostles and most eminently pious Servants of Jesus Christ in the bitterness of dispute and heat of quarrel
is no avoiding of it For the Laws of God which are impositions superinduced upon our Natures by their prohibitions make several of our most natural appetites and desires themselves to be sinful the lusts of the Flesh making up a good part of the prohibitions of the Gospel But although God by his after-prohibition has made them sinful yet from that natural necessity which he had laid upon us before we cannot live intirely free from them For our Flesh will lust and make offers after such things as are naturally fitted to its liking and we cannot help it because our Bodies so long as they are conversant among the things of this World from their natural frame and constitution will still be delighted with some things to crave and desire and pained by others to hate and abhor them This I say is natural whilst there is any life and sense in our Bodies the good and evil things of the world must of necessity thus sensibly affect them and where they are affected with pleasure there 't is natural for them to desire as where they feel pain 't is natural for them to abhor the thing which occasions and produces it These first lustings then and cravings after forbidden things are natural and were made necessary before the prohibition came to make them sinful And if by an after-Law men shall be condemned for being sensibly affected with outward things or for having a sudden lust and inclination after them upon their being so sensibly affected with them then shall they be condemned for what they could not help and dye for not performing impossibilities But God neither can nor doth make any Laws which exact things so rigorous He punishes nothing in us but what proceeded from our own will nor exacts an account of us for our natural lusts and inclinations further than they are subject to our own choice and free disposal If a sudden fear or an unclean desire arise up in the heart of an holy man from the presence of outward objects or inward imaginations and the natural temper of his Blood and Spirits he shall not be put to answer for it because he could not prevent it He could no more hinder it than he can hinder the beating of his heart or the motion of his blood seeing it was no free work of his will but a natural effect of his temper And to be condemned for that is to suffer for having flesh and blood as well as Reason and Spirit and to undergo punishment for being made up of Body as well as Soul for being a man and not an Angel As for several things indeed which follow upon the first suggestion of a prohibited object and upon the first lusting after it they are not the effects of nature but of our own choice For though a fancy of evil and a sudden lusting after it from its fansied agreeableness may obtrude it self upon us whether we will or no either by chance or by occasion of a temptation yet a continued entertainment of it and a stay upon it in our imaginations to cherish lust and inflame desire cannot come upon us but by our own liking and connivence For as soon as ever we can observe them our thoughts are our own to dispose of how and upon what we please The first thought 't is true is not always in our power to hinder because many times it comes upon us e're we can observe it For our souls as I have sometimes said are souls in flesh and make use of our bodily powers in their most spiritual operations being linked so fast to them as that they cannot but communicate and be affected with them But then the stay upon it and the continued attention to it in after-entertainment is a thing that cannot be so suddenly forced upon us but we give way to it only when and how long we our selves please So that whatsoever the first fancy and desire of evil was the after-entertainment is our own seeing it came not from any necessity of nature but from the free determination or connivence of our own will But yet even these after-thoughts and inclinations after forbidden things are not always an Article of our condemnation but then only when we consent to them or practise and fulfil them For if the forbidden thing is only fansied in our minds and craved by our appetites but has got no consent of our hearts nor any endeavours of our lives and actions according to the gracious terms of that Gospel whereby we must stand or fall it is not yet come within the terrours of Judgment nor has made us liable to Death and Hell For the evil and danger of our bodily desires we must know is the evil and danger of a temptation When our appetites desire what the prohibition has made evil and our Spirits on the other side declare what the Commandment has made good then is the time of temptation or tryal whether our wills are resolved to stick to our lusts or to our Duty and whether they will prefer God or sin And herein lyes the great danger of our natural appetites for although in themselves they are not deadly and damning to any man otherwise good yet are they traps and snares to deadly and damning sins In themselves I say to any Christian man who is otherwise good and vertuous our natural appetites are not deadly and damning The lusting and inclination of our Flesh after Meats and Drinks and after ease and pleasures and the lusting of the eye after gain and riches are not absolutely and directly forbidden or in themselves and before they have got any further an Article of our condemnation No all the desires of the Flesh are naturally necessary some to preserve our own persons and some to the preservation and propagation of Mankind This God himself has made and he allows of it It is no mans sin to have a stomach to his meat or to have desires after ease and a fleshly inclination after bodily pleasures because God has so framed our Bodies that they should and therefore he cannot be angry with us if we do desire them Indeed he has not left these desires to their own swing but has put several restraints upon them he has bound them up from some objects and in some degrees For we are forbid to desire and lust after meat and drink ease and pleasure riches and plenty when either we are injurious to other men in procuring that which we lust after or when we are excessive and intemperate in the use of it or for its sake transgress any other Commandment Our desires of meat and drink for instance must not carry us on to excessive measures in gluttony and drunkenness our carnal lusts must not draw us on to act them with undue objects in fornication adultery rapes or other prohibited uncleannesses and our desire of money must not betray us into thefts or robberies fraud and circumvention extortion and oppression niggardliness uncharitableness
matter of condemnation although before it were uncondemning For then when lust hath conceived by being in some imperfected measure willed and consented to it bringeth forth answerable to its conception which is but an imperfect sort of production an imperfect embryo of sin and this embryo of sin when by a full choice and perfect consent and much more when by action and practice it is finished bringeth forth its proper wages death Jam. 1.14 15. Although these lustings and desires therefore which good men complain of may justly be an imployment of their watchfulness and care yet ought they not to be a cause of their fear or scruple For it shall not bring upon them those evils which they are afraid of nor ever prove their ruine and destruction The evil thing is entertained only in a thought or a wish they lust after it and are tempted by it but that is all for they do not consent to the temptation And since their lusts go no further than thus they shall not harm them when Christ comes to Judgment nor ever bring them into condemnation CHAP. V. Of two other Causes of groundless Scruple to good Souls The CONTENTS A second cause of scruple is their unaffectedness or distraction sometimes in their prayers Attention disturbed often whether we will or no. A particular cause of it in fervent prayers Fervency and affection not depending so much upon the command of our wills as upon the temper of our bodies Fervency is unconstant in them whose temper is fit for it God measures us not by the fixedness of our thoughts or the warmth of our tempers but by the choice of our wills and the obedience of our lives Other qualifications in prayer are sufficient to have our prayers heard when these are wanting Yea those Vertues which make our prayers acceptable are more eminently shown in our obedience so that it would bring down to us the blessings of prayer should it prove in those respects defective A third cause of scruple is the danger of idle or impertinent words mentioned Matth. 12.36 The scruple upon this represented The practical errour of a morose behaviour incurred upon it This discountenanced by the light of Nature and by Christianity The benefits and place of serious Discourse Pleasureable conversation a great Field of Vertue The idle words Matth. 12 not every vain and useless but false slanderous and reproachful words this proved from the place ANother thing which disquiets the hearts of good and honest men and makes them needlesly to call in question the saveableness of their present state and their title to salvation is the coldness and unaffectedness the unsettledness and distractions which they find in themselves when they are at prayers Good people are wont to cry out of desertions to think that God has thrown them off and that his Spirit has forsaken them if at any time they find a great distraction and dulness of Spirit in their devotions and a great abatement of that zeal and fervency that fixedness and attention which they have happily enjoyed at other times But this is a great mistake from mens ignorance of Gods Laws and of their own selves For God has no where told them that he will judge them at the last day by the steadiness and fixedness the tide and fervency of their devotions but by the integrity of their hearts and the uprightness of their obedience The last Sentence shall not pass upon men according to the heat of their affections but according to the goodness of their lives So that if they have been careful to practise all God's Commandments according to their power and opportunities and this of prayer among the rest in such sort as their unavoidable infirmities would suffer them they shall be safe in that Judgment notwithstanding any inequality in their bodily tempers or unconstancy and abatement in their bodily affections To state this business so as that we may neither be unnecessarily scrupulous about these qualifications of our prayers when we cannot nor on the other side irreligiously careless of them when we might enjoy them I shall say something of their necessity when they can be had as well as of that allowance which God will make to them when through any bodily indispositions or unforeseen accidents they cannot If we would put up our prayers to God in such manner as it is fit for us to offer them in or for him to hear them we must make them with a due fixedness and attention of mind and fervency of affection We must offer them up with a due fixedness and attention of mind Our thoughts must go along with our lips and our souls must be intent upon the business which we are about when we are making our prayers to God We must not expect that he should mind those vain words and mere talk which we do not or that he should hear us when we do not hear our selves No it is the work of the Soul and not the bare labour of the lips which he attends to so that if only our Tongues pray but our minds are straying this is as good as no prayer at all We must offer them up also with much earnestness of desire and fervency of affection We must shew that we put a price upon a mercy before we are fit to receive it for otherwise there is no assurance that we shall be duely thankful for it We must not seem cold and indifferent after it for that is a sign that we can almost be as well content without it But we must be eager in our desire and express a fervency of affection after it such as we are wont to use in the pursuit of any thing which we greatly value and this is an inducement for God to give us that which he sees we so dearly love it sets a price upon his blessings and shews the measure of our own vertuous inclinations and therefore he will encourage and reward it The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man says S t James availeth much Jam. 5.16 Thus are a due attention of mind and a fervent heat of desire in devotion such qualifications as are necessary to render our prayers becoming either us to offer or God to hear so that we must always strive and according to our power and present circumstances endeavour after them We must take care as much as we can to compose our thoughts when we pray to draw them off from other things for some time before and still to bring them back again when at any time we find them wandring And we must endeavour also by a due sense of the necessity the greatness and undeservedness of Gods mercies to heighten our affections and make them bend vigorously and eagerly after those things which we pray for that so God seeing we are serious and in earnest with him he may be induced to grant those benefits which we desire of him But then on the other hand if after all our care
and pains in fixing of our thoughts and raising of our desires through some bodily indisposition or unforeseen accidents which we cannot help our minds run sometimes still astray and our desires are cold and languid this unwill'd dulness and distraction shall not influence our main state it is a thing which we cannot help and no man living is perfectly free from it and therefore God will not be severe upon it but in great mercy he will pity and connive at it For as for the attention of our minds and the fixedness of our thoughts either in prayer or in any other business it is a thing which is not always in our own power but may be hindred and interrupted by many accidents whether we will or no. For any thing that makes our bodily spirits tumultuary and restless renders our attention small and interrupted Any high motion of our blood any former impression upon our spirits either by our precedent studies or our crowd of business will make great variety of thoughts and roving fancies obtrude themselves upon us and this is our natural frame and constitution which we must submit to and cannot remedy We can no more prevent it than we can prevent our dreams but our fancies will be struck and diverting thoughts will be thrown into us whether we will or no. For from the natural union of our souls and bodies our minds in their most spiritual operations of thinking and understanding go along with our bodily spirits and apprehend after their impressions and we can as well refuse to see when our eyes are open or to taste what is put into our mouths as we can refuse to have a thought of those things which are impressed upon our bodily fancy or imagination The connexion betwixt these is necessary and natural and there is no breaking or avoiding it So that let us be either at our prayers or at any other exercise if any temper of our bodies any accidental motion of our blood any former impressions of foregoing studies or other business stir in our fancies our thoughts must needs be diverted and our attention disturbed by them Nay in our prayers we are more apt to find it thus than in any other thing For there men oft-times use violence and screw up the fixedness of their minds and the fervency of their hearts to the highest pitch and then their bodily spirits being overstrained are liable not only to be discomposed by outward accidents but also to give back and fall of themselves and when in this manner they withdraw there is room made till they can be again recollected for other thoughts to arise instead of them All this I say happens from the very nature and frame of our bodies and from that dependance which our minds and thoughts themselves have upon them so that we cannot prevent or overcome it wholly We may and ought indeed to strive against these distractions as much as we can and to compose our thoughts as much as our natural temper or our present circumstances will suffer us when they wander in our prayers as soon as we discern it we may recollect them and when other thoughts intrude as soon as they are observed we may reject them but then this is all that we can do or that God requires we should do for we cannot pray perfectly and continuedly without them And then as for the zeal and fervency of our affections whether in our prayers or in any thing else they are fickle and very changeable and do not depend so much upon the choice of our wills as upon the temper of our bodies Some upon every occasion are more warm and eager in their passions either of love or hatred hopes or fears joy or sorrow than other men either are or can be For there is a difference in tempers as well as in palates and mens passions do no more issue out upon the same things in the same eagerness than their stomachs do after the same food with the same degrees of appetite So that as for a great fervency and a vehement affection every man cannot work himself up to it because all tempers do not admit of it For zeal and affectionateness in Devotion as in other things is more a mans temper than his choice and therefore it is not to be expected that all people should be able to raise themselves up to a transporting pitch in it but only that they should who are born to it Nay even they whose natural temper fits them for a great fervency and a high affection are not able to work themselves up to it at all times For no mans temper is constant and unchangeable seeing our very bodies are subject to a thousand alterations either from things within or from others that are without us If a mans blood is put into an irregular ferment either by a cold air or an inward distemper or any discomposing accident it spoils not only the fixedness of his thoughts but the zeal of his affections likewise Let there be any damp or disorder any dulness or indisposition either upon a mans blood or spirits and the discomposure of his body is presently felt in his soul for his thoughts flag and his passions run low and all his powers are under a cloud and suffer an abatement And this every man finds in himself when he labours under a sickly and crazy temper an aking head or any other bodily indisposition For our passions are bodily powers and are performed altogether by bodily instruments they live and dye with them and are subject to all their coolings and abatements their changes and alterations And therefore as long as our bodily tempers and dispositions alter and by reason of a number of accidents whether from without or from within themselves are still changeable and unconstant the zeal and fervency of our affections must needs be so too Thus is some distraction of mind and chilness of affection either in our prayers or in pursuit of any other thing most necessarily incident to all men We cannot wholly prevent them or live altogether free from them but sometimes they will break in and seize upon us do what we can And since we cannot help them God will not be always angry or eternally torment us for them No he knows that we are flesh and blood and his love and favour to us doth not alter as our unsetled thoughts or bodily tempers do He measures us not by the fixedness of our thoughts or by the fervency of our affections which are not always in our own power but by our wills and actions which are So that if we are careful to will and chuse what is pleasing to him and from our hearts entirely to obey him we need not doubt but that whatever involuntary distractions there may be sometimes in our thoughts or abatements in our bodily tempers whilst we are at our prayers we shall still be accepted by him We shall be accepted I say and the blessings