here to be understood by it which indeed sleeping would more aptly signifie than awaking but what is co-incident therewith in the same period the exuscitation and revival of the soul. When the body falls asleep then doth the Spirit awake and the eye-lids of the morning even of an eternal day do now first open upon it 1. Therefore we shall not exclude from this season the introductive state of blessedness which takes its beginning from the blessed souls first entrance into the invisible state And the fitness of admitting it will appear by clearing these two things 1. That its condition in this life even at the best is in some sort but a sleep 2. That when it passes out of it into the invisible Regions 't is truly said to awake 1. It s abode in this mortal body is but a continual sleep its senses are bound up a drowsie slumber possesses and suspends all its faculties and powers Before the renovating change how frequently doth the Scripture speak of sinners as men a sleep Let not us sleep as do others Awake thou that sleepest and stand up from the dead c. They are in a dead sleep under the sleep of death They apprehend things as men asleep How slight obscure hovering notions have they of the most momentous things and which it most concerns them to have thorough real apprehensions of All their thoughts of God Christ Heaven Hell of Sin of Holiness are but uncertain wild guesses blind hallucinations incoherent phansies the absurdity and inconcinnity whereof they no more reflect upon then men asleep They know not these things but only dream of them They put darkness for light and light for darkness have no senses exercised to discern between good and evil The most substantial realities are with them meer shadowes and chemaera's Phansied and imagined dangers startle them as 't is wont to be with men in a dream real ones though never so near them they as little fear as they The creature of their own imagination the Lion in the way which they dream of in their slothful slumber affrights them but the real roaring Lion that is ready to devour them they are not afraid of And conversion doth but relax and intermit it doth not totally break of this sleep It as it were attenuates the consopiting fumes doth not utterly dispel them What a difficulty is it to watch but one hour There are some lucid and vivid intervals but of how short continuance how soon doth the awakened soul close its heavy eyes and fall asleep again how often do temptations surprize even such in their slumbring fits while no sense of their danger can prevail with them to watch and pray with due care and constancy least they enter thereinto Hither are most of the sins of our lives to be imputed and referr'd not to meer ignorance that we know not sin from duty or what will please God and what displease him but to a drowsie inadvertency that we keep not our spirits in a watchful considering posture Our eyes that should be ever towards the Lord will not be kept open and though we resolve we forget our selves before we are aware we find our selves overtaken Sleep comes on upon us like an armed man and we cannot avert it How often do we hear and read and pray and meditate as persons asleep as if we knew not what we were about How remarkable useful providences escape either our notice or due improvement amidst our secure slumbers How many Visits from heaven are lost to us when we are as it were between sleeping and waking I sleep but my heart waketh and hardly own the voice that calls upon us till our beloved hath withdrawn himself Indeed what is the whole of our life here but a dream The entire scene of this sensible world but a vision of the night where every man walks but in a vain shew where we are mockt with shadows our credulous sense abus'd by impostures and delusive appearances nor are we ever secure from the most destructive mischievous deception further than as our souls are possest with the apprehensions that this is the very truth of our case and thence instructed to consider and not to prefer the shadows of time before the great realities of eternity Nor is this sleep casual but even connatural to our present state the necessary result of so strict an union and commerce with the body which is to the in-dwelling Spirit as a dormitory or charnel-house rather than a mansion A soul drench't in sensuality a Leâ—â—e that hath too little of fiction in it and immur'd in a sloathful putid slesh sleeps as it were by fate not by chance and is only capable of full relief by suffering a Dissolution which it hath reason to welcome as a jubilee and in the instant of departure to sacrifice as he did with that easie and warrantable change to make a Heathen expression Scriptural Jehovae liberatori to adore and praise its great Deliverer At least accounts being once made up and a meetness in any measure attained for the heavenly inheritance c. hath no reason to regret or dread the approaches of the eternal day more than we do the return of the Sun after a dark and long-some night But as the sluggard doth nothing more unwillingly than forsake his bed nor bears any thing with more regret than to be awak't out of his sweet sleep though you should intice him with the pleasures of a Paradise to quit a smoky loathsome Cottage so fares it with the sluggish soul as if it were lodg'd in an inchanted Bed 't is so fast held by the charms of the body all the glory of the other world is little enough to tempt it out than which there is not a more deplorable Symptome of this sluggish slumbring state So deep an oblivion which you know is also naturally incident to sleep hath seiz'd it of its own Countrey of its alliances above its relation to the Father and world of Spirits It takes this earth for its home where 't is both in exile and captivity at once And as a Prince stoln away in his infancy and bred up in a beggers shed so little seeks that it declines a better state This is the degenerous torpid disposition of a soul lost in flesh and inwrapt in stupifying clay which hath been deeply resented by some Heathens So one brings in Socrates pathetically bewailing this oblivious dreaming temper of his soul which saith he had seen that pulchritude you must pardon him here the conceit of its pre-existence that neither humane voice could utter nor eye behold But that now in this life it had only some little remembrance thereof as in a dream being both in respect of place and condition far removed from so pleasant sights prest down into an earthly station and there encompast with all manner of dirt and filthiness c. And to the same purpose Plato often speaks
and he that peâ—ceiveth the operations of a strong effectual Lovâ— hath an acquaintance with God and Heaven whiâ—â— is above that of believing Faith seeth the Feaâ—â— but Love is the tasting of it And therefore it that the Holiest souls sticks closest unto God because though their reâ—soning faculty may be dâ—fective they know him by the highest and mâ— Tenacious kind of knowledge which this Worâ—â—ffâ—rdeth as I have lately shewed elsewhere â— Here you have described to you the true witness the spirit Not that of supposed Internal Voiceâ— which they are usually most taken up with whâ— have the smallest knowledge and Faith and Love and the greatest self esteem or spiritual pride with the strongest phantasies and pâ—ssiâ—ns But the objective and the sealing Testimony the Divinâ— Nature the renewed Image of God whose Children are known by being like to their Heavenly Father even by being Holy as he is Holy This is the Spirit of Adoption by which we are inclined by Holy Love to God and confidence in him to cry Abba Father and to flie unto him The Spirit of Sanctification is thereby in us the Spirit of Adoption For both signifie but the giving us that Love to God which is the filial nature and our â—athers Image And this Treatise doth happily direct thee to â—â—at faithful beholding God in Righteousness which â—ust here begin this blessed Assimilation which full â—tuition will for ever perfect It is a happy sign that God is about to repair our â—ins and divisions when he stirreth up his serâ—ants to speak so much of Heaven and to call â— the minds of impatient complainers and conâ—tious censurers and ignorant self conceited diâ—ders and of worldly unskilful and unmerciful â—stors to look to that state where all the godly shall one and to turn those thoughts to the furtherance Holiness to provoke one another to Love and to â—od works which two many lay out upon their hay â—â—d stubble And to call men from judging and â—spising each other and worse then both those out their Meats and Drinks and Dayes to study â—â—ghteousness and Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost â—r he that in these things serveth Christ in which â— Kingdom doth consist is acceptable to God and proved of men that are wise and good Let us â—â—erefore follow after the things which make for â—ace and things wherewith one may edifie anoâ—â—er whilest the contentious for meat will destroy â—e work of God Rom. 14. 17 18 19 20. The â—ion between Peace and Holiness is so strict that he â—o truly promoteth one promoteth both Heb. 12. â—4 Jam. 3. 17. The true way of our Union is exâ—lently described Eph. 4. 11 12 13 14 15 â—6 If any plain unlearned Readers shall blame the â—curateness of the stile they must remember that those persons have not the least need to hear of Heâ—ven and to be drawn up from the vanities of earâ—â— who cannot digest a looser stile As God hath endued the worthy Authour with more thâ—n ordinary measure of judiciousness 〈◊〉 soundness and accurateness of understanding 〈◊〉 seriousness spirituality and a heavenly mind we have for our common benefit the effects of these happy qualifications in this judicious heâ—venly discourse And if my recommendations mâ— in any measure further your acceptance in provement and practising of so edifying a Treatâ—â— it will answer the ends of him who waiteth with 〈◊〉 in hope for the same Salvation Rich. Baxter Acton May 30. 1668 THE BLESSEDNESSE OF THE RIGHTEOUS A Proemial Discourse to the intended Subject THe continual mixture of Good and Evil in this present state of things with its uncertain fluctuations and subjection to perpetual changes do naturally prompt a considering mind to the belief and hope of another that may be both more perfect and more permanent For certainly it could never be a design adequate or any way agreeable to the Divine Wisdom and goodness that the blessed God should raise such a thing as this lower Creation out of nothing Only to give himself the temporary pleasure of beholding the alternate Joys and Sorrows of the best part thereof his reasonable creature seated in it Nor a delight at all proportionable to an eternal happy being when he hath connaturalliz'd such a creature to this sensible world onely to take notice how variously the passions he hath planted in him may be mov'd and stir'd by this variety of occasions which he shal thence be presented with And what suddain and contrary impressions may be made upon his easie passive senses by the interchanged strokes and touches of contrary objects How quickly he can raise him into a transport of high contentment and pleasure and then how soon he can again reduce him to a very Paroxism of anguish and despair It would discover us to have very vile and low thoughts of God if we did not judge it altogether unanswerable to his perfections to design no further thing in creating this world and placing such a creature as man in it then onely to please himself for a while with such a spectacle and then at last clear the Stage and shut up all again in an eternal Silent darkness If we could suppose a man furnished with such power he would surely adde little to the reputation of his being wise or good beyond other men by a design so to use it Much less can we think it worthy of God to perpetuate such a state of things as this and continue a succession of such persons and actions as we now behold in the world through eternal generations onely to perpetuate to himself the same pleasure in the exercise of his immense power upon created natures over which he hath so infinite advantage And indeed nothing can be more unconceivable then that the great Creatour and Authour of all things should frame a Creature of so vast comprehension as the Spirit of man put into it a capacity of knowing and conversing with himself give it some prospect of his own glory and blessedness raise thereby in many boundless unsatisfied desires after him and an unexpressible pleasure in the preconceived hope of being received into the communion of that glory and blessedness and yet defeat and blast so great an expectation by the unsuspected reducement of the very subject of it again to nothing Yea and that he should deal herein as in that case he must the most hardly with the best And that such souls whose meer love and devotedness to him had made them abandon the pleasures of this life and run thorough whatsoever difficulties for his sake should fare worse then the very worst were beyond all the rest most utterly unimaginable and a thought which Pagan-reason hath not known how to digest or entertain If saith one and he speaks the sense of many another as well as his own with the dissolution of our bodies the essence of the Souls whatsoever that be should be dissolved too and for ever cease to be any thing I know not how
satisfaction and blessedness of the expecting soul. And wherein it may do so is not altogether unapprehensible Admit that a Spirit had it never been imbodied might be as well without a body or that it might be as well provided of a body out of other materials 't is no unreasonable supposition that a connate aptitude to a body should render humane souls more happy in a body sufficiently attempered to their most noble operations And how much doth relation and propriety endear things otherwise mean and inconsiderable or why should it be thought strange that a soul connaturallized tâ— matter should be more particularly inclined to a particular portion thereof So as that it should appropriate such a part and say 't is mine And will it not be a pleasure to have a vitalitâ— diffused through what even more remotely appertains to me to have every thing belonging to the Supposition perfectly vindicated from the Tyrannous dominion of death The returnâ—ing of the Spirits into a benumb'd or sleeping toe or finger adds a contentment to a maâ— which he wanted before Nor is it hence neâ—cessary the Soul should covet a re-union wiâ—â— every effluvious particle of its former body A desire implanted by God in a reasonable soul will aim at what is convenient not whâ— shall be cumbersome or monstrous And how pleasant will it be to comtemplatâ— and admire the wisdom and power of thâ— great Creatour in this so glorious a change when I shall find a Clod of Earth an Heaâ— of Dâ—st refined into a Celestial purity anâ— brightness when what was sown in corruptiâ—â— shall be raised in incorruption what was sown 〈◊〉 dishonour is raised in glory what was sown in weakness is raised in power what was sown a natural body is raised a Spiritual body When this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this mortal an immortality and death be wholly swallowed up in victory So that this awaking may well be understood to carry that in it which may bespeak it the proper season of the Saints consummate satisfaction and blessedness But besides what it carries in it self there are other more extrinsical concurrents that do further signalize this season and import a great increase of blessedness then to Gods holy ones The body of Christ is now compleated the fulness of him that filleth all in all and all the so nearly related parts cannot but partake in perfection and reflected glory of the whole There is joy in Heaven at the conversion of one sinner though he have a troublesome Scene yet to pass over afterwards in a tempting wicked unquiet world how much more when the many sons shall be all brought to glory together The designes are all now accomplished and wound up into the most glorious result and issue whereof the Divine Providence had been as in travel for so many thousand years 'T is now seen how exquisite wisdom govern'd the world and how steady a tendency the most intricate and perplexed Methods of Providence had to one stated and most worthy end Specially the constitution administration and ends of the Mediatours Kingdom are now beheld in the exact aptitudes order and conspicuous glory when so blessed an issue and success shall commend and crown the whole undertaking The Divine Authority is now universally acknowledged and adored his Justice is vindicated and satisfied his Grace demonstrated and magnified to the uttermost The whole assembly of Saints solemnly acquitted by publique sentence presented spotless and without blemish to God and adjudged to eternal blessedness 'T is the day of solemn triumph and jubilation upon the finishing of all Gods works from the creation of the world wherein the Lord Jesus appears to be glorified in his Saints and admired in all that believe Upon which ensues the resignation of the Mediatours Kingdome all the ends being now attained that the Father â—imself may be immediately all in all How aptly then are the fuller manifestations of God the more glorious display of all his Attributes the larger and more abundant Effusions of himself reserv'd as the best Wine to the last unto this joyful day Created perfections couldnot have been before so absolute but they might admit of improvement Their capacities not so large but they might be extended further and then who can doubt but that divine communications may also have a proportionable increase and that upon the concourse of so many great occasions they shall have so CHAP. XI An Introduction to the use of the Doctrine hitherto proposed The Use divided into Inferences of Truth Rules of Duty 1. Inference That Blessedness consists not in any sensual injoyment 2. Inference The Spirit of man since 't is capable of so high a Blessedness a Being of high excellency AND now is our greatest work yet behind the improvement of so momentous a truth to the affecting and transforming of hearts That if the Lord shall so far vouchsafe his assistance and blessing they may taste the sweetness feel the power and bear the impresse and image of it This is the work both of greatest necessity difficulty and excellency and unto which all that hath been done hitherto is but subservient and introductive Give me leave therefore Reader to stop thee here and demand of thee ere thou go further hast thou any design in turning over these leaves of bettering thy Spirit of getting a more refined heavenly temper of soul art thou weary of thy dross and earth and longing for the first fruits the beginnings of glory dost thou wish for a soul meet for the blessedness hitherto described What is here written is designed for thy help and furtherance But if thou art looking on these pages with a wanton rolling eye hunting for novelties or what may gratifie a prurient wit a coy and squeamish fancy Go read a Romance or some piece of Drollery know here 's nothing for thy turn and dread to meddle with matters of everlasting concernment without a serious Spirit read not another line till thou have sighed out this request Lord keep me from trifling with the things of Eternity Charge thy soul to consider that what thou art now reading must be added to thy account against the great day 'T is amazing to think with what vanity of mind the most weighty things of Religion are entertained amongst Christians Things that should swallow up our souls drink up our Spirits are heard as a tale that is told disregarded by most scorned by too many What can be spoken so important or of so tremendous consequence or of so confessed truth or with so awful solemnity and premised mention of the sacred name of the Lord as not to find either a very slight entertainment or contemptuous rejection and this by persons avowing themselves Christians We seem to have little or no advantage in urging men upon their own principles and with things they most readily and professedly assent to Their hearts are as much untouch't and void of impression by the
been all this while a sleep we saw the light that shone upon us we heard the voice that called to us wherewith shall we then excuse our selves that our desires were not mov'd that our Souls were not presently in a flame was it then that we thought all a meer fixion that we durst not give credit to his word when it brought us the report of the everlasting Glory will we avow this Is this that we will stand by or what else have we left to say have we a more plausible reason to alledge that the discovery of such a glory mov'd us not to desire it then that we believed it not sure this is the truth of our case We should feel this heavenly fire alwayes burning in our breasts If our Infidelity did not quench the coal If we did believe we could not but desire But doth not the thoughts of this shake our very souls and fill us with horrour and trembling We that should be turn'd into indignation and ready to burn our selves with our own flame and all about us if one should give us the lie that we should dare to put the lye upon the Eternal Truth upon him whose Word gave stability and being to the world who made and sustains all things by it That awful Word That Word that shivers Rocks and melts down Mountains that make the inanimate Creation tremble that cna in a moment blast all things and dissolve the frame of Heaven and Earth which in the mean time it upholds is that become with us fabulous lying breath Those God-breath'd Oracles those Heavenly Records which discover and describe this blessed state are they false and foolish Legends must that be pretended at last if men durst that is so totally void of all pretence what should be the gain or advantage accrewing to that Eternal All-sufficient being What accession should be made to that infinite self-fulness by deluding a Worm Were it consistent with his Nature what could be his design to put a cheat upon poor mortal dust If thou dare not impute it to him such a deception had a beginning but what Author canst thou imagine of it or what end did it proceed from a good mind or a bad could a good and honest mind form so horribly wicked a design to impose an universal delusion and lye upon the world in the name of the true and holy God or could a wicked mind frame a design so directly level'd against wickedness or is there any thing so aptly and naturally tending to form the World to sobriety holiness purity of conversation as the discovery of this future state of glory and since the belief of future felicity is known to obtain universally among men who could be the Author of so common a deception If thou had'st the mind to impose a lie upon all the world what course would'st thou take how would'st thou lay the design or why dost thou in this case imagine what thou knowest not how to imagine And dost thou not without scruple believe many things of which thou never had'st so unquestionable evidence or must that Faith which is the foundation of thy Religion and eternal hopes be the most suspected shaking thing with thee and have of all other the least stability and rootedness in thy soul If thou can'st not excuse thy infidelity be ashamed of thy so cold and sluggish desires of this glorious state And doth it not argue a low sordid Spirit not to desire and aim at the perfection thou art capable of not to desire that blessedness which alone is suitable and satisfying to a reasonable and spiritual being Bethink thy self a little how low art thou sunk into the dirt of the earth how art thou plunged into the mity Ditch that even thine own clothes might adhor thee Is the Father of Spirits thy Father Is the world of Spirits thy Country Hast thou any relation to that Heavenly Progeny Art thou ally'd to that blessed Family and yet undesirous of the same blessedness Can'st thou savour nothing but what smells of the Earth Is nothing grateful to thy Soul but what is corrupted by so vicious and impure a tincture are all thy delights centred in a Dunghill and the polluted pleasures of a filthy world better to thee then the eternal visions and enjoyments of Heaven what art thou all made of Earth Is thy soul stupifi'd into a Clod hast thou no sense with thee of any thing better and more excellent can'st thou look upon no glorious thing with a pleased eye Are things onely desirable and lovely to thee as they are deformed O consider the corrupted distempered state of thy Spirit and how vile a disposition it hath contracted to it self Thine looks too like the Mundan◠Spirit The Spirit of the World The Apostle speaks of it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by way of distinction we have not received the Spirit of the world but the Spirit that is from God that we might know or see and no doubt 't is desire that animates that eye 't is not bare speculative intuition and no more the things freely given us of God Surely he whose desire doth not guide his eye to the beholding of those things hath received the Spirit of the world onely A Spirit that conforms him to this world makes him think onely thoughts of this world and drive the designs of this world and speak the language of this world A Spirit that connaturalizes him to the world makes him of a temper suitable to it He breathes onely worldly breath carries a worldly aspect is of a worldly conversation O poor low spirit that such a world should with-hold thee from the desire and pursuit of such glory Art thou not ashamed to think what thy desires are wont to pitch upon while they decline and wave this blessedness Methinks thy very shame should compel thee to quit the name of a Saint or a Man To forbear numbring thy self with any that pretend to immortality and go seek Pasture among the Beasts of the Field with them that live that low animal life that thou dost and expect no other And while thou so fallest in with the world how highly dost thou gratifie the pretending and usurping God of it The great fomentor of the sensual worldy genius The Spirit it self that works in the children of disobedienence and makes them follow the course of the world hold them fast bound in worldly lusts and leaves them captive at his will causes them after his own Serpentine manner to creep and crawl in the dust of the Earth He is most intimate to this apostate world informs it as it were and actuates it in every part i◠even one great soul to it The whole world lies in that wicked one as the body by best Philosophers is said to be in the Soul The world is said to be convicted when he is judged He having fall'n from a state of blessedness in God hath involv'd the world with himself
the notice and observation of the world Moreover how can it escape thy serious reflection that if thou pretend it otherwise with thee 't is but to adde one sin to another and cover thy Carnality with Hypocrisie and Dissimulation yea while thou continuest in that temper of Spirit not to desire this blessedness as thy Supreme end the whole of thy Religion is but an empty shew an artificial disguise it carries an appearance and pretence as if thou wast aiming at God and Glory while thy heart is set another way and the bent of thy soul secretly carries thee a counter-course Hath not Religion an aspect towards Blessedness what mean thy Praying thy Hearing thy Sacramental Communion if thou have not a design for Eternal Glory what makest thou in this way if thou have not thy heart set towards this end Nor is it more dishonest and unjust then it is foolish and absurd that the disposition and tendency of thy soul should be directly contrary to the only design of the Religion thou professest and doest externally practice Thy profession and practice are nothing but self-contradiction Thou art continually running counter to thy self outwardly pursuing what thou inwardly declinest Thy real end which can be no other then what thou really desirest and settest thy heart upon and thy visibly way are quite contrary So that while thou continuest the course of Religion in which thou art engaged having taken down from before thine eyes the end which thou should'st be aiming at and which alone Religion can aptly subserve Thy Religion hath no design or end at all none at least which thou would'st not be ashamed to profess and own Indeed this temper of heart I am now pleading against an undesirousness or indifferencie of Spirit towards the eternal glory renders Religion the vainest thing in the world For whereas all the other actions of our lives have their stated proper ends Religion hath in this case none at all none to which it hath any designation in its nature or any aptness to subserve This monstrous absurdity it infers and how strange is it that it should not be reflected on That whereas if you ask any man of common understanding what he doth this or that action for especially if they be stated actions done by him in an ordinary course he can readily tell you for such and such an end But ask him why he continues any practice of Religion he cannot say in this case for what For can any man imagine what other end Religion naturally serves for but to bring men to blessedness which being no other thing then what hath been here described such as are found not to desire it really and Supremely as their end can have no real attainable end of their being religious at all To drive on a continued course and series of actions in a visible pursuit of that which they desire not and have no mind to is such a piece of folly so fond and vain a trifling that as I remember Cicero reports Cato to have said concerning the South-sayers of his time he did wonder they could look in one anothers faces and not laugh being conscious to each others impostures and the vanity of their profession so one would as justly wander that the generality of carnal men who may shrewdly guess at the temper of one anothers minds do not laugh at each other that they are joyntly engaged in such exercises of Religion to the design whereof the common and agreed temper of their Spirits do so little correspond As if all were in very good earnest for Heaven when each one knows for himself and may possibly with more Truth then Charity suppose of the rest that if they might alwayes continue in their earthly stations they had rather never come there And therefore that they desire it not Supremely and so not as their end at all consider it then that thy no-desire of this blessed state quite dispirits thy Religion utterly ravishes away its Soul leaves it a dead foolish vain thing renders it an idle impertinency not a mean to a valuable end This desire is that life of Religion all duties and exercises of piety are without it but empty Formalities Solemn pieces of Pageantrie Every service done to God but the Sacrifice of a Fool if not animated by the desire of final blessedness in him and be not part of our way thither a means designed to the attainment of it Which nothing can be that we are not put upon by the vertue of the desired end Without this Religion is not it self A continuance in well doing is as it were the body of it and therein a seeking honor glory and immortality the Soul and Spirit The desire of an Heavenly Country must run through the whole course of our Earthly Pilgrimage It were otherwise a continued errour an uncertain wandring no steady tending towards our end So that thou art a meer Vagrant if this desire do not direct thy course towards thy Fathers house And methinks all this should make thee even ashamed of thy self if thou canst not find this desire to have a settled residence and a ruling power in thy Soul then 2. Sense of praise should signifie something too as the Apostle Whatsoever things are pure lovely c. if there be any vertue any praise think of these things And hath not the eternal glory those characters upon it of purity and loveliness beyond all things Is it not a laudable and praise-worthy thing to have a mind and heart set upon that The blessed God puts a note of excellency upon this temper of Spirit But they desire a better Country that is an Heavenly Wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God c. This renders them a people worthy of him who hath called them to his kingdom and glory fit for him to own a relation to Had they been of low terrene Spirits he would have accounted it a shame to him to have gone under the name and cognisance of their God But in as much as they desire the Heavenly Country have learned to trample this terrestrial world cannot be contained within this lower Sphere nor satisfie themselves in earthly things they now discover a certain excellency of Spirit in respect whereof God is not ashamed to own a relation to them before all the world to be called their God to let men see what account he makes of such a Spirit Yea this is the proper genuine Spirit and temper of a Saint which agrees to him as he is such He is begotten to the eternal inheritance A disposition and therein a desire to it is in his very nature the new nature he hath received implanted there from his original He is born Spirit of Spirit and by that birth is not intituled onely but adopted and suited also to that pure and Spiritual state of blessedness That grace by the appearance whereof men are made Christians teaches also instructs unto this very thing to
visions of this Makers face that chuses thus to entertain it self on earth rather then partake the effusions of Divine glory above That had rather creep with Worms then soar with Angels associate with Bruits then with the Spirits of just men made perfect who can solve the Phaenomenon or give a rational account why there should be such a Creature as man upon the Earth abstructing from the hopes of another world who can think it the effect of an infinite wisdom or account it a more worthy design then the representing of such a Scene of actions and affairs by Puppets on a Stage for my part upon the strictest enquiry I see nothing in the life of man upon earth that should render it for it self more the matter of a rational election supposing the free option given him in the first moment of his being then presently again to cease to be the next moment Yea and is there not enough obvious in every mans experience to incline him rather to the contrary choice and supposing a future blessedness in another world to make him passionately desirous with submission to the Divine pleasure of a speedy dismission into it Do not the burdens that press us in this earthly taâ—ernacle teach our very sense and urge opprest nature into involuntary groans while as yet our consideration doth intervene And if we do consider is not every thought a sting making a much deeper impression then what only toucheth our flesh and bones Who can reflect upon his present state and not presently be in pangs The troubles that follow humanity are many and great those that follow Christianity more numerous and grievous The sickness pains losses disappointments and whatsoever afflictions that are in the Apostles language humane or common to men as are all the external sufferings of Christians in nature and kind though they are liable to them upon an account peculiar to themselves which there the Apostle intimates are none of our greatest evils yet even upon the account of them have we any reason to be so much in love with so unkind â— world Is it not strange our very Bridewel should be such a Heaven to us But these things are little considerable in comparison of the more Spiritual grievances of Christians as such that is those that afflict our Souls while we are under the conduct of Christ designing for a blessed eternity if we indeed make that our business and do seriously intend our spirits in order thereto The darkness of our beclouded minds The glimmering ineffectual apprehension we have of the most important things the inconsistency of our shattered thoughts when we would apply them to Spiritual Objects The great difficulty of working off an ill frame of heart and the no less difficulty of retaining a good our being so frequently tost as between Heaven and Hell when we sometimes think our selves to have even attained and hope to descend no more and are all on a suddain plung'd in the Ditch so as that our own Clothes might abhor us fall so low into an earthly temper that we can like nothing Heavenly or Divine and because we cannot are enforced justly most of all to dislike our selves Are these things little with us How can we forbear to cry out of the depths to the Father of our Spirits that he would pity and relieve his own Off-spring yea are we not weary of our crying and yet more weary of holding in How do repell'd Temptations return again and vanquished Corruptions recover strength We know not when our work is done We are miserable that we need to be always watching and more miserable that we cannot watch but are so often surprized and overcome of evil We say sometimes with our selves we will seek relief in retirement but we cannot retire from our selves or in converse with Godly friends but they sometimes prove snares to us and we to them Or we hear but our own miseries repeated in their complaints would we pray How faint is the breath we utter How long is it ere we can get our Souls possest with any becoming apprehensions of God or lively sense of our own concernments Would we meditate We sometimes go about to compose our thoughts but we may as well assay to hold the Windes in our fist If we venture forth into the world how do our Senses betray us How are we mockt with their impostures Their neerer objects become with us the onely realities and eternal things are all vanisht into airie shadowes Reason and Faith are laid asleep and our Sense dictates to us what we are to believe and do as if it were our only guide and Lord. And what are we not yet wearie Is it reasonable to continue in this State of our own choice Is misery become so natural to us so much our element that we cannot affect to live out of it Is the darkness and dirt of a dungeon more grateful to us then a free open air and sun Is this Flesh of ours so lovely a thing that we had rather suffer so many deaths in it then one in putting it off and mortality with it While we carry it about us our Souls impart a kind of life to it and it gives them death in exchange Why do we not cry out more feelingly O wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this Body of Death Is it not grievous to us to have so cumbersome a yoke-fellow to be tied as Mezentius is said to have done the living and the dead together Do not we find the Distempers of our Spirits are mostly from these bodies we are so in love with either as the proper Springs or as the occasion of them From what cause is our drowsy sloth our eager passions our aversion to Spiritual objects but from this impure Flesh or what else is the Subject about which our vexatious cares or torturing fears our bitter griefs are taken up day by day And why do we not consider that 't is onely our love to it that gives strength and vigour to the most of our temptations as wherein it is more immediately concern'd and which makes them so often victorious thence to become our after-afflictions He that hath learn'd to mortifie the inordinate love of the Body will he make it the business of his life to purvey for it Will he offer violence to his own Soul to secure it from violence will he comply with mens Lusts and humors for its advantage and accommodation or yeild himself to the tyranny of his own avarice for its future or of his more-sensual Lusts for it s present content Will it not rather be pleasing to him that his outward man be exposed to perish while his inward man is renewed day by day He to whom the thoughts are grateful of laying it down will not though he neglect not duty towards it spend his days in its continual Service and make his Soul an hell by a continual provision for the flesh and
he would much less have made a difficultie to concede such bodies also to humane souls after they had lost their terrestial ones as his sectators do not who hold they then presently become Daemons In the mean time 't is evident enough the doctrine of the separate souls present blessedness is not destitute of the patronage and suffrage of Philosophers And 't is indeed the known opinion of as many of them as ever held its immortality which all of all Ages and nations have done a very few excepted for in as much as they knew nothing of the resurrection of the bodie they could not dream of a slâ—epiâ—g interval And 't is at least a shrewd presumption that nothing in reason lies against it when no one instance can be given among them that professedly gave up themselves to its only guidance of any one that granting the immortality of the soul and its separableness fâ—om its terrestrial body ever denied the immediate blessedness of good souls in that state of separation Nor if we look into the thing it self is it at all more unapprehensible that the soul should be independent on the body in its operations then in its exist 〈◊〉 If it be possible enough to form an unexceptionable notion of a spiritual being distinct and separable from any corporeal substance which the learned Doctor More hath sufficiently demonstrated in his Treatise of the immortalitie of the Soul with its proper attributes and powers peculiar to it self what can reasonablely with-hold me from assenting that being separate from the body it may as well operate alone I mean exert such operations as are pâ—oper to such a being as exist alone That we find it here de facto in its present state acting only with dependence on a bodie will no more infer that it can act no otherwise then its present existence in a body will that it can never exist out of it neither whereof amounts to more then the trifling exploded argument à non esse ad non posse and would be as good sense as to say such a one walks in his clothes therefore out of them he cannot move a foot Yea and the very use it self which the soul now makes of corporeal organs and instruments plainlie â—vinces that it doth exert some action wherein they assist it not For it supposes an operation upon them antecedent to any operation by them Nothing can be the instrument which is not first the subject of my action as when I use a pen I act upon in order to my acting by it i. e. I impress a motion upon it in order whereunto I use not that or any other such instrument And though I cannot produce the designed effect leave such characters so and so figured without it my hand can yet without it perform its own action proper to it self and produce many nobler effects When therefore the soul makes use of a bodily organ its action upon it must needs at last â—e without the ministry of any organ unless you multiply to it bodie upon bodie in infiniâ—um And if possibly it perform not some meaner and grosser pieces of drudgerie when out of the body wherein it made use of its help and service before that is no moâ—e a disparagement or dimunution then it s to the Magistrate that law and decency permit him not to apprehend or execute a Malefactor with his own hand It may yet perform those operations which are proper to it self that is such as are more noble and excellent and immediately conducive to its own felicitie Which sort of actions as Cogitation for instance and Dilection though being done in the body there is conjunct with them an agitation of the Spirits in the brain and heart It yet seems to me more reasonable that as to those acts the Spirits are rather subjects then instruments at all of them that the whole essence of these Acts is antecedent to the motion of the Spirits and that motion certainly but accidentally consequent only by reason of the present but soluble union the soul hath with the body And that the purity and refinedness of those Spirits doth only remove what would hinder such acts rather than contribute positively thereto And so little is the alliance between a thought and any bodily thing even those very finest Spirits themselves that I dare say whoever sets himself closely and strictly to consider and debate the matter with his own faculties will find it much more easily apprehensible how the acts of intellection and volition may be performed without those very corporeal Spirits then by them However suppose them never so indispensably necessarie to those more noble operations of the soul it may easilie be furnisht with them and in greater plentie and puritie from the ambient aire or aether than from a dull torpid body with some part of which air if we suppose it to contract a vital union I know no rational principle that is wronged by the supposition though neither do I know any that can necessarily infer it As therefore the doctrine of the souls activitie out of this earthly body hath favour and friendship enough from Philosophers so I doubt not but upon the most strict and rigid disquisition it would be as mâ—ch befriended or rather righted by Philosophie it self And that their reason would afford it as direct and more considerable defence then their Authority In the mean time it deserves to be considered with some resentment that this Doctrine should find the generality of Learned Pagans more forward Advocates then some learned and worthy Patrons of the Christian Faith which is only imputable to the undue measure and excess of an otherwise jâ—st zeal in thâ—se latter for the resurrection of the body so far transporting them that they became willing to let go one Truth that they might hold 〈◊〉 the â—â—ster and to ransome this at the too deare and unnecessary expence of the former Accounting they could never make sure enough the resurrection of the bodie without making the souls dependence on it so absolute and necessarie that it should be able to do nothing but sleep in the mean while Whereas it seems a great deal more unconceiveable how such a being as the soul is once quit of the entanglements and encumbrances of the body should sleep at all then how it should act without the body * See Dr. Hammonds annot in loc Dan 12 2 Joh. 14 12. 2 Cor. 15. 2 Thes. 4. c. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Phil 3. 20 21. 1 Thes. 4. 14 15 16. Chap. 14. 14. 1 Cor. 15. 2 Thes 1. 1 Cor. 15. Use. Dissoluti est hominis in rebus sâ—riis quaerere voluptatem Arnob. â—cientiam qui â—idicit faâ—enda viâ—nda percepit â—â—dum sapiens 〈◊〉 nisi in ea quae â—dicit transfiâ—ratus est aniâ—â—s Sen. Ep. â—4 Non prodest cibus nec corpori accedit qui statim sumptus emittitur Sen Epist. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Epitlet Psal. 49. *
I can account them blessed that never having enjoyed any good as the reward of their vertue have even perished for vertue its self Wherefore it is consequent that this present state is only intended for trial to the spirits of men in order to their attainment of a better state in a better world That is that inasmuch as the infinitely wise and blessed God had given being to such a creature as man in which both words the material and the immaterial did meet And who in respect of his Earthly and Spiritual natures had in him somewhat suitable to each And whereas this Creature had lost with his interest his very inclination to the Spiritual Objects and enjoyments of the purer immaterial world wherein alone his true blessedness could consist suffered a vile depression of his Spirit unto this gross corporal world and hereby brought himself under a necessity of being miserable his nobler part having nothing now to satisfie it but what it was become unsuitable and disaffected to His merciful Creatour being intent upon his restitution thought fit not to bring it about by a suddain and violent hand as it were to catch him into Heaven against his will But to raise his Spirit into its just Dominion and Soveraignty in him by such gradual Methods as were most suitable to a rational and intelligent nature That is to discover to him that he had such a thing as Spirit about him whence it was fall'n how low it was sunk to what state it was yet capable to be rais'd and what he had design'd and done for its happy recovery And hence by the secret and powerful insinuations of his own Light and Grace to awaken his drowsie slumbering reason and incline his perverse and wayward will to the consideration and choice of such things as that felicity consists in which that better world can afford and his better part enjoy And while he propounds such things to him how reasonable and agreeable was it that he should keep him sometime under a just probation yea how much was there in it of a gracious and compassionate indulgence often to renew the trial whether he would yet bestir himself and having so great hopes before him and such helps and aids afforded him and ready to be afforded apply at last his intellectual and elective powers to mind and close with so gracious overtures in order to his own eternal advancement and blessedness Nor was it an unreasonable expectation that he should do so For however the temporal good and evil that may constantly affect his sensitive part and powers be present and near but the eternal misery or blessedness of his Soul future and remote Yet inasmuch as he is capable of understanding the vast disproportions of time and eternity of a mortal flesh and an immortal Spirit How preposterous a course were it and unworthy of a man Yea how dishonourable and reproachful to his Maker should he prefer the momentary pleasures of narrow incapatious sence to the everlasting enjoyments of an inlarged comprehensive Spirit Or for the avoiding the pains and miseries of the former kind incur those of the latter Whence also the holy God doth not expect and require onely that men should make that wiser choice But doth most justly lay the weight of their eternal states upon their doing or not doing so And in that day when he shall render to every one according to their works make this the Rule of his final judgment To allot to them who by a patient continuance in well doing seek for honour glory and immortality eternal life To the rest indignation and wrath tribulation and anguish c. and that whether they be Jews or Gentiles Nor is it a new thing in the world that some among the children of men should in this comply with the righteous will of God and so judge and chuse for themselves as he is pleased to direct and prescribe 'T is a course approved by the concurrent suffrage of all them in all times and ages into whose minds the true light hath shined and whom God hath inspired with that wisdom whereby he maketh wise to salvation That numerous Assembly of the perfected Spirits of the just have agreed in this common resolution And did in their several generations ere they had past this state of tryal with an Heroique magnanimity trample this present World under their feet and and aspire to the glory of the world to come Relieving themselves against all the grievances they have fuffered from such whose portion is in this life with the alone hope and confidence of what they were to enjoy in another And hereof we have an eminent and illustrious instance in this Context were the ground is laid of the following Discourse THE BLESSEDNESSE OF THE RIGHTEOVS Psal. 17. 15. As for me I will behold thy Face in Righteousness I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness CHAP. I. A reflection upon some foregoing verses of the Psalm by way of Introduction to the Text. A consideration of its somewhat various readings and of its literal importance A discussion of its real importance so far as is necessary to the settling the subject of the following discourse THe Title speaks the Psalm a Prayer of David The matter of the Prayer is preservation from his enemies Not to go over the whole Psalm we have â—n the 13. and 14. verses the sum of his deâ—ires with a description of the Person he prayes to be delivered from in which Description every Character is an Argument to enforce his prayer From the Wicked q. d. They are equally enemies to thee and me not more opposite to me by their cruelty then by their wickedness they are to thee Vindicate then at once thy selfe and deliver me Thy sword thy hand Thou canst as easily command and manage them as a man may weild his sword or move his hand Wilt thou suffer thine own sword thine own hand to destroy thine own Servant Men of the world which have their portion in this life Time and this lower World bound all their hopes and fears They have no serious believing apprehensions of any thing beyond this present life therefore have nothing to withhold them from the most injurious violence if thou withhold them not Men that believe not another world are the ready Actors of any imaginable mischiefes and Tragoedies in this Whose belly thou fillest i. e. Their sensual appetite As oftentimes that term is used With thy hid Treasures viz. the riches which either God is wont to hide in the bowels of the earth or lock up in the repository of Providence dispensing them at his own pleasure They are full of Children So it appears by that which followes it ought to be read and not according to that grosse but easie mistake of some Transcribers of the Seventy As if in all this he had pleaded thus Lord thou hast abundantly indulged those men already what need they more They have
and deportments towards God and man Christ formed in the soul or put on the new creature in its being and operations the truth learned as it is in Jesus to the putting off the old man and the putting on the new More distinctly we may yet see wherein it lyes upon a premised view of some few things necessary to be foreknown in order thereunto As That this righteousness is a renewing righteousness or the righteousness of one formerly a sinner a lapsed perishing wretch who is by it restored into such a state towards God as he was in before that lapse in respect of certain great essentials though as yet his state be not so perfectly good while he is in his tendency and motion And shall by certain additionals be unspeakably better when he hath attained the end and rest he is tending to That a reasonable creature yet untainted with sin could not but have a temper of mind â—uteable to such apprehensions as these Viz. That as it was not the Author of being to it self so it ought not principally to study the pleasing and serving of it self but him who gave it being that it can no more continue and perfect it self unto blessedness than it could create it self and can therefore have no expectation hereof but from the same Author of its being And hence that it must respect and eye the great God its Creator and Maker as The Soveraign Authority whom it was to fear and obey Soveraign Good whom it was to love and enjoy But because it can perform no duty to him without knowing what he will have it do nor have any particular expectation of savours from him without knowing what he will please to bestow and is therefore obliged to attend to the revelations of his Will concerning both these It is therefore necessary that he eye him under a notion introductive and subservient to all the operations that are to be exerted towards him under the two former notions i. e. as the Eternal never failing Truth safely to be depended on as intending nothing of deceit in any the revelations whether of his righteous Will concerning matter of duty to be done or of his good Will concerning matter of benefit to be expected and enjoyed That Man did apostatize and revolt from God as considered under these severall notions And returns to him when an holy rectitude is recovered and he again becomes righteous considered under the same That it was not agreeable to Gods wisedom truth and legal justice to treat with Man a Sinner in order to his recovery but through a Mediator and that therefore he was pleased in wonderfull mercy to constitute and appoint his own Son Jesus Christ God-man unto that Office and Undertaking that through him man might return and be reconciled to himself whom he causlessely forsook designing that man shall now become so affected towards himself through the Mediator and firstly therefore towards the Mediators own person as he was before and ought to have been towards himself immediately Therefore whereas God was considerable in relation to Man both in his innocency and Apostacy under that forementioned two fold notion of the supream Authority Goodness He hath also set up and exalted our Lord Jesus Christ and represented him to Sinners under an answerable two fold notion of a Prince Saviour i. e. a mediating Prince and Saviour to give repentance first to bow and stoop the hearts of sinners and reduce them to a subject posture again and then remission of sins to restore them to favour and save them from the wrath to come Him hath the Father cloth'd with his own authority and fill'd with his grace requiring sinners to submit themselves to his ruling power and commit themselves to his saving mercy now both lodg'd in this his Son to pay him immediately all homage and obedience and through him ultimately to himself from him immediately to expect Salvation and blessedness and through him ultimately from himself That whereas the Spirits of men are not to be wrought to this temper but by the intervention of a discovery and revelation of the divine Will to this purpose Our Lord Jesus Christ is further appointed by the Father to reveal all this his counsel to Sinners And is eminently spoken of in Scripture upon this account under the notion of the Truth in which capacity he more effectually recommends to Sinners both his authority and his grace So that his three fold so much celebrated Office of King Priest Prophet the distinct parts of his general Office as Mediator which he manages in order to the reducement of lost Sinners exactly correspond if you consider the more eminent acts and properties of each Office to that threefold notion under which the Spirit of Man must alwayes have eyed and been acted towards God had he never fallen and hence this righteousness which consists in conformity to the Gospel is the former righteousness which was lâ—st with such an accession as is necessary upon consideration that it was lost and was only to be recovered by a Mediator Therefore you may now take this short and as compendious an account as I can give of it in what follows It includes so firm and understanding an assent to the truth of the whole Gospel Revelation as that the soul is thereby brought through the power of the Holy Ghost sensibly to apprehend its former disobedience to God and distance from him the reasonableness of subjection to him and desirableness of blessedness in him the necessity of a Redeemer to reconcile and recover it to God the accomplishments and designation of the Lord Jesus Christ to that purpose And hence a penitent and complacential return to God as the supream Authority and soveraign Good an humble and joyful acceptance of our Lord Jesus Christ as its Prince and Saviour with submission to his Authorâ—y and reliance on his grace the exercise of both which are founded in his blood looking and pitching upon him as the only medium through which he and his duties can please God or God and his mercies approach him and through which he hath the confidence to venture upon a Covenant-acceptance of God and surrender himself to him afterward pursued to his uttermost by a continued course of living in his fear and love in obedience to him and communion with him through the Mediator alwayes while he is passing the time of his pilgrimage in this world groaning under remaining sin and pressing after perfect holiness with an earnest expectation animating him to a persevering patience through all difficulties of a blessed eternity in the other world That such a conformity to the Gospel should be expressed by the name of righteousness cannot seem strange to such as acquaint themselves with the language of the Scripture That graoious frame which the Gospel made essential impresses upon the soul is the Kingdom of God in the passive notion of it his Kingdom received and now actually come with power upon our Spirits
blessedness Yet as this is the most noble comprehensive quick and sprightly sense so is the Act of it more considerable in the matter of blessedness than any other of the outward man and the most perfect imitation of the act of the mind whence also this so often borrows the name of the other and is called seeing 'T is an act indeed very proper and pertinent to a state of glory By how much more any sensible object is glorious supposing the sensorium to be duely disposed and fortified as must be here supposed so much is it the fitter object of Sight hence when we would express a glorious object we call it conspicuous and the lesse glorious or more obscure any thing is the less visible and approaches the nearer to invisibility whence that saying in the common Philosophy To see blackness is to see nothing Whatsoever a glorified eye replenished with a heavenly vitality and vigor can fetch in from the many glorified objects that encompasse it we must suppose to concurr to this blessedness Now is the eye satisfied with seeing which before never could But 't is intellectual sight we are chiefly to consider here that whereby we see him that is invisible and approach the inaccessible Light The word here used some Criticks tell us more usually signifies the sight of the mind And then not a casual superficial glancing at a thing but contemplation a studious designed viewing of a thing when we solemnly compose and aplly our selves thereto or the vision of Prophets or such as have things discovered to them by divine Revelation thence called Chozim Seers which imports though not a previous design yet no lesse intention of mind in the act it self And so it more fitly expresses that knowledge which we have not by discourse and reasoning out of one thing from another but by immediate intuition of what is nakedly and at once offered to our view which is the more proper knowledge of the blessed in heaven They shall have the glory of God so presented and their minds so enlarged as to comprehend much at one view in which respect they may be said in a great degree to know as they are known in as much as the blessed God comprehends all things at once in one simple act of knowing Yet that is not to be understood as if the state of glory should exclude all ratiocination more than our present state doth all intuition for first and indemonstrable principles we see by their own light without illation or argument nor can it be inconvenient to admit that while the knowledge the blessed have of God is not insinite there may be use of their discursive faculty with great fruit and pleasure Pure intuition of God without any mixture of reasoning is acknowledged by such as are apt enough to be over-ascribing to the creature peculiar to God alone But as the blessed God shall continually afford if we may speak of continuity in Eternity which yet we cannot otherwise apprehend a clear discovery of himself so shall the principall exercise and felicity of the blessed soul consist in that less labouring and more pleasant way of knowing a meer admitting or entertaining of those free beams of voluntary light by a grateful intuition which way of knowing the expression of sight or beholding doth most incline to and that is we are sure the ordinary language of Scripture about this matter CHAP. IV. The second ingredient into this Blessedness considered assimilation to God or his glory imprest Wherein it consists discovered in sundry Propositions The third ingredient The satisfaction and pleasure which results stated and opened AND now upon this Vision of the blessed face of God next follows in the order of discourse The souls perfect assimilation unto that revealed glory or its participation thereof touching the order the things themselves have to one another there will be consideration had in its proper place and this also must be considered as a distinct and necessary ingredient into the state of blessedness we are treating of Distinct it is for though the vision now spoken of doth include a certain kind of assimilation in it as all vision doth being only a reception of the species or likeness of the Object seen This assimilation we are to speak of is of a very different kind That is such as affects only the visive or cognitive power and that not with a real change but intentional onely nor for longer continuance than the act of seeing lasts but this is total real and permanent And surely it is of equal necessity to the souls blessedness to partake the glory of God as to behold it as well to have the divine-likeness imprest upon it as represented to it After so contagious and over-spreading a depravation as sin hath diffus'd through all its powers it can never be happy without a change of its very crasis and temper throughout A diseased ulcerous body would take little felicity in gay and glorious sights no more would all the glory of heaven signifie to a sick deformed self-loathing soul. It must therefore be all glorious within have the Divine nature more perfectly communicated the likeness of God transfus'd and wrought into it This is the blessed work begun in Regeneration but how far it is from being perfected we may soon find by considering how far short we are of being satisfied in our present state even in the contemplation of the highest and most excellent Objects How tasteless to our souls are the thoughts of God! How little pleasure do we take in viewing over his glorious Attributes the most acknowledged and adorable excellencies of his Being And whereto can we impute it but to this that our spirits are not yet sufficiently connaturallized to them Their likeness is not enough deeply instamped on our souls nor will this be till we awake when we see better we shall become better When he appears we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is But do we indeed pretend to such an expectation Can we think what God is and what we are in our present state and not confesse these words to carry with them an amazing sound we shall be like him How great an hope is this How strange an errand hath the Gospel into the world How admired a design to transform men and make them like God! Were the dust of the earth turned into stars in the firmament were the most stupendous poetical transformations assured realities what could equal the greatness and the wonder of this mighty change Yea and doth not the expectation of it seem as presumptious as the issue it self would be strange Is it not an over bold desire too daring a thought a thing unlawful to be affected as it seems impossible to be attained It must be acknowledged there is an appearance of high arrogance in aspiring to this to be like God And the very wish or thought of being so in all respects were not
not uncapable of them or that hath its powers bound up by a stupifying sleep It s the rest of hope perfected in fruition not lost in despair of satisfied not defeated expectation Despair may occasion rest to a mans body but not to his mind or a cessation from further endeavours when they are constantly found vain but not from trouble and disquiet It may suspend from action but never satisfie This satisfaction therefore speaks both the realitie and nature of the souls rest in glory that it rests and with what kind of rest CHAP. V. The relative consideration of these three ingredients of the Saints blessedness Where it is propounded to shew particularly 1. What relation Vision hath to Assimilation 2. What both these have to Satisfaction The relation between the two former inquired into an entrance upon the much larger Discourse what relation and influence the two former have towards the third What Vision of Gods Face or glory contributes towards Satisfaction Estimated from the consideration 1. Of the Object the glory to be beheld as 't is divine entire permanent appropriate THUS far have we view'd the parts or necessary concurrents of which the blessedness of the Saints must be composed absolutely and severally each from other We proceed Secondly to consider them relatively viz. in the mutual respects they bear one to another as they actually compose this blessed state wherein we shall shew particularly 1. The relation by way of inâ—luence and dependence between Vision and Assimilatioâ— 2. Between both these and the satisfaction that insues Which latter I intend more to dwell upon and only to touch the former as a more speculative and lesse improvable subject of Discourse in my way to this 1. First It may be considered what relation there may be between vision of God and assimilation or being made like to him and it must be acknowledged according to what is commonly observed of the mutual action of the understanding and will that the sight of God and likeness to him do mutually contribute each towards other The sight of God assimilates makes the soul like unto him that likeness more disposes it for a continued renewed vision It could never have attained the beatifical vision of God had it not been prepared thereto by a gradual previous likeness to him For righteousness which we have shewn qualifies for this blessedness consists in a likeness to God and it could never have been so prepared had not some knowledge of God introduced that conformity and yielding bent of heart towards him For the entire frame of the new man made after the image of God is renewed in knowledge But as notwithstanding the circular action of the understanding and will upon one another there must be a beginning of this course some-where and the understanding is usually reckon'd the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the first mover the leading faculty So notwithstanding the mutual inâ—luence of these two upon each other seeing hath a natural precedency and must lead the way unto being like Which is sufficiently intimated in the Text I shall behold thy face and then I shall be satisfied with thy likeness and more fully in that parallel Scripture We shall â—e like him for we shall see him c. From whence also and from the very nature of the thing we may fitly state the relation of the first of these to the second to be that of a cause to its effect Sight begets likeness is antecedent to it and productive of it That is the face or glory of God seen that glory in conjunction with our vision of it for the vision operates not but according to the efficaciousness of the thing seen nor can that glory have any such operation but by the intervention of vision T is therefore the glory of God seen as seen that assimilates and impresses its likeness upon the beholding Soul and so its causality it is that of an objective cause which whether it belong to the efficient or final I shall not here dispute that operates onely as it is apprehended so introducing its own form and similitude into the subject it works upon Such a kind of cause were Jacobs streaked rods of the productions that ensued and such a cause is any thing whatever that begets an impression upon an apprehensive subject by the mediation and ministry whether of the phancy or understanding This kind of causality the word hath in its renewing transforming work and the Sacraments wherein they are 〈◊〉 of real physical mutations on the Subjects of them So much of the Image of God as is here imprest upon souls by Gospel dispensations so much is imprest of his glory The work of grace is glory begun And now as glory initial and progressive in this life enters at the eye beholding as in a glasse the glory of the Lord we are changed so doth perfect and consumate glory in the other life For we have no reason to imagine to our selves any alteration in the natural order the powers of the soul have towards each other by its passing into a state of glory The Object seen is unspeakably efficacious the Act of intuition is full of lively vigour the Subject was prepared and in a disposition before and what should hinder but this glorious effect should immediately ensue as the Sun no sooner puts up its head above the Hemisphere but all the vast space whether it can diffuse its beams is presently transformed into its likenesse and turned into a Region of light What more can be wanting to cause all the darkness of Atheism carnality and every sting of sin for ever to vanish out of the awaking soul and an intire frame of holiness to succeed but one such transforming sight of the face of God one sight of his glorioâ—â— Majesty presently subdues and works it to 〈◊〉 full subjection one sight of his purity makes 〈◊〉 pure one sight of his lovelinesse turns it into 〈◊〉 and such a sight alwayes remaining the impress remains alwayes actually besides that it is in it self most habitual and permament in the souls now confirmed state fresh and lively The Object hath quite another aspect upon a wicked soul when it awakes and the act of seeing is of another kind therefore no such effect follows besides the subject is otherwise disposed and therefore as the Sun inlightens not the inward parts of an impervious dung-hill but it inlightens air so the sight of God transforms and assimilates at last not a wicked but it doth a godly soul. That which here makes the greatest difference in the temper of the subject is Love I look upon the face of a stranger and it moves me not but upon a friend and his face presently transforms mine into a lively cheerful aspect As iron sharpens iron so doth the face of a man his friend puts a sharpness and a quickness into his looks The soul that loves God opens it self to him admits his influences and impressions
divine wisdom in that former Notion when in that glasse that speculum aeternitatis we shall have the lively view of all that truth the knowledge whereof can be any way possible and grateful to our natures and in his light see light when all those vast treasures of wisedom and knowledge which already by their alliance to Christ Saints are interested in shall lye open to us When the tree of Knowledge shall be without enclosure and the most voluptuous Epicurism in reference to it be innocent Where there shall neither be lust nor forbidden fruit no withholding of desirable knowledge nor affectation of undesirable When the pleasure of speculation shall be without the toil and that maxime be eternally antiquated that increased knowledge increases sorrow As to the other notion of it how can it be lesse grateful to behold the wisdom that made and govern'd the world that compast so great designs and this no longer in its effects but in it self Those works were honourable and glorious sought of all them that have pleasure in them What will be the glory of their cause It would gratifie some mens curiosity to behold the unusual motion of some rare automaton but an ingenious person would with much more pleasure prie into the secret Springs of that motion and observe its inward frame and parts and their dependence and order each to other 'T is comely to behold the exterior oeconomy of a well govern'd people when great affairs are by orderly conduct brought to happy issues but to have been at the helm to have seen the pertinent proper application of such and such maximes to the incident cases to have known all the reasons of state heard debates observ'd with what great sagacity inconveniencies have been foreseen and with what diligence prevented would much more gratifie an inquiring Genius When the Records of Eternity shall be exposed to view all the counsels and results of that profound wisdom lookt into how will it transport when it shall be discern'd loâ— thus were the designes laid here were the apt junctures and admirable dependencies of things which when acted upon the stage of the world seem'd so perplext and crosse so full of mysterious intricacy If Saint Paul were so ravisht at those more obscure appearances of divine wisdom which we find him admiring Rom. 11. 33. O the depths c. what satisfaction will it yield to have a perfect modell of the deep thoughts and counsels of God presented to open view How is the happiness of Solomons Servants magnified that had the priviledge continually to stand before him and hear his wisdom But this happiness will be proportionably greater as Solomons God is greater than he 2. The glory of his power will add comliness to the Object of this Vision Power duly placed and allay'd is lovely Beauty consists much in a Symmetrie or proportion of parts So must there be a concurrence of divine perfections to compose and make up the beautiful complexion of his face to give us a right aspect the true Idea of God And here his power hath a necessary ingrediency How incoherent and disagreeing with it self were the motion of an impotent God His power gives lively strokes to his glory 'T is called glorious power or the power of glory Yea 't is simply called glory it self the Apostle tells us Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father when 't is plain he means power And the same Apostle prayes on the behalf of the Ephesians that God would grant them according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might c. How frequently are power and glory ascribed to him in conjunction intimating that as he is powerful he is glorious And certainly even this glory cannot but cast a grateful aspect upon the blessed soul and be infinitely pleasant to behold What triumphs doth it now raise in gracious Spirits to behold the exertions of it in his works to read its descriptions in his word while as yet he holds back the face of his throne while the countenance of inthroned Majesty cannot be seen when so little a portion is heard of him and the thunder of his power so little understood The infinitely fainter Rayes of this power in a creature power in that unspeakable diminution and abatement that derived precarious power when 't is innocently used is observed with pleasure Here is power in the throne power in its chief and highest seat essential and self-originated power the root and fountain the very Element of power power in its proper situation in its native place to which it belongs God hath spoken once twice have I heard this that power belongeth unto God It languishes in a Creature as in an alien Subject If I speak of strength lo he is strong saith Job q. d. Created power is not worth the speaking of Here is the power that deserves the name that is so indeed How satisfying a pleasure will this afford to contemplate this radical power this all-creating all-ruling power the principle of all action motion and life throughout the whole Creation This will be as natural a pleasure as the Child takes in the Mothers bosom and in imbracing the womb that bare it How grateful to behold whence the vast frame of nature Sprang what stretcht out the Heavens established the Earth sustained all things what turned the mighty Wheels of Providence throughout all the successions of time what ordered and changed times and seasons chained up Devils restrained the outrages of a tumultuous world preserved Gods little Flock especially what gave Being to the new Creation The exceeding greatness of power that wrought in them that believed c. what made hearts love God imbrace a Saviour what it was that overcame their own and made them a willing people in that memorable day How delightful a contemplation to think with so inlarged an understanding of the possible effects of this power and so far as a creature can range into infinity to view innumerable creations in the creative power of God And yet how pleasant to think not only of the extents but of the restraints of this power and how when none could limit it became ordinate and did limit it self that since it could do so much it did no more turned not sooner a degenerous world into flames withhheld it self from premature revenge that had abortiv'd the womb of Love and cut off all the hopes of this blessed Eternity that is now attained This also speaks the greatness of power Let the power of my Lord be great according as thou hast spoken the Lord is gracious long-suffering c. This was his mightiest power whereby he overcame himself Fortior est qui se c. 3. And what do we think of the ravishing aspects of his Love when it shall now be open fac'd and have laid aside its vail when his amiable smiles shall be chekered with no
therefore in this happy state of subjection and conjure you to beg for me of God the solid sense of these words And do we think my God and my all or my God and my glory will have lost its emphasis in heaven or that 't will be less significant among awaked souls These things concur then concerning the object 't is most excellent even divine entire permanent and theirs How can it but satisfie CHAP. VI. What the Vision of Gods face contributes to the Souls satisfaction Estimated from the consideration of the act of vision it self Wherein this pleasure surpasses that of sense A comparison pursued more at large between this intuition and discourse between it and Faith This intuition more absolutely considered its characters and why they contribute to the satisfaction of the blessed Souls That 't is viz. efficacious comprehensive fixed appropriative THe act of vision or intuition it self How great the pleasure will be that accrues to the blessed from this sight of Gods face is very much also to be estimated from the nature of the act as well as the excellency of the object In as much as every vital act is pleasant the most perfect act of the noblest facultie of the soul must needs be attended with highest pleasure 'T is a pleasure that most nearly imimates divine pleasure And every thing is more perfect as it more nearly approaches divine perfection Intellectual pleasure is as much nobler than that of sense as an immortal Spirit is more noble than a clod of earth The pleasure of sense is drossie feculent the pleasure of the mind refined and pure that is faint and languid this lively and vigorous that scant and limited this ample and inlarged that temporary and fading this durable and permanent that flashie superficial this solid and intense that raving and distracted this calm and composed Whence even that great reputed sensualist Epicure himself professedly disclaimes or is represented as disclaiming the conceit of placing happiness in sensual delights And as the pleasure of intellection excells all the pleasure of sense so doth the pleasure of intuition excel all other intellectual pleasure Let us to this purpose but consider generally this way of knowing things and compare it with those two other waves by Discouse Faith 1. Discourse I mean that I be not mistaken by the vulgar Reader the discourse of the mind or ratiocâ—nation that way of attaining the knowledge of things by comparing one thing with another considering their mutual relations connexions dependencies and so arguing out what was more doubtful and obscure from what was more known and evident To the altogether unlearned it will hardly be conceiveable and to the learned it need not be told how high a gratification this employment of his Reason naturally yields to the mind of a man When the harmonious contexture of truths with truths the apt coincidence the secret links and junctures of coherent notions are clearly discerned When effects are traced up to their causes Properties lodg'd in their native subjects Things sifted to their Principles What a pleasure is it when a man shall apprehend himself regularly led on though but by a slender thred of discourse through the Labyrinths of nature when still new discoveries are successfully made every further enquiry ending in a further prospect and every new Scene of things entertaining the mind with a fresh delight How many have suffered a voluntary banishment from the world as if they were wholly strangers and unrelated to it rejected the blandishments of sense macerated themselves with unwearied studies for this pleasure making the ease and health of their bodies to give place to the content and satisfaction of their minds But how much intuition hath the advantage above this way of knowledge may be seen in these two obvious respects 1. 'T is a more facile way of knowing Here is no need of a busie search a tiresome indagation the difficulty whereof makes the more slothful rather trust than try a chaining together of consequencies The Soul hath its cloathing its vestment of light upon as cheap terms as the Lilies theirs doth neither toyl nor spin for it And yet Solomon in all the glory of his famed wisdom was not aray'd like it This knowledge saves the expence of study is instantaneous not successive The soul now sees more at one view in a moment than before in a lifes-time As a man hath a speedier and more grateful prospect of a pleasant Country by placing himself in some commodious station that commands the whole Region than by travelling through it 'T is no pains to look upon what offers it self to my eye Where there is a continued series of consequencies that lie naturally connected the soul pleasingly observes this continuity but views the whole frame the whole length of the line at once so far as its limited capacity can extend and needs not discuss every particle severally in this series of truths and proceed gradatim from the knowledge of one truth to another in which case only one at once would be present to its view It sees things that are connected not because they are so As a man coveniently plac't in some eminent station may possibly see at one view all the successive parts of a gliding stream but he that sits by the waters side not changing 〈◊〉 place sees the same parts only because 〈◊〉 succeed and these that passe make way 〈◊〉 them that follow to come under his eye 〈◊〉 doth a learned man apply describe the â—â—successive knowledge of God of which the glorified souls way of knowing is an imitation 〈◊〉 the very words seeing or beholding which it â—â—so frequently set forth by in Scripture do naturally import Yet that as to them all raâ—â—cination shall be excluded that state I see 〈◊〉 reason to admit though with God it can â—â—ve no place And as he is reckon'd to live â—â—pleasanter life that spends upon a plentiful â—â—ate than he that gets his bread by the sweat 〈◊〉 his brows so this more easie way of knowing must needs be reckon'd more pleasing This knowledge is as Jacob's Venison not hunâ—â—ed for but brought to hand The race is not â—ere to the swift The unlearned Ideot knows as much as the profoundest Rabbi at least with as much satisfaction and all arms are of an equal size 2. 'T is more certain For what do we use â—o reckon so certain as what we see with our eyes Better even in this respect is the sight of the eyes than the wandring of the desire While here the mind is carried with most earnest desire to pursue knowledge it very often mistakes its way and miserably wanders In our most wary ratiocinations we many times shoot at rovers but when we know by â—his Vision our mark is immediately presenâ—ed to our eye We are in no danger to be â—mposed upon by delusive appearances of things We look through no fallacious medium's are held
in no suspence puzled with no doubts whether such consequencies withhold such conclusions be rightly infer'd anâ— so are not retarded from giving a present unwavering assent Here are no perplexing intricacies no dubious hallucinations or uncertain guesses we see things as they are by â— simple and undeceiving light with both subjective and objective certainty being secure both from doubt and error 2. Faith How magnificent things doth Scripture speak of this grace which the experience also of such as have been wont to liâ—â— by it i. e. to make it the governing principle of their lives doth abundantly confirm Hoâ— clear are its apprehensions 't is the evidence â— things not seen how sweet its enjoyments whom not seeing ye love and though now you 〈◊〉 him not yet believing ye rejoyce with joy unspeakable and full of glory Even the Heathen Theology hath magnifie it above knowledge What is it saith one that unites us with the self-goodness and 〈◊〉 joyns us thereto that it quiets or gives reâ—â— to all our action and motion I will expressâ— it in one word 't is faith it self which unâ—speakably and after a hidden manner doâ— unite and conjoyn happy souls with the selâ— good For saith he it concerns us neither in a way of Science or with any iâ— perfection to enquire after the good but 〈◊〉 behold our selves in the divine light and 〈◊〉 shutting our eyes to be placed in thâ— unknown and secret unity of beings And a latter writer gives us this as a conclusion from that former Author That as Faith which is credulity is below Science so that Faith which is truly so called is super-substantially above Science and intelligence immediately uniting us to God But 't is evident intuitive knowledge far exceeds even faith also 1. 'T is more distinct and clear Faith is taking a thing upon report Who hath believed â—ur report And they are more general languid apprehensions we have of things this way Faith enters at the â—ar it comes by hearing And if we comâ—â—re the perceptions of these two external 〈◊〉 that of hearing and sight the latter is unspeakably more clear and satisfying He that hath knowledge of a forreign Country only by report of another hath very indistinct apprehensions of it in comparison of him who hath travell'd it himself While the Queen of Sheba only heard of Solomons glory she could not satisfie her self without an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 â—â—ght of her own eye and when she saw it 〈◊〉 â—aith the one half was not told her of whâ—â— she now beheld The Ear more slowly and gradually receives and the Tongue more defectively expresses to another an account of things than ones ocular inspection would take it in But as to the excellency of this 〈…〉 above Faith the comparison 〈…〉 knowing by the ministry of a more 〈◊〉 sense and a less noble but knowing by dependance on a less noble and without dependence upon any at all When God hath been pleased to afford discoveries in that way of Vision to men in the body his Prophets c. he hath usually bound up all their senses by sleep or trances sense hath had no part or lot in this matter unto believing it must necessarily concurr 2. More affective What we see even with our external eye much more powerfully moves our heart than what we onely give credit to upon hearsay The Queen of Sheba much admired no doubt Solomons famed splendor and magnificence while she only heard of it but when she saw it it puts her into an extasie it ravish'd away her soul she had no more spirit c. What would the sight of the Divine glory do if God did not strengthen with all might were there not as well glorious power to support as powerful glory to transform Job had heard of God by the hearing of the ear but when once his eye saw him whether that were by the appearance of any sensible glory which is probable enough for 't is said the Lord answered him out of the whirlewind or whether by a more immediate revelation 't is less-material what work did it make in his soul The Devils believe and tremble so impressive are the pre-apprehensions of Judgment to come and the consequents thereof with them yet their present torment thence is no torment in comparison art thou come to torment us before the time of what they expect Let wicked men consider this they will have their intuitions in hell too were your belief and terror thereupon with reference to the eternal Judgment and the impendent wrath of God equal to what the Devils themselves have upon the same account actual sensation will make you more exceed your selves in point of misery than the Devils do now exceed you There is no doubt a proportionable difference between the impressions of present faith and future vision with holy souls Now not seeing yet believing they rejoyce with joy unspeakable their present joy cannot be spoken their future then cannot be thought Experience daily tells us how greatly sensible present objects have the advantage upon us beyond those that are spiritual and distant though infinitely more excellent and important When the tables are turned the now sensible things disappear a new scene of things invisible and eternal is immediately presented to our view the excellency of the objects the disposedness of the subjects the nature of the act shall all multiply the advantages on this part How affective will this vision be beyond what we have ever found the faint apprehensions of our so much disadvantaged faith to amount to A kind message from an indulgent Father to his far-distant Son informing of his welfare and yet continuing love will much affect but the sight of his Fathers face will even transport and overcome him with joy But further consider this intuition a little more particularly and absolutely in it self So you may take this somewhat distincter account of it in some few particulars corresponding to those by which the object the glory to be beheld was lately characterized 1. It will be a vigorous efficacious intuition as that which it beholds is the most excellent even the divine glory such an object cannot be beheld but with an eye full of lively vigour a sparkling a radient eye A weak eye would be struck blind would fail and be closed up at the first glance We must suppose then this Vision to be accompanied with the highest vitality the strongest energy A mighty plenitude of Spirit and Power no lesse than the divine nothing but the divine power can sufficiently fortifie the soul to behold divine glory When the Apostle speaks only of his desire of glory he that hath wrought us to this self same thing saith he is God he that hath moulded us suitably framed us for this thing as the word signifieth is God 't is the work of a Deity to make a Soul desire Glory certainly then 't is his work to give the
or lose the disposition by which it is contempered and made proportionable thereto Hence no weariness can ensue What a soul in which the love of God is perfected grow weary of beholding him The Sun will sooner grow weary of shining The touch'd Needle of turning its self to its wonted point every thing will sooner grow weary of its centre and the most fundamental Laws of Nature be sooner antiquated and made void for ever The eye of the fool Solomon tells us is in the ends of the earth his only is a rolling wandring eye that knows not where to fix wisdom guides and fixes the eye of the holy soul determines it unto God only I will bless the Lord who hath given me counsel my reines â—â—so instruct me I have set the Lord alwayes â—efore me Surely heaven will not render it less capable of dijudication of passing a right judgment of the excellency worth of things And here a rational judgment will find no want an irrational will find no place Therefore as permanent glory will certainly infer a perpetual vision perpetuated vision will as certainly perpetuate thesouls satisfaction and blessedness 4. 'T will be a possessive intuition as 't is an appropriate glory which it pitches upon 'T will be the language of every look this glory is mine The Soul looks not upon it shily as if it had nothing to do with it or with slight and careless glances but the very posture of its eye speaks its interest and proclaimes the pretentions it hath to this glory With how different an aspect doth a stranger passing by and the owner look upon the same house the same lands A mans eye layes his claim for him and avowes his right A grateful object that one can say is his own he arrests it with his eye So do Saints with appropriative looks behold their God and the Divine Glory Even with such an eye as he was wont to behold them To this man will I look c. that is as the place of my rest mentioned before he designes him with his eye which is the import of that expression The Lord knows who are his His eye markes them out owns them as his own As concerning others whom he disowns the phrase is I know you not And how vastly different is such an intuition from that when I look upon a thing with an hungry lingring eye which I must never enjoy or never expect to be the better for This vision is fruitive unites the soul with the blessed object Which kind of sight is meant when actual blessedness is so often exprest by seeing God We see then what vision the sight of Gods face contributes to the satisfaction of blessed souls CHAP. VII Wherein assimilation the likeness or glory of God imprest contributes unto satisfaction Where is particularly propounded to be shewn what pleasure it involves what it disposes to What it involves in the esse of it what in the cognosci 1. The pleasure of being like God discovered 1. Shewing concerning the Image of God generally considered that it is the souls health and soundness restored that it is a vital an intimate a connatural a perfect image OUr next business is to discover what assimilation or the impressed likeness of God may further add to this satisfied state or what satisfying pleasure the blessed soul finds in this that it is like God And here we are distinctly to enquire into The pleasure which such an assimilation to God involves in it self tends and disposes to 1. The pleasure it involves in it self or which is taken in it abstractly considered which we may more particularly unfold by shewing The pleasure involved 1. In being like God 2. In knowing or reflecting upon the same The Esse Cognosci Of this assimulation 1. The pleasure in being like God which may be discovered both by a general consideration hereof and by instancing in some particulars wherein blessed souls shall be like him 1. It is obvious to suppose an inexpressible pleasure in the very feeling the inward sensation the holy soul will have of that happy frame in general whereinto it is now brought That joyful harmony that intire rectitude it finds within it self You may as soon separate light from a Sun-beam as pleasure from such a state This likeness or conformity to God is an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a perfect temperament an athletique health ness a strong sound constitution of soul Do but imagine what it is to a mans body after a wasting sickness to find himself well Frame a notion of the pleasure of health and soundness when both all the parts and members of the body are in their proper places and proportions a lively active vigour a sprightly strength possesses every part and actuates the whole how pleasant is this temper If we were all body there could be no greater felicity than this But by how much the more noble any creature is so is it capable of more exquisite paines or pleasures Sin is the sickness and disease of the soul infeebles all its powers exhausts its vigour wasts its strength You know the restless tossings the weary rollings to fro of a diseased languishing body such is the case of a sinful soul. Let it but seriously bethink it self and then speak its own sense but here is the malignity of the disease it cannot be serious it always raves what will it be O I can take no rest The way of wickedness is called a way of pain Sinners would find it so if the violence of the disease had not bereft them of sense Nothing savors with me I can take comfort in nothing The wicked is as a troubled Sea as their name imports that cannot rest Whose waters c. The Image of God renewed in holiness nad righteousness is health restored after such a consuming sickness which when we awake when all the drowsiness that attends our disease is shaken off we find to be perfect The fear of the Lord an ordinary paraphrase of holiness or piety is said to be health to the navel and marrow to the bones Our Lord Jesus invites wearied sinners to come to him to take his yâ—ke on them to learn of him that is to imitate him to be like him and promises they shall finde rest to their souls How often do we find grace and peace in conjunction in the Apostles salutations and benedictions We are told that the wayes of divine wisdom i. e. which it prescribeth are all pleasâ—ntness and peace That in keeping the Commandments of God is great reward That they are not grievous i. e. for there seems to be a Meiosis in the expression are joyous pleasant And what are his Commandments but those expresses of himself wherein we are to be like him and conform to his will The Kingdom of God that holy order which he settles in the spirits of men his Law transcribed and imprest upon
the soul which is nothing else but its conformation and likeness to himself is righteousness and then peace The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 That notion and judgment and sâ—vour of things that excellent temper of mind and heart for that is the extent of the expression whereof the holy Spirit of God is both the author and pattern is life and peace involves them in it self When one thing is thus in casu recto predicated of another it speaks their most intimate connexion as Rom. 14. 7. above so 1 Joh. 5. 3. This is love that c. So here such a mind is life and peace though the copula be not in the original it is fitly supply'd in the translation you cannot separate q. d. life and peace from such a mind It hath no principle of death or trouble in it Let such as know any thing of this blessed temper and complexion of soul compare this Scripture and their own experience together when at any time they find their souls under the blessed Empire and dominion of a Spiritual mind when wholly spirituality rules and denominates them are not their souls the very region of life and peace both these in conjunction life and peace not raging life not stupid peace but a placid peaceful life a vital vigorous rest and peace 't is not the life of a furie nor peace of a stone Life that hath peace in it and peace that hath life in it Now can the soul say I feel my self well all is now well with me nothing afflicts the Spiritual mind so far and while 't is such 'T is wrapt up and cloath'd in its own innocency and purity and hereby become invulnerable not liable to hurtful impressions Holiness under the name of light for that is by the context the evident meaning of the word there is by the Apostle spoken of as the Christians armour Put on saith he the armour of light in opposition to the works of darkness which he had mentioned immediately before strang armour that a man may see through A good mans armour is that he needs none his armour is an open breast that he can expose himself is fearless of any harm Who is he that shall harm you if ye be followers of that which is good It should be read imitators so the word signifies and so where as following is either of a pattern or an end the former must be meant hear by the natural importance of that word and hence by that which is good is not to be understood created goodness for 't is not enough to imitate that goodness for so we must be good but the words are capable of being read him that is good or which is all one the good And so 't is the increate good the blessed God himself formally considered under the notion of good Nothing can harm you if you be like God that 's the plain sense of this Scripture Likeness to God is armour of proof i. e. an imitation of him viz. in his moral goodness which holiness as a general name of it comprehends A person truly like God is secure from any external violence so far as that it shall never be able to invade his Spirit He is in Spirit far raised above the tempestuous stormie region and converses where winds and clouds have no place Nor can so far as this temper of soul prevails any evil grow up to such a mind within it self It is life and peace It is light and purity for 't is the image the similitude of God God is light and with him is no darkness at all Holy souls were darkness â—ut they are light in the Lord. He the Father of lights They the children of light They were darkness not in the dark but in the abstract darkness as if that were their whole nature and they nothing else but an impure masse of coâ—globated darkness So ye are light as if they were that and nothing else nothing but a Sphere of light Why suppose we such a thing as an entire Sphere of nothing else but pure light what can work any disturbance here or raise a storm within it A calm serene thing perfectly homogeneous void of contrariety or any self-repugnant quality how can it disquiet it self We cannot yet say that thus it is with holy souls in their present state according to the highest literal import of these words ye are light But thus it will be when they awake when they are satisfied with this likeness They shall then be like God fully and throughout O the joy and pleasure of a soul made after such a similitude Now glory is become as it were their being they are glorified Glory is revealed into them transfused throughout them Every thing that is conceivable under the notion of an excellency competent to created nature is now to be found with them and they have it inwrought into their very beings So that in a true sense it may be said that they are light they not only have such excellencies but they are them As the Moralist saith of the wise or vertuous man that he not so properly hath all things as is all things 'T is said of man in respect of his naturals he is the image and glory of God As for his supernatural excellencies though they are not essential to man they are more expressive of God and are now become so inseparable from the nature of man too in this his glorified state that he can assoon cease to be intelligent as holy The image of God even in this respect is not separable from him nor blessedness surely from this image As the divine excellencies being in their infinite fulness in God are his own blessedness so is the likeness the participation of them in the soul that now bears this image its blessedness Nothing can be necessary to its full satisfaction which it hath not in it self by a gracious vouchsafement and communication The good man in that degree which his present state admits of Solomon tells us is satiâ—fied from himself he doth not need to traverse the world to seek his happiness abroad He hath the matter of satisfaction even that goodness which he is now enrich't with in his own breast and bosom yet he hath it all by participation from the fountain-goodness But that participated goodness is so intimately one with him as sufficiently warrants and makes good the assertion he is satisfied from himself viz. from himself not primarily or independently but by derivation from him who is all in all and more intimate to us than we to our selves and what is that participated goodness but a degree of the divine likeness But when that goodness shall be fully participated when this image and imitation of the divine goodness shall be compleat and intire then shall we know the rich exuberant sense of those words How fully will this image or likeness satisfie then And yet more
distinctly we may apprehend how satisfying this likeness or image imprest will be if a little further deferring the view of the particulars of this likeness which we have defigned to instance in we consider these general properties of it 1. 'T is a vital image not the image only of him that lives the living God but it is his living and soul quickning image 'T is the likeness of him in that very respect an imitation and participation of the life of God by which once revived the soul lives that was dead before 'T is not a dead picture a dumb shew an unmoving Statue but a living speaking walking image that wherewith the Child is like the Father the very life of the subject where it is and by which it lives as God speaks and acts comformably to him An image not such a one as is drawn with a Pencil that expresses only colour and figure but such a one as is seen in a Glass that represents life and motion as was noted from a worthy Author before 'T is even in its first and more imperfect draught an analogical participation as we must understand it of the divine nature before which first tincture those preludious touches of it upon the Spirit of man his former state is spoken of as an alienation from the life of God as having no interest no communion therein The putting on of the new man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness is presently mentioned in direct opposition to that dismal state implying that to be a participation of the divine life And certainly so far as it is so 't is a participation of the divine blessedness too 2. 'T is an image most intimate therefore to its subject Glory it is but not a superficial skin-deep glory such as shone in Mâ—sâ—s his face which he covered with a Vail 'T is througâ—y transformative changes the soul throughout not in external appearance but in its very nature All outward imbellishments would add little felicity to a putrid corrupt soul. That would be but painting a Sepulchre Thiâ— adds â—rnament unto life and both especially to the inward man 'T is not pâ—int in the 〈◊〉 while dâ—â—th is at the heart but 't is 〈…〉 of such a principle within as will soon form and attemper the man universally to it self 'T is glory blessedness participated brought home and lodged in a mans own soul in his own bosom he cannot then but be satisfied A man may have a rich stock of outward comforts and while he hath no heart to enjoy them be never the happier But 't is impossible that happiness should be thus lodged in his Soul made so intimate and one with him and yet that he should not be satisfied not be happy 3. An image connatural to the Spirit of man Not a thing alien and forraign to his nature put into him purposely as is were to torment and vex him but an ancient well-known inhabitant that had place in him from the beginning Sin is the injurious intruder which therefore puts the soul into a commotion and permits it not to rest while it hath any being there This Image calms it restores it works a peaceful orderly composure within returns it to it self to its pristine blessed state being reseated there as in its proper primitive subject For though this image in respect of corrupted nature be supernatural in respect of institute and undefiled nature it was in a true sense nâ—tural as hath been demonstrated by divers of ours against the Papists and upon the matter yielded by some of the more modeâ—â—â—e among themselves At least it was 〈…〉 with humane nature consentaneâ—us to it and perâ—ective of it We are speaking it must be remembred of that part of the divine Image that consists in moral excellencies there being another part of it as hath been said that is even in the strictest sense natural There is nothing in the whole moral Law of God in conformity where unto this Image did ab origine consist nothing of what he requires from man that is at all distructive of his being prejudicial to his comforts repugnant to his most innate principles nothing that clashes with his reason or is contrary to his interest or that is not most directly conservative of his being and comfors agreeable to his most rational principles subservient to his best and truest interest For what doth God the Lord require but fear and love service and holy walking from an intire and undivided Soul What but what is good not only in it self but for us and in respect whereof his Law is said to be holy just and good And what he requireth he impresseth This Law written in the heart is this likeness How grateful then will it be when after a long extermination and exile it returns and repossesses the Soul is recognâ—zed by it becomes to it a new nature yea even a divine a vitâ—l living Law The Law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus What grievance or burden is it to do the dictates of nature actions that easily and freely slow from their own principles and when blessedness it self is infolded in those very acts and inclinations How infinitely satisfying and delightful will it be when the soul shall find it self connaturallized to every thing of its duty and shall have no other duty incumbent on it than to be happy when it shall need no arguments and exhortations to love God nor need be urged and prest as heretofore to mind him to fear before him When love and reverence and adoration and praise when delight and joy shall be all natural acts Can you separate this in your own thoughts from the highest satisfaction 4. This Image will be now perfect Every way fully perfect First In all its parts as it is in the first instant of the souls entrance into the state of regeneration the womb of Grace knows no defective maimed births And yet here is no little advantage as to this kind of perfection For now those lively lineaments of the new creature all appear which were much obscured before every line of glory is conspicuous every character legible the whole entire frame of this Image is in its exact Symmetrie and apt proportions visible at once And 't is an unspeakable addition to the pleasure of so excellent a temper of Spirit that accrews from the discernable intireness of it Heretofore some gracious dispositions have been to seek through the present prevalence of some corruption or temptation when there was most 〈…〉 occasion for their being reduced 〈…〉 Hâ—nce the reward and pleasure of 〈…〉 and improvement of the principle were lost together Now the Soul will be equally disposed to every holy exercise that shall be suitable to its state It s temper shall be even and Symmetral Its notions uniform and agreeable nothing done out of season Nothing seasonable omitted for want of a present disposition of Spirit thereto
There will be not only an habitual but actual intireness of the frame of holiness in the blessed Soul 2. Again this Image will be perfect in degree so as to exclude all degrees of its contrary and include all degrees of it self There will now be no longer any colluctation with contrary principles no law in the members warring against the law of the mind No lustings of the flesh against the Spirit That war is now ended in a glorious victory and eternal peace There will be no remaining blindness of mind nor errour of iudgement nor perverseness of will nor irregularity or rebellion of affections No ignorance of God no aversation from him or disaffection towards him This likeness removes all culpable dissimilitude or unlikeness This communicated glory fills up the whole soul causes all clouds and darkness to vanish leaves no place for any thing that is vile or inglorious 't is pure glory free from mixture of any thing that is alien to it And it is it self full The Soul is replenish't not with airy evanid shadows but with substantial solid glory a massie mighty glory for I know not but subjective glory may be taken in within the significancy of that known Scripture if it be not more principally intended in as much as the Text speaks of a glory to be wrought out by afflictions which are the files and furnaces as it were to polish or refine the Soul into a glorious frame 'T is cumulated glory glory added to glory Here 't is growing progressive glory we are changed into the same image from glory to glory It shall now be stable consistent glory that carries a self-fulness with it which some include also in the notion of purity 't is full of it self includes every degree requisite to its own perfection God hath now put the last hand to this glorious Image added to it its ultimate accomplishments Now a conformity to Christ even in the resurrection from the dead in his glorious state is fully attained That prize of the high calling of God is now won And the humble sense of not having attained as yet and of not being already perfect in which humility the foundations of the temple of God in a Saint is laid and the building raised is turned into joyful acclamations Grace Grace for the laying on of the top stone the finishing of this glorious work And when this Temple is filled with the glory of the Lord the soul it self replenished with the divine fulness will not its joy be full too For here is no sacrifice to be offered but that of praise and joy is the proper seasoning for that sacrifice Now the new creature hath arrived to the measure of the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus The first formation of this Spiritual as well as of the natural man was hidden and secret it was curiously wrought and in a way no more liable to observation than that of framing the Child in the Womb as that is as hidden as the concoction of Minerals or precious stones in the lower parts of the earth no secrets of Nature can outvie the the Mysteries of godliness Its growth is also by very insensible degrees as it is with the products of nature but its arrival to perfection is infinitely more strange than any thing in nature ever was how sudden and wonderful is the change when in the twinkling of an eye the blessed soul instantly awakes out of drowsie languishings and miserable weakness into perfect strength and vigour As a man is so is his strength and as his strength is so is his joy and pleasure The Sun is said to go forth as a strong man rejoicing to run his race When a man goes in the fulness of his strength upon any enterprize how do blood and spirits triumph beforehand no motion of hand or foot is without a sensible delight The strength of a mans Spirit is unspeakably more than that of the outward man Its faculties and powers more refined and raised and hence are rational or intellectual exercises and operations much more delightful than corporal ones can be But still as the man is so is his strength 't is an incomparably greater strength that attends the heaven-born man This man born of God begotten of God after his own likeness This Hero this Son of God was born to Conflicts to Victories to Triumphs While he is yet but in his growing age he overcomes the world as Hercules the Serpents in his Cradle overcomes the wicked one and is at last more than Conquerour A mighty power attends godliness a Spirit of power and of a sound mind but how much this divine creature grows so much the more like God and being perfect Conflicts cease he had overcome and won the Crown before And now all his strength runs out into acts of pleasure Now when he shall go forth in his might to love God as we are required to love him now with all our might and every act of praise shall be an act of power done with a fulness of strength as 't is said their praises at the bringing home of the Ark were with all their might O! what will the pleasure be that shall accompany this state of perfection Perfect power and perfect pleasure are here met and shall for ever dwell together and be alwayes commensurate to one another They are so here in their imperfect state our feeble spiritless duties weak dead prayers they have no more sweetness than strength no more pleasure than power in them Therefore we are listless and have no mind to duties as we find we are more frequently destitute of a spiritual livelyness and vigour therein When a spirit of might and power goes on with us in the wonâ—â—d course of our converses with God we then forecast opportunities and gladly welcome the season when it extraordinarily occurs of drawing nigh to him It cannot be thought that the connexion and proportion between these should fail in glory or that when every thing else is perfect The blessed Soul it self made perfect even as God himself is perfect this bearing his likeness should be unlike him in bliss or its satisfaction be imperfect CHAP. VIII The satisfaction carried in the glory of God impressed further shew'n by instances Certain particulars of this impression instanc't in A dependent frame of Spirit Subjection or self-devoting Love Purity Liberty Tranquility BUt besides the general consideration of this likeness we shall instance in some of the particular excellencies comprehended in it Wherein the blessed shall imitate and resemble God Whence we may further estimate the pleasure and satisfaction that being like God will afford Only here let it be remembred that as we all along in this discourse speak of likeness to God in respect of moral excellencies So by likeness to him in respect of thâ—se we understand not only a participation of those which are communicable but a correspondent impresse also as to those
be his perpetual triumph over all the imaginary Deities the phansied Numina wherewith he was heretofore provoked to jealousie And he shall now have no rival left but be acknowledged and known to be all in all How pleasant will it then be as it were to loose themselves in him and to be swallowed up in the overcoming sense of his boundless alsufficient every where flowing fulness And then add to this they do by this dependence actually make this fulness of God their own They are now met in one common principle of life and blessedness that is sufficient for them all They no longer live a life of care are perpetually exempt from solicitous thoughts which here they could not perfectly attain to in their earthly state They have nothing to do but to depend to live upon a present self-fufficient good which alone is enough to replenish all desires else it were not self-sufficient How can we divide in our most abstractive thoughts the highest pleasure the fullest satisfaction from this dependence 'T is to live at the rate of a God a God-like life A living upon immense fulness as he lives 2. Subjection which I place next to dependence as being of the same allay The product of imprest Soveraignty as the other of all-sufficient fulness Both impressions upon the creature corresponding to somewhat in God most incommunicably appropriate to him This is the souls real and practical acknowledgement of the Supream Majesty Its homage to its Maker Its self-dedication Than which nothing more suits the state of a creature or the Spirit of a Saint And as it is suit-table 't is pleasant 'T is that by which the blessed Soul becomes in its own sense a consecrated thing a devoted thing sacred to God It s very life and whole being refer'd and made over to him With what delightful relishes what sweet gusts of pleasure is this done while the soul tasts its own act approves it with a full ungainsaying judgment apprehends the condignity and fitness of it assents to its self herein and hath the ready suffrage the harmonious concurrence of all his powers When the words are no sooner spoken Worthy art thou O Lord to receive glory honour and power for thou hast created all things and for thy pleasure they are and were created but they are resounded from the penetralia the inmost bowels the most intimate receptacles and secret chambers of the Soul O Lord thou art worthy worthy that I and all things should be to thee worthy to be the Omega as thou art the Alpha the last as thou art the first the end as thou art the beginning of all things the Ocean into which all being shall slow as the Fountain from which it sprang My whole self and all my powers the excellencies now implanted in my being the priviledges of my now glorified state are all worth nothing to me but for thee please me only as they make me fitter for thee O the pleasure of these Sentiments the joy of such raptures when the soul shall have no other notion of it self than of an everlasting sacrifice always ascending to God in its own flames For this devotedness and subjection speak not barely an act but a state A Being to the praise of grace A Living to God And t is no mean pleasure that the sincere soul finds in the imperfect beginnings the first Essayes of this life the enitial breathings of such a Spirit its entrance into this blessed state when it makes the first tender and present of it self to God as the Apostle expresses it when it first begins to esteem it self an hallowed thing separate and set apart for God Its first act of unfeigned self-resignation when it tells God from the very heart I now give up my self to thee to be thine Never was marriage covenant made with such pleasure with so complacential consent This quitting claim to our selves parting with our selves upon such terms to be the Lords for ever O the peace the rest the acquiescence of Spirit that attends it When the poor soul that was weary of it self knew not what to do with it self hath now on the sudden found this way of disposing it self to such an advantage there is pleasure in this Treaty Even the previous breakings and relentings of the soul towards God are pleasant But O the pleasure of consent of yielding our selves to God as the Apostles expression is when the Soul is overcome and cryes out Lord now I resign I yield possess now thy own right I give up my self to thee That yielding is subjection self-devoting in order to future service and obedience To whom ye yield your selves servants to obey c. And never did any man enrol himself as a servant to the greatest Prince on earth with such joy What pleasure is there in the often iterated recognition of these transactious in multiplying such bonds upon a mans own soul though done faintly while the fear of breaking checks its joy in taking them on When in the uttering of these words I am thy servant O Lord thy servant the son of thine handmaid i. e. thy born servant allâ—ding to that custom and Law among the Jews Thy servant devoted to thy fear a man finds they fit his spirit and are aptly expressive of the true sense of his soul is it not a grateful thing And how pleasant is a state of life consequent and agreeable to such transactions and Covenants with God! when 't is meat and drink to do his will When his zeal eats a man up and one shall find himself secretly consuming for God! and the vigour of his soul exhaled in his service Is it not a pleasant thing so to spend and be spent when one can in a measure find that his will is one with Gods transformed into the divine will that there is but one common will and interest and end between him and us and so that in serving God we raign with him in spending our selves for him we are perfected in him Is not this a pleasant life Some Heathens have spoken at such a rate of this kind of life as might make us wonder and blush One speaking of a vertuous person saith he is as a good Souldier that bears wounds and numbers skars and at last smitten through with darts dying will love the Emperour for whom he falls he will saith he keep in mind that ancient precept follow God But they that complain cry out and groan and are compelled by force to do his commands and hurried into them against their will and what a madness is it saith he to be drawn rather than follow And presently after subjoyns we are born in a Kingdom to obey God is liberty The same person writes in a Letter to a friend If thou believe me when I most freely discover to thee the most secret fixed being of my soul in all things my mind is thus formed I obey not God so properly as
I assent to him I follow him with all my heart not because I cannot avoit it And another Lead me to whatsoever I am appointed and I will follow thee chearfully but if I refuse or be unwilling I shall follow notwithstanding A Soul cast into such a mould formed into an obediential subject frame what sweet peace doth it enjoy how pleasant rest every thing rests most composedly in its proper place A bone out of joynt knows no ease nor lets the body enjoy any The creature is not in its place but when 't is thus subject is in this subordination to God By flying out of this subordination the world of mankind is become one great disjoynted body full of weary tossings unacquainted with ease or rest That soul that is but in a degree reduc't to that blessed state temper is as it were in a new world so great and happy a change doth it now feel in it self But when this transformation shall be compleated in it and the will of God shall be no sooner known than rested in with a complacential approbation and every motion of the first and great mover shall be an efficacious law to guide and determine all our motions and the lesser-wheeles shall presently run at the first impulse of the great and master-wheel without the least rub or hesitation when the law of sin shall no longer check the law of God when all the contentions of a rebellious flesh all the counter-strivings of a perverse ungovernable heart shall cease for ever O unconceivable blessedness of this consent the pleasure of this joyful harmony this peaceful accord Obedience where 't is due but from one creature to another carries its no small advantages with it and conducibleness to a pleasant unsolicitous life To be particularly prescribed to in things about which our minds would otherwise be tost with various apprehensions anxious uncertain thoughts how great a priviledge is it I cannot forget a pertinent passage of an excellent person of recent memory And saith he for pleasure I shall profess my self so far from doting on that popular Idol liberty that I hardly think it possible for any kind of obedience to be more painful than an unrestrained liberty Were there not true bounds of Magistrates of Laws of piety of reason in the heart every man would have a fool I add a mad Tyrant to his Master that would multiply him more sorrows than bryars and thorns did to Adam when â—e was freed from the bliss at once and the restraint of Paradise and was sure greater slave in the wilderness than in the inclosure would but the Scripture permit me that kind of Idolatry the binding my faith and obedience to any one visible infallible Judg or Prince were it the Pope or the Mufti or the grand Tartar might it be reconcilible with my Creed it would be certainly with my interâ—st to get presently into that posture of obedience I should learn so much of the Barbarian Ambassadors in Appian which came on purpose to the Romans to negotiate for leave to be their servants 'T would be my policy if not my piety and may now be my wish though not my faith that I might never have the trouble to deliberate to dispute to doubt to chuse those so many profitless uneasinesses but only the favour to receive commands and the meekness to obey them How pleasurable then must obedience be to the perfect will of the blessed God when our wills shall also be perfectly attempered and conformed there unto Therefore are we taught Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven What is most perfect in its kind gives rule to the rest 3. Love This is an eminent part of the image or likeness of God in his Saints As it is that great Attribute of the divine being that is alone put to give us a notion of God God is love This is an excellency consider it whether in its original or copie made up of pleasantnesses All love hath complacency or pleasure in the nature and most formal notion of it To search for pleasure in love is the same thing as if a man should be solicitous to find water in the Sea or light in the body of the Sun Love to a friend is not without high pleasure when especially he is actually present and injoye'd Love to a Saint rises higher in nobleness and pleasure according to the more excellent qualification of its object 'T is now in its highest improvement in both these aspects of it where whatsoever tends to gratifie our nature whether as humane or holy will be in its full perfection Now doth the soul take up its stated dwelling in Love even in God who is Love and as he is Love 't is now enclosed with Love encompas'd with Love 't is conversant in the proper region and element of Love The Love of God is now perfected in it That Love which is not only participated from him but terminated in him That perfect Love casts out tormenting Fear So that here is pleasure without mixture How naturally will the blessed soul now dissolve and melt into pleasure It is new fram'd on purpose for Love-imbraces and injoyments It shall now love like God as one composed of Love It shall no longer be its complaint and burden that it cannot retaliate in this kind that being beloved it cannot love 4. Purity Herein also must the blessed soul resemble God and delight it self Every one that hath this hope viz. of being hereafter lâ—ke God and seeing him as he is purifieth himself as he is pure A God-like purity is intimately connext with the expectation of future blessedness much more with the fruition Blessed are the pure in heart besides the reason there annext for they shall see God which is to be considered under the other head the pleasure unto which this likeness disposes that proposition carries its own reason in it self It is an incomparable pleasure that purity carries in its own nature As sin hath in its very nature besides its consequent guilt and sorrow trouble and torment beyond expression Whatsoever defiles doth also disturb Nor do any but pure pleasures deserve the name An Epicurus himself will tell us there cannot be pleasure without wisdom honesty and righteousness 'T is least of all possible there should when once a person shall have a right knowledge of himself and which is moral impurity whereof we speak the filthiness of sin I doubt not but much of the torment of Hell will consist in those too-late and despairing self-loathings those sickly resentments the impure wretches will be possessed with when they see what hideous deformed monsters their own wickedness hath made them Here the gratifications of sense that attend it bribe and seduce their judgments into another estimate of sin but then it shall be no longer thought of under the more favourable notion of a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they shall taste nothing but
turn my thoughts to glorious objects but I cannot The blessed soul feels it self free from all confinement nothing resists its will as its will doth never resist the will of God It knows no limits no restraints is not tyed up to this or that particular good but expatiates freely in the immense universal all comprehending goodness of God himself And this liberty is the perfect Image and likeness of the liberty of God especially in its consummate state In its progress towards it it increases as the Soul draws nearer to God which nearer approach is not in respect of place or local nearness but likeness and conformity to him in respect whereof as God is most sublime and excellent in himself so is it in him It s consummate liberty is when it is so fully transformed into the likeness of God as that he is all to it as to himself So that as he is an infinite satisfaction to himself his likeness in this respect is the very satisfaction it self of the blessed soul. 6. Tranquility This also is an eminent part of that assimilation to God wherein the blessedness of the holy Soul must be understood to lye a perfect composure a perpetual and everlasting calm an eternal vacancy from all unquietness or perturbation Nothing can be supposed more inseparably agreeing to the nature of God than this Whom Scripture witnesses to be without variablness or shadow of change There can be no commotion without mutation nor can the least mutation have place in a perfectly simple and uncompounded nature Whence even Pagan reason hath been wont to attribute the most undisturbed and unalterable tranquility to the nature of God Balaam knew it was incompatible to him to lye or repent And supposing him to speak this from a present inspiration it is their common Doctrine concerning God Any the least troubles and tempests saith one are far exiled from the tranquility of God for all the inhabitants of heaven do ever injoy the same stable tenour even an eternal quality of mind And a little after speaking of God saith he 't is neither pâ—ssible he should be moved by the force of another for nothing is stronger than God nor of his own accord for nothing is perfecter than God And whereas there is somewhat that is mutable and subject to change somewhat that is stable and fixt in which of those natures saith another shall we please God must we not in that which is more stable and fixt and free from this fluidness and mutability for what is there amâ—ng all beings that can be stable or consist if God do not by his own touch stay and sustain the nature of it Hence is it made a piece of deformity of likeness to God by another who tells his friend It is an high and great thing which thou desirest and even bordering upon a Deity not to be moved Yea so hath this Doctine been insisted on by them that while other Divine perfections have been less understood it hath occasioned the Stoical â—ssertion of fatality to be introduced on the one hand and the â—picurian nâ—gâ—tion of providence on the other least any thing should be admitted that might seem repâ—gnant to the tranquility of their Numâ—â—â— But we know that our God doth whatsoever pleaseth him both in heaven and earth and that he doth all according to the wise counsel of his holy will freely not fatally upon the eternal prevision and foresight of all circumstances and events so that nothing can occur that is new to him nothing that he knows not how to improve to good or that can therefore infer any alteration of his counsels or occasion to him the least perturbation or disquiet in reference to them Holy souls begin herein to imitate him as soon as they first give themselves up to his wise and gracious conduct 'T is enough that he is wise for himself and them Their hearts safely trust in him They commit themselves with unsollicitous confidence to his guidance knowing he cannot himself be mis-led and that he will not mis-lead them As Abraham folled him not knowing whether he went and thus by faith they enter into his rest They do now in their present state only enter into it or hover about the borders Their future assimilation to God in this gives them a stated settlement of Spirit in this rest They before did owe their tranquillity to their faith now to their actual fruition Their former acquiescency and sedate temper was hence that they believed God would deal well with them at last their present for that he hath done so Those words have now their fullest sense both as to the rest it self which they mention and the season of it Return to thy rest O my soul for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee The occasions of trouble and a passive temper of Spirit are ceased together There is now no fear without nor terror within The rage of the world is now allay'd it storms no longer Reproach and persecution have found a period There is no more dragging before Tribunals nor haling into Prisons no more running into dens and deserts or wandring to and fro in Sheep-skins and Goat-skins And with the cessation of the external occasions of trouble the inward dispositions thereto are also ceased All infirmities of Spirit tumultuating passions unmortified corruptions doubts or imperfect knowledge of the love of God are altogether vanished and done away for ever And indeed that perfect cure wrought within is the souls great security from all future disquiet A well tempered Spirit hath been wont strangely to preserve its own peace in this unquiet world Philosophy hath boasted much in this kind and Christianity performed more The Philosophical 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or calmness of mind is not without its excellency and praise That stable settlement and fixedness of Spirit that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as the moralist tells us it was wont to be termed among the Grecians and which he calls Tranquillity when the mind is alwayes equal and goes a smooth even course is propitious to it self and beholds the things that concern it with pleasure and interrupts not this joy but remains in a placid state never at any time exalting or depressing it self But how far doth the Christian peace surpass it that peace which passeth all understanding that amidst surrounding dangers enables the holy soul to say without a proud boast none of all these things move me The peace that immediately results from that faith which unites the soul with God and fixes it upon him as its firm basis when 't is kept in perfect peace by being stay'd upon him because it trusts in him When the heart is fixed trusting in the Lord filled full of joy and peace or of joyous peace by an 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in believing And if Philosophy and which far transcends it Christianity Reason and Faith have that statique power can so
soul in order hereto How often over have I spread this desire before the Searcher and Judge of hearts Turn me out of all my worldly comforts so thou give me but such an heart Let me spend my dayes in a Prison or a Desert so I have but such a heart I refuse no reproaches no losses no tortures may I but have such a heart How hath my soul been somtimes ravisht with the very thoughts of such a temper of Spirit as hath appeared amiable in my eye but I could not attain and what a torture again hath it been that I could not What grievance in all the world in all the dayes of my vanity did I ever find comparable to this To be able to frame my self by Scripture and rational light and rules the Notion and Idea of an excellent temper of spirit and then to behold it to have it in view and not be able to reach it to possess my soul of it What indignation have I sometimes conceived against mine own soul when I have found it wandring and could not reduce it hovering and could not fix it dead and could not quicken it low and could not raise it How earnestly have I expected this blessed day when all those distempers should be perfectly healed and my Soul recover an healthy lively spiritual frame What fresh ebullitions of joy will here be when all former desires hopes indeavours are crowned with success and fruit This joy is the joy of Harvest They that have sown in tears do now reap in joy They that went out weeping bearing precious seed now with rejoycing bring their sheaves with them 6. In reference to what this imprest likeness shall for ever secure to it an everlasting amity and friendship with God that it shall never sin nor he ever frown more 1. That it shall sin no more The perfected image of God in it is its security for this for 't is holy throughout in every point conformed to his nature and will There remains in it nothing contrary to him It may therefore certainly conclude it shall never be liable to the danger of doing any thing but what is good in his sight and what solace will the blessed soul find in this If now an Angel from Heaven should assure it that from such an hour it should sin no more the world would not be big enough to hold such a soul. It hath now escaped the deadliest of dangers the worst of deaths and which even in its present state upon more deliberate calmer thoughts it accounts so the sting of death the very deadly head of death the Hell of Hell it self The deliverance is now compleat which cannot but end in delight and praise 2. That God can never frame more This 't is hence also assured of How can he but take perfect everlasting complaceny in his own perfect likeness and image and behold with pleasure his glorious workmanship now never liable to impairment or decay how pleasant a thought is this The blessed God never beholds me but with delight I shall alwayes behold his serene countenance his amiable face never covered with any clouds never darkened with any frown I shall now have cause to complain no more my God is a stranger to me he conceals himself I cannot see his face lo he is incompast with Clouds and darkness or with flames and terrours These occasions are for ever ceased God sees no cause either to behold the blessed soul with displeasure or with displeasure to avert from it and turn off his eye And will not this eternally satisfie when God himself is so well pleased shall not we 2. The pleasure it disposes to Besides that the inbeing and knowledge of this likeness are so satisfying It disposes and is the souls qualification for a yet further pleasure That of closest union and most inward communion with the blessed God 1. Union Which what it is more then relation is not till now compleat Besides relation it must needs import presence not Physical or Local for so nothing can be nearer God then it is but moral and cordial by which the holy soul with will and affections guided by rectified reason and judgment closes with and imbraces him and he also upon wise forelaid counsel and with infinite delight and love imbraceth it so friends are said to be one besides their relation as friends by an union of hearts An union between God and the creature as to kind and nature higher than this and lower than Hypostatical or personal union I understand not and therefore say nothing of it But as to the union here mentioned as till the image of God be perfected it is not compleated so it cannot but be perfect then When the soul is perfectly formed according to Gods own heart and fully participates the divine likeness is perfectly like him that likeness cannot but infer the most intimate union that two such natures can admit That is for nature a love-union such as that which our Saviour mentions and prayes to the Father to perfect between themselves and all believers and among believers mutually with one another Many much trouble themselves about this Scripture but sure that can be no other then a love-union For 1. 'T is such an union as Christians are capable of among themselves for surely he would never pray that they might be one with an union whereof they are not capable 2. 'T is such an union as may be made visible to the world Whence 't is an obvious corollary that the union between the Father and the Son there spoken of as the pattern of this is not their union or oneness in essence though it be a most acknowledged thing that there is such an essential union between them for who can conceive that Saints should be one among themselves and with the Father and the Son with such an union as the Father and the Son are one themselves if the essential union between Father and Son were the union here spoken of But the exemplary or pattern-union here mentioned between Father and Son is but an union in mind in love in design and interest wherein he prayes that Saints on earth might visibly be one with them also that the world might believe c. 'T is yet a rich pleasure that springs up to glorified Saints from that love-union now perfected between the blessed God and them 'T is mentioned and shadowed in Scripture under the name and notion of marriage-union in which the greatest mutual complacency is always supposed a necessary ingredient To be thus joyned to the Lord and made as it were one Spirit with him For the eternal God to cleave in love to a nothing creature as his likeness upon it ingages him to do is this no pleasure or a mean one 2. Communion unto which that union is fundamental and introductive and which follows it upon the same ground from a natural propensity of like to like There is nothing now to
hinder God and the holy soul of the most inward fruitions and injoyments no animosity no strangeness no unsutableness on either part Here the glorified Spirits of the just have liberty to soâ—â—ce themselves amidst the rivers of pleasure at Gods own right hand without check or restraint They are pure and these pure They touch nothing that can defile they defile nothing they can touch They are not now forbidden the nearest approaches to the once inaccessible Majesty there 's no Holy of Holies into which they may not enter no dore lockt up against them They may have free admission into the innermost secret of the divine presence and pour forth themselves in the most liberal effasions of love and joy as they must be the eternal subjects of those infinitely richer communications from God even of immense and boundless love and goodness Do not debase this pleasure by low thoughts nor frame too daring positive apprehensions of it 'T is yet a secret to us The eternal converses of the King of glory with glorified Spirits are onely known to himself and them That expression which we so often meet in our way It doth not yet appear what we shall be seems left on purpose to check a too curious and prying inquisitiveness into these unrevealed things The great God will have his reserves of glory of love of pleasure for that future state Let him alone a while with those who are already received into those mansions of glory those everlasting habitations He will find a time for those that are yet pilgrims and wandring exiles to ascend and enter too In the mean time what we know of this communion may be gathered up into this general account The reciprocation of loves the flowing and reflowing of everlasting love between the blessed soul and its infinitely blessed God Its egress towards him his illapses into it Unto such pleasure doth this likeness dispose and qualifie You can no way consider it but it appears a most pleasurable satisfying thing Thus far have we shewn the qualification for this blessedness and the nature of it What it prerequires and wherein it lyes and how highly congruous it is that the former of these should be made a prerequisite to the latter will sufficiently appear to any one that shall in his own thoughts compare this righteousness and this blessedness together He will indeed plainly see that the natural state of the case and habitude of these each to other makes this connexion unalterable and eternal so as that it must needs be simply impossible to be thus blessed without being thus righteous For what is this righteousness other than this blessedness begun the seed and principle of it And that with as exact proportion or rather sameness of Nature as is between the grain sown and reaped which is more than intimated in that of the Apostle Be not deceived God is not mocked for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption there is the same proportion too but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting Which though it be spoken to a particular case is yet spoken from a general rule and reason applicable a great deal further And as some conceive and is undertaken to be demonstrated that the seeds of things are not vertually only but actually and formally the very things themselves so is it here also The very parts of this blessedness are discernable in this righteousness The future vision of God in present knowledge of him for this knowledge is a real initial part of righteousness The rectitude of the mind and apprehensions concerning God consisting in conformity to his revelation of himself Present holiness including also the future â—ssimilation to God And the contentment and peace that attends it the consequent satisfaction in glory But as in glory the impression of the divine likeness is that which vision subserves and whence satisfaction results so is it here visibly the main thing also The end and design of the Gospel revelation of whole Christianity I mean Systematically considered of all Evangelical Doctrines and knowledge is to restore Gods likeness and image from whence joy and peace result of course when once the Gospel is believed The Gospel is the instrument of impressing Gods likeness in order whereunto it must be understood and received into the mind Being so the impression upon the heart and life are Christianity haâ—itual and practical whereupon joy and pleasure the belief or thorough reception of the Gospel thus enterveining do necessarily ensue So Aptly is the only way or method of seeing Gods face so as to be satisfied with his likeness said to be in or thorow righteousness CHAP. X. The season of this satisfaction which is twofold at Death Resurrection The former spoken to wherein is shewn That this life is to the soul even of a Saint but as a sleep That at death it awakes As to the latter that there is a considerable accession to its happiness at the resurrection 3. THe season of this blessedness comes next to be considered which as the words when I awake have been concluded here to import must in the general be stated beyond the time of this present life Holy souls are here truly blessed not perfectly or their present blessedness is perfect only in nature and kind not in degree 'T is in this respect as far short of perfection as their holiness is Their hunger and thirst are present their being filled is yet future The experience of Saints in their best state on earth their desires their hopes their sighs and groans do sufficiently witness they are not satisfied or if they be in point of security they are not in point of enjoyment The completion of this blessedness is reserved to a better state as its being the end of their way their rest from their labours the reward of their work doth import and require Therefore many Scriptures that speak of their present rest peace repose satisfaction must be understood in a comparative not the absolute highest sense More particularly in that other state the season of their blessedness is twofold or there are two terms from whence in respect of some gradual or modal diversifications it may be said severally to commence or bear date Viz. The time Of their entrance upon a blessed immortality when they shall have laid down their earthly bodies in death Of their consummation therein when they receive their bodies glorified in the general resurrection Both these may not unfitly be signified by the Phrase in the Text when I awake For though Scripture doth more directly apply the term of awaking to the latter there will be no violence done to the Metaphor if we extend its signification to the former also To which purpose it is to be noted that it is not Death formally or the disanimating of the body we would have
in the name of the same person and particularly of the winged stati of the good soul when apart from the body carried in its triumphant flying Chariot of which he gives a large description somewhat resembling Solomons rapturous Metaphor Before I was aware my soul made me as the Chariots of Aminnadib But being in the body 't is with it as with a Bird that hath lost its wings it falls a sluggish weight to the earth Which indeed is the state even of the best in a degree within this Tabernacle A sleepy torpose stops their flight They can fall but not ascend the remaines of such a drowsiness do still hang even about Saints themselves The Apostle therefore calls upon such to awake out of sleep from that consideration as we know men are not wont to sleep so intensely towards morning that now their salvation was nearer then when they believed i. e. as some judicious Interpreters understand that place for that they were nearer death and eternity than when they first became Christians though this passage be also otherwise and not improbably interpreted However 2. The holy souls release and dismission from its earthly body which is that we propounded next to be considered will excusse and shake off this drowsie sleep Now is the happy Season of its awaking into the heavenly vital light of God The blessed morning of that long desired day is now dawned upon it the cumbersome night-vail is laid aside and the garments of salvation and immortal glory are now put on It hath past through the trouble darkness of a wearisome night and now is joy arrived with the morning as we may be permitted to allude to those words of the Psalmist though that be not supposed to be the peculiar sense I conceive my self here not concern'd operously to insist in proving that the souls of Saints sleep not in the interval between death and the general resurrection but enjoy present blessedness It being besides the design of a practical discourse which rather intends the propounding and improvement of things acknowledg'd and agree'd for the advantage and benefit of them with whom they are so then the discussing of things dubious and controversible And what I here propound in order to a consequent improvement and application should methinks pass for an acknowledg'd truth among them that professedly believe and seriously read and consider the Bible For meer Philosophers that do not come into this account 't were impertinent to discourse with them from a Text of Scripture and where my design only obliges me to intend the handling of that and to deliver it from what may fitly be supposed to have its ground there unless their allegations did carry with them the Species of demonstrating the simple impossibility of what is asserted thence to the power of that God whose word we take it to be which I have not found any thing they say to amount to That we have reason to presume it an acknowledged thing among them that will be concluded by Scripture That the Soul doth not sleep when it ceases to animate its earthly body many plain Texts do evince which are amassed together by the reverend Mr. Baxter some of the principal whereof I would invite any that waver in this matter seriously to consider As the words of our Saviour to the Thief on the Cross. This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise That of the Apostle We are willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. And that I am in a straight having a desire to depart and to be with Christ. That passage The Spirits of just men made perfect c. Which are expressions so clear that it is hard for an industrious Caviller to find what to except to them and indeed the very exceptions that are put in are so frivolous that they carry a plain confession there is nothing colourable to be said Yea and most evident it is from those Texts not only that holy souls sleep not in that state of separation but that they are awaked by it as out of a former sleep into a much more lively and vigorous activity than they enjoyed before And translated into a state as much better then their former as the tortures of a Cross are more ungrateful then the pleasures of a Paradise these joyes fuller of vitalitie then those sickly dying faintings As the immediate presence and close imbraces of the Lord of life are more delectable then a mournful disconsolate absence from him which the Apostle therefore tells us he desired as far better and with an Emphasis which our English too faintly expresses for he uses a double comparative 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 by much more better and as a perfected i. e a crowned triumphant Spirit that hath attained the end of its race as the words import in the agonistical notion is now in a more vivid joyous state then when lately toyling in a tiresome way it languished under many imperfections And it is observable that in the three former Scriptures that phrase of being with Christ or being present with him is the same which is used by the Apostle 1 Thes. 4. 17. to express the state of blessedness after the resurrection intimating plainly the sameness of the blessedness before and after And though this phrase be also used to signiâ—ie the present injoyment saints have of Gods gracious presence in this life which is also in nature and kind the same yet it is plainly used in these Scriptures the two latter more especially to set out to us such a degree of that blessedness that in comparison thereof our present being with Christ is a not being with him our presence with him now an absence from him While we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord and I am in a strait betwixt two desiring to depart or having a desire unto desolution and to be with Christ c. How strangely mistaken and disappointed had the blessed Apostle been had his absence from the body his dissolution his release set him further off from Christ or made him less capable of converse with him then before he was And how absurd would it be to say the spirits of the just are perfected by being cast into a stupifying sleep yea or being put into any state not better then they were in before But their state is evidently far better The body of death is now laid aside and the wights of sin that did so easily beset are shaken off flesh and sin are laid down together the soul is rid of its burdensome bands and shackles hath quitted its filthy darksome prison the usual place of lasiness and sloth is come forth of it's drowsie dormitory and the glory of God is risen upon it 'T is now come into the world of realities where things appear as they are no longer as in a drean or vision of the night
Christian Doctrine as if they were of another Religion How unlike is the Christian world to the Christian Doctrine The seal is fair and excellent but the impression is languid or not visible Where is that serious godliness that heavenliness that purity that spirituality that righteousness that peace unto which the Christian Religion is most aptly designed to work and form the Spirits of men we think to be saved by an empty name and glory in the shew and appearance of that the life and power whereof we hate and deride 'T is a reproach with us not to be called a Christian and a greater reproach to be one If such and such Doctrines obtain not in our professed Belief we are Hereticks or Infidels if they do in our practice we are precisians and fools To be so serious and circumspect and strict and holy to make the practice of godliness so much our business as the known and avowed principles of our Religion do plainly exact from us yea though we come as we cannot but do unspeakably short of that required measure is to make ones self a common derision and scorn Not to be professedly religious is barbarous to be so in good earnest ridiculous In other things men are wont to act and practise according to the known Rules of their several Callings and Professions and he would be reckon'd the common fool of the neighbour-hood that should not do so The Husbandman that should sow when others reap or contrive his Harvest into the depth of Winter or sow Fitches and expect to reap Wheat The Merchant that should venture abroad his most precious Commodities in a leaky bottom without Pilot or Compass or to places not likely to afford him any valuable return In Religion only it must be counted absurd to be and do according to it s known agreed Principles and he a fool that shall but practise as all about him professe to believe Lord whence is this apprehended inconsistency between the profession and practise of Religion what hath thus stupify'd and unman'd the world that seriousness in Religion should be thought the character of a fool that men must visibly make a mockery of the most Fundamental Articles of Faith onely to save their reputation and be afraid to be serious least they should be thought mad Were the Doctrine here opened believed in earnest were the due proper impresse of it upon our Spirits or as the Pagan Moralists expression is were our mind transfigured into it what manner of persons should we be in all holy conversation and godliness But 't is thought enough to have it in our Creed though never in our hearts and such as will not deride the holiness it should produce yet indeavour it not nor go about to apply and urge truths upon their own souls to any such purpose What should turn into Grace and Spirit and Life turns all into Notion and Talk and men think all is well if their head be fill'd and their tongues tipt with what should transform their souls and govern their lives How are the most awful Truths and that should have greatest power upon mens Spirits trifled with as matters only of speculation and discourse They are heard but as empty airy words and presently evaporate pass away into words again like food as Seneca speaks that comes up presently the same that it was taken in which as he saith profits not nor makes any accession to the body at all A like case as another ingeniously speaks as if sheep when they have been feeding should present their Shepherds with the very grass it self which they have cropt and shew how much they had eaten No saith he they concoct it and so yield them Wool and Milk And so saith he do not you viz. when you have been instructed presently go and utter words among the more ignorant meaning they should not do so in a way of ostentation to shew how much they knew more than others but works that follow upon the concoction of what hath been by words made known to them Let Christians be ashamed that they need this instruction from heathen Teachers Thy words were found and I did eat them saith the Prophet and thy word was to me the joy and rejoycing of my heart Divine truth is only so far at present grateful or useful for future as 't is received by faith and consideration and in the love thereof into the very heart and there turned in succum sanguinem into real nutriment to the soul So shall man live by the word of God Hence is the application of it both personal and ministerial of so great necessity If the Truths of the Gospel were of the same alloy with some parts of Philosophy whose end is attained as soon as they are known If the Scripture Doctrine the whole entire System of it were not a Doctrine after godliness if it were not designed to sanctifie and make men holy or if the hearts of men did not reluctate were easily receptive of its impressions our work were as soon done as such a Doctrine were nakedly proposed But the state of the case in these respects is known and evident The tenour and aspect of Gospel truth speaks its end and experience too plainly speaks the oppositeness of mens Spirits All therefore we read and hear is lost if it be not urgently apply'd The Lord grant it be not then too Therefore Reader let thy mind and heart concur in the following improvement of this Doctrine which will be wholly comprehended under these Two heads Inferences of Truth Rules of Duty that are consequent and connatural thereto 1. Inferences of Truth educible from it 1. True Blessedness consists not in any sensual injoyment The blessedness of a man can be but one Most onely one He can have but one highest and best good And its proper character is that it finally satisfies and gives rest to his Spirit This the face and likeness of God doth his glory beheld and participated Here then alone his full blessedness must be understood to lye Therefore as this might many other wayes be evinced to be true so it evidently appears to be the proper issue of the present truth and is plainly proved by it But alas it needs a great deal more to be pressed than proved O that it were but as much considered as it is known The experience of almost 6000. years hath one would think sufficiently testified the incompetency of every worldly thing to make men happy that the present pleasing of our senses and the gratification of our animal part is not blessedness that men are still left unsatisfied notwithstanding But the practice and course of the world is such as if this were some late and rare experiment which for curiosity every one must be trying over again Every age renews the inquiry after an earthly felicity the design is intail'd as the Spanish designs are said to be and reinforc'd with as great a confidence and vigor
and good impressions thou had'st but even all thou wast capable of and mightst have attained Thou shalt now recount with anguish and horror and rend thy own Soul with the thoughts what thou mightest now have been how excellent and glorious a creature hadst thou not contriv'd thy own misery and conspir'd with the Devil against thy self how to deform and destroy thy own Soul While this remembrance shall alwayes a fresh return that nothing was injoyned thee as a duty or propounded as thy blessedness but what thou wast made capable of and that it was not fatal necessity but a wilful choice made thee miserable CHAP. XII Inference 3. That a change of heart is necessary to this blessedness The pretences of ungodly men whereby they would avoid the necessity of this change Five considerations proposed in order to the detecting the vanity of such pretences A particular discussion and refutation of those pretences 3. 'T Is a mighty change must pâ—sse upon the Souls of men in order to their enjoyment of this Blessedness This equally follows from the consideration of the Nature and substantial parts of it as of the qualifying righteousness prerequired to it A little reflection upon the common state and temper of mens spirits will soon inforce an acknowledgement that the Vision of God and conformity to him are things above their reach and which they are never likely to take satisfaction in or at all to savour till they become otherwise disposed then before the renovating change they are The text expresses no more in stating the qualified subject of this blessedness in righteousness then it evidently implies in the account it gives of this blessedness it self that it lies in seeing God and being satisfied with his likeness Assoon as it is considered that the blessedness of Souls is stated here what can be a more obvious reflection then this Lord then how great a change must they undergo what such Souls be blessed in seeing and pertaking the Divine likeness that never loved it were so much his enemies 'T is true they are naturally capable of it which speaks their original excellencie but they are morally uncapable i. e. indisposed and averse which as truly and most sadly speaks their present vileness and the sordid object temper they now are of They are destitute of no natural Powers necessary to the attainment of this blessedness but in the mean time have them so depraved by impure and vitious tinctures that they cannot relish it or the means to it They have reasonable Soul's furnished with intellective and elective faculties but labouring under a manifold distemper and disaffection that they cannot receive they cannot savour the things of God or what is Spiritual They want the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as we may express it the well disposedness for the Kingdom of God intimated Luke 9. 62. the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the meetness the aptitude or idoneity for the inheritance of the Saints in light Col. 1. 12. A settled aversion from God hath fastned its roots in the very spirit of their minds for that is stated as the prime subject of the change to be made and how can they take pleasure then in the vision and participation of his glory whereas by beholding the glory of the Lord they should be changed into the same image a vail is upon the heart till it turn to the Lord as was said concerning the Jews 2 Cor. 3. The God of this world hath blinded their minds least that transforming light the light of the glorious Gospel of Christ who is the image of God should shine unto them Chap. 4. 4. They are alienated from the Life of God through their ignorance and blindness of heart The life they chuse is to be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Atheists or without God in the world They like not to retain God in their knowledge are willingly ignorant of him Say to him depart from us we desire not the knowledge of thy wayes The Lord looks down from Heaven upon the children of men to see if any will understand if any will seek after God and the result of the inquiry is there is none that doth good no not one They are haters of God as our Saviour accused the Jews and Saint Paul the Gentiles Are lovers of pleasure more then lovers of God Their understandings are dark their minds vain their wills obstinate their Consciences seared their hearts hard and dead their lives one continued Rebellion against God and a defiance to Heaven At how vast distance are such Souls from such blessedness The notion and nature of blessedness must sure be changed or the temper of their Spirits Either they must have new hearts created or a new Heaven if ever they be happy And such is the stupid dotage of vain man he can more easily perswade himself to believe that the Sun it self should be transformed into a dunghill that the Holy God should lay aside his Nature and turn Heaven into a place of impure darkness then that he himself should need to undergo a change O ye powerful infatuation of self love that men in the gall of bitterness should think 't is well with their spirits and fancie themselves in a case good enough to enjoy Divine pleasures that as the Toads venome offends not it self their loathsom wickedness which all good men detest is a pleasure to them and while 't is as the poison of Asps under their lips they call it as a daintie bit revolve it in their thoughts with delight Their wickedness speakes it self out to the very hearts of others while it never affects their own and is found out to be hateful while they still continue slattering themselves And because they are without spot in their own eyes they adventure so high as to presume themselves so in the pure eyes of God too and instead of designing to be like God they already imagine him sucâ— a one as themselves Hence their allotment of time in the whole of it the Lord knowes little enough for the working out of their salvation spends a pace while they do not so much as understand their business Their measured hour is almost out an immense Eternity is coming on upon them and lo they stand as men that cannot find their hands Urge them to the speedy serious indeavour of an heart-change earnestly to intend the business of regeneration of becoming new creatures they seem to understand it as little as if they were spoken to in an unknown tongue and are in the like posture with the confounded builders of Babel they know not what we mean or would put them upon They wonder what we would have them do They are say they Orthodox Christians They believe all the Articles of the Christian Creed They detest all Heresie and false Doctrine They are no strangers to the house of God but diligently attend the injoyned Solemnities of Publick
Worship Some possibly can say they are sober just Charitable Peaceable and others that can boast lesse of their Vertues yet say they are sorry for their sins and pray God to forgive them And if we urge them concerning their Translation from the state of Nature to that of Grace their becoming new creatures their implantation into Christ. They say they have been Baptized and therein regenerate and what would we have more But to how little purpose is it to equivocate with God to go about to put a fallacy upon the Judge of Spirits or escape the animadversion of his fiery flaming eye or elude his determinations and pervert the true intent and meaning of his most established Constitutions and Laws Darest thou venture thy soul upon it that this is all God means by having a new heart created a right Spirit renewed in us by being made Gods workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works by becoming new creatures old things being done away all things made new by so learning the truth as it is in Jesus to the putting off the old man and putting on the new which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness by being begotten of Gods own will by the word of truth to be the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the chief excellency the prime glory as certainly his new creature is his best creature the first fruits or the devoted part of all his creatures by having Christ formed in us by partaking the divine nature the incorruptible seed the seed of God by being born of God Spirit of Spirit as of earthly parents we are born flesh of flesh When my eternal blessedness lies upon it had I not need to be sure that I hit the true meaning of these Scriptures especially that at least I fall not below it and rest not in any thing short of what Scripture makes indispensably necessary to my entring into the Kingdom of God I professedly wave controversies and 't is pity so practical a business as this I am now upon and upon which Salvation so much depends should ever have been incumbred with any controversie And therefore though I shall not degress so far as to undertake a particular and distinct handling here of this work of God upon the soul yet I shall propound something in general touching the change necessarily previous to this blessedness wherein that necessity is evidenceable from the nature of this blessedness which is the business I have in hand that I hope will pass among Christians for acknowledged truth not liable to dispute though the Lord knows it be little considered My design being rather to awaken souls to the consideration of known and agreed things than to perplex them about unknown Consider therefore First that the holy Scriptures in the forementioned and other like passages do plainly hold forth the necessity of a real change to be made in the inward temper and dispositions of the soul and not a relative only respecting its state This cannot be doubted by any that acknowledge a real inherent depravation propagated in the nature of man No nor denyed by them that grant such a corruption to be general and continued among men whether by imitation only or what way soever And willing I am to meet men upon their own principles and concessions however erroneous or short of the truth they may be while they are yet improvable to their own advantage Admit that regeneration or the new birth includes a change of our relation and state God-ward doth it therefore exclude an intrinsique subjective change of the inclinations and tendencies of the Soul And if it did yet other termes are more peculiarly appropriate to and most expressly point out this very change alone As that of conversion or of turning to God of being renewed in the spirit of the mind of putting off the old man that is corrupt by c. and putting on the new man which is created in righteousness and true holiness c. of partaking the Divine nature It matters not if this or that expression be understood by some more principally in another sense the thing it self of which we speak is as clearly expressed and as urgently pressed as there was cause as any other matter whatsoever throughout the whole Book of God But men are slower of belief as to the great Article of the Christian Doctrine then to most I might say any other This Truth more directly assaults the strong holds of the Devil in the hearts of men and is of more immediate tendency to subvert his Kingdom Therefore they are most unwilling to have it true and most hardly believe it Here they are so madly bold as to give the lie to all Divine Revelations and though they are never so plainly told without holiness none shall see God they will yet maintain the contrary belief and hope till go ye cursed vindicate the Truth of God and the flames of Hell be their Eternal confutation Lord that so plain a thing will not enter into the hearts of men that so urgent inculcations will not yet make them apprehend that their Souls must be renewed or perish That they will still go dreaming on with that mad conceit that whatever the Word of God says to the contrary they may yet with unsanctified hearts get to Heaven How deplorable is the case that when men have no other hope left them but that the God of truth will prove false belie his word yea and overturn the nature of things to save them in their sins Thou that livest under the Gospel hast thou any pretence for thy seeming ignorance in this matter couldst thou ever look one quarter of an hour into the Bible and not meet with some intimation of this truth What was the ground of thy mistake What hath beguiled thee into so mischievous a delusion How could such an imagination have place in thy soul that a Child of wrath by nature could become a Child of God without receiving a new nature That so vast a change could be made in thy state without any at all in the temper of thy Spirit Secondly consider That this change is in its own nature and the design of God who works it dispositive of the soul for blessedness 'T is sufficiently evident from the consideration of the state it self of the unrenewed soul that a change is necessary for this end such a soul in which it is not wrought when once its drowsie stupifying slumber is shaken off its reflecting power awakened must needs be a perpetuall torment to it self So far it is remov'd from blessedness it is its own Hell and can flie from misery death no faster then from it self Blessedness composes the soul reduces it to a consistancie it infers or rather is a self-satisfaction a well-pleasedness and contentment with one self self in rich't and fill'd with the divinefulness Hence 't is at rest not as being pent in but contentedly
dwelling with it self and keeping within its own bounds of its own accord The unrenewed soul can no more contain it self within its own termes or limits is as little self consistent as a raging flame or an impetuous tempest Indeed it s own lusts perpetually as so many vultures rend and tear it and the more when they want external objects Then as hunger their fury is all turned inward and they prey upon intestines upon their own subject but unto endless torment not satisfaction In what posture is this soul for rest and blessedness The nature of this change sufficiently speakes its own design 'T is an introduction of the primordia the very principles of blessedness And Scripture as plainly speaks the design of God He regenerates to the undefiled inheritance Makes meet for it works formes or fashions the soul unto that self same thing viz. to desire groan after that blessed state and consequently to acquiesce and rest therein Therefore vain man that dreamest of being happy without undergoing such a change how art thou trying thy skill to abstract a thing from it self For the prerequired righteousness whereunto thou must be changed and this blessedness are in kind and nature the same thing as much as a Child and a man Thou pretendest thou would'st have that perfected which thou canst not indure should ever be begun Thou settest thy self to prevent and suppresse what in its own nature and by Divine Ordination tends to the accomplishment of thy own pretended desires Thou wouldst have the Tree without ever admitting the Seed or Plant. thou wouldst have heat and canst not indure the least warmth so besotted a thing is a carnal heart Thirdly That in as much as this blessedness consists in the satisfactory sight and participation of Gods own likeness unto whom the soul is habitually averse This change must chiefly stand in its becoming holy or godly or in the alteration of its dispositions and inclinations as to God Otherwise the design and end of it is not attained We are required to follow peace with all men but here the accent is put and holiness without which no man shall see God Heb. 12. 14. 'T is therefore a vain thing in reference to what we have now under consideration viz. the possibility of attaining this blessedness to speak of any other changes that fall short of or are of another kind from the right disposition of heart Godward This change we are now considering is no other then the proper adequate impress of the Gospel-discovery upon mens spirits as we have largely shewn the righteousness is in which it terminates The sum of that discovery is That God is in Christ reconciling the world unto himself The proper impress of it therefore is the actual reconciliation of the soul to God through Christ a friendly well affected posture of Spirit towards God our last end and highest good and towards Christ our only way since the Apostacy of attaining and injoying it To rest therefore in any other good dispositions or indowments of mind is as much besides the business as impertinent to the present purpose as if one design'd to the Government of a City should satisfie himself that he hath the skill to play well on a Lute or he that intends Phisick that he is well seen in Architecture The general Scope and Tenor of the Gospel tells thee O man plainly enough what the business is thou must intend if thou wilfully overlook it not in order to thy blessedness 'T is written to draw thee into fellowship with the Father and the Son that thy joy may be full It aimes at the bringing of thee into a state of blessedness in God through Christ and is therefore the instrument by which God would forme thy heart thereto The seal by which to make the first impression of his image upon thee Which will then as steadily incline and determine thy soul towards him as the magnetique touch ascertains the posture of the Needle wherefore doth he there discover his own heart but to melt and win and transform thine The wâ—rd of grace is the seed of the new Creature Through the exceeding great and precious promises he makes souls partake of the divine nature Grace is firstly reveal'd to teach the denial of ungodliness c. Turn thy thoughts hither then and consider what is there done upon thy soul by the Gospel to attemper and conform it to God wherein hath thy heart answered this its visible design and intendment Thou art but in a delirious dream till thou seriously bethinkest thy self of this For otherwise how can the aversion of thy heart from him escape thy daily observation thou canst not be without evidences of it what pleasure dost thou take in retiring thy self with God what care to redeem time onely for converse with him had'st thou not rather be any where else In a time of vacancy from business and company when thou hast so great a variety of things before thee among which to chuse an object for thy thoughts do they not naturally fall upon any thing rather then God! Nor do thou think to shift off this by assigning the mear natural cause for if there were not somewhat more in the matter why is it not so with all He upon whom this change had passed could say My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lipâ— when I remember thee upon my bed and meditate on thee in the night watches My meditation of him shall be 〈◊〉 I will be glad in the Lord. How precious are thy thoughts unto me O God how great is the sunt of them If I should count them they are more in number then the sand when I wake I am still with thee Yea in the way of thy judgment O God have we waited for thee the desire of our soul is to thy name and to the remembrance of thee With my Soul have I desired thee in the night yea with my spirit within me will I sâ—ck thee early c. Therefore plain it is there is a sinful distemper to be wrought out an ungodly disposition of heart which it concerns thee not to rest till thou see removed Fourthly Consider that to become godly or this change of inclinations and dispositiâ—ns towards God is that which of all other the soul doth most strongly reluctate and strive against and which therefore it undergoes with greatest difficulty and reget 'T is an horrid and amazing thing it should be so but Scripture and experience leave it undoubted that so it is What! that the highest Excellency the most perfect Beauty Loveliness and Love it self should so little attract a reasonable Spiritual being that issued thence His own off-spring so unkind what more then monstrous unnaturalness is this so to disaffect ones own Original 'T were easie to accumulate and heap up considerations that would render this astonishingly strange
So things are reckon'd upon several accounts either as they are more rare and unfrequent which is the vulgar way of estimating wonders or as their causes are of more difficult investigation or if they are moral wonders as they are more unreasonable or causeless upon this last account Christ marvelled at the Jews unbelief And so is this hatred justly marvellous as being altogether without a cause But thence to infer there is no such thing were to dispute against the Sun No truth hath more of light and evidence in it though none more of â—â—rrâ—ur and prodigie To how many thousand objects is the mind of man indifferent can turn it self to this or that run with facility all points of the Compass among the whole universe of beings but assay only to draw it to God and it recoiles Thoughts and affections revolt and decline all converse with that blessed object Toward other objects it freely opens and dilates it self as under the benign beams of a warm Sun there are placid complacential emotions amicable sprightly converses and imbraces Towards God only it is presently contracted and shut up Life retires and it becomes as a stone cold â—rigid and impenetrable The quite contrary to what is required which also those very precepts do plainly imply 't is alive to sin to the world to vanity but crucified mortified dead to God and Jesus Christ. The natures of many men that are harsh fierce and savage admit of various cultivations and refinings and by moral precept the exercise and improvement of reason with a severe animadversion and observance of themselves they become mild tractable gentle meek The story of the Physiognamists guess at the temper of Socrates is known but of all other the disaffected soul is least inclinable ever to become good natur'd towards God wherein grace or holiness doth consist Here 't is most unperswadable never facile to this change One would have thought no affection should have been so natural so deeply inwrought into the spirit of man as an affection towards the Father of Spirits but here he most of all discovers himself to be without natural â—ffection surely here is a sad proof that such affection doth not ascend The whole duty of man as to the principle of it resolves into love That is the fulfilling of the Law As to its object the two Tables devide it between God and our neighbour And accordingly divide that love Upon those two Branches whereof love to God and love to our neighbour hang all the Law and the Prophets The wickedness of the world hath kil'd this love at the very root and indisposed the nature of man to all exercises of it either way whether towards God or his neighbour It hath not only rendred man unmeet for holy communion with God but in a great measure for civil society with one another It hath destroyed good nature made men false envious barbarous turn'd the world especially the dark places of the Earth where the light of the Gospel shines not into habitations of cruelty But who sees not the enmity and disaffection of mens hearts towards God is the more deeply rooted and less superable evil The beloved Apostle gives us a plain and sad intimation how the case is as to this when he reasons thus He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen how can he love God whom he hath not seen He argues from the less to the greater and this is the ground upon which his argument is built That the loving of God is a matter of greater difficulty and from which the Spirit of mâ—n is more remote then the loving of his neighbour And he withall insinuates an account why it is so Gods remoteness from our sense which is indeed a cause but no excuse For is our so gross sensuality no sin that nothing should affect our hearts but what we can see with our eyes as if our sense were the onely measure or judg of excellencies We are not all flesh what have we done with our souls if we cannot see God with our eyes why do we not with our minds at least so much of him we might as to discern his excellency above all things else How come our souls to lose their dominion and to be so slavishly subject to a ruling sense But the reason less concerns our present purpose that whereof it is the reason that implyed assertion that men are in a less disposition to the love of God then their neighbour is the sad truth we are now considering There are certain homilitical vertues that much adorn and polish the nature of man Urbanity Fidelity Justice Patience of Injuries Compassion towards the Miserable c. and indeed without these the world would break up and all civil societies disband if at least they did not in some degree obtain But in the mean time men are at the greatest distance imaginable from any disposition to society with God They have some love for one another but none for him And yet it must be remembred that love to our neighbour and all the consequent exertions of it becoming dutie by the Divine Law ought to be performed as acts of obedience to God and therefore ought to grow from the stock and root of a Divine Love I mean love to God They are otherwise but Spurious Vertues Bastard Fruits men gather not Grapes of Thorns c. they grow from a Tree of another kind and what ever semblance they may have of the true they want their constituent form their life and soul. Though love to the brethren is made a character of the regenerate state of having past from death to life 'T is yet but a more remote and is it self brought to trial by this higher and more immediate one and which is more intimately connatural to the new creature even the Love of God By this we know we love the children of God when we love God and keep his Commandments A respect to God specifies every Vertue and Duty What ever is loved and served and not in him and for him servato ordine finiâ— as the School-phrase is becomes an Idol and that love and service is Idolatry And what a discovery is here of disaffection to God that in the exercise of such the above mentioned vertues one single act shall be torn from it self from its specifying moral â—orm onely to leave out him A promise shall be kept but without any respect to God for even the promises made to him are broken without any scruple That which is anothers shall be rendred to him but God shall not be regarded in the business An alms given for the Lords sake left out That which concerns my neighbour often done but what concerns God therein as it were studiously omitted This is what he that runs may read that though the hearts of men are not to one another as they should they are much more â—verse towards God Men are easier of acquaintance
correctioâ—s what awakenings and terrours what remorses what purposes what tasts and relishes do some find in their own hearts that yet are blasted and come to nothing How many miserable abortions after travailing pangs and throwes and fair hopes of an happy birth of the new Creature Often somewhat is produced that much resembles it but is not it No gracious principle but may have its counterfeit in an ungracious heart whence they deceive not others only but themselves and think verily they are true converts while they are yet in their sins How many wretched souls that lie dubiously strugling a long time under the contrary alternate impressions of the Gospel on the one hand and the present evil world on the other and give the day to their own sensual inclinations at last In some degree escape the corruptions of the world by the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ but are again intangled and overcome so as their latter end is worse then their beginning Such a man is so far from being advantaged by his former faint inclinations towards God that he will be found at last under this aggravated wickedness beyond all other men that when others wandred from God through inadvertency and inconsideration this man will be found to have been his enemy upon deliberation and again the various strivings of his convinced heart to the contrary This is more eminently victorious and raigning enmity such a one takes great pains to perish Alas 't is not a slight touch an overly superficial tincture some evaned sentiments of piety a few good thoughts or wishes that bespeak a new man a new creature 'T is a thorough prevailing change that quite alters the habitual posture of a mans soul and determines it towards God so as that the after course of this life may be capable of that denomination a living to God a living after the Spirit That exalts the love of God into that Supremacy in him that it becomes the governing principle of his life and the reason and measure of his actioâ—s that as he loves him above all things else better then his own life so he can truly though possibly sometimes with a doubtful trembling heart resolve the ordinary course of his daily walking and practice into that love as the directive principle of it I pray I read I hear because I love God I desire to be just sober charitable meek patient because I love God This is the perfection and end of the love of God therefore that must needs be the principle hereof obedience to his will Herein appears that power of godliness denied God knowes by too many that have the form The Spirit of love power and of a sound mind That onely is a sound mind in which such love rules in such power Is not love to God often pretended by such that when ever it comes to an actual competitioâ— discover they love their own flesh a gâ—eat deal more that seldom ever cross their own wills to do his or hazard their own fleshly interest to promote his interest we may justly say as the Apostle in a case fitly enough reducible hiâ—her how dwells the love of God 〈◊〉 that man Notwithstanding such a subdued ineffectual love to God such a one shall be denominated and dealt with as an enemy 'T is not likely any man on earth hates God so perfectly as those in Hell And is not every quality not yet perfect in its kind and that is yet growing more and more intense in the mean time allayed by some degree of its contrary Yet that over-mastered degree denominates not its subject nor ought a man from such a supposed love to God have the name of a â—over of him That principle only is capable of denominating the man that is prevalent and practical that hath a governing influence on his heart and life He in whom the love of God hath not such power and rule whatever his fainter inclinations may be is an ungodly man And now methinks these several considerations compared and weighed together should contribute something to the settling of right thoughts in the minds of secure sinners touching the nature and necessity of this heart-change and do surely leave no place for the forementioned vain pretences that occasioned them For to give you a summary view of what hath been propounded in those foregoing considerations It now plainly appears that the holy Scripture requires in him that shall injoy this blessedness a mighty change of the very temper of his soul as that which must dispose him thereto and which must therefore chiefly consist iâ— the right framing of his heart towards God towards whom it is most fixed averse and therefore not easily susceptible of such a change And that any slighter or more feeble inclination toward God will not serve the turn but such onely whereby the soul is prevalently and habitually turned to him And then what can be more absurd or unsavory what more contrary to Christian Doctrine or common Reason then instead of this necessary heart-change to insist upon so poor a Plea as that mentioned above as the onely ground of so great a hope How empty and frivolous will it appear in comparison of this great Soul-transforming change if we severally consider the particulars of it As for Orthodoxie indoctrinals 't is in its self an highly laudible thing and in respect of the Fundamentals for therefore are they so called indispensibly necessary to the blessedness As that cannot be without holiness so nor holiness without truth But Besides that this is that which every one pretends to is every thing which is necessary sufficient As to natural necessity which is that we now speak to reason an intellectual nature are also necessary shall therefore all men yea and Devils too be saved Besides are you sure you believe the grand Articles of the Christian Religion consider a little The Grounds Effects of that petended Faith First its grounds every assent is as the grounds of it are Deal truly here with thy soul. Can you tell wherefore you are a Christian what are thy inducements to be of this Religion are they not such as are common to thee with them that are of a false Religion I am here happily prevented by a worthy Author to which I recommend thee but at the present a little bethink thy self Is it not possible thou may'st be a Christian for the same reasons for which one may be a Jew or a Mahometan or a meer Pâ—gâ—â— as viz. Education Custome Law Example Outward advantage c. Now consider if thou â—ind this upon enquiry to be thy case the Motives of thy being a Christian admit of being cast together into this form of reasoning That Religion which a Mans Forefathers were of which is established by Law or generally obtains in the Country where he lives The Profession whereof most conduces to or best consists with his credit and other outward advantages that Religion he is
supreme desire till it attain to the fulness thereof We have here a plainly-implyed description of the posture and tendencies of such a soul even of a sanctified holy Soul which had therefore undergone this blessed change towards this state of blessedness I shall saith he be satisfied with thy likeness q. d. I cannot be satisfied otherwise We have seen how great a change is necessary to dispose the Soul to this blessedness which being once wrought nothing else can now satisfie it Such a thing is this blessedness I speak now of so much of it as is previous and conducing to satisfaction or of blessedness materially considered the Divine Glory to be beheld and participated 'T is of that nature it makes the Soul restless it lets it not be quiet after it hath got some apprehension of it till it attain the full enjoyment The whole life of such a one is a continual seeking Gods face So attractive is this glory of a subject rightly disposed to it While others crave Corn and Wine this is the summe of the holy Souls desires Lord lift thou up the light of thy countenance c. The same thing is the object of its present desires that shall be of its eternal satisfaction and enjoyment This is now it s one thing the request insisted on to behold the beauty of the Lord c. and while in any measure it doth so yet 't is still looking for this blessed hope still hoping to be like him see him as he is the expectation of satisfaction in this state implies the restless working of desire till then for what is this satisfaction but the fulfilling of our desires the perfecting of the souls motions in a complacential rest Motion and rest do exactly correspond each to other Nothing can naturally rest in any place to which it was not before naturally inclin'd to move and the rest is proportionably more compos'd and steady according as the motion was stronger and more vigorous By how much the heavier any body is so much the stronger and less resistible is its motion downward and then accordingly it is less moveable when it hath attained its resting place 'T is therefore a vanity and contradiction to speak of the Souls being satisfied in that which it was not before desirous of And that state which it shall ultimately and eternally acquiesse in with a rest that must therefore be understood to be most composed and sedate towards it must it needs move with the strongest and most unsatisfied desire a desire that is supreme prevalent and triumphant over all other desires and over all obstructions to it self least capable of diversion or of pitching upon any thing short of the terme aimed at Ask therefore the holy Soul What is thy Supreme desire and so far as it understands it self it must answer to see and partake the divine glory to behold the blessed face of God till his likeness be transfused through all my powers and his entire image be perfectly formed in me present to my view what else you will I can be satisfied in nothing else but this Therefore this leaves a black note upon those wretched souls that are wholly strangers to such desires that would be better satisfied to dwell always in dust that shun the blessed face of God as Hell it self and to whom the most despicable vanity is a more desirable sight then that of divine glory Miserable souls consider your state can that be your blessedness which you desire not or do you think God will receive any into his blessed presence to whom it shall be a burden methinks upon the reading of this you should presently doom your selves and see your sentence written in your breasts compare your hearts with his holy mans See if there be any thing like this in the temper of your Spirits and never think well of your selves till you find it so 5. The knowledge of God and conformity to him are in their own nature apt to satisfie the desires of the soul and even noâ— actually do so in the measure wherein they are attained Some things are not of a satisfying nature there is nothing tending to satisfaction in them And then the continual heaping together of such things doth no more towards satisfaction then the accumulating of Mathematical Points would towards the compacting of a solid body or the multiplication of Ciphers only to the making of a summe But what shall one day satisfi hath in it self a Power and aptitude thereto The act when ever it is supposes the power Therefore the hungry craving soul that would sain be hâ—ppy but knows not how needs not spend its dayes in making uncertain guesses and fruitless attempts and trials It ma◠〈◊〉 â—ts hovering thoughts and upon afâ—â—â—◠〈◊〉 given say I have now found at 〈…〉 satisfaction may be had and have 〈◊〉 this to do to bend all my powers hither and intend this one thing the possessing my self of this blessed rest earnestly to inâ—e 〈◊〉 and patiently to wait for it Happy discovery welcome tidings I now know which waâ— to turn my eye and direct my pursuit I shall no longer spend my â—â—if in dubious toilsome wandrings in anxious vaâ—n inquiries I have found I have found blessedness is here If I can but get a lively efficacious sight of God I have enough Shew me the Father and it suffices Let the weary wandring soul bethink it self and retire to God he will not mock thee with shadows as the world hath done This is eternal life to know him the onely true God and Jesâ—â— Christ whom he hath sent A part from Christ thou canst not know nor see him with fruit and comfort but the Gospel revelation which is the Revelation of God in Christ gives thee a lovely prospect of him His Glory shines in the face of Jesus Christ and when by beholding it thou art changed into the same likeness and findest thy self gradually changing more and more from glory to glory thou wilt find thy self accordingly in a gradual tendency towards satisfaction and blessedness That is do but seriously set thy self to study and contemplate the Being and Attributes of God and then look upon him as through the Mediatour he is willing to be reconcil'd to thee and become thy God and so long let thine eye fix and dwell here till it affect thy heart and the proper impress of the Gospel be by the Spirit of the Lord instamp't upon it till thou find thy self wrought to a compliance with his holy will and his image formed in thee and thou hast soon experience thou art entring into his est and wilt relish a more satisfying 〈◊〉 in this blessed change then all thy 〈◊〉 sensual injoyments did ever afford thee before Surely if the perfect vision and perception of his glorious likeness will yield a compleat satisfaction at last the initial and progressive tendencies towards the former will proportionably infer the latter 'T is obvious hence to
collect who are in this world ordinarly and caeteris paribus where more unusual violent temptations hinder not the most satisfied and contented persons even those that have most of the clarifying sights of God and that thence partake most of his image indeed Scripture only vouchsafes the name to such sights of God he that doth evil hath not seen God Such as have most of a godly frame wrought into their spirits and that have hearts most attempered and conformed to God These are the most contented persons in the world Content is part of the gain that attends godliness it concurring renders the other a great gain godliness with contentment the form of expression discovers how connatural contentment is to godliness as if they were not to be mentioned apart Godliness as if he had said is a very gainful thing but if you would comprehend the gainfulness of it fully do not abstract too curiously take in with it that which is of so near an alliance that you will hardly know how to consider them apart let its inseparable adjunct contentment go along with it and you will find it againful thing indeed The true knowledge of God so directly tends to holiness and that to contentation that it may be too evidently concluded that a discontented person hath little of the one or the other not much knowledge and less grace he is so far from being like God that in the Apostles language above we may say he hath not seen him Doth that person know God or hath ever seen him that falls not into the dust admiring so glorious a Majesty that subjects not himself to him with Loyal affections accounting it his only grand concernment to please and serve him But the discontented person takes upon him as if he were God alone and as if he expected every creature to do him homage and thought the creation were made for the pleasure and service of none but him Hath that person ever seen God that acknowledges him not a sufficient portion a full all-comprehending good Hath he seen him that sees not reason to trust him to commit all his concernments to him Hath he seen him that loves him not and delights not in his love Hath he seen him that quits not all for him and abandons not every private interest to espouse his and how evidently do these things tend to quiet and compose the soul Discontent proceeds from idolizing thoughts of our selves 't is rooted in self-conceit in self-dependence self-love self-seeking all which despicable Idols or that one great Idol Self thus variously served and Idolized one sight of the Divine Glory would confound and bring to nothing The sights of God melt the heart break it under a sense of sin and hence compose it to a meek peaceful humility but the discontented spirit is an unbroken proud imperious spirit The sights of God purifie the soul refine it from the dross of this vile world make it daily aspire to a conformity unto the pure and Spiritual nature of God But a discontented spirit is a sensual terrene spirit for what but such objects are the usual matter of most mens discontents taking sensuality in its just latitude 't is a low Dâ—nghil spirit fit for nothing but to rake and scrabble in the dirt I insist upon this apprehending what deserves more lamentation then it hath observation that too many annex a profession of eminent godliness and spirituality into an indulged querulous impatient temper of spirit joyn a splendid appearance of piety to an unreformed perverse frowardness which agree as well as a Jewel of Gold to a Swines â—nout nothing pleases them their mercies are not worth the acknowledging their afflictions intolerable not to be born They fall out and quarrel with all occurrences actions events neither Man nor God doth any thing good in their sight The world is not well govern'd nothing falls out well as to themselves What can possibly be thought on more repugnant to the knowledge of God The gâ—and design of all Religion and the very Spirit of the Gospel than this temper which way do these tend and aime but to lead souls to blessedness to bring them into a peaceful happy satisfied state and frame and must we because that end cannot be attained here therefore go the quite contrary way or pretend we are going to heaven with our backs turned upon it Sure the discoveries God now makes of himself to us and by which he impresses his likeness upon his own though they ultimately design our satisfaction and blessedness in heaven as intermediate there unto they aime at the bringing us into an Heaven upon Earth to form us unto a life agreeable and hath analogie with that of heaven unto which nothing is more analogous in our pre-present state then that peace and serenity which result from Divine Knowledge and holiness nothing more inconsistent then a peevish fretful turbulent Spirit The one is a participation of a bright and mild light from heaven the other of a dark and raging fire from Hell 'T is onely Gods face his glorious likeness reflected on our souls that shall satisfie hereafter and make heaven heaven He doth not now wholly conceal himself from us nor altogether hide his face The shining of the same face in what degree he now vouchsafes them will make this Earth an Heaven too One glance towards him may transmit a lively pleasant lustre upon our spirits They looked to him and were lightned And we live in the expectation of clearer and more impressive eternal visions It will become us to express a present satisfiedness proportionable to our present sights and expectations and to endeavour daily to see more and to be more like God that we may be daily more and more satisfied While me cannot yet attain to be making gradual approaches towards that blessed state By how much any have more of the vision and likeness of God in their present state so much they approach nearer unto satisfaction 6. We infer The love of God to his people is great which hath designed for them so great and even a satisfying good We cannot overlook the occasion this Doctrine gives us to consider and contemplate a while the love of God Iâ— this shall be the blessedness of his Saints 't is a great love that shall be the Spring and source of it Two things here before our eyes discover the greatness of this love That it designes satisfact on to the persons meant and that they shall be satisfied with the Divine vision and likeness 1. It designs their sâ—tisfactiâ—n This is as far as love can go 'T is love to the uttermost Iâ— doth not satisfie itself till it satisfie them 'T is love to spare an enemy to relieve a stranger but to satisfie for ever them that were both this sâ—â—e exceeds all the wonted measures of love Much love is shewn in the forgiveness of sin in the sâ—pply of necessities but herein as the Apostle
speaks in another case is the love of God perfected as to its exercise it hath now perfectly attained its end when it hath not left so much as a craving desire not a wish unsatisfied the soul cannot say I wish it were better O thâ—t I hâ—d â—ut this one thing more to 〈◊〉 my hâ—ppiâ—â—ss It hath neither pretence nor inclination to think such a thought Divine Love is now at rest It was travailing big with gracious designs before it hath now delivered it self It would rather create new heavens every moment then not satisfie but it hath now done it to the full the utmost capacity of the soul is filled up it can be no happier then it is This is loves triumph over all the miseries wants and desires of a languishing soul. The appropriate peculiar glory of Dâ—vâ—ne love If all the excellencies of their whole creation besides were contracted into one glorious creature it would never be capable of this boast I have satisfied one soul. The love of God leaves none unsatisfied but the proud despisers of it Now is the eternal Sabbath of love Now it enters into rest having finish't all its works it views them over now with delight for â—o they are all Good its works of Pardon of Justification and Adoption Its works of Regeneration of Conversion and Sanctification its establishing quickning comforting works they are all good good in themselves and in this their end the satisfaction and reposâ— of blessed souls Now divine love puts on the Crown ascends the Throne and the many Miriads of glorified Spirits fall down about it and adore All professe to owe to it the satisfying pleasures they all injoy Who can consider the unspeakable satisfaction of those blessed Spirits and not also reflect upon this exalted greatness of divine love 2. 'T is again great love if we consider wherewith they shall be satisfied The sight and participation of the Divine glory his face his likeness his represented and impressed glory There may be great love that never undertakes nor studies to satisfie all the desires of the persons we cast our love upon especially where nothing will satisfie but high and great matters The love of God knows no difficulties nor can be overset The greater the performance or vouchsafement the more suitable to Divine Love It hath resolved to give the soul a plenary satisfaction perfectly to content all its desires and â—nce nothing else can do it but an eternal beholding of the glorious face of the Divine Majesty and a transformation into his own likeness that shall not be with-held Yea it hath created refined inlarged its capacity on purpose that it might be satisfied with nothing less Great love may sometimes be signified by a glance the offered view of a willing face Thus our Lord Jesus invites his Church to discover her own love and answer his Let me see thy face c. Cant. â— 14. Love is not more becomingly exprest or gratified then by mutual looks ubi amor 〈◊〉 oculus How great is that love that purposely layes aside the vail that never turns away its own nor permits the aversion of the beholders eye throughout eternity Now we see in a glass then face to face as if never weary of beholding on either part but on that part the condiscention lies is the transcendent admirable love That a generous beneficent the other till it be satisfied here a craving indigent love And how inexpressible a condiscension is this poor wretches many of whom possibly were once so low that a strutting Grandee would have thought himself affronted by their look and have met with threatning rebukes their overdaring venturous eye lo now they are permitted to stand before Princes that 's a mean thing to feed their eyes with Dâ—vine glory to view the face of God He sets them before his face for ever And that eternal vision begets in them an eternal likeness they behold and partake glory at once that their joy may be full They behold not a glorious God with deformed souls that would render them a perpetual abomination and torment to themselves Love cannot permit that Heaven should be their affliction that they should have cause to loath and be weary of themselves in that presence It satisfies them by cloathing and filling them with glory by making them partake of the Divine likeness as well as behold it 'T is reckon'd a great expression of a complying love but to give a Picture when the parties loved only permit themselves to view in a mute representation a vicarious face This is much more a vital image as before Gods one living likeness propagated in the soul the inchoation of it is called the Divine Nature the seed of God what amazing love is this of the great God to a worm not to give over till he have assimilated it to his own glory till it appear as a ray of light begotten of the Father of Lights Every one saith the Apostle that doth righteousness is â—orn of him and then it follows Behold what manner of love to be â—he sons of God to be likâ— him to see him as he is c. How great a word is that spoken in reference to our present state to make us partakers of his holiness And as well it might 't is instanc't as an effect and argâ—ment of love for sure chastening it self abstracted from that end of it doth not import love Whâ—m the Lord loveth he chesteneth and then by and by in the same series and line of discourse is added to make nâ— partakers of his his holiness Love always either supposes similitude or intends it and is sufficiently argued by it either way And sure the love of God cannot be more directly expressed then in his first intending to make a poor soul like him while he loves it with compassion and then imprinting and perfecting that likeness that he may love it with eternal delight Love is here the first and the last the beginning and end in all this business CHAP. XIV The 7th Inference That since this blessedness is limited to a qualified subject I in righteousness the unrighteous are necessarily lest excludâ—d The 8th Inference That righteousness is no vain thing in as much as it hath so happy an issue and ends so well 7. COnsidering this blessedness is not common but limited â—o a qualified subject I in righteousness person cloth'd in righteâ—usness Iâ— evidently follows Thâ— unrighteous are necâ—ssâ—â—ily excluded and shut out can have no pâ—râ— nor pâ—rtion in this blessedness The same thing that the Apostle tells us without an inference Know ye not that the unrighteouss shall not inherit the Kingdom of God c. Intimating that to be a most confessed known thing Know ye not is it possible ye can be ignorant of this The natural necessity of what hath been here infeâ—'d hath been argued already from the consideration of the nature of this blessedness The legal necessity of it arising from
and that their end was without honour but now how are they numbred among the sons of God and their lot is among the Saints They that were too wise before to mind so mean a thing as Religion the world through wâ—sdâ—m knew not God strange wisdom that could so wisely baffle Conscience and put fallacies upon their own souls that had so ingenious shifts to elude a conviction and direct any serious thought from fastening upon their spirits that were wont so slily to jeere holiness seemed as they meant to laugh Religion out of countenance they will now know that a circumspect walking a faithful redeeming of time and improving it in order to eternity was to do not as fools but as wise and begin to think of themselves now as lost as all wise and sober men thought of them before CHAP. XVI The second general Head of the improvement or use of the Doctrine propounded from the Text containing certain Rules or prescriptions of duty connatural thereto Rule 1. That we settle in our minds the true notion of this blessedness Rule 2. That we compare the temper of our own spirits with it and labour thence to discern whether we may lay claim to it or no. THus far we have the the account of the Truths to be considered and weigh'd that have dependence on the Doctrine of the Text. Next follows the duties to be practis'd and done in reference thereto which I shall lay down in the ensuing Rules or Prescriptions That we admit and settle the distinct notion of this blessedness in our minds and judgements That we fix in our own souls apprehensions agreeable to the account this Scripture hath given us of it This is a counsel leading and introductive to the rest and which if it obtain with us will have a general influence upon the whole course of that practice which the Doctrine already opened calls for As our apprehensions of this blessedness are more distinct and clear it may be expected more powerfully to command our hearts and lives Hence it is in great part the Spirits and conversations of Christians have so little savour and appearance of heaven in them We rest in some general and confused notion of it in which there is little either of efficacy or pleasure we descend not into a particular inquiry and consideration what it is Our thoughts of it are gloomy and obscure and hence is our Spirit naturally listless and indifferent towards it and rather contents it self to sit still in a Region all lightsome round about and among objects it hath some present acquaintance with then venture it self forth as into a new world which it knows but little of And hence our lives are low and carnal they look not as though we were seeking the heavenly Country and indeed who can be in good earnest in seeking after an unknown state This is owing to our negligence an infidelity The blessed God hath not been shy and reserv'd hath not hidden or concealed from us the glory of the other world nor lock't up Heaven to us nor left us to the uncertain guesses of our own imagination the wild fictions of an unguided phansie which would have created us a poetical heaven only and have mock't us with false Elysiums But though much be yet within the vail he hath been liberal in his discoveries to us Life and Immortality are brought to light in the Gospel The future blessedness though some refined Heathens have had near guesses at it is certainly apprehensible by the measure onely of Gods revelation of it For who can determine with certainty of the effects of Divine good pleasure 'T is your Fathers good pleasure to give you a Kingdom Who can tell before hand what so free and boundless goodness will do further then as he himself discovers it The discoverâ— is as free as the donation The things that eye hath not seen and ear not heard and which hâ—ve not entred into the heart of man God hath revealed to us by his Spirit and it follows v. 12. We hâ—ve received the Spirit of God that we might know the things freely given us of God The Spirit is both the principle of the external revelation as having inspired the Scriptures which foreshew this glory and of the internal revelation also to enlighten blind minds that would otherwise 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 never be able to discover things at so great a distance see afâ—r off Therefore called the Spirit of wisdom and revelation by which the eyes of the understanding are inlightned to know the hope of that calling and the riches of the glory of his inheritance among the Saints as the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 there is most fitly to be rendred But this internal discovery is made by the mediation and interveniencie of the external Therefore having that before our eyes we are to apply our minds to the study and consideration of it and in that way to expect the free illumination of the holy Spirit In the mean time we must charge our ignorance and the darkness of our cloudy thoughts touching these things upon our carelesness that we do not attend or our incredulity that we will not believe what God hath revealed concerning them 't is therefore a dutiful attention and reverential Faith that must settle and fix the notion of this blessedness If we will not regard nor give credit to what God hath discovered concerning it we may sit still in a torpid disconsolate darkness which we our selves are the authors of or which is no less pernicious compass our selves with sparks beaten out of our own Forge walk in the light of our own fire cheat our souls with the fond dream of an imagined Heaven no where to be found till we at length lye down in sorrow How perverse are the imaginations of men in this as in reference to the way so in respect of the end also For as they take upon them to fancy another way to happâ—ness quite besides and against the plain word of God so do they imagine to themselves another kind of happiness such as shall gratâ—fie onely the sensual desires a Mahometâ—n indeed a Fools Paradise or at best 't is but a negative Heaven they many times enâ—ertain in their thoughts of which their sense too is the onely measure a state wherein nothing shall offend or incommodate the flesh in which they shall not hunger or 〈◊〉 or feel want and when they have thus stated the matter in their own thoughts we cannot beat them out of it but that they desire to go to heaven viz. the heaven of their own making when did they conceive it truly and fully they would find their hearts to abhor from it even as hell it self Therefore here we should exercise an authority over our selves and awaken conscience to its proper work and business and demand of it Is it not reasonable these divine discoveries should take place with me hath not God spoken plainly enough
why should my heart any longer hang in doubt within me or look wishly towards future glory as if it were an uncouth thing or is it reasonable to confront my own imaginations to his discoveries Charge conscience with the duty it owes to God in such a case and let his revelations be received with the reverence and resignation which they challenge and in them study and contemplate the blessedness of awakened souls till you have agreed with your self fully how to conceive it Run over every part of it in your thoughts view the several divine excellencies which you are hereafter to see and imitate and think what every thing will contribute to the satisfaction and contentment of your Spirits This is a matter of unspeakable consequence Therefore to be as clear as is possible you may digest what is recommended to you in this Rule into these more particular directions 1. Resolve with your selves to make the divine revelation of this blessedness the prime measure â—nd reason of all your apprehensions concerning it Fix that purpose in your own hearts so to order all your conceptions about it that when you demand of your selves What do I conceive of the future blessedness and why do I conceive so the divine revelation may answer both the questions I apprehend what God hath revealed and because he hath so revealed The Lord of heaven sure best understands it and can best help us to the understanding of it If it be said of the origen of this world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it may much more be said of the stâ—â—e of the other we understand it by faith That must inform and perfect our intellectuals in this matter 2. Therefore reject and sever from the notion of this blessedness whatsoever is alien to the account Scripture gives us of it Think not that sensual pleasure that a liberty of sinning that an exemption from the divine dominion distance and estrangedness from God which by nature you wickedlâ— affect can have any ingrediency into or consistency with this state of blessedness 3. Gather up into it whatsoever you can find by the Scripture-discovery to appertain or belong thereto Let your notion of it be to your uttermost not only true but comprehensive and full and as particular and positive as Gods revelation will warrant Especially remember 't is a spiritual blessedness that consists in the refining and perfecting of your Spirits by the vision and likeness of the holy God and the satisfying of them thereby for ever 4. Get the notion of this blessedness deeply imprinted in your minds so as to abide with you that you may not be alwayes at a loss and change you apprehensions every time you come to think of it Let a once-well formed Idaea a clear full state of it be preserv'd entire and be as a lively image alwayes before your eyes which you may readily view upon all occasions 2. That having well fixed the notion of this blessedness in your minds you seriously reflect upon yourself and compare the temper of your Spirit with it that you may find out how it is affected thereto and thence judge in what likelihood you are of enjoying it The general aversion of mens Spirits to this so necessary work of self-reflection is one of the most deplorable Symptoms of lapsed degenerate humanity The wickedness that hath overspread the nature of man and a secret consciousness and misgiving hath made men afraid of themselves and studiously to decline all acquaintance with their own souls to shun themselves as Ghosts and Spectives they cannot indure to appear to themselves You can hardly impose a severer task upon a wicked man than to go retire an hour or two and commune with himself he knows not how to face his own thoughts His own soul is a Devil to him as indeed it will be in hell the most frightful tormenting Devil Yet what power is there in man more excellent more appropriate to reasonable nature than that of reflecting of turning his thoughts upon himself Sense must here confess it self out done The eye that sees other objects cannot see it self But the mind a rational Sun can not only project its beams but revert them make its thoughts turn inward It can see its own face contemplate it self And how useful an indowment is this to the nature of man If he err he might perpetuate his error and wander infinitely if he had not this self-reflecting power and if he do well never know without it the comfort of a rational self-approbation Which comfort Paganish morality hath valued so highly as to account it did associate a man with the inhabitants of heaven and make him lead his life as among the gods as their Pagan language is Though the name of this reflecting power Conscience they were less acquainted with the thing it self they reckon'd as a kind of indwelling Deity as may be seen at large in those Discourses of Maximus Tyrius and Apuleius both upon the same subject concerning the god of Socrates And another giving this precept Familiarize thy self with the gods adds and this shalt thou do if thou bear thy mind becomingly towards them being well pleased with the things they give and doing the things that may please thy Daemon or Genius whom saith he the most high God which they mean by Jupiter hath put into every man as as a derivation or extraction from himself 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to be his president and guide viz. every ones own mind and reason And this mind or reason in that notion of it as we approve our selves to it and study to please it is the same thing we intend by the name of Conscience And how high account they had of this work of self-reflection may appear in that they entituled the Oracle to that document Know thy self esteeming it above humane discovery and that it could have no lower than a divine Original therefore consecrating and writing it up in golden Characters in their Delphick Temple as Pliny informs us for an heavenly-inspired dictate Among Christians that enjoy the benefit of the Gospel-revelation in which men may behold themselves as one may his natural face in a glass how highly should this self-knowledge be prized and how fully attained The Gospel discovers at the same time the ugly deformities of a mans soul and the means of attaining a true spiritual comliness Yea it is it self the instrument of impressing the divine image and glory upon mens Spirits which when it is in any measure done they become most sociable and conversable with themselves and when 't is but in doing it so convincingly and with so piercing energy layes open the very thoughts of mens hearts so thoroughly rips up and diffects the soul so directly turns and strictly holds a mans eye intent upon himself so powerfully urges and obliges the sinner to mind and study his own soul that where it hath affected any thing been any way operative
Title to thy Estate would'st thou not think it reasonable to inquire into thy case and is it not much more desirable in a matter of this consequence to be at some certainty and prudent to indeavour it if it may possibly be attain'd Whence let me further ask Fourthly Canst thou pretend it to be impossible Hath God left thee under a necessitated ignorance in this matter or denied thee sufficient means of knowing how 't is with thee in respect of thy Spiritual Estate Though he have not given thee a List or told thee the Number or Names of his Sanctified ones yet hath he not sufficiently described the persons and given thee characters by which they may be known And hath he not furnish't thee with a self reflecting power by which thou art inabled to look into thy self and discern whether thou be of them or no Doth he not offer and afford to serious diligent souls the assisting light of his blessed Spirit to guide and succeed the inquirie And if thou find it difficult to come to a speedy clear issue to make a present certain judgment of thy case ought not that to ingage thee to a patient continued diligence rather then a rash despairing madness to desist and cast off all In as much as the difficultie though great is not insuperable and the necessity and advantage incomparably greater And though divers other things do confessedly fall in the principal difficultie lies in thy aversation and unwillingness Thou art not put to traverse the Creation to climb Heaven or dig through the Earth but thy work lies nigh thee in thy own heart and Spirit and what is so nigh or should be so familiar to thee as thy self 'T is but casting thy eye upon thy own soul to discern which way 't is inclin'd and bent thou art urged to Which is that we propounded next to discover Viz. 2. That we are to judge of the hopefulness of our enjoying this blessedness by the present habitude or disposedness of our spirits thereto For what is that righteousness which qualifies for it but the impress of the Gospel upon the minds and hearts of men The Gospel-revelation is the onely Rule and Measure of that righteousness It must therefore consist in conformity thereto And look to the frame and design of the Gospel-revelation and what doth so directly correspond to it as that very habitude and disposedness of spirit for this blessednesse whereof we speak Nothing so answers the Gospel as a propension of heart towards God gratifi'd in part now and increasing till it find a full satisfaction a desire of knowing him and of being like him 'T is the whole design of the Gospel which reveals his glory in the face of Jesus Christ to work and form the spirits of men to this They therefore whose spirits are thus wrought and framed are righteous by the Gospel-measure and by thâ—t righteousness are evidently entituled and fitted for this blessedness Yea that righteousness hath in it or rather is the elements the first Principles the seed of this blessedness There can therefore be no surer Rule or Mark whereby to judge our states whether we have to do with this blessedness may expect it yea or no than this How stand we affected towards it in what disposition are our hearts thereto Those fruits of righteousnesse by which the soul is qualified to appear without offence in the day of Christ the several graces of the Sanctifying Spirit are nothing else but so many holy Principles all disposing the soul towards this blessednesse and the way to it Mortification Self-denial and godly sorrow take it off from other objects the World Self and Sin Repentance â—that part of it which respects God turns the course of its motion towards God the end Faith directs it through Christ the way Love makes it more freely desire earnestly joy pleasantly hope confidently humility evenly fear circumspectly patience constantly and perseveringly All conspire to give the Soul aright disposition towards this blessedness The result of them all is heavenliness an heavenly temper of spirit For they all one way or other as so many Lines and Rayes have respect to a blessedness in God which is heaven as the point at which they aim and the cuspis the point in which they meet in order to the touching of that objective point is heavenliness This is the ultemate and immediate disposition of heart for this blessedness the result the terminus productus of the whole work of righteousness in the Soul by which 't is said to be as it were gnota ad gloriam begotten to the eternal inheritance Concerning this therefore chiefly institute thy inquiry Demand of thy self is my soul yet made heavenly bent upon eternal blessednesse or no And here thou mayest easily apprehend of how great concernment it is to have the right notion of heaven or future blessedness as was urged under the foregoing Rule For if thou take for it another thing thou missest thy mark and art quite beside thy business But if thou retain a right and scriptural state and notion of it the Rule thou art to judge by is sure They shall have heaven whose hearts are intent upon it and framed to it Scripture is every where pregnant and full of this The Apostle plainly intimates this will be the rule of Gods final judgment Certainly it cannot be unsafe for us to judge our selves by the same Rule He tells us when God shall judge every one according to his works the great business of the judgment day eternal life shall be the portion of them who by patient continuance in well doing sought glory and honour and immortality which are but other expressions of the same thing what can be more plain They shall have eternal life and glory that seek it whose hearts are towards it Again speaking of true Christians 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. in a way of contradiction from Pseudo-Christians such as he saith were enemies of the Crosse he gives us among other this brand of these latter that they did mind earthly things and tells us their end would be destruction but gives us this opposite character of the other our conversation is in heaven our trade and business our daily negotiations as well as the priviledges of our Citizen-ship lie there as his expression imports and thence intimates the opposite end of such whence we look for a Saviour not destruction but salvation And in the same Context of Scripture where they that are risen with Christ and who shall appear with him in glory are requir'd to fet their mind on things above not on things on the earth That we may understand this not to be their duty onely but their character we are immediately told they who do not so mortifie not their earthly members those lusts that dispose men towards the earth and to grovel in the dust as the graces of the Spirit dispose them heaven-ward and to converse with glory
are the children of disobedience upon whom the wrath of God cometh The Faith the just live by is the substance of things hoped for c. Such believers are confessed avowed strangers on earth seekers of the better the heavenly Country whence 't is said God will not be ashamed to be called their God plainly implying that as for low terrene spirits that love to creep on the earth and imbrace Dunghills God will be ashamed of them he will for ever disdain a relation to them while and as such And if we will be determined by the express word of our great Redeemer to whom we owe all the hopes of this blessedness When he had been advising not to lay up treasure on earth but in heaven he presently adds where your treasure is there will your hearts be also If thy treasure thy great interests thy precious and most valuable good be above that will attract thy heart it will certainly be disposed thitherward Yet here it must carefully be considered that in as much as this blessednesse is thy end i. e. thy Supream good as the notion of treasure also imports Thy heart must be set upon it above any other injoyment else all is to no purpose 'T is not a faint slight overmastered inclination that will serve the turn but as all the forementioned Scriptures import such as will bespeak it a mans business to seek heaven his main work and give ground to say of him his heart is there If two lovers solicit the same person and speaking of them in comparisons she say this hath my heart is it tolerable to understand her as meaning him she loves less so absurd would it be to understand Scriptures that speak of such an intention of heart heaven-ward as if the faintest desire or coldest wish or most lazie inconstant indeavour were all they meant No 't is a steady prevalent victorious direction of heart towards the future glory in comparison whereof thou despisest all things else all temporal terrene things that must be the evidential ground of thy hope to enjoy it And therefore in this deal faithfully with thy own soul and demand of it Dost thou esteem this blessednesse above all things else Do the thoughts of it continually return upon thee and thy mind and heart as it were naturally run out to it Are thy chieâ—est solicitudes and cares taken up about it least thou should'st fall short and suffer a disappointment Dost thou savour it with pleasure hath it a sweet and grateful relish to thy Soul dost thou bend all thy powers to pursue and presse on towards it Urge thy self to give answer truly to such enquiries and to consider them seriously that thou may'st do so Such whose Spirits are either most highly raised and lift up to heaven or most deeply deprest and sunk into the earth may make the clearest judgment of themselves With them that are of a middle temper the trial will be more difficult yet not fruitless if it be managed with serious diligence though no certain conclusion or judgment be made thereupon For the true design and use of all such enquiries and reflections upon our selves which let it be duly considered is not to bring us into a state of cessation from further indeavours as if we had nothing more to do suppose we judge the best of our state that can be thought but to keep us in a wakeful temper of Spirit that we may not forget our selves in the great business we have yet before us but go on with renewed vigour through the whole course of renewed indeavours wherein we are to be still conversant till we have attained our utmost mark and end Therefore is this present enquiry directed as introductive to the further duty that in the following Rules is yet to be recommended CHAP. XVII Rule 3d. Directing such as upon enquirie find or see cause to suspect a total aversation in themselves to this blessednesse to be speedy and restlesse in their indeavours to have the temper of their Spirits altered and made suitable to it Doubts and Objections conconcerning the use of such indeavours in such a case answered Some Considerations to enforce this Direction propounded and pressed 3. THat if upon such reflection we find or suspect our selves wholly diseffected and unsuitable to this blessedness we apply our selves to speedy incessant indeavours to get the temper of our Spirits changed and fitted thereto The state of the case speaks it self that there is no sitting still here This is no condition Soul to be rested in unless thou art provided to encounter the terrours of eternal darkness and endure the torture of everlasting burnings Yet am I not unapprehensive how great a difficulty a carnal heart will make of it to bestir itself in order to any redresse of so deplorable a case And how real a difficulty it is to say any thing that will be thought regardable to such a one Our sad experience tells us that our most efficacious words are commonly wont to be entertained as neglected puffs of wind our most convictive reasonings and perswasive exhortations lost yea and though they are managed too in the name of the great God as upon the deaf and dead Which is too often apt to tempt into that resolution of speaking no more in that name And were it not that the dread of that great Majesty retains us how hard were it to forbear such expostulations Lord why are we commonly sent upon so vain an errand Why are we required to speak to them that will not hear and expose thy sacred truths and counsels to the contempt of sinful worms to labour day by day in vain and spend our strength for nought Yea we cannot forbear to complain None so labour in vain as we Of all men none so generally improsperous and unsuccessful Others are wont to see the fruit of their labours in proportion to the expence of strength in them But our strength is labour and sorrow for the most part without the return of a joyfull fruit The Husbandman ploughs in hope and sowes in hope and is commonly partaker of his hope we are sent to plough and sow among Rocks and Thorns and in the high Way how seldom fall we upon good ground where we have any increase Yea Lord how often are men the harder for all our labours with them the deader for all indeavours to quicken them Our breath kills them whom thou sendest us to speak life to and we often become to them a a deadly savour Sometime when we think somewhat is done to purpose our labour all returns and we are to begin again and when the duties we perswade to come directly to cross mens interests and carnal inclinations they revolt and start back as if we were urging them upon flames or the swords point and their own souls and the eternal glory are regarded as a thing of naught Then Heaven and Hell become with them Phancies and Dreams and all
be God-like Let us therefore make this our present business much to acquaint our selves with God We count upon seeing him face to face of being alwayes in his presence beholding his glory that speaketh very intimate acquaintance indeed How shall we reach that pitch what to live now as strangers to him Is that the way The path of the righteous is as the shining light that shineth more and more unto perfect day The text shews us the righteous mans end to behold the glory of Gods face c. 't is easie to apprehend then his way must needs have in it a growing brightness as he comes still nearer this end Every nearer approach to a lucid thing infers to us an increase of light from it We should therefore be following on to know the Lord and we shall see his going forth will â—e before us as the morning He will be still visiting us with renewed increasing light for such is morning light fresh and growing light and ere long it will be perfect daâ— Labour we to improve our knowledge of God to such a degree of acquaintance as our present state can admit of To be as inward with him as we can to familiarzie our selves to him His Gospel aims at this to make those that were afar off nigh Far-distant objects we can have no distinct view of He can give us little account of a person that hath only seen him afar off so God beholds the proud afar off That is he will have no acquaintance with them Whereas with the humble he will be familiar he will dwell as in a family with them So the ungodly behold God till he brings them in and make them nigh then they are no longer strangers but of his family and houshold now throughly acquainted Several notes there are of a through acquaintance which we should endeavour may concur in our acquaintance with God in that analogy which the case will bear To know his nature or as we would speak of a man what will please and displease him so as to be able in the whole course of our daily conversation to approve our selves to him To have the skill so to manage our conversation as to continue a correspondence not interrupted by anâ— of our offensive unpleasing demeanours To walk worthy of God unto all well-pleasing It concerns us most to study and indeavour this practical knowledge of the nature of God what trust and love and fear and purity c. his faithfulness and greatness his goodness and holiness c. do challenge from us What may in our daily walking be agâ—eeable what repugnant to the several Attributes of his being To know his secrets to be as it were of the Cabinet-councel the word used by the Psalmist hath a peculiar significancy to that purpose to signifie not only counsel but a council or the concessus of persons that consult together This is his gracious vouchsafement to humble reverential souls The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him such acquaintance with him is to be sought to know the communicable secrets both of his mind and heart Of his mind his truths Gospel-mysteries that were kept secret from ages and generations We have the mind of Christ. This is great inwardness of his heart His love his good will his kind bosome-thoughts towards our souls To know his methods and the course of his dispensations towards the World his Church and specially our own Spirits This is great knowledge of God to have the skill to trace his footsteps and observe by comparing times with times that such a course he more usually holds and accordingly with great probability collect from what we have seen and observed what we may expect What order and succession there is of storms of wrath to clouds of sin and again of peaceful lucid intervals when such storms have infer'd penitential tears In what exigences and distresses humble mourners may expect Gods visits and consolations To recount in how great extremities former experience hath taught us not to despair and from such experiences still to argue our selves into fresh reviving hopes when the state of things whether publick or private outward or spiritual seems forlorn To know the proper seasons of address to him and how to behave our selves most acceptably in his presence In what dispositions and postures of Spirit we are fittest for his converse so as to be able to come to him in a good hour in a time when he may be found To know his voice This discovers acquaintance The ear trieth words as the mouth tasteth meats Gods righteous ones that are filled with the fruits of righteousness do proportionably abound in knowledge and in all sense They have quick naked unvitiated senses to discern between good and evil Yea and can have the suffrage of several senses concerning the same Object They have a kind of taste in their ear They taste the good word of God even in his previous workings on them Being-born they are intimated to have tasted in the word how gracious the Lord is As they grow up thereby they have still a more judicious sense and can more certainly distinguish when God speaks to them and when a stranger goes about to counterfeit his voice They can tell at first hearing what is grateful and nutritive what offensive and hurtful to the divine life what is harmonious and agreeable what dissonant to the Gospel already receivâ—d so that an Angel from heaven must expect no welcome if he bring another To know his inward inâ—tiâ—ns and impulses When his hand toucheth our hearts to be able to say this is the â—iâ—ge of God there is something divine in this touch My beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door and my bowels were moved This speaks acquaintance when the soul can say I know his very touch the least impression from him I can distinguish it from thousands of objects that daily beat upon my heart To understand his looks to know the meaning of his aspects and glances of the various casts as it were of his eye Such things intimate friends can in a sort talk by with one another I will guide thee by mine eye that implyes an intelligent teachable subject We have now no full-ey'd appearances of God he shews himself looks in upon us through the lattess through a vail or shadow or a glass That measure of acquaintance with him to be able to discern and own him in his appearances is a great participation of heaven Utter unacquaintance with God is exprest by the denyal of these two ye have neither heard his voice nor seen his shape John 5. Finally which brings us home to the text to keep our eye intentively fixed on him not to understand his looks only as before but to return our own intimate acquaintance when such friends meet it is much exprest and improv'd by the eye by a reciprocation of
could not be content with the light of the Sun without the help of a candle or a spark and speaking of the constancy of the vertuous man saith he They do ill that say such an evil iâ— tolerable to him such a one intolerable anâ— that confine the greatness of his mind within certain bounds and limits Adversity he tells us overcomes us if it be not wholly overcome Epicurus saith he the very patron of your sloth acknowledges yet thiâ— unhappy events can seldom disturb the minâ— of a vertuous person and he adds how haâ— he almost uttered the voice of a man pray saith he speak out a little morâ— boldly and say he is above them altogether Such apprehensions the more vertuous Heathen have had of the efficacy and defensative poweâ— of Moral goodness however defective theiâ— notion might be of the thing it self Hencâ— Sâ—crates the Pâ—gan Martyr is reported to havâ— cryed out when those persons were perseâ—cuting him to death Anytus and Meletus can kill me but they cannot hurt me And Anaxarchus the Phylosopher having sharply reproved Nicoerean and being by him ordered to be beaten to death with iron Malets bids strike on strike on thou may'st saith he break in pieces this vessel of Anaxarchus but Anaxarchus himself thou canst not touch Shall Christianity here confess it self out-vy'd shall we to the reproach of our Religion yield the day to Pagan-morality and renew the occasion of the ancient complaint That the Faith of Christians is out-done by the Heathen infidelity It is I remember the challenge of Cecilius in Minucius There is Socrates saith he the Prince of Wisdom whosoever of you Christians is great enough to attempt it let him imitate him if he can Methinks we should be ambitious to tell the world in our lives for Christians should live great things not speak them that a greater then Socrates is here to let them see in us our represented pattern to shew forth higher vertues then those of Socrates even his who hath called us out of darkness into his glorious and marvellous light Certain it is that the Sacred Oracles of the Gospel set before us a more excellent pattern and speak things not less magnificent but much more modest and perspicuous With less pomp of words they give us a much clearer account of a far more excellent temper of mind and prescribe the direct and certain way of attaining it Do but view over the many passages of Scripture occasionally glanc't at Chap. 7. But we grope as in the dark for blessedness we stumble at noon day as in the night and wander as if we had no eyes we mistake our business and lay the Scene of an happy state at a great distance from us in things which we cannot reach and which if we could it were to little purpose Not to speak of grosser sensualists whom at present I have less in my eye Is there not a more refined sort of persons that neglecting the great business of inspecting and labouring to better and improve their spirits are wholly taken up about the affairs of another Sphere that are more solicitous for better times for a better world then better spirits That seem to think all the happiness they are capable of on earth is bound up in this or that external state of things Not that the care of all publique concernments should be laid aside Least of all a just solicitude for the Churches welfare but that should not be pretended when our own interest is the one thing with us And when we are really solicitous about the Churches interests we should state them aright God designs the afflictions of his people for their Spiritual good therefore that is a much greater good then their exemption from suffering these evils otherwise his means should eat up his end and be more expensive then that will countervail which were an imprudence no man of tolerable discretion would be guilty of We should desire the outward prosperity of Sion for it is a real good but in as much as it hath in it the goodness not of an end but onely and that but sometimes neither of a means not a constant but a mutable goodness not a principal but a lesser subordinate goodness we must not desire it absolutely nor chiefly but with submissive limited desires If our hearts are grieved to hear of the sufferings of the Church of God in the world but not of their sins If we more sensibly regret at any time the persecutions and opressions they undergo than their spiritual distempers their earthliness pride cold love to God fervent animosities towards each other It speaks an uninstructed carnal mind We take no right measure of the interests of Religion or the Churches welfare and do most probably mistake our selves as much in judging of our own and measure theirs by our own mistaken model And this is the mischievous cheat many put upon their own souls and would obtrude too often upon others too that overlooking the great design of the Gospel to transform mens spirits and change them into the Divine likeness they think 't is Religion enough to espouse a party and adopt an Opinion and then vogue themselves friends to Religion according to the measure of their zeal for their own party or Opinion And give a very pregnant proof of that zeal by magnifying or inveighing against the times according as they favour or frown upon their empty unspirited Religion It being indeed such a secret consciousness whereof they herein bewray as hath no other life in it then what it owes to external favour and countenance And therefore all publique rebukes are justly apprehended mortal to it whereas that substantial Religion that adequately answers the design and is animated by the Spirit of the Gospel possesses the Souls of them that own it with a secure confidence that it can live in any times and hold their Souls in life also Hence they go on their way with a free unsolicitous chearfulness enjoying silently in their own bosomes that repose and rest which naturally results from a sound and well composed temper of Spirit They know their happiness depends upon nothing without them That they hold it by a better tenure then that of the worlds courtesie They can be quiet in the midst of storms and abound in the want of all things They can in patience possess their own souâ— and in them a vital spring of true pleasure when they are driven out of all other possessions They know the living sense of these words that the good man is satisfied from himself that to be Spiritually minded is life and peace that nothing can harm them that are followers of the good That the way to see good dayes is to keep their tongue from evil and their lips from speaking gâ—â—le to depart from evil and do good to seek peace and pursue it They cannot live in bad times They carry that about them that will make the worst
of your spirits I shall recommend onely some few instances that you may see how little reason or inducement a soul conformed to the holy will of God hath to seek its comforts and content elsewhere Faith corresponds to the Truth of God as it respects Divine Revelations How pleasant is to give up our understandings to the conduct of so safe a guide to the view of so admirable things as he reveals It corresponds to his goodnesse as it respects his offers How delectible is it to be filling an empty Soul from the Divine fulnesse What pleasure attends the exercise of this Faith towards the Person of the Mediatour viewing him in all his Glorious Excellencies receiving him in all his gracious Communications by this Eye and Hand How pleasant is it to exercife it in reference to another world living by it in a daily prospect of eternity in reference to this world to live without care in a chearful dependence on him that hath undertaken to care for us Repentance is that by which we become like the holy God to whom our sin had made us most unlike before how sweet are kindly relentings penetential tears and the return of the Soul to its God and to a right mind And who can conceive the Ravishing Pleasures of love to God! wherein we not onely imitate but intimately unite with him who is Love it self How pleasant to let our Souls dissolve here and slow into the Ocean the element of love Our Fear corresponds to his Excellent Greatnesse and is not as it is a part of the New Creature in us a tormenting servile passion but a due respectfulness and observance of God and there is no mean pleasure in that holy awful seriousness unto which it composes and formes our Spirits Our Humility as it respects him answers his high excellency as it respects our own inferiours his gracious condescention How pleasant is it to fall before him And how connatural and agreable to a good Spirit to stoop low upon any occasion to do good Sincerity is a most Godlike excellency an imitation of his Truth as grounded in his All-sufficiency which sets him above the necessity or possibility of any advantage by collusion or deceit and corresponds to his Omnisciency and heart-searching eye It heightens a mans spirit to a holy and generous boldness makes him apprehend it beneath him to do an unworthy dishonest action that should need a palliation or a concealment And gives him the continual pleasure of self approbation to God whom he chiefly studies and desires to please Patience a prime Glory of the Divine Majestie continues a mans possession of his own Soul his Liberty his Dominion of himself He is if he can suffer nothing a Slave to his vilest and most sordid passions at home his own base fear and bruitish anger and effeminate grief and to any mans lusts and humours besides that he apprehends can do him hurt It keeps a mans Soul in a peaceful calm delivers him from that most unnatural self-torment defeats the impotent malice of his most implacable enemy who fain would vex him but cannot Justice the Great Attribute of the Judge of all the Earth as such so farre as the imppression of it takes place among men preserves the Common Peace of 〈◊〉 World and the Private Peace of each 〈◊〉 in his own bosome so that the former be not disturbed by doing of mutual injuries nor the latter by the conscience of having done them The brotherly love of fellow Christians the impression of that special love which God bears to them all admits them into one anothers bosomes and to all the indearments and pleasures of a mutual communion Love to enemies the expresse image of our heavenly Father by which we appear his children begotten of him overcomes evil by goodness blunts the double edge of revenge at least the sharper edge which is alwayes towards the Author of it secures our selves from wounding impressions and resentments turns keen anger into gentle pity and substitutes mild pleasant forgiveness in the room of the much uneasier thoughts and study of retaliation Mercifulnesse towards the distressed as our Father in Heaven is merciful heaps blessings upon our Souls and evidences our Title to what we are to live by the Divine mercy An universal benignity and propension to d◠good to all in imitation of the immense diffusive goodnesse of God is but kindnesse to our selves Rewards it self by that greater pleasure is in giving then in receiving and associates us with God in the blessedness of this work as well as in the disposition to it who exercises loving kindnesse in the Earth because delighteth therein Here are some of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the things wherein consists that our conformity to the divine Nature and Will which is proper to our present state And now who can estimate the blessedness of such a soul Can in a word the state of that soul be unhappy that is full of the Holy Gost full of Love Joy Peace Long-suffering Gentleness Goodness Faith Meekness Temperance those blessed fruits of that blessed Spirit Blessedness is connaturalized unto this soul Every thing doth its part and all conspire to make it happy This soul is a Temple an habitation of holiness here dwells a Deity in his glory 'T is a Paradise a Garden of God Here he walks and converses daily delighted with its fragrant fruitfulness He that hath those things and aboundeth is not barren or unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus he is the Sun and the knowledge of him the quickening beams that cherish and ripen these fruits But the soul that lacketh these things is a Desart a habitation of Devils Here is stupid disconsolate infidelity inflexible obstinacy and resolvedness for Hell Hatred and contempt of the Sovereign Majesty whom yet its secret misgiving thoughts tell it will be too hard for it at last Here is swoln pride and giddy vain-glory disguised hypocrisie and pining envy raging wrath and ravenous avarice with what you can imagine besides leading to misery and desolation You have then some prospect of a happy temper of Spirit It can now be no difficulty to you to frame an Idea of it in your thoughts to get a notional image or this likeness in the notion of it into your minds but that will avail you little if you have not the real image also that is your Spirits really fashioned and formed according thereto If having the knowledge of these things as the Pagan morallists expression before mentioned is of vertuous Rules and Precepts they become not habitual to you and your Spirits be not transfigured into them But now I treat with such as are supposed to have some such real impressions that they may be stir'd up to endeavour a further perfecting of them In order whereto I shall adde but this two-fold advice 1. Be very careful that this living Image such you have been formerly told it is may
as an end Religion doth not brutify men but make them more rational It s business is to guide them to blessedness It must therefore pitch their eyes upon it as the mark and 〈◊〉 they are to aim at and hold them intent there 'T is ingenuous and honourable to God that we should expresly avow it we come to Him for satisfaction to our Spirits not knowing whether else to apply our selves We turn our eyes upon Him we lay open our souls to receive impressions from Him for this very end This is an explicit acknowledment of Him as God our highest Soveraign good 2. Actually apply and accommodate divine visions and communications to this purpose Say O my Soul now come solace thy self in this appearance of God come take thy allowed pleasure in such exertions of God as thou dost now experience in thy self Recount thy happiness think how great it is how rich thou art on purpose that thy Spirit may grow more daily into a satisfied contented frame Often bethink thy self What is the great God doing for me that he thus reveals and imparts himself to my soul O how great things do those present pledges presignisie to me That thou may'st still more and more like thy portion and account it faln in pleasant places so as never to seek satisfaction in things of another kind though thou must still continue expecting and desiring more of the same kind And remember to this purpose there cannot be a greater participation of the misery of hell before-hand than a discontented Spirit perpetually restless and weary of it self nor of the blessedness of heaven than in a well-pleased satisfied contented frame of Spirit CHAP. XIX Rule 5. Directing to raise our desires above the actual or possible attainments of this our present and terminate them upon the future consummate state of Blessedness The Rule explained and pressed by sundry considerations Rule 6. That we add to a desirous pursuit a joyful expectation of this blessedness which is pursued in certain subordinate directions 5. THat notwithstanding all our present or possible attainments in this imperfect state on earth We direct fervent vigorous desires towards the perfect and consummate state of glory it self Not designing to our selves a plenary satisfaction and rest in any thing on this side of it That is that forgetting what is behind we reach forth not only to what is immediately before us the next step to be taken but that our eye and desire aim forward at the ultimate period of our race terminate upon the eternal glory it self and that not only as a measure according to which we would some way proportion our present attainments but at the very mark which it self we would fain hit and reach home to And that this be not only the habitual bent and tendency of our Spirits but that we keep up such desires in frequent and as much as is possible continual exercise Yea and that such actual desires be not only faint and sluggish wishes but full of lively efficacy and vigour in some measure proportionable to our last end and highest good beyond and above which we neither esteem nor expect any other enjoyment Whatsoever we may possibly attain to here we should still be far from projecting to our selves a state of rest on this side consummate glory but still urge our selves to a continual ascent so as to mount above not onely all enjoyments of any other kind but all degrees of enjoyment in this kind that are beneath perfection Still it must be remembred this is not the state of our final rest The Mass of Glory is yet in reserve we are not yet so high as the highest Heavens If we gain but the top of Mount Tabor we are apt to say 't is good to be here and forget the longer journey yet before us loath to think of a further advance when were our spirits right how far so ever we may suppose our selves to have attained it would be matter of continual joy to us to think high perfections are still attainable that we are yet capable of greater things then what we have hitherto compast our souls can yet comprehend more Nature intends what is most perfect in every Creature methinks the Divine Nature in the New Creature should not design lower or cease aspiring till it have attained its ultimate perfection its culminating point till Grace turn into Glory Let us therefore Christians bestir our selves let us open and turn our eyes upon the eternal glory Le ts view it well and then demand of our own souls why are our desires so faint and slothful why do they so seldom pierce through the interveining distance and reach home to what they prefessedly level at so rarely touch this blessed mark How can we forbear to be angry with our selves that so glorious an end should not more powerfully attract that our hearts should not more sensibly find themselves drawn and all the powers of the soul beset on work by the attractive power of that glory It certainly concerns us not to sit still under so manifest a distemper But if the proposal of the object the discourse all this while of this blessed state do not move us to make some further trials with our selves see what urging and reasoning with our souls what rubbing and chasing our hearts will do And there is a two fold trial we may in this kind make upon our spirits What the sense of shame will work with us whether our hearts cannot be made sensible to suppose how vile and wretched a temper it is to be undesirous of glory And then what sense of praise can effect or what impression it may make upon us to consider the excellency and worth the high reasonableness of that temper posture of soul which I am now perswading to a continual desirousness of that blessed glorious state 1. As to the former Let us bethink our selves can we answer it to God or to our own souls that we should indulge our selves in a continual negligence of our eternal blessedness A blessedness consisting in the Vision and Participation of the Divine Glory Have we been dreaming all this while that God hath been revealing to us this glorious state and setting this lovely prospect before our eyes Did it become us not to open our eyes while he was opening Heaven to us and representing the state which he designed to bring us to or will we say we have seen it and yet desire it not Have we been deaf and dead while he hath been calling us into eternal glory have all our senses been bound up all this while Hath he been speaking all along to sensless Statues to Stocks and Stones while he expected reasonable living souls should have received the voice and have returned an obedient complying answer And what answer could be expected to such a call a call to his Glory below this We desire it Lord we would fain be there And if we say we have not
look for this blessed hope the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. That which you know consummates that blessedness For when Christ who iâ— their life shall appear then shall they also appear with him in glory by the participation of the divine nature their Spirits escape and get up above this corrupt impure world That new nature is a holy flame that carries theâ—r hearts upwards towards heaven Further such desires appear hence to be of divine originall an infusion from the blessed God himself That nature is from him immediately in which they are implanted The Apostle speaking of his earnest panting desire to have mortality swallowed up of life presently add's He that wrought us to the self same thing is God They are obedient desires The souls present answere to the heavenly call by which God calls it to his kingdom and glory This glory is as hath been formerly noted the very term of that calling The God of all grace hath called us into his eternal glory by Christ Jesus The gloriâ—ied state is the marke the price of the high calling of God in Christ. T is the matter of the Apostles thanksgiving unto God on the behalf of the Thessalonians that they were called by his Gospel to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ when the soul desires this glory it obediently answers this call This is a complyance and subjection of heart to it How Lovely and becoming a thing is this when God touches the heart with a stamp and impress of glory and it forthwith turnes it self to that very point and stands directly bent towards the state of glory if not wayward or perverse but here in yield it self to God and complyes with the divine pleasure Such desires have much in them of a child-like ingenuity To desire the sight of a Fathers face when this is this intimate sense of the soul show me the Father and it suffices To desire the fullest conformity to his nature and will to be perfect as that heavenly Father is perfect what doth better become a child They are generous desires they aim at perfection the highest that created nature is capable of not contented to have had some glances of divine glory some stroaks and lines of his image but aspiring to full-eyd visions a perfect likeness They are victorious desires they as it were ride in triumph over the world and every sublunarie thing they must be supposed to have conquered sensual inclinations to have got the mastery over terrene dispositions and affections With what holy contempt and scorn of every earthly thing doth that loftie soul quit thiâ— dirty world and ascend that is powerfully carryed by its own desire towards the blessed state The desire of such a knowledge of Christ as might transform into his Likeness and pass the soul through all degrees of conformity to him till it attain the resurrection of the dead and become like a risen glorified Jesus Such a desire I say if it make all things seem as loss and dung in comparison even a formal Spirit less religion it self will it not render this world the most despicable dunghill of all the rest Try such a soul if you can tempt it down to injoy a flattering kind world or to please it when angry and unkind When desires after this glory are once awakn'd into an active lively vigour when the fire is kindled and the flame ascends and this refined Spirit is joyfully ascending therein see if you can draw it back and make it believe this world a more regardable thing Why should not all those considerations make thee in love with this blessed frame of Spirit and restless till thou find thy self uncapable of being satisfied with any thing but divine likeness 6. That while we cannot as yet attain the mark and end of our desires we yeild not to a comfortless despondency in the way but maintain in our hearts a lively joy in the hope that hereafter we shall attain it We are not all this while perswading to the desire and pursuit of an unattainable good Spiritual desires are also rational and do therefore involve hope with them and that hope ought to infer and cherish joy Hopeless desire is full of torment and must needs banish joy from that breast which it hath not the possession of T is a disconsolate thing to desire what we must never expect to enjoy and are utterly unlikely ever to compass But these desires are part of the new creature which is not of such a composition as to have a principle of endless trouble and disquiet in it self The Father of mercies is not so little merciful to his own child to lay it under a necessity from its very natural constitution of being for ever miserable by the desire of that which it can never have It had been very unlike the workmanship of God to make a creature to which it should be necessarie to desire and empossible to enjoy the same thing Not but as he hath given holy souls as to the present case great incentives of desire so doth he afford them proportionable encouragements of hope also and that hope intervening can very well reconcile desire and joy and lodge them together in the same bosome So that as it is a thing capable of no excuse to hear of this blessedness and not desire it so it would be to desire and not expect it to expect it and not rejoyce in it even while we are under that expectation And it must be a very raised joy that shall answer to the expectation of so great things If one should give a stranger to Christianity an account of the Christian hopes and tell him what they expect to be and enjoy erelong he would sure promise himself to find so many angells dwelling in humane flesh and reckon when he came among them he should be as amidst heavenly Quire every one ful of joy and praise He would expect to find us living on earth as the inhabitants of heaven also many pieces of immortal glory lately dropt down from above and shortly again returning thither He would look to find every where in the Christian world incarnate glory sparkling through the over-shaddowing vail and wonder how this earthly sphere should be able to contain so many great souls But when he draws nearer to us and observs the course and carriage of our lives when he sees us walk as other men and considers the strange disagreement of our daily conversation to our so great avowed hopes and how little sense of joy and pleasure we discover our selves to conceive in them would he not be ready to say sure some or other willing only to amuse the world with the noise of strange things have composed a Religion for these men which they themselves understand nothing of If they do adopt and own it for theirs they understand not their own pretences they are taught to speak
consists first in righteousness and then in peace and joy in the holy Ghost Thou wilt so daily behold the face of God in righteousness and with pleasure but wilt most of all please thy self to think of thy final appearance before him and the blessedness that shall ensue 4. Watch and arm thy self against the too forcible strokes and impressions of sensible objects Let not the favor of such low vile things corrupt the pallate of thy soul. A sensual earthly mind and heart cannot tast heavenly delights They that are after the flesh do savor the things of the Flesh they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit Labor to be throughly mortified towards this world and the present state of things Look upon this scheme pageant as passing away keep natural appetites under restraint the world and the lusts of it pass away together sensuality is an impure thing Heavenly refined joy cannot live amid'st so much filth Yea and if thou give thy flesh liberty too far in things that are in specie lawful it will soon get advantage to domineer and keep thy soul in a depressing servitude Abridge it then and cut it short That thy mind may be enlarged and at liberty may not be throng'd and prepossest with carnal imaginations and affections Let thy soul if thou wilt take this instruction from a Heathen look with a constant erect mind into the undefiled light neither darkened nor born down towards the Earth but stopping its Ears and turning its Eyes and all other Senses back upon it self and quite abolishing out of it self all Earthly Sighs and Groans and Pleasures and Glories and Honours and disgrace and having forsaken all these choose for the Guides of its way true Reason and strong Love the one whereof will shew it the way the other make it easie and pleasant 5. Having voided thy mind of what is earthly and carnal apply and turn it to this blessed Theam The most excellent and the vilest objects are alike to thee while thou mindest them not Thy thoughts possibly bring thee in nothing but vexation and trouble which would bring in assoon joy and pleasure didst thou turn them to proper objects A thought of the heavenly glory is assoon thought as of an earthly Cross. We complain the world troubles us then what do we there why get we not up in our spirits into the quieter Region what trouble would the thoughts of future glory be to us How are the thoughts and wits set on work for this flesh but we would have our Souls flourish as the Lilies without any thing of their own care Yea we make them toyl for torture and not for joy revolve an affliction a thousand times before and after it comes and have never done with it when eternal blessedness gains not a thought 6. Plead earnestly with God for his Spirit This is joy in the Holy Ghost or whereof he is the Author Many Christians as they must be called are such strangers to this work of imploring and calling in the blessed Spirit as if they were capable of adopting these words We have not so much as heard whether there be an Holy Ghost That name is with them as an empty sound How hardly are we convinc't of our necessary dependance on that free Spirit as to all our truly Spiritual operations This Spirit is the very earnest of our inheritance The foretasts and first fruits we have here of the future blessedness The joy and pleasure the complacential relishes we have of it before hand are by the gracious vouchsafement and work of this blessed Spirit The things that eye hath not seen nor ear heard and which have not entred into the heart of man are revealed by this Spirit Therefore doth the Apostle direct his Prayer on the behalf of the Ephesians to the Father of this glory that he would give them this Spirit of wisdom and revelation to enlighten the eyes of their understanding that they might know the hope of his calling and the riches of the glory of his inheritance in or among the Saints And its revelation is such as begets an impression in respect whereof 't is said also to seal up to the day of redemption Therefore pray earnestly for this Spirit not in idle dreaming words of course but as being really apprehensive of the necessitie of prevailing And give not over till thou find that sacred fire diffusing it self through thy mind and heart to enlighten the one and refine the other and so prepossess both of this glory that thy soul may be all turned into joy and praise And then let me adde here without the formality of a distinct head That it concerns thee to take heed of quenching that Spirit by either resisting or neglecting its holy dictates or as the same precept is otherwise given of grieving the Spirit he is by Name and Office the Comforter The Primitive Christians 't is said walked in the fear of God and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost Is it equal dealing to grieve him whose business it is to comfort thee or canst thou expect joy where thou causest grief Walk in the Spirit adore its power Let thy Soul do it homage within thee Wait for its holy influences yield thy self to its ducture and guidance so wilt thou go as the redeemed of the Lord with everlasting joy upon thy head till thou enter that presence where is fulness of joy and pleasures for evermore Nor do thou think it improper or strange that thou should'st be called upon to rejoyce in what thou dost not yet possess Thy hope is in stead of fruition 't is an anticipated enjoyment We are commanded to rejoyce in hope and Saints have profest to do so to rejoyce even in the hope the hope of the glory of God Nor is it unreasonable that should be thy present highest joy For though yet it be a distinct thing and indistinctly revealed the excellency of the object makes compensation for both with an abundant surplusage As any one would much more rejoyce to be assured by a great person of ample possessions he would make him his heir to though he knew not distinctly what they should be then to see a shilling already his own with his own eyes CHAP. XXX The addition of two Rules that more specially respect the yet future season of this blessedness after this life viz. Rule 7. That we patiently wait for it until death Rule 8. That we love not too much this present life THere are yet two more Rules to be superadded that respect the season of this blessedness when we awake i. e. not till we go out of time into eternity not till we pass out of the drowsie darkness of our present state till the night be over with us and the vigorous light of the everlasting day do shine upon us Hence therefore it will be further necessary 7. That while the appointed proper season of this blessedness
the Lusts of it That is cruel Love that shall enslave a man and subject him to so vile and ignoble a servitude And it discovers a sordid temper to be so imposed upon How low are our Spirits sunk that we disdain not so base a vassalage God and nature have obliged us to live in bodies for a time but they have not obliged us to measure our selves by them to confine our desires and designs to their compass to look no further then their concernments to entertain no previous joyes in the hope of being one day delivered from them No such hard law is laid upon us But how apt are we to become herein a most oppressive Law to our selves and not only to lodge in filthy earthen cottage but to love them and confine our selves to them loath so much as to peep out T is the apt expression of a Philosopher upbraiding hat base low temper The degenerous Soul saith he buried in the Body is as a slothful creeping thing that loves its hole and is loath to come forth And methinks if we have no love for our better and more noble self we should not be altogether unapprehensive of an obligation upon us to express a dutiful love to the Author of our beings doth it consist with the love we owe to him to desire always to lurk in the dark and never come into his blessed presence Is that our love that we never care to come nigh him Do we not know that while we are present in the body we are absent from the Lord should we not therefore be willing rather to be present with the Lord and absent from the body should we not put on a confidence an holy fortitude as 't is there exprest we are confident or of good courage and thence willing c. that might carry us through the Grave to him As is the brave Speech of that last mentioned Philosopher God will call thee ere long expect his call Old age will come upon thee and shew thee the way thither and death which he that is possest with a base fear laments and dreads as it draws on but he that is a lover of God expects it with joy and with courage meets it when it comes Is our love to God so faint and weak that it dares not encounter Death nor venture upon the imaginary terrours of the Grave to go to him How unsuitable is this to the character which is given of a Saints love And how expresly are we told that he who loves his life better then Christ or that even hates it not for his sake as certainly he cannot be said to do that is not willing to part with it to enjoy him cannot be his Disciple If our love to God be not Supreme 't is none or not such as can denominate us lovers of him and will we pretend to be so when we love a putide flesh and this base earth better then him And have we not professedly as a fruit of our avowed love to him surrendred our selves Are we not his devoted ones will we be his and yet our own or pretend our selves dedicated to his holy pleasure and will yet be at our own dispose and so dispose of our selves too as that we may be most ungrateful to him and most uncapable of converse with him How doth this love of a perishing life and of a little animated clay stop all the effusions of the Love of God suspends its sweet and pleasant fruits which should be always exerting themselves towards him Where is their fear obedience joy and praise who are through the fear of death all their lives subject to bondage And kept under a continual dismal expectation of an unavoidable dissolution But must the great God lose his due acknowledgements because we will not understand wherein he deals well with us Is his mercy therefore no mercy As we cannot nullify his truth by our unbelief so nor his goodness by our disesteem But yet consider doth it not better become thee to be grateful then repine that God will one day unbind thy Soul and set thee free Knock of thy Letters and deliver thee out of the house of thy bondage Couldst thou upon deliberate thoughts judge it tollerable should he doom thee to this earth forever He hath however judged otherwise as the Pagan Emperour and and Philosopher excellently speaks who is the Author both of the first composition of thy present being and now of the dissolution of it thou wert the cause of neither therefore depart and be thankful for he that dismisseth thee dealeth kindly with thee If yet thou understandest it not yet remember It is thy Father that disposes thus of thee how unworthy is it to distrust his Love What child would be afraid to compose it self to sleep in the Parents bosom It expresses nothing of the duty and ingenuity but much of the frowardness and folly of a child They sometimes cry vehemently in the undressing but should their cryes be regarded by the most indulgent Parent or are they fit to be imitated by us We have no excuse for this our frowardness The Blessed God hath told us his gracious purpose concerning us and we are capable of understanding him What if he had totally hidden from us our future state and that we know nothing but of going into an eternal silent-darkness The Authority of a Creator ought to have awed us into a silent submission But when we are told of such a glory that 't is but drawing aside this fleshly vaile and we presently behold it methinks the Blessed hour should be expected not with patience only but with ravishing joy Did we hear of a country in this world where we might live in continual felicity without toyl or sickness or grief or fear who would not wish to be there though the passage were troublesome have we not heard enough of Heaven to allure us thither Or is the eternal truth of suspected credit with us Are Gods own reports of the future glory unworthy our belief or regard How many upon the credit of his word are gone already triumphantly into glory That only seeing the promises afar off were perswaded of them and embraced them and never after owned themselves under any other notion then of Pilgrims on earth longing to be at home in their most desirable Heavenly Country We are not the first that are to open Heaven The main Body of Saints is already there 't is in comparison of their number but a scattering remnant that are now alive upon the earth How should we long to be associated to that glorious Assembly Methinks we should much more regret our being so long left behind But if we should desire still to be so why may not all others as well as we And as much expect to be gratified as we And then we should agree in desiring that our Redeemers triumph might be defer'd that his Body might yet remain incompleat that
he might still be debarr'd of the long expected fruit of the travail of his Soul that the name of God might be still subjected to the blasphemy and and reproach of an Atheistical world who have long ago said with derision where is the promise of his coming Would we have all his Designs to be still unfinisht and so mighty wheeles stand still for us while we sport our selves in the dust of the earth And indulge our sensual inclination which sure this bold desire must argue to be very predominant in us and take heed it argue not its habitual prevalency At least if it discover not our present sensuality it discovers our former Sloth and Idleness It may be we may excuse our aversness to dye by our unpreparedness that is one fault with another though that be besides the case I am speaking of what then have we been doing all this while What were the affairs of thy Soul not thought of till now Take then thy repro of from a Heathen that it may convince thee the more No one saith he divides away his money from himself but yet men divide away their very life but doth it not shame thee he after adds to reserve only the reliques of thy life to thy self and to devote that time only to a good mind which thou canst employ upon no other thing How late is it to begin to live when we should make an end and deser all good thoughts to such an Age as possible few do ever reach to The truth is as he speaks we have not little time but we lose much we have time enough were it well employ'd therefore we cannot say we receive a short life but we make it so we are not indigent of time but prodigal what a pretty contradiction is it to complain of the shortness of time and yet do what we can to precipitate its course to hasten it by that we call pastime If it have been so with thee art thou to be trusted with more time But as thy case is I cannot wonder that the thoughts of death be most unwellcome to thee who art thou that thou shouldst desire the day of the Lord I can onely say to thee hasten thy preparation have recourse to Rule 2. and 3d. and accordingly guide thy self till thou find thy Spirit made more suitable to this blessedness that it become savory and grateful to thy soul and thy heart be set upon it Hence thou may'st be reconciled to the grave and the thoughts of death may cease to be a terror to thee And when thou art attained so far consider thy great advantage in being willing and desirous to dye upon this further account that thy desire shall now be pitch't upon a thing so certain Thine other desires have met with many a disappointment Thou hast set thy heart upon other things and they have deceived thy most earnest thirsty expectations Death will not do so Thou wilt now have one certain hope One thing in reference whereto thou may'st say I am sure Wait a while this peaceful sleep will shortly seize thy body and awaken thy soul. It will calmly period all thy troubles and bring thee to a blessed rest But now if onely the meer terrour and gloominess of dying trouble thy thoughts this of all other seems the most inconsiderable pretence against a willing surrender of our selves to death Reason hath overcome it natural courage yea some mens Atheism shall not Faith Are we not ashamed to consider what confidence and desire of death some Heathens have exprest some that have had no preapprehension or belief of another state though there were very few of them and so no hope of a consequent blessedness to relieve them have yet thought it unreasonable to disgust the thoughts of death What would'st thou think if thou had'st nothing but the Sophisms of such to oppose to all thy dismal thoughts I have met with one arguing thus Death which is accounted the most dreadful of all evils is nothing to us saith he because while we are in being Death is not yet present and when Death is present we are not in being so that it neither concerns us as living nor dead for while we are alive it hath not touch't us when we are dead we are not Moreover saith he the exquisite knowledge of this that Death belongs not to us makes us injoy this mortal life with comfort not by adding any thing to our uncertain time but by taking away the desire of immortality Shall they comfort themselves upon so wretched a ground with a little Sophistry and the hope of extinguishing all desire of immortality and shall not we by cherishing the blessed hope of injoying shortly an immortal glory Others of them have spoken magnificently of a certain contempt of this bodily life and a not onely not fearing but desiring to dye upon a sixed apprehension of the distinct and purer and immortal nature of the soul and the preconcieved hope of a consequent felicity I shall set down some of their words added to what have been occasionally mentioned amongst that plentiful variety wherewith one might fill a volume purposely to shame the more terrene temper of many Christians The Soul saith one of them is an invisible thing and is going into another place suitable to it self that is noble and pure and invisible even into Hades indeed to the good and wise God whether also my Soul shall shortly go if he see good But this he saith in what follows belongs only to such a Soul as goes out of the body pure that draws nothing corporal along with it did not willingly communicate with the body in life but did even fly from it and gather up it self into it self always meditating this one thing A soul so affected shall it not go to something like it self divine and what is divine is immoâ—tal and wise whether when it comes it becomes blessed free from errour ignorance fears and wild or enormous loves and all other evils incident to men One writing the life of that rare person Plotinus sayes that he seemed as if he were in some sort ashamed that he was in body which however it would less become a Christian yet in one that knew nothing of an incarnate Redeemer it discovered a refined noble Spirit The same person speaks almost the language of the Apostle concerning his being rapt up into the third heaven and tells of such an alienation of the soul from the body That when once it finds God whom he had before been speaking of under the name of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or the beauty shining in upon it it now no longer feels its body or takes notice of its being in the body but even forgets its own being that it is a man or a living creature or any thing else whatsoever for it is not at leisure to mind any thing else nor doth it desire to be Yea and having sought him out he
immediately meets it presenting its self to him It onely views him instead of it self and would not now change its state for any thing not if one could give it the whole heaven in exchange And else where discussing whether life in the body be good and desirable yea or no he concludes it to be good not as it is an union of the soul and body but as it may have that vertue annex't to it by which what is really evil may be kept off But yet that that death is a greater good That life in the body is in it self evil but the soul is by vertue stated in goodness not as enlivening the body with which it is compounded but as it severs and so joyns it self from it meaning so as to have as little communion as possible it can with it To which purpose is the expression of another That the soul of an happy man so collects and gathers up it self out from all things into it self that it hath as it were separated it self from the body while it is yet contained in it And that it was possest of that fortitude as not to dread its departure from it Another gives this character of a good man that as he liv'd in simplicity tranquility purity not being offended at any that they believed him not to live so he also comes to the end of his life pure quiet and easie to be dissolved disposing himself without any constraint to his lot Another is brought in speaking thus If God should grant me to become a Child again to send forth my renewed infant-cries from my Cradle and having even run out my race to begin it again I should most earnestly refuse it for what profit hath this life and how much toil Yet I do not repent that I have lived because I hope I have not liv'd in vain And I now go out of this life not as out of my dwelling house but my Inn. O blessed day when I shall enter into that Council and Assembly of souls and depart from this rude and disorderly rout and crew c. I shall adde another of a not much unlike strain and rank that discoursing who is the Heir of Divine things as being either not an open or no constant friend to Christianity Saith he cannot be who is in love with this animal sensitive life but only that purest mind that is inspired from above that partake of an Heavenly and Divine portion that onely despises the body c. with much more of like import Yea so have some been transported with the desire of immortality that being wholly ignorant of the sin of self-murder they could not forbear doing violence to themselves Among the Indians two thousand years ago were a sort of wise men as they were called that held it a reproach to dye of age or a disease and were wont to burn themselves alive thinking the flames were polluted if they came amidst them dead The story of Cleombrotus is famous who hearing Plato discourse of the immortality of the soul by the Sea side leapt from him into the Sea that he might presently be in that state And 't is storied that Nero refused to put Apollonius to death though he were very much incenst against him only upon the apprehension he had that he was very desirous to dye because he would not so far gratifie him I onely make this improvement of all this Christian Principles Rule do neither hurry nor misguide men but the end as we have it revealed should much more powerfully and constantly attract us Nothing is more unsuitable to Christianity our way nor to that blessedness the end of it then a terrene Spirit They have nothing of the true light and impress of the Gospel now nor are they ever like to attain the Vision of the blessed face of God and the impress of his likeness hereafter that desire it not above all things and are not willing to quit all things else for it And is it not a just exprobration of our earthliness and carnality if meer Philosophers and Pagans shall give better proof then we of a spirit erected above the world and alienated from what is temporary and terrene Shall their Gentilism outvy our Christianity Methinks a generous indignation of this reproach should inflame our souls and contribute somewhat to the refining of them to a better and more Spiritual temper Now therefore O all you that name your selves by that worthy name of Christians that profess the Religion taught by him that was not of the earth earthly but the Lord from heaven you that are partakers of the heavenly calling Consider the great Apostle and High-priest of your profession who only took our flesh that we might partake of his Spirit bare our earthly that we might bare his heavenly Image descended that he might cause us to ascend Seriously bethink your selves of the Scope and end of his Apostleship and Priesthood He was sent out from God to invite and conduct you to him to bring you into the Communion of his glory and blessedness He came upon a Message and Treaty of peace To discover his Fathers love and win yours To let you know how kind thoughts the God of love had conceived to you-wards And that however you had hated him without cause and were bent to do so without end he was not so affected towards you To settle a friendship and to admit you to the participation of his eternal glory Yea he came to give an instance and exemplifie to the world in his own Person how much of heaven he could make to dwell in mortal flesh how possible he could render it to live in this world as unrelated to it How gloriously the divine life could triumph over all the infirmities of frail humanity And so leave men a certain proof and pledge to what perfections humane nature should be improv'd by his grace and Spirit in all them that should resign themselves to his conduct and follow his steps That heaven and earth were not so far asunder but he knew how to settle a commerce and intercourse between them That an heavenly life was possible to be transacted here and certain to be gloriously rewarded hereafter And having testifi'd these things he seals the Testimony and opens the way for the accomplishment of all by his death Your heavenly Apostle becomes a Priest and a Sacrifice at once That no doubt might remain among men of his sincerity in what even dying he ceased not to profess and avow And that by his own propitiatory bloud a mutual reconciliation might be wrought between God and you that your hearts might be won to him and possest with an ingenuous shame of your ever having been his enemies And that his displeasure might for ever cease towards you and be turned into everlasting friendship and love That eternal redemption being obtained heaven might be opened to you and you finally be received to the
glory of God Your hearts being bent thitherward and made willing to run through whatsoever difficulties of life or death to attain it Do not think that Christ came into the world and dyed to procure the pardon of your sins and so translate you to heaven while your hearts should still remain cleaving to the earth He came and returned to prepare a way for you and then call not drag you thither That by his Precepts and Promises and Example and Spirit he might form and fashion your Souls to that glorious state And make you willing to abandon all things for it And low now the God of all grace is calling you by Jesus Christ unto his eternal Glory Direct then your eyes and hearts to that marke the Prise of the High calling of God in Christ Jesus 'T is ignominious by the common suffrage of the civiliz'd world not to intend the proper business of our Callings To your Calling to forsake this world and mind the other make hast then to quit your selves of your entanglements of all earthly dispositions and affections Learn to live in this world as those that are not of it that expect every day and wish to leave it whose hearts are gone already 'T is dreadful to dye with pain and regret To be forced out of the Body To dye a violent death and go away with an unwilling refluctant heart The wicked is driven away in his wickedness Fain he would stay longer but cannot He hath not power over the Spirit to retain the Spirit nor hath he power in death He must away whether he will or no. And indeed much against his will So it cannot but be where there is not a previous knowledge and love of a better state where the Soul understands it not and is not effectually attempered and framed to it O get then the lovely Image of the future glory into your minds keep it ever before your eyes Make it familiar to your thoughts Imprint daily there these words I shall behold thy face I shall be satisfied with thy likeness And see that your souls be inrich't with that righteousness Have inwrought into them that holy rectitude that may dispose them to that blessed state Then will you dye with your own consent and go away not driven but allur'd and drawn You will go as the redeemed of the Lord with everlasting joy upon their heads As those that know whether you go even to a state infinitely worthy of your desires and choice and where 't is best for you to be You will part with your souls not by a forcible separation but a joyful surrender and resignation They will dislodge from this earthly Tabernnacle rather as putting it off then having it rent and torn away Loosen your selves from this body by degrees as we do any thing we would remove from a place where it sticks fast Gather up your spirits into themselves Teach them to look upon themselves as distinct thing Inure them to the thoughts of a dissolution Be continually as taking leave Cross and disprove the common maxime and let your hearts which they use to say are wont to dye last dye first Prevent death and be mortifi'd towards every earthly thing beforehand that death mave have nothing to kill but your body And that you may not die a double death in one hour and suffer the death of your body and of your love to it both at once Much less that this should survive to your greater and even incurable misery Shake off your Bands and Fetters the terrene affections that so closely confine you to the house of your bondage And lift up your heads in expectation of the approaching Jubilee the day of your redemption when you are to go out free and enter into the glorious liberty of the Sons of God When you shall serve and groan and complain no longer Let it be your continual song and the matter of your daily praise that the time of your happy deliverance is hastening on that ete long you shall be absent from the body and present with the Lord. That he hath not doom'd you to an everlasting imprisonment within those closs and clayie walls wherein you have been so long shut up from the beholding of his sight and glory In the thoughts of this while the outward man is sensibly perishing let the inward revive and be renewed day by day What Prisoner would be sorry to see the walls of his Prison House so an Heathen speaks mouldering down and the hopes arriving to him of being delivered out of that darkness that had buried him of recovering his liberty and injoying the free air and light What Champion inur'd to hardship would stick to throw off rotten rags rather expose a naked placid free body to naked placid free air The truly generous soul to be a little above never leaves the body against its will Rejoyce that it is the gracious pleasure of thy good God thou shalt not always inhabit a Dungeon nor lie amid'st so impure and disconsolate darkness that he will shortly exchange thy filthy Garments for those of Salvation and Praise The end approaches As you turn over these leaves so are your days turned over And as you are now arrived to the end of this Book God will shortly write Finis to the Book of your Life on Earth and shew you your names written in Heaven in the Book of that Life which shall never end FINIS Senec. * Pruritus disputandi scobies Ecclesia * Ut ulcera quaedam nocituras manus apoetunt tactu gaudent faedam corporum scabiem delectat quicquid â—xâ—sperâ—t Non alitè◠dixerim his mâ—ntibus in quas voluptates velut mala ulcera crupê unt voluptati esse laborem vexâ—tionemque Sâ—n. de tranquillitate anâ—â—â— Sen de Brev. vit * Nihil est Deo similius aut gratius quam vir animo perfectè bonus c. Apul. de Deo Soâ—â—atis * Inter bonos viros ac Deum amicitia est conciliante virtute amicitiam dico etiam necessitudâ— similitudâ— c. Sca de prov * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plato in Minâ—e 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Dyonys Halicar Antiq. Rom. lib. 8. Rom. 2 6 7 8 9. * Rom. 16 18. Phil. 3. 19. * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Sept. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The vâ—lgar Latine Eâ—oautem 〈…〉 appaâ—câ—o â—oâ—spectui 〈◊〉 satiabo◠〈◊〉 â—â—pâ—â—uâ—riâ— gloâ—ia tua Exactly following the Seventy as doth the Ethiopique the Chaldee Paraphrase disagrees little the Arabique lesse the Syâ—iâ—ck mistook it seem◠〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and so read that word saith which we read likenesse Hieronymus juxta Hebr. reads the words exactly as we do Ego in justiâ—iâ viâ—â—bo faciâ—m tuam implebor cum evigilavero similitudine tua 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Seems best to be rendered here by or through righteousness as by the condition
homini datum est quando primum creatus est rectus potuit non peccare sed potuit peccare Hoc autem novissimum eâ— potentius erit quò peccare noa potuit Aug de Civitat Dei lib. 22. c. 30. Libertas nâ—stâ—a inhaerâ—t divina ut exemplari in pâ—â—pâ—luâ ejus imitatâ—one versatur sive ortum sive pâ—â—gressum sive conâ—â—mmâ—tionem ejus intue 〈◊〉 libertas nostra in oâ—tu est capacitas Dei In progressu libertas res est longe câ—arâ—or progress â—senim atâ—â—nditur pâ—nes accessâ—m hominis ad Dâ—â—m qâ—i quidem 〈…〉 sed imitatione â—ssâ—â—latione câ—nstâ—t eâ—t utiquc imâ—â—atioâ—e assiâ—il itioâ— secuadum quam siâ—ut Deus est sablimis excelsus seipso ita homo est sublimis excelsus Deo altitudo ejus Deus est ut inquit D Augustinuâ— Consummatio denique libertatis est cum homo in Deum felicissimo gloriae coelestis statu transformatur deus omnia illi esse incipit Qui quidem postremus status co dissert à priore quippe homo tum non modo inalligatus est creaturis sed nec circaillas negotiatur etiam referendo in finem nec in creaturis se insundit nec per illas procedit ut faciâ—bat cum esset viator sed in solo Deo conquiescit effundit se placidissimè motits ejus cum sit ad presentissimum conjunctissimum bonum similior est quieti quà m mâ—tui Gib l. 2. c. 14. Omnes turbulae tempestates quae procul à Deoâ—rum coelestium tranquilitate exulant c. Apuleius de Deis Sâ—câ—atis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Max. Tyâ— disser 1. Quod desideras autâ—m magâ—â—m summum 〈◊〉 Deoque vicinum noa concuti Sâ—n. de trâ—nquil Animi Psal. 116. Sen. de tranquill anim Phil. 4. 7. Act. 20. 24. Isa. 26. 3. Psal. 112. 7. Rom. 15. 13. 2 Cor. 5. 5. 2 Cor. 4. 6. Prov. 4 18. Phil. 2 7. 2 Pet. 1. 4. 2 Cor. 3. 18. Psal 126. 6. * I would fain know what the Tertium shall be resulting from the Physical union some speak of Joh. 17. 11. ver 11. Ver. 21. 1 Cor. 6. 16. Gal. 6 7 8. Dr. Hâ—rv de Ovo * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Rom. 15. 13. Gâ—â—◠〈◊〉 in Christa â—â—â—â—â—mus homâ—â—â—â— c. Orat. 1 Matth. 5. 6. 1 Thes. 5 6. Ephes 5. 14. * So well doth the Apostles watchword suit our case awake to righteousness and sin not c. 1 Cor. 15 34. Cant. 5 2. Psal. 39 6. * Viz. 〈◊〉 Who at the time of his death sprinkled water upon the servants about him addita voâ—e se liquorem illâ—m libare Joâ—i lâ—beratori Tacit Annal. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 * In Phaedro Cant. 6. 12 Rom. 13 11. Arelius Beza c. Psal. 30. 5. * In his Saints rest p. 2. c. 10 Luke 23. 43. 2 Cor. 5 8. Phil. 1. 23. Heb. 12. 23. 'T is true that divers of the Fathers and others have spoken some dubiously some very diminishingly of the blessedness of separate souls many of whose words may be seen together in that elaborate Tractate of the learned Parker de descens lib secâ—nâ— p. 77. Yea and his own assertion in that very page be it spoken with reverence to the memory of so worthy a person argues something gross and I conceive unwarrantable thoughts of the souls dependance on a body of Earth His words are Tertium vulnus speaking of the prejudices the Soul receives by its separation from the body omnes operationes etiam suas quae sunt praesertim ad extra extinguit Where he makes it a difficulty to allow it any operations at all as apears by the praesertim inserted He first indeed denies it all operations and then more confidently and especially those ad extra And if he would be understood to exclude it only from its operations ad extra if he take operations ad extra as that Phrase is wont to be taken he must then mean by it all such operations as have their objects not only those that have their terms to which without the Agent i. e. not only all transient but all immanent acts that have their object without them As when we say all Gods acts ad extra are free we mean it even of his immanent acts that have their objects without him though they do not poâ—â—re terminum extra deum as his election his love of the elect And so he must be understood to deny the separate souls and that with a praesertim too the operations of knowing God of loving him and delighting in him which are all operations ad extra as having their objects extra animam though their terminus ad quâ—m be not so which makes the condition of the separate souls of Saints unspeakably inferiour to what it was in the body and what should occasion to dismal thoughts of that state of separation I see not Scripture gives no ground for them but evidently enough speaks the contrary Reason and Phylosophy offers nothing that can â—ender the sense we put upon the forementioned plain Scriptures self contradâ—ctions or impossible Yea such as had no other light or guide have thought the facility of the souls operations being separate from its earthly body much greater by that very separation And upon this score doth Saint Augustine with great indignation inveigh against the Pâ—ilosophers Plaâ—o more especially because they judg'd the separation of the Soul from the body necessary to its blessedness Quia videlicct ejus perfectâ—m beatitudinem tunc illi fieri exâ—stimâ—at cum omni prorsus corpore exuta ad Deum sâ—nâ— lex solâ— quodommodo nuda redierit De civit Dei l. 13 c. 16. unto which purpose the words of Philolâ—us Pythâ—goricus of Plato of Porphyrius are cited by Ludovicus vives in his Comment upon that bovementioned passage The first speaking thus Deposito corpore hominem Deum immortalem fieri The second thus Trahi nos à corpore ad ima à cogitatione superarum rerum subinde revocari ideo relinquendum corpus hîc quantum possumus in alterâ vitâ vitâ prorsum ut liberi expediti verum ipsi videamus optimum amemus The third denies Aliter fieri bâ—atum quenquam posse nisi relinquat corpus affigatur Deo I conceive it by the way not improbable that the severity of that Pious Father against that Dogma of the Philosophers might proceed upon this ground that what they said of the impossibilitie of being happy in an earthly body he understood meant by them of an impossibilitie to be happy in any body at all when 't is evidently the common opinion of the Platonists that the soul is alwayes united with some body or other and that even the Daeâ—oâ—s have bodies aereal or etherial ones which Plato himself is observed by St. Augustine to affirm whence he would fasten a contradiction on him ibid. not considering 't is likely that
upon mens spirits they are certainly supposed to be in a good measure acquainted with themselves whatever others are Therefore the Apostle bids the Corinthians if they desire a proof of the power and truth of his ministery to consult themselves examine your selves and presently subjoyns know ye not your own selves intimating it was an unsupposeable thing they should be ignorant What Christians and not know your selves Can you have been under the Gospel so long and be strangers to yourselves none can think it Sure 't is a most reproachful thing a thing full of ignonimy and scandal that a man should name himself a Christian and yet be under grosse ignorance touching the temper and bent of his own soul. It signifies that such a one understands little of the design and tendency of the very religion he pretends to be of Yet he was a Christian by meer chance that he took up and continues his profession in a dream Christianity aims at nothing it gets a man nothing if it do not procure him a better Spirit 't is an empty insignificant thing it hath no design in it at all if it do not design this It pretends to nothing else It doth not offer men secular advantages emoluments honours it hath no such aim to make men in that sense rich or great or honourable but to make them holy and fit them for God He therefore loses all his labour and reward and shews himself a vain trifler in the matters of Religion that makes not this the scope and mark of his Christian profession and practice and herein he can do nothing without a constant self-inspection As it therefore highly concerns it well becomes a Christian under the Gospel to be in a continual observation and study of himself that he may know to what purpose he is a Christian and take notice what or whether any good impressions be yet made upon his Spirit whether he gain any thing by his Religion And if a man enter upon an enquirie into himself what more important question can he put then this In what posture am I as to my last and chief end how is my Spirit framed towards it This is the intendment and business of the Gospel To fit souls for blessedness and therefore if I would enquire what am I the better for the Gospel this is the sense and meaning of that very question is my soul wrought by it to any better disposition for blessedness Upon which the resolution of this depends am I ever likely to enjoy it yea or no That which may make any heart not deplorably stupid shake and tremble that such a thing should be drawn into question but the case with the most requires it and it must be so 'T is that therefore I would fain here awaken souls to and assist them in that is propound something in pursuance of the present direction which might both awaken them to move this great question and help them in discussing it Both which will be done in shewing the importance of this latter ultimate question in it self and then the subserviencie of the former subordinate one towards the deciding it These two things therefore I shall a little stay upon 1. To shew and urge the requisiteness of debating with ourselves the likelihood or hopefulnesse of our enjoying this blessednesse 2. To discover that the present habitude or disposedness of our Spirits to it is a very proper apt medium whereby to judge thereof First As to the former of these methinks our business should do it self and that the very mention of such a blessedness should naturally prompt souls to bethink themselves doth it belong to me have I any thing to do with it Methinks every one that hears of it should be beforehand with me and prevent me here Where is that stupid soul that reckons it an indifferent thing to attain this blessed state or fall short of it When thou hearest this is the common expectation of Saints to behold the face of God and be satisfi'd with his likeness when they awake Canst thou forbear to say with thy self and what shall become of me when I awake what kind of awaking shall I have shall I awake amid'st the beams of glory or flames of wrath If thou canst be perswaded to think this no matter of indifferency then stir up thy drowsie soul to a serious inquirie how 't is likely to fare with thee for ever and to that purpose put thy conscience to it to give a free sincere answer to these few Queries 1. Canst thou say thou art already certain of thy eternal blessedness Art thou so sure that thou need'st not enquire I know not who thou art that now readest these lines and therefore cannot judg of thy confidence whether it be right or wrong onely that thou may'st not answer too hastily consider a little that certainty of salvation is no common thing not among I speak you see of subjective certainty the heirs of salvation themselves How many of Gods holy ones that cannot say they are certain yea how few that can say they are That exhortation to a Church of Saints Work out your salvation with fear and trembling they of whom he expresseth such confidence Chap. 1. 6. over whom he so glories Chap. 4. 1. implyes this to be no common thing So doth Christs advice to his Disciples Strive to enter in at the strait gate and St. Peters to the scattered Jews that he saith had obtained like precious faith c. give diligence to make your calling and election sure with many more passages of like import Yea how full is the Scripture of the complaints of such crying out of broken bones of festering wounds of distraction by divine terrours Now what shall we say in this case when so eminent Saints have left us Records of the distresses and agonies of their Spirits under the apprehended displeasure of God may it not occasion us to suspend a while and consider have we much more reason to be confident then they And do we know none that lead stricter and more holy lives then we that are yet in the dark and at a losse in judging their Spiritual states I will not say that we must therefore think our selves bound to doubt because another possibly ter then we doth so Unknown accidents may much vary the cases But who would not think that reason and modesty had quite forsaken the world to hear where the odds is so vastly great the vain boasts of the loose generality compared with the humble solicitous doubts of many serious knowing Christians To see such trembling about their soul concernments who have walk't with God and served him long in prayers and tears when multitudes that have nothing whereon to bottom a confidence but Pride and Ignorance shall pretend themselves certain If drawing breath a while thou wilt suspect thou have reason not to be peremptory in thy confidence thou wilt sure think thy self concern'd to inquire further Urge