such useless members forseiting their very sustenance then surely he that is such or worse speeds fair if you leave him food and raiment 4. And the great command of doing all to Gods Glory and serving him with our substance will not be obeyed if you leave your Riches and Estates in the hands of such persons meerly because they are your Children No doubt but that is a selfish and unconscionable course and the thing that sets up the ungodly to disturb the Church Lord it over the world while parents furnish them with Riches to do the Devil eminent service with Object But who knows but God may convert them Answ You cannot guide your actions by things unknown You have no promise of their conversion nor much probability when they have frustrated all your Counsels and means of their good education and grace is supernatural and therefore you must proceed upon grounds that are known And for remoter Kindred if they may be as serviceable to God with what I give them as others nature teacheth me to prefer them before others but otherwise Grace teacheth me both to love a godly stranger better than ungodly kindred and to lay out all that I have as may be most serviceable to God CHAP. LVII Q. How we must love our Neighbours as our selves Quest 7. HOw is it that Self-denial requireth us to love our neighbour as our selves Is it with the same degree of Love Answ I answered this on the by before Briefly 1. The chief part of the precept is Negative thus q. d. Set not up thy self against the welfare of thy neighbour Draw not from him or covet not that which is his to thy self and confine not thy love and care of thyself 2. And it comprehendeth this positive and that as to the kind of Love we should love both our selves and neighbours as means to God and for the interest of God and in that respect there is an equality we must appretiative or estimatively love a better and more serviceable man that hath more of Gods Spirit in him above our selves and an equal person equally with our selves with this Rational Love which intendeth all for God 3. But Natural Love which is put into a man for self-preservation will be stronger to self than to another and alloweth us caeteris paribus to prefer and first preserve and provide for our selves And in this regard our neighbour must be loved but as a second self or next our selves 4. But this Natural Love in the exercise of it at least in imperate acts is to be subservient to our Rational spiritual Love and to be over-mastered by it And therefore it is that as Reason teacheth an Heathen to prefer his Country before his life though the instinct of Nature incline us more to life so faith teacheth a Christian much more to prefer Gods honour and the Gospel Church Common-wealth and his neighbours good when it more conduceth to these ends than his own before himself his liberty or life CHAP. LVIII Q. Is Self-revenge and Penance self-denial Quest 8. WHether self-denial require us after sin to use vindictive penance or punishment of the flesh by fasting watching going barefoot lying hard wearing hair-cloth or to do this ordinarily as some of the Papists Monks and Fryars do Answ The easiness of this case may allow a brief decision 1. The Body must be so far afflicted as is needful to humble it and subdue it to the spirit and tame its Rebellion and fit it for the service of God 2. The exercise of a holy revenge on our selves may be a lower end subservient to this 3. It must also be so far humbled as is necessary to express Repentance to the Church when Absolution is expected upon publick Repentance 4. As also to concur with the soul in secret or open humiliation But 1. He that shall think that whippings or sackcloth or going bare-foot or other self-punishing are of themselves good works and meritorious with God or satisfie his Justice or are a state of perfection doth offer God a hainous sin under the name and conceit of a good work 2. And he that shall by such self-afflicting unfit his Body for the service of God yea that doth not cherish it so far as is necessary to fit it for duty is guilty of self-murder and defrauding God of his service and abusing his creature and depriving others of the help we owe them so that iâ— one word the Body must be so used as may best fit it for Gods service And to think that self-afflicting is a good work meerly as it is penalty or suffering to the body or that we may go further herein is to think 1. That we should use our Body worse than our beast for we will no further afflict him than is necessary to tame him or serve our selves by him and not to disable him for service 2. And it will teach men to kill themselves for that is a greater penalty to the body than whipping or fasting 3. And it is an offering God a sacrifice of cruelty and Robbery which we commit against himself and man But I must needs add that though some Fryars and Melancholy people are apt to go too far in this and pine their bodies or misuse them with conceits of merit and satisfaction yet almost all the common people run into the contrary extream and pamper and please their flesh to the displeasing of God and the ruine of their souls And I know but few that have need to be restrained from afflicting or taking down the flesh too much CHAP. LIX Q. Is self-denial to be without Passion Quest 9. WHether self-denial consist in the laying by of all Passions and bringing the soul to an impassionate serenity Answ The Stoicks and some Behmenists think so But so doth not God or any well informed man For 1. God would not have made the Affections in vain It is not the Passions but the disorder of them that is sinful or the fruit of sin 2. We are commanded to exercise all the Affections or Passions for God and on other sutable objects We must Love God with all the heart and soul and might which is not without affection or passion We must Love his servants his Church his Word his wayes We must fear him above them that can kill us we must hunger and thirst after his Righteousness and pant after him as the Hart doth after the Water-brooks We must be angry and sin not A zeal for God is the life of our Graces we must always be zealous in a good matter fervent in Spirit serving the Lord. We must hate evil and sorrow for it when we are guilty and grieve under the sense of our miscarriages and Gods displeasure And all these expresly commanded in the Word are holy Affections or Passions of the soul 3. Yea it is the Work of the Holy Ghost to sanctifie all these Passions that they may be used for God and they are called by
of self-denyal 2. As God was mans ultimate End in his state of innocency so accordingly man was appointed to use all Creatures in order to God for his Pleasure and Glory So that it was the work of man to do his Makers will and he was to use nothing but with this intention But when man was faln from God to himself he afterwards used all things for himself even his carnal self and all that he possessed was become the provision and fuel of his lusts and so the whole creation which he was capable of using was abused by him to this low and selfish end as if all things had been made but for his delight and will But when man is brought to Deny himself he is brought to restore the Creatures to their former use and not to sacrifice them to his fleshly mind so that all that he hath and useth in the world is used to another end so far as he denyeth himself than formerly it was even for God and not himâ—elf 3. In the state of Innocency though man had naturally an aversness from death and bodily pains as being natural evils and had a desire of the welfare even of the flesh it self yet as his body was subject to his soul and his senses to his Reason so his bodily ease and welfare was to be esteemed and desired and sought but in a due subordination to his spiritual welfare and especially to his Makers Will So that though he was to value his Life yet he was much more to value his everlasting life and the pleasure and Glory of his Lord. But now when man is faln from God to Himself his Life and earthly felicity is the sweetest and the dearest thing to him that is So that he preferreth it before the Pleasing of God and everlasting life And therefore he seeketh it more and holdeth it faster as long as he can and parteth with it more unwillingly As Innocent Nature had an appetite to the objects of sense but corrupted nature hath an enraged greedy rebellious and inordinate appetite to them so Innocent nature had a love to this natural earthly life and the comforts of it but corrupted Nature hath such an inordinate love to them as that all things else are made but subordinate to them and swallowed up in this gulf even God himself is so far loved as he befriendeth these our carnal ends and furthereth our earthly prosperity and life But when men are brought to Deny themselves they are in their measures restored to their first esteem of Life and all the prosperity and earthly comforts of life Now they have learned so to love them as to love God better and so to value them as to prefer everlasting life before them and so to hold them and seek their preservation as to resign them to the will of God and to lay them down when we cannot hold them with his Love and to choose death in order to life everlasting before that life which would deprive us of it And this is the principal instance of self-denyal which Christ giveth us here in the Text as it is recited by all the three Evangelists that recite these words He that saveth his life shall lose it c. And what shall it profit a man to win all the world and lose his soul By these instances it appears that by self-denyal Christ doth mean a setting so light by all the world and by our own lives and consequently our carnal Content in these as to be willing and Resolved to part with them all rather than with him and everlasting life even as Abraham was bound to love his Son Isaac but yet so to prefer the Love and Will of God as to be able to sacrifice his Son at Gods Command And the Lord Jesus himself was the liveliest Pattern to us of his Self-denyal that ever the world saw Indeed his whole life was a continued practice of it And it hath oft convinced me that it is a special part of our Sanctification when I have considered how abundantly the Lord hath exercised himself in it for our example For as it is desperate to think with the Socinians that he did it only for our Example so it is also a desperate Error of others to think that it was only for satisfaction to God and not at all for our Example Many do give up themselves to Flesh-pleasing upon a misconceit that Christ did therefore deny his flesh to purchase them a liberty to please theirs As in his Fasting and Temptations and his sufferings by the reproach and ingratitude of men and the outward Poverty and Meanness of his condition the Lord was pleased to deny himself so especially in his last Passion and death As I have shewed elsewhere he loved his natural life and peace and therefore in manifestation of that he prayeth Father if it be thy Will let this Cup pass from me But yet when it came to the comparative practical Act he proceeded to choose his Fathers Will with death rather than life without it and therefore saith Not my Will that is my simple love of life but thy Will be done In which very words he manifesteth another will of his own besides that which he consenteth shall not be done and sheweth that he preferred the pleasing of his Father in the Redemption of the world before his own life And thus in their measure he causeth all his Members to do so that life and all the comforts of life are not so dear to them as the love of God and everlasting life 4. When God had created man he was presently the Owner of him and man understood this that he was God's and not his own And he was not to claim a Propriety in himself nor to be affected to himself as his own nor to live as his own but as His that made him But when he fell from God he arrogated practically though notionally he may deny it a propriety in himself and useth himself accordingly And when Christ bringeth men to deny themselves they cease to be their own in their conceits any more Then they resign themselves wholly to God as being wholly his They know they are his both by the right of Creation and of Redemption And therefore are to be disposed of by him and to glorifie him in body and spirit which are his 1 Cor. 6. 19 20. Rom. 14. 9. To be thus heartily devoted to God as his own is the form of Sanctification and to live as God's own is the truly Holy life 5. As man in Innocency did know that he was not his own so he knew that nothing that he had was his own but that he was the Steward of his Creator for whom he was to use them and to whom he was accountable But when he was fallen from God to himself though he had lost the Right of a Servant yet be graspeth at the Creature as if he had the Right of a Lord He now takes his Goods his
because you are idle that should use them Every hour that you lose in idleness what noble faculties and large provisions are all laid by As much as in you lieth you make the whole creation to be and work in vain Why should the Sun shine an hour or minute for you in vain Why should the Earth bear you an hour in vain why should the springs and rivers run for you an hour in vain why should the air refresh you an hour in vain why should your pulse beat one stroke in vain or your lungs once breathe a breath in vain shall all be at work for you to further your work and will you think that idleness is no sin 3. Moreover Laziness and sloth is a sin that loseth you much precious time All the time is lost that you are idle in Yea when you are at work if you do it slothfully you are losing much of your time A diligent person will go further and do more in an hour than the lazy flesh-pleaser will do in two When the slothful is praying or reading and working in his calling he is but losing half his time which diligence would redeem And is our time so â—…ort and precious and yet is idleness an excusable sin what loiter so near night so near eternity when we have but a little time to work O work while it is day for the night is coming when none can work Were it but for this that sloth doth steal so much of our time I must think it no better than an hainous Thievery 4. And by this means we rob our selves We might be getting some good all the time that we are idle or doubly advantage our selves if sloth did not keep us company in our work The slothful is brother to him that is a great waster Pro. 18. 9. slothfulness is self-murdering men die while they lie still and wish It 's a sin that famisheth soul and body Prov. 21. 25. The desire of the slothful killeth him because his hands refuse to labour It 's the common cause of beggery and want and what comfort can you have under such afflictions which you bring upon your selves If you want food or rayment if your wives and children are in want how can you think that God should take care of you and afford you relief when you bring this on your selves by pleasing your flesh which is his enemy If a Souldier get hurt by trucking with the enemy he may rather look that his General should hang him than relieve him And how should good men be moved to compassionate you If God do improveriâ—h you and you come to want by innocency or a righteous cause they must needs be ready to relieve you But if Sloth or Pride or Gluttony or Drunkenness bring you to it till you repent I see not how they should relieve you at least any further than to keep you alive For if you are set toplease your flesh by idleness must I joyn with you to please it by such supplies as shall cheriâ—â— you in your sin No one flesh-pleaser is enough for one man If you will please it either by Idleness or by Luxury your selves expect not that others should please it by your relief and make provision for your sin If I may not make provision for my own flesh to satisfie its lusts neither must I do it for another But that 's not the worst slothfulness is the common cause of mens damnation when they see a temptation and danger before them slothfulness hindereth them from resisting it When Heaven is offered them slothfulness makes them sit still and lose it They must Run and Strive and Fight and Conquer and these are not works for a slothful person especially when they must be continued to the death So that it 's manifest that most men in the world are undone soul and body by the sin of sloth 5. And by this you rob others as well as your selves You owe the world the fruit of your labours You rob the souls of men to whom you should do good You rob the Church that should be bettered by you You rob the Commonwealth of which you are a member and should have benefit by you You owe your labours to Church and Commonwealth and the souls of men and will you not pay so great a debt You deserve no room in the Church or Commonwealth but to be cut off as an unprofitable member if you bring no advantage to them They say the Bees will not suffer a drone in the Hive Nay if you be hired servants you plainly rob your Masters if you are slothful as much as if you stole their money or goods If you buy an hundred sheep of a man and he let you have but fourscore doth he not rob or cheat you And if a man buy a years or a days labour of you and you let him have but half a years labour or half a days labour because of your sloth do you not defraud or rob him of the other half So that the idle are thieves to themselves to the Church and the souls of men to the Commonwealth and those that they are related to even to their wives and children for whom they should provide due maintenance by their labour 6. And you are injurious to the honest poor in that you disable your selves from relieving them when God commandeth you to work with your hands not only for your selves but that you may have to give to them that need Eph. 4. 28. What if all men should do as you do how would the poor be maintained and the Church and Commonwealth served 7. Yea worst of all you are guilty of robbing God himself It is him that you owe your labours to and the improvement of all the talents which he lendeth you And idleness is unsaithfulness to the God of Heaven that setteth you on work Even in working for men you must do it ultimately for God Col. 3. 22 23. Not with eye-service as men-pleasers but in singleness of heart fearing God and whatsoever ye do do it heartily as to the Lord and not unto men knowing that of the Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance for ye serve the Lord But he that doth wrong shall receive for the wrong which he hath done If it be an offence to wrong man what is it to wrong God and if you may not be slothful in the work of a man what a crime is it to be slothful in the work of the God of Heaven The greater your Master is the more hainous it is to be lazy in his service Remember the curse on them that do the work of the Lord deceitfully Jer. 48. 10. All work that you have to do is the work of the Lord. 8. And consider That the Idle forfeit the protection and provision of God even their daily bread For must he support and feed you to do nothing His own rule is that if any man will not work neither should he
reason and drawn you to excess in meats and drinks for matter or manner for quality or quantity or both Many a groan those sins have cost you and many a smarting day they have caused you and a sad uncomfortable life you have had by reason of them in comparison of what you might have had And this flesh hath been the Mother or the Nurse of all You were engaged by your Baptismal Covenant to fight against it when you entred into the Church and if you are Christians this combate hath been your daily work and much of the business of your lives And yet are you loth to have the victory see your enemy under feet Do you fight against it as for the life of your souls yet are you afraid lest death should hurt it or break it down Have you fought your selves friends with it that you are so tender of it when you are the greatest friends to it it will be the most dangerous enemy to you And do not think that it is only sin and not the body that is the flesh that is called your enemy in Scripture For though it be not the body as such or as obedient to the soul yet is it the Body as inclining to creatures from which the sinful soul cannot restrain it it is the body as having an inordinate sensitive appetite and imagination and so distempered as that it rebels against the Spirit and casteth off the rule of Reason and would not be curbed of its desires but have the rule of all it self Was it not the very flesh it self that Paul saith he fought against and kept under and brought into subjection lest he should be a cast a-way 1 Cor. 9. 26 27. Why should sin be called Flesh and Body but that it is the Body of Flesh that is the principal-seat of those sins that are so called If ye live after the flesh ye shall die but if ye through the Spirit do mortifie the deeds of the Body ye shall live Rom. 8. 13. If ye sow to the flesh of the flesh ye shall reap corruption Gal. 6. 8. That which is first in Being is first in sin But it is the Flesh or Embryo endued with sense that is first in being Be not therefore too tender of that which corruption hath made your prison and your enemy Many a time you have been put to resist it and watch and strive against it and when you have been at the best it hath been hindring you to be better and when the spirit was willing the flesh was weak And quickly hath it caused your cooling declension Many a blessed hours communion between God your souls that flesh hath deprived you of And therfore though still you must love it yet you should the less grieve or be troubled at its sufferings seeing they are but the fruits of its sin and a holy contentedness shold possess your minds that God should thus castigatorily revenge his own quarrel yours upon it 10. But yet consider that were you never so tender of the body it self yet faith and reason should perswade you to be content For God is but preparing even for its felicity His undoing it but to make it up again As in the new birth he broke your hearts and false hopes that he might heal your hearts and give you sounder hopes instead of them so at death he breaketh your flesh and worldly hopes not to undo you and leave it in corruption but to raise it again another manner of body than now it is and give it a part in the blessedness which you hoped for If in good sadness you believe the Resurrection what cause is there for so much fear of death You can be content that your Roses die and your sweetest Flowers fall and perish and the green and beauteous complexion of the earth be turned into a bleak and withered hue because you expect a kind of Resurrection in the Spring You can boldly lie down at night to sleep though sleep be a kind of death to the body and more to the soul and all because you shall rise again in the morning And if every nights sleep or one at least were a gentle death if you were sure to rise again the next morning you would make no great matter of it Were it as common to men to die every night and rise again in the morning as it is to sleep every night and rise in the morning death would not seem such a dreadful thing Those poor men that have the falling-sickness do once in a day or in a few days lie as dead men and have as much pain as many that die And yet because they use to be up and well again in a little time they can go merrily about their business the rest of the day and little fear their approaching fall How much more should the belief of a Resurrection unto life confirm us against the fears of death And why should we not as quietly commit our bodies to the dust when we have the promise of the God of heaven that the Earth shall deliver up her dead and that this body that is sown in corruption shall be raisedin incorruption It is sown in dishonour it is raised in glory it is sown in weakness it is raised in power it is sown a natural body it is raised a spiritual body So great and wonderful the change will be as now is unconceivable we have now a drossie lâ—mp of flesh an aggravation of the Elements to a seed of life which out of them forms it self a body by the Divine influx Like the Silk-worm which in the Winter is but a seed which in the Summer doth move attract that matter from which it gets a larger body by a kind of Resurrection But it is another manner of body I will not say of flesh which at the Resurrection we shall have Not flesh and blood nor a natural body but of a nature so spiritual sublime and pure that it shall be indeed a spiritual body And think not that this is a contradiction and that spirituality and corporeity are inconsistent For There is a Natural Body and there is a Spiritual body The root of the fleshly Natural body was the first man Adam who was made a living soul to be the Root of living souls The root of the spiritual Body is Christ who being a quickning Spirit doth quicken all his members by his Spirit which Spirit of Grace is the seed of Glory as from an holy and gracious Saviour we receive an holy and gracious nature so from a Glorified Saviour we shall receive a glorious nature we are now changed from glory to Glory in the beginning as by the spirit of the Lord But it is another kind of Glory that this doth tend to Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual but the natural and afterwards the spiritual The first man was of the Earth Earthy The second man is the Lord from heaven
earth or from a carrion in a ditch so will our glorified immortal bodies differ from this mortal corruptible flesh If a skilful workman can turn a little earth and ashes into such curious transparent glasses as we daily see and if a little seed that bears no shew of such a thing can produce the more beautiful flowers of the earth and if a little acorn can bring forth the greatest Oak why should we once doubt whether the seed of everlasting life and glory which is now in the blessed souls with Christ can by him communicate a perfection to the flesh that is dissolved into its elements There 's no true beauty but that which is there received from the face of God And if a glympse made Moses face to shine what glory will Gods glory communicate to us when we have the fullest endless intuition of it There only is the strength and there 's the riches and there 's the honour and there 's the pleasure and here are but the shadows and dreams and names and images of these precious things And the perfection of the soul that 's now imperfect will be such as cannot now be known The very nature and manner of Intellection Memory Volition and Affections will be unconceivably altered and elevated even as the soul it self will be and much more because of the change on the corruptible body which in these acts it now makes use of But of these things I have spoke so much in the Saints Rest that I shall say no more of them now but this that in a Believer that expects this blessed change and knows that he shall never till then be perfect there is much unreasonableness in the inordinate unwillingness and fears of death 12. You know that fears and unwillingness can do no good but much increase your suffering and make your death a double death If it be bitter naturally make it not more bitter wilfully I speak this of a violent death for Christ as well as of a natural death For as the one cannot be avoided if we would so the other cannot be avoided when Christ calleth us to it without the loss of our Salvation and therefore it may be called Necessary as well as the other Necessary suffering and death is enough without thâ— addition of unnecessary fears 13. Nay were it but to put an end to the inordinate fears of death even death it self should be the less fearful to us These very fears are troublesome to many an upright soul and should we not desire to be past them As a woman with Child is in fear of the pain danger of her travel but joyful when it 's over so is the true believer himself too oft afraid of the departing hour but death puts an end to all those fears Is it the pain that you fear Why how soon will it be over Is it the strangeness of your souls to God and the place that you are passing to This also will be quickly over and one moment will give you such full acquaintance with the blessed God and the Celestial inhabitants and the world in which you are to live that you will find your self no stranger there but be more joyfully familiar and content than ever you were in the bosom of your dearest friend The Infant in the Womb is a stranger to this lighter open world and all the inhabitants of it and yet it is nor best stay there You can fail for commodity to a Country that you never saw and why cannot you pass with peace and joy to a God a Christ a Heaven that you never saw But yet you are not wholly a stranger there Is it not that God that you have loved and that hath first loved you Have you not been brought into the world by him and lived by him and been preserved and provided for by him and do you not know him Is it not your Father and he that hath given you his Son and his Spirit have you not found an inclination towards him desires after him and some taste of his love and communion with him and yet are you wholly unacquainted with him Know ye not him whom you have loved above all in whom you have trusted and whom you have daily served in the world Who have you lived to but him for whom else have you laid out your time and labour and yet do you not know him And know you not that Christ that hath purposely come down into flesh that you might know him and that hath shewed himself to you in a holy life and bitter death and in abundant precious Gospel mercies and in Sacramental representations that so he might entertain a familiarity with you and infinite distance might not leave you too strange to God Know you not that Spirit that hath made so many a motion to your soul that hath sanctified you and formed the image of God upon you and hath dwelt in you so long and made your hearts his very work-house where he hath been daily doing somewhat for God It is not possible that you should be utterly strange to him that you Live to and Live from and Live in and not know him by whom you know your selves and all things nor see that Light by which you see whatever you see O but you say you never saw him and have no distinct apprehension of his essence Answ What! Would you make a Creature of him that can be limited comprehended or seen with fleshly mortal eyes Take heed of such imaginations It is the understanding that must see him You know that he is most Wise and Good and Great and that he is the Creator and Sustainer and Ruler of the world and that he is your Reconciled Father in Christ and is this no knowledg of him And then the Heaven that you are to go to is it that you are an Heir of where you have laid up your treasure and where your hearts and conversation hath so long been and yet do you not know it You have had many a thought of it and bestowed many a days labour for it and yet do you not know it O but you never saw it for all this Answ It is a spiritual blessedness that flesh and blood can neither enjoy nor see But by the eye of the mind you have often seen at least some glimpse of it You know that it is the present intuition and full fruition of God himself and your glorified Redeemer with his blessed Angels and Saints in perfect Love and Joy and Praise And if you know this you are not altogether strangers to heaven And for the Saints and heavenly Inhabitants you are not wholly strangers to them Some of them you have known in the flesh and others of them you have known in the spirit You are fellow-Citizens with the Saints and of the houshold of God and therefore cannot be utterly unacquainted with them But me thinks the stranger you are to God and to Heaven and to the Saints
say others Miracles say others and indeed it 's what the Interest of selfish men doth dictate to the accusers O that they would tell us what is the due Call and where is the Ministery on Earth that hath it if we have not If they would have all laid by that work not Miracles we may see what they would have done to the Church If we are not what they would have us be and do not what they would have us do why do they not come in charity and meekness and shew us the course that we should take If we are fools or besides our selves it is for them The God whom we serve that will shortly judge us is our witness that we have chosen the Calling that we are in for their salvation and for his glory and that we labour in it in season and out of season toplease Christ and to profit them rather than to please or accommodate our flesh You brought me into the Ministry I am confident you know to what ends and with what intentions I desired it I was then very ignorant young and raw Though my weakness be yet such as I must lament I must say to the praise of the great Shepherd of the slock that he hath since then afforded me precious opportunities much assistance and as much encouragement as to any man that I know alive You know my Education and initial weakness was such as forbiddeth me to glory in the flesh But I will not rob God of his Glory to avoid the appearance of ostentation lest I be proud of seeming not to be proud I doubt not but many thousand souls will thank you when they have here read that you were the man that led me into the Ministry And shall I entertain a suspicion that you will ever hearken to those men that would rob you of the reward of many such works and engage you against the King of Saints Is it gain or ease or worldly advantages that continueth me in this work Let me speak as a fool seeing it is for the Lord in imitation of Paul that was no fool Was I not capable of Secular and Military advancement as well as others that are grown great Did I ever sollicite you so much as for my Arrears which is many hundred pounds You could scarce do the thing that would gratifie my flesh more than to silence and depose me from the Ministry Might I consult with the flesh I should be more against my own employment than many of my enemies are Did I but turn Physitian I â—â—uld get more worldly wealth And my Patients would not be so froward and quarrelsome and unthankful as most Ministers find their carnal Auditors to be When men come to me for Physick for their Bodies how submissive are they and how do they intreat and what thanks after will they return But when we would help their souls what cavils and quarrels and unthankful obstinacy do we meet with We must be much beholden to them to accept our help and all will not serve surn My Patients that have bodily Diseases will pay me if I would take it But if by giving them twice as much as I receive I could satisfie and further the cure of diseased souls how joyful should I be And must we deny our selves and all things in the world for our peoples sakes and after all be reproached as if we were a mercenary generation and sought our selves O how will God confound this ingratitude when he comes to judge Something they might say if the Ministers of England had the provision of the French and other Popish Clergy I will not presume to compare now our Calling fidelity and maintenance with Magistrates Judges and men of other professions Should I suppose the Magistracy epitomized in you and the Ministery in me I should give you an undue advantage For I suppose there are far more Ministers better than me than there are Magistrates better than you And yet I think you would not judge of me as the Ministers are judged of As there are no such Commissioners for ejection of scandalous insufficient negligent Magistrates as are for the ejection of such Ministers so if there were I should not doubt but you would quickly see which part were liable to more exceptions But when I took on the faithful Ministers round about me how many of them could I name with whom my conscience tells me I am not worthy to be compared in Holiness I am then amazed at the ingratitude of the Apostates of this age How constantly and zealously do they preach in publick at home and abroad some of them many times a week How diligently do they instruct the ignorant in private from house to house How unblameably and meekly and self-denyingly do they behave themselves And are men that once made profession of Religion become the enemies of such a Ministry O my soul come not thou into their secret unto their Assembly mine honour be not thou united Gen. 49. 6. I had rather be in the case of Turks yea of Canibals than of those men I know that many think our very ignorant Dividers to have more illumination and that the Pastors of the flocks are carnal ignorant men As the blind man that rusht against another and asked him whether he were blind that could not go out of his way But I have long tryed the spirits and I have found that these Cameleons have nothing within but lungs and that straw and little sticks may make the quickest and the lightest blaze but will not make a durable fire as the bigger fewel doth A Bittern hath a loud â—â— voice than a Swan or Eagle And in some one thing a bungler may excell a better work-man And what if one Minister excel in one gift and another in another and few in all Is not this like the Primitive administration You be not angry with your Apple-tree that it bears not Plumbs nor with your Pear-tree that it bears not Figs But I have been too tedious I beseech you interpret not any of these words as intended for accusation or unjust suspicion of your self God forbid you should ever fall from that integrity that I am perswaded you once had But my eye is on the Times with grief and on my Antient Dearest Friend with Love And in an age of Iniquity and Temptation my conscience and the world shall never say that I was unfaithful to my friend and forbore to tell him of the common dangers Dear Friend take heed of a glittering flattering world Remember that greatness makes few bad men good and few good men better As Seneca saith The Carkase is as truly dead that is embalmed as that which is dragg'd to the grave with hooks And this I say the time is short It remaineth that they that weep be as if they wept not and they that rejoyce as though they rejoyced not and they that buy as though they possessed not and they that use this world as they
changed in the point of Baptism and these are greatly offended with me for dissenting and giving the Reasons of my dissent what uncharitable dealings some of them have been guilty of I shall not now express Some of them have turned to one opinion and some to another and almost all that make these turns have left their Charity behind them Some of them take up new Causes in the Common-wealth and these are as angry with me as the rest because I cannot follow them in their Changes How many waies hath a man to lose a selfish friend I was once beloved by all these men and now I am either hated or lookt at as a stranger at least when I am where I was when I had their Love If I know my heart I speak not this in any great sense of the loss of my own interest but in the sense of the lamentable Power and Prevalency of Self-love and Self-conceitedness in the world And while I am bitterly censured by almost every party how easily could I recover my interest and reputation with any one of them if I could but be of their mind and side How wise and how honest a man could I be with the Anabaptists if I would but be Rebaptized and turn to them And how much should I be valued by the Papists if I would turn to them The like I may say of all the other fore-named parties For every one of them have by word or writing signified so much to me Even the Grotian Prelatists would wipe their mouths and speak me fairer if I could turn to them Mr. Pierce himself that hath exceeded all men in his late Book abounding with visible falâ—hoods and unchristian abuse of the servants of the Lord whom he calleth Puritans yet telleth me page 212. We contend for your fellowship and daily pray for your coming in if you by name should have occasion to pass this way and present your self with other guests at the holy Supper of our Lord no man on earth should be more welcome but if you and your partners will continue your several separations and shut your selves out from our Communion as it were judging your selves unworthy of the Kingdom of God and excommunicating your selves c. See here the power of Selfishness A man that is painted out as Lazie a Reader a Proud Hypocrite and much more should be as welcome as any man on earth if he will but have communion with them in their way how much more if he were but of their party This would cure Hypocrisie Pride and all these crimes And till we can comply with them we Excommunicate our selves and judge our selves unworthy of the Kingdom of God He that thinks Bishops should not be as now Diocesan and undertake many hundred Parishes and then feed and govern them by others and he that submits not to their mode in a Surplice or some form of Prayer doth therefore judge himself unworthy of the Kingdom of God as if Gods Kingdom were confined to them and lay in meats and drinks and not in Righteousness and Peace And as if we continued in an excommunication of our selves because we are not of their party when yet we deny no Protestants to be our Brethren nor refuse local Communion with them so they will grant it us on Scripture-terms which if they will not we will yet hold communion with them in several Congregations But thus it appeareth how strong self-interest is in the world and how charitable men are to those of their own opinions or parties and how easily many do take liberty to speak their pleasure against any that are not of their mind 8. Observe also how forward men are to Teach and how backward to be Learners and then judge of their Self-denial Why are so many unwilling to enter by the way of Ordination but too commonly because they judge better of their Own abilities than Ordainers do and therefore suspect that they may be rejected by the Ordainers or disgraced at the least while they think highly of themselves But if they were self-denying men they would think the sober faithful Pastors much fitter Judges of their abilities than themselves and would not run before they are sent Many that reproach the Ministers as deceivers will needs be themselves the Teachers of the people As if they should say We silly ignorant souls are wiser and fitter to be Teachers than you come down and let us take your places In conference you may observe that most are forwarder to speak than to hear which shews that they over-value their own understandings And so much are Proud men delighted to be thought the Oracles of the world that if you will but seem to hearken to them and learn of them and yield to their Opinions you win their hearts and shall be the men that have their commendations Insomuch that some late ambitious persons that have thought to rise by the art of dissimulation have found that there is no way for the deceiving of the people and procuring the good will of most like this even to seem to be of every mans opinion that they talk with and to make every Sect and Party believe that they are their friends and of their mind Especially if you will seem to be changed by their arguments and give them the glory of your convictions and illuminations you will then be the dearly beloved of their hearts In all this you may see the rarity of self-denial Yea in the very work of God too many of the most zealous godly Ministers that have been the instruments of converting many souls are toucht a little with the temptation to this selfishness looking too much to their own part in the work 9. Observe but how commonly with men called Christians the interest of Christ is trodden in the dirt when it seemeth to cross any interest of their own An Argument drawn from the commands of God or the necessity of the Church or of the souls of men seems nothing to them if their Honour or Gain or Greatness or safety do stand up against it and be inconsistent with its conclusion Hence it is that the souls of Hypocrites do cheat themselves by a Carnal Religiousness serving God only in subserviency to themselves Hence it is that Hypocrites do most shew themselves in matters of self-interest In the cheap part of Religion they seem to be as good as any as zealous for their party and opinions which they call the Truth and as long and loud in prayer and for as strict a way of Discipline with others But touch them in their Estates or Names Call them to costly works of Charity or to let go their right for peace or publick good or to confess and lament any sin that they commit and you shall then see that they are but common men and Self bears rule instead of Christ Hence also it is that so many persons can bear with themselves in any calling or trade of life
that is but gainful be it never so unjust and will not believe but it is lawful because it is profitable for they suppose that gain is godliness 1 Tim. 6. 5. Hence it is that so many families will be so far Religious as will stand with their commodity but no further Yea that so many Ministers have the wit to prove that most Duties are to them no Duties when they will cost them much labour or dishonour in the world or bring them under sufferings from men And hence it is that so many Carnal Polititians do in their Laws and Counsels alwaies prefer the interest of their bodies before Gods interest and mens souls Yea some are so far forsaken by common reason and void of the Love of God and his Church as to maintain that Magistrates in their Laws and Judgments must let matters of Religion alone as if that self even carnal self were all their Interest and all their God and as if they were of the Prophane Opinion Every man for himself and God for us all or as if they would look to their own cause and bid God look to his From the Power of this selfishness it is that so many ☞ Princes and States turn persecutors and stick not to silence banish and some of the bloodier sort to kill the Ministers of Christ when they do but think that they stand cross to their carnal interests And if you will plead the Interest of Christ and souls against theirs and tell them that the banishment imprisonment silencing or death of such or such a servant of the Lord will be injurious to many souls and therefore if they were guilty of death in some cases they should reprieve them as they do women with child till Christ be formed in the precious souls that they travail in birth with so their Lives be not more hurtful by any contrary mischief which death only can restrain which is not to be supposed of sober men yet all this seems nothing to a selfish Persecutor that regards not Christs interest in comparison of his own ☞ Self is the great Tyrant and Persecutor of the Church 10. Observe also how few they be that satisfie their souls in Gods Approbation though they are mis-judged and vilified by the world and how few that rejoyce at the prosperity of the Gospel though themselves be in Adversity most men must needs have the Hypocrites reward Matth. 6. 2. even some commendation from men and too few are fully pleased with his eye that seeth in seret and will reward them openly Matth. 6. 4 6. And hence it is that injurious censures and hard words do go so near them and they make so great a matter of them Those times do seem best to selfish men which are most for them If they prosper and their party prosper though most of the Church should be a loser by it they will think that it is a blessed time But if the Church prosper and not they but any suffering befall them they take on as if the Church did stand or fall with them Self-interest is their measure by which they judge of times and things 11. Observe also how eagerly men are set to have their Own wills take place in publick businesses and to have their own opinions to be the Rule for Church and Common-wealth and then judge by this of their self-denial Were not self predominant there would not be such striving who should Rule and whose will should be the Law but men would think that others were as likely to Rule with Prudence and Honesty as they How eager is the Papist to have his way by an Universal Monarch How eager are others for one Ecclesiastical National Head How eager are the Popular party for their way as if the welfare of all did lie in their several modes of Government And so confidently do the Libertines speak for theirs that they begin now to make motions that our Parliament-men shall be hanged or beheaded as Traitors if any should make a motion in a free Parliament against the General Liberty which they desire Wonderful that men should ever grow to such an over-weening of themselves and over-valuing their own understandings as to obtrude so palpable and odious a wickedness upon Parliaments so confidently and to take them for Traitors that will not be Traitors or grosly disobedient against the Lord Self-denial would cure these peremptory demands and teach men to be more suspicious of their own understandings 12. Lastly Observe but how difficult a thing it is to keep Peace as in families and neighbourhoods so in Churches and Common-wealths and judge by this of mens self-denial Husbands and Wives brothers and sisters masters and servants live at variance and all through the conflicts that arise between their contrary self-interests If a beast do but trespass on a neighbours grounds if they be but assessed for the State or poor above their expectations if in any way of trading their commodity be crost you shall quickly see where self bears Rule This makes it so difficult a work to keep the Churches from Divisions Few men are sensible of the Universal Interest because they are captivated to their own And therefore it is that men fear not to make parties and divisions in the Church and will tear it in pieces to satisfie their interest or selfish zeal Hence it is that Parties are so much multiplied and keep up the buckler against others because that selfishness makes all Partial Hence it is that people fall off from their Pastors or else fall out with them when they are crost in their opinions reproved for their sins or called to consess or make restitution and perhaps that they may sacrilegiously desraud the Church of Tithes or other payments that are due Hence it is also that members so oft fall out with one another for foul words or differences of judgement or some point or other of self-interest Nay sometimes about their very seats in the place of Worship while every man is for himself the Ministers can hardly keep them in Charity and Peace And is any of this agreeable to our holy Rule and Pattern No man can think so that hath read the Gospel but he that is so blinded by selfishness as not to understand what makes against it And here besides what is largelier spoken after let me tell of a few of the evils of this sin and the contrary benefits of self-denial 1. The Power of selfishness keeps men strangers to themselves They know not their Original nor Actual sins with any kindly humbling knowledge The very nature of Original sin doth consist in these two things Privatively in the want of our Original Love or Propensity to God as God I mean the Privation of the Root or Habit or Inclination to Love God for himself as the Beginning or End of us and all things and the absolute Lord and infinite simple inestimable Good And Positively in the inordinate Propensity or Inclination to our selves as
break out in the Town and infect but a quarter as many houses as here are infectious Alehouses that harbour tiplers and drunkards and see whether the Magistrates of this or any Town will not a little better bestir themselves and send to search after infected places and nail up their doors and write on them Lord have mercy on us that all may take warning and keep away They will not here be offended with Informers nor say Am I bound to look after them And why are they not as zealous against sin as against the plague Great reason Self is for sin and God only is against it but self is against the Plague because it is concerned in it sin doth but hurt the soul and bring men to Helfire but the plague destroys their body and this is the greater matter with them because they have flesh and sense to judge of it but they have not faith to believe the other Again let but one house in the Town be on fire and all are up to quench it and the Bell is rung and the Magistrate doth not think that he wants a Call himself to look after it And when the fire of Hell is kindling in an Ale-house that 's nothing but must be let alone there 's no such zeal nor no such haste And why so Why one they see in good sadness and perceive that it is fire indeed but the other they believe in jest as if it would prove but a painted fire Again let but an ungodly fellow slander the Magistrate or call him all to naught especially if he give him but two or three boxes on the ear and see whether he will let that man alone But let the same man abuse the name of God and break his Laws and with too many he may be let alone unless they be urged to do Justice And how comes this difference Why self is toucht in one and it is but God But God! O Atheists that 's touched in the other Self can do more with them than God can do Remember still when I say that self can do more with them than God that I speak not of what God could do by his Omnipotency if he would but of the final Causality or the small interest that God hath in their hearts by holy Faith and Love Again let but a servant rob the Magistrate and carry his money and goods to an Ale-seller to reset and try whether he will look after him and the Ale-seller And why not as soon and as zealously when Ale-sellers reset mens sons and servants and drown mens understandings and turn them into beasts Why because in one it is but God and mens souls that are concerned a matter of nothing but in the other it is self a greater matter with them Shall I give you but one instance more that the Ale-sellers themselves will take my part in so far as to bear me witness that its true Here are Farmers of the Excise that have power to know what Ale-houses are in the Town and their gain lyeth on it and there shall scarce a man in Town or Country sell Ale so secretly but they will know it nor sell a Barrel but what they are acquainted with They do not say I am not bound to go search after them nor that they be not able to discover them and to bring them to pay Excise But the Justices too commonly can overlook abundance that the Excise-men can find and they cannot make one of twenty pay when the other can And what 's the matter Why one works for self and money and the other works but for God and his own and other mens salvation a small matter See then beyond denyal what self and money can do with such men when God and mens salvation can do next to nothing But I must desire you not to mistake me and think I speak this of any honest godly Magistrate and abuse the good by joyning them with the bad No far be it from me to be so injurious For its evident that they can be no good men nor have any true Love of God in their souls that are such in a predominant sense as I have here described It is not in my thoughts to lay this blame on any honest Godly Magistrate for none but the ungodly would do as I have mentioned and prefer themselves before the Lord and the bodies of men before the souls And alas if the Soveraign Powers of the Nations of the world were not too sick of the same disease gain would not be accounted Godliness but Godliness the greatest gain and carnal Policie would not go for Piety but true Piety would go for the surest Policie It would not be so common in most Nations to have the Truth and Cause of Christ disowned and his servants persecuted and their lives and blood to be made a sacrifice to carnal Self and worldly Interests Nor would the breaches of the Churches be so long unhealed and grow wider and wider and few much regard them but all have their own work to do which must be looked after Yea and the Cause of Christ and the Gospel must be trod down if it stand in the way of their own And the Churches must be set on fire by their wars and contentions for their selfish Interests And if Self were not too strong among us we should not have had such connivence at doctrinal and practical abominations nor so much delay or neglect of healing the discomposed Churches and uniting the divided Christians or attempting it more effectually than we have done But because I desire to speak to none but those that are within my hearing I will return home to our selves The holy ordering and instructing of families and suppressing sin in Children and servants is one of the most effectual works for the building up of the Church and the glory and stability of the Common-wealth O if Parents and Masters would but sanctifie their houses to the Lord and teach their families the will and fear of God and do their best by punishment when instruction will not serve to hinder sin how fast would Reformation then go on And what hindreth why carnal Self If it were but for wordly commodities they would do more Would you have me prove it Let experience speak Let a servant or child go prayerless to their work and few regard it but they will not go without meat or drink or cloaths The Master will suffer them to neglect Gods service but if they neglect his own and should do him no more or better service than they do to God they should soon hear of it and be turned out of door and they were no servants for him They will teach their children to do their own work or set them Apprentices to learn it but the work of God and their salvation they shall for them have little teaching in how plainly soever God hath commanded it them Deut. 11. 18 19. 6. 6 7 8. Ephes 6. 4. Let
a servant or child reproach his Master or Parent or call them all to naught and they think not fit to put up that nor indeed is it but let them swear by the name of God or break his Laws and they can patiently bear with it and a cold rebuke like Eli's will serve turn They can get them into field or shop to work together but they cannot get them before and after to prayer together And why is all this Why one is for Self and the other is for God One is for the body and the other is for the soul So that you see what Self can do and how commonly it is the master of Families Towns and Countries because it is the master in mens souls God must be loved above all and our neighbour as our selves But if God were allowed but so much love as a very neighbour should have it would not be all so ill with the selfish world as now it is But because I have been so long on this first discovery of the power of Self and the scarcity of Self-denyal I will be shorter in the rest that follow CHAP. V. The power of Selfishness upon mens opinions in Religion 2. ANother instance Discovering the Reign of selfishness in the world is The great Power that it hath to form mens Opinions and Conceptions in Religion Though the understanding naturally be inclined to Truth yet a selfish by as upon the soul especially on the will doth commonly delude it and make the vilest error seem to be Truth to it and the most useful Truth to seem an error The Will hath much command over the Understanding and when selfishness is become the very habit the byas the nature of the will you may easily conjecture how it will pervert the understanding But what need we more than experience to satisfie us Do you not see that where self is but deeply engaged the judgement is bribed or overmastered and carried from the Truth So that as the eye that looks through a coloured glass doth see all things as if they were of the same colour as the glass So the understanding that is mastered by a selfish inclination thinks every thing is truth that savoureth his self-interest And here I shall offer you some more particular instances 1 We all see that almost all the world is of that Religion or Opinion which hath the countenance of the Government that they live under and the persons that have greatest power on their reputation or at least which is consistent with their safety if not rising and prosperity in the world The Turks are commonly Mahometans the subjects of Rome and Spain and Austria c. are generally Papists those in Denmark Sweden Saxony c. are generally Lutherans those of Scotland England Helvetia c. are commonly Calvinists as they are called I know the power of education is great and hearing evidence only on one side may byas a well meaning man But Papists and Protestants as to the learned part have the Books of the contrary-minded at hand And therefore that Opinions should run in a stream and whole Countreys almost be of a party must needs be much from the power of selfishness because they are swayed by them that have the power of their reputation and estates and liberties in the world 2. Moreover when a man is by custome grown self-conceited or by the power of Pride is wise in his own eyes how hard a matter do we find it to convince such men by the clearest evidence They will not see when they can hardly wink so close as to keep out the light It is their opinion and therefore shall be so and they will hold it because it is their own 3. Especially if it be an Opinion of a mans own invention which is doubly his own both as he is the contriver and possessor how close will he stick to it too commonly beyond the evidence of truth because that self hath so greâ—â—â—n interest in it 4. Yea if a man be but deeply engaged for it either by laborious Disputes or confident owning it or any way so as that his credit lyeth on it how tenacious will he be of it because of the powerful interest of Self 5. And if it be but an Opinion that seems to befriend any former Opinion that we have much engaged for how much doth selfishness usually appear in our inordinate propensity to it 6. Also if we live in dayes of persecution how easily do we receive those Opinions that would keep us from prison and fire Or if any suffering lye upon it we commonly take that side to be right that is safest to the flesh except when self would be advanced by the occasion of sufferings And in prosperity if there be any controversie arise which our gain is concerned in how easily believe we the thriving opinion If any Oath Engagement or Duty be imposed on us by those that have Power to do us harm the generality are for it be it what it will In all these cases it is commonly Carnal Self that is the Judge And how far Self commands in such cases you may see by these discoveries following 1. In studying the case mens thoughts run almost all one way They study what to say for their own opinions and how to answer all that is against them but they study but very little what may be saâ—d on the other side They sit at their studies with a byassed will inclining or commanding their understanding what to do even to prove that to be true which they would have â—o be true whether it be so or not 2. And hence it is that the weakest Arguments on their own side do seem sufficient if not invincible and they stand wondering at the blindness of all those men that cannot see the force of them But no Arguments seem to have any weight that are brought against them And all this is from the power of self 3. Yea sometimes when they are silenced and know not what to say for their opinions nor how to answer the Arguments for the contrary yet they can say We are of this mind and we will be of this mind And why but because it is espoused to them and their own 4. And hence it is that if a man be but an admirer of us or of our own opinion in other things we are readier to receive an opinion from him than from another 5. And hence it is that Disputations do so sâ—ldome change mens minds because they take it to be a dishonour to be changed by another unless it be a person of great renown we envy to an Opposite the glory of altering our understandings But if we may have the doing of it our selves by the power of our own understandings and studies we will sometimes yield to change our minds He is a stranger to the ungodly world that seeth not how much self-interest doth to master their understandings and turn their hearts from the holy
let out that dangerous venomous wind that puffs you up And if you should have any Knowledge of the most precious truths as long as you are thus proud and self-conceited it will not be savoury and effectual on your hearts Humility feedeth and Pride starveth every Grace The Spirit of God will not dwell with the proud He will beat you out of your selves unless you drive him away from you Some seeming raptures and comforts the self-conceited have which are but the deluding flatteries of self and the encouragements that Satan giveth to his servants For Satan will needs be a comforter for a while as the Holy Ghost is to the Saints and his followers also have their joys But it is the humble soul that hath the solid comforts From the dust of Humiliation we have the clearest sight of Glory and consequently the sweetest tasts of it As high as the rain comes from it is the lowest valleys that receive it most and retain it Faith it self will not prosper in the proud and self-conceited To such the Gospel will be foolishness or an offence It is only the humble that savingly close with its mysteries Humility cherisheth the fear of God and makes us say How shall we do this evil or neglect this duty But Self-conceitedness and Pride is blind and bold and destroyeth in mens apprehensions the difference between things sacred and common the holy and the unclean It disposeth them to such an unreverent boldness with holy things as usually ends in a prophane contempt so that such can at last despise holy Ordinances which they should live upon Repentance and this Pride are deadly foes To be Penitent and Proud is to be Hot and Cold alive and dead Though Christ love not to find you in the dust of earthly-mindedness yet he loves to find you in the dust of humility The Publican that hanged down the head did â—it the way better to the sight of God than the self-conceited Pharisee The most self-denying humiliation is the nearest way to heaven and the most self-exalting Pride is the surest and nearest way to hell I had rather sit with Mary washing and wiping the feet of Christ than ask as the Mother of James and John to sit at Christ's right hand and left hand in his Kingdom Mary was in a manner thanked for the Love of her humility and they were in a manner denied the request that so little savoured of self-denial Our Lord doth not use to thank people for their service and yet he did that which was next to it to this humble self-denying penitent woman He doth not use to deny his own Disciples an heavenly request and yet he did that which was next to a denial when self brought him the petition He that hath taught us not to press to the highest room lest with shame we hear Sit lower doth hereby tell us what we must expect from himself And he that hath bid us sit down at the lower end that we may hear Friend sit up higher doth express his purpose for humble self-denying souls I had rather from the dust hear his Come up higher than from self-exaltation to hear Come down lower O you that are proud self-conceited wretches did you but know what good it doth an humble soul to feel Christ take him up from the dust you would soon fall down that you might tast their comforts in his lifting up O what a blessed feeling it is to feel ones self in the arms of Christ Our common compassion that makes us run to take up one that falls before us is a spark of that compassion in Christ who meddles with him that walks before us but a man that falls down in a swoon we are all ready to lay hands on O happy fall that makes us feel the arms of Christ Though the fall into sin be never the better that occasioneth it yet the fall into Humiliation is the better that prepareth for it He that in his agony had an Angel to minister to him will not leave the self-denying humble soul without his Angel or some way of relief that is sutable to the necessity Christ himself will not communicate himself to the proud and self-conceited He is wisdom but not to them that are wise in their own eyes already He is Righteousness but not to them that Justifie themselves He is Sanctification but not to those that never found their own uncleanness He is Redemption but to none but those that feel themselves condemned He hath the white raiment and the treasures of grace and glory but it 's only those that penitently feel that they are poor and miserable and blind and naked Truly Sirs though I have no mind to trouble the well-grounded peace or comfort of any of your Souls yet I would advise you if you have never so good thoughts of your selves suspect lest it should be the fruit of self-conceiteduess And if you should have never so much peace and joy look well whether it come from God or self-conceit And if it come not in against self it 's ten to one but it comes from self If your Peace and Comfort be not won from Christ in a way of self-denial and as the spoils of the flesh you have it not in the ordinary way of God Did you come to your Joy and Peace by humility and self-denial and patience and mortification and by becoming little Children and the servants of all and by learning of Christ to be meek and lowly If not take heed lest you nourish a changeling an Imp of Hell and a selfish brat instead of the fruit of the Spirit the peace and joy of the Holy Ghost If you feel no great matter at home to trouble you you are too Righteous to be Justified by Christ If you groan not under your ignorance and unbelief you are too wise to be Christ's Disciples If you mourn not under the load and pain of sin you are too well to be Christ's Patients If you are readier to justifie and excuse your selves than to condemn your selves and had rather hear your selves praised than reproved admonished or instructed and like Diotrephes love to have the preheminence you are too high for Christ to take any acquaintance with you and too full of self to have any room for his Love and Spirit and heavenly Consolations He that gave us the Parable of the importunate widdow Luke 18. 2 3. would have us understand that bare necessity is not enough to fit us for relief for then the worst of men should be the fittest but it must be Necessity so felt as to humble us and drive us to importunity with God The Prodigal was miserable when he was denied the husks but he never felt his Fathers embracements till he came to himself by denying himself and returning to his Father And this the self-conceited will not be perswaded to The first that must touch Christ after his Resurrection is not a King nor a Lord no nor a
man but a woman that had been a sinner When she held him by the feet Love did begin low in humility but it tended higher and ended higher Christ hath told us that where much is forgiven there will be much love For there 's most of the fruits of God's love and least of self and most to abase self It is not possible that love to Christ should dwell or work in any but the humble that feel at the heart that they are unworthy of love and worthy of everlasting wrath The Proud and Self conceited cannot love him for they cannot be much taken with Christ's love to them except as the Pharisee in a way of self-flattery But the poor soul that was lost will heartily love him that sought and found him and he that was dead will love when he finds himself alive and he that was condemned both by God and conscience will surely love the Lord that ransomed him And it is the apprehensions that men have of themselves that much causeth all this difference The self-abhorring self-judgeing self-denying sinner is melted with the love of God in Christ because it is to such a worthless sinful wretch What Lord saith he is the blood of Christ the pardon of sin the spirit of grace the priviledges of a child and everlasting glory for such an unworthy wretch as I that have so long offended thee and so much neglected thee and lived such a life as I have done and am such an empty unprofitable worm O what a wonder of mercy is this But the full soul loaths the honey-comb The self-conceited unhumbled sinner looks as mindlesly at Christ as a healthful man at the Physitian or an innocent man at a pardon And that good that is in the Proud and Self-conceited doth seldom do much good to others much less to themselves As such do but serve themselves so ordinarily God doth not bless their endeavours but as they are perverted they are the likest to pervert others and propagate their self-conceitedness Two words from an humble self-denying man doth oftentimes more good than a Sermon from the self-conceited I admonish you therefore in the name of God that you take heed of this part of selfishness and mortifie it It will else keep out God and almost all that is good If you are proud and self-conceited you will hear a Minister rather to cavil with him than to be edified and when any thing from God doth cross your foolish wisdom you will but slight it or make a jest at it And if any truth of God do strike at the heart of your selfish interest you will but fret at it and secretly hate it and perhaps as the Devils open souldiers publickly reproach it and as the Jews did against Stephen Act. 7. even gnash the teeth at the Preacher or as they did by Paul Act. 22. 22. They gave him audience to that word even that word that made against themselves and then lift up their voices and said Away with such a fellow from the earth for it is not fit that he should live This entertainment we still meet with from our hearers when self hath brought them the next step to hell O Sirs suspect your own understandings Think not of them beyond the proportion of your attainments Nor beyond your experience and the helps and time and opportunities which you have had for knowledge nor beyond the measure of your diligence for the improving of these For these are God's ordinary way of giving in a ripeness in knowledge Read and study Heb. 5. 12 14. 1 Tim. 3. 6. Set not up your own conceits too boldly against those of longer standing and diligence in holy studies much less against your Teachers and much less against a multitude of Ministers and much less against all the Church of God and least of all against God himself as speaking to you by the holy Scriptures O take warning by the swarms of heresies and scandals that have been caused by self-conceitedness and pride Object If you may think your self wiser than me and others without self-conceitedness why may not I think my self wiser than you and such others without self-conceitedness Answ I may not do it in the cases before-mentioned I may not think my self to be what I am not nor exalt my self above them that are wiser than I nor against my Guides or the Church of God Object But it is but your conceit that you are wise enough to be a Teacher or wiser than others and why may not I as well conceit it Answ No man on his own Conceits must become a Teacher but the judicious of that Calling must Call them and judge of their abilities And conceits are as the ground of them is The true understanding of the grace that we have received is a duty and fitteth us for thankfulness but the false conceit that we have what we have not is a dangerous delusion For he that thinketh he is something when he is nothing deceiveth himself Gal. 6. 3. What if a blind man should argue as you do with one that sees and say You say that you see so far off and why may not I say so too would you not answer him I know that which I say to be true and so do not you And what if he still go on and say you think that I am blind and I think that you are blind and why may not I be believed as well as you would this kind of talk prove the man to have his eye-sight or should it make me question wheâ—â—er I have mine He that seeth knoweth that he seeth whoever question it and if another make doubt of it let men that have eyes in their head be Judges but not the blind But I confess spiritual blindness hath this disadvantage that whereas I can easily make any other blind man know that he is blind and therefore be willing to be led or help'd here the more blind men are most commonly they are the more confident that they see and scornfully say as the Pharisees to Christ John 9. 40. Are we blind also For Pride will not let them know their ignorance The same light that cureth ignorance must reveal it Especially when men are born blind and never knew the saving illumination of the Saints they will not believe that there is any other light than they have seen But I have been somewhat long on this part I pass now to the next CHAP. XV. Self-will be denied 4. THe fourth part of selfishness to be mortified is self-will And this is the fruit of self-conceit and also a natural corruption of the soul And a most deep rooted obstinate vice it is Every wicked man is a self-willed man against God and all that speak for God And till self be mortified in the will there is no saving grace in that will Quest But what will is it that is to be called a self-will Answ Not that which is from God and for God but all the
Directions for this part of self-denial CHAP. XXII False Stories Romances and other tempting Books 5. ANother point of sensuality to be denied is The reading or hearing of false and tempting Books and those that only tend to please an idle fancy and not to edifie Such as are Romances and other feigned histories of that nature with Books of tales and jests and foolish complements with which the world so much aboundeth that there 's few but may have admittance to this Library of the Devil Abundance of old feigned Stories and new Romances are in the hands especially of Children and idle Gentlemen filthy lustful Gallants or â—…ty persons that savour not greater matters but have spirits sutable to such gawds as these But if they were only toyes I should say the less but having seen by long observation the mischief of them I desire you to note it in these few particulars 1. They ensnare us in a world of guilt by drawing us to the neglect of those many those great and necessary things that all of us have to mind and study O for a man or woman that is under a load of sin unassured of pardon and salvation that is near to death and unready to die to be seen with a story or Romance in their hand what a gross incongruity is this It 's fitter the Book of God should be in your hand It 's that which you must live by and be judged by There 's much that you are yet ignorant of which you have more need to be acquainted with than Fables Are you not ignorant of an hundred truths that you should know that God hath revealed to further your salvation and can you lay them all by to read Romances Are you travelling towards another world with a Play-book in your hand O that you did but know what greater matters you have to mind and to to do Do all that you have to do first that 's of a thousand times more worth and weight and need and then come to me and I will answer your Objections What harm is it to read a Play-book First Quench the fire of sin and wrath that is kindled in your souls and see that you understand the Laws of God and read over those profitable Treatises of Divines that the world aboundeth with and your souls more need and then tell me what mind or time you have for Fables 2. Moreover it dangerously bewitcheth and corrupteth the minds of young and empty people to read these books Nature doth so close with them and delight in them that they presently breed an inordinacy of affection and steal away the heart from God and his holy Word and ways It cannot be that the Love and delights of the heart can be let out on such trash as these and not be taken off from God and the most needful things That is the most dangerous thing to the soul that works it self deepest into the affections and is most delighted in instead of God And therefore I may well conclude that Play-books and History-Fables and Romances and such like are the very poyson of youth the prevention of grace the fuel of wantonness and lust and the food and work of empty vicious graceless persons and it 's great pity that they be not banished out of the Common-wealth 3. Moreover they rob men of much precious time in which much better work might be done much precious knowledge might be got while they are exercised in these Fables Those hours must be answered for And there is not the worst of you but then had rather be able to say I spent those days and hours in prayer and meditating on the life to come and reading the Law and Gospel of Christ and the Books which his Servants wrote for my instruction than to say I spent it in reading Love-books and Tale-books and Play-books All these considered I beseech you throw away these pestilent vanities and take them not in your hands nor suffer them in the hands of your children or in your houses but burn them as you would do a conjuring-book as they did Acts 19. 19. that so they may do no mischief to any others CHAP. XXIII Vain Sports and Pastimes to be denied 6. ANother part of fleshly interest to be denied is vain sports and pastimes and all unnecessary Recreations For this also is one of the harlots that the flesh is defiled with Recreations are lawful and useful if thus qualified 1. If the matter of them be not forbidden For there 's no sporting with sin 2. If we have an holy Christian end in them that is to fit our bodies and minds for the service of God and do not do it principally to please the flesh If without dissembling our hearts can say I would not meddle with this recreation If I thought I could have my body and mind as â—ell strengthned and fitted for Gods service without it 3. If we use not recreations without need as to the said End nor continue them longer than they are useful to that End and so do not cast away any of our precious time on them in vain 4. If they be not uncivil excessively costly cruel or accompanied with the like unlawful accidents 5. If they contain not more probable incentives to vice than to vertue as to Covetousness Lust Passion Prophaneness c. 6. If they are not like to be more hurtful to the souls of others that joyn with us than profitable to us 7. If they be not like to do more hurt by offending any that are weak or dislike them than good to us that use them 8. If they be used seasonably in a time that they hinder not greater duties 9. If we do it not in company unfit for us to joyn with 10. Especially if we make a right choice of Recreations and when divers are before us we take the best that which is least offensive least expensive of time and cost and which best furthereth the health of our bodies with the smallest inconvenience These Rules being observed Recreations are as lawful as sleep or food or Physick But alas they are made another thing by the sensual ungodly world Sometime they must sport themselves with sin it self in the abuse of Gods Name and Servants and Creatures Tipling and prophane Courses are some mens chiefest recreations And though the Law of the Land forbid most of their sports and the Law of God commandeth them to obey all the Laws of men that are not against the Law of God yet this is a matter of nothing to their consciences And let the matter be never so lawful they make all impious by a carnal end It 's none of their intention to strengthen and fit themselves for the service of God and an holy righteous life by their recreations but it 's meerly because their fancy and flesh is pleased in them Even as the Drunkard Glutton or Whoremonger that have no higher end than Pleasure and can give you no better account
curiosity is necessary And what is the deformity that you would hide by this Is it that of your mind Why you bewray it more you tell all that see you that you are empty silly souls as plainly as a Morrice-dancer or a Stage-player doth tell folks what he is by his attire Is it the deformities of your bodies that you would hide this way I confess that 's the best excuse that can be made for this excess For apparel will do more to hide the deformities of the body than of the mind But the shape of your clothes is fittest for this so far it is fit to be attempted For the bravery of them will do little but draw mens observation the more upon your infirmity If you say that you have no such extraordinary necessity then I must say that you do your selves wrong to tice people to suspect it 2. And also you make an open ostentation of Pride or Lust or both to all that look upon you In other cases you are careful to hide your sin and take it for an hainous injury if you be but openly told of it and reproved How comes it then to pass that you are here so forward your selves to make it known that you must carry the signs of it open in the world Is it not a dishonour to Rogues and Thieves that have been burnt in the hand or forehead or must ride about with a paper pin'd on their backs declaring their crimes to all that see them So that every one may see yonder is a thief and yonder is a perjured man And is it not much like it for you to carry the badge of pride or lust abroad with you in the open streets and meetings Why do you desire to be so fine or neat or excessive comely Is it not to draw the eyes and observations of men upon you and to what end Is it not to be thought either Rich or beautiful or of an handsom person And to what end desire you these thoughts of men Do you not know that this desire is Pride it self You must needs be some body and fain you would be observed and valued and fain you would be noted to be of the best or highest rank that you can expect to be reckoned of And what is this but Pride And I hope you know that Pride is the Devils sin the first born of all iniquity and that which the God of heaven abhors so that it were more credit for you in the eyes of men of wisdom to proclaim your selves beggars sots or ideots than to proclaim your pride And too oft it shews a pang of lust as well as pride especially in young persons and few are so forward to this sin as they This bravery and fineness is but the fruit of a procacious mind it 's plainly a wooing alluring act It is not for nothing that they would fain be eyed and be thought comely or fair in others eyes somewhat they want you may conjecture what And even married people if they love their credit should take heed by such means of drawing suspicion upon themselves Sirs if you are guilty of folly pride and lust your best way is to seek of God an effectual cure and to use such means as tends to cure it and not such as tend to cherish it and increase it as certainly fineness in clothing doth But if you will not cure it for shame conceal it and do not tell every one that sees you what is in your heart what would you think of one that should go up and down the street telling all that meet him I am a thief or I am a fornicator would you not think that he were a compound of foolery and knavery And how little do you come short of this that write upon your own backs Folly Pride and Lust or tell them by your apparel Take notice of me I am foolish Proud and lustful 3. And if you be so silly as to think that bravery is a means of honour you should withall consider that it is but a shameful begging of honour from those that look upon you when you shew them not any thing to purchase or deserve it Honour must be forced by desert and worth and not come by begging for that is no honour that 's given to the undeserving It is but the shadow of desert and will constantly follow it among the wise and good but never go without it Your bravery doth so openly shew your desire of esteem and honour that it plainly tells all wise men that you are the less worthy of it For the more a man desireth esteem the less he deserves it And you tell the world by your attire that you desire it even as plainly and foolishly as if you should say to folks in the streets I pray think well of me and take me for an handsome comely person and for one that is above the common sort Would you not laugh at one that should make such a request to you Why what do you less when by your attire you beg estimation from them And for what I pray you should we esteem you Is it for your cloaths Why I can put a silver lace upon a mawkin or a silken coat on a post or on an Ass Is it for your comely bodies why a wicked Absolon was beautiful and the basest harlots have had as much of this as you A comely body or beautiful face doth oft betray the soul but never saveth it from hell And your bodies are never the comelier for your dress whatever they may seem Is it for your vertues that you would be esteemed Why pride is the greatest enemy to vertue and as great a deformity to the foul as the Pox is to the body And he that will think you ever the honester for a new sute or a silver lace doth as little know what honesty is as your selves For shame therefore give over beging for esteem at least by such a means as inviteth all wise men to deny your suit But either let honour come without begging for or be without it 4. Consider also that excess of Apparel doth quite contradict the End that proud persons do intend it for I confess it doth sometime ensnare a fool and so accomplish the desires of the lustful But it seldom attaineth the ends of the proud For their desire is to be the highlier esteemed and almost all men do think the meanlier of them Wise men have more wit than to think the Taylor can make a wise man or woman or an honest man or woman or an handsom man or woman Good men pity them and lament their folly and vice and wish them wisdom and humility In the eyes of a wise and gracious man a poor self-denying humble patient heavenly Christian is worth a thousand of these painted posts and peacocks And it so falls out that the ungodly themselves do frustrate the proud persons expectations For as covetous men do not like covetousness in another
because they would get most themselves so Proud persons like not Pride in others because they would not have any to vie with them or overtop them and be look'd upon and preferr'd before them None look with such scorn and envy at your bravery as those that are as silly and sinful as your selves who cannot endure that you should excel them in vanity so that good and bad do ordinarily despise or pity you for that which you think should procure your esteem 5. Consider also that Apparel is the fruit or consequent of sin that laid man naked and open unto shame and is it fit you should be proud of that which is ordained to hide your â—â—ame and which should humble you by minding you of the sin that caused the necessity of it 6. And you should bethink you better than most Gallants do what account you mean to make to God for the money that you lay out in excess of bravery will it think you be a good and comfortable account to say Lord I laid out so much to feed and manifest my Pride and Lust when such abundance of pious and charitable uses did call for all that you could spare Many a Lord and Knight Gallant bestoweth more in one suit of cloaths or in one set of hangings or in the superfluous dress of a Daughter than would keep a family of poor people for a 12 moneth or than would maintain a poor Scholar for higher service than ever they themselves will do And many a poor boy or girl goeth without a Bible or any good books that they may lay out all they have on their backs 7. Lastly I beseech you do not forget what it is that you are so carefully a doing and what those bodies are that you so adorn and are so proud of and set out to the sight of the world in such bravery Do you not know your selves Is it not a lump of warm and thick clay that you would have men observe and honour When the soul that you neglect is once gone from them hey will be set out then in another garb That little space of earth that must receive them must be defiled with their filthiness and corruption and the dearest of your friends will have no more of your company nor one smell or sight of you more if they can choose There is not a carrion in the ditch that is loathsomer than that gallant painted corpse will be a little after death And what are you in the mean time Even bags of filth and living graves in which the carkasses of your fellow-creatures are daily buried and corrupt There is scarce a day with most of you but some part of a dead carkass is buried in your bodies in which as in a filthy grave they lie and corrupt and part of them turneth into your substance and the rest is cast out into filthy excrements And thus you walk like painted sepulchres Your fine clothes are the adorned covers of filth and flegm and dung If you did but see what is within the proudest Gallant you would say the inside did much differ from the outside It may be an hundred worms are crawling in the bowels of that beautiful damsel or adorned fool that set out themselves to be admired for their bravery If a little of the filth within do but turn to the scab or the small pox you shall see what a piece it was that was wont to have all that curious trimming Away then with these vanities and be not children all your days nay be not proud of that which your children themselves can spare Be ashamed that ever you have been guilty of so much dotage as to think that people should honour you for a borrowed bravery which you put off at night and on in the morning O poor deluded dust and worms-meat lay by your dotage and know your selves Look after that which may procure you deserved and perpetual esteem and see that you make sure of the honour that is of God Away with deceitful ornamens and gawds look after the inward real worth Grace is not set out and honoured by fine clothes but clouded wronged and dishonoured by excess It is the inward glory that is the real glory The Image of God must needs be the chiefest beauty of man Let that shine forth in the holiness of your lives you will be honourable indeed Peter telleth you of such a conversation of women as may win their unbelieving husbands without the word And what is it while they behold your chast conversation coupled with fear whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair and of wearing of gold or of putting on of apparel but the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit which is in the sight of God of great price For after this manner in old time the holy women that trusted in God adorned themselves being in subjection to their husbands 1 Per. 3. 1 2 3 4 5. CHAP. XXVII Ease Quietness and worldly Peace to be denied 10. ANother part of Carnal self-interest to be denied is Ease and Quietness and worldly Peace which the slothful and self-seekers prefer before the pleasing of God Both the ease of the mind and of the body are â—here comprehended and slothfulness in Gods nearest service and also in the works of our callings to be reprehended The same fleshly Power that draweth one man to whoredom and drunkenness and covetousness doth draw another to sloth and idleness It is but several ways of Pleasing the same flesh and obeying the same sensuality And because that Idleness and Sloth is so great and common a sin yet made so light of by the most I shall briefly tell you the mischiefs of it and the Reasons that should make you hate it 1. Slothfulness doth contradict the very end of our creation and preservation and the frame of our nature and so provoketh God to cut us off and cast us as useless into the fire Who dare so wrong the wisdom of God as to say or think that he made us to do nothing If a man make an house it is to dwell in if he make a watch it is to tell him the hour of the day and every thing is for its proper use And is man made to be idle what man that is the noblest inferior creature and an active creature fitted for work and the highest work shall he be idle Justly may God then hew him down as a dead and withered tree and suffer him no more to cumber his ground 2. Slothfulness is a sin that loseth the precious gifts of God Our faculties and our members are his gifts and talents which he hath committed to us to use for his service so are our goods and all that we have and shall we hide them in a napkin or idly neglect to use them O what abundance of excellent mercies lie useless and idle
thy course and judge at last whether the friend that thou didst chuse or that thou didst neglect and abuse was the better and would have stood thee in more stead in thy deepest exâ—remities Christ hath resolved you once for all that he that loveth Father or Mother more than him is not worthy of him and cannot be his Disciple Nay if he hate not Father Mother and all that is If he will not cast them all away and forsake them as men do hated things rather than forsake Christ and the glory which he hath promised Luke 14. 26. 33. And therefore seeing Christ hath thought meet to instance in the forsaking of carnal friends for his sake as a duty of all that will be his Disciples you may see that this is a very considerable part of your self-denial And doubtless it is a point that Christians are usually put to the tryal in or else Christ would not have instanced in it Few turn to Christ but their carnal friends will turn from them No greater enemies to a man in the matters of his salvation except carnal self than carnal friends and therefore either God or they must be denied For when God is for holiness and they against it when they are for sinful pleasures and gain and God against it both cannot be pleased and therefore one of them must be denied God or they CHAP. XXX Revengeful passions to be denied 13. ANother part of self-denial consisteth in the denying of Revengeful Passions that provoke us against those that have done us wrong or that we judge to be our enemies It is the common saying of such persons as are disposed to this sin that Revenge is sweet it easeth the minds of malicious persons to have their will upon their adversaries and to see them at their feet Nothing of all his honours and prosperity could satisfie â—aman till he was revenged of Mordecai As a burning fâ—stering â—oâ—l or apâ—steme is eased by opening and vent so is a boiling paâ—â—ionate mind when by railing speeches or revengeful actions it venteth it self against them that they hate But in this also self must be denied by all that will be Christs Disciples for he forgiveth none but those that can heartily forgive another And that we may know that this is a part of self-denial of great necessity he hath put it into our prayers and will not have us so much as ask for forgiveness our selves if we cannot forgive that we may know that seeing it is not to be asked for on lower terms it is not to be hoped for The forgiving grace of God in Christ doth so melt and overcome the hearts of all true Christians that it disposeth them in their measure to imitate him in forgiving And they cannot find in their heart to take another by the throat for an hundred pence when their Lord hath forgiven them ten thousand talents Mat. 18. 24. 28. The grace that is most gloriously manifested in the Gospel must needs make the deepest imprestion on the soul and consequently conform the soul into its image and doubtless this is love and compassion and forgiving mercy and therefore he that cannot love his enemy bless them that curse him and pray for them that hate and persecute him and return good for evil can be no child of God Mat. 5. 44 45 46. It is an inhumane oblivion of our own condition for a man to seek revenge of another for a trifle for it can be no greater as it is against such simple worms as we when so many and hainous sins have been forgiven us Doth God remit to us the everlasting torments and shall we inflict on another the venom of our private spleen I know the furious Bedlams and malicious wretches do take all this but for unsatisfactory talk it is not words that will serve their turns to repair their honour and ease their devilish rancorous minds Flesh and blood say they cannot endure it Answ And therefore flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God nor corruption inherit incorruption 1 Cor. 15. 50. Grace can do more than flesh and blood and if you cannot forgive you cannot be forgiven If it be so hard to you to sorbear yea to love an enemy it shall be as hard for you to be saved and escape the portion of the enemies of God and if the word of Gods command be but wind with you the word of his promise shall be as uneffectual to your salvation as the word of his precept and perswasion was uneffectual to your conversion and obedience As God is Love so his sanctified ones are turned into Love Love is their new nature and Love is not of a Revengeful disposition Love is the Divine Nature in us and malice provoking to Revenge is the Devilish nature And a believer is more afraid of the anger of God than to take his sword of Revenge out of his hand He hath learn'd 1 Pet. 2. 21 23. 1 Thes 4. 6. Rom. 12. 19. Avenge not your selves but give place to wrath vengeance is mine and I will repay saith the Lord. Be not overcome of evil but overcome evil with good CHAP. XXXI New Vain Histories and other Mens Matters c. 14. ANother piece of Carnal pleasure to be denied is the Delight men have in reading unprofitable Histories and hearing News that do not concern us and medling with other mens matters where we have no Call With some fancies this is a notable part of carnal delight Many School-boys and young effeminate wits are as much poysoned and carried away with reading Romances feigned histories and tale-books and play-books as by almost any piece of sensuality O the precious hours that have been lost upon this trash and trumpery but of this I spoke before that which now I speak is even true History and Reports as matter of meer News to please a busie ranging mind History is a very profitable study if it be used for right ends and be rightly chosen It 's a very great help to understand the Scriptures and to know the former and present state of the Church and see the wonderful works of providence that otherwise would be as lost to us It is not fit that the wondrous works of God should die with those that have seen them and not be transmitted to posterity God should have the honour of his glorious works from generation to genetion and how shall that be if all be forgotten He that knoweth nothing of any age but that which he lives in is as fooli as he that knows nothing of any Country or Town but that which he lives in Some History is essential to our faith and much more is integral to it yet much more is very serviceable to it He that hath not some competent acquaintance with Church-History will be at great disadvantages in the holding and defending his â—aith it self against an Infidel or the purity of Religion against a Papist And he that knoweth not the present
Officer trouble them and no neighbour accuse them this is their Liberty To game and roar and revel and have no body say to them Why do you so is part of their Liberty To have leave without Restraint to make all others as bad as themselves and if they are Infidels or Hereticks to perswade other men to it If they hold any opinion against the God that made them against Christ against the Spirit of God against the Word and Laws of God against his Ministers his Church his Ordinances against any necessary point of Faith or if they have any false conceit that leads straight to Hell that they may have full power license and authority to bring as many as they can to be of the same mind that they may not be unprofitable servants to the Devil nor go to Hell alone this is a great part of their impious Liberty And because the name of Conscience is become honourable they call this by the name of Liberty of Conscience when indeed it is Liberty of Practice that they mean and not Liberty of Conscience For their Conscience cannot be altered by force nor touched by the Sword It 's they that deprive men of the Liberty of their Consciences whilst by false teaching they put out the eye of conscience enslave it to sinful false conceits And Conscience is science and Error is not science but ignorance And therefore as Error is not Conscience but the destruction of Conscience so Liberty to error is no Liberty of Conscience but a Liberty to destroy Conscience Much less is it Liberty of Conscience to sin against God and draw others from Conscience into error and poyson mens souls and hinder the Gospel and promote the work and Kingdom of the Devil And many of our miserable sottish people take it for a part of their desired Liberty to be free from Ministers Spiritual Oversight and Government not to be Carechised or called to an account or examined about the state of their souls nor questioned about their lives but that they may do what they will and have Sacraments and all Ordinances on what terms and in what manner they will and to have Ministers bow their Judgments to theirs and lay their Consciences at the feet of every carnal ignorant wretch and be but their servants to do what they would have them this is the Liberty that Satans servants do desire And withall that they may be free from necessary payments for the safety of the Commonwealth and from the necessary retribution to God for the Church and poor yea from giving but the Ministers their own all this they take for part of their liberty But they are all such liberties as Christ never purchased and the Gospel never bestowed and never made the Owners happy It is a liberty to starve their own souls and go quietly to everlasting torment and not be molested by Preachers and Puritans but to sin against God and damn themselves and be let alone and have no body tell them of it or ask them Why will you do so In a word it is that liberty that Christ died to save his people from and which the Gospel would take down and the spirit ministry and Ordinances would overthrow and which no wise or good man hath reason to desire it is that liberty which God will save all those from whom he will save from the flames of hell III. The third sort of Liberty is that which is in it self Indifferent or to be reckoned among the common transitory benefits of this life which with Gods blessing is a mercy and well used may do good but otherwise is hurtful or little worth This Liberty is not the Natural Liberty of the will which in regard of its own elicite Acts is nothing but the power of self-determination and in regard of internal imperate acts is nothing but a power or freedom to do what we will For these are so our own if not our selves that no man can take them from us at least the first Nor is it the Ethical Liberty of the soul from sin by gracious Habits for this is ever good as was said before Nor is it a Political Liberty from those tyrannous Laws or practices of men that would root out the Gospel and pull down the Kingdom of Christ and set up iniquity This Liberty must be desired and not denied even when we submit our selves to persecution but it is 1. The Civil Liberty of being from under the Government of others and of having a hand in Government our selves 2. The Liberty of being from under the Government of Strangers Conquerors or enemies 3. The Liberty of choosing our own Governors and having them not by other mens election set over us 4. A Liberty from burdensom payments taxes which are of no necessity to our good 5. A liberty from arbitrary Government and from being liable to the meer will and passions of men 6. A protection from the abuses and injuries of others 7. And a liberty for o foolish conceits that makes imprisonment so grievous to the most It is the same earth that they tread on and the same air that they breath in as before The great trouble is that they have not their wills for when their own wills do as much confine them it is then no trouble I can confine my self to one room to one chair the far greatest part of the year for my studies and why should I not bear as well to be so confined by another if my own will could but comply with it Never grudge at restraint or imprisonment then but find out some imployment in it whereby you may be serviceable to God or at least serve him by your sufferings and then rejoyce in it and bring your minds to your condition and so you may set your selves at liberty in spite of the greatest Tyrant in the world Imprisonment is but a penal restraint and if it be not Involuntary it 's scarcely penal it is therefore in your power whether you will be Prisoners or not because it is in your power whether it shall be involuntary or not Be but willing of your confinement and you are at liberty and though you are not out of the place you are out of the prison The same room that is a prison to the rest is none to the keper that guards them because apprehending it to be for his commodity he is willing of it and their prison is his home And if you do but apprehend how you are called from temptations and have an opportunity of honouring God or at least of being more humbled and mortified and so bring your mind to consent to your habitation it 's become your home and place of freedom however he is unworthy of the liberty of the Saints that cannot deny the liberty of his habitation or bodily abode for the attaining of it And for thethings that men make such a stir about in the world under the name of their â—â—â—il liberties
quiet the mind when it cannot abate the pain of the body and must use to submit to a lesser evil to avoid a greater or to obtain a greater good than it depriveth us of Paul and Silas could sing with their bodies sore and their feet in the stocks To be joyful in tribulation should be no strange matter to a Saint much more with a patient submission to undergo it We may not thrust our selves into the fire nor choose suffering without a call but we must suffer rather than sin and choose the wounds and hurts of the body before the wounds and losses of the soul But because flesh and blood will draw back and make too great a matter of sufferings I shall briefly give you ten Considerations that may perswade you herein to deny your selves and in two cases I desire you to make use of them First in case you have no way to escape suffering but by sinning then deny your selves and choose to suffer Secondly in case of Gods afflictions which unavoidably lie upon you then deny your selves by a quiet and patient submission And for both consider 1. That is the best condition for us in which we may be most serviceable to God And if we suffer for Righteousness we may serve God as well in such suffering as in a prosperous state Or if God himself afflict us we may serve him in our affliction Our patience then is the service that we are called to The sufferings of the Saints have done very much to the promoting of the Gospel and building of the Church Men will see that there is somewhat worth the suffering for in the Christian Religion and see that Heaven is taken by believers for a certain thing when they can let go earth for it They will be moved to enquire what it is that moves you to such constancy and patience And why should we not be willing of that condition in which we do our Master the best service what ever the doing of it shall cost us The commodity of our end is the chiefest commodity 2. That is the best condition for us in which we may have most of God But certainly we may have as much and usually more of God in suffering especially for his cause than we can have in prosperity especially when we sin to escape these sufferings Is it bodily ease or God that you set most by It will be seen by your choice If you prefer your ease before him you must expect to have no better than you choose If you prefer him before your ease and prosperity you must be gladder of God with adversity and pain than of prosperity and ease without him A beast hath health and ease as well as you and yet you will not think him as happy If you are tormented or lose your health for Christ you lose nothing but what a Turk or Infidel hath yea but what a beast hath as well as you But you may have that of God by the advantage of your suffering that none but Saints have And God's presence can make a suffering state as sweet as a prosperous And he hath given you ground in his promises to expect it Isa 43. 1 2 3. When thou passest through the fire I will be with thee 1 Cor. 10. 13. There hath no temptation taken you but what is common to man but God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that your able but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it 1 Pet. 4. 14. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ happy are ye for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you On their part he is evil spoken of but on your part he is glorified ver 16. If any man suffer as a Christian let him not be ashamed but let him glorifie God on this behalf What is the Scripture fuller of than comforting promises to the sufferers for Christ To fly from such sufferings then is but to fly from the presence of God and our own consolations 3. At least these sufferings further our sanctification and make us better And is not that our best condition that makes us best Common experience as well as Scripture may satisfie us that a suffering state doth very much further humiliation and mortification and bring men to a deeper sense of sin help all the truths of God to work and make them more sensible and serious than in prosperity Then we do not only hear but feel that sin is evil and that the world is vain and that the threatnings of God are true Why Christian if thou didst but know that thou shouldst have more of the spirit and its graces and less of sin in a suffering estate than in ease and plenty wouldst thou not even choose it and be glad of it Is not sin worse than suffering to thee and holiness better than ease and peace Alas what senseless careless persons should we be if it were not for the help of suffering Grace useth to work by means and this is the common means 4. Consider that pain and suffering we shall have whether for Christ or not The worst men undergo almost as much by ordinary sicknesses and losses and crosses as the Martyrs do that suffer for Christ sin will bring suffering and it 's better have that which is sanctified by the interest of Christ than that which is not 5. And a Christian that hath so much ado to curb and rule the flesh in prosperity me thinks should the more patiently bear adversity because God sets in by it and helps him to subdue the flesh and tame the body and bring it in subjection And as it is but this burdensome flesh that suffereth which hath been the cause of so much suffering to our minds so our warfare against this flesh which we mannage through the course of our lives goes on more prosperously in the time of its sufferings than in prosperity A weakned enemy is easilier conquered Do not therefore too much take part with the suffering flesh but self-denyingly justifie the proceedings of the Lord. 6. And consider that the pains and suffering will be but short It is but a little while and you shall feel no more than if you had felt nothing And that which shortly will not be is next to that which is not As it makes all the pleasures and glory of the world to be a dream and next to nothing because it 's but a while and they are gone and never return again So it makes our sufferings next to nothing that they are passing away and almost over And then all tears will be wiped from your eyes and pain will be forgotten or remembred only to encrease your joy When you are past the brunt and safe with Christ you will never repent of your sufferings on earth nor will it trouble you then to think of the shame or sickness or pain and torment that here you were put
How loth soever you are you are sure to die You may turn you every way and look about you on the right hand and the left to all the friends and means in the world and you will never find a medicine that will here procure immortality nor ever scape the hands of death It is appointed to all men once to die and after that the Judgement Heb. 9. 27. And no man can change the Decrees of Heaven And seeing all your turnings and unwillingness cannot avoid it is it not better to submit to it willingly than unwillingly God doth impose it on you as a necessity Your willingness may make a vertue of Necessity and out of Necessity extract a reward but your unwillingness may turn your suffering into your sin and a Necessary death unto an unnecessary misery now and hereafter if you be not true believers as Paul saith of his Ministerial labours 1 Cor. 9. 16 17. If I do this thing willingly I have a reward but if against my will a dispensation is committed to me for necessity is laid upon me So I may say in the present case If you give up your lives willingly in the love of God you have a Reward but if you do not Necessity is upon you and die you must whether you will or no. You may scape the Reward by your unwillingness but death you cannot escape And me thinks you should see that it 's little thanks to you to give up that life which you cannot keep And yet this is all that God requireth Perhaps you think that though you cannot keep it still yet somewhat longer you may keep it But you be not sure of that The next hour may God deprive you of it And O what a dreadful thing it were if as soon as you have denied God your lives he should snatch them from you in his fury and cast you into Hell and if he should distrain for his own as soon as you have denied it him and you should die as enemies that would not die as Martyrs and as his Friends And in this sence hath my Text been many a time fulfilled He that will save his Life shall lose it 8. Consider also that it is upon terms of the highest advantage imaginable to your selves that God calls you to resign and lay down your lives It is not indeed to lose them but to save them as my Text doth promise you He that loseth his life shall save it No more than you lose your cloaths which you put off at Night and put on again in the Morning Or rather no more than you lose your lousie rotten rags when you put them off at Night and are to have in the Morning a Suit of Princely attire in their stead Will any man say these rags are lost At least they will not say that the man is a loser by the change That is not lost that is committed to God upon the ground of a promise Nor that which is laid out in his Servive at his command Reason will tell us that no man can be a loser by a course of submissive Obedience to God You cannot be at so much cost for him or offer him so dear a service which he is not able and willing to satisfie you for a thousand fold God will not be beholden to any man You cannot bring him in your debt beyond what he doth by his bountiful promise But if you could he would not continue in your debt You 'l make nothing of your death if you do not either undergo it for Christ or bear it submissively by the power of heavenly love constraining you Meerly to die whether you will or no as a fruit of sin is common to the most ungodly men But if the love of God can make you voluntarily submit to death whether natural or violent from persecutors what a glorious advantage may you make of it You will 1. Put your salvation more out of doubt â—han any other course in this world could do For whosoever perisheth it 's most certain that such as these all be saved 2. And therefore you may die with the greatest confidence and joy as having seen the matter of your doubts removed and dying in the very exercise of those graces that have the promise of salvation and in such a 〈…〉 as hath the fullest and most frequent promises in the Gospel 3. And then the Crown of Martyrdom is the most glorious Crown You will not have an ordinary place in heaven These are that part of the Heavenly Host that si and nearest to the Throne of God and that praise him with the highest joys who hath brought them through tribulations and redeemed them by his blood If a man should make a motion to you to exchange your cottage for a Palace and a Kingdom you would not stick at it as if it were against you because you must leave your ancient home And how much less should you be against it when you are but moved to step out of your ruinous cottage into glory when it would shortly fall upon your heads and you must leave it whether you will or no for nothing 9. What reason have you to be so tender of the flesh Is it the greatness of its suffering that you stick at Why you put poor Beasts and Birds to as much and so do the Butchers daily for your use and they must suffer it And why should the body be so dear to you for the matter of it what is it but earth and wherein is it more excellent than the beasts that perish I think God hath purposely clothed your soul with so poor a dress that you should be the less unwilling to be unclothed and might learn to set more by your souls than by your bodies and to make more carefully provision for them It seems he hath purposely lodged you in so poor a cottage that you should not be at too much care for it nor be too loth to leave it You have its daily Necessities and Infirmities and pains and somewhat of its filth and lothsomeness to tell you of its meanness And why should you be so loth that so poor a cottage so frail a body should be turned to dust Dust it is and to dust it is sentenced When the soul hath left it but a week men can scarce endure to see it or smell it And should the breaking of such an earthen Vessel be so unpleasing a thing to you And for its usesulness though so far as it is obedient it was serviceable to your souls and God yet was it so refractory ill disposed and disobedient that it proved no better than your enemy Many a temptation it hath entertained and cherished and many a sin hath it drawn you to commit Those senses have let in a world of vanity Those wandring eyes have called in covetousness and pride and lust Those greedy appetites have been so eager on the bait that they have too oft born down your faith and
And from each of them we partake of an answerable Nature As is the Earthy such are they that are earthy even all of us in our fleshly state having earthy bodies from an earthy Adam and natural bodies from the natural Adam And as is the heavenly such are they that are heavenly for Christ makes men like himself even first gracious and then glorious as Adam begets us like himself that is natural and sinful And therefore all those that have followed Christ in the Regeneration shall follow him into Glory and having conquered by him shall reign by him and with him and having received the holy nature here which is the seed of glory they shall receive the glorious nature there which is the perfection of that Grace And so as Christ hath an heavenly spiritual body and â—â—â— an earthy natural body so shall his Members have that they may be like him And as we have here born the image of the earthy in having first a natural fleshly body we shall also bear the Image of the Heavenly Adam in having a spiritual body that is not fleâ—â— Now lest any doubt of it saith the Spirit of God this I say that Flesh and Blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God neither doth Corruption inherit incorruption 1 Cor. 15. 42. to 51. Object If there were but as much likelihood of a Resurrection as there is of the Reviving of the plants in the Spring I could believe it for there is a life remaining in the Root or Seed but the body of man hath neither Root nor seed of life and therefore it 's contrary to nature that it should revive Answ 1. If it be above nature that is all it is not contrary to it Or not so contrary as to be above the power of the Lord of nature Will you allow no greater works for God than such as you can see a reason of and can assign a natural cause of what did Nature in the creation of nature It was not certainly any cause of it self If Christ rose without a natural cause even so shall we 2. But why may I not say that the dead body of man hath a living Root as truly as the plants in winter The soul is the Root of the body and the soul is still alive And Christ is the Root of the soul and he is still alive For though we are dead yet our Life is hid with Christ in God and when Christ who is our life shall appear at the Spring of Resurrection then we shall also appear with him in Glory Col. 3. 3 4. And though there be no Physical contact between this living soul and the body yet there is a Relative Union and a deep rooted Love of the soul to its body and inclination to it so that it is mindful of it and waiteth with longing for that hour when the command of God shall send it to revive that body It is not incredible that a silly snail should by its natural life and power make for it self a beautiful habitation Or that the life of a Rose-tree that was buried in the root should fabricate a sweet and beauteous Rose by which it may make an ostentation of its invisible self to the world In how small a room doth the life of a silk-worm lie of which I spoke before in the winter That little grain or seed is such as yields no sign of life to the beholder yet doth it form it self a larger body and that body spin its silken web out of its own substance and in that house it self in a husk and take to it self another shape and thence become a winged Fly and so generate more But nearer us in the generation of man the vital principle in the seed doth quickly with concurrent causes form it self a body The warmth of the body of the Hen or other Bird can turn the egge into a Chicken Why then may not the living sâ—ul that is the Root and life of the body in the dust be the instrument of God to reform its own body as certainly it will be the principle that shall reinform it But you say the body being dead hath no natural root nor way of recess to life again because the privation is total To which I answer First the Relative union between the soul and it and the souls disposition to the Return into its body is as potent a cause of its reviving as the natural union of the Root and branches if withal you consider that Christ is the Root of the soul Rational agents if perfect will work as certainly as Natural For natural causes do nothing but by a Power communicated to them from an Intellectual cause even God himself Why should Nature do any of these things but because God that makes and ruleth all will have it to be so Now Jesus Christ is the Political Head of the Church The body in the grave hath its own Relation to him Christ is still living and resolved and engaged by promise and enclined by Love to revive that body And as Christ is the life of the soul so the soul is the life of the body and this soul as I said is waiting to be sent again into it And when the hour comes what can hinder The Love of the soul to its body and its desire to be reunited is a kind of natural cause of the Resurrection A candle not lighted is as far from light and as much without it as a dead body is without life And yet one touch of a lighted candle will light that which never was lighted before And so may one touch of the living soul that 's now with Christ put life into the body that lieth in the dust And as the lighted candle makes the other like it and communicateth of its own nature to it so doth the glorified soul communicate a new kind of excellency to the body which it never had before even to be a spiritual glorious incorruptible and immortal body In the first creating of man the new formed body as to the matter of it was no better than the body of a Beast or any common piece of earth But the soul made the difference when a Rational Soul was breathed into that Body it advanced the very body to a dignity beyond the bodies of brutes even such as the natural body of man had before sin When Christ was about to repair faln man it was the spirit of Christ informing the soul that caused the renewed soul to communicate again a dignity to the bodies of sanctified men above other bodies And so when the body was dead because of sin having the root of sin and death within it and being mortal therefore yet the spirit was life because of Righteousness being the Root of holy and Righteous dispositions and the new life in man himself Rom. 8. 10. For Christ the principal root of life and the spirit and holiness are first in order of nature in the soul and but by
communication and secondarily in the Body But contrarily sin made its entrance first by the Body and hath its Root and Seat first in order of nature in the body it is so communicated to the soul Thus sin comes in at the back-door even at the wrong end and by the baser part But Grace comes in the right way by the Nobler part sin hath its Root in the viler part but Christ hath his seat first in the better part And yet I must add 1. That sin is not ripe till it reach the will though it enter by the flesh and senses it is not formed nor to be called sin till it reach the will and as there it is scituated but yet the thing it self is first in and by the flesh 2. And the will is truly the seat of Original sin it self as well as the sensitive part but not the first Root of the corruption Though sin be Worst in the Rational part because the corruption of the best is the worst yet it is not first there But Holiness is first also in the soul and so communicated to the body And so also Glory it self will be And therefore take notice of the wise and gracious providence of God that taketh the soul to heaven before-hand that it may be first Glorified and so may be fit to communicate glory to the body And so as the Natural Soul dignified the Natural Body and the Sanctified Soul did Sanctifie the body so the Glorified Soul by reunion with the body shall communicate its Nature to the body at the Resurrection and so it will be made spiritual immortal and incorruptible by the soul and soul and body are made such by Christ So that by this time you may see that there is more Reason for the Resurrection for all the body is turned to earth than there is Reason that a Candle that 's gone out should be lighted again by another or than there is Reason that I should put on my cloaths in the morning which I put off at night It 's true those cloaths have no power to put on themselves nor is there any natural necessitating cause of it but yet there is a Free cause in me that will infallibly if I live and be able produce it For nature disposeth me to abhor nakedness and desire my cloaths and therefore in the morning I will put them on And so nature teacheth the separated soul to desire a reunion with its body and therefore when the Resurrection morning comes it will gladly take the word from Christ and give that vital touch to the body that shall revive it and so put on its ancient garment but wonderfully changed from fleshly to spiritual from dishonourable into glorious And now I hope you see that you may put off these cloths with patience and submission and that it is no wrong to the flesh it self to be put off but tendeth to its highest advancement at the last Though the first cause of sin and the nest of sin shall be so broken first that it shall first be seen what sin hath done before it be seen what Grace will do and the fruit of our own wayes must first be tasted before we shall fully feed and live upon the blessed fruit of the grace of Christ 11. Moreover as there is a Resurrection for the body it self and that to a more perfect estate than it can here attain so the whole nature shall be perfected beyond our present comprehension This life was not intended to be the place of our perfection but the preparation for it As the fruit is far from ripeness in the first appearance or the flower while it is but in the husk or bud or the Oak when it is but an acorn or any plant when it is but in the seed no more is the very nature of man on earth As the Infant is not perfect in the Womb nor the Chicken in the shell no more are our natures perfect in this world Methinks for the sake of the body it self much more of the soul if we are believers we should submit contentedly to death While you are here you know that creatures will fail you enemies will hate you friends will grieve you neighbours will wrong you Satan will tempt you and molest you the world is changeable and will deceive you all your comforts are mixed with discomforts the body carrieth about with it calamities enough of its own to weary it What daily pains must it be at for the sustentation of its self in its present state and yet what grief and sorrow must it undergo Every member hath either its disease or a disposition thereto What abundance of passages can pain and sickness find to enter at and how many rooms that are ready to receive them As every member hath its use so every one is capable of sorrow and the sorrow of one is at least as much communicated to the whole as the usefulness is The pain of the simplest member even of a tooth can make the whole body a weary of it self What is the daily condition of our flesh but weakness and suffering with care and labour to prevent much worse which yet we know cannot long be avoided The sorrow of many a mans life hath made him wish he had never been born and why then should he not wish as much to die which doth ten thousand fold more for him if he be a Christian than to be unborn would have done Not a Relation so comfortable but hath its discomforts Not a friend so suitable but hath some discordancy nor any so amiable and sweet but hath somewhat loathsome troublesome and bitter Not a place so pleasant and commodious but hath its unfitness discommodities Not a Society so good and regular but hath its corruptions and irregularities And should we be so loth to leave whether naturally or violently such a life as this When the fruit is ripe should it not be gathered When the corn is ripe would you have it grow there and not be cut When the spirit hath hatched us for heaven should we be so loth to leave the shell or nest When we are begotten again to the hopes of immortality should we be so desirous to stay in the womb O Sirs it is another kind of life that we shall have with God They are purer comforts that stay for us above But if you will not have the Grapes to be gathered and prest how can you expect to have the Wine Me thinks our fleâ—h should have enough e're this time of sickness and pain and want and crosses and should be content to lie down in hope of the day when these shall be no more Little would an unbeliever think what a Body God will make of this that now is corruptible flesh and blood It shall then be loathsome and troublesome no more It shall be hungry or thirsty or weary or cold or pained no more As the stars of heaven do differ from a clod of
not as certainly now as he shall do in his sickness And yet in health these wretches will not be awakened so much to fear it as may restrain them from sin and help them to prepare for it It 's troublesome precise talk with them to talk of making ready to die Either they slight it or love not to hear or think of it And yet the same men when death is coming and they see they must away are even amazed with fear and horror And I cannot blame them unless they were in a better case But this I must blame them for as most unreasonable that they can make such a lamentable complaint when death and Hell are near hand and yet make so light of it all their life time CHAP. XXXIX Answer to their doubts that fear death BUt because this is the hardest part of self-denial and yet most necessary and the particular subject of my Text I shall stay upon it yet so much longer as to resolve a question of some doubting Christians and to give you some Directions for the furtherance of self-denial herein Object If it be a necessary part of self-denial to deny our own lives I am much afraid that I am no Disciple of Christ as having no true self-denial For I find that for all these Reasons I cannot be willing to die but when you have said all that can be said death is the most terrible thing in the world to me Answ I pray you lay together these following particulars for answer to this great and common doubt 1. Death as death is naturally dreadful to all and the best men as men are naturally averse to it and abhor it No man can desire death as death nor ought to do it If it had not been an evil to nature it had not been fit to be the matter of Gods punishment and to be Threatned to the world Threatnings would not do their work if that which is threatned were not naturally evil or hurtful and dreadful to the subject To threaten men with a benefit is a contradiction as much as to promise him a mischief and more 2. It is not therefore a simple Displacency or Averseness to die that God requireth you to lay by Self-denial consisteth not in reconciling us to Death as death For then he might as well perswade us to become Angels as to deny our selves and Preachers had as hard a work to do as to perswade men to cease to be men Death will be an enemy as long as it is death Even the separated soul hath so natural an inclination to union with its Body that the separation is part of the penalty to it And though heaven be their joy and Christ their life and fulness yet the separation from the body which they have even with Christ is a penalty and they have not that perfect measure of Joy and Glory as they shall have when they are joyned in the body again So that separation as such is penal to the soul in blessedness And even the separated soul of Jesus Christ that was more blessed than ours was as separated in a state of penalty when his body was in the grave Of which see my Appendix to the Reformed Pastor about the Descent into Hell 3. That which you have to look after therefore in your souls is not a love to death or willingness to death as death which no man hath or should have but it is 1. A Submission to it as a less evil than sin and Hell and the Displeasure of God and a choosing rather to die than wilfully to sin and forsake the Lord. 2. And a Love to that glory in the fruition of God which death is the passage to Seeing we cannot obtain the end of our faith and patience by any easier passage than death you must rather be content to go this strait and grievous way than miss of the state of eternal blessedness Let death be never so odious and dreadful to you if you had but rather die than forsake Christ by sin or miss of everlasting life with God you have that true self-denial even of life it self which is required in my Text. 4. And yet even a gracious soul may be so much unprepared as to desire to stay yet longer on earth though he be absent from the Lord while he is present in the body that so a better preparation may be made And also the love of God may make a man desire to stay yet longer for the service of the Church or to be with Paul in a strait between two Phil. 1. 21 22 23. 5. Have you not such pleasant apprehensions of the New Jerusalem and the coming of Christ in glory and the blessed state of the Saints in heaven as that you could most gladly enter into that blessed state by any other way than death And had you not rather die than miss of that felicity At least when you know that die you must had you not rather die sooner even a violent death by persecution than miss of your eternal life by saving your lives a little longer 6. And for your unwillingness to die as death is the last enemy to be conquered by Christ at the Resurrection so the fears of death and the power of it is the last evil that we shall be troubled with and you must not expect to be fully freed from these fears in this life for death will be death and man will be man But yet let me tell you that before you die God may very much abate your fears and very ordinarily doth so with his servants 1. By giving them that grace that is suited to a dying state and 2. By the help of sickness and pain it self And that is one great reason why sickness shall usually go before death that pain and misery may make the flesh even a weary of it self and make the soul a weary of its companion and both a weary of this miserable life And now I shall briefly name some few Directions which if you will practise you will more easily submit to death CHAP. XL. Directions to be willing to die Direct 1. BY all means endeavour the strengthening of your Belief of the Reality of eternal life and the truth of the promise of Christ concerning it For if you Believe it not you cannot die for it nor chearfully submit to a natural death through the hopes of it This is the sum or principal work of the Christian faith to Believe the everlasting life as procured for us by the love of the Father the Obedience Death Resurrection and Intercession of the Son and the Sanctification of the Holy Ghost It is the unsoundness or the weakness of this Belief that is the principal cause of our unwillingness to die Direct 2. By all means endeavour to get and maintain the Assurance of your Title to this Promise and Felicity Get sound evidence and keep it clear Expunge all blots without delay Take heed of such sin as woundeth Conscience
and wasteth comfort and grieveth the spirit of Adoption by which you are sealed to the day of Redemption and by which you have your peace and comforts If by such sin your souls are clouded and estranged from God be diligent in seeking for healing and reconciliation and rest not till your peace be made with God For while you think of him as displeased you will be afraid of coming to him and this will double the fears of Death Direct 3. Deny your selves first in the carnal and worldly comforts of this life or else you are unlikely to deny your selves in the matter of Life it self Disuse your selves from unnecessary pleasures of the flesh And learn to endure dishonour contempt and reproach from the world and sickness and poverty when it 's inflicted on you by the hand of God Till you can deny your ease and profit and appetite and honour and all the delight of this present world you are never likely to deny your lives sincerely To deny your lives doth contain the denying of all these and more and therefore you must learn the lesser if you would do the greater These are the parts of life as it were and it 's easier thus to overcome it in its parts than in the whole when particular Souldiers are destroyed the Army is the weaker And the use of suffering the Afflictions of this life will make you hardy and make death seem a smaller matter For when you thus Die Daily you will the more easily die once Besides Death is half disarmed when the Pleasures Interests of the flesh are first denied For the leaving of fleshly contents and pleasures is much of the reason of mens unwillingness to die And therefore when these are denied before-hand the Reasons of your unwillingness are taken away If you pull down the Nest the Birds will be gone Men that are loth to leave their Country would willingly be gone if their houses were fired or they were turned out of doors and their friends and goods were all sent away This is it that makes men so unwilling to die because they practise not Mortification in their health but contrarily study to live as Pleasingly as may be to the flesh and think it part of their Christian Liberty thus making Christ a carnal Saviour as the Jews conceive of their expected Messiah and taking up with a carnal false salvation not purchased by Christ but given by Satan in the name of Christ and assumed by themselves They make it their business to have buildings and lands and meats and drinks and honours and all things as pleasing as may be to the flesh and then they complain that they are unwilling to die and I easily believe him it is no wonder They make it the work of their lives to feather their nests and make Provision for the flesh and then complain that they are loth to leave those nests that they have been feathering so long and loth to scatter all the heap and treasure which they have been gathering And did you think that gathering it was the way to make you willing to leave it Men load themselves with the lumber and baggage of the world and then complain that they cannot travel on their journey but had rather sit down They fall a building them habitations in their way when they should have none but Inns or Tents and when they have bestowed all their time and cost and charges on them they complain of their hearts for being loth to leave them Such mad doings as these are not the way to be willing to die To provide for self and flesh in your Life-time is not the way to Deny your Lives Sirs the way is this if you will learn it and stick not at the cost and trouble Self must be here stript naked of all its carnal comforts so that it shall have nothing left o fly to or trust upon nor nothing lest tâ—at it can take delight in then it will away If you would drive ouâ—â—n ill Tenant you will cast out all their goods and leave them nothing but the bare walls and not so much as a bed to lie on and uncover the house over their heads and then they will be gone So if you cast out all your sensual commodities and delights that when the flesh looks about it shall see nothing but the bare walls and cannot find a resting place then death will be less grievous and less unwelcome Or rather indeed even the flesh and self must be mortified and in the sense in which it must be denied it must have no being or life that is as it is withdrawn from its subordination to God And then there will be nothing to rise up against your submission to Death Though nature as nature will keep you from Loving death as death yet were but self-denial perfect there would be nothing to keep you from submitting to it and desiring to pass through it to immortality O that you would but try such a self-denying life and you would certainly die an easie comfortable Death Direct 4. Suffer not unworthy thoughts of God to abide in your soul Think not of his Infinite Love and Goodness with doubtfulness or diminution You will never be willing to come to God while you think of him as cruel or as a despiser of his creatures or unwilling to do Good But when once you think of him as the surest greatest Good and your fastest friend and the most lovely object that can be conceived of and these thoughts are deep and wrought into the very nature of your soul then you will be ready more chearfully to die No man can love the presence of a tyrant or an enemy or of him that is so far above him that there is no communion with him to be had If you entertain such blasphemous thoughts of God you are unlikely ever to desire his presence See you think as honourably and magnificently of the Goodness and Love of God as you do of his Knowledge or his Power and as you would abhor any extenuating conceptions of the one so do of the other And then the Loveliness and glory of his face will draw out your desires and make you long to be with God Direct 5. And by such means as this aforesaid Labour to bring up your souls to live in the Love of God It is love that is the Divine and heavenly nature in us and therefore must needs incline us heaven-wards The nature of love is to long after communion with him that we love The more Love the more of God in the soul and the more desire after God This is the grace that must live for ever and therefore bendeth towards the place of its perfection It 's want of Love to God that maketh most of us so contented to be from him Strengthen and exercise all other graces as far as in you lieth but above all live in the exercise of this enjoying heavenly grace Direct 6. Consider of all
the burdens that are here upon you which should make you long to be with God One would think the feeling of them should force you to consideration and weariness of them and make the thoughts of rest to be sweet to you Have you yet not sin enough and sorrow and fear and trouble enough Or must God lay a greater load on you to make you desire to be disburdened Every hour you spend and every creature you have to do with afford you some occasion of renewing your desires to depart from these and be with Christ Direct 7. Observe and magnifie that of God which is here revealed to you in his word and works Study him and admire him in Scripture study and admire him in the frame of nature And when you look towards Sun or Moon or Sea or Land and perceive how little it is that you know and how desirable it is to know them perfectly think then of that estate where you shall know them all in God himself who is more than all Study and admire him in the course of Providences study and admire him in the person of Christ in the frame of his holy life in the work of Redemption in the holy frame of his Laws and Covenants study and admire him in his Saints and the frame of his holy Image on their souls This life of studying and admiring God and dwelling upon him with all our souls will exceedingly dispose us to be willing to come to him and to submit to death Direct 8. Live also in the daily exercise of holy Joy and Praise to God which is the heavenly Employment For if you use your selves to this heavenly life it will much incline you to desire to be there Exercise fear and godly sorrow and care in their places but especially after Faith and Love be sure to live in holy Joy and Praise Be much in the consideration of all that Riches of grace in Christ communicated and to be communicated to you And be much in Thanks to God for his mercies and chearing and comforting your soul in the Lord your God And thus the Joy of Grace will much dispose you to the Joys of glory the Peace which the Kingdom of God consisteth in will incline you to the peace of the everlasting Kingdom and the chearful Praising of God on Earth in Psalms or other ways of Praise will prepare and dispose you to the heavenly Praises And therefore Christians exceedingly wrong their souls and hinder themselves from a willingness to be with God in spending all their days in drooping or doubting or worldly dulness and laying by so much the Joy of the Saints and the Praises of God Direct 9. Dwell on the believing fore-thoughts of the everlasting glory which you must possess Think what it is that others are enjoying while you are here and what you must be and possess and do for ever Daily think of the Certainty Perfection and Perperuity of your Blessedness What a life it will be to see the blessed God in his Glory and taste of the fulness of his love and to see the glorified Son of God and with a perfected soul and body to be perfectly taken up in the Love and Joy and Praises of the Lord among all his holy Saints and Angels in the heavenly Jerusalem You must by the exercise of Faith and Love in holy Meditation and Prayer even dwell in the Spirit and converse in Heaven while your bodies are on earth if you would entertain the news of death as beseems a Christian But of this at large elsewhere Direct 10. Lastly if you would be willing to submit to death resign up your own understandings and wills to the wisdom and the will of God and Know not good and evil for your carnal selves but wholly trust your lives and souls to the Wisdom and Love of your dearest Lord. Must you be carking and caring for your selves when you have an Infinite God engaged to care for you O saith self I am not able to bear the terrors and pangs of death O saith Faith My Lord is easily able to support me and it is his undertaken work to do it My work is but to Please him and it 's his work to take care of me in life and death and therefore though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death yet will I fear no evil O saith Self I am utterly a stranger to another world I know not what I shall see nor what I shall be nor whither I shall go the next minute after death None come from the dead to satisfie us of these things O but saith Faith My blessed Father and Redeemer is not a stranger to the place that I must go to He knows it though I do not He knows what I shall be and do and whither I shall go and all is in his power And seeing it belongs not to me but to him to dispose of me and give me the promised reward it is meet that I rest in his understanding And it is better for me that his Infinite Wisdom dispose of my departing soul than my shallow insufficient knowledge I may much more acquiesce in his knowledge than my own O but saith self I fear it may prove a change of darkness and confusion to my soul what will become of me I cannot tell O but saith Faith I am sure I am in the hands of Love and such Love as is Omnipotent and engaged for my good and how can it then go ill with me If I had my own will I should not fear And how much less should I fear when I am at the will of God even of most Wise Almighty Love There is no true Centre for the soul to Rest in but the Will of God It is our business to Obey and Please his Will as dutiful Children and to commit our selves contentedly to his Will for the absolute disposal of us It is not possible that the Will of an Heavenly Father should be against his Children whose desire and sincere endeavour hath been to Obey and Please his Will And therefore learn this as your great and necessary Lesson with Joyful Confidence to Commit your selves and your departing souls to your Fathers Will as knowing that your Death is but the execution of that Will which is engaged to cause all things to work together for your good Rom. 8. 28. And say with Paul I suffer but am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed and I am perswaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day 2 Tim. 1. 12. 1 Tim. 4. 10. Therefore we labour and suffer because we trust in the living God who is the Saviour of all men especially of those that believe say therefore as Job Though he kill me yet will I trust in him Or rather as Christ Father into thy hands I commend my Spirit Luke 23. 46. If the hands and Will of the Father was the Rock and
or within them as to see that which may take them down from being proud of any comeliness of the flesh One would think this should be so easie a part of self-denial as any graceless one might reach by a little use of the Reason that is left them CHAP. XLV Strength and Valour to be denied 5. ANother piece of Vain-glory to be Denied is in the Reputation of strength and valour The witless part of men especially in their procacious humours do use to be carried away with this as witless women with the former Hence commonly are their matches of Running and Wrestling and many exercises of activity and strength yea and hence commonly are their duels and murders It seems such a dishonourable thing to them to be thought a Coward or unable to defend themselves and to be crow'd over by their enemy that they will venture body and soul upon it rather than they will put up such indignities or lie under the dishonour of being Cowards Yea and would one think it some Jesuits are such Carnal Doctors that they teâ—ch men that if they be challenged and their honour lie upon it they may meet the challenger there in a defensive posture and fight with him to defend their honour yea and in many other cases they may kill another for their Honour seeing their honour is more to them than their lives O miserable Teachers and miserable souls that do obey them Christ hath taught you another lesson even to despise the shame Heb. 12. 2 3. â—nd to humble your selves intimateth that such cannot be believers which receive honour of one another and seek not the honour that cometh from God only Joh. 5. 44. It 's more Honor to obey God in suffering than be so valiant as to murder another man The day is near when he will appear the Honourable man that was likest to Jesus Christ that when he was reviled reviled not again when he suffered he threatned not but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously 1 Pet. 2. 23. Blind sinners do you think it more honourable to do hurt than to suffer hurt yea to be like the Devil who is a murderer than to Christ that was a sufferer and came not to destroy mens lives but to save them and lay down his own Can any thing be more Honourable than to be the children of the heavenly Father and if you be such you must Love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you and pray for them that despightfully use you and persecute you Mat. 5. 44. What a Case are those mens understandings in that think it their Honour to revenge themselves when God hath so forbidden it Rom. 12. 19. CHAP. XLVI Wisdom and Learning to be denied 6. ANother piece of Vain-glory to be denied is in the Reputation of Wisdom and Learning The things themselves are very excellent and to be desired and much sought after but not for our own Honour but the Service and Honour of the Lord. And the greater is the worth of the thing the greater is the temptation to vain-glory in them that have it and the harder it is to deny themselves herein This part of self-denial consisteth not in a contempt of Learning or Wisdom nor a neglect of it for this were a sin but in a neglect of self that would make an advantage of it for its own carnal exaltation and in a contempt of the Honour and vain-glory which may redound by it to our selves further than such honour is serviceable to God O how sinful and miserable a liâ—e do abundance of Learned men live in the world Their whole life is but one continued vice and that a sin of a most hainous nature even the exercise of Pride and Self-seeking when yet they take themselves for Saints because they are not such as are accounted scandalous sinners in the world They sacrifice their precious time and studies to their Pride Phansies and not to God Too many hours and years are spent to gain the Reputation of being Learned men Too many disputations are managed yea odious sacriledge too many Sermons are preached and too many learned Books are written to gain the Reputation of being Learned men Ah miserable low unworthy studies Prophane Sermons ungodly labours and poor reward O how it netleth some Proud spirits if they hear that they are taken to be no Scholars And how many take their University Degrees to be meerly the wings of this part of their vain-glory Learning and Degrees and the Reputation of it are all good if they be valued and used but for God But they are so much the worse when they are sacrificed to self and and made the food and fuel of Pride Learn therefore this part of self-denial CHAP. XLVII Reputation of Gifts and spiritual Abilities c. 7. ANother piece of vain-glory to be denied is The Reputation of our Gifts and spiritual Abilities I mean such as Praying and Preaching and Disputing and good Conference to have readiness for words and liveliness of expression and exactness of method to be esteemed in all these a very able man by others is an high part of self-interest to be denied The duties themselves must be denied by none for they are the service of God commanded us by his word But it is the Honour that self presumeth to hunt after in these holy things And it is a double sin here to seek our selves when we are specially commanded to seek God! and where the work is instituted for that end and when we pretend to seek God and to deny our selves The greater are our abilities to do God service the more resolutely and thankfully we should improve them in his service But we must remember that they are given us to save others by our improvement and not to destroy our selves by our Pride Get as great abilities as you can and when you have them thank God for them and use them for him to the uttermost of your Power but take heed lest Pride should sacrifice them to your selves and pervert them from your Masters service The persons that have most need of this advice are especially these following 1. Young unexperienced Professors that are but lately turned to a Profession of a Godly life that have so much illumination as sheweth them much that before they knew not and raiseth them above the vulgar measure but yet hath made them but smatterers and half-knowing men These are they that the Apostle requireth should not be made Bishops or Pastors of the Church because of their pronenefs to this very sin that now we are speaking of 1 Tim. 3. 6. Not a Novice lest being lifted up with Pride he fall into the condemnation of the Devil the spirit of God here intimateth to us that Novices are the likest to be lifted up with Pride and that this Pride is the way to the Condemnation of the Devil 2. And men of great abilities natural or acquired that have
common good as may exceedingly promote it if they be observed by posterity must have a great regard to his present and surviving fame because the honour of his Laws will depend much upon the honour of his name and if once the people vilifie him they will be likely to vilifie and cast off his Laws to the hurt of Church and Common-wealth and their own undoing And even as to the success of their present Government they should be very careful of their fame so also a Minister of the Gospel must be very careful of his present and future reputation For at present the saving good of his auditors doth much depend upon it For if they have a base esteem of the Pastor they will be unlikely to give diligent intention to his Doctrine but disesteem it as they do the speaker and it is not likely to go to their hearts Nor will they seek his advice in the great matters of salvation and the difficult cases and dangers that they meet with but to the great hazard of their souls will slight the necessary assistance of him that is appointed to be their guide to heaven and will set light by all the Ordinances of God And therefore the Pastors Reputation is ten thousand times more beneficial and necessary to the people than to himself For alas it is but their good thoughts and words that he receiveth which add little to his happiness but it 's everlasting life which they may receive by that Word of God and help from him which is furthered by his Reputation And therefore as Ministers should be exceeding watchful against Pride that they desire not Honor for themselves so when they are sure that God is their end they must be exceeding careful of their own Reputation and avoid all occasions appearances of evil and purchase it by all just means For though honour be worth little yet the Cause of God and the souls of men are worth much and we must not be prodigal of our Masters Talents and such as are very useful to his service Our Reputation is Gods and the Churches due and to be cherished for their use Especially those Ministers must be careful of their Reputation that by Reformation or Publick useful writings are capable of profiting Posterity and they may desire the surviving of their honours which for it self might not be desired because their works and writings and Doctrine are like to be much blasted by their own defamations and do little good to any that come after Nay the precious truths and cause of God may be most dangerously wronged and disadvantaged by it and get such a blot and dishonour by their dishonour that any that shall seek the promoting of it hereafter may be greatly hindered and disadvantaged thereby For it will seem enough to cast off such a Doctrine for ever that by the dishonour of the maintainers it was once dishonourable and rejected as an error And doubtless some things have been thus made Heresies and so will be long rejected as Heresies in many parts of the Christian world because they were once called by that name and that was because the Person that did own them had some such dishonour or disadvantage as left his Doctrine open to this reproach And therefore you may here see what a Potent instrument Reputation is in the Devils hand to do his work and what abundance of advantage he gets by defaming Gods servants Principally by this means did he long keep the world from the entertainment of the Gospel the servants of Christ being contemptible in their eyes and the preaching of the cross but foolishness to them By this means did the Pharisees hinder the Jews from believing in Christ And by this means is Heathenism Infidelity and Mahometanism continued in possession of most of the world to this day By this means it is that Popery keeps the common people in thraldom as the voluminous lies of Cochlaeus Bolsecus and many others concerning Luther Calvin Zuinglius and other of our Reformers and Writers do fully testifie And by personal reproaches and dishonours it is that the Doctrine of the Reformed Divines is made so odious among the Lutherans and the like instances might be given in others If now any weighty Christian Verity should be asserted by any Pastor of the Church in a sounder and clearer manner than is commonly known or owned if the person that doth it should but fall under any reproach which he shall be sure of if the Devil can procure it it 's two to one but for his sake his Doctine will be stigmatized with the name of error and so lie buried for ever till Divine Omnipotency commands its Resurrection And hence it is that there is not one Instrument that ever God raiseth up to vindicate any truth or ordinance or do him any special service but Satan raiseth up tongues and pens if not hands and swords against him and an Army of reproachers will presently be on the back of him Now in all such cases as these it is a great duty for any servant of Christ to be very regardful of his Reputation even with Posterity For his good name may much promote the Truth as we know the Name of Austin Calvin and many another doth at this day And if it be our great duty to extend our service of God as far as we can to all Countries and to all posterity to do them good then is it our duty to endeavour that a good Reputation should go along with our labours to further the success or remove impediments And thus while we are sincere and intend all for God we may and must regard our honour and yet in so doing we Deny our selves because we do it not for our selves but for God and his Church 2. And if honour be given in to us this way even as we partake of it our selves as a Means to Gods honour we must thankfully accept it esteem it and rejoyce in it And therefore it is made the matter of many promises and spoken of in Scripture as a blessing Prov. 22. 1. A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches and 10. 7. The memory of the Just is blessed but the name of the wicked shall rot Eccles 7. 1. A good name is better than precious oyntment with many the like Thus much I have said to prevent a mis-application of that which followeth and to help you so to understand me on this point of Honour as not to run from extream into extream and to sin by seeking to avoid sin But alas this kind of seeking our Honour for God and his Church and not for our selves and as our own I doubt is more rare than the neglect of honour The sin that I disswade you from is in these two points 1. That you do not Affect and seek after Extending or surviving Reputation for your selves and out of a Proud desire to be still some body in the estimation of the world 2.
turn them into mortal sins If Princes rule fight for themselves I have told you already what they do but if this were done for God it would have another form and another reward as it had another End What a doleful case is it that such excellent works as alms-deeds and acts of bounty to Church or poor or Commonwealth in buildings lands or any the like works should be all turned into sin and death by such a selfish vain-glorious intent And that their souls should be suffering for those works that others receive much good by What a sad case is it that Historians Lawyers Physicians Philosophers Linguists and the Professors of all the Sciences should undo themselves for ever by those excellent works that edifie the world Nay what can be more lamentable to think of than that able and learned Divines themselves should lose their own souls in the studying and preaching those precious truths that are saving unto others and that such excellent writings as remain a standing blessing to the Church should be the Authors of mortal sin And yet so it is if the renown and immortality of a name on Earth be the End that all this work is done for 12. Lastly Consider that if Honour be good for you it is better attained by minding your duty for the Honour of God and denying your own Honour than by seeking it For Honour is the shadow that will follow you if you fly from it and fly from you if you follow it What Christ here saith of Life is true of Honor He that seeketh and saveth it shall lose it and he that loseth it for Christ shall find it The greatest Honour is to deny our selves and our own honour and to do most for the Honour of God and to be contented to be nothing that God may be all For you have his promise that them that honour him he will honour but they that despise him shall be lightly esteemed THough I have endeavoured by a right limitation and exposition of the foregoing parts of self-denial to prevent mistakes and give you those grounds by which objections may be answered yet the stir that is made in the world about this point by Papists and many other mistaking Sects doth perswade me to give a more distinct Resolution of some of the principal doubts that are before us and therein to shew you that self-denial consisteth not in all things that by some are pretended to be parts of it but that there is a great deal of sin that goes under the name of self-denial among many of these sorts of mistaken persons CHAP. LI. Q. Whether Self-denial lie in renouncing Propriety Quest 1. WHether doth self-denial require us to renounce Propriety and to know nothing as our own as the Monks among the Papists swear to do as part of their state of perfection a book called The way to the Sabbath of Rest dothteach us Answ 1. That there should be no Propriety in goods or estate among men is contrary to the will of God who hath made men his Stewards and trusted several persons with several talents and forbidden stealing and commanded men to labour that they may have to give to him that needeth and he that hath this worlds goods and seeth his brother have need must not shut up the bowels of his compassion It is a standing duty to give to the poor and we shall therefore have the poor always with us for this exercise of our Charity And he that hath nothing can give nothing nor use it for God Why did Paul require them to give to the distressed Saints and maintain the Ministry and gather for such uses every first day of the week if he would have men have nothing to give This therefore is a conceit that needs nothing but Reason and the reading and belief of Scripture to confute it 2. But as no man is a Proprietary or hath any thing of his Own in the strict and Absolute sense because all is Gods and we are but Stewards so no man may retain his humane analogical propriety when God calleth him to give it up No man may retain any thing from Gods Use and service which he hath a propriety in We have so much Propriety as that no man must rob us and so much as our works of charity are rewardable though it be but giving a cup of cold water which could not be without propriety for who will reward him that gives that which is none of his own yea it is made the matter of the last judgement I was hungry and ye fed me I was naked and ye cloathed me c. Which they could not have done if they had not had food and cloathing to bestow So that the denial of propriety would destroy all exercise of charity in such kinds and destroy all Societies and orderly converse and industry in the world But yet when God calls for any thing from us we must presently obey and quit all title to it and resign it freely and gladly to his will And 3. There must be so much vigour of charity and sense of our neighbours wants as that no man must shut up the bowels of compassion but as we must love our neighbours as our selves so must we relieve them as a second self yea and before our selves if Gods service or honour should require it If we must lay down our lives for the brethren much more our estates So that Levelling Community is abominable but Charitable Community is a Christian duty and the great Character of sincere Love to Christ in his members And therefore in the Primitive Church there was no forbidding of Propriety but there was 1. A resignation of all to God to signifie that they were contented to forsake all for him and did prefer Christ and the Kingdom of God before all and 2. There was so great vigor of true Charity as that all men voluntarily supplied the wants of the Church and poor and voluntarily made all things as common that is Common by voluntary Communication for use though not common in primary title And so no man took any thing as his Own when God and his Churches and his Brethrens wants did call for it O that we had more of that Christian Love that should cause a Charitable Community which is the true Mean between the Monkish Community and the selfish tenacious Propriety Levelling hath not destroyed one soul for ten thousand that an inordinate love of Propriety hath destroyed CHAP. LII Q. Whether it lie in renouncing Marriage Quest 2. WHether Self-denial consists in the forswearing or renouncing of Marriage or the natural use of it by those that are marryed Answ. To forbid Marriage simply is called by the holy Ghost a Doctrine of Devils 1 Tim. 4. 1 3 and was one of the Heresies that the Apostles were called out to encounter in their own days But yet a Married state doth ordinarily not always call men off from that free attendance on the
and Prince and people living in jealousies of each other as having contradictory interests which would not be if the Pleasing of God and the common good were the principal End and Interest of them all and selfishness did not prevail And this is it that keepeth Christian Princes in most ungodly wars to the shedding of Christian blood and the weakening of the common interest and the strengthening of the common enemy whom they should all joyn together to resist This also keepeth up so many parties on Religious pretences to seek the undermining and ruine of each other when they should all joyn together against the common prophaneness of the world and all their conjunct endeavours would be too little Thus selfishness is the grand Enemy that by Divisions and Subdivisions is still at work for the Dissolution and Ruine of Church and State and the Confusion of the World and the disturbance and destruction of order and government 8. Yea Selfishness makes men false and treacherous so that they are not to be trusted and are unmeet materials for any Society For what ever they promise pretend or seem they are all for themselves and will be no further true and faithful to the Society or any Member of it than suiteth with their own Ends Never trust a selfish person if it be your own Brother further than you can accommodate and please him and so oblige him to you upon his Own account It is the Complication of Interests that makes Husband and Wife so much agree and love each other because that which one hath the other hath But if their Interests fall out to be any whit divided it is two to one but selfishness will divide their affections One would think that the bond of nature should be so strong to constrain a Son to love his Father that nothing could dissolve it And yet sad experience telleth us that even here it is an unity of Interest that doth more with many children than either nature or grace and that when they have no more dependance upon their Parents for their commodity their affections and respects are gone and if they shall gain much by their death they can bear it without much sorrow if not desire it So potent is selfishness that it makes not men unfaithful only to their friends and treacherous to their Governors and false to all they have to do with but also unnatural to their nearest Relations And therefore next to true Piety which leads up all to an Unity in God and therefore is the most perfect Polity the chief point of humane Polity for the preservation of Commonwealths and all Societies is a Complication of Interest when the Constitution makes the Governor and the Governed as Husband and Wife that have nothing dividely as their own but all in common and take each other for better or worse and know they must stand or fall together and that the good or hurt of one is the good or hurt of both and that there is no manner of hope that either of them should thrive by the ruine of the other If Politicians had the skill and will to make such an union of Interests between the Soveraign and the Subject and to make it visible that all might understand it their Republicks would be Immortal till either the wrath of a Neglected God or the Power of a foreign enemy should dissolve them For nothing else but self could do it and self wil not do it when it sees its own interest lie in the preservation of the present State CHAP. LXIX Corrupteth and debaseth all that it disposeth of 7. ANother aggravation of the evil of selfishness is that it corrupteth and debaseth every thing that it disposeth of And on the contrary it is the excellency of self-denial as joyned with the Love of God that it rectifieth and ennobleth all your actions Let the work be never so Holy in its own nature yet if you do it but for your selves you make a prophane employment of it and to you it is not Holy A selfish carnal person is serving himself even in Preaching and hearing and praying and Sacraments and other acts of worship and Church-communion Much more in the common business of his life Even when he thinks he is serving God he is but serving himself of God and provoking God by this abuse when he thinks he is very holy because of his services he is doubly unholy in that he even prophaneth holy things And as it is not God indeed that he serveth so from God he must not expect a Reward And as far as a mans self and flesh is below the blessed God so far in a sort is the work of selfish men debased in comparison of those works of the Saints that are performed purely for God They make but a low unprofitable drudgery of that which in the hands of others is the highest and noblest work on earth For the action can be no better than the End and therefore is base as it is base But on the other side self-denial makes noble the actions that in themselves seem base If you are gone out of your selves and can truly say that it is God you serve and seek in your employments you may be sure that God will take them for his service and set them on your account among the works that he hath promised to Reward supposing that the Matter be such as he alloweth of and that you think not by good Intentions to turn sin to holiness and make him a service of that which he forbiddeth O what an honour what an encouragement what a comfort is this to every Christian The actions of a Prince or Conqueror are base if self be their End and the respect to God do not ennoble them And the work of the poorest person is honourable that is done for God It is a great temptation to some poor Christians to grudge at their condition because they are so unserviceable to God Alas thinks a poor Tradesman or Plowman or Servant What do I but drudge in the world I have neither parts not place to do God service with But such dâ— very much mistake the matter It is not the parts and place but the hearty performance of your works for God that makes them such as he will take for service O thinks a poor woman or toiling servant I can do nothing either for the Conversion of Souls or the good of Church or Commonwealth but am made unserviceable But do you not know that any thing is acceptable service which God commandeth and is heartily intended to his honour and his Pleasure It is not the mettle but the stamp of the Prince that makes a piece to be currant money If the Kings stamp were put by his appointment on a piece of Brass or Copper it would pass for Coin Believe it sirs if your study be to Please the Lord in your Callings and you can but get above your selves and do the basest servile works as commanded
one sin were but rooted out of the hears of the Ministers themselves that are the Preachers of self-denial it would make so sudden and wonderful a change in the Church as would be the glory of our Profession the Joy of the godly and the admiration of all O happy and honourable Magistrates at Court and Country if self were but throughly conquered and denyed O happy and Reverend Ministry the pillars of Religion the honour of the Church if it were not for the shameful prevalency of self O happy Churches happy Cities Corporations Societies and Countrys were it not for self But alas this is it that saddeth our hearts and makes us look for more and more sad tidings concerning the affairs of the Church from all parts of the world or frustrates our hopes when we look for better For we know on the one side that without self-denial there will never be true Reformation or Unity neither sin nor division will ever be overcome and on the other side we see that selfishness is so natural and common and obstinate that so many men as are born into the world so many enemies are there to Holiness and Peace till grace â—â— all change them and that all endeavours perswasions convictions do little prevail against this deadly rooted sin so that men will preach against it and yet most shamefully live in it and after all rebukes chastisements and heavy judgements of God the Church is still bleeding and Princes Pastors and People are self-conceited self-willed and self-seekers still Alas for the cause and Church of Christ Must we give it up to the lusts of self Must we sit down and look on its miserable torn condition with lamentation and despair and shall we deliver down this despair to our Posterity Were not our hope only in the Omnipotent God it must be so When we look at men at Magistrates or Ministers we see no hope What higher professions can be made by those in succeeding Ages than have now been made And yet what negligence of Magistrates and what contentiousness of Ministers destroy all hopes So that we look at the Restauration of the Church as at the Resurrection that must be done by Omnipotency God must raise up another Generation of more self-denying prudent zealous Magistrates and of more self-studying peaceable Humble Zealous Industristous Ministers before the Healing work be done The selfish spirit that prevaileth now in the most is neither fit to be the Matter or Instrument of the Reformed Peaceable state which we expect While the enemies are destroying us by secret fraud and open force we stand at a distance and unite not against them yea we are calling each other Heretick and Deceivers and teaching them how to revile us and putting such words into their mouth against us as may help our people to despise us and reject us and warrant them from our own mouths or pens to rail at us and forsake us One part of us being Hereticks or Deceivers by the testimony of the other part and the other part by the testimony of too many of them Dear Brethren if selfishness shall not now be left when we are in the sight of the havock it hath made and stand in the field among those that it hath slain and see the Church of God so horribly abused by it when then shall it be forsaken I here intreat every man that loveth his present or everlasting Peace and the Peace of the Church or Commonwealth that he will resolve upon a deadly enmity with this selfishness in himself and others And that you will suspect it and watch against it in every work you have to do Are you upon any imployment spiritual or secular Presently enquire when you set upon it Is there no self-interest and selfish disposition lurking here How far is my own worldly fleshly ends or prosperity concerned in it And if you discover that self is any way concerned in it I beseech you suspect it and follow self with an exceeding watchful eye and when you have done your best it is ten to one but it will over-reach you O look to it that you be not ensnared before you are aware Take heed of it especially you that are great and honourable and have so much self-interest to tempt you in the world How hardly will you escape When all other enemies are conquered you have yet self the greatest enemy to overcome Take heed of it you that have any rising thriving project little know you on what a precipice you stand Take heed of it you that are in deep and pinching wants lest self make them seem more grievous than they are and provoke you to venture upon sin for your relief Take heed all you that have raging appetites or passions or lustful inclinations and remember your enemy is now discovered and you have him to deal with before your face and therefore see that you be resolute and vigilant Take heed all you that have Learning Parts or fame and honour or any thing that self hath to glory in and to abuse lest the noblest gifts should by this deadly principle be turned into a plague to the Church and to your souls Suspect self in the choice of your parties and opinions Suspect it in your publick labours yea and in your private duties and greatest diligence in Religious Works lest when your eyes are open'd at last it should appear that you preached or prayed or professed or wrote or lived for self and not for God I do but transcribe the counsel to you that God is daily giving in to my own soul as I feel exceeding great use of it to my self so I am sure there is to others and wo to me and you if we take it not and be not found among the self-denying Doubtless God will put you to the tryal and find you frequent use for this grace Let me take the boldness to tell you from my own though alas too small experience that as it is meer selfishness that is the perplexer and disquieter of the mind without which nothing that befalls us could discompose it so it is God only that quiets it and gives it rest And I bless the Lord I can truly say that I have found that content in loving and closing with the will of God and endeavouring to know no interest but his to disquiet or quiet me which I never could find in any other way When God is enough for us and his will is in our eyes the will of a Father infinitely good it may satisfie the soul in the darkest condition when we understand not the particular meaning of his providence nor what he is doing with us yet still we may be sure that he is doing us good And therefore a child may not only submit to the will of God because it cannot be resisted as enemies must be forced to do but he may Rest in that will as the Center of his desires and the very felicity and Heaven of
fleshly Pleasures tend He that by faith hath seen both Heav'n and Hell And what sin costeth at the last can tell He that hath try'd and tasted Better things And felt that love from which all pleasure springs They that still watch and for Christs coming wait Can turn away from or despise the bait Flesh Must I be made the foot-ball of disdain And call'd a precise fool or Puritane Spirit Remember him that did despise the shame And for thy sake bore undeserved blame Thy journey 's of small moment if thou stay Because dogs bark or stones lie in the way If life lay on it wouldst thou turn again For the winds blowing or a little rain Is this thy greatest love to thy dear Lord That canst not for his sake bear a foul word Wilt thou not bear for him a scorners breath That underwent for thee a cursed death Is not Heav'n worth the bearing of a flout Then blame not Justice when it shuts thee out Will these deriders stand to what they say And own their words at the great dreadful day Then they 'd be glad when wrath shall overtake them To eat their wrrds and say they never spake them Flesh How Forsake all Ne're mention it more to me I 'le be of no Religion to undo me Spirit Is it not thine more in thy Fathers hand Than when it is laid out at sins command And is that sav'd that 's spent upon thy lust Or which must be a prey to thieves or rust And wouldst thou have thy riches in thy way Where thou art passing on and canst not stay And is that lost that 's sent to Heav'n before Hadst thou not rather have thy friends and store Where thou may dwell for ever in the light Of that long glorious day that fears no night Flesh But who can willingly submit to Death Which will bereave us of our life and breath That laies our flesh to rot in loathsome graves Where brains and eyes were leaves but ugly caves Spirit So nature breaks and casts away the shell Where the now beauteous singing bird did dwell The secundine that once the infant cloath'd After the birth is cast away and loath'd Thus Roses drop their sweet leaves under-foot But the Spring shews that life was in the root Souls are the Roots of Bodies Christ the Head Is Root of both and will revive the dead Our Sun still shineth when with us it's night When he returns we shall shine in his light Souls that behold and praise God with the Just Mourn not because their bodies are but dust Graves are but beds where flesh till morning sleep's Or Chests where God a while our garments keep 's Our folly thinks he spoils them in the keeping Which causeth our excessive fears and Weeping But God that doth our rising day foresee Pittie 's not rotting flesh so much as we The birth of Nature was deform'd by sin The birth of Grace did our repair begin The birth of Glory at the Resurrection Finisheth all and brings both to persection Why should not fruit when it is mellow fall Why would we linger here when God doth call Flesh The things and persons in this world I see But after death I know not what will be Spirit Know'st thou not that which God himself hath spoken Thou hast his promise which was never broken Reason proclaims that noble heav'n-born souls Are made for higher things than worms and moles God hath not made such faculties in vain Nor made his service a deluding pain But faith resolves all doubts and hears the Lord Telling us plainly by his Holy Word That uncloath'd souls shall with their Saviour dwell Triumphing over sin and death and hell And by the power of Almighty Love Stars shall arise from graves to shine above There we shall see the Glorious face of God His blessed presence shall be our abode The face that banisheth all doubts and fears Shuts out all sins and dryeth up all tears That face which darkeneth the Suns bright rayes Shall shine us into everlasting joyes Where Saints and Angels shall make up one Chore To praise the Great Jehovah evermore Flesh Reason not with me against sight and sense I doubt all this is but a vain pretence Words against nature are not worth a rush One bird in hand is worth two in the bush If God will give me Heav'n at last I 'le take it But for my Pleasure here I 'le not forsake it Spirit And wilt thou keep it bruitsh flesh how long Wilt thou not shortly sing another song When Conscience is awakened keep thy mirth When Sickness and Death comes hold fast this earth Live if thou canst when God saith come away Try whether all thy friends can cause thy stay Wilt thou tell death and God thou wilt not die And wilt thou the consuming fire defie Art thou not sure to let go what thou hast And doth not Reason bid thee then forecast And value the least hope of endless joyes Before known vanities and dying toyes And can the Lord that is most just and wise Found all mans duty in deceit and lies GET thee behind me Satan thou dost savour The things of flesh and not his dearest favour Who is my Life and Light and Love and All And so shall be whatever shall befall It is not thou but I that must discern And must Resolve It 's I that hold the stern Be silent Flesh speak not against my God Or else hee 'l teach thee better by the rod. I am resolved thou shalt live and die A servant or a conquered enemy LOrd charge not on me what this rebel sayes That alwaies was against me and thy wayes Now stop its mouth by Grace that shortly must Through just but gainful death be stopt with dust The thoughts and words of Flesh are none of mine Let Flesh say what it will I will be thine Whatever this rebellious Flesh shall prate Let me but serve the Lord at any rate Use me on earth as seemeth good to thee So I in Heav'n thy Glorious face may see Take down my Pride let me dwell at thy feet The humble are for earth and heav'n most meet Renouncing Flesh I Vow my self to thee With all the Talents thou hast lent to me Let me not stick at honour wealth or blood Let all my dayes be spent in doing good Let me not trifle out more precious hours But serve thee now with all my strength and powers If Flesh would tempt me to deny my hand Lord these are the Resolves to which I stand Richard Baxter October 29. 1659. The laâ—e Lord Chief Justice Oliver St. John See my Reasons of the Christ â—â—â—g since written I may with Tertullian call all our enemies to search their Court Records and â—ce how many of us have been cast out or silenced for any immorality but for obeying Conscience against the interest or wills of some who think that Conscience should give place to their Commands Read the two or three last Chapters in Dr. Holden's Analâ—fidei Read Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Rogers books against me and the souldiers openly thâ—â— calumaiâ—â—ed me and thâ—e in eâ— my death as the said Authors â—eâ—red them to call me to a trâ—al even for speaking and writing against their casting dow the Government of the Land â—â—ing 〈◊〉 themselves and aâ—â—â—pting at once to Vo e out all the â—arâ—â—h 〈◊〉 I know that it hardneâ—h thousands in impenitency to say that Others have done worse and Is the matter mended with you And will it also eâ—se men in heâ—l to think that some others suffer more The Quuakers and other Self-esteemers are reverthemore reconcil'd to us now we have been eleven years turned out of all So common it is for selfish meâ— to make their gain sayers as odious as they can devise that I conâ—eâ—s I wondred that I me with no more of this dealing my self from Papists Anabaptists or any that have turned their stiâ—e against me And at last Mr. Pierce hath answered my expectation and from my own confession not knowing me himself hath drawn my picture that I am Proâ—â—i Lazie False an Hypocrite uâ—just a Reader c. And from this Bolsecks credit I make no doubt but the Papists will think they may warrantably descrâ—bâ— me if I be thought worthy their reâ—embrance in all following Ageâ— though now I have nothing from them but good wordâ— But it is a small thing to be judged by man especially when our â—â—uâ—â— enjoy the Lord. They way-laid the Messengers that I sent Letters by to friends took them from the â— by force seâ—â— them to 〈…〉 to the Council of State to the trouble of those I wrote to though nothing was found but â—â—noâ—ency And this was by my old 〈…〉 who differed from â—â—â— in nothing but â—â—tant 〈…〉 Changes of our Government and yet 〈…〉