tenderness of love and kindness which should result from the intimate nearness of their relation is estrangedness and as proceeding higher to ill-will and expressions of an imbittered mind as it causes for the present wrangling and debate it is strife or contention and as festring into an habitual displeasure and lasting regret it is hatred or enmity and as breaking out in a proclamation of each others weaknesses evil speaking or publishing each others infirmities 3. As doing no good to each other themselves so seeking none from God which is not praying for each other 4. An avoidance of each others Bed and being false to the Marriage Covenant about it which is adultery But if this unfaithfulness really be not but through the suspicious temper of one side is only groundlesly presumed it is jealousie 2. Such as are peculiar and concern one particularly towards the other either 1. The Husband towards the Wife and here the effects of hatred will be 1. A neglecting to use his power for her benefit through an insensibleness of her wants and regardlesness of what hardships she struggles with either as to necessaries or conveniencies which is not providing for her or not maintaining her or as to injuries and affronts which is not protecting her 2. Vsing all his authority over her by a harsh and magisterial peremptoriness of Command which is imperiousness or by an unyielding inflexibleness of will and pleasure which is uncompliance uncondescension 2. The Wife towards the Husband where it will produce a light and low opinion of him which is dishonour which being joined with a contemptuous and fearless behaviour towards him is irreverence And this will effect 1. A backwardness and utter averseness to do unbidden what will delight and please him which is non-observance or what is commanded by him which is disobedience 2. A refusal or open reluctance in undergoing that restraint which he imposes which is casting off his yoke or unsubjection So that in this relation of Husband and Wife the effects of hatred or Laws forbidding are to both Parties the Law against unconcernedness in each others condition against not bearing each others infirmities against provoking one another against estrangedness against strife and contention against hatred and enmity against publishing each others infirmities against not praying for each other against adultery against jealousie To the Husband towards the Wife the Law against not maintaining her against not protecting her against imperiousness against uncompliance or uncondescension To the Wife towards her Husband the Law against dishonour against irreverence against unobservance against disobedience against casting off his yoke or unsubjection 2. The second domestick relation is that of Parents and Children and in this the effects of Love and particulars of Duty are either 1. On the Parents side towards their Children as are 1. From the extraordinary nearness that their Children have to them being parts even of their own Bodies that most heightened tenderness and kindness which because it is found in all Animals in nature towards their own Offspring is called natural affection 2. From their Childrens helplesness and wants their care over them Which is taken up 1. With respect to this world and that in behalf 1. Of their Bodies by providing for them all due necessaries and conveniencies both whilst they are under them and against the time that they go out from them which is provision maintenance 2. Of their whole persons both Body and Soul by training them up in the best ways they can whereby to render them profitable in their station and useful Members of Society which is good and honest education In the management whereof the using of their power over them not in a rigorous and austere but a tender obliging way is loving Government 2. With respect to the next world and that is by causing them to be duely instructed in Religion and stamped with vertuous impressions which S t Paul calls bringing them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord Ephes. 6.4 And for those things which they cannot procure for them by themselves begging of them from Gods bounty by prayer for them 2. On the Childrens side towards their Parents where besides the Duty of natural affection common to them with the Parents Love effects 1. An opinion of their preheminence and authority over them which is honour and this when it is joined with an awful regard to them and a fear of offending them is reverence 2. Whilst they are under them a ready chearfulness in performing all that they command which is obedience and in bearing and undergoing all that they impose which is submission or subjection 3. When either they are under them or gone from them a readiness upon occasion to requite all their care and kindness in supporting and relieving them which the Apostle calls requiting their Parents 1 Tim. 5.4 4. And in such things wherewith they cannot supply them of themselves entreating God on their behalf which is praying for them So that the effects of Love and instances of Duty in this relation are from the Parents towards their Children the Law of natural affection of maintenance and provision of honest education of loving Government of bringing them up in the institution and fear of God of prayer for them from the Children towards their Parents the Law of honour of reverence of obedience of subjection of requiting upon occasion their care and kindness of prayer for them And opposite to these effects of Love which are so many commanded Duties the effects of hatred in this relation which are so many particular forbidden sins are these that follow 1. In Parents towards their Children it will produce a coldness of heart and unconcernedness for them which is being void of natural affection Which will effect 1. As to their care for them a neglecting to provide for their present maintenance or future support which is condemned by S t Paul under the name of not providing for those of our own house 1 Tim 5.8 2. As to their Government and Conduct of them an untoward exercise and employment of it where there is no just need or a neglect of it where there is For it will produce 1. As to things that are good and necessary for the Children an utter carelesness of them when the Parents neglect to teach and inure them to such things as may render them dutiful to God and useful in Society and contrariwise accustome and bring them up in idleness vanity or wickedness which is irreligious or evil education 2. As to things that are unnecessary and indifferent a great strictness and severity whether it be in commanding or imposing things without reason necessity or convenience or convenient things with imperious harshness or unreasonable rigour only out of wantonness of authority and plenitude of power which instead of exciting them to a cheerful obedience is apt to move in them an irksome regret which is provoking them to anger 3. And instead of praying for
and proposed it to us because the necessity of our faith to our obedience shews plainly that it cannot be denied us and because the best men that ever were have not been able to obey without it and yet their obedience has been most graciously accepted First Some respect to our own good and intention to advantage our selves by our obedience is of that nature that it cannot be forbidden us It cannot fall under a Law or be a matter of a Commandment because it can never be performed As for any one particular advantage and self-interest indeed we may deny our selves in it and therefore any Law may very well require it For we have many particular self-interests to serve and they clash and interfere among themselves and so long as we are in pursuit of any one by virtue of it we are able to restrain and deny our selves in any other And thus all men daily deny their Ease for their Interests and their Gain for their Liberty and their Liberty for their Lives And all good men daily over-rule that Love which they have for their Bodies by that higher and stronger love which they have for their Souls and deny themselves in any Temporal Interests to secure their Eternal And because all men have this power of denying their own Self-love in small instances to serve it in greater and of parting with any goods and advantages of this world to purchase to themselves incomparably better in the next God has enacted the denial of our selves in all such particular Interests as hinder our Obedience into a Religious Duty and made it universally obliging to all the world But as for the casting off this love of our selves and respect to our own advantage not only as to some particular interests whilst our eye is upon others but as to all self-interests whatsoever this in the matter of Duty and Obedience no man can perform and therefore no Law can command it For in that Constitution of Nature which God has given us self-love is the first and over-ruling Principle It has a share almost in all our actions and influences all our faculties so that in all that variety of operations which flow from us there are very few wherein we have no eye at our own advantage In some actions 't is true we are influenced chiefly and almost wholly by our love of others which is a noble and a generous Principle For there are several good Offices which we daily do to others in doing whereof we no way prejudice our selves and these our love of others makes us perform and our own self-love doth not withstand it which is seen in all the Offices of humanity and common courtesie And other things again there are wherein we advantage them though it be considerably to our own trouble and our own hindrance and here although our own self-love oppose it self yet our love of them prevails and over-rules it as is daily shown in the Offices of Christian Charity and particular friendship In these Cases our love of others and of our selves are separate our kindness for them shews it self in such things wherein our own self-love is either not concerned at all or wherein it is opposed and over-powered so that here we are not influenced and governed by it And if this were the Case in all our obedient actions there might be more pretence for performing them purely out of love to God without mixing therewith any love of our own selves But in them quite contrary our love of God and of our selves are neither repugnant nor so much as separate but most closely conjoined For God hath made the same things the matter both of our Duty and of our interest so that in serving him we do in the highest measure serve our own selves too And in this Case where our own self-love is so much concerned and has not the love of God to oppose and over-rule it but to jump in and conspire with it it is not possible but that we shall be influenced and acted by it For it naturally issues out upon our own good and here it has an object in the highest advancement and there is nothing to hinder or restrain it So that whatsoever we may do through a bare abstracted love of others without any regard to our own selves in those Cases where our own self-love and it are separate or repugnant yet in the matter of obedience where they are so close conjoined and Gods service is so infinitely our own interest 't is plain that we cannot be wholly free from it For since in obeying we do that which we know is most highly advantageous to us we are not able perfectly to abstract our thoughts but we shall intend whether we will or no to be advantaged by it And since no man can wholly abstain from intending his own advantage in Gods service no Law can require it It is no fit matter of a prohibition nor capable of being retrenched by a Commandment being it is at no mans choice whether or no he shall observe it So that God must work a Change in his own Creation and form us into something different from what we are before he can in reason demand it of us 2. Some respect to our own advantage in performing what God commands is lawful and allowable in us because Gods Laws themselves do authorize and propose it to us God has not required us to serve him for nothing but has offered us an abundant recompence for all our labour and added such allurements to his Laws as infinitely surpass all the difficulties of our Duty He has proposed every thing to us that may any way work upon our self-love and care for our own advantage whether it be the promises of good to intice or the threats of evil to affright us into obedience For thus saith our Law Verily verily I double the Asseveration that you may give the greater credit to it I say unto you He that keepeth my Sayings or Commands shall never see death John 8.51 To my Sheep that follow me and hear or obey my voice I will give eternal life John 10.27 28. Blessed are they that do his Commandments for they shall have right to the Tree of Life and enter in through the Gate into the City Rev. 22.14 But on the other side The wrath of God cometh upon the Children of disobedience Col. 3.6 For at the Day of Judgment when the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from Heaven with the Guards and Attendance of his mighty Angels then will he in flaming fire take vengeance on them that obey not the Gospel who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord 2 Thess. 1.7 8 9. Thus have we in Christs Laws to omit other things a promise made to us of Heaven and endless joys to induce us to obedience and a threatning of Hell and eternal miserie denounced to us to make us afraid to disobey And these make our obedience to
temptations or to lusts and desires of evil This Point summed up 63â— CHAP. V. Of two other causes of groundless Scruple to good Souls The Contents A second cause of scruple is their uâ—affectedness or distraction sometimes in their prayers Of the necessity of fixedness and fervency in Devotion when we can and of Gods readiness to dispense with them when we cannot enjoy them Attention disturbed often whether we will or no. A particular cause of it in fervent prayers Fervency and affection not depending so much upon the command of our wills as upon the temper of our Bodies Fervency is unconstant in them whose temper is fit for it God measures us not by the fixedness of our thoughts or the warmth of our tempers but by the choice of our wills and the obedience of our lives Other qualifications in prayer are sufficient to have our prayers heard when these are wanting Yea those Vertues which make our prayers acceptable are more eminently shown in our Obedience so that it would bring down to us the blessings of prayer should it prove in those respects defective A third cause of scruple is the danger of idle or impertinent words mentioned Mat. 12.36 The scruples upon this represented The practical errour of a morose behaviour incurred upon it This discountenanced by the light of Nature and by Christianity The benefits and place of serious Discourse Pleasurable conversation a great Field of Vertue The idle words Mat. 12 not every vain and useless but false slanderous and reproachful words this proved from the place 664 CHAP. VI. Of the sin against the Holy Ghost which is a fourth cause of scruple The Contents Some good mens fear upon this account What is meant in Scripture by the Holy Ghost Holy Ghost or Spirit is taken for the gifts or effects of it whether they be first ordinary either in our minds or understandings or in our wills and tempers or secondly extraordinary and miraculous Extraordinary gifts of all sorts proceed from one and the same Spirit or Holy Ghost upon which account any of them indifferently are sometimes called Spirit sometimes Holy Ghost Holy Ghost and Spirit are frequently distinguished and then by Holy Ghost is meant extraordinary gifts respecting the understanding by Spirit extraordinary gifts respecting the executive powers The summ of the explication of this Holy Ghost What sin against it is unpardonable To sin against the Holy Ghost is to dishonour him This is done in every act of sin but these are not unpardonable What the unpardonable sin is Of sin against the ordinary endowments of the Holy Ghost whether of mind or will the several degrees in this all of them are pardonable Of sin against the Spirit Blaspheming of this comes very near it and was the sin of the Pharisees Mat. 12 but it was pardonable Of sinning against the Holy Ghost The Holy Ghost the last means of reducing men to believe the Gospel that Covenant of Repentance The sin against it is unpardonable because such Sinners are irreclamable All dishonour of this is not unpardonable for Simon Magus dishonoured it in actions who was yet capable of pardon but only a blaspheming of it in words No man is guilty of it whilst he continues Christian. 681 CHAP. VII The Conclusion The Contents Some other causless scruples The Point of growth in Grace more largely stated A summary repetition of this whole Discourse They may dye with courage whose Conscience doth not accuse them This accusation must not be for idle words distractions in Prayer c. but for a wilful transgression of some Law of Pieey Sobriety c. above mentioned It must further be particular and express not general and roving If an honest mans heart condemn him not for some such unrepented sins God never will 700 THE INTRODUCTION ROM viij 1 There is no Condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus who walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit The Contents Religious men inquisitive after their future State Three Articles of Christian belief cause such inquisitiveness The Articles of Eternal Life and the Resurrection make men desire satisfaction The Article of the last Judgment encourages the search and points out a way towards it A proposal of the present design and the matters treated of in the ensuing Discourse AMong all those things which employ the minds of Religious and Considerate men there is none that is so much a matter of their thoughtful care and solicitous enquiries as their Eternal happiness or Misery in the next World For in Christs Religion there are three great Articles which being believed and seriously considered by a nature restlessly desirous of its own happiness and such ours is must needs render it very inquisitive after some security of its future good estate and they are these The Immortality of the Soul the Resurrection of the Body and the great Day of Doom or last Judgment Whosoever is firmly perswaded of these three as every man is or at least pretends to be who professes himself a Christian he assuredly believes that when this Life is over both his Body and Soul shall live again and be endlessly Delighted or Tormented Comforted or Distressed in the next world according as their condition is when they leave this For by the Doctrine of Eternal Life he is assured that his Soul shall live and be adjudged to an Eternal bliss or misery By the Article of the Resurrection he is perswaded that his Body with all its powers shall spring out of the dust and be again enlivened with its ancient Soul to be a sharer of its state and joyntly to undergo an endless train of most exquisite woes or pleasures And since it is the very frame and fundamental principle of our Natures studiously to pursue Pleasure and to fly as fast from Pain to seek good and to avoid evil These states of future Happiness and Misery are such as no man who sees and believes them can possibly be unaffected with or unconcern'd in But whosoever in his own thoughts views and beholds them must needs find all his faculties awake and through an innate care and natural instinct solicitously inquisitive after that lot which shall fall to their own share Now if this endless happiness and misery both of Soul and Body in the next world were only casual and contingent the gift of blind chance or partial and arbitrary favour then would the belief of it perplex us indeed with fears and misgiving thoughts but never encourage us on to any exact care or diligent enquiry It would be in vain for us to seek what we could never find and downright folly to endeavour after satisfaction and certainty in things which are utterly casual and Arbitrary For what comes by chance is neither foreseen by us nor subject to us And what is given arbitrarily without all rule or reason is as fickle and unconstant as Arbitrary will it self is It cannot be prevented by any endeavours because it doth not
well as in those that are allowed and make us fulfil them in things sinful as well as in things innocent So that if we would be sure to conquer and subdue them in all such instances as are sinful we must take care that they grow not strong upon us in any instances whatsoever but infeeble them and keep them low and make them tame and governable ready to come or go at our own pleasure And this now is a piece of Command and Mastery which is never to be hoped for in gratifying and indulging them in any sort of instances but only by mortifying and denying them in all For this power of denying them at our own pleasure cannot otherwise be attained but by a long use and custom of denials we must learn to deny and mortifie them in particular Instances before we can in any reason hope to deny them for altogether And this mortification and denial of our lawful and innocent bodily appetites being thus plainly necessary to the denial and mortification of our sinful and unlawful bodily desires and actions our Lord Christ who best understood the necessities of our natures what instruments were most necessary and what means most proportionate for us has enacted it into a Law So that now 't is every mans duty to mortifie and deny not only all sinful bodily actions and desires but so far as is necessary unto that all such as are innocent and lawful also And according to the different degrees of mens progress herein are their different perfections in Vertue and their different measures of security and assurance that they shall continue in it It being only the unmortifiedness of their fleshly desires which can prove a Snare to them and a dangerous temptation Every man as S t James says being tempted then when he is drawn away of his own Lusts and enticed Jam. 1.14 And all the forenamed Vertues viz. Temperance Sobriety Chastity c. are Duties incumbent upon us and implied in that care which this general Vertue Sobriety takes of our meaner Part our Bodies And then as for what more directly concerns our Souls that dueness and decency which Sobriety prescribes in their actions and towards them is either 1. In thinking no better of our selves than we deserve but having a just sense of all our weaknesses and defects which is humility and lowliness of mind 2. In taking all that just care and thoughtfulness after their future good and happiness which their worth requires which is heavenly-mindedness or contriving and designing for the things of Heaven So that those particular Laws of God which command something to be done by us towards our own selves both as to our Bodies and our Souls and which are all comprized under the general Name Sobriety are these The Law of humility of heavenly-mindedness of temperance of sobriety of chastity of continence of contempt of the world and contentment with our present condition of courage and taking up the Cross of diligence and watchfulness of patience of mortification and self-denial And as he has commanded us to exercise all these Vertues towards our own selves so has he as strictly forbid us to act those Vices which are contrary to them as are these that follow First To humility or lowliness of mind is opposed 1. An over-high conceit of our own excellence and preheminence above others making us set our selves and strive to appear above them and contemn and despise them as persons that are below us which is pride 2. An outward expression of this in making a false shew of more excellence than indeed we have whether in religions natural or civil endowments which implies hypocrisie joyn'd with pride and is called arrogance ostentation boasting 3. An industrious affecting in all things by setting out our own praise and exposing our atchievements to get the honour and praise of others answerable to the conceit which we have of our own selves which is vain-glory 4. A restless pursuit of honour and great Places which we conceit our selves to be worthy of which is Ambition And the effects of this pride and elation of mind are 1. In our behaviour a scornful and contemptuous disrespect and sleight of others which is haughtiness And if it go on to an unusual and enormous degree it is insolence And this haughtine's when it is expressed in a commanding way as if we had Lordship and Authority over them is imperiousness Which when 't is shown in exacting their submission to our dogms or opinions is dogmaticalness or impatience of contradiction 2. In our Speeches of others an envious depression and disparagement of them the better to set off our own selves which is backbiting 3. In our conversation a mixture of pride and envy or an envious provoking strife of out-doing others and being better thought of our selves or of hindering their designs lest they should enjoy what we who in our own opinion deserve it better are deprived of which is emulation Secondly To heavenly-mindedness is opposed an over-industrious care of present things or being wholly or chiefly taken up with this World which is worldliness Thirdly To moderation is opposed luxury or excess And as that moderation which sobriety prescribed was either in meats or drinks c. so is this breach of sobriety in excess likewise For First To temperance is opposed intemperance which when it is a Luxury 1. In the quantity of Meat is called Gluttony 2. In the deliciousness or quality of it it is called Voluptuousness Secondly To sobriety or a moderate and undisturbing use of Drink is opposed a stupifying and intoxicating use of it which is Drunkenness And this when it is accompanied with boisterousness unchast Songs and riotous mirth is called revelling Thirdly To Chastity is opposed unchastness and that weakness which betrays us into it viz. our subjection to our bodily Lusts and inability to contain them within due bounds is called incontinence Which issues out and expresses it self 1. In preparatory enticements by an indulgence to provoking gestures touches words or actions which is called lasciviousness or wantonness The particular expression whereof in obscene and shameful words is filthiness And if they be uttered in picquancy of wit and smartness of conceit it is foolish or obscene Jesting 2. In the acting or execution of it which may be done 1. By one person upon their own Body alone and then 't is impurity or uncleanness 2. By two persons each with other Which if they are both men is called Sodomy and by S t Paul Rom. 1.27 Men with men working that which is unseemly and the persons who are guilty of it are called the abominable Rev. 21.8 And the persons suffering themselves to be so abused are called the effeminate But if they be Man and Woman then either 1. One or both are married to another and so 't is Adultery 2. Both are unmarried and so it is Fornication Which if it be 1. By the joint-consent
which are delivered in that Chapter are required as part of our walking as Children of the light and proving what is acceptable unto the Lord ver 8 10. Marriage is honourable and the Bed undefiled but Whoremongers and Adulterers God will judge Heb. 13.4 Wives are to be taught to be obedient to their own Husbands that the Word of God or Doctrine of the Gospel be not blasphemed Tit. 2.5 Let Wives be in subjection to their own Husbands For with this in old time the holy women adorned themselves even as Sarah obeyed Abraham calling and observing him as her Lord whose Daughters ye are as long as you do well and imitate her but no longer 1 Pet. 3.5 6. So that all the Laws in this relation are enjoined under the same necessity and confirmed with the same sanction as the former And as for the Particulars of the next relation they are imposed with the same strictness For natural affection the want of it S t Paul affirms plainly makes men worthy of death Rom. 1.31 The Children ought not to lay up Treasure or provide for the Parents but the Parents for the Children 2 Cor. 12.14 And if any man provide not for his own house he hath denied the Faith of Christ which indispensably enjoins it nay despising such a notorious and necessary Precept of mere Nature he is worse than any honest Infidel 1 Tim. 5.8 Fathers provoke not your Children to wrath against you by a harsh and austere Government of them but rule them in kindness and love and bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. And ye Children on the other side obey your Parents in the Lord for this is right Honour your Father and Mother that it may be well with you Ephes. 6.1 2 3 4. Which Precepts are of the number of those which he imposes on them as parts of their walking as Children of the light and proving what is acceptable unto the Lord Chap. 5.8 10. If any man have Children or Nephews let them first learn to shew piety at home and requite their Parents for this is good and acceptable to God But if any man provide not for his own especially those of his own house or Family as Parents are in the first place he hath denied the Faith and in his unnatural actions is worse than an honest Infidel 1 Tim. 5.4 8. And thus are all the Laws of this relation likewise established in the greatest strictness and our obedience to them made plainly necessary to our bliss and happiness And as for the particular Laws of natural affection and communicating upon occasion to each other of their Substance in the relation of Brethren and Sisters they are proved to be necessary in the proof of the former For the same places which require them in that relation require them in this also And then as for the Particulars of the last relation viz. that of Masters and Servants they are of equal necessity with all the foregoing If any man provide not for his own house whereof Servants are one part he hath denied the Faith and is worse than an Infidel 1 Tim. 5.8 Masters give unto your Servants that which is just and equal knowing that ye also have a Master in Heaven who will punish your unequal dealing towards them Col. 4.1 If I despise the cause of my man-servant or of my maid-servant when they argue in their own defence and contend with me what then shall I do when God rises up and when he visiteth what shall I answer him Job 31.13 14. Thou shalt not oppress an hired Servant that is poor and needy whether he be of thy Brethren a Jew or a Stranger of the Gentiles At his Day thou shalt give him his hire neither shall the Sun go down upon it for he is poor and setteth his heart upon it Deut. 24.14 15. Weep and howl O ye rich men says S t James for the miseries that shall come upon you for behold the hire of the Labourers who have reaped down your Fields and which is of you keept back by fraud crieth against you and the Cries are entred into the ears of the Lord who hearkens to them and in great Justice will one Day avenge them James 5.1 4. Ye Masters do the same things viz. good whether as to their Bodies in providing for them or to their Souls in religious instruction with a good will in expectation of a reward from the Lord to your Servants forbearing threatning knowing that your Master also is in Heaven who has threatned you if ye neglect this necessary Duty neither is there any respect of persons with him Ephes 6.8 9. Let as many Servants as are under the Yoke count their own Masters worthy of all honour that the name of God be not blasphemed as certainly it would upon their contrary practice And if any man teach otherwise he is proud knowing nothing 1 Tim. 6.1 3 4. Servants obey in all things your Masters according to the Flesh not with eye-service but in singleness or sincerity of heart without fraud or double dealing as persons fearing God And whatsoever you do do it heartily as to the Lord not to men knowing that of the Lord you shall receive the reward of the inheritance for such your obedient practice for in thus serving them you serve the Lord Christ Col. 3.22 23 24. Servants obey your Masters with fear and trembling not with eye-service as Men-pleasers but from the heart with good-will doing service as to the Lord who commands this of you and not only to men knowing that whatsoever good or ill in this particular any man doth the same shall he receive of the Lord Ephes 6.5 6 7 8. Exhort Servants to be obedient to their own Mâ—sters and to please them well by all manner of observance in all things either as to their reputation in vindicating it when 't is injured or concealing such defects as would stain and fully it or their other interests showing all good fidelity For the Grace of God which brings salvation hath appeared to all men teaching them as ever they hope to be saved by it That denying all ungodliness and worldly lusts whereof the contrary practices to these are the effect and offspring they should live soberly c. Tit. 2.9 10 11 12 13. And moreover these Precepts are part of that sound Doctrine which Titus is required to speak ver 1. in opposition to their Doctrine who in the Verse before are said to be abominable disobedient and to every good work reprobate Servants be subject to your own Masters with all fear or reverence not only to the good and gentle but also to the hard or hasty and froward For this is thank-worthy if for Conscience towards God you patiently endure grief suffering wrongfully This is acceptable to God and likewise
his Gospel Promises they are neither grievous nor extream difficult but a burthen fair and easie to be born His Commandments saith S t John are not grievous 1 Joh. 5.3 And our Lord himself who best knew the measures both of our Natures and of his own Grace declares expresly that his Yoke of Precepts is easie or gracious and favourable and his burthen light Upon which inducement he exhorts all men with the greater willingness to take it upon them and submit to it Mat. 11.30 This then all Religions in the world and we Christians above any either are or may be undoubtedly assured of that no man is indispensably bound to do what no man can do and that those things cannot be injoyn'd which can never be performed But now to live wholly without sin in an impeccable and unerring obedience to go on exactly streight in Gods way without the least wandring and to tread always firm in the paths of righteousness without ever slipping to walk so uprightly as never to fall neither by security or rashness inadvertency or weakness surprize or weariness is more than humane nature can do and is a task not for a Man but an Angel And that some slips and transgressions of this nature are such as no man of what Religion soever whether Gentile Jew or Christian can avoid is plain because no meer man ever yet did avoid them It was an undeniable Argument of Atticus in S t Jerome Give an instance of some man that did it or else confess that no meer man yet ever could do it For since there is both an utter necessity and a severe Commandment requiring it it cannot be but that some of all mankind when they had so much reason and so infinite inducement should have endeavoured to the utmost and have done it if the doing of it had been within the power of humane nature So that if it be a failing inseparable from the practice of every man we must conclude it to be unconquerable by the humane nature also But now as for this inability of performing in every instance and transgressing at no time it has been the complaint of all persons in all Religions throughout all ages of the world For as for the bravest men among the Heathens we have Seneca their great Moralist confessing freely We have all sinned more or less sayes he even of his Countrey Laws For some have sinned in great matters some in little some out of choice and design some through constraint or through the ill example and seduction of others Some have been too easily driven from good purposes and sinned though it were against their wills Nay we have not only transgressed thus far but what augments our misery we shall continue still to transgress so long as we have breath in our bodies Yea if there be any man who has so well cleansed his soul as that no temptation can win upon him yet has he run through a long train of sins before he attained to that pitch of innocence Let us perswade our selves of this in the first place sayes he again that we are all sinners For what man is he that dare say he has broken none even of his Countrey Laws But granting that he had kept all them yet how scanty and defective an innocence is that to have done only all that Good which they oblige to For how many things are required and not performed by the Divine Law of Piety of Humanity of Liberality of Justice of Fidelity of all which whether we keep or break them the Laws of our Nation take no notice And as for the Jews we find David the man after Gods own heart crying out Who can understand his errors Cleanse thou me from my secret faults Psal. 19 12. And Solomon who was the wisest and most knowing man that ever was upon the earth layes it down for an Aphorism of universal observation that there is not a just man upon earth so perfect as alwayes to do good and never sin Eccles. 7.20 Nay even the Disciples of Christ themselves who have the noblest encouragements and the greatest assistances for a most compleat and entire obedience of any men whatsoever could never yet attain to such a state as to obey universally without ever slipping The Holy Fathers in the African Councils felt this by themselves and were so deeply sensible of it from their own experience and from what they heard and presumed of others that they condemned it as a proud errour for any man to think or speak otherwise To say that our Nature is as perfect as ever Adams was and that any man now may live if he will all his life long without sin and has the same free liberty that Adam had in Paradise never to do amiss is an errour that stands condemned by the Holy Councils And what these good men thus ingenuously confessed all others have constantly complained of there being none among them who was ever able to live up so exactly to the Precepts of the Gospel as not to do against them in any instance No that was the sole Prerogative of the man Christ Jesus who in that respect had no other man to whom he could be likened For he was made like unto us in all other things indeed save only in sin which we all had more or less but he wanted Heb. 2.17 and chap. 7.26 And since this state of unerring Obedience is such as in this life no man can because no meer man ever yet did attain unto we may be sure that God doth not indispensably require it But some infirmities the Gospel must of necessity dispense with because according to the present circumstances of Humane Nature we cannot help all some must be pardoned since all cannot be escaped But besides all that has been already said to shew the consistence of some failings with a state of salvation because of the unavoidable weakness of Humane Nature which cannot perfectly get quit of them we may add this further which will evidence it beyond all exception that the best Saints of God and the unquestionable heirs of happiness have alwayes lived subject to them Those very men who are most certainly gone to Heaven went thither with some of these slips and infirmities about them They could not plead an unerring obedience but yet notwithstanding all their errours they had right to all the Promises of the Gospel They died happily although they could not live wholly without offence So that some sins do not in any wise destroy a Saint or subvert the hopes and happiness of a good man but can and do consist with them And in the proof of this the Scriptures are many and plain Holy Job who maintained his own Integrity to be such as God would accept and approve of more stoutly it may be than any man ever did confesses notwithstanding a number of sins for which although God of his abundant Grace and Mercy would not yet
Vriah and adulterating his wife For upon that he felt both these losses which I have mention'd viz. the laying waste of the virtuous temper of his own spirit and the deprivation of the good spirit of God For this sin being so long in acting as it must needs be since it required such a train of wicked plots and contrivances to the consummation of it he must needs feel all the opposition that could be made from the checks of his own Conscience and from the restraints of the Spirit of God And when he had born down both for the satisfaction of his lust and trampled them under foot for the consummation of his sin then doth he begin to feel the want and to be all in fear of losing the habitual rectitude of his own spirit which by so many contrary actions implyed in that one great one he had almost quite destroyed and of suffering the desertion of Gods spirit which by his continued provocations contained in it likewise he had well nigh abandon'd For to this purpose we find him complaining and crying out in his Psalm of repentance for that great transgression whereof at the 14 th verse he makes express mention Create or new make in me a clean heart O God sayes he and renew a right spirit within me And besides that cast me not away neither from thy presence nor take thy holy spirit from me Psal. 51.10 11. So that as for the effect of wilfull sins it is plainly this All wilfull sins whatsoever destroy our state of acceptance with God and put us into a state of enmity and death for the present But as for those among them which lay waste the Conscience they effect not that only but moreover they destroy that virtuous habit and grieve nay sometimes drive away that good spirit whereby we should restore our selves to it for the time to come And because this latter sort have the mischievous effect in making our return thus dubious and difficult they are particularly taken notice of in the accounts of God Thus for instance David had committed several deadly sins for some whereof he had undergone severe punishment as particularly for that proud presumptuous offence of his in numbring of the people 2 Sam. 24.1 10 13 c. But these made no notable decay or devastation in the virtuous temper of his soul for his own heart admonished him of the evil which he had done and he repented quickly and rose again without delay and so was presently restored to what he was before But as for his sin in the matter of Vriah it was a lasting work and took up a long deliberation and contrivance It made his Conscience hard and insensible for his own heart did not smite him into a change nor enable him to repent without a monitor So that his stay in this crying sin was long and his return both difficult and dangerous And therefore in that character which is given of him by the Holy Ghost when all the rest are buried in silence this sin particularly is expresly specified David did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord and turned not from any thing that he commanded him all the days of his life save only in the matter of Vriah the Hittite 1 Kings 15.5 Thus then as for this first part of our enquiry we see plainly of all our wilful sins that they are not consistent with a state of Grace and salvation but that they are all deadly and damning for the present if we dye under them without repenting of them and as for the future that they do all of them wound and weaken but some almost quite destroy that habitual inherent Grace whereby we should recover our selves to the state of pardon for the time to come CHAP. IV. Of the nature of involuntary sins and of their consistence with a state of salvation The CONTENTS Of involuntary actions Of what account the forced actions of the Body are in morals Two causes of involuntariness First The violence of mens passions It doth not excuse Secondly The ignorance of their understandings This is the cause of all our consistent failings and the sins that are involuntary upon this account are consistent with a state of salvation This proved 1. From their unavoidableness The Causes of it in what sense any particular sin among them is said to be avoidable 2. From the nature of God A representation of God's nature from his own Word and mens experience The Argument drawn from it for the consistence of such failings 3. From the nature and declarations of the Gospel It is fitted to beget a cheerful and filial confidence and therefore is called the Spirit of Adoption The Argument from this The Scripture-Declarations and Examples in this matter These Arguments summed up THE second sort of sins are such as are involuntary and unchosen and these are consistent with a state of salvation and such as Christ's Gospel doth not eternally threaten but graciously bears and in great mercy dispenseth with As for the involuntariness of mens actions that which produces and effects it is not any force from without upon our will it self All the things in the material world can never bind and compel the will of man seeing it is no physical bodily thing so as that any bodily force might act upon it Nothing in the world can make us will and like that which we do not like the will of man is liable to no compulsion it has this priviledge above all other things on the Earth that nothing about it can force or constrain it but that still it wills and chuses as it self pleaseth As for the actions of men indeed they are mixt things Because they flow from the whole man both Body and Soul and beginning in the mind or will within are consummate in our outward and bodily operation And as for the last of these viz. our bodily operation it may be forced forasmuch as one Body is liable to the force and compulsion of another Thus for instance a chast Matrons Body may be violently ravished A peaceable mans hand may by the overpowering strength of another man be made the forced instrument of anothers murther The bodily work and operation can be forced seeing other Bodies more powerful than it self can compel it And in this sence the Schools understand the word action viz. only for the action of the Body when they make one kind of involuntary actions to be involuntary by violence or compulsion that being a thing whereto not the will it self but the body only can be liable But now these forced actions of the Body although in Nature they be looked upon as actions yet in morality they are esteemed as none at all That is Laws which are the Rules of good and evil and the measure of mens manners take no notice of them nor look upon themselves to be either broken or kept by them because it is not the Body and Carkass
but the whole man consisting of Soul as well as Body which Laws are given as a Guide to So that a ravished Matron if only her Body suffered and there was no concurrence of her own consent to it is as chast and unpolluted in God's account and in the censure of the Law as is the purest Virgin And therefore it was a great truth whereby Collatinus and Brutus went about to comfort the poor destowred Lucretia in Livy It is the mind say they which sins and not the Body so that in those actions wherein there is nothing of will and deliberation there is likewise no fault or transgression And this Case is expresly thus determined Deut. 22. For in the Case of the ravished Damsel whose will was no way consenting to it but who did all that she could against it it is expresly ordered that to her there is nothing to be done by way of punishment because in her there is no sin worthy of death for like as when one man is slain by another even so is this case she is not acting but suffering in it ver 26. As for him indeed who chose thus to force us 't is true that the Law will interpret what is done by our Bodies as his action because he freely chose so to compel us Our bodily Members which were forced by him were his instruments and not our own for he it was and not we ourselves who ordered and directed them We were the same in his hands as a Sword is in the hand of a man viz. the Instrument only but not the Agent So that what was done by us is not our own but his who was pleased so to make use of us In him therefore the unlawful action being willed and chosen is really a sin and transgression But in us since it was not our own it is looked upon as none There is nothing charged upon our account for it more than if it had never been done because we did not act but suffer it had nothing of our own will and therefore it can be no Article of our condemnation So much of any action therefore as is forced viz. the outward bodily operation in the estimate of good and evil of vice and vertue is of no account to us whatever it be to others because it is not our own For to make any action ours it must proceed not from our Bodies but from our selves who have Souls as well as Bodies it must come from the will within as well as from the body without and as for our will it self 't is plain that it can never be made to chuse involuntarily by force since it is not subject to any forcible violence and compulsion But although those actions which we exert our selves and wherein we are not merely passive instruments in the hands of others cannot be made involuntary by any force from without upon the will it self yet may they become so from something else within us For our wills are not the only internal Principle of humane actions but several others concur with them whereby their choice it self is influenced Our wills indeed chuse and command our actions but then our passions move and our understandings direct and carry away our very wills themselves So that they are set in a middle Station being subject to be acted upon and hurried away by some as well as they are impowered to command and govern others 1. Mens wills are subject to be violently acted by their passions which hurry them on to consent to those things which are both without and against their habitual liking and inclination When any passion is grown too strong for them although they are afraid to act that sin which it hales them to yet can they not withstand it For the Law of sin in the Members is of more force with them and prevails more over them than the Law of God in the mind So that although they have several exceptions against it they are not for all that able to refuse it but they are overcome by it and yield at last to act it though unwillingly and to fulfil it though with trouble and regret Now here is an unwillingness 't is true and things are done which otherwise would not be done because the power of mens lusts and passions is so strong that their wills cannot restrain them For all the interest which the contrary motives of Reason and Religion can make against them is not able to contend with them They can and do effect something indeed so as that the will when it doth consent to them doth it not fully and freely with perfect ease and pleasure but unwillingly with fear and reluctance But yet that which they do is not enough for the other side prevails and the will is not able to hold out but yields at last to fulfil the lust and to act the sin still But now although this be some sort of involuntariness yet is it not that which will excuse our transgressions and make all those sins which we commit under it to be esteemed consistent slips and pardonable infirmities For this state of unwilling Sinners as we heard above is no state of mercy but a state of death It is the state which S t Paul describes in the seventh Chapter of his Epistle to the Romans viz. a state of captivity and slavery under sin ver 14 23 and thereupon a state of misery and death ver 24. All the Grace which Christs Gospel allows to it is a Grace of deliverance a Grace that shall help us out of it and rescue us from it In this state of weakness and infirmity Christ found us For whilst we were yet without strength to help our selves saith S t Paul Christ dyed for us Rom. 5.6 But now since he has dyed for us he will not leave us in it but rescue and deliver us out of it For now he having dyed for us we are likewise to reckon our selves to be dead indeed unto sin for him that it should no longer master and prevail over us to reign in our mortal bodies so far as that we should fulfil the lusts thereof Rom. 6.11 12. And as for our bodily members which are the Stage whereon our lusts and passions reign we are to yield them up now not any longer instruments of unrighteousness unto the service of sin but instruments of righteousness unto the service of God ver 13. If therefore we are truly Christians and such as Christ came to make us upon our becoming which he has procured Grace and pardon for us we are not enslaved and led Captives by our passions but have conquered and subdued them This S t Paul affirms expresly For they that are Christ's says he have crucified the flesh with the passions or affections and lusts Gal. 5.24 But then besides our lusts and passions which although they do make some cannot yet effect a pardonable unwillingness there still remains one cause more which may
stay beyond that time which we are to act in if we do act at all Besides our powers of action especially where there is any strong temptation of pleasure or profit to act for are forward of themselves and ready to spring out upon the first occasion As soon as the temptation is offered to our thoughts our wills indeliberately approve and all our bodily and active powers by an unconsidered emanation start up to pursue and endeavour after it whence thinking and considering is necessary not to raise but to stop and restrain them And then if either our thoughts have been otherwise engaged and so cannot readily withdraw themselves to consider of a new object or if our thinking powers themselves are dull and heavy and thereby unfit to consider of it we presently and indeliberately go on to act the thing without all pausing and due consideration For this other reason of inconsideration also viz. the want of power or indisposition of our thinking faculty it self is not a thing wholly subject to our own will to chuse whether or when we shall fall under it Because in this state of our souls during their being here united to our Bodies they make use of our bodily powers in their use of reason and in the very exercise of thought and consideration and therefore even in them they are liable to be changed and altered just as our Bodies are For in a brisk and healthy Body our thoughts are free and quick and easie but if our Bodies are dull and indisposed our minds are so too A heaviness in our heads will make us heavy in our apprehensions and a discomposure in our Spirits whether through the strength of Wine or of a violent passion will make us discomposed and incoherent in our thoughts also And if there be an utter perverting or blasting of our bodily powers as is often seen in the bodily Diseases of Epilepsies Phrensies Apoplexies and the like there will be the same perversion or utter extinction of our conceptions likewise But now these indispositions of our Bodies which thus unfit our very souls for thought and due consideration are not in our power to order when and where they shall seize upon us For our Bodies are liable to be thus acted upon by any other Bodies of the world whether we will or no. A heavy air or an indisposing accident will work a change in our bodily temper without our leave and when once that is indisposed we cannot hinder our thoughts themselves from being indisposed too And since it is not in our power at all times to chuse whether or no we will pause and consider although we can avoid offending in those Cases wherein we can consider of it yet is it manifest that we cannot avoid offence in all Indeed if we take any particular action and in our own thoughts separate it from any particular time and from the Chain of other particular actions amongst which it lyes we shall be apt to affirm that it is such whereof we can think and consider For take any action by it self and being aware of it we can let other things alone and watch for it particularly and when we do so we are sure to find one time or other when our understandings are disposed for a due deliberation and fit and able to consider of it But then we must take notice that this supposed state of an action as separate from the Crowd of other actions and determined to no time is only imaginary and in speculation For when we come to practise them though in some we have time and power enough yet in others we find that we have not Because either they come in the throng of other business and then our thoughts being hotly employed upon other things cannot so easily be drawn from them upon the sudden to consider of them or if they call upon us when we have time to consider in yet it happens that our faculties are heavy and indisposed and so we exert them still without due consideration When we think of any particular action by it self therefore we take it out of the throng of business wherein it is involved and out of that time wherein we are indisposed and then we are bold to conclude that we can consider of it But when we come to practise it we find that our former speculation supposed false and that it comes mixt with a crowd of other things or in a time when we have troubled and discomposed thoughts So that how subject soever it was to our consideration in that separate state wherein we imagined it yet have we no power to consider of it in that throng of business or indisposition of faculties wherein we find it And this is verily the Case of several of our slips and transgressions For look upon any of the particulars by it self and take it asunder from the rest and then we shall be confident that we may bethink our selves and consider of it But take it as indeed it lyes among the mixt Crowd of other actions or as offered to our indisposed understandings and then we shall find that it slips from us without all consideration And this as I take it is intended by a great man when he tells us of sins of pardonable infirmitie that the liberty which they seem to have when we consider them in special and asunder they indeed have not when we consider them in the general viz. as involved in the crowd of other actions amongst whom they lye and altogether Upon which account of their having in them no choice and consideration he questions whether they contain that which can in strictness and propriety of speech be called sin And indeed if we understand the same by sin which S t John doth when he gives the explication of it 1 John 3.4 viz. a rejecting or contemning of the Law in which sence only a state of Grace is destroyed by it and he who is born of God cannot commit it they have not For men cannot be said to reject and despise a Law when they do not see and consider of it The liberty then which we have about those slips and transgressions which we do not know and consider of is in effect no liberty at all For we neither chuse the disobedient action it self nor the cause of it We do not chuse the sinful action it self because we do not know or consider of it Nor do we chuse the inconsideration because it is not left to our liberty whether in some of our actions we should be inconsiderate or no. And since our slips and failings which are thus involuntary by ignorance cannot be chosen or refused 't is plain that they cannot be avoided And as for all those things which we cannot avoid it is clear from what has been said above that the Gospel doth not eternally threaten us nor will God ever condemn us for them But that these slips and transgressions which being thus unknown
is no avoiding of it For the Laws of God which are impositions superinduced upon our Natures by their prohibitions make several of our most natural appetites and desires themselves to be sinful the lusts of the Flesh making up a good part of the prohibitions of the Gospel But although God by his after-prohibition has made them sinful yet from that natural necessity which he had laid upon us before we cannot live intirely free from them For our Flesh will lust and make offers after such things as are naturally fitted to its liking and we cannot help it because our Bodies so long as they are conversant among the things of this World from their natural frame and constitution will still be delighted with some things to crave and desire and pained by others to hate and abhor them This I say is natural whilst there is any life and sense in our Bodies the good and evil things of the world must of necessity thus sensibly affect them and where they are affected with pleasure there 't is natural for them to desire as where they feel pain 't is natural for them to abhor the thing which occasions and produces it These first lustings then and cravings after forbidden things are natural and were made necessary before the prohibition came to make them sinful And if by an after-Law men shall be condemned for being sensibly affected with outward things or for having a sudden lust and inclination after them upon their being so sensibly affected with them then shall they be condemned for what they could not help and dye for not performing impossibilities But God neither can nor doth make any Laws which exact things so rigorous He punishes nothing in us but what proceeded from our own will nor exacts an account of us for our natural lusts and inclinations further than they are subject to our own choice and free disposal If a sudden fear or an unclean desire arise up in the heart of an holy man from the presence of outward objects or inward imaginations and the natural temper of his Blood and Spirits he shall not be put to answer for it because he could not prevent it He could no more hinder it than he can hinder the beating of his heart or the motion of his blood seeing it was no free work of his will but a natural effect of his temper And to be condemned for that is to suffer for having flesh and blood as well as Reason and Spirit and to undergo punishment for being made up of Body as well as Soul for being a man and not an Angel As for several things indeed which follow upon the first suggestion of a prohibited object and upon the first lusting after it they are not the effects of nature but of our own choice For though a fancy of evil and a sudden lusting after it from its fansied agreeableness may obtrude it self upon us whether we will or no either by chance or by occasion of a temptation yet a continued entertainment of it and a stay upon it in our imaginations to cherish lust and inflame desire cannot come upon us but by our own liking and connivence For as soon as ever we can observe them our thoughts are our own to dispose of how and upon what we please The first thought 't is true is not always in our power to hinder because many times it comes upon us e're we can observe it For our souls as I have sometimes said are souls in flesh and make use of our bodily powers in their most spiritual operations being linked so fast to them as that they cannot but communicate and be affected with them But then the stay upon it and the continued attention to it in after-entertainment is a thing that cannot be so suddenly forced upon us but we give way to it only when and how long we our selves please So that whatsoever the first fancy and desire of evil was the after-entertainment is our own seeing it came not from any necessity of nature but from the free determination or connivence of our own will But yet even these after-thoughts and inclinations after forbidden things are not always an Article of our condemnation but then only when we consent to them or practise and fulfil them For if the forbidden thing is only fansied in our minds and craved by our appetites but has got no consent of our hearts nor any endeavours of our lives and actions according to the gracious terms of that Gospel whereby we must stand or fall it is not yet come within the terrours of Judgment nor has made us liable to Death and Hell For the evil and danger of our bodily desires we must know is the evil and danger of a temptation When our appetites desire what the prohibition has made evil and our Spirits on the other side declare what the Commandment has made good then is the time of temptation or tryal whether our wills are resolved to stick to our lusts or to our Duty and whether they will prefer God or sin And herein lyes the great danger of our natural appetites for although in themselves they are not deadly and damning to any man otherwise good yet are they traps and snares to deadly and damning sins In themselves I say to any Christian man who is otherwise good and vertuous our natural appetites are not deadly and damning The lusting and inclination of our Flesh after Meats and Drinks and after ease and pleasures and the lusting of the eye after gain and riches are not absolutely and directly forbidden or in themselves and before they have got any further an Article of our condemnation No all the desires of the Flesh are naturally necessary some to preserve our own persons and some to the preservation and propagation of Mankind This God himself has made and he allows of it It is no mans sin to have a stomach to his meat or to have desires after ease and a fleshly inclination after bodily pleasures because God has so framed our Bodies that they should and therefore he cannot be angry with us if we do desire them Indeed he has not left these desires to their own swing but has put several restraints upon them he has bound them up from some objects and in some degrees For we are forbid to desire and lust after meat and drink ease and pleasure riches and plenty when either we are injurious to other men in procuring that which we lust after or when we are excessive and intemperate in the use of it or for its sake transgress any other Commandment Our desires of meat and drink for instance must not carry us on to excessive measures in gluttony and drunkenness our carnal lusts must not draw us on to act them with undue objects in fornication adultery rapes or other prohibited uncleannesses and our desire of money must not betray us into thefts or robberies fraud and circumvention extortion and oppression niggardliness uncharitableness
and pains in fixing of our thoughts and raising of our desires through some bodily indisposition or unforeseen accidents which we cannot help our minds run sometimes still astray and our desires are cold and languid this unwill'd dulness and distraction shall not influence our main state it is a thing which we cannot help and no man living is perfectly free from it and therefore God will not be severe upon it but in great mercy he will pity and connive at it For as for the attention of our minds and the fixedness of our thoughts either in prayer or in any other business it is a thing which is not always in our own power but may be hindred and interrupted by many accidents whether we will or no. For any thing that makes our bodily spirits tumultuary and restless renders our attention small and interrupted Any high motion of our blood any former impression upon our spirits either by our precedent studies or our crowd of business will make great variety of thoughts and roving fancies obtrude themselves upon us and this is our natural frame and constitution which we must submit to and cannot remedy We can no more prevent it than we can prevent our dreams but our fancies will be struck and diverting thoughts will be thrown into us whether we will or no. For from the natural union of our souls and bodies our minds in their most spiritual operations of thinking and understanding go along with our bodily spirits and apprehend after their impressions and we can as well refuse to see when our eyes are open or to taste what is put into our mouths as we can refuse to have a thought of those things which are impressed upon our bodily fancy or imagination The connexion betwixt these is necessary and natural and there is no breaking or avoiding it So that let us be either at our prayers or at any other exercise if any temper of our bodies any accidental motion of our blood any former impressions of foregoing studies or other business stir in our fancies our thoughts must needs be diverted and our attention disturbed by them Nay in our prayers we are more apt to find it thus than in any other thing For there men oft-times use violence and screw up the fixedness of their minds and the fervency of their hearts to the highest pitch and then their bodily spirits being overstrained are liable not only to be discomposed by outward accidents but also to give back and fall of themselves and when in this manner they withdraw there is room made till they can be again recollected for other thoughts to arise instead of them All this I say happens from the very nature and frame of our bodies and from that dependance which our minds and thoughts themselves have upon them so that we cannot prevent or overcome it wholly We may and ought indeed to strive against these distractions as much as we can and to compose our thoughts as much as our natural temper or our present circumstances will suffer us when they wander in our prayers as soon as we discern it we may recollect them and when other thoughts intrude as soon as they are observed we may reject them but then this is all that we can do or that God requires we should do for we cannot pray perfectly and continuedly without them And then as for the zeal and fervency of our affections whether in our prayers or in any thing else they are fickle and very changeable and do not depend so much upon the choice of our wills as upon the temper of our bodies Some upon every occasion are more warm and eager in their passions either of love or hatred hopes or fears joy or sorrow than other men either are or can be For there is a difference in tempers as well as in palates and mens passions do no more issue out upon the same things in the same eagerness than their stomachs do after the same food with the same degrees of appetite So that as for a great fervency and a vehement affection every man cannot work himself up to it because all tempers do not admit of it For zeal and affectionateness in Devotion as in other things is more a mans temper than his choice and therefore it is not to be expected that all people should be able to raise themselves up to a transporting pitch in it but only that they should who are born to it Nay even they whose natural temper fits them for a great fervency and a high affection are not able to work themselves up to it at all times For no mans temper is constant and unchangeable seeing our very bodies are subject to a thousand alterations either from things within or from others that are without us If a mans blood is put into an irregular ferment either by a cold air or an inward distemper or any discomposing accident it spoils not only the fixedness of his thoughts but the zeal of his affections likewise Let there be any damp or disorder any dulness or indisposition either upon a mans blood or spirits and the discomposure of his body is presently felt in his soul for his thoughts flag and his passions run low and all his powers are under a cloud and suffer an abatement And this every man finds in himself when he labours under a sickly and crazy temper an aking head or any other bodily indisposition For our passions are bodily powers and are performed altogether by bodily instruments they live and dye with them and are subject to all their coolings and abatements their changes and alterations And therefore as long as our bodily tempers and dispositions alter and by reason of a number of accidents whether from without or from within themselves are still changeable and unconstant the zeal and fervency of our affections must needs be so too Thus is some distraction of mind and chilness of affection either in our prayers or in pursuit of any other thing most necessarily incident to all men We cannot wholly prevent them or live altogether free from them but sometimes they will break in and seize upon us do what we can And since we cannot help them God will not be always angry or eternally torment us for them No he knows that we are flesh and blood and his love and favour to us doth not alter as our unsetled thoughts or bodily tempers do He measures us not by the fixedness of our thoughts or by the fervency of our affections which are not always in our own power but by our wills and actions which are So that if we are careful to will and chuse what is pleasing to him and from our hearts entirely to obey him we need not doubt but that whatever involuntary distractions there may be sometimes in our thoughts or abatements in our bodily tempers whilst we are at our prayers we shall still be accepted by him We shall be accepted I say and the blessings
regard them Neither can it be collected beforehand from any fixt rule or reason seeing it observes none And what neither our greatest wisdom can foretel nor our exactest care prevent it is wholly to no purpose to make a matter of our study and enquiry But as for the Everlasting happiness or misery of our Souls and Bodies in the other Life and at the Resurrection they are not left at random nor fall out by accident but are dispensed by a wise hand and according to a fixt and established rule For it is God who distributes them and this distribution is in Judgment and the procedure in that is by Laws and those laws are unalterably fixt for us and most plainly declared and published to us in the Gospel So that now it is no impossible no nor extream difficult thing for us to understand which shall be our own state in the next world For the laws are well known proclaimed daily to every ear by a whole order of men set apart for that purpose their sence and meaning is obvious to any common understanding and the Judgment according to them at that day will be true and faithful God will Absolve all those whom his Gospel acquits but Condemn every man whom it accuses There will be no perverting of Justice through fear or favour no Sentence passed through partiality or ill will but a Tryal every way unbyassed and uncorrupt where Every one shall receive according to the things done in the body 2 Cor. 5.10 And Judgment shall pass upon all men according to their works Rom. 2.6 And thus as the belief of the two former Articles the immortal state either of Bliss or Misery for our Souls and the Resurrection of our Bodies will inflame us with restless desires so if we seriously believe it will this third Article of the great and general Judgment possess us with sure hopes of being satisfyed in this great enquiry which of the two States will fall to our own share And as this belief of the last Judgment will be the most effectual means to encourage so will it be withal the surest to guide our Enquiries after it It chalks us out a method for our search and directs us to the readiest course for satisfaction For if the happiness and misery of the next world is to be dispensed to every man for a reward or punishment according to the direction of those Laws which promise or threaten them then have we nothing more to do in this enquiry but to examine well what those laws are what obedience they require what allowances and mitigations they will bear and what lot and condition they assign us For in that day we shall be look'd upon to be what they declare us and be doom'd to that state which they pronounce for us What they speak to us all now that the Judge of all the world will pronounce upon us all then their sentence shall be his and what they denounce he will execute He will judge us by no other measure but his own Laws those very Laws which he has taken so much care to proclaim to us and continually to press upon us which he has put into every one of our hands and made to be sounding daily in our ears the laws and sanctions of the Gospel Our blessed Saviour Christ the Judge himself has told us this long ago The word that I have spoken the same shall judge men at the last day Joh. 12.48 And his great Apostle Paul has again confirmed it Rom. 2. God shall judge the world at that day according to my Gospel vers 16. If we perform what those Laws peremptorily require they now already declare us blessed and such at the last day will Christ pronounce us But if by sinning against them we fall short of it they denounce nothing but everlasting woes and miseries and those he will execute For he tells us plainly that when he shall come to judgment in the Glory of his Father with his holy Angels he will reward every man according to his works Mat. 16.27 To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and immortality he will give eternal life Rom. 2.7 But to them who obey not the Truth but obey unrighteousness indignation and wrath tribulation and anguish and that upon every man whether he be Jew or Gentile vers 8 9. For all this shall be acted in the greatest integrity without preferring one before an other It is only the difference in mens works which shall difference their conditions but they who have been equal in their sins shall be equal also in their sufferings For at the appearance of Jesus Christ God as S t Peter tells us without any respect of persons judges according to every mans work 1 Pet. 1.7.17 The way then whereby to satisfie our selves in this great matter is this To look well into the Gospel there to learn what we should be and into our own hearts and lives there to see what indeed we are and thence to conclude what in the next world whether in a state of Life or Death we shall be And to shew this to every man and to let him see now beforehand how he stands prepared for the next world and whether if he should be called away presently to the Bar of that Judgment he would be everlastingly acquitted or condemned in it is my present business and design It is to let us see our Eternal Condition before we enter on it and to make it evident to every man who is both capable and willing to be instructed what shall be his endless doom of Life or Death before the Judge pronounce it And since the Rule of that Court whereby we must all be tryed and which must measure out to us either Life or Death is as we have seen none other than the Gospel of our Judge and Saviour Jesus Christ that I may manage this enquiry with the greater light and clearness I will proceed in this method First I will enquire What is that condition of our happiness or misery which the Gospel indispensably exacts Secondly What are its mitigations and allowances those defects which it pardons and bears with And when at any time we fall short of this condition and thereby forfeit all right and title to that happiness and pardon which is promised to us upon it Then Thirdly What are those remedies and means of recovery which it points us out for restoring our selves again unto a state of Grace and Favour and whereupon we shall be reconciled And having by this means discovered what in the great and general judgment shall really and truly determine our last estate what shall be connived at in it and when once 't is lost what shall restore to it I shall in the Fourth and last place Remove those groundless doubts and scruples which perplex the minds of good and safe but yet erring and misguided people concerniâ—â— it And having in this manner cleared up all thâ—se
worldly lusts we should LIVE SOBERLY GODLY and RIGHTEOVSLY in this present world Tit. 2.11 12. I begin with that which contains all our Duty towards our selves viz. Sobriety Sobriety is in the general Such a regulation of all our actions whether they concern our Bodies or our Souls as makes it appear that they are guided by a sound mind presiding in Flesh and that the animal Body which they flow from is under the Command of a spiritual Reason It is a doing what is becoming and fit for such Creatures as are Soul as well as Body that have a wise and discerning Spirit which should govern and give Laws in this lump of Flesh. So that Sobriety is a taking care and giving what is due and becoming to both the Parts of our Natures viz. our Bodies and our Souls As for our Bodies all the things in the world which affect them are of a limited goodness or illness but yet in their desires and aversations of them they do not of themselves know any Limits So that in their desires and actions that dueness and decency which Sobriety prescribes is keeping within due bounds or moderation And this Moderation is either 1. Of their desires and use of such things as gratifie and delight them whether that inveigling delight which causes such excess of use and desire be 1. In Meats and our desire and use of them both as to their quantity and quality is moderated by Temperance 2. In Drinks and the like moderation there is by Sobriety more particularly so called 3. In other bodily pleasures which are particularly called Lust and our bodily desires and use of them are moderated by Chastity And the ability to contain our selves and to restrain the violence of our desires herein is called Continence 4. In Riches and Honours and the desire and use of these are moderated by contempt of the world and contentedness In our bodily desires and use of all these things by reason of the unbridled temper of our bodily Appetites which stop at no bounds nor ever know when they have enough we are in great danger to exceed and therefore our desires and use of them stand in need to be moderated and retrenched by these Vertues that it may appear we understand and act not as brute Beasts who have nothing else but bodily appetite to guide them but as men who have wise Souls presiding in Flesh to keep within decency and due bounds the exorbitant inclinations of our Bodies Which Souls moreover as we shew by such actions are of an immortal and invaluable nature whose interest therefore is infinitely dearer to us and calls incomparably more for our care and pains than our Bodies either do or in reason ought to call for 2. Of their aversation and avoidance of such things as grieve and trouble them Whether that matter of our bodily avoidance be 1. The troubles and losses that are laid in the way of our Duty and our avoidance of these is moderated by the Duty of taking up the Cross. 2. The irksome pains which we take in going through it and performing it and our avoidance of this is moderated by the Vertues of diligence and watchfulness 3. The great evils which we have already fallen under and are suffering for it and our avoidance and flight of these is moderated and restrained by patience Our hatred and avoidance of all these evils which in themselves are naturally prone to be excessive are so to be moderated and over-ruled by these Vertues that all the world may see we are not acted as the brute Beast by mere sense and appetite which know no Rules of decency nor stop at any limits but know and do as becomes men who are endowed with spiritual and discerning Souls which understand how to give Laws and prescribe Rules of decency to our fleshly Appetites and whose sins are far worse evils than any or all the sufferings which can befal our Bodies So that to keep back from them we will not avoid and fly from these but willingly embrace and undergo them And to enable us the better thus to moderate all the desires and aversations and to keep perfectly under Command and within just bounds these naturally extravagant tendencies and propensions of our Flesh we must curb and keep it in and dead in great degrees not only its immoderate and excessive but also its innocent eagerness and inclinations lest they become a Snare to us and acquire so much strength by our indulgence of them as will carry us on to gratifie them at other times when they are not innocent but sinful which but for such curbing and conquest of them they would be sure to do And this is done by the general Vertues of mortification and self-denial The great matter indeed and principle Object of mortification and self-denial is our sinful appetites and such disobedient actions as we are tempted and drawn into by the untamed inclinations of our Bodies And this S t Paul affirms is an indispensable Duty and a Vertue of absolute necessity unto life If ye live after the Flesh saith he you shall dye but if you through the Spirit do mortifie the DEEDS of the Body you shall live Rom. 8.13 But as our sinful and disobedient appetites are the prime Object of all religious self-denial and mortification and that which is absolutely necessary as the end so likewise are our innocent appetites an inferior object of it and our mortification of them is a necessary means and instrument without which we shall never be able to mortifie the other For a free allowance of our bodily desires in all things lawful and an unlimited gratification of them in all instances whatsoever where they are innocent would certainly prove a Snare to us and betray us into a like indulgence and satisfaction of them in some Cases where they are sinful and disobedient And the reason of this is plain because if we should gratifie them in all things where we may lawfully and never deny them any thing but what is sinful they must needs come by long use and indulgence to rule in us and to have a great Power and Empire over us We shall find it a matter of great difficulty to put them by and a very painful task to deny them any thing so that whithersoever they lead us it is odds but we shall follow them But now as for their Parts they make no difference between an innocent and a sinful enjoyment they do not distinguish things into good and evil they are not moved by Law and decency but pleasure and desire what is delightsom and agrees with them whether it happen to be allow'd to them or forbidden If by a customary gratification therefore and indulgence of them in any thing even in instances that are innocent and lawful we suffer our bodily appetites to grow strong in us and to get the guidance and management of us they will over-rule us in instances that are prohibited as
them not praying at all or using passionate and modish curses or imprecations which is imprecating or praying against them 2. In Children towards their Parents it will cause besides the want of natural affection 1. A low esteem and undervaluing opinion of them in their minds which is dishonour And this if it be joined with a contemptuous disregard and fearless behaviour towards them is irreverence Which is expressed 1. In disowning or disregarding them by reason of their meanness which is being ashamed of them 2. In entertaining their weaknesses and infirmities not with pity and sorrow but with sport and delight turning them into a matter of mirth and laughter This is a mixture of hatred and scorn and is called mocking them 3. In divulging in words and instead of concealing and excusing publishing their faults and defects with reproaching of them and inveighing against them upon the account of them which is malediction or cursing of them 2. Whilst they are under them a spiting and going cross 1. To their Commands by not performing what they require but doing against it which is disobedience 2. To their impositions by not submitting to that restraint and burthen which they lay upon them which is contumaciousness or casting off subjection 3. To their interest by embezilling or secret wasting of their substance which is robbing them 3. When either they are under them or gone from them not recompencing their care and kindness by their relief and service when their Parents need requires it which is not requiting them 4. And instead of praying for them not praying at all or hasty wishing ill to them which is imprecation So that the effects of hatred in this relation or forbidding Laws are to the Parents the Law against want of natural affection against not providing for those of their own house against irreligious and evil education against provoking their Children to anger against not praying for them and imprecation of them To the Children besides that against want of natural affection the Law against dishonour against irreverence against being ashamed of their Parents against mocking them against cursing or reproach and speaking evil of them against disobedience against contumaciousness against robbing them against not praying for them or imprecation of them 3. The third sort of domestick relation that includes some instances of Love that are not due towards all men indifferently but peculiarly towards some is the relation of Brethren and Sisters And these being so nearly allied and partaking of the same blood Love betwixt them will exert it self 1. In a most passionate concern and tender affection for each other which because we seem to be carried on to it by the very force and instinct of our nature without any help of reason or need of being argued up to it is called natural affection 2. And as an effect of this a helping each other by a reciprocal service and when occasion requires by communicating mutually of their substance which S t Paul calls a providing for those of our own Family 1 Tim. 5.8 And in those things which they cannot afford themselves seeking them mutually for each other by prayer And opposite to these are the effects of hatred betwixt them which will effect 1. An unconcernedness for each other or a want of natural affection 2. A not helping of each others needs or not providing for them and not praying to God in each others behalf but making ill wishes mutually which is imprecation So that the effects of Love or commanding Laws in this relation are the Law of natural affection of providing for our Brethren of praying for them and opposite to them the effects of hatred or forbidding Laws are the Law against want of natural affection against not providing for our Brethren against not praying for them and imprecation or praying against them 4. The fourth and last relation is that of Masters and Servants And in this the effects of Love are either 1. From the Masters to the Servants Where Love will produce 1. A care of their Servants as of Members of their own Families both 1. Of their Bodies in provision and maintenance 2. Of their Souls in religious instruction and admonition 2. A Government of them that is not harsh and severe but kind and gentle such as we expect and desire that God who is our Master should use over us which therefore is called by the Apostle our dealing justly and equally with them i. e. so as we would have our Master to deal with us Col. 4.1 In particular observing 1. In our Commands to them Mercy as well as Justice in requiring nothing that God forbids which is unlawful nothing for imperiousness and commands sake only that we may create them work though we our selves receive no benefit which is unprofitable and even where we are advantaged by it nothing lastly which is either above or at least very hard and oppressive to their power and strength which is unproportionable And this is kindness and equity in commanding 2. In our threatnings and punishments tenderness and pity in not threatning and punishing out of will and power or either more or oftener than need requires which the Apostle calls forbearing or moderating threatning Ephes 6.9 3. In our rewards paying them punctually and justly what they have wrought for which is punctual payment of the wages of the Hireling 4. And besides all the kindness which we can do for them our selves whether by rewarding or promoting them procuring moreover all the good which we can for them at Gods hands by praying for them 2. From the Servants to the Masters And the nature of service being a setting over all our powers and abilities for the time to their benefit whom we are to serve the effects of Love in this relation will be 1. An opinion and esteem in the mind of their Masters preheminence and lordship over them which is honour And this being joined with an awfulness and fear of offending him who has both Authority to command and Power to punish is reverence 2. In things which they know he desires and delights in a forward care and ready industry to please him by doing them before they are bidden which is observance And this among other things effects 1. As for his or his Families defects at home concealing or excusing them 2. As for his reputation abroad when 't is injured vindicating and defending it 3. A care of their Masters Goods and carrying suitably to his pleasure always exercising 1. In those things which their Master intrusts them with a true discharge of that trust and the things committed to it which is fidelity 2. In those things which their Master commands a ready performance and execution of them which is obedience The vigorous application of themselves to the dispatch whereof is diligence Which they are to shew not only from the terrour of their Master so long as his eye is over them which the Apostle calls eye-service but from the ready
willingness of their own minds which will make them do it whether he be with them or absent from them which in the same place is called obeying with good will and from the heart Ephes. 6.6 7. 3. In those things which he imposes and inflicts whether they be just or even injust if light and tolerable a quiet and uncontending submission which is patience and subjection 4. And in those things wherein they cannot advantage him themselves commending him to Almighty God by prayer for him So that the effects of Love or commanding Laws in this relation are on the Masters side the Law of maintenance of religious instruction of a just and equal Government of them of kindness and equity in commanding of forbearance and moderation in threatning of punctual payment of the wages of the Hireling of praying for them On the Servants the Law of honour of reverence of observance of concealing and excusing their Masters defects of vindicating their injured reputation of fidelity of obedience of diligence of willing and hearty service of patient submission and subjection of praying for them And opposite to these are all the effects of hatred which will be instanced in these Particulars 1. From the Masters towards their Servants it will produce 1. A carelesness of what becomes of their Servants whether as to 1. Their Bodies in not duly maintaining or providing for them 2. Their Souls in not catechising or instructing of them 2. A Government of them which is cruel and rigorous and this being a dealing otherwise with them than we are willing to be dealt with our selves is unequal Government Which is expressed 1. In the injustice and severity of our Commands when we enjoin what God forbids which is unlawful or what tends not to benefit our selves but only to vex and trouble them which is unprofitable or what is either above their strength or exceeding hard for it which is unproportionable And this is unjustness and wantonness and rigour in commanding which if it be acted in a contemptuous haughtiness and peremptory way is imperiousness 2. In the injustice and hardship of our threatnings and punishments when we use them without occasion or more than needs when there is occasion for them which is immoderate threatning or punishing And this as it vents it self in bitter words and vehemence of vilifying expressions a fault that is incident to proud hasty Folk and lordly Masters is railing at them 3. In the dishonesty and dilatoriness of our Rewards when we either pay not at all that which was covenanted for their service or cut it short or delay it long when their necessity calls for it instantly which is defrauding or keeping back the wages of the Hireling 3. And besides all the kindness which we deny them our selves neglecting to seek for any thing for them at Gods hands by not praying for them or cursing and imprecating them which is praying against them 2. From the Servants towards their Masters where the effects of hatred are 1. A disesteem and contemptuous opinion of their Masters as persons of no worth or preheminence above themselves which is dishonour And this when it is evidenced in a careless and disrespectful behaviour towards them which argues them to stand in no fear or awe of them is irreverence 2. An industrious neglect of such things as they know are pleasing and acceptable to him and venturing upon others that will disgust and offend him which is non-observance two particular expressions whereof are 1. As to his or his families defects at home a publishing and aggravation of them 2. As to his reputation abroad a suffering it to lye under imputations that are undeserved which is not vindicating him 3. An endamagement of their Masters Goods Concerns and Authority by shewing 1. In what their Master intrusts them falseness or non-performance which is unfaithfulness And if it be instanced in making away such Goods or Mony as were committed to them 1. To their own luxury and pleasure by such ways as our Saviour sets down of eating drinking and keeping ill company Matth. 24.49 it is wastfulness of their Masters Goods 2. To their own private profit and secret enrichment it is purloining 2. In what their Masters command a careless omission of it or acting against it which is disobedience Whether this be expressed 1. In questioning and disputing the fitness and convenience of what they enjoin instead of doing and performing it which S t Paul calls answering again or speaking against and contradicting it Tit. 2.9 2. In a slow and lazy application of themselves to it when they do set about it which is slothfulness 3. In a laborious dispatch of what they are commanded only whilst their Masters eye is over them but slackning all again when he is gone from them doing all things out of dread but nothing out of choice and good will which is eye-service 3. In what their Master imposes or inflicts a not enduring or resting under it which is contumacy or resistance 4. And in such things as God is to bestow on them a not seeking to him by prayer on their behalf but praying against them So that the effects of ill will and hatred or Laws forbidding in this relation are on the Masters side the Law against not providing maintenance for his Servant against not catechizing or instructing him against unequal Government against unjustness wantonness and rigour in commanding against imperiousness against immoderate threatning against railing against defrauding or keeping back the wages of the Hireling against not praying for him and imprecation or praying against him and on the Servants side the Law against dishonour of his Master against irreverence against non-observance against publishing or aggravating his Masters faults against not vindicating his injured reputation against unfaithfulness against wasting his Goods against purloining against disobedience against answering again against slothfulness against eye-service against contumacy or resistance against not praying for them and imprecation or praying against them And thus we have seen what are the particular effects of love and hatred both towards all men in general and also towards all in those several relations wherein we stand concerned with one another in the World And in them are contained all the particular Commands and Prohibitions which make up this third Branch of Duty viz. righteousness or our Duty towards our Neighbour All that God requires of us towards other men is only to have a hearty kindness for them and in this manner to express it And all that he forbids is only our hatred of them with all the forementioned effects of it So that in the above-named instances and effects of Love in Justice Charity Peace with those others in the relations now recited is comprized the whole of this last Member of S t Paul's Division righteousness Thus at last we have seen what are all the particular instances of those three general Laws sobriety piety and righteousness wherein if we add two or
although he do not define the particular proportion of the compensation doth yet establish this satisfaction and reconciliation of our selves to our injured Brother in the general as an indispensable Duty without which nothing not our very Prayers or Oblations shall be accepted If thou bring thy gift to the Altar and there remembrest that thy Brother hath ought against thee having been injured by thee leave there thy gift and go thy way first be reconciled to thy Brother by giving him satisfaction for thy offence and then come and offer thy gift Matth. 5.23 24. Which Command is moreover one of those whose sanctions is the loss of Heaven ver 19. Blessed are the Peace-makers for they shall be called the Children of God Matth. 5.9 And thus we see of all the Laws which make any thing due to God our selves or all mankind in general whether they are instances of sobriety piety justice charity or peace that our obedience unto them all is made necessary unto life and that they are bound upon us by all our hopes of happiness and Heaven And the sanction is the same for all those Laws which make some things due in particular relations likewise For as for the Laws that bind us in the particular relation of Subjects to our Kings their sanction appears plainly from these places Let every soul be subject to the higher Powers for there is no Power but of God whosoever therefore resisteth the Power resisteth the Ordinance of God and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation Wherefore you must needs be subject not only for wrath but also for Conscience sake Render therefore to all their Dues as these following are to Kings Tribute to whom Tribute is due Custom to whom Custom Fear or Reverence to whom Fear Honour to whom Honour Rom. 13.1 2 5 7. And all these are only part of that Catalogue of Laws which he begins to reckon up and declares to them by his Apostolical Authority chap. â—2 ver 3. These things speak and exhort rebuke with all Authority and let no man despise thee who shall surely be punished as a Contemner of Christ if he do Put them in mind to be subject to Principalities and Powers to obey Magistrates Tit. 2. ver ult chap. 3. ver 1. I exhort therefore first of all that prayers of all sorts supplications intercessions petitions and giving of thanks be made for all Kings and such as are in Authority for this is in it self and will render us good and acceptable in the sight of God our Saviour 1 Tim. 2.1 2 3 and a proof moreover of that good conscience which Timothy is charged to keep chap. 1. ver 19. And for Fidelity and Allegiance this may suffice to shew its necessity that among the men of corrupt minds who are reprobate concerning the Faith and who should render the last times perillous S t Paul reckons Traitorâ— 2 Tim. 3.1 4 8. So that as for all the forementioned Duties of this relation we see their indispensable necessity and that as ever we hope to be saved by them we must perform and obey them And so it is in the particular Laws of the next relation that of people towards their spiritual Governours viz. their Bishops and Ministers as is plain from these Texts following We beseech you Brethren to know them who labour among you and are set over you in the Lord and to esteem or honour them very highly or more than abundantly in love for their works sake 1 Thess. 5.12 13. And this is one of those Precepts which are pressed upon them as they would be Children of light and not of darkness ver 5 and as they are to avoid wrath and to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ ver 9. Let him who is taught or catechized in the Word communicate unto him that teacheth or catechizeth in all good things Be not deceived God is not mocked for whatsoever a man soweth in this and other things that shall he also reap Gal. 6.6 7. Obey them that have the rule over you and submit your selves for they watch for your souls Pray for us Heb. 13.17 18. Which are part of those Precepts that are enjoined as the way whereby to serve God acceptably who is a consuming fire to destroy and devour all that dare offend him chap. 12.2 last verses And for the necessity of the several Laws in the particular relation of Husband and Wife that will appear by what follows For as for that love which is strictly required betwixt them it ought says S t Paul agreeably to the words of God at the institution of Marriage They two shall be one Flesh to be such as people have for their own Bodies Ephes. 5.28 31. Which cannot imply less than an affectionate concern and communicating in each others joy or sorrow for if one member of a mans Body suffer all the rest as the Apostle observes suffer with it and if one be honoured all the rest rejoyce with it the Members all having the same care one for another 1 Cor. 12.25 26. And also a bearing with each others infirmities as every man will do with those of his own Body and praying for each other And for particular Duties we are told in the same fifth Chapter to the Ephesians that the Husband must condescend and comply with his Wife and part not only with his own self-will but even with his own life to serve her Husbands love your Wives saith he even as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it So ought men to love their Wives as their own Bodies And how that is we all experience for no man ever yet hated his own Flesh but protecteth it and provideth well and duly for it or nourisheth and cherisheth it ver 25 28 29. In which love of his Wife as of his own Flesh is implied moreover that his Government of her be flexible and obliging nothing being more contrary to our self-love than to be commanded in peremptoriness and rigour And then as for the particular Duties of the Wife she is bid to be observant or to take care how to please her Husband 1 Cor. 7.34 To submit her will to his and to be ready to perform what he enjoins as she is to do what God commands her Wives submit your selves unto your own Husbands as unto the Lord for the Husband is the Head of the Wife as Christ is of the Church therefore as the Church is subject unto Christ so let the Wives be unto their own Husbands in every thing Ephes. 5.22 23 24. And this submission she must shew in respectful carriage and such behaviour as argues in her a fear to give offence Let the Wife see that she reverence her Husband ver 33. And all these Commands enjoining Duties both on one side and on the other
called in Christianity to inherit from Christs example this Vertue of blessing or speaking well of them who revile you And this is no indifferent thing For he that will love life and see good days must thus refrain his tongue from evil 1 Pet. 3.9 10. Let all bitterness and anger and wrath or hatred and clamour or brawling and evil speaking be put away from you with all malice Ephes 4.31 And that if you have been taught as the truth is in Jesus to put off the old man and to put on the new ver 20 21 22 24. Exhort and rebuke with all authority and let no man despise thee lest in doing so he be judged as a Despiser of Christ also Luke 10.16 Put them in mind to speak evil of no man to be no Brawlers or Quarrellers but gentle shewing all meekness opposite to surliness unto all men Tit. 2. ult Chap. 3.1 2. In the last days perillous times shall come for men shall be unthankful fierce Despisers and Haters of those that are good From such turn away for they are men of corrupt minds and reprobate concerning the faith 2 Tim. 3.1 2 3 5 8. Charity suffers long before it be provoked and so is not hasty to punish and is also kind or courteous and so not uncourteous Charity is not puffed up doth not swell and exalt it self above others in stateliness or difficulty of access and uncondescension but is condescensive and affable doth not behave it self unseemly or contumeliously seeks not her own praise or pleasure at other mens loss or shame and therefore neither mocks nor upbraids nor reproaches any is not provoked easily or not unto the height but mixes mercifulness with anger in exacting punishment which is opposite to rigour thinks or imputeth no evils or vices to men who are guilty of them in railing and reproach but kindly overlooks or lessens them as we are wont to do with persons whom we love rejoiceth not in evil and least of all in the highest sort of it iniquity of men 1 Cor. 13.4 5 6. And without this Charity all other things whatsoever will at the last Day profit nothing ver 3. The works of the Flesh are manifest which are hatred envying variance or debate Gal. 5.19 20 21. Be not deceived no revilers shall enter into the Kingdom of God 1 Cor. 6.9 10. I write unto you that if any Christian Brother be a railer to excommunicate him and with such an one to use no conversation no not so much as to eat 1 Cor. 5.11 And our Lord himself hath determined whatsoever you shall bind by excommunication on earth shall be bound also in Heaven Matth. 18.18 Judge not or be not forward to pass undervaluing and censorious judgments upon what other men do or say that you be not judged For with what judgment you judge others you shall be judged your selves both by God and men who will repay you in your own kind Matth. 7.1 2. Which Precept we must note moreover is one of those whereof Christ affirms That whosoever breaks the least of them shall be least in the Kingdom of Heaven Chap. 5. ver 19. At the Day of Judgment Christ will say unto the uncharitable Depart from me ye cursed into everlasting fire For in my poor Members I was hungry and you gave me no meat thirsty and you gave me no drink naked and you gave me no cloaths a Stranger and you were unhospitable and took me not in For in as much as ye refused it and did it not to the very least of these ye did it not to me Matth. 25.41 42 43 45. Wo unto the world because of offences or scandals for it must needs be that offences come but wo unto that man by whom the offence or scandal cometh Matth. 18.7 And as for all the prohibiting Laws in the sin of discord their penalty is expressed in these places The works of the flesh are manifest which are these hatred or enmity variance emulation strife or contention seditions or divisions heresies envyings of the which I tell you that they who do such things shall not inherit the Kingdom of God Gal. 5.19 20 21. And if we live in the Spirit let us not be desirous of vain-glory provoking one another ver 25 26. Mark those which are turbulent and contentious or cause divisions and offences among you contrary to the Doctrine which you have learned and avoid them For they that are such serve not the Lord Jesus Christ Rom. 16.17 18. Whereas there is among you strife and divisions are ye not carnal 1 Cor. 3.3 And what the punishment of that is we are told in plain terms for to be carnally minded is death Rom. 8.6 13. Study so as to be ambitious of it to be quiet which directly forbids all unpeaceableness and to do your own business not busying your selves in other mens matters Which are of the number of those Commands that were given them by the Lord Jesus so that he who despiseth them despiseth not men but God 1 Thess. 4.2 8 11. Thou shalt not go up and down as a Tare-bearer among thy people I am the Lord to judge and punish any man that doth Lev. 19.16 I fear when I come there will be found among you debates tumults and I shall be forced to bewail many or excommunicate them with mourning over them as over a dead Body at a Funeral which was the custom of the Apostles times 2 Cor. 12.20 21. And as for the prohibitions in the particular relation of Subjects to our Sovereign Princes their sanction is expressed in the Texts ensuing The filthy Dreamers who despise dominion which implies both dishonour and irreverence of it and speak evil of Dignities were before ordained to condemnation Jude 4 8 9. Let every soul be subject to the higher Powers for they that resist and rebel against the men in power and authority shall receive to themselves damnation Render therefore in fear of that penalty Tribute to whom Tribute and Custom to whom Custom is due Rom. 13.1 2 5 6 7. Submit your selves to every Ordinance of man and be obedient to it for the Lords sake from whom you shall receive a severe recompence of all your disobedience whether it be to the King himself as supreme or unto lower Officers and deputed Governours as unto those who are sent by him 1 Pet. 2.13 14. In the last Days perillous times shall come for men shall be fierce traitors c. from such turn away for they are men of corrupt minds reprobate concerning the faith 2 Tim. 3.1 4 5 8. And as for the particular prohibitions in the relation of people to their Bishops and Pastors their penalty is the same with the others already mentioned He that despiseth
with all thy heart or will and with all thy soul or affections and with all thy strength or executive and bodily powers and with all thy mind or understanding Luke 10.25 26 27 28. Obedience with all these powers and with our whole Nature is the means of life and the indispensable condition of our eternal happiness First We must keep all Gods Commandments with our minds or understandings It is a dangerous conceit for any man to phansie that he may be as sinful as he will in his thoughts so long as he only loves and chuses projects and contrives for the forbidden instance in his mind but doth not proceed so far as to obey it in his outward practice For at the last Day we must be called to account and justified or condemned by the counsels and imaginations of our minds as well as by the works of our lives For not only the works and practice but also the thoughts of the wicked or of wickedness are an abomination to the Lord Prov. 15.26 The thought of foolishness is sin Prov. 24.9 And since God forbids and hates them as ever we hope for his favour we must repent of them and forsake them Let the wicked man forsake his thoughts saith the Prophet and turn them from his sin unto the Lord and then he will have mercy upon him and abundantly pardon him Isai. 55.7 For the warfare that God has set us after which we are to attain the reward of eternal happiness is a casting down imaginations as the Apostle tells us and bringing into captivity every rebellious thought to the obedience of Christ 2 Cor. 10.4 5. In particular this obedience of our minds to the Law of God must be as a doing what he enjoins so likewise a keeping off from every thing which he forbids First In our imaginations We must not phansie it in our minds with love and delight nor indulge to any thoughts of it with such pleasure as may be a bait to our choice and weaken our aversation and hatred of it and thereby ensnare us into the practice of it Our warfare as we have heard from the Apostle must not be against actions only but against imaginations also and insnaring phancies of evil casting down rebellious imaginations and making every thought obedient to the Laws of Christ 2 Cor. 10.4 5. And in the old world when the imaginations of mens thoughts were always evil it repented the Lord that he had made man insomuch as he resolved to destroy him Gen. 6.5 6 7. Secondly In our counsels and contrivances We must not study what means are fittest what times are best and what manner is most advantageous for the acting of our sins They must no more have our care and contrivance than our service and obedience For if we cast about in our thoughts and consult about the most commodious way of committing any sin although all our designs be defeated before we come to any effect yet shall we be damned for our contrivance as well as we should for the compleat action And this our Lord himself has plainly determined in one instance and the Case is the same in all the rest For of the contrivances and machinations of murther he assures us That they as well as murther it self are of the number of those things which pollute a man and so utterly unfit him for Heaven where nothing can ever enter that is polluted or unclean Out of the heart saith he proceed evil thoughts or murtherous machinations and besides them compleat murthers adulteries c. and these defile the man Matth. 15 19. And as for that particular sort of contriving for sin which is the height and perfection of villany viz. the inventing of new and before unknown ways of transgressing it of all others is sure to meet with the severest punishment and to thrust men down into the deepest Abyss of Hell Of this sort are all invention of new Oaths new Nick-names or evil speakings new frauds and methods of couzenage new incentives of lust new modes of drinking and arts of intemperance But of these and of all others that are like unto them God will one day exact a most rigorous and terrible account For he that deviseth to do evil saith Solomon although he himself doth not act but only devise it he shall be called and dealt with as a mischievous and wicked person Prov. 24.8 And S t Pauls words are full to this purpose For he tells us expresly that in the judgment of God inventers of evil things shall be declared worthy of death Rom. 1.30 32. As for our minds or understandings then they are one faculty which is plainly implied in the Integrity of our service and without the obedience whereof at the last day God will not accept us And another faculty implied in it likewise is Secondly Our Soul or Affections It is a vain thing for any man to love and set his heart upon any particular sin and yet for all that to expect that God should love and reward him If I regard iniquity in my heart saith the Psalmist the Lord will not hear me Psal. 66.18 No man as our Saviour sayes can serve two masters for if he love the one for his sake when their interests enterfere he will hate the other so that we cannot serve God if with our affections we continue to serve sin Mat. 6.24 To pretend obedience to God and yet to love what he sorbids to make a show of his service and yet in our very hearts to hanker after his vilest enemies whom above all things his soul abhors this surely is not honestly to serve but grosly to collogue and slatly to dissemble with him For in very deed if any man love sin he sides with Gods enemy but for the service and fear of the Lord it is to hate evil Prov. 8.13 If ever we expect that God should accept our works we must offer up our affections with them For if our hearts go along with our lusts whilst our practice is against them we serve God only against our wills we submit to him as a slave doth to a tyrannous Lord not through any kindness for him but through a hatefull fear of him We utterly dislike what he bids us but yet we do it only because we dare not do otherwise But now this is such a way of performing obedience as God will never endure to accept of For he scorns to be served by a slavish fear and an unwilling mind he will never look upon a heartless sacrifice but it is the affection that we do it with which makes him set a price upon any thing that we do and our love that he regards more than our performance For this is that very thing which was thought fit to be mentioned in the command it self Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy heart with all thy soul and with all thy mind Mat. 22.37 'T is true indeed we do not find our affection so quick and
sit as their Judge Depart from me all ye that work iniquity Mat. 7.23 As for this fourth faculty therefore our strength or bodily powers in outward works and operations it is one necessary ingredient of an entire obedience The service of our works is indispensably required to our pardon and happiness as well as the service of our minds our wills and our affections so that as ever we hope to live our obedient thoughts and desires must end in an obedient practice And thus at last we see what those powers or faculties are whose concurrence in Gods Service is necessary to make up an entire obedience We must obey all the particular Laws that are recounted in the former Book with our whole man both with our minds and souls and hearts and strength all these several powers must unite in Gods Service before it will be upright and compleat such as at present his Law requires and such as at the last day he will accept of CHAP. V. Of the second sort of integrity an integrity of times and seasons The CONTENTS Of the second sort of Integrity viz. that of Times and Seasons Of the unconstancy of many mens obedience Perseverance necessary unto bliss The desperate case of Apostates both as to the difficulty of their recovery from sin and the greatness of their punishment BUt besides the Integrity of our powers and faculties or the Integrity of the Subject whereof I have discoursed hitherto there is a second sort of Integrity which is plainly necessary to make our obedience available to our salvation at the last day and that is an Integrity of seasons and opportunities or our obeying the forementioned Laws not now and then but at all times We must not think to please God by an obedience that comes and goes by fits or by serving him only at such times as we are in humour or have no temptation to the contrary But our service of him must be constant and uniform we must obey him at all times and wilfully transgress in none For although all other things have their proper season yet sin has not it is alwayes forbidden and alwayes threatned so that whensoever we commit it it puts us under the curse and makes us liable to death and hell Some indeed there are who parcel out their time and divide it betwixt God and their sins They observe a constant course of transgressing and repenting of sin and sorrow For they are alwayes won when they are tempted and they are alwayes sorrowfull when they have done They are all holy purpose and good resolution before they are tryed but when the temptation comes they can make but a poor resistance for all their good thoughts quickly vanish and they are taken They are never constant either in pious purposing or in well-doing Their actions are not all of a piece but a medly of good and bad for they still keep on in an uninterrupted vicissitude and succession of works of obedience and sin Others again there are who act more agreeably to themselves and whilst they are for God are more constant in their obedience who yet fall off at last and sin against him for altogether For either they grow faint and weary by the tediousness and length of their journey or they are turned out of the way by some great difficulties or drawn aside by the importunate allurements of some temptation and when once by any of these wayes they are put beside their duty they turn their backs thenceforward upon God and never more obey him They are seduced by ill company or drawn away by interest or frighted by persecution and from that time their care slackens and their lusts encrease and grow too hard for Grace and the Gospel And thus what from inducements from within and what from occasions from without they are quite cut off from the service of God and Religion and give themselves up to serve their lusts for altogether and to an uninterrupted obedience of sin But now as for such a broken service and obedience as this God will by no means accept of it nor shall any man be ever the better by it For when Christ comes to Judgment he will pass Sentence upon men according to what they are then and not according to what they have been formerly If the righteous man turn away from his righteousness saith Ezekiel and commit iniquity and do according to all that the wicked man doth shall he live No by no means For all his righteousness that he hath done formerly shall not be mentioned but in his trespass that he hath since trespassed and in his sin that he hath sinned in them shall he dye Ezek. 18.24 It is only if you continue in my Word saith our Saviour that you are my Disciples indeed John 8.31 You must persevere in obedience if you expect to have the reward of it For he only who endures to the end shall be saved Matth. 10.22 and none but they who by PATIENT CONTINVANCE in well doing seek for Glory and Immortality shall inherit eternal life Rom. 2.6 7. Perseverance is the indispensable condition of bliss we cannot have it cheaper Be thou faithful unto death and then saith Christ I will give thee a Crown of life Rev. 2.10 But as for all those who fall off from a good course and turn Apostates from obedience their case is desperate and their condition extreamly damnable For they grow wicked to the highest degree and their state is almost irrecoverable They have by their continued rebellion and provocations in spite of all the suggestions of Gods Grace and the checks of their own Conscience not only grieved but even quenched the Spirit of God So that God for the most part leaves them to themselves and seeks no further to reduce them For if men are idle and will not use it and much more if they scornfully cast it from them and reject it Christ hath told us plainly that the Grace which any man hath shall be taken from him Matth. 25. 29. And when once God and his good Spirit have deserted them they are under nothing but an unbridled lust and run on without all restraint into an exorbitant pitch of wickedness And this any man may easily observe in the world For who is usually so evil as the backsliding Sinner Who is ordinarily so irrecoverable as the Apostate Saint They are quite lost to all goodness and sin beyond all bounds and past all retrieve No Creatures in the World were ever so much out of all capacity to be restored to Heaven as those Angels that fell from it and no men on Earth are so hardly reclaimed from a wicked to a holy life as they who once knew what it was and yet utterly renounced it For God for the most part lets them alone to enjoy their own choice and to go on in their own way and the good Spirit which has been almost quenched by them contends no more with them nor acts any more
all Piety towards God by complying readily with all his Laws depending upon his Providence and resigning our selves up to his pleasure in all purity and soberness being free from all lust and intemperance all sinfull pleasures and covetous practices in all justice and charitableness doing right and keeping peace and shewing mercy towards all men This sayes S t James will pass for pure and undefiled Religion before God and the Father at the last day if in such instances as these we have expressed not our Opinions but our Obedience by visiting the fatherless and widows in their affliction and by keeping our selves unspotted from all filthiness and disobedience of the world But if any man pretends to be religious who is destitute of this obedience that mans religion is vain Jam. 1.26 27. Secondly Another great part and object of Religion is the Doctrines of the Gospel And agreeably another act or instance of Religious Service is Faith or Orthodox Belief And this is intended by God himself as a means to produce the former Faith being the great instrument in working out our obedience For this is that victory sayes S t John which makes us conquerors and overcometh the world even our Faith 1 Joh. 5.4 An obedient practice is all that a righteous faith aims at it is its end and perfection that which consummates and compleats it It being as S t James assures us by works which faith co-operates and concurs to that faith is made perfect Jam. 2.22 And this all the points of our Christian Faith are most admirably fitted to effect in us For in that epitome and compendious account of them whereinto they were contracted by the Apostles and which is usually called the Apostles Creed there is not any one purely speculative Article or point of idle notion and meer belief But every one is influential upon our practice and helps on our obedience as any man of competent skill and abilities may discern by running over the particulars These two then viz. Knowledge and Practice or Faith and Obedience take in the compass and integrate the nature of our Religion Obedience is the chief thing and first in Gods design and Faith or Knowledge is the great means which God has prescribed us whereby to compass and effect it So that Religion in that sense wherein the Scriptures use and God at the last day will reward it is the same as obedience to the Gospel proceeding from a belief of it or in Saint Paul's phrase an Obedient Faith or a Faith which worketh by Love Gal. 5.6 And now let any man who considers this bethink himself and tell me whether the transgression of Gods Laws can ever be called Religion in the Scripture-sense or whether it be possible for men to evidence themselves to be Religious by their disobedience For the making us obedient to Gods Laws is the great design and ruling part of all true and acceptable Religion and the belief and profession of Gods Truth is an exercise and instance of it that avails us only so far as it concurs to and effects this Religion of Obedience So that Religion is not preserved but lost by breach of Duty it is never strengthned by disobedient and sinfull means but is alwayes wasted and destroyed by them Let no man therefore ever dare to make Religion a cover for unlawfull Lusts or dream of protecting it from sufferings and persecutions this way For God will by no means endure such gross mockery and hypocritical pretensions as for men to feign piety in the breach of Duty but if they wickedly transgress his Laws and continue impenitently to disobey him let their Forms and Professions of Religion be what they will he will take severe and endless vengeance on them for their impious and irreligious disobedience If they are scandalized at the Cross that is if they fall off from religious and obedient walking into irreligious transgressions to prevent those crosses that in persecuting times are annexed to a religious practice and profession they are scandalized or offended in him The Cross is to them a stumbling-block and a rock of offence it makes them trip and turn out of their duty because they will disown their Lord and break all his Laws rather than undergo it And this is a most provoking sin and subjects men to a most dreadful punishment For as God will abundantly recompence any losses which befall us through the exercise of an obedient Religion and a pious conscience so will he also inflict such torments as infinitely surpass all those light and present advantages which we may at any time promise our selves from our politick disobedience For whosoever by sinfull means will seek in perillous and persecuting times such as those were to save his life in this world he shall certainly lose it for ever in the next world but whosoever shall lay down his life for Christs sake in taking up that cross which is laid upon a Christian profession and a Christian practice that same man shall save and encrease it eternally Luk. 9.23 24. So that no dangers in obedience can ever render it secure for any man to disobey But that which God indispensably exacts of us in perillous cases is this Fear not them which kill the body but after that is done have nothing more to fright you with being utterly unable to kill or so much as touch the soul but fear him who exacts obedience of you even at such times as your bodies are like to perish for it for he after he hath killed the body which is all that they can do is able eternally to destroy both body and soul in hell Mat. 10.28 No dangers then can make obedience cease to be our Duty nor any sufferings make it cease to be our Interest So that neither Religion nor Prudence will ever allow of sinfull means but every Religious yea every wise man must take up the Cross and patiently bear any sufferings that come upon him for Religion rather than use any breach of duty or unlawfull wayes either to prevent or remove it And this the Saints of God and Religious men alwayes did For no dangers or hazards no pains or sufferings in obedience could ever draw them to seek for shelter by disobeying David was tryed with hazards and persecutions of all sorts but neither sense of present nor fears of future evils could ever chase him from his duty or make him seek relief from iniquity and sin He could not be forced upon it by the most apparent dangers even of the most affecting loss the loss of life it self The wicked saith he have laid a snare for me yet I erred not from thy Precepts My soul is continually in my hand ready to be snatched out of it yet do I not forget thy Law Psal. 119.109 110. He was not grieved or frighted into it either by the pressure of his pains or by the number of his persecutors They had almost consumed me upon earth but
and universally performed by the primitive Christians This shown from the Characters of the Apostles and of the Primitive Writers Hence it was that they could despise Death and even provoke Martyrdom Some Pleas from our impotence against the strictness of this obedience which are considered in the next Book NOW as for this intire obedience of the whole man at all times to the whole will of God whereof I have hitherto discoursed in the foregoing Chapters it is that very obedience with all the heart and with all the soul and with all the mind and with all the strength which is so expresly called for in the words of the Commandment Luke 10.27 Deut. 11.13 It is not to be expected that all our heart and all our mind and all our soul and all our strength should be so wholly devoted to God as that we should never either will or think or desire or do any other thing than what he has commanded us No that is a Dream of utter absurdities and impossibilities For God has not only allowed us but he has made it plainly necessary for us to employ our thoughts and desires and endeavours upon several other things besides himself and his Commandments Because we cannot live without meat and other necessaries and these we cannot get without seeking nor seek without desiring nor desire without thinking on them All the innocent enjoyments of Nature and all the necessaries of life all the laudable advantages of converse and all the lawful benefits of trade and employment require our minds and hearts and souls and strength as well as God and our Duty all our Powers not only may be exercised about them but they needs must For God himself has so ordained it it being a necessity of his own making so that we must employ our endeavours about them and we cannot do otherwise And therefore when the Commandment calls for all our hearts and all our strength c. it is utterly absurd and unreasonable to understand it of such an all as excludes the exercise of these faculties upon any thing besides It doth not ingross all our power to God's use alone and shut out all other things from any place in them but may and must be understood so as to leave room for them likewise But all that is included in the latitude of that expression with all thy heart c. is set out agreeably to the use of the Phrase at other times in these three Particulars 1. It notes the sincerity and undissembledness of our faculties so as the Phrase with all the heart signifies the same as in simplicity and honesty without guile or a double heart For a dissembling hypocritical man has one heart in shew and another in reality His heart is not one intire thing but double and divided He appears to will what indeed he doth not will and to desire what in truth he doth not desire so that his whole heart doth not go together that which he outwardly professes being one but that which he inwardly intends another And this simplicity and sincere honesty of intention is expressed in the course of our common speech by this Phrase all the heart nothing being more usual in our daily converse than to give assurances of our sincerity in any thing which we do by saying it is with all our heart And as sincerity is expressed by all the heart so is dissimulation and hypocrisie on the contrary set out by a double heart And thus the men of war who were faithful to David and undissembled in their service of him are said not to have been of a double heart Psal. 12.2 Which sence the word double has not only when it is applyed to this particular faculty viz. our wills and hearts but also when it is attributed to any other And thus we read of a double that is of a dissembling tongue 1 Tim. 3.8 2. This Phrase all the heart c. implies the fervency and concernedness of our faculties And thus the Latines use the word whole when they express their being very busie or industriously intent upon a thing by saying they are whole upon it And as this Phrase all the heart c. in respect of our faculties themselves denotes these two things viz. sincerity and fervency so likewise in respect of their object or that will of God which they are to be employed about doth it imply 3. Integrity so as that this fervency and sincerity be shown in obeying not some but all the Commandments not part but the whole will of God For our heart and soul and strength must be all or whole for God that is they must be constant and uniform not various and divided being sometimes for him and at other times against him They must be for all things which he commands and for nothing that he forbids for we must neither think nor desire nor do any thing against him And in this sense the word all or whole is opposed to divided and expresses thus much that our faculties do not stand for some commands and against others that they do not divide and parcel pick and choose with Gods Laws but that they obey wholly and universally observing all and every one Now these three viz. the sincerity and fervency of our faculties and the integrity of our obedience which are conveniently expressed by the word all or whole are all indispensably required of us as appears plainly from what has been above discoursed upon this subject So that they are all implied in the latitude of this Commandment Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy mind c. But besides them nothing else is For if we should extend that precept further and make it include all that the largest compass of those words would comprehend we should give it a sence which is as I said absurd and utterly impossible And to clear this a little more wherewith so many good souls are oft-times perplexed we may further observe that those very men who will'd and thought and desired and acted other things as well as Gods Laws are yet in the Scriptures expresly recorded to have performed all that is meant in this Commandment because they served God in the particulars which I have mention'd viz. sincerely fervently and entirely For Caleb and Joshua are said to have followed the Lord wholly Numb 32.12 David kept my Commandments saith God and followed me with all his heart 1 King 14.8 Josiah did what was right in the sight of the Lord 2 Kings 22.2 Now these persons were men not only of as great necessities as others but also of far higher place and greater business in the world For their station required them to be much employed about it and to spend frequent thoughts and many desires and great pains upon it So that their whole heart and mind and soul and strength could not be employed in Gods service any otherwise than as they loved and served
making in his own defence commanded him to be smitten on the face Upon which unexpected occasion he was surprized into a sudden anger and into an unadvised irreverence God shall smite thee thou whited wall says he presently to him again for sittest thou to judge me according to the Law and yet commandest me to be smitten contrary to the Law Act. 23.1 2 3. But as soon as ever he dad done he retracts his words and confesses that his Speech was evil but yet he pleads that it was pardonable as being altogether unconsidered through the suddenness of the occasion I wist not Brethren says he that he was the High Priest I did not think of that for if I had I should not have spoke so disrespectfully to him it being thus written Thou shalt not speak evil of the Ruler of thy people v. 4 5. 2. Another innocent cause of inconsideration whereby we venture upon several actions without thinking of their sinfulness is the natural weariness of our faculties or understandings It is the very frame of our Natures and we cannot help it for our minds to be tired out by being held long and constantly to one thing We find it is so with us in all Studies whatsoever for let our thoughts be employed upon what we will they cannot be kept at stretch upon it for a long time together but either we must draw them off and relieve them or else they will flag and fail of themselves But now as for some sins they are a continued temptation They do not soon come upon us and go off as soon again but they lye before us and stick to us and for a long time are still alluring and solliciting us And here although our minds can consider of them and watch against them for some time yet by reason of their long abode with us they wax faint at last and grow weary and forgetful and then the temptation gets ground and enters when we are not aware and in some thing we prove unadvised and yield to it because we cannot hold out longer to consider of such things as should guard and preserve us from it Thus in afflictions and sickness for instance by the uneasiness of his flesh and the hardness of his condition a man is tempted to fret and murmure and to be peevish and repining But for some considerable time he stands upon his guard and his thoughts are in readiness and so long he represses his passion and keeps it under so that although the sin be importunately offered it is not embraced And if the temptation would pass off whilst he stands thus prepared to watch against it all were well and his Vertue would remain in safety But on the contrary it is lasting and permanent it sticks to him and incessantly importunes him and so proves a continual snare to him And now if his mind would endure to be held always upon the stretch and in a continued watchfulness against it all were well and he would keep back from it still But alas his Faculties after a long toil grow weary and his Powers of thinking being constantly imploy'd are spent and disabled and then his watchfulness begins to impair and his thoughts by degrees to unbend and whilst he becomes less attent and less careful to oppose the Temptation it wins ground and prevails upon him when he is not aware so that although he could not at first yet he is surprized at last into some impatient thought or peevish behaviour And the case is the same in a continued provocation to Anger Lust or other sins Now this weariness which renders us thus inconsiderate is no matter of our own chusing it is the very frame of our Nature and not the effect of our will so that we must submit to it and we cannot help it For the Soul in thinking and understanding uses bodily powers and they by exercise are spent and wasted weakned and enfeebled and therefore when by a fixt watchfulness and consideration of one thing they have been kept long attent they naturally grow weak and weary and there is no avoiding it And since we cannot help it God will never exact of us that we should but when he comes to judge us for those slips which were inconsiderate upon this account he will not punish but in great mercy pardon and bear with us And this we find that he has always done For his best Servants have been wearied into slips of this nature and yet they have not put them out of a state of Grace nor made a breach in God's acceptance but he has own'd and rewarded them as his faithful Servants still Job was a man patient to a Proverb and one to whom by the testimony of God himself there was none equal in the whole earth a perfect and an upright man one who feared God and eschewed evil Job 1.8 But yet this man of admirable Constancy and Patience was wearied out of his watchfulness by a tedious Tryal of Afflictions and in that time of his unadvisedness utter'd many things impatiently with his lips For after he had watched sore by himself and kept silence continuing still his noble Patience when his Friends came to pity him and stood amazed at his condition for seven days and seven nights together at last being over-charged with grief and wearied off from his guard against it he bursts out into a rash and foolish cursing of the day of his birth and into many repining Questions and fretful Answers Job 2.12 13 and Chap. 3. But yet notwithstanding all these and several other fretful expressions of a tired mind God owns him for his dear Servant still and honours him in the end with a most noble mark of a particular affection by accepting of his Sacrifice for his Friends when he would not accept of it from themselves Job 42.8 David the man after Gods own heart when in great fear he flyes from Saul and after several escapes made from one place to another could not either weary or avoid him being tired out of all patience and composure at last begins sinfully to call in question the truth of Gods promise For although Samuel had come from God to anoint him King and had thereby in Gods Name assured him of the Crown yet after a long confidence in Gods Faithfulness he begins at last in the tiredness of his spirit to doubt within himself whether God would be as good as his word and to say in his heart I shall now perish one day by the hand of Saul 1 Sam. 27.1 which he did as he himself gives the account of it only because the weariness of his mind through his continued and repeated dangers had made him hasty and inconsiderate I said in my haste saith he I am cut off from before thine eyes referring in all likelihood to this very case Psal. 31.22 Good Asaph by the continuance of his troubles is wearied into a like offence For although he guarded his spirit well
at the beginning and for some time yet after he had laboured long under his affliction he breaks out at last in the discomposure of his soul into these repining thoughts and distrustful expostulations Will the Lord cast off for ever and will he be favourable no more Is his mercy clean gone for ever and doth his promise fail for evermore Hath God forgotten to be gracious and hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies Psal. 77.7 8 9. But when once he had got liberty to recollect his thoughts and to recover again his former guard he doth not any longer give way to these distrustful surmises but immediately suppresses and corrects them Then I said as he goes on this is mine own infirmity v. 10 3. A third innocent Cause of inconsideration in our Actions is the discomposure and disturbance of our thinking powers which should consider of them Our souls as I said are united to our bodies and make use of their powers in their most spiritual actions of Knowledge and Apprehension And therefore upon any ruffling discomposure in our bodily spirits our thoughts are ruffled and discomposed likewise They see nothing clearly at such times nor have any distinct notices of things but are blunder'd and confused even as our bodily powers themselves are Now that which thus discomposes our bodily spirits so as that our souls can see and consider of nothing through their disorder is either strong Drink or a strong Passion For so much is all exercise of reason and consideration disturbed and hindred by these that of men in drink or in a high passion it is usually said that they are not themselves and that they have not their wits about them But although either Wine or any violent passion are sufficient causes of disturbance in our spirits and of discomposure in our thinking powers which unfit us to consider of what we do during such time as we are disturbed by them yet are not both of them innocent and able to excuse those inconsiderate slips which we commit by reason of them For drunkenness is always our own fault and if we sin unadvisedly through its discomposure we shall certainly suffer punishment because that is a discomposure of our own seeking As for our passions indeed they are causes of ambiguous quality For sometimes they grow strong in us by our own fault Either we feed them or we indulge them we suggest such things to them as will foment them or we permit them to grow unruly of themselves without checking and repressing of them as we might and should were we so minded And when our passions are thus indulged and the violence of them is of our own chusing they are themselves our sin and so cannot plead our excuse and vindication But then at other times they are forced upon us by the power and suddenness of outward objects whether we will or no. For we hate them and are afraid of them and if we were aware we would stand upon our guard and call in against them all the Aids of Reason and Religion to preserve us from being too much disturbed by them But God's Providence casts them upon us on the sudden so that we do not see them before they come nor can consider aforehand to prevent and avoid them And when once they are come by their very natural force in disturbing of our Spirits they take away from us all power of consideration So that they are unconsidered in themselves and unconsidered in their effects and therefore they are involuntary all the way And when our passions are made violent this way viz. by being raised in us not by any thing of our own search or indulgence but by the timing of God's Providence and by the suddenness and greatness of outward objects they are pardonable in themselves and will excuse our inconsiderate transgressions Those slips which we incur under them are prepared for pardon because we did not seek nor could avoid them Thus then our innocent Discomposures which unfit us for consideration are those only which are caused in us by strong passions not of our own indulging The passion which begets them must enter against our wills through the greatness and suddenness of outward objects it must be forced upon us suddenly and by surprize and then we cannot refuse it or the discomposure which ensues upon it because we have no time beforehand wherein to consider how to prevent it Now it is not every passion which the power of outward objects can force upon us on such a sudden For love desire and all those passions which have good for their object are more under our own Command and spring up in us more gradually They arrive not to such a discomposing pitch in a moment but they require more time and go on more leisurely and in all the intermedial steps they are subject to our own power so that we may arrest them if we please before they have got so far And therefore all the inconsideration which they effect in us is more or less wilful and a matter of our own choice because it proceeds from our own permission and indulgence But then as for other passions of grief anger and fear especially which have evil for their object if the opportunity be sudden and the object great enough they may be raised in us to such a degree as to amaze and confound us in a moment A man may be in such a fright upon the sudden as not to know what he doth as we see by daily experience and the case is the same in the others likewise And the reason of this difference between these passions and the former is this because the suffering of evil is far more repugnant to self-preservation and self-love which are the fundamental principle of all our passions than the absence of good For if we sit without that good which would move our love and desire we are still where we were but if we fall under that evil which excites our fear we are made miserable and much the worse that is only a denial of a farther delight but this is a real deprivation and a step towards destruction And since our self-love and self-preservation are so much more nearly concerned in the suffering of evil than in the absence of good our passions which are only their several aspects and expressions must needs be more quick and violent in that than they are in this and the discomposure upon them will be so likewise This difference there is betwixt our inconsiderateness upon the violent fears of evil and upon our violent desires and pursuit of good Which is observed by our Saviour in an instance where both were criminal in which notwithstanding the discomposure upon the fears of evil being fit to plead the more excuse made the transgression that ensued upon it to be a lesser sin For both the Jews and Pilate concurred in the grievous sin of shedding innocent blood when they crucified and murthered him
In which wicked action that which moved them was envy and malice but that which prevailed with him was his fear of their calumnies and of the anger of the Roman Emperour For in his own heart he was minded to release him being convinced of his innocence and afraid to have any hand in the Blood of one who called himself the Son of God But because he called himself a King which his own mind could not but suggest to him as the Rabble did afterwards was a Title whereof the Emperour would be extremely jealous therefore he gives him up to their will fearing lest if he did not he should be traduced as no Friend to that most jealous Prince Tiberius Caesar. And when Christ himself comes to pass Judgment in comparison of his offence and theirs He who delivered me unto thee saith he hath the greater sin Joh. 19.11 Those discomposures then of our knowing Faculties which are innocent and fit to excuse our inconsiderate slips which proceed from them are such as spring from an unwill'd sudden grief or anger but especially from an unwill'd sudden fear To make it unwill'd I say it must be sudden for if our fear it self which is a passion that amazes more than all the rest doth not presently effect any thing but stays some considerable time and reigns long before it produces any sinful action then it is a matter of our own choice being it is a fear of our own indulging We give it room and entertainment we feed it or give way to it and that makes our fear to become our sin which can never serve for our vindication For a true Christian must be as bold as a Lyon and fear nothing so much as the disobedience of his God and the breach of his Duty But as for other things which men use to be afraid of whether they be loss of Fame of Estate of Friends of Liberty or even of Life it self though he may justly fear and avoid them when he can innocently yet if they are the burden of the Cross imposed upon the doing of his Duty he must chearfully take it up and not fear and fly from but overlook and contemn them For God will make us an abundant Recompence in the next World for any thing which we part with for his sake in this And therefore he indispensably requires us as in all reason he very well may not to fear and shrink from the loss of any thing even of life it self when he calls for it but in Faith of his Promises and in hope of his Rewards most couragiously to undergo it Persecutions and Dangers which are the great objects of our fears are the chiefest tryals of our obedience for which reason they are so often in Scripture called Temptations and therefore their business is to evidence how much we will part with for obedience but by no means to excuse us when we disobey But in relation to them Christs command is this Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul but fear him who can cast both body and soul into Hell Mat. 10.28 And if we suffer our fears of them to chase us away from the owning of his Religion or to drive us from the performance of his Will his Sentence against us is plain and peremptory Whosoever is ashamed of me and my words and dare not owne them although it be in a Generation that is sinful and adulterous wherein he will be sure to suffer for the profession of them of him shall the Son of man be ashamed when he cometh in the Glory of his Father with his holy Angels Mark 8.38 As for all Fear then which drives us from our Duty it is our fault and if we stand and pause upon it and have time to deliberate and arm our selves against it if we fear still our fear is our wilful and deadly sin and doth not excuse but deserve our condemnation And such was the fear of Peter that made him deny his Lord which cost him so many penitential tears to wash off the stain of it Mat. 26.75 And in an instance of a smaller crime such was the indulged fear of Abraham when to save his own life he exposed his wife Sarah and Pharaoh King of Egypt to the danger of an adulterous mixture Gen. 12.11 12 13 15 c. Concerning which action S t Chrysostome thus discourses He participates in the Adultery of his wife and doth in a manner minister to the Adulterer unto his wife's reproach only that he himself may avoid a present death And this he did because his mind was still subject to the Tyranny of death the sting of it was not yet taken out nor his fears of it subdued but the face of it was ghastly and terrible above his courage And a like sinful practice upon a deliberate fear we meet with in Isaac in the same case who was a true Child of Abraham in his infirmities as well as in his piety Gen. 26.7 But that Fear or Grief or Anger which makes excusable and innocent discomposure must be sudden and surprizing It must seize on us suddenly and disturb our thinking powers unawares and carry us on to transgress before we can recover our selves from the discomposure And when it doth so it is forced upon us and is not chosen by us we are hurried into it without our own consent and cast upon it whether we will or no and since the inconsideration it self is thus involuntary the slips upon it are excusable and such as God will not severely punish but has been always prone to pardon and dispense with David the man after Gods own heart when he received the sad 〈◊〉 of Absoloms being slain was suddenly transported into a most impatient and indecent height of sorrow 2 Sam. 18.33 and Chap. 19. v. 2 4. Samuel who was a person so dear to God that if he could be intreated by any man he tells us it would be by him or Moses standing to intercede before him did yet in an instance that would have drawn him into the hazard of his life dispute Gods command when he should have performed it and question where in duty it became him to obey For when God bid him go and anoint David King which service was sure to draw upon him the cruel and implacable hatred of Saul through the sudden force of that frightful thought instead of obeying he answers again saying How can I go for if Saul hear of it he will kill me 1 Sam. 16.1 2. And a like instance we have of Moses's infirmity when God was for sending him upon an Errand as hazardous and much more difficult viz. his deliverance of the poor oppressed Israelites from the cruel Bondage of the powerful Egyptians Exod. Chap. 3 and 4. And Paul and Barnabas two great Apostles and most eminently pious Servants of Jesus Christ in the bitterness of dispute and heat of quarrel
could in strict justice be worthy of death was yet subject to such a conflict of flesh and spirit as this now mentioned His very Death and Passion which was the very consummation and highest part of his obedience was not without great struggling of his flesh and a long and earnest conflict of his bodily desires against it For he was in a strange fear and discomposure about it he began says S t Mark to be sore amazed Mark 14.34 And when he had recovered himself a little from the maze of that sudden fright he prays against it O my Father if it he possible let this cup pass from me Mat. 26.39 And when his request was not granted at first he makes a fresh address wherein he is more importunate being in his Agony says S t Luke he prayed more earnestly Luk. 22.44 his supplications he offered up with strong crying and tears Hebr. 5.7 All this strife and opposition did the desire of life and the bodily appetite after ease and safety together with the sense of God's wrath and high displeasure raise in him against this obedience of his sufferings But because all this was only lust and desire which although it lasted some time and discomposed him much was not yet able to gain any thing of his will and consent to it therefore notwithstanding it was he perfectly innocent All that can be said is That he was tempted by the desires of his Flesh against this great and last instance of obedience but he did not yield or consent to the temptation Thus then as for the lusts and desires of our Flesh whether they be suddenly rejected and make no resistance or are longer liv'd and contend much if they have got no consent of our wills to the fulfilling of them nor any choice of the evil which is craved by them they are only a temptation to a damning sin but in themselves thus far they are not damning As for these motions and lustings after evil things then that are unconsented to and unfulfilled which are the complaint and fear of good men they shall not harm them or be charged upon them to their condemnation But when God comes to judgment he will pardon and pass them by and not eternally punish and avenge for them And having shewn thus for what lusts and desires of evil we shall at the last day be pardoned I come now 2. To shew for which of them we shall be condemned And as for this we have in great part our answer to it already For our lusts are then damnable and dangerously evil when they are effectual instruments and temptations to damning evils and carry us on either to chuse or practise them For they are the great Favourites and Seducers of our wills and thereby the Authors of our actions they first bring us to chuse and consent to the deadly sin whereby they are gratified and then to act it and when they are gone on to either of these they are an Article of our condemnation They are uncondemning till they come so far but if once they have got us to consent to the alluring sin from that consent begins their sting and both it and all that follows it make us liable to eternal destruction To make this Discourse more clear I will here set down those several steps whereby we ascend to the completion and are carried on to the working and commission of any sin 1. At the representation of the object which is to tempt us to it whether it be an unchast embrace an unlawful gain or the like either by what we feel of it now if it be before our senses or by what we fansie if it is in our imagination our flesh is pleased and delighted with it And from this pleasure it naturally goes on to love and from loving to desire it And desire or lust is the last step among the passions for delight begets love and love ends in desire but when once we are come to desire a thing our passions have done their part and all that in them lyes towards the action 2. When in the appetite or animal soul the sin has gone thus far the next step is that to gratifie this desire or lust of our Flesh our wills should consent to it For our wills are the Disposers of all that follows so that unless they consent to get that which the Flesh so much desires there can nothing more be done towards it But if they do consent to the desire and intend to fulfil it then 3. Our understanding and contrivance is employed in deliberating and consulting what time what place what means are fittest to accomplish it with the least difficulty and the most delight and to the greatest advantage And when our minds have seen which to prefer and fix upon then 4. Our wills resolve upon them and make choice of them And when this is done the last Decree is past and all the time of doubting and deliberation is over so that nothing more remains but 5. To apply our bodily powers to perform our resolutions in the execution and commission of that which was resolved upon This is the natural order of our faculties and the process that is observed by our principles of action in their completion and final commission of any sin The first beginning is in the lower soul for that is the inlet of all sin and the seat of temptation and there it is that sin hath all its strength and insnaring power upon which account it is called by S t Paul a Law in the Members Rom. 7.23 And when these lusts of our Flesh have won the consent of our wills they are secure of all our after-contrivances for it and of our actual performance and execution of it For both our thoughts and our bodily powers are at the Command of our own wills so that if at the instigation of our lusts our wills have once consented to the sin they will quickly set our heads awork to contrive for it and our hands and other bodily powers to execute and fulfil it And in this method our Principles of action move when we act with full deliberation and when they are all employed Sometimes indeed there is no contrivance at all because none is needful as it happens when the opportunity of the sin is present with us and just before us at such time as we consent to it so that nothing more is wanting but only to act and fulfil it But when the opportunity is absent and we are put to forecast and contrive for it then is the process of our faculties in that very order which I have here described For an instance and illustration of this we will take the sin of drunkenness and the process will appear to be in that order which I have mentioned For in a man whose inclination that way disposes him to be tempted by it the fancy of it in himself or the having it suggested by another gives him a thought
sensible for God and his Laws as it uses to be for the things of the world neither can we reasonably expect it should For our affections are bodily powers and it is their very nature as Philosophy instructs us to be a vehement sensation upon some certain commotions of our bodily spirits so that God and his Laws which are things immaterial and insensible are no proper and proportionate object for them For it is only matter that is able of it self to affect matter and material and sensible objects which can excite our material and sensitive passions and appetites One bodily faculty is no more fit in its own nature to be moved by a spiritual object than another and we may as well expect that our eye should see or our fingers handle it as that our affections should of themselves issue out upon it either to love or desire or delight in it So that considering things barely in themselves I say and the natural agreeableness that is betwixt them which is the ground of their natural operations it is only bodily pain or pleasure that is of it self fit to move our bodily passions But as for spiritual and insensible objects such as God and Virtue are whatever fitness to work upon our affections they may have upon other accounts yet in themselves they have none Virtue and Obedience which are spiritual things may gain upon our wills and understandings which are spiritual and rational faculties but upon our bodily appetites and affections for their own sakes barely they never can But that which makes our affections to issue out upon God and Virtue is not the spiritual nature of God and Virtue themselves but those sensible and bodily things which flow from them and are annexed to them For although God be immaterial in himself yet infinite are those material and bodily delights which we receive from him And although Virtue and Obedience are in their own natures spiritual and insensible yet exceeding great and exceeding many are the sensible goods and pleasures that are annexed to them For Heaven and eternal life which are promised to our obedience will give a full delight not only to our souls and spirits but even to all our senses likewise It will endlesly entertain our eyes with most splendid sights and glorious objects it will feast our ears with melodious songs and most ravishing halelujahs and refresh our whole bodies with a most exalted and everlasting ease and pleasure As on the other side hell and eternal misery which are the established punishment of all sin and disobedience will bring not only upon our spirits but upon our bodies too as full a scene of most exquisite pain and sorrow For so violent and intolerable will the torments of our bodies there be that God could find nothing too high to set them out by but has expressed them by one of the most raging and tormenting things in nature eternal fire Now as for Heaven and Hell they indeed are such things as can of themselves stir our affections and bodily passions with a witness When they are set before us they are able to make us love God and our Duty above all things else and to hate nothing so much as Sin and Disobedience For no Sin can promise us so much bodily delight as is to be injoyed in Heaven neither can Obedience in any possible instance expose us to so great bodily pains as the damn'd for ever undergo in Hell So that when once Heaven and Hell are proposed to our affections and act upon them they will prevail with them more than any thing else can and make nothing so dear to them as the performance of their duty nor any thing so hatefull as the transgression of it And thus may God and Virtue become a fit object even of our bodily passions and a most cogent matter of love desire and joy as on the contrary sin and wickedness are of sorrow slight and hatred They are most powerfull to excite all these affections although not in their bare spiritual selves yet in their bodily dependants and annexed consequences For the greatest bodily joys shall one day crown our Obedience and the acutest bodily torments will certainly befall us if we disobey And these although as yet they are at a distance and future to us are most fit to work upon us and most strongly to affect us For we are Creatures endowed with understanding and have Reason given to us to set future things before us and to think our selves into passions and affections and not to be idle and altogether passive like the brute and unreasonable Creatures and suffer the bare force of outward and present objects to excite them in us So that with our bodily affections we may love and delight in God and Religion which are spiritual things because of their bodily joys and attendancies and sensibly hate and grieve at our sins and disobedience which are moral and immaterial evils because of their sensible pains and punishment And we may love the one and hate the other above all things else because no bodily joys are in any the least comparison so great as those which are laid up for the good in heaven nor any bodily pains so tormenting as those which are prepared for the damn'd in hell And since God has given to our bodily affections even in their own way the greatest motives to love him above all and above all things to hate sin it is the highest Reason that he should require it of us and demand the preeminent service not only of our spirits but also of our lower soul or affections also But although our bodily affections when they are employed about Vice and Virtue which are spiritual things by reason of this supereminence of sensitive rewards in the one and punishments in the other be more strong and powerfull yet are they not as I said so warm and sensible as they use to be when they issue out upon sensible and bodily objects We feel one in our own souls and are affected in them much more violently than we are in the other And that it must needs be so is plain For our affections for worldly things are raised in us by the things themselves and by those impressions which they make upon us and they act to the highest and according to the utmost of their power But our affections for spiritual things are to be raised in us by our own Reason we are to argue and think our selves up to them and our thoughts are free and go no further than we please to suffer them And indeed we find so much difficulty in fixing them upon any thing and there are so many other things obtruding daily upon them to divert and call them off from these that we seldom stay so long upon them or are so well acquainted with them as to be wrought up into a very warm and inflamed affection for them Besides what is the chief Reason of all that Good and Evil