and Glory § 6. And is it not a joy to you to be your Parents joy To find them love you not only as their Children but as Gods Love maketh it sweet to us to please and be beloved by those whom we love If it be not your grief to grieve your Parents and your pleasure to please them you love them not but are void of natural affection § 7. And O what a mercy will you find it when you come to age and business in the World 1. That you come with a clear Conscience not clogged terrified and shamed with the sins of your Youth 2. And that you come not utterly unfurnished with the knowledge Righteousness and Virtue which you must make use of in every condition all your lives when others are like Lads that will go to the Universities before they can so much as read or write To live in a Family of your own and to trade and converse in the World and specially to go to Church to hear to pray to communicate in private to pray to meditate in a word to live or die like a Christian like a man without the furniture of Wisdom Faith and serious Godliness is more impossible and unwise than to go to Sea without Provision or to War without Arms or to become a Priest without Book or understanding § 8. II. And you that are young men can scarce conceive what a joy a wise and godly Child is to his wise and godly Parents Read but Pro. 10.1 13.1 17.2 25. 19.13 26. 27.11 23.15 19 24 c. The Prayers and Instructions of your Parents are comfortable to them when they see the happy fruit and answer They fear not Gods Judgments upon their houses as they would do if you were Cains or Chams or Absaloms They labour comfortably and comfortably leave you their Estates at death when they see that they do not get and leave it for those that will serve the Devil with it and consume it on their Lusts but will use it for God for the Gospel and their Salvation If you fall sick and die before them they can rejoyce that you are gone to Christ and need not mourn as David for Absalom that you go to Hell If you overlive them they leave the world the easier when they leave as it were part of themselves here behind them who will carry on the work of God which they lived for and be blessings to the world when they are gone § 9. III. And O what a mercy is it to Church and State to have our posterity prove better than we have been and do God more Service than we have done and take warning by our faults to avoid the like Solomon tells us of one poor wise man that saved a City And God would have spared Sodom had there been but ten righteous Persons in it Wherever yet I lived a few persons have proved the great blessings of the place to be Teachers Guides and Exemplary to others as the little Leaven that leaveneth the Lump and as the Stomach Liver and other nutritive parts are to the Body Blessed is that Church that City that Country that Kingdom that hath a wise and just and holy People The nearest good and evil are the greatest Our Estates are not so near us as Wives and Children nor they so near us as our Bodies nor they so much to us as our Souls It 's more to a Person House or Country what they are than what they have or what others do for them or against them It is these that are Gods Children as well as ours that are the Blessing so often mentioned in the Scripture who will as the Rechabites obey their Fathers wholsom Counsels rather than their Lusts and carnal Companions and God before all Who walk not in the Counsel of the Vngodly nor stand in the way of Sinners nor sit in the seat of the scornful But their Delight is in the Law of the Lord and in that Law they meditate day and night Psal. 1. Lo such Children are an heritage of the Lord such fruit of the Womb is his Reward They are as Arrows in the hand of a mighty man Happy is the man that hath his Quiver full of them They shall not be ashamed but they shall speak with the Enemies in the gate Psal. 127.3 4 5. Were it not for wise and godly Children to succeed us Religion and Peace and all publick good would be but as we frail mortals are like the Grass or Flowers of a few days or years continuance and the difference between a Church and no Church between a Kingdom of Christians and of Infidels would be but like the difference between our waking and our sleeping time so short as would make it the less considerable CHAP. VII Vndeniable Reasons for Repentance and speedy amendment of those that have lived a fleshly and ungodly Life By way of Exhortation § 1. ANd now the Commands of God the Love of my Country and the Church the Love of Piety true Prosperity and Peace and the Love of Mankind even of your own Souls and Bodies do all command me to become once more an earnest suiter to the Youth of this Land especially of London who have hitherto miscarried and lived a fleshly sinful life Thousands such as you are dead in sin and past our warning and past all hope and help for ever Thousands that laught at Judgment and Damnation are now feeling that which they would not believe By the great mercy of God it is not yet the case of you who read these words but how soon it may be if you are yet unsanctified you little know O that you knew what a mercy it is to be yet alive and after so many sins and dangers to have one to warn you and offer you Salvation and to be yet in possibility and in a state of hope In the name of Christ I most earnestly intreat you a little while trie to use your reason and use it seriously in retired sober Consideration till you have first well perused the whole course of your lives and remembred what you have done and how Till you have thought what you have got or lost by sinning and why you did it and whether it was justifiable reason which led you to it and such as you will stand to in your sober thoughts yea such as you will stand to before God at last Consider seriously what comes next and whither you are going and whether your life have fitted you for your journeys end and how your ways will be reviewed ere long and how they will appear to you and tast at death Judgment and in the world to come Hold on and think soberly a little while what is in your Hearts and what is their condition what you most love and what you hate and whether God or sinful pleasure be dearer and more delightful to you and how you stand affected and related to the World that you are
Hell for ever O foolish sinners I beseech you think in time how mad a bargain you are making O what an Exchange For a filthy Lust or fleshly Pleasure to sell a God a Saviour a Comforter a Soul a Heaven and all your hopes Qu. 9 If the Devil or deceivers should make you doubt whether there be any Judgment and Life to come should not the meer possibility and probability of such a day and life be far more regarded by you than all fleshly pleasure which is certainly short and base Did you ever hear a man so mad as to say I am sure there is no Heaven or Hell for Souls But you are sure that your flesh must not in a dark grave you are sure that death will quickly put an end to all that this world can afford you House and Land and all that now deceive poor worldlings will be nothing to you No more than if you had never seen them save the terrible reckoning that the Soul must make Sport and Mirth and Meat and Drink and filthy Lusts are ready all to leave you to the final Sentence of your Judge And is not even an uncertain hope of Heaven more worth than certain transitory Vanity Is not an uncertain Hell to be more feared and avoided than the forsaking of these certain trifles and deceits Much more when God hath so certainly revealed to us the life to come Qu. 10. Is it a wise and reasonable expectation that the righteous God should give that man everlasting Glory who will not leave his Whores his Drunkenness or the basest vanity for all his Love and for all his Mercies for the sake of Christ nor for the hopes of all this Glory Heaven is the greatest reward of holiness and of the diligent and patient seekers of it Heaven is the greatest gift of the great Love of God And can you believe that he will give it to the slaves of the Devil and to contemning wilful Rebels May not you next think that the Devils may be saved If you say that God is merciful it 's most true and this will be the unconverted mans damnation that he would for a base Lust offend so merciful a God and sell everlasting mercy for nothing and abuse so much mercy all his life Abused and refused mercy will be the fewel to feed the flames of Hell and torment the Conscience of the impenitent for ever Doth not God know his own mercy better than you do Can he not be merciful and yet be holy and just Is the King unmerciful if he make use of Jails and Gallows for Malefactors It 's mercy to the Land to destroy such as would destroy others The bosom of eternal Love is not a place for any but the holy The heavenly Paradise is not like Mahomet's a place of Lust and sensual Delights You blaspheme the most just and holy God if you make him seem indifferent to the holy and the unholy to his faithful Servants and to the despisers of his Grace Qu. 11. If there were any possibility that unsanctified Souls should be sanctified and saved in another World is it not a madness to cast everlasting life upon so great uncertainty or improbability when we have life and time and helps to make our Salvation sure God hath called you to give all diligence to make it sure 2 Pet. 1.10 He hath made infallible promises of it to sanctified Believers He calleth you to examine and judge your selves 2 Cor. 13.5 And do you know the difference between certainty and uncertainty in so great a case O none can now sufficiently conceive what a difference there is between a Soul that is going out of the Body with joyful assurance that Christ will presently receive him and a Soul that in the guilt of sin must say I am going to an endless life and know not but it may be an endless misery I am here now and know not but I may be presently with Devils that here deceived me Just fear of passing presently to Hell fire is a dreadful case to be avoided above all earthly sufferings Luk. 12.4 and 14.33 Much more when Gods threatnings to the impenitent are most sure Qu. 12. Do you think in your hearts that you have more pleasure and sound content and peace with your Whores and in your Sports and Drink or Riches than true Believers have in God in Christ in a holy life and the hopes of everlasting Glory Judge but by the cause Is not the Love of that God that is the Lord of Life and Death and all and the pleasure of pleasing him and the sense of pardon and mercy through Christ and the firm expectation of endless joy by a promise of God sealed by his Son his Sacraments and his Spirit I say is not all this matter more worthy to rejoyce a Soul than Money and Meat and Drink and Lust Have not you those secret gripes of Conscience when you think how short the sport will be and that for all these things you must come to judgment which much abateth the pleasure of your sin Had you spent that time in seeking first the Kingdom of God and its Righteousness and in honest obedient labouring in your callings you need not have lookt back on it with the gripes of an accusing Conscience If you see a true Believer sorrowful it is not for serving and obeying God or being holy and hating sin but for serving God no better and hating sin no more Qu. 13. Have you not oft secret wishes in your hearts that you were in the case of those persons that you judge to be of the most holy and heavenly hearts and conversations Do you not think they are in a far safer and better case than you Unless you are forsaken to blindness of mind it is certainly so And doth not this shew that you chuse and follow that which is worse when your Consciences tell you it is worse and refuse that which your Consciences tell you is best But it is not such sluggish wishes that will serve To lye still and live idle and wish your selves as rich as the industrious is not the way to make you so Qu. 14. At least if you have no such wishes now do you not think that you shall wish it at Death or Judgment Do not your Consciences now tell you that you shall shortly wish O that I had hated sinful pleasure O that I had spent my short life in obeying and trusting God Will you not say with Balaam Let me die the death of the Righteous and let my last end be like his O that I were in the case of those that mortified the Flesh and lived to God and laid not up their Treasure on Earth but in Heaven And why choose you not now that which you know you shall deeply wish that you had chosen Qu. 15. I take it for granted that your merry and sensual and worldly Tempters and Companions deride all this and persuade you to despise
the Body and enter into an endless World To come to judgment for all his sins and all his ill spent days and hours and for choosing the pleasures of a Swine before Heaven and the pleasures of a Saint Little know you what it is for Devils presently to take away to Hell a wretched Soul which they have long deceived I tell you the thought of appearing before God and Christ and Angels in another World and entring on an endless state is so dreadful even to many that have spent their lives in holy preparation and are indeed in a safe Condition that they have much ado to overcome the terror of Death Even some of Gods own faithful Servants are almost overwhelmed when they think of so great a change And though the belief of God's Love and the heavenly Glory do support them and should make them long to be with Christ yet alas Faith is weak and the Change is great beyond our Comprehension and therefore feared O then in what a Case is a wicked unpardoned unprepared Wretch when his guilty soul must be torn from his Body and dragged in terror to hear its doom and so to the dreadful Execution Sinners Is this a light matter to you Doth it not concern you Are you not here mortal Do you not know what Flesh is and what a Grave is And are not your abused Souls immortal Are you so mad as to forget this Or so bad as not to believe it Will your not believing it make void the Justice and the Law of God and save you from that Hell which only believing could have saved you from Will not the fire burn you or the Sea drown you if you can but run into it drunk or winking Is feeling remediless feeling easier than believing God in time Alas What should your believing Friends do to save you They see by Faith whither you are posting They foresee your terror and undone case and fain if possible they would prevent it But they cannot do it without you If you will not consent and help your selves it is not the holyest nor wisest Friends in the World that can help you They would pull you out of the fire in fear and out of the mouth of the roaring Lion but you will not be delivered They call and cry to you O fear God and turn to him while there is hope and you will not let Conscience and Reason be awakened but those that go asleep to Hell will be past sleeping there for ever O run not madly into the everlasting Fire § 7. And indeed your sleepy security and presumption doth make your case more dangerous in itself and more pittiful to all that know it O what a sight is it to see a man go merry and laughing towards damnation and make a jeast of his own undoing To see him at the brink of Hell and will not believe it Like a mad man boasting of his Wit or a drunken man of his Sobriety Or as the Swine is delighted when the Butcher is shaving his Throat to cut it Or as the fatted Lambs are skipping in the pasture that to morrow must be kill'd and eaten Or as the Bird sits singing when the Gun is levelled to kill him Or as the greedy Fish runs striving which shall catch the Bait that must presently be snatched out of her Element and lie dying on the Bank But because I touch'd much of this in the second Chapter I will pass by the rest of your own Concerns and a little further consider how sad the case of such wretched Youths is also unto others § 8. And if Parents be wise and godly and understand such Childrens case what a grief must it needs be to their hearts to think that they have begot and bred up a Chlld for Sin and Hell and cannot make him willing to prevent it To see their Counsel set at nought their Teaching lost their Tears despised and an obstinate Lad seem wiser to himself than all his Teachers even when he is swallowing the Devil's Bait and cruelly murdering his own Soul Ah! thinks a believing Father and Mother have I brought thee into the World for this Hath all my tender natural Love so sad an issue Is this the fruit of all my sorrows my care and kindness to see the Child of my Bowels whom I dedicated in Baptism to Christ to make himself the Child of the Devil the Slave of the Flesh and World the Enemy of God and Holiness and his own destroyer and all this wilfully obstinately and against all the Counsel and means that I can use Alas must I breed up a Child to become an Enemy to the Church of God into which he was baptized and a Souldier for Satan against Christ Must I breed up a Child for Hell and see him miserable for ever and cannot persuade him to be willing to be saved O what a heart breaking must this be to those that Nature and Grace have taught to love them with tenderness even as themselves § 9. But if they be wicked Parents and as bad themselves the misery is far greater though they yet feel it not For 1. As the Thief on the Cross said to his Companion Luk. 23.40 41. Thou art in the same Condemnation and we suffer justly for we receive the due reward of our deeds Wicked Parents and wicked Children are in the same Gall of bitterness and Bond of Iniquity They sinned together and they must suffer for ever together if true Faith and Conversion do not prevent it 2. And it is their wickedness which was much of the cause of their Childrens sin and misery And their own deep guilt will be more to them than their Childrens suffering God and Conscience will say to them ere long O cruel Parents that had no mercy on your Children or your selves What did Nature teach you to love more than your selves and your Children And would you wilfully and obstinately be the ruine of both You would not have done as the mad Idolaters that offered their Children in fire to Moloch And will you offer them by sin to Satan and to Hell Had a Serpent stung them or a Bear devoured them they had done but according to their Nature But was it natural in you to further their damnation This was work too bloody for a Cannibal too cruel for an Enemy fitter for a Devil than a Father or Mother As your Child had from you his vicious nature it was your part to have endeavoured his Sanctification and Recovery You should have taught him betime to know the corruption of his nature and to seek and beg the Grace of Christ to know his God his duty the evil of sin the danger of temptations and his everlasting hopes and fears You should have taught him to know what man hath done against himself by disobeying and departing from his God and what Jesus Christ hath done for his Redemption and what he himself must do to be saved You should have taught
not help your selves Doubtless one reason why God hath put so strong a love in Parents to their Children and made your Birth and Breeding so costly to your Mothers and made the Milk which is formed in her own Body to be the first nourishment of your lives is to oblige you to answerable Love and Obedience And if after all this you prove worse than Bruits and become the grief of their Souls that thus bred and loved and nourished you do you think God will not at last make this far sadder to you than ever it was to them If cruelty to an enemy much more to a stranger to a neighbour to a friend be so hateful to the God of Love that it goeth not unrevenged O what will unnatural cruelty to Parents bring upon you Yea even in this Life as honouring Father and Mother hath a special promise of prosperity and long life so dishonouring and grieving Parents is usually punished with some notable calamity as a forerunner of the great revenge hereafter And you cannot but perceive that such as live in Sensuality and Lust and Wickedness are the great troublers of Church and State God himself hath said it There is no peace to the wicked Isa. 48.52 and 57 21. For the wicked are like the troubled Sea when it cannot rest whose waters cast up mire and dirt There is no peace saith my God to the wicked v. 22. Isa. 59.8 The way of peace they know not there is no judgment in their goings They have made them crooked paths whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace They give no peace to others and God will deny peace to themselves Yea the nature of their own sin denieth it them as broken Bones and griping sickness deny ease to the Body And can you think you shall become the shame of the Church and the troublers of the Land and that God will not trouble you for it If you will be enemies of God and your Country you will prove the sorest Enemies to your selves And who is the gainer by all this No one in the World unless you will call it the Devil's gain to have his malicious cruel Will fulfilled And sure the pleasing the Devil and a fleshly Lust Fancy or Appetite can never compensate all your losses nor comfort you under the sufferings which you wilfully bring upon your selves Young Men the reason I thus deal with you by way of question is that I may if possible engage your own thoughts in answering them For I find most are aptest to learn of themselves And indeed without your selves and your own serious thoughts we cannot help you to true understanding He that readeth the wisest Lecture to Boys or Men that take no heed to what is said yea or that will not make it their own study to understand and remember doth but cast away his labour It 's hard saving any man from himself but there is no saving any man without himself and his own consent and labour If you will but now take these twenty questions in secret into your serious thoughts and consider of them till you can give them such an answer as reason should allow and as you will stand to before God when the mouth of all iniquity shall be stopt I should not doubt but you will reap the benefit O what should a man do that pittieth blind and wilful sinners to make them willing of their own recovery Here all stops And must it stop at this Are you not willing And will you not so much as consider of the reasons that should make you willing when Heaven or Hell must be the consequence O what a thing is a blind mind and a dead and hardened heart What a befooling thing is fleshly Lust O what need had mankind of a Saviour And what need have all of a Sanctifier and of his holy word and of all the holy means of Grace Poor sinners O let not your Teachers and your Parents Counsel and Tears be brought in as witnesses against you to your condemnation O add not this to all their griefs that their Counsel and their Sorrows must sink you deeper into Hell Alas it were sadness enough to them to see that it is all in vain Let not this Counsel of mine to you be rejected to the increase of your guilt and misery If it do you no good it will leave you worse Were I present with you I should not think it too much would that prevail to kneel to you to beg that you would but well consider your own case and ways and think before of what will follow And that you will study a wise and satisfactory answer to the questions put to you till you are resolved Your case is not desperate Mercy is yet offered you The day of Grace is not yet past God is not unwilling to receive you Christ is not unwilling to be your Saviour if you consent No difficulty in the world maketh us afraid of your damnation but your own foolish choice and wicked Wills Our care is not to make God merciful nor to make Christs merits and sacrifice sufficient nor to get God to promise you pardon if you repent and come to him by Christ All this is done already but that which is undone is to make you considerate and truly willing and to live as those that indeed are willing to let go the poisonous pleasures of sin and to take God and Heaven for your hope and port on and to be saved and ruled by Christ and sanctified by his Spirit and to receive his daily help and mercies to this end in the use of his appointed means and without this you are undone for ever And is there any hurt in all this If there were is it worse than the filth of sin and the Plagues that follow here and for ever Worthy is he to bear at last Depart from me thou worker of iniquity and to be thrust away from the hopes of Heaven that after all that can be said and done chuseth sin as more desirable than this God this Saviour this Sanctifier and this Glory CHAP. VIII General Directions to the willing THough the blindness and obstinacy of fleshly Sinners too oft frustrate great endeavours yet we may well hope that the Prayers and tears of Parents and the calls of God may prevail with many and I may hope that some that have read what is before written will say We are willing to hear and learn that we may be saved tell us what it is that we must do And on that hope I shall give such miscarrying Youth some General Advice and some Counsel about their particular cases and all as briefly as I may O that the Lord would make you that read this truly willing to practise these ten Directions following How happy yet may you be I. Set your Vnderstandings seriously and diligently to the work which they are made for and consider well what is your Interest and your Duty till you come to a
do 1. The work is so high and requireth such qualifications and miscarrying in it is of such dreadful consequence that no youth should be resolvedly devoted to the Ministry that hath not all these following endowments 1. He must have a good natural Wit and Capacity it should be somewhat above the ordinary degree but it must needs be of the better rank of ordinary wits for Grace supposeth nature and by sanctifying it turns it the right way but doth not use to make wise Teachers of natural drones or weak headed lads that have not wit enough to Learn How many and how great things have they to learn and teach 2. They must have some competent readiness of speech to utter the knowledge they have got One that cannot readily speak his mind in common things is not like to come to that ready utterance which will be necessary to a Preacher 3. He must be one that is so far hopeful for Godliness 1. As to be captivated by no gross sin 2. To have a love not only to Learning but to Religion to the Word of God and good Company and Prayer and good Books and a setled dislike of the things words and persons that are against these 3. And he must shew some sence of the concerns or his soul and regard of the Life to come and that his Conscience is under some effectual convictions of the evil of sin and the goodness and necessity of a godly Life The youth that hath not these three qualifications should not be intended or devoted to the Ministry To devote an uncapable person an ungodly person to such a holy state and work is worse than of old to have offered God the unclean which he abhorred for a sacrifice And to design a graceless Lad for the Ministry on pretence of hoping that he may have Grace hereafter is a presumptious profanation and worse than to design a Coward to be a Soldier a wicked unsuitable person to be a Husband or Wife in hope they may be fit hereafter § 17. II. Therefore if your Parents have been so unwise as to devote that to God which was unfit for his acceptance it concerneth you quickly to look better to your selves and not to run into the consuming fire You should be conscious of your own condition If you may know that you want 1. A competency of natural capacity and ingenuity 2. Or of ready speech 3. Or of serious piety love to godliness and heart devotedness to God do not meddle with that calling which requireth all these § 18. Obj. But you may say What shall we do we have gone so farre that we are fit for nothing else Answ. You are less fit for the Ministry than for any thing That which requireth the highest qualifications will most shame you and condemn you if you want them If you are not fit for Physick or Law be some great mans Servant if not that it s better that you turn to the basest Trade or laborious imployment than to run into the sad case of Hophni and Phinehas or Nadab and Abihu to the utter undoing of your selves and the loss and danger of many others But if your unfitness be not in your disability but your ungodliness whether you be Ministers or not you will be for ever miserable unless you consider well the great things that should change your Hearts and Lives and turn unfeignedly to God and when that is done I am no discourager of you But believe it it is farre better to be a Cobler or Chimney sweeper or to beg your bread than to be an ungodly Clergy man with the greatest preferments riches and applause § 19. Obj. But Parents may say If we devote none to the Ministry till Godliness appear in them how few will be so devoted Children seldom shew much savour of Religion and some that seem young Saints prove old Devils Answ. 1. At the present we have so many supernumeraries that we need not fear a want of number 2. Children cannot be expected to shew that understanding in Religion which men must have But if they shew not a Love to it and a Conscience regardful of Gods authority and the Life to come and a dislike of ungodliness and sin you have no reason to presume that they will be fit for the Ministry If they had never been baptized you ought not to baptize them in such a state They must credibly profess Faith and Repentance before they can be adult Christians and so dedicated to God in baptism much more before they are dedicated to him as the Guides of the Christian Churches 3. And you can judge but according to probabilities if they prove bad after a probable profession it will not be charged upon you but we all know that a hopeful youth is a great preparation to an honest age § 20. II. My next advise to you is abhorre sloth and idleness when you are at Countrey Schools your Masters drive you on by fear but when you are in the Universities and at riper age you are more trusted with your selves and then all the diligence which fear constrained will be left off and if you be not carryed on with constant pleasure and love of knowledge the flesh will preferre its ease and unwillingness and weariness will go so slow a pace as will bring you to no high degree of Wisdom And when you have spent your appointed time and are void of that which you should have attained your emptiness and ignorance will presently appear when you are called out to the use of that knowledge which you have not And it is not your Canonical Habit nor seven or seventeen years spent in the University nor the Title of Master of Arts Batchelor of Divinity or Doctor no nor Bishop that will pass with men in their right wits instead of Knowledge Diligence Humility Patience and Charity nor that without these will do the work to which you are devoted And then when you find that other men discern that weakness and badness which you are loth to know your selves it will be like to exasperate you into diabolical malignity Beleive it the high and needful accomplishments of a true Divine are not easily or speedily attained § 21. III. My next warning is Fear and fly from sensuality and Fleshly lusts and all the baits and Temptations that may endanger you therein Sence and Appetite is born with us and it is inordinate in our corrupted nature and the reason and will that should resist and rule it are weakened and depraved labouring poor Countrey men are not in such danger in this as you are your bodies are not tired and tamed with labours nor your thoughts taken up with Wants and Cares While your bodies are at ease and your Studies are Arbitrary fleshly lust and appetite hath time and room to sollicite your phantasies and incline you to interrupt your Studies and think of the matters of sensual delight either with what to please your Appetite in eating
those that would draw you into uncharitable Factions on pretense of right Religion to hate or censure or fly from all that are not just of their Sect and way especially the proud faction of Church-Tyrants that on pretence of Order and Piety would set up a lifeless Image of Formality and burn banish silence or persecute all that are not for Domination and Usurpation and Worldly interest IV. Let not rising and riches be the chief end of your Studies but to serve God in the just service of your King and Country to promote justice and do good in the World V. Live in the familiarity of the most useful men of your Profession that is the wise and the most conscionable and choose those Pastors for your best helpers in Religion who keep closest to Gods word and warp not after any dangerous singularities or worldly preferments or unpeaceable tearing impositions on their Brethren and that live as they Preach in Love Peace and Holiness as men that set their Hearts and Hopes on future Blessedness and labour for the Churches Edification and Concord and the saving mens Souls CHAP. XII Counsel to the Sons of the Nobility and Magistrates THough men of your rank are furthest out of the hearing of such as I and usually the greatest contemners of our Counsel yet will not that excuse us from due compassion to the Land our of Nativity nor from Love and Pity to your selves nor from any probable Ministerial attempt to do you good Your dangers are much greater than other mens or else Christ had never so often told us how hard it is for Rich men to be saved and how few such escape the Idolatrous damning Love of the World and become sincere believers and followers of a Crucified Saviour Luke 12. and 16. c. I. One part of your great danger is that you are commonly bred up among the baits of sensuality It is not for nothing that fulness of bread is made one of the sins of Sodom Ezek. 16.49 and that he that after lay in the flames of Hell is described as richly cloathed and faring sumptuously every day Not that all rich Cloathes or sumptuous seasonable Feasting is a sin but that these use both to signifie sensuality and to cherish it It s the sure brand of the ungodly to be Lovers of Pleasure more than of God They that but seldom come where tempting plenty is of delicious meats and drinks are too often overcome But they that are bred up where plenty of both these is daily before them are in greater danger lest their Table and their Drink become a snare Feast not therefore without fear remember that flesh-pleasing sensuality is as damnable in the rich as in the poor and that the greatest wealth will not allow you to take any more for quantity or quality than standeth with Temperance and truly tendeth to fit you for your duty your riches are given you in trust as God's Stewards to serve your Countrey and relieve the poor and to promote good uses but not to serve your fleshly lusts nor to be abused to excess or cherish sin To be sober and temperate is the interest of your own Souls and Bodies and under your great Temptations the more laudable II. Another of your dangers is the ill examples of too many persons of your rank You are apt to think that their wealth and Pomp and Power makes them more imitable than others as being more Honourable And if they wallow in drunkenness or filthy lust or talk prophanely you may think that such sins are the less disgraceful But can you dream that they are the less Dangerous and Damnable Will God fear them or spare them Must they not die and be judged as well as the lowest Is it not an aggravation of their sin that it s done by men that had the greatest Mercies and were put in trust and honour purposely to suppress sin in the World As their places signifie more than others so do their sins and accordingly shall they be punished Doth the quondam Wealth Honour or Pleasures of a Dives a Pharaoh an Ahab a Herod a Pilate a Nero ease a lost tormented Soul III. Another of your Temptations will be Pride and overvaluing of your selves because of wealth and worldly honour But this is so foolish a sin and against such notorious humbling evidence that as it is the Devils Image it is natures shame Is not your flesh as corruptible as a Beggars Do you not think what is within that skin And how a Leprosie or the Small Pox would make you look and how you must shortly leave all your glory and your bodies become unpleasant spectacles Do you not think what it is to lye rotting in a Grave and turn to Earth And do you not know how much more loathsome a thing all the Vice and Unholiness of your Souls is And what it is to have to do with a Holy God and to be near to judgment and an endless State He is mad in sin that such considerations will not humble IV. Another of your dangers is from flatterers that will be pleasing and praising you but never tell you of that which should humble you and awake you to the sence of your Everlasting concerns But none here are so dangerous as a Flattering Clergy who being themselvs carnal worldlings would serve that flesh which is their Master by your Favour and Beneficence Ahab had such Prophets that said go and prosper in whose mouths the Devil was a lying Spirit How many sincere men have been undone by such Remember then what it is to be a sinful man and what need you have of vigilant Friends and Pastors that will deal faithfully with you as if it were on your death Bed And encourage such and abhorre worldly flatterers Your Souls have need of as strong Physick and as plain dealing as the poorest mens and therefore bear it and thankfully accept it V. And one of your greatest dangers here will be that your own fleshly minds and this worldly sort of men especially if of the Clergy will be drawing you to false contemptuous thoughts of serious Godliness and of serious godly men When as if you be not such your selves you are undone for ever and all your flatterers your big Names Wealth and Honour will neither save you nor ease your pains in Hell As ever you believe there is a God believe that you owe him the utmost reverence obedience and love that your faculties can perform And as ever you care what becomes of you for ever pay him this great due and hate all that would divert you and much more all those diabolical suggestions which would draw you to think that a needless thing which must be your life and all VI. But above all I beseech you fear and watch lest you be drawn to espouse any thing as your interest which is against the interest and command of Christ and against his Kingdom or the good of his Church or
Compassionate COUNSEL TO ALL Young-Men Especially I. LONDON-Apprentices II. Students of Divinity Physick and Law III. The Sons of Magistrates and Rich Men. By RICHARD BAXTER LONDON Printed by T. S. and are to be Sold by B. Simmons and Ionath Greenwood at the Three Golden Cocks at the West End of St. Pauls and at the Crown in the Poultry 1681. The CONTENTS Chap. 1. Prefatory Ch. 2. Of what grand Importance the Case of Youth is to themselves that betimes they live to God Ch. 3. Of what publick Concernment the quality of Youth is Ch. 4. How the Case standeth with our Youth in matter of Fact Ch. 5. How sad the Case of many of them is Ch. 6. The joyful State and Blessing of good Children to themselves and others Ch. 7. Vndeniable Reasons for the speedy Repentance of those that have miscarried By way of Exhortation Ch. 8. Directions to them that are willing to amend Ch. 9. Special Counsel to the Candidates for the Ministry Ch. 10. Short Counsel to young Students in Physick Ch. 11. Short Counsel to young Men in the Inns of Court that study the Law Ch. 12. Short Counsel to the Sons of Nobles and Magistrates Ch. 13. Some Memorials to Parents Ch. 14. A short Word to Church Ministers for Youth To the YOUTH of London and the rest of England Richard Baxter's Last and Compassionate Warning and Advice CHAP. I. THere is no man that ever understood the Interest of Mankind of Families Cities Kingdoms Churches and of Jesus Christ the King and Saviour but he must needs know that the right Instruction Education and Sanctification of Youth is of unspeakable consequence to them all In the place where God most blest my labours at Kidderminster in Worcester-shire my first and greatest success was upon the Youth And which was a marvellous way of Divine Mercy when God had toucht the hearts of young Men and Girles with a love of goodness and delightful obedience to the truth the Parents and Grandfathers who had grown old in an ignorant worldly State did many of them fall into liking and love of Piety induced by the love of their Children whom they perceived to be made by it much wiser and better and more dutiful to them And God by his unexpected disposing Providence having now twenty years placed me in and near London where in variety of places and conditions sometimes under restraint by men and sometimes at more liberty I have Preached but as to Strangers in other mens Pulpits as I could and not to any special flock of mine I have been less Capable of judging of my success But by much experience have been made more sensible of the Necessity of warning and instructing youth than I was before The sad reports of fame have taught it me The sad Complaints of mournful Parents have taught it me The sad observation of the wilful impenitence of some of my acquaintances tells it me The many score if not hundred bills that have been publickly put up to me to pray for wicked and obstinate Children have told it me And by the grace of God the penitent Confessions Lamentations and restitutions of many Converts have more particularly acquainted me with their Case Which moved me on my Thursdays Lecture a while to design the first of every month to speak to youth and those that educate them And though I have already loaded the world with books finding that God seems to be about ending my life and labours I am urged in my mind by the greatness of the case to add yet this Epistle to the younger sort Which shall contain I. The great importance of the Case of youth II. How it stands with them in matter of fact III. What are the Causes of their sin and dangerous degeneracy IV. How great a blessing wise and godly youth are to themselves and others V. How great a plague and calamity the ungodly are VI. What great reason ungodly sensual youth have presently to Repent and Turn to God VII Directions to them how to do it VIII And some Directions to Parents about their Education And all must be with the Brevity of an Epistle CHAP. II. To begin betimes to live to God is of unspeakable importance to your selves FOR 1. You were betimes solemnly Dedicated to God as your God your Father your Saviour and your Sanctifier by your Baptismal Vow And as that was a great Mercy it obliged you to great Duty You were capable in Infancy of that holy Dedication and Relation and your Parents were presently obliged as to Dedicate you to God so to Educate you for God And as soon as you are capable of performance the Vow is upon your selves to do it If your Childhood is not presently obliged to Holiness according to your natural capacity no doubt your Vow and Baptism should have been also delayed Little think many that talk against Anabaptists how they condemn themselves by the Sacred Name of Christians while they by perfidious Sacriledge deny God that which they Vowed to him 2. All your time and life is given you by God for one End and Use and all is little enough and will you alienate the very beginning and be Rebels so soon 3. The youngest have not assurance of Life for a day or an hour Thousands go out of the World in youth Alas the Flesh of young men is corruptible liable to hundreds of Diseases as well as the old How quickly may a vein break and cold seize on your head and lungs and turn to an uncurable Consumption How quickly may a Fever a Pleurisie an Impostume or one of a thousand Accidents turn your Bodies to corruption And O that I knew how to make you sensible how dreadful a thing it is to die in an unholy state and in the guilt of any unpardoned sin An unsanctified Soul that hath lived here but to the flesh and the world will be but fewel for the fire of Hell and the wrathful Justice of the most holy God And though in the course of undisturb'd Nature young men may live longer than the old yet Nature hath so many disturbances and crosses that our lives are still like a Candle in a broken Lanthorn which a blast of wind may soon blow out To tell you that you are not certain in an unsanctified state to be one day or hour more out of Hell I expect will not move you so much as the weight of the Case deserveth because meer possibility of the greatest hurt doth not affect men when they think there is no probability of it You have long been well and long you hope to be so But did you think how many hundred Veins Arteries Nerves must be kept constantly in order and all the blood and humours in due temper and how the stopping of one vein or distemper of the blood may quickly end you it would rather teach you to admire the merciful providence of God that such a body should be kept alive one year 4. But were
you sure to live to maturity of Age alas how quickly will it come What haste makes Time How fast do Daies and Years roll on Methinks it is but as a few daies since I was playing with my School-fellows who now am in the 66th year of my Age Had I no service done for God that I could now look back upon I should seem as if I had not lived A thousand years and one hour are all one that is nothing when they are past And every year day and hour of your lives hath its proper work And how will you answer for it Every day offereth you more and more mercies and will you despise and lose them If you were Heirs to Land or had an Annuity which amounted but to an hundred pounds a year and you were every day to receive a proportionable part of it or lose it would you lose it through neglect and say I will begin to receive it when I am old Poor Labourers will work hard all the day that at night they may have their wages And will you contemptuously lose your every daies mercies your safety your communion with God your daily blessings and his grace which you should daily beg and may daily receive 5. Either you will Repent and live to God or not if not you are undone for ever Oh how much less miserable is a Dog or a Toad than such a sinner But if God will shew you so great mercy oh how will it grieve you to think of the precious time of Youth which you madly cast away in sin Then you will think O what Knowledge what Holiness might I then have got What a comfortable life might I have lived O what daies and years of mercy did I cast away for nothing Yea when God hath given you the pardon of your sin the tast of his love and the hopes of Heaven it will wound your hearts to think that you should so long so unthankfully so heinously offend so good a God and neglect so merciful a Saviour and trample upon Infinite Divine Love for the love of so base a freshly pleasure That ever you should be so bad as to find more pleasure in sinning than in living unto God 6. And be it known to you if God in mercy convert and save you yet the bitter fruit of your youthful folly may follow you in this World to the grave God may forgive the pains of Hell to a penitent sinner and not forgive the temporal chastisement to his flesh If you waste your Estate in Youth you may be poor at Age If you marry a wicked Wife you may feel it till death notwithstanding your Repentance If by drinking gluttony idleness or filthy lust you contract any uncurable Diseases in Youth Repentance may not cure them till death All this might easily have been prevented if you had but had fore-seeing Wisdom Beggary Prisons Shame Consumptions Dropsies Stone Gout Pox which make the lives of many miserable are usually caused by youthful sins 7. And if ever you think to be men of any great wisdom and usefulness in the World to your selves or others your preparations must be made in Youth Great Wisdom is not got in a little time Who ever was an able Lawyer Physician or Philosopher without long and hard Study If you will not learn in the Grammar-Schools in your Childhood you will be unfit for the University at riper Age and if when you should be Doctors you are to learn to Spell and Read your shame will tell you that you should have sooner begun O that you well knew how much of the safety fruitfulness and comfort of all your after-life dependeth on the preparations of your Youth on the Wisdom and the Grace which you should then obtain As mens after trading doth on their Apprentiship 8. And O what a dreadful danger is it lest your youthful sin become remediless and custom harden you and deceivers blind you and God forsake you for your wilful resistance of his Grace God may convert old hardened sinners But how ordinarily do we find that Age doth but answer the preparations of Youth and the Vessel ever after savoureth of the Liquor which first throughly tainted it And men are but such as they learned to be and do at first If you will be perfidious breakers of your Baptismal Vows it 's just with God to leave you to your selves to a deluded understanding to think evil good and good evil to a seared conscience and a hardened heart and as past feeling to work uncleanness with greediness Ephes. 3.18 and to fight against Grace and your own Salvation till Death and Hell convince you of your madness O sport not with the Justice of a sin-hating God! Play not with sin and with the unquenchable fire Forsaking God is the way to be forsaken of him And what is a forsaken soul but a miserable Slave of Satan 9. Yea did you but know of what moment it is to prevent all the heinous sins that else you will commit you would make haste to Repent though you were sure to be forgiven Forgiveness maketh not sin to be no sin or to be no evil no shame no grief to the soul that hath committed it You will cry out O that I had never known it To look back on such an ill-spent life will be no pleasant thought Repentance though a healing work is bitter yea oft-times exceeding bitter Make not work for it if you love your peace 10. And is it a small thing to you that you are all this while doing hurt to others And drawing them to sin and plunging them into that dangerous guilt which can no way be pardoned but by the blood of Christ upon true Conversion And when they have joyned with you in lust and fleshly pleasure it is not in your power to turn them that they may joyn with you in sound Repentance And if not they must lie in Hell for ever And can you make a sport of your own and other mens damnation But this leadeth me to the Second Point I have shewed you of what vast concernment it is to your selves to begin betimes a holy life I will next shew you of what concernment it is to others CHAP. III. Of what Publick Concernment the Quality of Youth is § 1. THe welfare of the World is of far greater worth than of any single person and he hath put off Humanity who doth not more earnestly desire it If this World consisted but of one Generation then to make that Generation wise and good would be enough to make it a happy World But it is not so In Heaven and in the future glorious Kingdom there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage but they are as the Angels in a fixed everlasting State and one continued Generation maketh up the New Ierusalem Being once holy and happy they are so for ever But here it is not so One Generation cometh and another goeth If the Father be as wise as Solomon
â—appy § 6. And God in great mercy hath â—lanted yet more deeply and fixedly the Natural Love of Parents to their Children â—hat it might be in them a spring of all this â—uty so that though fleshly vice may make men mistake their Childrens good â—s most ungodly men do their own and â—hink that it consisteth in that which it doth not yet still the general desire of their Childrens well-fare as well as of their own is deeply rooted and will work for their well-fare as soon as they well know wherein it doth consist And God hath not given them this Love only for the good of the individual Children but much more for the Common-Wealth and Church that as many sticks make one fire and many exercised Souldiers one Army so many well educated Children may make up one peaceable and holy Society § 7. And accordingly it is much to be observed that God hath not given Children a natural Love and submissiveness to Parents only for the personal benefit of their provision and other helps but especially that hereby they may be teachable and obedient to those Instructions of their Parents by which they may become Blessings in their Generations and may conjunctly make up wise and holy Societies Families Churches and Common-wealths For these ends it is that God hath bound you as to reverence your Masters Tutors and Pastors so especially both to reverence and love your Parents that you may be the more capable of their necessary Instruction and Advice § 8. Yea the great strictness of God in condemning Polygamy Adultery and Fornication seemeth to be especially for the securing of the good Education of Children for their Souls and for the publick good For it is notorious that confusion in Marriages and Generation would many ways tend to the depraving of humane Education while Mothers had not the necessary encouragement to perform their part The younger Women would be a while esteemed and afterward be cast off and made most miserable and Families be like wandring beggars or like exposed Orphans Disorder and Confusion would deprive Children of much of their necessary helps and Barbarousness and bruitishness corrupt Mankind By all this it is most evident that the great means of the wellfare of the World must be the faithful and holy endeavours of Parents and the willing teachableness â—nd obedience of Children that they may escape the snares of folly and fleshly Lusts and may betimes get that Wisdom and â—ove of Goodness which may make them fit to be blessings to the places where they â—ive CHAP. IV. How the Case standeth with our Youth in matter of Fact § 1. THrough the great mercy of God many Families are sacred Nurseries for Church and Kingdom and many Parents have great comfort in the Grace of God appearing in their Children From their early Childhood many are of humble obedient Dispositions and have a love to Knowledge and a love to the word of God and to those that are good and virtuous persons They have inward convictions of the evil of Sin and a fear of sinning and a great dislike of wicked persons and a great Love and reverend Obedience to their Parents and when they grow up they diligently learn in private and in publick They increase in their love to the Scriptures and good Books and to Godly teachers and godly Company and God saveth them from temptations and worldly deceits and fleshly Lusts and they live to God and are blessings to the Land the joy of their Friends and exemplary and useful to those whom they converse with § 2. But all even religious Parents have not the like blessing in their Children 1. Some of them though religious otherwise are lamentably careless of the duty which they promised to perform at Baptism in the education of their Children and do but superficially and formally instruct them and are too faulty as to the Example which they should give them and seem to think that God must bless them because they are theirs and because they are baptised while they neglect their promised Endeavours 2. And some Children when they grow up and are bound to resist temptations and to use Gods appointed means for their own good do wilfully resist Gods Grace and run into temptations and neglect and wretchedly betray themselves and forfeit the mercies which they needed § 3. In all my observation God hath most blessed the Children of those Parents who have educated them as followeth 1. Those that have been particularly sensible what they promised for them in the Baptismal Vow and made Conscience of performing it 2. Those that have had more care of their Souls than of their outward Wealth 3. Those that have been most careful to teach them the pravity of corrupted nature by original sin and to humble them and teach them the need of a Saviour and his renewing as well as pardoning Grace and to tell them the work of the Spirit of Sanctification and teach them above all to look to the inward state of their Souls 4. Those that have most seriously minded them of death judgment and the Life to come 5. Those that have always spoken of God with the greatest reverence affection and delight 6. Those that have most wisely laboured to make all the knowledge and practice of Religion pleasant unto them by the suitableness of Doctrines and Duties to their capacity 7. Those that have most disgraced sin to them especially base and fleshly pleasures 8. Those that have kept them from the baits of sensuality not gratifying their appetites in meats and drink to bring them to an unruly habit but used them to a habit of temperance and neglect of appetite 9. Those that have most disgraced worldliness and Pride to them and used them so low things in Apparel and Possession and told them how the proud are hateful to God and set before them the example of a crucified Christ and opened to them the Doctrine of Mortification and self-denial and the great necessity of true humility 10. Those that have been most watchful to know their Childrens particular inclinations and temptations and apply answerable remedies and not carelesly leave them to themselves 11. Those that have been most careful to keep them from ill Company especially 1. Of wicked Youths of their own grouth and neighbourhood 2. And of tempting Women 12. Those that have most wisely used them to the meetest publick Teachers and help them to remember and understand what they hear especially the fundamental truths in the Catechism 13. Those that have most wisely engaged them into the familiarity and frequent converse of some suitable godly exemplary Companions 14. Those that have most conscionably spent the Lords days in publick and in their families 15. Those that have done all this as with reverend gravity so especially with tender endearing Love to their Children convincing them that it is all done for their own good And that do not by imprudent weaknesses ignorance passions or scandal frustrate
Travellers that have seen much of the world and old men and dying men that have had all that it can do are forced by experience to call all Vanity and Vexation unexperienced Youth that are taken up with the hopes of long prosperity and provision for all that the Flesh desireth have other thoughts of it and will not know that it is deceitful Vanity till it hath deceived them of their chiefest Hope and Treasure And when they have overtaken the Shadow which they pursue so greedily they find it what others have done before them the sweeter the more dangerous and the parting will be the more bitter Whereas had they sought first Gods Kingdom and its Righteousness and six days laboured in obedience to God and referred all corporal Blessings to spiritual uses and everlasting ends taking them as from God to serve him by them they might have had enough as an overplus to their satisfying Treasure CHAP. V. How sad a Case it is that I have described I Have told you the very lamentable case of too many young men especially rich mens Sons and Apprentices in this City I told you before of what concern the state of Youth is to themselves and others From thence and alas from sad experience it 's easy to gather the dolefulness of the case of those that are drowned in fleshly Lust and have sinned themselves into the guilt and danger which I have described But I will name some parts of the misery more particularly again § 1. Review the second Chapter and think what a doleful case this is to your selves 1. Do you not know that you are not Beasts but Men that have reason given them to know and love and serve their Maker And how sad is it to see a man forget all this and wilfully brutify himself Were the Poets fictions true of men turned into Trees and Birds and Beasts how small were the misery in comparison of yours It is no sin in Bruits to lust or to eat and drink too much They have not reason to restrain and rule them but lest they should kill themselves by excess God hath made reasonable man their Governor and moderateth their Appetite in the temper of their natures But for a reasonable Creature to subject himself to fleshly Appetite and wilfully degrade his Soul to the rank of Bruits is worse than if he had been made with the Body and the unreasonableness of Bruits Are you capable of no better things than these § 2. And what an odious thing is it when God hath chosen you out of the World to be members of his visible Church and given you the great priviledge of early Entrance into his holy Covenant and washt you in the laver of visible Regeneration and you are vowed to Christ renouncing the Lusts of the Flesh the World and the Devil that you might follow a Crucified Christ in the way of holiness to everlasting Life that you should so soon prove false perfidious Traitors and Rebels against him that is your only hope and by wickedness and Covenant breaking make your sin greater than that of Infidels Turks and Heathens that never were taken into the Church and Covenant of Christ nor ever broke the Vows which you have broken nor so cast away the mercys which you had received § 3. And what a doleful case is it that so much of your Minds and Love and Delight which were all made for God should be so misimployed even in your strength when they should be most vigorous and all worse than cast away on filth and folly If your Souls be more worth than your Money it is more folly and loss to misimploy and abuse your Souls your Reason Love and your Delight than to abuse or cast away your Money And what a Traitor or Murderer deserveth that would give his Money to hire one to kill the King or his Neighbour I suppose you know and what deserveth he that will use not only his mony but himself his soul his thoughts his love his desire and pleasure against the most glorious God that made him That you cannot hurt him is no thanks to you while you break his Laws and deny him your Love and Duty and love more that one thing which only he hateth and will never be reconciled to § 4. And how doleful a case is it that all the Care and Love and Labour of your Parents Masters and Teachers should be lost upon you God hath made all this their great Duty for your good and will you despise God and them and wilfully for nothing reject it all Shall all the pain of a Child-bearing Mother and all her trouble and labour to breed you up and all your Parents care to provide for you be but to breed up a slave for the Flesh the World and the Devil and a firebrand for Hell Shall godly Parents Prayers for you and Teaching and Counsel of you and all their desire and care for your Salvation be despised by you and all forgotten and cast away for a swinish Lust § 5. And how doleful a case is it that so much of so short a Life should be lost and a thousand times worse than lost even turned into sin to prepare for misery when alas the longest Life is little enough for our important work and quickly gone and the Reckoning and Judge are hard at hand All the Wealth Wit or Power in the World cannot bring or buy you back one hour of all that precious time which you now so basely cast away O how glad would you be of a little of it ere long on the tearms that now you have it when you lie dying and perceive that your souls are unready to appear before a righteous God! Then O for one year more of precious time O that you knew how to call again the time which you cast away on sin You will then perceive with a terrified Conscience that time was not so little worth as you once thought it nor given you for so base a work yea if God in mercy bring you hereafter to true Conversion O how it will wound your hearts to think how much of your Youth was so madly cast away while your God your Souls and everlasting hopes were all neglected and despised § 6. And alas if you should be cut off in that unholy miserable Estate no heart on earth can sufficiently bewail your case How many thousand die young that promised themselves longer pleasure in sin and Repentance after it O foolish sinners Cannot you so long borrow the use of your reason as to think seriously whither you must go next Do you never think when the small Pox or a Feaver hath taken away one of your Companions whither it is that his Soul is gone Have you your Wit for nothing but to taste the sweetness of Drink or Lust which is as pleasant to a Dog or Swine as to you O little you know what it is to die what it is for a Soul to leave
him early how to live and how to die and what to seek and what to shun You should have given him the Example of a holy and heavenly mind and life You should have watch'd over him for his safety and unweariedly instructed him for his Salvation But you led him the way to despise God's Word and set light by Christ and Holiness and Heaven to hate Instruction and Reproof to spend the Lords day in idleness or worldly vanity and to seek first the World and the prosperity of the Body and glut the Flesh with sinful pleasure What wonder if a Serpent breed a Serpent and quickly teach him to hiss and sting and if Swine teach their young to feed on dung and wallow in the mire This is part of the fruit of your worldliness fleshliness ungodliness and neglect of your own Salvation and your Childs Now he is as you are a slave of sin and an heir of Hell Was this it that you vowed him for to God in Baptism Was it to serve the Flesh the World and the Devil against our God our Saviour and our sanctifier Or did the mistake of the Liturgy deceive you to think that it was not you but the God-Fathers that were bound by Charge and Vow to bring him up in the Faith and Fear of God and teach him all that a Christian should know for his Soul's Health Was it not you that God bound to all this The sin and misery of your Child now is so far your curse as you are guilty of it and will add to your misery for ever Such are the sorrows that wicked Parents and wicked Children do prepare and heap on one another Such miseries will come but woe to those by whom they come it had been good for that man that he had never been born § 10. And it is no small grief to faithful Ministers to see their labour so much lost and to see so much evil among their flocks and such sad Prognosticks of worse to come He is no true Minister of Christ as to his own acceptance and Salvation whose heart is not set on the winning and sanctifying and saving of Souls What else do we study for preach for live for long for suffer for in our Work All faithful-Teachers can say with Paul that they are willing to spend and be spent for them and now we live if ye stand fast in the Lord. 2 Cor. 12.15 1 Thes. 3.8 He told them weeping of those that were Enemies to the Cross of Christ whose God was their Belly who glory in their shame and mind earthly things instead of a Conversation in Heaven Phil. 3.18 19. When God hath blessed us with the comfortable enjoyment of many ancient holy Christians who are the beauty and honour of the Assemblies and Death calls home one of them after another to Christ and the rest are ready to depart Alas Must a seed of Serpents come after them Must those take their places to our grief and shame who are bred up to the World and Flesh in Drunkenness Fornication and Enmity to God and a holy Life O what a woful change is this And if any be like to be the stain and Plague of the Church it is such as these If we preach holy truth to them Lust cannot love it If we tell them of Gods word the fleshly mind doth not savour it nor can be subject to it Rom. 8.5 6 7. If we reprove them sharply they smart and hate us If we call them to Confession and Repentance their Pride and Carnality cannot bear it If we excommunicate them for Impenitency as Christ requireth or but deny them the Sacrament as unmeet they rage against us as our fiercest Enemies If we neglect Discipline and admit Swine to the Communion of Saints we harden and deceive them and flatter them in their sin pollute the Church and endanger our Souls by displeasing the chief Pastor What then shall we do with these self-murthering ungodly men Many of them have so much Reverence of a Sacrament or so little regard of it that they never seek it but keep away themselves Perhaps they are afraid left they eat and drink damnation to themselves by the prophanation of holy things But do they think that it is safe to be out of the Church and Communion of Saints because it 's dangerous to abuse it Are Infidels safe because false hearted Christians perish What if breaking your Vows and Covenant be damnable Is it not so to be out of the holy Covenant What if God be a consuming fire to those that draw near him in unrepented heinous sin Is it therefore wise or safe to avoid him Neither those that come not to him nor those that come in their hypocrisie and reigning sin shall be saved And yet what to do with these self-suspenders we know not Are they still Members of the Churches or are they not If they are we are bound to call them to Repentance for forsaking the Communion of Saints in Christs commanded Ordinance If they are not we should make it known that Christians and no Christians may not be confounded and they themselves may understand their case And neither of these can they endure But for dwelling in the Parish and hearing the Liturgy and Sermons must still pass for Church Members lest Discipline should exasperate and further lose them This is that Discipline which is thought worthy the honour of Episcopal Dignity and Revennues and is supposed to make the Church of England the best in the world by the same men that would rage were Discipline exercised on them and must either be admitted to the Sacrament in a life of Fornication Drunkenness Sensuality and Prophaneness without any open Confession Repentance and Reformation or else must pass for Church Members without any exercise of Discipline while they shun the Sacramental Communion of the Church Such work doth wickedness make among us § 11. Indeed these are the men that are the trouble of Families the trouble of Neighbours the trouble of good Magistrates the shame of bad ones and the great danger of the Land All the foreign Enemies whom we talk so much against and fear are not so hurtful and dangerous to us as these These that spring out of your own bowels These that are bred up with care and tenderness and cost in your houses These that should succeed godly Ancestors in Wisdom and well doing and be their glory Who plot against us but home bred sinners Who more hate the good and persecute them Who are more malignant Enemies of Godliness and scorners of a holy Life and hinderers of the Word of God and Patrons of Prophaneness and of Ministers and People that are of the same mind If England be undone as the Eastern Churches and much of the Western are undone it will be by your own carnal ungodly Posterity He that is once a slave to Satan and his fleshly Lust is ready for preferment or a reward to be a slave
to the Lust of any other He that is false to his God and Saviour after his Baptismal Vows is unlike to be true to his Country or his King if he have but the bait of a strong temptation And he that will sell his Soul his God and Heaven for a Whore or for to please his Appetite it 's like will not stick to betray Church or State or his dearest Friend for provision to satisfie these Lusts. Can you expect that he should love any man better than himself A wicked fleshly worldly man is a soil for Satan to sow the seeds in of any sort of actual sin and is fuel dryed or tinder for the sparks of Hell to kindle in Will he suffer much for God or his Country who will sell Heaven for nothing An evil Tree bringeth forth evil Fruit. If he hath the heart of an Achan a Gehazi an Achitophel no wonder if he hath their Actions and their Reward If he be a Thief and bear the Bag no wonder if Iudas sell his Master § 12. And these wretches if they live are like to be a Plague to their own posterity Woe to the Woman that hath such an Husband And how are the Children like to be bred that have such a Father Doth not God threaten punishment to the third and fourth Generation of them that hate him and to visit the iniquity of the Fathers on the Children Were not the Children of the old World drowned and those of Sodom and Gomorrah burned and Achans stoned Dathans Abirams swallowed up and Gehazi's struck with Leprosie c. for their Fathers sins And the Amalekites Children all destroyed and the posterity of the Infidel Jews forsaken the Curse coming on them and on their Children And as their Children are like to speed the worse for such Parents sins so are such Parents like to be requited by their Children As you shamed and grieved the hearts of your Parents so may your Children do by you And by that time it 's like if Grace convert you not though you have no hatred to your own sins worldly Interest may make you dislike your Childrens Their Lust and Appetite doth not tempt and deceive you as your own did Perhaps when they shame your Family debauch themselves with drink and Whores and consume the Estates which you sold your Souls for you may perceive that sin is an evil and destructive thing especially when they proceed to despise and abuse your persons also and to desire your Death and be a weary of you sooner or later you shall know better what sin is CHAP. VI. The joyful State and Blessing of good Children to themselves and others § 1. FRom what is said Chap. 2. and 5. it 's easie to gather how joyful a case to themselves and what a Blessing to Parents and others it is when Children betime are sober wise and godly and obedient The difference doth most appear at age and when they come to bring forth to themselves and others the fruits of their dispositions And the end and life to come will shew the greatest difference But yet even here and that betime the difference is very great § 2. I. As to themselves How blessed a state is it to be quickly delivered from the danger of damnation and Gods displeasure that they need not lie down and rise in fear lest they be in Hell whenever Death removeth them from the Body Can one too soon be out of so dreadful a state Can one that is in a house on fire or falln into the Sea make too much haste to be delivered If a man deep in debt be restless till it be paid and glad when it is discharged If a man in danger of sickness or a condemning Sentence of the Judge be glad when the fear of Death is over How glad should you be to be safe from the great danger of Damnation And till you are sanctified by Grace you are far from safety § 3. And if a mans Sickness Pain or Distraction be a Calamity the cure of which brings ease and joy How much more ease and joy may it bring to be cured from all the grievous Maladies of reigning sin Sanctification will cure your minds of spiritual blindness and madness that is of damnable Ignorance Unbelief and Error It will cure your affections of idolatrous distracting carnal Love of the itch of fleshly Desires or Lusts of the feaver of revengeful passions and malignant hatred to goodness and good men and of self vexing envy and malice against others of the greedy worm of Covetousness and the drunken desire of ambitious and imperious minds It will cure your Wills of their fleshly servitude and biass and of that mortal Backwardness to God and holy things and that sluggish dulness and lothness to choose and do what you are convinced must be done It will make good things easie and pleasant to you so that you will no more think you have need to beg mirth from the Devil or steal it from sin as if God Grace and Glory had none for you But it will be so easie to you to love and find pleasure in the Bible and good Books in good Company and good Discourse in spiritual Meditations and thoughts in holy Sermons Prayers and Church Communion and Sacraments even in Christ in God and the fore-thoughts of Heaven that you will be sorry and ashamed to think that ever you forsook such joys for fleshly pleasure and defiled your Souls with filthy and forbidden things And is not the itch of Lust better cured than scratch'd Is not the feaverish and dropsie thirst after Drink and Wealth and Honour better cured than pleased to the sinners death And is not a lazy backwardness to Duty better cured by spiritual health than pleased with idleness and sleep § 4. And certainly you cannot too soon attain the delights of Faith and Hope and Love of holy Knowledge and Communion with God and Saints You cannot too soon have the great blessing of Righteousness Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost and live night and day in peace of Conscience in assurance that all your sins are pardoned and that you are the adopted Sons of God and Heirs of Heaven sealed by his Spirit accepted in your Prayers welcome to God through Christ and when you die shall be with him Can you make too great haste from the folly and filth of sin and the danger of Hell into so safe and good a state as this § 5. And it will be a great comfort to you thus to find at age and use of reason that your baptismal Blessings ceased not with your Infancy by your own rejection but that you are now by your own consent in the Bond of God's Covenant and have a right to all the blessings of it which the Sacrament of Christs Body and Blood will confirm as you had your Entrance by your Parents consent and accepted Dedication For the Covenant of Grace is our certain Charter for Grace
fixed Resolution what is for your good and what is for your hurt and what that good or hurt will be Should it be a hard thing to persuade a man in his wits to love himself and to think what is good or hurtful to himself especially for everlasting Why are you Men if you will live like Dogs What do you with Understandings if you will not use them What will you use them for if not for your own good and to avoid misery What good will you desire if not everlasting Joy and Glory and what hurt will you avoid if not Hell fire Have you reason and can you live as if these were not worth the thinking on Will you bestow your thoughts all the day and year upon you know not what nor why and not one hour soberly think of such important things as these O Sirs Will you go out of the World before you well think whither you must go Will you appear before the Judge of Souls to give up your great account before you think of it and how it must be done Is he worthy of the help of Grace that will not use his natural Reason I beg it of you as ever you care what becomes of you for ever that you will some time alone set your selves for one hour seriously to think Who made you and why what you owe him how much you depend on him what you have done against him how you have spent your time what case your Souls are in what Christ hath done for you and what he is or would be to you whether you are sanctified and forgiven what Gods Spirit must do for you and what you must be and do if you will be saved and if it be otherwise whither it is that you must go II. Therefore I next advise you and intreat you that you live not as at a great distance from Eternity nor foolishly flatter your selves with the deceitful promises of long Life And were it sure to be an hundred years remember how quickly and certainly they will end O Time is nothing Therefore think of nothing in this World as separated from the World to come Whatever you are doing or saying or thinking the Boat is hasting to the Gulf You are posting to Death and Judgment Which way ever you go by wealth or poverty health or sickness busie or idle single or married you are going still to the Grave and to Eternity Judge then of every thing as it tendeth to that end And think of nothing as not related as a means to the near and everlasting end O choose and do that which Reason and Conscience telleth you that you will at last earnestly wish that you had chosen and done when you are tempted to be prayerless and averse to good or to run to Lust or sinful Pleasure ask your selves seriously how will this look in the final review What shall I think of this at last Will it be my comfort or my torment O judge as you will judge at last III. My third Counsel is If your Consciences tell you that you have foolishly sinned against God and your Salvation make not light of it but presently and openly go to your Parents or Masters and penitently confess your sinful Life in general and your known or open sins particularly But such secret sins which wronged not them and will blast your Reputation you are not bound to confess openly unless the Ease or future Direction of your doubtful and troubled Consciences require it But when your vicious fleshly life is known excuse it not hide not the evil by Lies or extenuation when you have wronged your Parents or Masters by disobedience and by robbing them of part of your Time and Service if not also of their Money or goods go to them with sorrow and shame and confess how foolishly you have served the Flesh to the injury of them to the offending of God and to the unspeakable hurt of your own Souls Lament your sin and ask them forgiveness and intreat their Prayers and their careful Government of you for the time to come and sincerely promise them Reformation and Obedience Yea If you have had familiar Companions in your sin go to them and tell them God and Reason have convinced me of my sinful folly that for bruitish fleshly Pleasure have wilfully broken the Laws of my Creator and Redeemer and for nothing undone and lost my Soul if Christ do not recover me by found Repentance O how madly have we despised our Salvation How easily might we have known had we but searcht and considered the word of God that we were displeasing God undoing our selves and making work for future sorrows Should I when I know this and when I know that I am going to Death and Judgment yet obstinately go on and be a hardened Rebel against Christ and Grace what can I expect but to be forsaken of God and lost for ever O therefore as we have sinned together let us repent together You have been a snare to me and I to you We have been agents of the Devil to draw each other to sin and misery Certainly all this must sooner or later be repented of O let us joyn together in Sorrow and Reformation and a holy obedient Life If you will not consent I here declare to you before God for I know that he seeth and heareth me that I will be your Companion in sin no more I beg pardon for tempting you I resolve by Gods Grace to prefer my Salvation and my Obedience to God before a base and beastly pleasure Whatever you say against it I will never more forsake my Salvation to follow you nor ever take you to be wiser than God nor better friends to me than my Saviour nor your Words more regardable than Gods word nor a Whore or a merry Cup or Vanity to be better than Heaven nor Temperance and Holiness to be worse than Hell If you will not be undeceived with me I will pray for you but I renounce your sinful Company and my warning will be a Witness against you to your confusion Stick not at the scorn of fools nor at the shame of such Repentance and Confession It may profit others But however it is no more than in hope you owe them whom you have wronged and endangered by sin And it will lay some new obligation on your selves to amend by doing what you have so professed And sure Conscience and shame will somewhat the more hinder you from evermore joyning with them in the sin which you have so bewailed and renounced And think not this too much for there is no jeasting with God and with everlasting joy or misery IV. My next Counsel is presently understandingly and considerately renew the Covenant which you made in Baptism with God your Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier Consider whether to be a Christian is not necessary to your Salvation and then consider what it is to be a Christian and whether it be not a far higher
Christ many Books of marks are extant Bifields Rogers Harsnets Berries c. And Mr. Chishull and Mr. Mead of being almost Christians If you would have any of mine read the Right method for peace of Conscience and Directions for weak Christians where are the Characters of the false the weak and the strong III. For the dayly Government of Heart and Life read the Practice of Piety Scudders daily walk Mr. Reyners directions three excellent Books Mr. Corbets small private thoughts And if you would have any of mine read my Family Book and the Divine Life the Life of Faith or the Saints Rest and for those that can read great ones my Christian Directory IV. And it will not be unuseful to read some profitable History especially the Lives of exemplary persons and the Funeral Sermons which characterize them I have prefaced to two which are eminently worth your reading and most true both young men that is Iohn Ianeway's Life and Ioseph Alleins and given you the true exemplary Characters in their Funeral Sermons of Mr. Ashurst an excellent pattern for Apprentices and Tradesmen Mr. Stubs Mr. Corbet and of Mr. Wadsworth and Mrs. Baker Read Mr. Samuel Clarks Lives and his Martyrology and his Mirrour Dr. Beards examples or Fox's Book of Martyrs Some Church History and History of the Reformation and the History of our own Country will be useful V. As you grow up to more judgment you may read methodical Sums of Divinity especially Ames his Marrow and his Cases of Conscience which are in English translated and Commentaries Great store of all sorts of good Books through the great mercy of God are common among us He that cannot buy may borrow But take heed that you lose not your time in reading Romances Play Books vain Jests or seducing or reviling Disputes or needless Controversies This course of Reading Scripture and good Books will be many ways to your great advantage 1. It will above all other ways increase your knowledge 2. It will help your Resolutions and holy affections and direct your lives 3. It will make your lives pleasant the knowledge the usefulness the variety will be a continual recreation to you unless you are utterly besotted or debaucht 4. The pleasure of this will turn you from your filthy fleshly pleasure You will have no need to go for delight to a Play-house a Drinking-house or to Beastly lusts 5. It will keep you from the sinful loss of time by idleness or unprofitable employment or pastimes You will cast away Cards and Dice when you find the sweetness of useful Learning But be sure that you choose the most useful and necessary subjects and that you seek knowledge for the love of Holiness and Obedience VI. The sixth part of my advise is forsake ill Company and converse with such as will be helps to your Knowledge Holiness and Obedience and not such as will draw you to sin and misery You have found by sad experience what power ill Company hath on fools with such a merry Tale a Laughter a Jest a Scorn a merry Cup and a bad Example and Perswasion doth more than Reason or Gods Authority or the Love of their Souls A Physician may go among the Sick and Mad to Cure them and a Wiseman that seeth these will pitty them and hate sin the more But what do you do there where you have already catcht the infection of their disease The mind of a man is known much by the Company which he chooseth and if you choose ill no wonder if you speed ill Pro. 13.20 He that walketh with wise men shall be wise but a companion of fools shall be destroyed Prov. 28.7 Whoso keepeth the Law is a wise Son but he that is a companion of riotous men shameth his Father Psal. 119.63 David saith I am a companion of all them that fear thee and of them that keep thy precepts 26.4 5. I have not sate with vain persons neither will I go in with dissemblers I have hated the Congregation of evil doers and will not sit with the wicked 119.115 Depart from me ye evil doers for I will keep the Commandments of my God VII Especially be sure that you run not willfully upon Temptation but keep as far from every tempting bait and object as you can Fire and Gunpowder or Straw must be kept at a sufficient distance no man is long safe at the very brink of danger especially if it be his own choice and more especially if it be a sin that his nature is much inclined to No wise man will trust corrupted nature very far especially where he hath often faln already The best man that is should live in fear when an enticing bait of sin is near him If David that prayed turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity had better practiced it O! what heynous sin had he escaped Had he made a Covenant with his eyes as Iob did what wounds had he prevented The Feast that you see not the Cup that is a mile off the person that is far distant the words which you hear not are not they that you are most in danger of But when tempting meat and drink are before you and the tempting person hath secret familiarity with you and tempting or provoking words are at your ears then alas many have need of more Grace Resolution and Mortification than they have If you knew well what sin is and what is the consequence you would be more watchful and resolved against temptations than against Thieves or Fire or the places infected by the Plague VIII Make it the cheif Study of your Lives to understand what mans everlasting hope is and to get a lively well setled belief of it and to bring your souls to take it joyfully for your true felicity and end and thence daily to fetch the powerful motives of your duty and your patience and your contenting comfort in Life and at your Death The end is the Life of all the means If heavenly blessedness be not the chief end that you live hope and labour for in the World your whole lives will be but carnal vain and the way to misery for the means can be no better than the End God that is the beginning is our End We are made and governed by Him and for Him Heavenly Glory is the sight of his Glory and the Everlasting perfection and pleasure of joyful mutual Love But we are not the noblest Creatures next to God in excellency and desert yea we are sinners who have deserved to be cast out from his Love And therefore as in the way we must come to him by a Saviour so at the blessed end we must enjoy him by a Mediator and to see Gods Glory in Christ and the Heavenly Ierusalem the blessed society of Saints and Angels continually flaming in Love Joy and Praises to the most holy God This this is the felicity for which we labour suffer and hope 2. And O! how great and how needful a work it
is to search study and pray for so firm a belief of this unseen Glory as may so resolve engage and comfort us in some good measure as if we had seen it with these eyes O! what men would one hours being in heaven make us or one clear sight of it Faith hath a greater work to do than a dreaming or dead opinion can perform If it be not well grounded first and well exercised upon Gods Love Promise and Glory from day to day you will find cause sadly to lament the weakness of it For this use you have great need of the help of such Books as open clearly the evident proofs of the Christian verity which I have breifly done in the beginning of the 2d part of my Life of Faith and more largely in 2 other Books viz. The unreasonableness of Infidelity and the reasons of the Christian Religion A firm bâ—lief of the World to come is it that must â—ake us serious Christians and over come the snares of worldly vanity And your Faith being well setled set your selves dayly to use it and live by it dwell in the joyful hopes of the heavenly Glory what is a man that liveth not in the use of Reason And you must know that you have as daily use for your Faith as for your Reason Without reason you can neither safely eat or drink nor converse with men as a man but as a Bedlam not do any business that concerneth you and therefore you must Live by your Reason And without Faith you cannot please God nor obtain Salvation no nor use your Reason for any thing higher than to serve your appetites and purvey for the flesh and therefore you must Live by Faith or live like Beasts and worse than Beasts and cannot otherwise live to God nor live in the hopes of blessedness hereafter O! Consider that the difference between living chiefly upon and for an Earthly fleshly felicity or a heavenly is the great difference between the holy and the unholy and the fore-goer of the difference between those in Heaven and those in Hell IX Still remember that the great Means of all the good that here or hereafter you can expect is the great Mediator the great Teacher Ruler and Intercessor for his people And therefore out of him you can do nothing All duty that you offer to God must be by his Mediation and so must all mercy which you receive from God To come to God by him who is the Way the Truth and the Life must be your daily work of Faith His blood must wash you from all sin past and from the guilt of daily failings and infirmities None but he can effectually teach you to know God and your selves your duty and your everlasting hopes None but he can render your persons praises and actions acceptable to God because you are sinners and unmeet for Gods acceptance without a Mediator All power in heaven and Earth is given him and your Lives and Souls are at his will and it is he that must judge you and with whom you hope to live in Glory Therefore you must so live by the Faith of the Son of God who hath loved you and and given himself for you that you may say it is he that liveth in you Gal. 2.2021 This is the Fountain from whence you must daily fetch your strength and comfort X. And still remember that it is by the operation of the holy Spirit that the Father and the Son do sanctifie Souls and Regenerate and breed them up for Glory It is by the Holy Ghost that God dwelleth in us by Love and Christ by Faith Therefore see that you rest not in corrupted nature and trust not to your selves or to the Flesh. Your souls are dead to God and Holiness and your duties dead till the Spirit of Christ do quicken them You are blind to God and mad in sin till the spirit illuminate you and give you understanding You are like Enemies out of Love with God Heaven and Holiness till this Spirit reconcile you and sanctifie your wills You will have no manlike spiritual holy pleasure till the Holy Spirit renew your hearts and make them fit to delight in God O that men knew the great necessity of the illuminating quickning sanctifying comforting influence of the Spirit of God how far would they be from deriding it as some prophane ones do By this Holy Spirit the sacred Records were written and by miracles of Christ and his Apostles and Evangelists and Prophets sealed and delivered to the Churches And by this Spirit the orders and Government of the Church were setled And by him we are inlightned to understand the Scripture and inclined to Love them and delightfully believe them and obey them Study therefore obediently these Writings of the Holy Ghost and confidently trust them O! be not found among the resisters or neglecters of the Spirits help and motions when proud self-confidence or fleshly lusts do rise against them Christs bodily presence is taken from the Earth he promised instead of it which was but in one place at once to send his Spirit which is to the soul more than the Sun light to the Eye and can shine in all the world at once This is his Agent on Earth by whom in Teachers and Learners he carrieth on his saving work This is his Advocate who pleadeth his cause effectually against unbeleif and fleshly lusts and worldly wisdom This is the well of living water springing up in us to Everlasting life the name the mark of God on Souls the Divine Regenerator the author of Gods Holy Image and the Divine Nature even Divine life and light and love the Conqueror of the World and Flesh the strengthner of the weak the confirmer of the wavering the comforter of the sad and the pledge earnest and first fruits of everlasting life O therefore pray earnestly for the Spirit of Grace and carefully obey him and joyfully praise God in the sence of his holy encouragement and help CHAP. IX Additional Counsel to Youngmen who are bred up to Learning and Publick work especially to the Sacred Ministry in the Vniversities and Schools § 1 IT was the case of the London Apprentices who are nearest me and I have oft to do with which first provoked me to this work and therefore which was chief in my intention But had I as near opportunity to be a Counsellor to others There are three sorts whom I should have preferred for the sake of the Church and Kingdom to which they are of greater signification I. Those in the Schools and Universities who are bred up for the Sacred Ministry II. Those there and in the Inns of Court that are bred up to the knowledge of the Law III. The Sons of Noblemen Knights and others that are bred up for some places of Government in the Kingdom according to their several ranks And of these it is the first that I shall most freely speak to § 2. And first I shall
asleep again with unsuitable things or a cold dull formal kind of managing holy things § 9. And such are too often the plagues of the Church and State as well as injurious to individual Souls 1. Their Ignorance or scandalous Ambition Covetousness and other sins do render them so contemptible in the Eyes of many that it tends to make the Church and all Religion so And when Nobles Gentlemen and People think basely of the Ministry Church and Religion for their sakes how sad is the case of such a people The Gospel is half taken away from a Nation when 't is taken out of their esteem and brought under their reproach and scorn And a scorned Clergie will prepare for the scorning of Religion And an ignorant or worldly ambitious fleshly scandalous Clergie will be a scorned Clergy with two many Erasmus much disgraced the Germane Protestants when he described some of them as having a Bottle of Wine at their Girdle and his Translation of the New Testament in their hands ready to dispute for it with blows And so do many that tell the world how many of the Lutheran Ministers are given to excess of Drink and unpeaceable reviling of Dissenters And the same Erasmus much depreciated either Bishops or Scotists when speaking of the Scotist Bishop of London who was Dr. Collets Adversary he saith I have known some such whom I would not call Knaves but never one whom I could call a Christian Not only Drunkenness and bruitish sins but factitiousness envy unpeaceableness Contentiousness and especially a proud and wordly mind will be in most mens Eeyes more ugly in a Minister than others For where there is a double Dedication to God that which is Common will seem Vnclean and when there should be a double Holyness sin will appear to be double sin 2. And indeed a carnal wordly Clergie are oft the most powerful and obstinate hinderers of the Peace and quietness of Church and State 1. By fitting themselves to the humours of those in whose power their preferments are be it never so much to the injury of mens Souls Bodies or Estates or against the publick good and safety Or else leading the people into errour for popular applause 2. By a domineering humour in matters of Religion taking themselves Law-givers to others and taking their witts and wills for uncontroulable laying Heaven and Hell upon their own Inventions or Conceits and the Controversies which they endlesly make but understand not and hereticating or anathematizing such as take them not for Oracles or Rabbi's that must not be gainsay'd 3. And by Corrupting the Christian Religion and Church by departing from the Christian simplicity and purity and forming Doctrine Worship and Government according to their own carnal worldly minds and interest 4. And than militating against the best that contradict them or stoop not to them though it be to the distraction and division of the Churches And usually they are the hardest to be brought to peace and reconciliation and do most against it when ever it is attempted by Peace-makers who pitty the woeful case of such a self-disturbing people § 10. All this hath been so long manifested to the sad Experience of mankind in most Nations and Ages of the Christian World that it is not to be denyed or concealed And should we pretend the Honour of the Church and Clergie for the denying or the hiding of such grievous Sins it would but make us partakers of the guilt and displease the most Holy God who will have sin in whomsoever shamed and harden others who are ready to imitate them The Holy Scriptures open and shame the sins even of Adam of Noe of Lot of David of Solomon of Peter and of Gods chosen people the Iews and this was not a faulty uncovering of their nakedness but a necessary disgrace of sin and manifestation of the Holyness and Justice of God and a warning to others that we should not sin with such Examples before our Eyes 1 Cor. 10.6 7 8. I have written the History of the Bishops and Councils of former Ages in which with their virtues I have opened their miscarriages some blame it as if it were uncovering their nakedness But I have said nothing but what is openly proclaimed of them long agoe by their own greatest flatterers and it was Christ himself that said Remember Lot 's Wife The Pit which so many have fallen into must be uncovered and God and Holyness must be honoured rather than those that dishonour them by sin Sin confessed and forsaken is not so dangerous as sin denyed and extenuated He that hideth it shall not prosper Sin is a reproach to any people Pro. 14.34 and 6.33 Even God that forgiveth it to the penitent will shame it to keep others from committing it He that minceth or hideth it tempteth others to imitate it Alas what work have a worldly proud and ignorant Clergie made in most Christian Nations these thirteen hundred years Athanasius Chrysostoms Isidore-Pelusiota c. but especially excellent Gregory Nazianzene have told it us even of their flourishing times more plainly than I now intend to do They have loved this present world some set themselves by venting new and odd opinions to draw Disciples after them for applause some furiously hereticating them that differed from them by ambiguous words and making themselves Lords of the Faith of others and making their ignorant Dictates the Oracles of the Church striving who should be thought wisest and best but especially who should be greatest as if Christ had never judged in that Controversie Flattering Emperours and Princes till they got Wealth and Power by them and then over-topping them and troubling the World by Rebellious and Bloody Warrs Tearing the Churches in pieces on pretence of Union and killing and burning men on pretence of Faith and Charity and Cursing from Christ his faithful Servants on pretence of using the Keyes of Christs Kingdom setting up themselves and a worldly Kingdom on pretence of the Spiritual Government of Christ making Merchandize of Souls on pretence of feeding and ruling them cherishing the people in Ignorance and sloth and carnality that they might be more obedient to their Tyranny and lesse capable of opposing it hating and destroying the most conscionable Christians as Hereticks or Schismaticks because they are the greatest Enemies to their Sin and desires of Reformation provoking Princes to become the bloody Persecutors of such for the upholding of their worldly State and Dignity yea making them their Lictors or Executioners to destroy such as they condemn Such work as this hath destroyed the Greeks or Eastern Churches set up Turkish Tyranny by dividing Christians weakning and ruining the Emperors making Religion a meer Image of lifeless formality and Ceremony and a powerless dying thing Such a Clergie hath darkned and lamentably brought low the Christian Churches in Moscovie Armenia Georgia Mengrelia Syria Abassia and extirpated them in Nubia and brought them in Italy Poland Hungary Spain France
and most of Germany to what they are Such a Clergie have brought Ireland from the laudable State which it was in in the days of Malachias as Bernard described it into the barbarous briutish ignorance and bloody inhumanity at which it is now arrived and had the chief hand in the murder of two hundred thousand persons in the late Rebellious insurrection such a Clergy had a chief hand in the civil wars in England in the reign of William Rufus King Stephen Hen. 3. King Iohn c. the subject of Pryns History of the Treasons of Prelates And alas such a corrupt sort of Ministers keepeth up the division of the German Protestants under the name of Lutherans and Calvinists about Consubstantiation Church-Images and doctrines of Predestination not understood And had the Low-Countries ever had the stirs between Remonstrants and Contra-remonstrants or England and Scotland ever had the miserable contentions warres and cruelties between the former Episcopal parties and the Laudians or between them and the Presbyterians and Independents and all the silencings and woefull contentions and Schisms that have thence followed if the vices of the Clergy had not been the cause And had we continued in this case these twenty years last silencing reviling and prosecuting about two thousand conscionable Preachers and writing and preaching still for executing the Lawes against them and the prosecuted people flying from such a Clergy as ravening Wolves And some censuring the innocent with the guilty could all this have been done by a wise holy and peaceable Clergy that served God in selfdenyal and knew what it is to seek the good of Church and souls When we yet continue under the same distractions and convulsions and all cry out that a flood of misery is breaking in on the Land and like to overwhelm us all and still it is the Clergy that cannot or will not be reconciled but animate Rulers and people against each other and cannot or will not find the way of peace yea all would be soon healed in probability could the Nation but procure the Clergy to consent certainly there is some grievous disease in our selves which is like to pove mortal to such a Kingdom and that while so many pray and strive for peace Those men that have no more skill or will to heal the wounds and stop the blood of a fainting Church and State nor wil by any reason or humble importunity be intreated to consent to the cheap and necessary cure no nor to hold their hands from continued tearing of us do tell all the world that they are sadly wanting in fitness for their sacred office and that this unfitness is like to cost an endangered Nation dear Wo wo wo to that Church that hath Hypocrites Ungodly Unexperienced Proud Worldly Fleshly Unskilful unfaithful and Malignant Pastors and that hath Wolves instead of Shepherds wo to the Land that hath such Wo to the Prince and States that have and follow such Counsellors and to the Souls that are subverted by them Alas from a bad Clergy hath sprung the greatest calamities of the Churches in all places to this very day § 11. But will such mens sins prove less woful to themselves than others No. 1. It is the sin and guilt it self which is the greatest evil 2. They aggravate their sin and guilt by a perfidious violating a double vow their Baptismal Vow of Christianity and their Ordination Vow to be Faithful Ministers of Christ. 3. They aggravate their guilt by their nearness to God in their Office and Works as Aarons two Sons that were struck dead Lev. 10.2 3. For God will be sanctifyed in them that come nigh him and before all the people he will be glorifyed The examples of the Beth-shemites Vzza Vzziah the bad Priests and False Prophets of old are terrible 4. And it greatly addeth to the guilt to do all this or much of it as in the Name of God or by his Commission This is a dreadful taking of Gods Name in vain for which he will not hold them guiltless To pretend that it is by Gods command that they set up that which he abhorreth that they corrupt his Doctrine or Worship or Church Order that they set up their own wills and sinful Laws instead of and against his Laws that they tear his Church by proud Impositions and wicked Anathema's and Interdicts of whole Kingdoms Excommunicating and Deposing Kings Absolving men from their Oaths of Allegiance Tormenting and Murdering Godly men as Hereticks Silencing Faithful Ministers Smiting the Shepherds and scattering the Flocks and then reviling them as Schismaticks and all this to uphold a worldly Kingdom of their own and keep up their Pride Domination and self-will and to have Riches for provision for fleshly Lusts I say to do all this as in the Name of Christ with a sic dicit Dominus and as for the Church and Truth and Souls is a most heynous aggravation 5. Indeed while a poor blind Clergy man as his Trade for applause and gain doth Study and Preach that Word of God which is against him how dreadful is it to think how all that he doth and saith is self-condemnation and that out of his own mouth he must be judged and that all the woes which he pronounceth against Hypocrites and impenitent carnal worldly men his own Tongue pronounceth them against himself § 12. And when Satan hath once got such Instruments how great an advantage hath he for the success against themselves against the Flock and against the Church and Cause of Christ above what he might expect by other Servants 1. They are farre hardlier brought to Repentance than others 1. Because they have by Wit and Study bended that Doctrine to defend their sin which should be used to bring them to Repentance 2. And because their aggravated sin against Light doth most forfeit that help of Grace which should work Repentance in them 3. And because being taken for Wise Learned men and Preachers of Truth and Teachers of others and reprovers of Errors their Reputation is much concerned in it and their unhumbled Souls which look all others should Assent and Consent to their prescripts will hardly be brought to confesse sin and Errour but will sooner as Papists plead-infallibility or conclude as some Councils have done that a Lay man must not accuse a Clergy man be he never so bad Repentance is hard to all men of carnal interest but to few more than to an unhumbled Clergy man And 2. Whoever accuseth or reproveth them of sin will be represented as an Enemy to the Church a dishonourer of his Ghostly Fathers and one that openeth their nakedness which he should Cover and so their Ulcers are as a noli me tangere and fret as a Gangreen unremedied 3. And their Place Office Titles and Learning with many will give sin Reputation and Advantage If a Drunkard in the Alehouse deride Godly men as Hereticks Schismaticks Hypocrites or Puritanes Sober men will not much regard
it But they think they owe more belief and reverence to a Learned Reverend Preacher in the Pulpit even when he preacheth against preaching and against those that practise what he teacheth them at other times O how much of his work hath Satan done in the World by corrupting Sacred Offices and by getting HIS SERVANTS INTO RVLE and MINISTRY TO DO HIS WORK AS FOR CHRIST and his Church and by his authority and in his name Our natural enmity with the Serpent disswadeth him from speaking or sending to us in his own name Should one say in the Pulpit Thus saith the Devil hate Christs servants silence his Ministers call serious Godliness Hypocrisie which is the contrary to Hypocrisie I should not much fear his success with any but if he be a lying Spirit in the mouth of Ahabs Prophets and can get a Prophet to smite Michaiah for pretending to more of the Spirit than he had or if he can get men in the Sacred Office to say Thus saith the Lord when they speak for sin or against the Lord this is the Devils prosperous way § 13. II. I have told you what Plagues bad Clergy men will be and still have been to themselves to the souls of men and to the publick State of Churches and Kingdoms and were it not lest my Writing should be too large I should tell you what Blessings on the contrary Able and Faithful Ministers are Briefly 1. Christ maketh them the cheif instruments for the propagating of his Truth and Kingdom in the World for the gathering of Churches and preserving and defending contradicted Truth They are the Lights of the World and the Salt of the Earth All Christians are bound to teach or help each others in charity but Christs Ministers are set in his Church as Parents in Families to do it by Office And therefore must be qualified above others for it and be wholly dedicated to it and attend continually on it as a Physitian differeth from every Neighbour who may help you in your sores or sickness as they can so do the Pastors of the Church differ from private helpers of your Souls The Scripture is preserved and delivered down by the private means of all the Faithful but eminently by the publick Office of the Pastors It may be expounded and applyed privately by any able Christian but the Pastors do it eminently by Office and to them especially though to all Christians commonly are committed the Oracles of God The Priests lips must preserve knowledge and men should enquire of the Law at his mouth for he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts Mal. 2.7 Never yet was the Gospel well propagated nor continued in any Country in the World but by the means of the Ministers of Christ And O! what difference hath there been in their successes as they differed in ability piety and diligence And how great an honour is it to be such blessed instruments of building up the house of God and propagating the Gospel and the Kingdom of Christ and the Christian Faith and Godliness in the World 2. And thus God useth them as his special instruments for the Convincing Converting Edifying Comforting and Saving of Souls Others may be blest herein But the special blessing goeth along with those that are specially obliged to the work which is Parents in Families and Pastors in the Church O how many thousand Souls in Heaven will for ever rejoyce in the effects of the Labours of Faithful Ministers and bless God for them And what an honour what a comfort is it to have a hand in such a work He that Converteth a sinner from the Errour of his way doth save a Soul from death and cover a multitude of sins Jam. last 3. And in this they are Co-workers with Jesus Christ the great Saviour of Souls and with the Holy Spirit the Regenerator and Sanctifier Yea Christ doth very much of the work of his Salvation by them when he ascended on high he gave gifts to men for the edifying of his body till they come to a perfect man Eph. 4.6 to 16. and when the Chief Shephard shall appear they shall receive a Crown of Glory that fadeth not away 1 Pet. 5.4 and shall hear well done good and faithful Servant Hence are the Streams of Consolation that make glad the City of God and daily refresh many thousand precious Souls For how shall men believe without a Preacher and how shall they Preach unless they be sent qualified obliged and authorized by Christ Rom. 10. 4. In a word Churches States and Christian Kingdoms are chiefly blest and preserved by the Labour of the faithful part of the Ministry For 1 If we have the rare blessing of a wise and holy and loving Magistracy it is usually by the success of the labours of the Ministry 2 And there is no better means to bring the Subjects to the Conscionable performance of their Duty to Superiours 3 And by the blessing of their Labour the sins of a Nation are prevented or healed which would else bring down Gods heavy Judgments 4 They teach people to live in Love and Peace with one another and to abhor Contention Cruelty Oppression Injury and Revenge and all to do their several duties to promote the common Good 5 When the ignorant and slothful and scandalous sort of bad Ministers betray Souls and would bring the Ministry and Religion into contempt it is a wise and holy Ministry that counter-worketh them by labouring while others are idle and doing that wisely which others do foolishly and shewing in their lives the power of that truth which others disgrace and the reality of that Holiness Love Justice Peace and Concord which others would banish out of the World by making it seem but a name or Image 6 VVhen proud men tear the Church by the Engines of their domineering VVits and VVills these humble Pastors as the servants of all will labour to heal it by Christian meekness and condescension VVhen malignant Priests seek to strengthen themselves by the multitude of the ungodly and to bring serious piety into contempt which doth molest them these faithful Pastors open the just disgrace of sin and the great necessity and honour of holiness endeavouring that vile persons may be contemned and those may be honoured that fear the Lord Psal. 15.4 and distinguishing the precious from the vile the righteous from the wicked and him that sweareth from him that feareth an Oath and him that serveth God from him that serveth him not God saith They are as his mouth Jer. 15.19 Mal. 3.17 18. Eccl. 9.2 To be short as An Ignorant Worldly Carnal Proud Vnholy sort of Prelates and Priests are and have been the great Plague of the Churches these 1300 years at least so the Skilful Holy Humble Faithful Laborious Patient Ministers of Christ have been and still are the great blessings of the World for saving Souls promoting Knowledge Faith Holiness Love and Peace opposing Errour Pride Oppression VVorldliness Sensuality
the Commonwealth As the Devil first undid the World by making deceived Eve believe that Gods command was against her interest so doth he to this day but with none so much as with Nobles and Rich men God hath commanded you nothing but what is for your own good nor forbidden you any thing but what is for your own and others hurt He needs not you or any but you must allow him to be God and therefore to be wiser and better than you to know better what is best fittest for you and others But Satan will slander to you Gods Laws Ways and Servants for he is for your enmity and separation from God and therefore would draw you to believe that that he and his ways are Enemies to you and against your pleasure honour domination commodity or ease O how many Princes and Great Men have been utterly undone by believing the Flesh the Devil and his Ministers that Christianity is against their power honour or other interests and that the Scripture is too precise and that Conscience obeying God before them is against their power and prerogative and so have set them as Enemies to keep under Conscience and serious godliness lest obedience to their wills be thereby hindred Yea how many also so dote as to think that the interest of Head Heart Stomack and Members of Rulers and Subjects stand not in Union but in contrariety and victory against each other Wo to the Land that hath such Rulers and to the poor Tenants that have such Land-Lords But much more wo to such selfish oppressours that had rather be feared than loved and take it for their honour to be free and able to do mischief and destroy those whose common welfare should be more pleasant to them than their own And to them especially that take serious godliness and godly men to be against them and therefore bend their wit and power to suppress them as if they said as Luke 19.27 We will not have this man reign over us whom Christ will destroy as his unthankful Enemies and will break them with his Iron rod and dash in peices as a potters vessel Psal. 2. VII As you love your selves and the common good get good men about you read Ps. 101.15 16. Especially faithful teachers and next godly Friends and Servants and Companions and read much the Histories of the Lives of wise and Godly men such as K. Edw. 6th and the Lord Harrington young men imitate such excellent persons as Scripture and other History justly commend to your imitation It will be profitable to read the Lives of worthy men such as are gathered by Mr. Clerk Dr. Fuller Thuanus Beza yea of the Martyrs and of such Christian Princes as Constantine M. Theodosius c. Maximilian 2d Emperor Iohn Frederick of Saxony Philip of Hassia Ludov. Pius of France yea such Heathens as Titus Trajan Adrian but especially M. Aurel. Antonine and Alex. Severus Yea and such Lawyers Philosophers Physicians but especially Divines as Melchior Adamus in Four Volums hath recorded and of such Bishops as Cyprian Nazianzene Ambrose Austin Basil Chrysostome and our Vsher and such others VIII Live not in Idleness as the Sons of rich men too oft do for that will rust and corrupt your minds and cherish besotting damning lusts and render you worthless and useless in the world and consequently the greatest plagues of your Country to which you should be the greatest helps and blessings Make as much Conscience of improving your hours as if you were the poorest men you have most wages and should do God most work Let holy and useful studies one part of the day and doing good to others another part and necessary refreshment and exercise another take up your time you have none allowed you for any thing unprofitable much less hurtfull O what a blessing to the world are wise Godly Magistrates and what a curse are the Foolish and Ungodly IX Remember that the grand design of the Devil and all deceivers is to delude and corrupt the rulers of the people knowing how much they signifie by their Laws Power and Examples and how sad it will be to be judged as a Persecutor or a Captain of iniquity And therefore you must have a greater self-suspicion and fear of seduction and sin than others and must watch more carefully against wicked Counsel and example but especially the Temptations of your own flesh and corrupted nature and of your VVealth and place CHAP. XIII Counsel to Parents and Tutors of Youth SHould I now say to Parents and Teachers what on their parts is necessary to their great duty and the good of Youth it would be more than all that I have said already but that is not the present work and you may see much of it done in my Christian Directory But because so much lyeth on their hands I beseech all such that read these lines to remember I. How near their relation to their Children is and that for a Parent to betray their Souls to Sin and Hell by neglect or by ill means seems more unexcusable cruelty than for the Devil a known Enemy to do it II. How very much their welfare is entrusted to your care you have the Teaching of them before the Ministers and have them alwaies nearer with you and have greater power over them O! that you knew what holy instructions and heavenly excitations and good example God requireth of you for their good And how much of the hopes of the Church and World lie on the Holy skill and fidelity of Parents in the right education of youth III. O feed not their sinful desires and lusts use them not to pride to idleness to too much fulness or pleasing of the appetite but teach them the reasons of Temperance and Mortification and the sin and mischief of all sensuality IV. Yet use them with tender fatherly Love and make them perceive that it is for their own good and cherish their profitable delights study how to make all good delightful to them encourage and reward them Tell them of the wisdom and goodness of Gods word and let them read the Lives of Holy men V. Choose them both Callings Habitations and Relations which make most for the common good and for the advantage of their Souls and not those that most serve Covetousness Pride or Slothfulness VI. Know their particular inclinations corruptions and temptations and accordingly watch and keep them as you would do against death VII Settle them under wise and godly Pastors and in the familiar Company of godly persons especially of their age and usual converse VIII Keep them as much as possible from Temptations at home and abroad especially those that tend to sensuality and to impiety or corrupting their judgments against Religion Thrust them not beyond Sea or elsewhere unfortified among deceivers for a meer Ornament as some cruelly do IX Remember how you dedicated them to Christ in Baptism and what was promised and what renounced and what
age they come to true understanding of the Covenant which they made and must renew and till they give credible signs of real Godlyness by a Godly Life and of what mischievous effects it is to confirm them and admit them to the Lords Supper on their bare saying the words of the Catechism the Creeds Lords Prayer and Decalogue without tryed Vnderstanding and serious Piety And what a wrong it is to the Christian Church and Religion to confound and corrupt our Communion for want of Parish Discipline and distinctions And how little good all Canons or Laws for Reformation or Religious duty will do if the Ministry be ignorant worldly and ungodly and the Churches be not taught and guided by able godly humble self-denying and loving Pastors I beseech you read him diligently he was no violent man and his books here mentioned were purposely written for K. Edward and the Bishops and Church of England and accepted kindly by them His burnt bones were honourably vindicated by the publick praise and his memory by many in Cambridge solemnly commended to posterity I beseech you let his Counsel in these Books be revived and true Reformation be tryed by their Light I hope they will hear that great and moderate Reformer that will not hear me or such as I. And if you will adde the Reading of old Salvian and of Nic. Clemangis it may do you good and excite you to do good to others and promote the ends of this Advise to Youth March 25. 1681. FINIS A CATALOGUE of Mr. Baxter's Books to satisfie some Foreigners And are to be Sold by B. Simmons at the Three Golden Cocks at the West End of St. Pauls I. Doctrinal 1. A Phorisms of the Covenants and Justification suspended for some imperfections 12 mo 2. The Reasons of the Christian Religion 4 to 3. The Unreasonableness of Infidelity How the Spirit is Christs Witness Of the sin against the Holy Ghost 8 vo 4. More Reasons for the Christian Religion confuting the Ld. Herbert de Veritate 12 mo 5. A Confession of his Faith against Antinomians 4 to 6. The Vindication of Gods goodness against some melancholy Exceptions 12 mo 7. How far Holiness is the design of Christianity 4 to 8. A Latine Methodus Theologiae Christianae which with the Body of Practical Divinity maketh an entire System It consists of 73 Tables or Methodical Schemes pretending to a juster Methodizing of Christian Verities according to the Matter and Scripture than is yet extant furnishing men with necessary distinctions on every Subject shewing that Trinity in Unity is imprinted on the whole Creation and that Trichotomising is the just distribution in Naturals and Morals The 1st Part of the Kingdom of Nature The 2d of the Kingdom of Grace before Christs Incarnation The 3d of the Kingdom of Grace and the Spirit since the Incarnation The 4th of the Kingdom of Glory All in the Political Method in the Efficience Constition and Administration viz. Legislation Judgment and Execution The first Part mostly Philosophical with a full Scheme of Philosophy or Ontology The Doctrine de Anima most largely handled with above 200 select Disputations Prolixe ones of the Trinity Predetermination the Faculties of the Soul Original Sin And a multitude of Controversies briefly decided in Fol. II. Practicals for all sorts 9. A Christian Directory or Body of practical Divinity 1. Christian Ethicks 2. Oeconomicks 3. Ecclesiasticks 4. Politicks Resolving multitudes of Cases on each Subject Fol. 10. The Saints everlasting Rest. 4 to 11. A Treatise of Self-Denial 4 to 12. The crucifying of the World by the Cross of Christ. 4 to 13. The mischiefs of Self-Ignorance 8 vo 14. A Sermon of Repentance preached to the Commons the day before they voted the King's Return 4 to 15. Right Rejoycing A Thanksgiving Sermon at St. Pauls foretelling the danger of their turning all into greater Calamity 4 to 16. The vain Religion of the formal Hypocrite And the Fools prosperity 12 mo 17. A Sermon of Faith before the King 4 to 18. The poor mans Family Book for them that cannot buy many A familiar Dialogue shewing the Unconverted how to become true Christians and the Converted how to live and die as such With a Catechism Prayers and Psalms 8 vo III. Practicals for the Vnconverted 19. A Call to the Unconverted to Turn and Live 12 mo 20. Directions and Persuasions to a sound Conversion 8 vo 21. Now or Never 12 mo 22. A Treatise of Conversion 4 to 23. A Saint or a Bruit 4 to 24. A Sermon of making Light of Christ. 8 vo 25. A Treatise of Judgment 8 vo 26. True Christianity Christs absolute Dominion and Mans Subjection Assize Sermons 12 mo 27. Catholick Unity How to be all of one Religion Ungodliness the great Divider 12 mo IV. Practicals for the Faithful 28. The right Method for settled Peace of Conscience and Spiritual Comfort 8 vo 29. The weak Christian strong Christian and Hypocrite characterized 8 vo 30. The Divine Life 1. A Treatise of the Knowledge of God and use of his Attributes 2. Of Walking with God 3. Conversing with God in solitude 4 to 31. The Life of Faith in every State 4 to 32. Mrs. Bakers Funeral Sermon Death the last Enemy 8 vo 33. Mr. Hen. Stubs Funeral Sermon 12 mo 34. Mrs. Coxes Funeral Sermon 4 to 35. Alderman Ashursts Funeral Sermon 4 to 36. Mr. Io. Corbets Funeral Sermon 4 to 37. Mrs. Baxters Life and her Mothers Funeral Sermon The last work of a Believer 4 to 38. Poetical Fragments Partly Thanksgiving partly the groans of the afflicted 8 vo V. Controversies against Popery 39. The safe Religion Three Disputations 8 vo 40. One Sheet of Reasons against Popery 8 vo 41. A Key for Catholicks to open the juglings of the Jesuits The first part answering all their common Sophisms The second against the Soveraignty and necessity of General Councils 4 to 42. The certainty of Christianity without Popery 8 vo 43. Full and easie satisfaction which is the true Religion Transubstantiation shamed 8 vo 44. Naked Popery Answering Mr. Hutchinson 4 to 45. The true Catholick Church A popular Sermon of its Unity 12 mo 46. The successive Visibility of the Church where it hath been in all Ages An Answer to W. Iohnson alias Terret 8 vo 47. Which is the true Church A full Answer to his Reply proving that the General Councils and the Popes Primacy were but in one Empire 4 to 48. The Grotian Religion discovered 12 mo 49. The History of Bishops and their Councils abridged and of the Popes 4 to VI. English Church Controversies 50. Gildas Salvianus The Reformed Pastor shewing the Nature of the Pastoral Office especially of personal Instruction 8 vo 51. Christian Concord The Agreement of the associated Pastors and Churches of Worcestershire 4 to 52. Their Agreement for Catechising and personal Instructing their Parishes 8 vo 53. Disputations of Right to Sacraments 4 to 54. Disputations of Church Government Liturgies and Ceremonies 4 to 55. Of
and Contention diverting Gods Judgments by Faith and Prayer forsaking all for Christ and patiently suffering for well doing and by Doctrine and Example teaching men to difference the Creator from the Creature Holiness from Sin Heaven from Earth Soul from the Body the Spirit from the Flesh and helping men to prepare by a mortified heavenly heart and life for a comfortable death and endless happiness Of such vast importance is it to the world whether the Clergy be good or bad skilful or unskilful holy or worldly and he is not a true Christian that is insensible of the difference or thinks it small And now do I need to say any more to shew young men designed for the Ministry of what importance it is that they be well prepared and qualified for it God can and sometime doth turn VVolves into faithful Shepherds and convert those that being unconverted undertake the work that should convert others and give wisdom and grace to ignorant and graceless Preachers of wisdom and grace But this is not ordinarily to be expected But as youth is trained up and disposed they commonly prove when they come to age Their first notions lie deepest and make way for their like and resist all that is contrary be it never so true and good and necessary Experience tells this to all the world Those that in youth are trained in Heathenism Mahometanism Popery or any distinct sect of Christians they commonly continue such especially if they live among those who are for it and so make it their Interest in reputation or wealth And if the Rulers and Times should be but Erroneous Heretical or Malignant at enmity to Truth and serious holiness alas how hard is it for ill-taught youth to resist the Stream How hard is it to unteach them the Errours which they first learnt A Vomit may easily bring up that which was but lately eaten but the yellow and the green humors that lie deep must cost heart-gripes before they will be cast up False Opinions as well as Truths are usually linkt together and the chain is neither easily cast off nor broken And they that have received Errours have received their defensatives These are like the Shell-fish that carry their house about them They have studied what to say for it but not what can be said against it or which is worse by a slight and false consideration of the arguments for Truth they have disabled them from doing them any good And if they had never so true Notions in their Memories if they come not in power on their hearts and make them not new spiritual holy men these will not master fleshly Lusts nor overcome ambitious and worldly Inclinations nor make men fit to propagate that Faith and Holiness which they never had And it is now that you must get those eminent qualifications of Knowledge and Holiness which you must after use And how will you use that which you have not And yet proud hearts how empty soever will be desirous of esteem and reputation and will hardly bear vilifying contempt or disregard When as though some few prudent hearers will encourage such young men as they think are hopeful yet most will judge of things and persons as they find them The ignorant dry and lifeless Orations of unexperienced carnal Preachers will not be magnified by such as know what Iudgment and holy Seriousness that place and sacred work require Few will much praise or feed on unsavoury or insippid Food meerly to flatter and please the Cook And then when you find that you are slighted for your slight and unskilful work your stomachs will rise against those that slight you and so by selfishness you will turn malignant and become Enemies to those that you take for Enemies to you because they are not contented with your unholy trifling And all your enmity will turn against your self and be like Satans against the members of Christs which is but his own self-tormenting § 15. II. The Case being so important I shall briefly conjoyn your Danger and your Remedy beseeching you as you have any care for your Souls your Country or the Church of God or any thing which Faith or reason should regard that you will soberly weigh the Counsel that I give you I. The first of your dangers which I shall mention lieth in a too hasty resolving for the Sacred Ministry Pious and prudent desires and purposes I would not discourage But two sorts of Parents in this prove greatly injurious to the Church First Worldly men that set their Sons to the Universities in order to their worldly Maintenance and Preferment looking at the Ministry meerly as a Profession or Trade to live by Secondly and many honest godly Parents ignorantly think it a good work to design their Children to the Ministry and call it a devoting them to God without due considering whether they are like to be fit for it or not And when they have bin some years at the University they think a Parsonage or Vicarage is their due Ordained they must be what have they else studied for It s too late now to change their purposes when they have been at seven years cost and labour to prepare for the Ministry They are too old and too proud to go Apprentices or Servants Husbandmen they cannot be They are used to an idler kind of Life To be Lawyers will cost them more time and study than they can now afford having lost so much and there are more already than can have practice Physicians are already so many that the younger sort know not how to live though they would for money venture on their Neighbours lives to their greater danger than I am willing to express So that there is no way left but for a Benefice to become Church Mountebanks and Quacks and undertake the Pastoral care of Souls before they well know what Souls are or what they are made for or whither they are going or how they must be conducted and prepared for their endless state And it seems to some the glory of a Nation to have many thousand such Lads at the Universities more than there be Cures or Churches in the Land all expecting that their Friends should procure them Benefices And they must be very ignorant and bad indeed that cannot find some Ministers so bad as to certifie that they are sober and of good lives and some Patrons so bad as to like such as they and for favour or somewhat worse to present them and some Bishops Chaplain bad enough to be favourable in examining them and then some Bishop bad enough to ordain and institute them And by that time nine Thousand such youths have got Benefices alas what a case will the Churches and the poor peoples Souls be in § 16. I. And what remedy is there for this That which I have now to propose is first to tell you who they be that should be devoted to the Ministry and next what both Parents and you should