Voluntiers in the service and as our Thoughts are thus above the reach of fear so of favour too above the love of friends or the reverence of great men or the expectation of rewards for who can pay a man for that which no man knows but the Spirit of a man which is in him how shall outward hopes influence the inward transactions of ones own breast only external acts of sin indeed may have somthing to say for themselves because they may chance to carry their wages such as it is along with them but he who plays the knave the adulterer the murderer c. in his own heart he has nothing in exchange for his Soul but sins for pure sinnings sake as it were without any prospect of ever being consider'd for his pains without any other wages than the old standing one of death VII AND Lastly those Sins which have a more immediate relation to the mind and spirit as pride envy ambition malice unfaithfulness uncharitableness c. which are transacted mostly in the inner man as they are more incorrigible so consequently more criminal than others For as to those Vices which in a high measure depend upon the tempers and constitutions of our Bodies want of fuel will in time dead their flame when the spirits flag the blood chills and the pulse beats low and the evil days come on wherein we have no pleasure in them the decays of nature set the Soul then at some tolerable sort of liberty to reflect upon her own condition but as to the other age generally only serves to confirm and establish us in them For how rarely do we see a covetous wretch let go his hold of the earth tho' he is dropping into it how seldom are envy and malice exchang'd for contentment and good nature and when see we the proud ambitious man reduced to the same level of mind with his humble neighbours Sins of this kind have too much of the Aethiopian's skin and the Leopard's spots easily to admit the laver of regeneration Accordingly we find the Angels who kept not their first station reserv'd in everlasting chains under darkness to the Judgment of the great day for sins of this incorrigible kind For suppose their sin pride and ambition malice or envy or what you will 't was certainly transacted in the mind without the intervention of corporal efficiency and deriv'd it's peculiar venom from the spirituality of its nature Mental sins then were the first and are still considered in themselves the most crying provocations SECT 4. Other Reasons why we should govern our Thoughts BESIDES what has been hitherto alledg'd on this behalf the consideration of God's all-seeing eye ought also to influence the conduct of our Thoughts they lie not indeed within the walk of humane justice are without the ken of humane inspection no eye can pry into the recesses of the heart but God sees and knows and reads their subtilest motions and darkest intrigues with greater perspicacity then we do men's outward words and actions For lo there is not a thought not the motion of the least fibre in our hearts but he knoweth it altogether knoweth it afar off at the distance of Eternity it self e'er we or our thoughts had any other being than in the Divine Idea For no thought can Job 42. 2. be witholden from him Hell and Prov. 15. 11. destruction are before him how much more then the hearts of the Children of Men And then how strongly are we obliged to keep good order there since they are under the eye of so intimate and accurate an Observer of their internal motions and subject to the inspection of so true a Judge of good discipline and so severe an Avenger of bad But I shall urge this consideration farther in it's proper place as a means to assist us in the ordering of our thoughts aright And therefore II. IN order to this end it would be â—onsidered that God bears a special regard to the obedience of our hearts and affections For tho bright and shining Examples of Vertue diffuse a lustre round about them promote the divine honour and induce men to glorifie the great Father of such burning Lights which is in Heaven yet nothing is so unexceptionable a demonstration of the power of Grace and the sincerity of our hearts as a conscientious care and management of those Thoughts that fly up and down in them for where such an obedience is yeilded to the divine commands as no eye can pry into but that which is ten thousand times brighter than the Sun in its Zenith it cannot possibly admit of the least intermixture or suspition of by-respect but must be tender'd God purely for his own Sake from a true spiritual principle of life and in a spiritual manner and then what sacrifice can possibly be more acceptable to our Maker than the immediate issues and emanations of our Souls when there is no Stander by no Witness of what passes betwixt God and our Souls in private no secular consideration that can possibly ingage us nor temporal rewards to induce nor temporal punishments to force us to the discharge of so spiritual and hidden a duty III. 'T IS a main point of Wisdom and Argument of good understanding to be able to order our Thoughts aright and the acquisition of that noble Character should spur us on to this discipline of our minds All the reasonable World will allow him to be a penson of a vast compass of understanding who by foreseeing and providing against the exigences of State by knowing how to compound temper and qualifie the different interests passions and perswasions of Men c. prudently administers a Government and if so no less will he deserve the Character who governs his Thoughts well for they are a Great people for number and as mutinous and disorderly as the most tumultuous rabble so that they who rule well in this sense too are worthy of double Honour IV. AND Lastly let the consideration of the noble and dignified Nature of our Thoughts induce us to an orderly management of them for they are beams of that Light which is inaccessible the immediate fruits and eldest Sons of that immortal Parent in us which is nearly allied to the Divinity it self and how then can we possibly be so insensible of our own high Character who were framed after the Image of the Immortal God and are designed to be made more ample partakers of his Nature as to lay out our time and our pains so busily as we do in the management of a Family acquireing an Estate and supporting and adorning a mouldring Carcase and yet totally disregard the menage of our thoughts which are the pride and glory of our Nature For wherein else but in this thinking reasoning Power do we differ from the inhabitants of our stable or our kennel And as this in general diserminates our Nature from theirs so I had almost said do's one Man as much differ from
more They understood little or nothing beyond the political Covenant the terms whereof chiefly influenc'd their obedience and so took up with such a political righteousness as consisted in the obedience of the civil Laws of the Jewish Common-weal hence it is that Trypho the Jew disputing with Justin Martyr says that the Gospel Precepts meaning those that command the obedience of the heart and affections seem'd to him incapable of observance and that Josephus reprehends Polybius the Historian for ascribing the death of Antiochus to sacriledge intended tho' not committed by him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For as long saith he as he did not actually execute his intentions he deserv'd no punishment and that this was the old received notion of obedience appears plainly enough from our Saviours correcting this misprision in the 5th of St. Mat. ye have heard saith he ver 21. that it was said by them of old time thou shalt not kill if a man did not actually murder another he was thought to have kept within the bounds of the eight Commandment as indeed he did as to the temporal penalty annex'd to the violation of it which was then principally regarded but our Lord tells them plainly Verse 22. that the guilt in this particular lies as deep as the very beginnings the first efforts and sallies of an angry mind towards a foolish quarrel that may end in blood in which sense St. John affirms that whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer is already so tho his sword be still unsheath'd and he has stab'd him only in effigie again says he to the same purpose at the 27th ver ye have heard that it was said by them of old time thou shalt not commit adultery if a man did but refrain from the actual embraces of a forbidden bed how keenly soever he debauch'd by the strength of an impure imagination yet he was for all that in their notion of obedience a chast and modest man still but our Saviour tells them a rape may be committed in the fancy and adultery by a wanton glance And that this Jewish notion of obedience is not yet altogether antiquated under Christianity seems but too evident from that trite proverbial saying amongst us that thoughts are free as if when men durst not let loose their hands or their tongues to work wickedness yet they might give their desires and imaginations their full swing and muse and wish and contrive and please themselves with the Invention and Images of those things which they think it not safe to put in execution whereas on the contrary the Laws of our Lord prescribe to our affections set bounds to our fancies regulate our desires direct our intentions govern our wishes strike at sin in embrio and check the first voluntary motions and tendencies of the mind to evil Voluntary I say because 't is hard to imagine that those motus primò primi as the Schools speak those first stirrings of Concupiscence which come not within the verge and compass of the Will should fall under the lash and censure of the Law a Souldier is not punished for having an enemy to encounter but for not doing his duty to repel his assaults if instead of watching and repressing his motions he rather entertains him then but not till then let the Law go upon him God will certainly punish no man for an imperfection that is not in his power to prevent and which he did not himself voluntarily contract will not call us to an account for being proper Subjects of the Operations of his Grace but for misusing it and will not require it at any mans hands that he has the Seeds of evil scatter'd in his composition but for suffering them to fructifie in the soil However it must still be own'd that as to all the irregular motions of the inner man that fall under the disposal of our Wills God hath concluded them all under sin that by the wicked man's forsaking his thoughts the numberless vain thoughts that fly up and down his mind he might the more abundantly pardon Is 55. v. 7. accordingly the same Prophet tells us of those that err Is 29. 24. in spirit Solomon of those that err in imagining evil Prov. 14. 22. and Micah denounces woe to the devisers 21. of iniquity Hence the same wise King of Israel tells us in one place that the thought of foolishness is sin Prov. 24. 9. Prov. 14. 22. Prov. 15. 26. in another place that they err who devise evil in a third that the thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord as his Father David had before observ'd of some that their inward parts were very wickedness Psal 5. 9. Psal 58. 2. and tells us of others that in their heart work wickedness hence again it is that St. Peter requires Simon Magus to repent of the thoughts of his Acts 8. 22. heart for what is the subject of our Repentance but our Sins that St. Paul requires us to bring into 2 Cor. 10. 4. captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ which supposes that of themselves they are naturally rebellious that our Saviour reprehends the Pharisees for thinking Matt. 9. 4. Matt. 15. 18 19. Matt. 5. evil and affirms of evil thoughts that they defile the man as well as when they shoot forth into the exterior actions of murder adultery c. The very intention and desire whereof he elsewhere equals with overt transgressions of the kind The reason of all is that God being the Father of the Spirits of all flesh and the Kingdom of his Son a spiritual Kingdom too 't is congruous both to the divine Nature and ours which is a stricture of his that his Laws bear sway in our spiritual part in our hearts and souls our wills and affections for would we have an infinitely glorious Spirit serv'd by dull flesh and blood only and not rather like himself in spirit and in truth with those prime productions those first born Sons of the immortal Nature in us Has God made us men and would we pay him but the spiritless homage of the animal part of us Has he implanted a noble and immortal principle of life and motion in us and shall it not share in our obedience to him and consequently in the guilt of the transgression of his Laws He is the natural Lord of both Soul and Body has bought them with a Price and therefore all the Reason in the World the Obedience we pay him should be commensurate to the extent of his Purchase so that if we have any just abhorrence of Sin in the true Latitude of the Divine construction of it we must govern our Thoughts as well as observe measures in our words and actions SECT 3. BUT I shall farther evince the obligations that lie upon us to order our Thoughts aright from such considerations as seem to enhance the guilt of mental sins above those of the outward Man For I. THO' it
again but range every Field and and pursue every game that comes in the interim in their way or like some restless birds they no sooner light upon one object than they presently take wing and fly off to another by which means there happens many times so quick a Succession or rather indeed such a tumultuary Jumble of Ideas in our heads that we lose our selves as in a Maze get into a Labyrinth of our own making and can hardly remember the goal from which our thoughts first started so that if we look'd them over again and could but trace them in their rambles and excursions from one Object to another we should find them many times no more coherent than our Dreams or the rovings and extravagant apprehensions of Mad-men and perhaps the main difference betwixt the Mad-man in Bedlam and the other musing in his Study lies in this that the one is so foolish as to utter his Conceptions as they throng into his head and the other so wise as to conceal them NOW there may be several causes of this Imperfection if we will trace it up to its spring head we must go as far back as the Fall of Adam for it when the mind leaving the pursuit of the chief and supream Good about which it regularly moved as about its proper Center and proposing to it self the acquest of infinite other false and fictitious Goods in its stead it became like a wandring Star planetary and erratic in its Motions AGAIN we may find another cause of this in our own Composition we are all fearfully and wonderfully made up of two very difficult parts Soul and Body and yet so that the Operations of the Soul do in a great measure depend upon the temperament of the Body now the great Instruments in our rational as well as animal Operations are those subtle parts of the bloud call'd Spirits which in the very constitution of some Persons those especially of a sanguine Complexion being of a fine and light Contexture do necessarily cause a like Levity of the mind in thinking for we cannot possibly help apprehending after their Motions and Impressions AND as this volatility of mind is natural to some Constitutions so may several accidents produce it in others a blow upon the Head a distemper in the Brain or intemperance may put the bloud into such a preternatural fermentation and so agitate and confuse the Spirits that there will necessarily ensue a like Levity and Confusedness of the mind in thinking BUT that which carries the most general and principal stroke in this affair is certainly the wantonness of our imaginations which is often presenting our understandings with fine Pictures and Images of things which inveigle our minds to run a gadding after them set the Spirits agog divert the main stream of our Thoughts from their primary channel and let them run out like water spilt upon the ground upon foreign and improper objects So that even the most thoughtful men many times are not able to direct one line of Thoughts streight on but lose sight of the subject they at first began with For imagination is a busie restless sort of power that 's seldom or never idle but most of all exerts its activity when the Understanding is lazy and out of imployment No sooner does the tempting object from without honour or pleasure or profit make its way through the doors of our senses to our understanding but this faculty like a Master of the Ceremonies ushers it in harangues upon its Excellencies and desires it may have audience if a Man hankers after honour and his temper is ambitious the imagination presently lifts him up to one of the highest Pinacles of the Court shews him all the Kingdoms of greatness together with Followers Dependants Attendants Retinue and the other glories of them so that the Man's Thoughts are always mounting making ladders as it were to himself and contriving how to climb higher So again if an object of profit has possess'd the mind the fancy presently begins to survey the land to set off the value and conveniency of Goods laid up for many years and falls a telling over the money as it were before yours eyes to ingage you in its pursuit and makes your Thoughts in the Prophets language go after your covetousness So again if the Idea of a pleasurable object has stoln in at your eyes the same faculty presents you with more charms than any one else can see in it summons all the senses to bear witness to the several gratifications it affords them and recommends the object so long till your deluded Thoughs play the adulterer and commit folly with it and in all these cases like a flattering Painter draws the Picture of the object far more beautiful and exact than ever the original could pretend to and by these means breaks off the connexion of our Thoughts cuts them short of the object they should pursue and renders them light and desultory NOW this defect as far as 't is purely casual or as far as 't is natural owing to our complex'd constitution of Soul and Body cannot be criminal but then comes certainly under that denomination and is sin to us where the natural infirmity is countenanc'd and indulg'd especially in divine worship or the defect is voluntarily acquired by intemperance or the like AND now that we are upon this Head it may not be improper here to subjoyn other vanities of our Thoughts that are principally owing to the same cause of a wanton and ludicrous imagination for indeed this power carries a mighty stroke with us influencing in a great measure their determination of the judgment the choice of the will the pursuit of the affections and in consequence of all these the execution of our bodily powers SECT 2. AND here I shall first take notice of that error of Thought it occasions in us when we apply our selves to the consideration of spiritual and immaterial substances For being used to think by the intervention of Ideas from our senses which are conversant only about material objects the imagination which receives these impressions from our senses is apt to draw the same gross Images of immaterial beings as of Spirits Angels and of God himself and we being used to view the objects we think of as they are represented in the looking glass of fancy are apt foolishly to conclude that the originals resemble those Pictures of them and so make no distinction in our conceptions betwixt material and immaterial objects hence it is that we conceive Angels to be like young Boys and the great God like a grave old Man that very vanity of imagination as the Apostle terms it of which the Gentil World stood guilty in changing the glory of the incorruptible God Rom. 1. 21 23. into an Image made like corruptible Man c. II. WE shall consider that vanity which Fancy imparts to our Thoughts in relation to sensual and voluptuous objects for hereby Men
frame and figure to themselves those unlawful enjoyments which 't is not in their power to put in execution courting and addressing and complementing and making fine speeches in their minds to speculative idols of their own framing fond Ixions that embrace the Clouds and vapours of their own lusts filthy waking dreamers that defile not the flesh only but when that 's out of imployment commit incest with the Daughters of their own imagination an argument of great depravity of Soul this for Men to make procurers of their Thoughts to prostitute their very Spirits and put out Conscience that Candle of the Lord that all may appear like Night about them whilst they commit their deeds of darkness their imaginary rapes whoredomes and debaucheries We have the voice of Scripture for it that this spiritual wickedness is adultery without any farther progress in the fact But III. THERE is yet a worse vanity of the Thoughts if possible in relation to the same voluptuous Objects and that is a repetition of these sinful Pleasures of the Mind when they are past and gone and have been really transacted When men are not satisfi'd with the harvest they have already reap'd but must have a latter Marth as it were a second crop of delight in their Thoughts and imaginations must renew their filthy scene in their own bosomes erect a stage there and their Fancies act over again the same brutal Comedies again with fresh satisfaction The fault this generally of overgrown and disabled sinners dry trees that have green leaves tho' they are past bearing fruit Men whose vices have left them not through supernatural Grace but natural Infirmity who lamenting not their Sins but their Impotence endeavour by the strength of an impure Imagination yet living in them to conjure up the Ghost of their old departed Lusts to make the dry bones live and give their dead Sins a Resurrection from one grave whilst they themselves are ready to drop into another SO again this mental repetition of sinful acts is seen in several other Cases as when a man has overreach'd and defrauded his Brother in any kind he is apt inwardly to applaud himself for the villany to walk over those steps again in his mind by which he circumvented him and repeat the dishonesty with as much satisfaction as he committed it so Men that are of bitter and implacable Spirits will act over their revenge again in their Thoughts make the wounds already given their Adversary bleed afresh in their own minds and stab him once more in Essigie and so of other Vices NOW a Man must be arriv'd at a very high measure of Impenitency and Impiety who thus indulges One would think it were enough for Men to commit the outward acts of Sin with greediness but to repeat them with delight again is to approve of them upon mature advice and boldly to declare against all Relentings and Repentances which ever look with horror not with satisfaction upon our by past evil Actions The great Apostle makes it an argument of a very wicked disposition not onely to commit Sin but to take pleasure likewise in those who do so and if there be any difference in the case 't is certainly the worse to be pleas'd with ones self for so doing For every such after game of internal complacency is a fresh commission of the Sin stains the Soul with a new guilt and that so much the deeper by how much 't is the more criminal to ingage not only the powers of the body to commit Sin but the faculties of the Soul likewise to view and contemplate and repeat it IV. ANOTHER Vanity of Thoughts chargeable upon a wild and ungovern'd Imagination is observeable in Men's framing fine Schemes and Images and suppositions of things and then pleasing themselves with them as if they were Realities and they actually enjoyed them For the Fancy has a sort of power of Creation and can hold up the Images of Idols of its own making fictitious Honours Riches c. till the foolish Heart falls down and worships them Thus you shall have Men placeing themselves in some high Posture or eminent Station or plentiful Fortune and then amusing themselves with ten Thousand idle Projects how they would behave themselves in such Circumstances what figure they should make what interest they would drive on c. Cutting out as much work for themselves as if they were in the actual possession of the Fools Paradice they have invented These and the like imaginations are the frequent entertainment of melancholy and hypocondraick Persons and perhaps the best of Men are apt now and then to fall into these sort of awaking Dreams our minds are apt to spread wider than our Conditions and we will now and then when our understandings are not better imployed be figuring as busily to our selves what we would do if invested with such an honour possessed of such an Estate c. as if we were actually Masters of them Thus our Fancies project shadows and we take them for substance we first build Castles in the Air and then our Thoughts proudly strut through every room of the imaginary Building we frame an Idol and then fall down and worship it whilst our Idol in the Apostles definition of it is nothing NOW this is not only a vanity and a weakness in our Thoughts but a Sin too First because God hath provided better Objects for the entertainment of our Thoughts than such Chimeras And 2. BECAUSE that when our minds thus strowl and stray beyond the Circumstances the Divine Providence has placed us in it argues a sort of dissatisfaction in us with our present Condition which is ever criminal V. AS 't is a great vanity of the mind thus to imploy its Thoughts in imaginary Suppositions or in drawing Pictures as it were of things and then taking them for Realities and Originals so is it likewise a Weakness and Fondness in the thinking Power owing likewise to a busie Imagination to dwell upon and be ever contemplating a Man's own real Enjoyments whether of Body Mind or Fortune We are certainly our own greatest Flatterers and should never be impos'd upon by others in this kind did we not first delude and impose upon our selves When God has blest Men with great abilities of Mind large Fortunes or the like they are always viewing themselves in the flattering Looking-Glass of their own Fancies like those who spend half their time in dressing or many times it proves a magnifying Glass that represents their Enjoyments or Perfections in far larger Dimentions than what they have in Reality Thus the Men of parts will be ever and anon amusing and pleasing themselves with their own Notions and Productions whereby as they are apt to over rate their own acquisitions and abilities so are they inclin'd to undervalue and depreciate those of other Men. For whilst our Thoughts thus dwell upon our own Perfections they are apt at the same time to sit in Judgment too upon
sleep is taken away unless they cause some to fall So intent are Men's Thoughts so closely do they fasten upon these earthly sensual and many times Devilish concernments whilst they are presently weary and frisk off from any thing that is sacred and sober and serious NOW this wandring in Prayer and other holy duties is resolvable into several causes As I. INTO our complex'd constitution of Soul and Body Whilst our Souls are lodg'd in these pitiful tenements of Clay they cannot help being affected with the inconveniences of their Habitation They are confined to the use of Bodily Spirits in their most abstracted operations and every considerable disorder in the blood and Spirits does therefore of necessity produce a proportionable disorder in the Soul in thinking and being surrounded with such variety of objects and business whilst we live in this material World which through the intervention of our senses leave their Ideas in the Head behind them the eye of the mind can no more help looking upon them when they are jogg'd and thrown in its way than the eyes of our bodies can help seeing when they are open or our ears hearing the sounds that strike them All this is natural and necessary as the unavoidable result of the dependance of the Soul in its most spiritual operations upon the frame and contexture of our Bodies during their conjunction and we may as well think of ceasing to be what we are and of casting the Man in a new mould as of a total prevention of this infirmity of our Constitution And this being so we must expect to meet with it in our Prayers as well as in other business of our Lives t is in Heaven alone where the faculties of both Soul and Body shall be inlarged and refined and we shall have but one Object of our Thoughts God who shall be all in all that our Souls shall cleave inseparably to him without the least avocation All which may serve to qualify by the by the seruples and vexations incident to some tender minds who are apt perhaps to entertain too hard thoughts of themselves because they cannot so manage their Thoughts that they shall regularly attend upon Gods Service without breaks and chasms in them without falling off now and then and straying from their present business For 't is impossible in the very nature of things our Composition totally to prevent the first beginnings or sallies of the Mind towards wandring for the Spirits by whose intervention we perform these mental Operations will not bear so rigid a fixation all we can do in the case and that we must do is to keep a strict eye upon our Thoughts to drive away the Fowls that light upon our Sacrifice to endeavour continually to check and controul and stop them in their career to other objects and when at any time they have given us the slip to call them upon the first discovery home again to their business and regret our weakness and if we thus both bewail and labour to remedy those exursions of our Thoughts which we cannot totally hinder they are not our sin but infirmity which will never affect our main state II. DISTRACTING Thoughts in Prayer are very much owing to that natural aversion we observ'd in us to things spiritual and Divine for such imployment of our Thoughts being therefore a sort of preternatural force upon them the spring that bends them Heaven-ward will be apt to relax and give way to the contrary tendency of our minds downwards so that leaving those unwelcome objects they presently fall back again into the company of the old familiars of their thoughts III. OUR distractions proceed in a great measure from an over-active and ungovern'd imagination 't is the quick-silver part in our mettal that runs glibly up and down and shoots as it were in our minds like Meteors in the Air traversing our devotions with ten thousand frivolous and foolish conceits presenting us with those fine Schemes and Images of things riches honour or the like till the distracted wandring Man instead of his Maker worships all the while perhaps the Idol of his own and the Devils making But we have discours'd the extravagancies of this Faculty before IV. DISTRACTIONS in Prayer proceed frequently from an intemperate love of the World and the cares that attend its enjoyments which so often ingross our hearts that we no sooner set about holy duties than they justle the one thing needful out of our minds and make Mary's good part stand by and Luk. 10. 42 give way to Martha's concern for the World and the family 'T is certainly one of the most ridiculous and yet most general frailties incident to our corrupt nature to use this World as if neither we nor the fashion of it were to pass away which is just as if a Traveller with business of infinite importance on his Hand should loyter and take up with his Inn on the Road without ever farther pursuing the end of his journey And possibly most of the sins that are committed in the World are fairly resolvable into a too passionate fondness for it Ye cannot serve God and Mammon is a saying that carries a greater force of truth in it than possibly most Men are aware of For their principles of action are opposite their interests are opposite and they require a quite different frame of mind in their respective Votaries and we know who has told us no less truly than roundly that if any Man love the World the love of God is not in him for it ties down our apprehensions to things mean and trivial and base and stifles and chokes our desires of such as are spiritual and Divine it extinguishes all holy fervour of Spirit estranges from God and puts out that sacred flame of love for him which is the very life and Soul of our devotions to him it crowds into the Church and Closet with us and like the Sons of Zerviah is too hard for David so that many times with Demas we forsake the Lord in our Thoughts even whilst we pretend to do him homage having lov'd this present World whose thorns i. e. its cares and riches choak the seeds in our Saviours Luk. 8. 7. 14. estimate of all the good that is sown amongst them and therefore it is that when God required the male Children of the Jews thrice a year to attend upon his service at Jerusalem he promised that no Man should desire their Land when they Ex. 34. 24. should go up to appear before the Lord their God thrice in the year for the fears and jealousies that might otherwise have seiz'd them would have divided their hearts betwixt God and their families at home and so have blasted the fruits of so laborious and universal a journey and upon the same account it is that the Apostle advises single persons that were able to receive it to continue rather in that state in times of difficulty and distress that they might
or any other Prayers by the bare telling over as the manner of some is and stringing up their Petitions We durst not thus mock our Prince to his Face we would hardly do it to our Equals and whence then is it but through want of preparing our Hearts with due Conceptions of his Awful and Majestick Presence in his own House that we make thus bold with our Maker 3. IT might be a proper preparatory reflection to consider the Fruits and Consequences of approaching God in so careless and so incogitant a Manner I shall not go about to shew at large how severe God has formerly been upon all disorders and irregularities committed about holy Things and Duties as in the Case of Aarons Sons of Vzzah of Lev. 10. 2. 2 Sam. 6. 6. the Bethshemites and of the Church 1 Sam. 6. 19. 1 Câ—r 11. 30. of Corinth nor how he threatn'd that for this very thing because his People drew near to him with their Lips but had removed their Heart far from him he would therefore Isa 29. 13 14. proceed to do a marvellous Work among them even a marvellous Work and a Wonder Which was no less than to confound the wisdom of the wise and the understanding of the prudent Men amongst them I shall not I say insist on these Considerations now because it has seem'd good to the infinite Wisdom to alter the nature of his Inflictions and for neglects of this kind especially to change them from temporal into spiritual which tho they do not so immediately affect the Body as the others did yet endanger the Soul and take away the spiritual Life of a Christian For tho he do's not now smite Men with Death for their unsanctified Approaches to him yet he smites them with Deadness with Coldness and Indifferency in the cause of Religion suffers them to grow listless reasty and awkard at their Devotions and ten to one to lapse at long run into open Atheism and Prophaneness For we certainly lose ground by every spiritless Prayer we advance grow from bad to worse from worse to stark nought and past feeling For every such formal performance grieves the Spirit cloggs the Conscience hardens the Heart and gives the Devil an occasion to draw us off from our Neutrality and to make us at last declare for his Party whence it is not improbable that when we have once contracted such a vitious habit and crasis of Soul in Devotion he himself many times sends us to our Prayers adding that he may add to our Disease and turn the best Antidote we have against him into so much stronger Poison to our selves And therefore we would do well to season and prepare our Hearts beforehand with these and the like Considerations that by a just Reslection upon the Importance of the Duty the Supream Majesty to whom we pay it and the fatal Consequences of a perfunctory Performance of it we may attend upon the Lord without Distraction III. ANOTHER proper means to fix our Thoughts in the Service of God is to Love him with all our Hearts with all the Powers and Capacities of our Souls did we Delight to have our Conversation with Him our Hearts would keep our Minds close to their Work and not suffer them to loiter or to ramble for our Affections have an immediate Influence upon our Thoughts and our Hearts generally sets our Mind the Theme of its Contemplations Love particularly is a commanding and imperial Passion that bids us go and and we go come and we come do this and we do it a passion that ingrosses all our Powers binds us fast to and runs our Thoughts so deep into its Object that we have neither Leisure nor Patience hardly Power to attend to any others O how I love thy Law says holy David and then it follows both in him and in the nature of the things it is my Meditation all the Ps 119. 97. Day and the first part of his Character of a good Man is that his Delight is in the Law of the Lord and the second is the natural Result of the first that in his Law doth he meditate Day and Night Ps 1. 2. For a Man cannot but pore and muse on the thing he delights in and therefore were our Hearts ravished with the Love of God from just and retired Reflections upon the benefits of Creation Preservation Redemption and the Glory that hereafter shall be Revealed did we but kindle this holy Flame in us by frequent Considerations of his patience forgiveness forbearance the Abyss of his Love and the great depths of his infinite beneficence things that must needs render the Deity amiable and lovely to us in our Conceptions of him all our motions would tend Heaven wards when once invigorated with impressions from that celestial Fire we should not be at leisure to admit any Rival of God in our Thoughts and to attend to those little idle Toys and Fancies that have the impudence to step into our Closets and distract us IV. MEDITATION is another proper Remedy of the wandring of our Thoughts in Prayer The Hill of Meditation is indeed of difficult but yet of noble Ascent that lifts us up so far above our natural Level that we look down upon the World and all its Enjoyments which so frequently interrupt our Devotions as a very little Thing 'T is an heroic and abstracted Operation of the Soul that lets us into the very secrets of the Objects we Contemplate that makes every day fresh Discoveries and gives us both deep and diffused Prospects of things otherwise invisible the Telescope of the Mind whereby we descry new Worlds a new Heaven and a new Earth the Terra incognita of Nature and Grace and see things at an immense distance from us It opens to us the Scene of Paradise it self makes a sort of indistance betwixt God and our own Souls takes us out or at least makes us forget that we are Flesh fills our head with those elevated Conceptions and warms our Heart with those Ravishments of Joy that we can feel indeed but cannot utter or express them And he who has never yet been experimentally sensible of this Truth never yet rightly enjoyed either God or himself has the most exquisite Pleasure of this Life yet to come and wants the preparatory Foretaste of the enjoyments of the other Meditation in a word I mean where God is the Object both quickens and fixes our Devotion which embraces not its Object but in proportion as Meditation gives it Entrance V. AND Lastly Solitude gives a mighty fixation of Thought in private and Religious Assemblies in publick Devotion for a Retreat naturally tends to Recollection of the Spirit and Communion with God it helps to center all the Emanations of our Souls upon him and gives us more pure and perfect Prospects and therefore when thou prayest says he who taught us to pray enter into thy Closet not only to avoid that vain Pomp and
O how greedily do our thoughts caress embrace and bid it ten thousand welcomes But when God or Religion or Death or Judgment or any such grave and serious Subject prossers it self to our Thoughts how apt are they to slink away hang back and be shy and after it may be a very short Enterview and a cold Entertainment dismiss those Objects make them stand by and give way to such as are more entertaining and diverting The one 's a wellcome Guest and old Acquaintance the other meets with the formal Reception of a Stranger or as of a Visitant that is not agreeable When we wind up our minds to the highest Pin of Meditation on these Subjects our Thoughts after a very little stay there presently fall down again we are impatient and uneasie under the Stretch and care not perhaps how soon Business or Company or the like step in and set us at Liberty so averse naturally are our Thoughts unless God has sanctified our Hearts to converse with holy Objects III. OUR Thoughts in regard of holy Duties are apt to mistime and misplace themselves when tho' they may be materially lawful and good in themselves yet they intrude impertinently at a time not proper for them when they are not call'd upon and have no business in the mind like an over officious friend who tho' he means well yet mars a matter through the unseasonableness of his interposal To every thing says Solomon there is time and season and 't is the right ordering of things as to time as well as place that renders them proper and decent and agreeable A Souldier may mean very well and do some acceptable Service by leaving his Rank or quitting the Post assign'd him and yet for all his Success he becomes a transgressor and may be call'd to an account for so doing And just so it is with our Thoughts I mean particularly in our religious Performances they may be truly good in themselves yet if they are forreign to the matter in hand step in unseasonably and break their Ranks they are Criminals So that when we are at our Devotions 't is not enough to bar out all sinful and worldly Conceits from crowding in upon us but we must stave off all other thoughts that relate not to the matter in hand for tho' a Thought for instance or purpose of doing some good Work be in it self Divine yet t is a question whether or no the Spirit that suggests it at that time be Divine because it tends then only to distract us and mar the performance we are about as colour misplaced in the face doth the beauty so then Gods worship must be performed not only externally but internally too in decency and order and we must not offer that great Majesty who made all things in weight and measure a tumultuary jumble of Thoughts in our homage to him But as in the words of the Apostle He that is ingaged in the Ministry must wait on his Ministring and he that teacheth on Teaching and he that Exhorteth on Exhortation c. So he that is at his Prayers must attend to his Prayers to the particular Petition before him he that is giving Thanks to his Thanksgiving he that is at Confession to his Confessing c. directing all his Thoughts streight upwards towards Heaven and he that is at Sermon ought for that time to apply his whole Thoughts to what is offer'd and if any other thoughts howsoever lawful and good pretend to interpose must bid them come another time for that he is now otherwise ingag'd and not at leisure IV 'T IS another sinful Infirmity in our thinking Power that tho we are willing to entertain pious Objects in our Hearts yet we care not to dwell long upon them so that they leave not those prints and impressions behind them that stick and abide by us persume not the heart with that due Fragrancy and Savour they ought to leave behind them when they are past and gone for tho we may not be so bad as those of whom it may be affirmed with the Psalmist that God is not in all their Thoughts yet of well disposed minds it may be said that he is not much at a time there 'T is long ere we can get sight of him through the optick glass of Contemplation and when we do our hands shake or somthing interposes so that ever and anon we lose sight of him again and this Levity of mind as it is seen in our Contemplations upon any Objects so more especially in the performance of holy Duties We set forth in Prayer it may be very well with a due Composure of mind and an humble Sense of our obligations to God and Dependance on Him but perhaps e're we are got half way on with our work our Thoughts which set out with our Lips have given them the slip and left them to go on by themselves whilst they in the interim have rambl'd perhaps from one corner of the Earth to another and made the grand Tour of the World When we should earnestly seek God by Prayer and our Souls and Spirits should ascend straight upwards in direct Bays of fervent devotion behold them tossed like a dried leaf before the wind or as an empty cask upon the waves for instead of good evil is present with us and we cannot do the things that we would but the World and the Devil knock at the Door of our hearts step in and desire to speak with our Thoughts divert them from their business and make a Man's heart go after his covetousness as the Prophet speaks after his pleasures his sins or his secular imployments any thing that was forgot before will be sure then to present it self to the mind and sue for Attendance Nay many times foreign Thoughts come about us like Bees as David speaks of his enemies in whole swarms together and with their humming noise distract our attention or like Abrahams Fowls in flocks to peck at and deform our Sacrifice And thus again it is in that other Branch of Religious duty hearing of the word for no doubt but any Man upon a just recollection of his Thoughts will find they were out of Church several times whilst his Person was there at home in the Shop or the Cosser or indeed any where but where they should have been in fine either out of Doors or at play perhaps within as much as the Children generally are without But then take any other sort of objects pleasurable or profitable or honourable and your Thoughts shall dwell and hover and brood over them all the day said I nay in the Night too disturb your repose and awake you for the abundance of the rich to use the wise Man's instance will not suffer him to sleep And so it is of any other worldly project gratifying Men's Lusts compassing a revenge or the like of the latter of which the same wise Man speaks they sleep not except they have done mischief and their
Composition where tho the Spirit may be willing yet the flesh is weak will necessarily make our minds nod take them off their guard now and then and consequently give the Tempter an anavoidable advantage over us yet if these wandrings of our Spirits are grievous to our Minds upon recollection if we hence learn what unprofitable Servants we are even in our best Performances and humble our selves hereupon in the sight of God begging him to whip those Thieves that steal away our Thoughts out of the Temples of our Souls we shall not stand chargeable with the Robberies they commit upon us but as the motions of the good Spirit when rejected do so much the more inhaunce Men's guilt so will the injections of the evil One when guarded against as far as may be and resisted be sanctified through the divine Mercy to our greater advantage In fine this wandring of the mind in holy Duties tho in its best Construction 't is a great Unhappiness yet will be only so far imputed for Sin to us as it is voluntary in its Cause and in our own power to remedy and is in its Progress whence soever it derives indulged and complyed with SECT 5. WE proceed now to another more terrible sort of Thoughts wherewith the Minds of Men are many times unhappily infested For it is not unusual for some tempers especially to be assaulted with abundance of odd extravagant and horrid Thoughts breaking in upon them in spite of all Guard and Opposition Thus you shall have some those particularly of musing heads and melancholly Dispositions press'd upon now and then with Atheistical and Blasphemous Câ—gitations tempted either with David to deny God Ps 73. 2. from a consideration of the unequal Dispensation of his Providence in the World or some other such illogical Topick or else through the pressure of their Afflictions or the like to think hardly of him to deny him in his Attributes to charge him foolishly and to curse him and die Others you shall have possess'd with dismal 〈◊〉 of thâ—â—r having sinned the â—in againâ—â— the holy Ghost of their being Reprobates cast off of God without the verge of his Mercy and seal'd up for destruction Others Lastly there are hurried on in their minds to the commission of some great and crying Sins even against the bent of their own Propensions and that sometimes as far as self Murder it self c. NOW these Thoughts being all of 'em a kin and of the self same Family I shall not go about to treat of them severally and apart but together and in the following Method I. I shall endeavour to shew that there is some difficulty in stateing their proper Rise and Origine But that II. 'T IS of great use to know it and therefore III. IN order thereunto I shall assign some Marks and Characteristies whereby it may be known when they are of their Father the Devil IV. I shall shew that howsoever troublesom and afflicting they are they do not affect nor endanger our main State V. and Lastly I shall endeavour to prescribe the regulation of them I. IT must be owned there is some difficulty in the enquiry into the rise and origine of these horrid Thoughts and 't is hard to know many times whether they are the genuine Issue of our own corrupt Nature or spurious Brats falsly father'd on us by the Devil For he can inject as much and more than our Corruptions can suggest and yet possihly on the other hand they are able of themselves to carry us on to those excesses that look diabolical and when they joyn hand in hand 't is hard to know whether of the two first made the Motions or proves the abler Solicitor of their common cause of Sin Out of the Heart says our Saviour proceed evil Thoughts Murders Adulteries c. there they are conceived whosoever begets them And St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans resolves Rom. 1. 24. some of those black Crimes for which he brands the heathen World into the Lusts of their own Hearts and yet at the same time 〈…〉 to understand that the Pâ—ince of the power of the Air wrought in all such Children of Disobedience And indeed as the Doctrine Eph. 2. 2. of divine and humane Concurrence in the progress of true Piety is very plain and legible in the Scriptures so as that we are said for instance to be washed and sanctified by the Spirit of God and 1 Cor. 6. 11. yet are required to cleanse our selves from all filthiness of the Flesh and Spirit So are the same sins in 2 Cor. 7. 1. different places charged upon the Devil and our own Hearts too As David's numbring the people 1 Chron. 21. 1. v. 8. is ascribed to Satan and yet the King takes it to himself Just as it is said of Ananias lying to the holy Ghost that Satan put him on it and yet that he conceived it in his Acts. 5. 3 4. Heart NOW tho it be somwhat difficult as we have seen to know the true Parent of these hideous Thoughts we speak of yet II. IT is of no small use and concernment to meet with some satisfaction in the Matter for the sad Experience I believe of many especially hypocondraick Persons tells us the darkness of whose humor is best fitted to receive such black Impressions how apt the grand Enemy of our peace is to throw these fiery Darts into our Hearts and then to accuse us of their burning within us to commit a rape upon our Spirits and then lay the Child at our Doors whereby he many times creates such infinite Disquiet of Thought Horror of Conscience and Astonishment of all the Powers and Faculties of tendor Minds that they are apt to look upon themselves as rejected of God deliver'd up to Satan and in such a desperate and forlorn Condition that the violent hand perhaps is sometimes thought of to put a Period to the comfortless and wretched Life and therefore I say it may be of excellent Use on this Argument for the Support and Encouragement of these unhappy Persons to point out such criterious and characteristies whereby the buffetings of Satan as we render it 2 Cor. 12 7. may be in some measure distinguished from the genuine productions of our own Minds and those generally assign'd by Divines are such as follow I. THEY are the Devil's Thoughts not ours when the matter of them surpasses the suggestions of our natural Corruption for Nature her self unless turn'd perfectly Diabolical shrinks and gives back at those outragiously wicked Motions that pass now and then in some Men's Minds and there to be sure they are the assaults of the Devil upon them to Vex Disquiet and Confuse their Spirits tho he chance to prove unable to prevail with them An evil Heart 't is true may through its own inherent Wickedness conjure up those frightful Spectres of Thoughts that would scare and amaze other Persons but that
them but if the Devil who lays siege to us throw them in we are no farther concern'd then to take the best care we can to put them out to suppress and hinder their spreading For that which is from within only defiles a Man not that which is thrown in from without if we are purely passive in the matter and joyn not with the Devil's Suggestions so long they are his Thoughts let him look to them they are none of ours we have nothing to do with them III. IT would be considered that these frightful Thoughts derive many times more from an ill habit of Body than of Mind more from poor Blood and a bad Spleen than from indisposition of Soul and falsness of Heart Melancholly whether Natural or acquired by Sickness Losses Afflictions c. and such Persons are most infested with these horrid Thoughts is of it self apt to fill Mens heads with infinite Crotchets the blackest Conceits and saddest Surmises it creates the Images of Apparitions Mormoes and Spectres and then inclines the poor deluded Man to take them for Realities Whilst alas his malady is generally better cured by good Air wholsom Diet and Chalybeats then by all the recipes of Divinity And then what reason has a Man to be troubled in Mind or dejected in Spirit more for this than any other Distemper why is poor Blood and a melancholy Disposition a surer mark of the divine Displeasure than the burnings of a Feaver or the shiverings of an Ague IV. IT may be added for the support and encouragement of these dejected Spirits that their malady is rarely incident but to religious Dispositions and pious Minds that live under tender Sense of their Duty and an awful dread of the divine Displeasure Were they in those bonds of Iniquity and that state of Reprobation they figure to themselves they would never be so happy as to experiment any of these spiritual conflicts in their bosoms Non timeo hos pingues said Caesar of Dolobella and his roaring Crew but sober Brutus and Cassius stuck in his Stomach the Devil like him never troubles his head with your supine unwary Sinners who are amusing their heads with a thousand wicked projects that advance the interests of his Kingdom for he might chance to jog them out of their sleep of sin and awaken them to repentance and so out-wit himself should he fright them by these terrible injections and therefore if Ephraim is joyned to Idols if Hos 4. 17. Men are deeply ingaged in notorious sins he too says like God let him alone For why should the Prince of darkness be thought so weak a States-man as to make war upon those who have already submitted to his government and sworn homage to him But then he uses all the black art of his infernal Suggestions to stop and vex or disquiet the Religious Man in his holy course 'T was righteous Job that he would fain have prevail'd with to curse God to his face and 't was the Holy Jesus that was Job 1. 11. 2. 5. tempted by him to that horrid blasphemy of renouncing the worship of the great God and substituting him in his stead So that upon the whole Temptations of this nature being rather an argument of a pious than irreligious temper ought in just construction to be so far from Ministring sorrow that they may afford even matter of comfort and rejoycing to those that are exercised therein V. AND Lastly Tho it must be confest that these black injections may be sometimes like other judgments the Chastisement of our sins as of our carnal security for instance of neglect of our Thoughts grieving the holy Spirit c. yet they are even then only the evil of punishment as any other infliction may be not of sin to us unless we like comply with and approve them and when they have once gained the design for which our heavenly Father sent them on his Children as suppose the awakening them to a more through Repentance than they have yet arriv'd at taking off their inclinations to the enjoyments of this present Life teaching them a more perfect Recumbency upon God abating their Pride least they should be with St. Paul above measure exalted 2 Cor. 12. 7. c. then he takes off his afflicting hand restrains the Tempter quiets the mind and speaks Peace to his People CHAP. III. SECT 1. THUS much of the second part of our Subject the Defects Failures and Infirmities incident to our Thoughts We are now arriv'd at the third and last which is to prescribe some rules for the Government and Manage of them And thus I will endeavour to do I. WITH Relation particularly to these horrid Thoughts we have just now treated of II. WITH Relation to the sinful infirmities of our Thoughts in religious Duties III. AND Lastly I shall lay down such Rules as concern the government of our Thoughts in general First I shall endeavour to shew how we are to behave our selves with particular relation to these horrid Thoughts we have just now treated of And 1. THERE is no doubt to be made but that Prayer which is so proper a means to the attainment of every good and perfect Gift and so powerful an Amulet against all the Evils we labour under will be of special Use in the case before us Is any among you afflicted says St. James let him pray and what greater affliction and consequently more pressing occasion to Prayer than those Perplexities of Mind we speak of for when can it be more opportune to call in the Aid of Heaven than when we are thus immediately assaulted by Hell What fitter to quench these fiery Darts of the Wicked than the Shield of Faith in God express'd Eph. 6. 16. by our importunate Applications to him for Relief For then must it be more especially acceptable to God to testifie an entire Dependance on and Confidence in him when he seems most of all to hide his Face from us in Displeasure For if we thus pour out our Supplications before him hungring and thirsting after the Assistances of his Spirit and the Testimony of our Consciences to support us in these spiritual Conflicts he has promised and therefore no doubt but in his own good time he will shine upon us with the Light of his Countenance and yeild us Refreshment Will put his hook into the Nose and his bridle into the Lips of the Tempter turn him back by the way by which he came and give Ease to those who have suffered so much in themselves for fear only of having offended him II. ANOTHER proper remedy in this case is to avoid idleness and solitary retirements it must indeed be own'd in my opinion that Solitude is a mighty help to elevation of Mind application of Thought recollection of Spirit and consequently to true private Devotion which might be the Reason I presume why our Lord himself on this occasion added somtimes even the darkness of the Night to the