by his life Having loved his own to the end he loveth them and without end His Gifts and Calling are without Repentance When Satan and thy Flesh would hide God's love look to Christ and read the golden words of Love in the Sacred Gospel and peruse thy many recorded experiences and remember the convictions which secret and open Mercies have many a time afforded thee But especially draw nearer to the Lord of Love and be not seldom and slight in thy contemplations of his Love and Loveliness Dwell in the Sun-shine and thou wâ—lt know that it is light and warm and comfortable Distance and strangeness cherish thy doubts Acquaint thy self with him and be at peace Yet look up and oft and earnestly look up after thy ascended glorified Head who said Tell my Brethren I ascend to my Father and your Father to my God and your God! Think where and what he is and what he is now doing for all his own and how humbled abased suffering Love is now Triumphant regnant glorified Love and therefore no less than in all its tender expressions upon Earth As Love is no where perfectly revealed but in Heaven so I can no where so fully discern it as by looking up by Faith to my Father and Saviour which is in Heaven and conversing more believingly with the heavenly Society Had I done this more and better and as I have persuaded others to do it I had lived in more convincing delights of God's Love which would have turned the fears of Death into joyfuller hopes and more earnest desires to be with Christ in the Arms in the World in the life of Love as far better than to be here in a dark a doubting fearing World But O my Father Infinite LOVE though my Arguments be many and strong my Heart is bad and my strength is weakness and I am insufficient to plead the cause of thy Love and Loveliness to my self or others O plead thy own cause and what Heart can resist Let it not be my word only but Thine that thou lovest me even me a Sinner speak it as Christ said to Lazarus Arise If not as thou tellest me that the Sun is warm yet as thou hast told me that my Parents and my dearest Friends did love me and much more powerfully than so Tell it me as thou tellest me that thou hast given me life by the consciousness and works of life That while I can say Thou that knowest all things Knowest that I love Thee it may include therefore I know that I am beloved of thee and therefore come to thee in the confidence of thy Love and long to be nearer in the clearer sight the fuller sense and joyfuller exercise of Love for ever Father into thy Hand I commend my Spirit Lord Jesus receive my Spirit Amen AN APPENDIX A Breviate of the Helps of Faith Hope and Love A Breviate of the proof of Supernatural Revelation and the Truth of Christianity 1 TIM 3. 16. Without Controversie great is the Mystery of Godliness God was manifested in the Flesh justified in the Spirit seen of Angels preached to the Gentiles believed on in the World received up into Glory THese are the Creed or Six Articles of the Gospel which the Apostles preached § 1. I. God manifested in the Flesh of Jesus is the first and great Article Believe this and believe all No wonder that believing that Jesus Christ is the Son of God is so often made in Scripture the description of saving Faith the Title to Baptism and Pardon and Salvation the Evidence of the Spirit c. He that truly and practically believeth that God came in Flesh to Man and that Christ is the Fathers Messenger from Heaven must needs believe that God hath a great value for the Souls of men and for his Church that he despiseth not even our Flesh that his Word is true and fully to be trusted that he who so wonderfully came to Man will certainly take up Man to him Who can doubt of the Immortality of Souls or that Christ will receive the departing Souls of the Faithful to himself who believeth that he took Man's Nature and hath glorified it now in Heaven in union with the Divine Who can ever have low Thoughts of God's love and Mercy who believeth this And who can prostitute his Soul and Flesh to wickedness who firmly believeth that he took the Soul and Flesh of Man to sanctifie and glorifie it § 2. II. The holy Spirit is the Justification of the Truth of Jesus Christ He is Christ's Advocate and Witness to the World He proveth the Gospel by these five ways of Evidence I. By all the Prophesies Types and Promises of Christ in the Old Testament before Christs coming II. By the Inherent impress of God's Image on the Person and Doctrine of Christ VVhich Propria luce sheweth itself to be Divine III. By the concomitant Miracles of Christ Read the History of the Gospel for this use and observe each History IV. By the subsequent gift of the Spirit to the Apostles and other Christians by Languages wonders and multitudes of Miracles to convince the VVorld V. By the undeniable and excellent work of Sanctification on all true Believers through all the VVorld in all generations to this day These five are the Spirits VVitness which fully justifieth the certain Truth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God § 3. Quest But how are we sure who our selves never saw the Person Miracles Resurrection Ascension of Christ that the History of them is true Answ 1. We may be sure that the Spectators were not deceived II. And that they did not deceive them to whom they reported it III. And that we are not deceived by any miscarriage in the historical Tradition to us § 4. I. It was not possible that men that were not mad that had Eyes and Ears could for three Years and a half believe that they saw the Lame the Blind the Deaf and all Diseases healed the Dead raised Thousands miraculously fed c. and this among crouds of People that still followed Christ if the things had not been true One Man's Senses may be deceived at some one instance by some deceitful accident But that the Eyes and Ears of Multitudes should be so oft deceived many years in the open Light is as much as to say No Man knoweth any thing that he seeth and heareth § 5. II. That the Disciples who received the Apostles and Evangelists report of Christ were not deceived by the Reporters is most evident For 1. They received it not by hearsay at the second hand but from the Eye and Ear Witnesses themselves who must needs know what they said 2. They heard this report from Men of the same Time and Age and Countrey where it was easy to examine the case and confute it had it been false 3. The Apostles appealed to crouds and Thousands of Witnesses as to many of Christ's Miracles who would have made it odious had it not been
them that have been piously inclined from their Childhood it is harder to discern the difference unless they mark the Case of others If Man be worth any thing it is for the use that his Faculties were made And if he be not good for the Knowledg Love and Service of his Creator what is he good for And certainly the generality of ungodly Worldlings are undisposed to all such works as this till the Spirit of Christ effectually change them Men are Slaves to sin till Christ thus make them free Joh. 8. 32 33 36. Rom. 6. 18. Act. 26. 18. Rom. 8. 2. But where the Spirit of the Lord is there is Liberty 2 Cor. 3. 17. If the Divine Nature and Image and the Love of God shed abroad on the Heart be not our Excellency Health and Beauty what is And that which is Born of the Flesh is Flesh but that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit Joh. 3. 6. Without Christ and his Spirit we can do nothing Our dead Notions and Reason when we see the Truth have not power to overcome Temptations nor to raise up Man's Soul to its Original and End nor to possess us with the love and joyful hopes of future Blessedness It were better for us to have no Souls than that those Souls should be void of the Spirit of God § 4. 2. And that HEAVEN is the Sum and End of all the Spirits Operations appeareth in all that â—â—e truly Conscious of them in themselves and to them and others by all God's Precepts which the Spirit causeth us to obey and the Doctrine which it causeth us to believe and by the description of all God's graces which he worketh in us What is our Knowledge and Faith but our knowledge and belief of Heaven as consisting in the Glory and Love of God there manifested and as purchased by Christ and given by his Covenant What is our Hope but the Hope of Glory See Heb. 11. 1. and throughout 1 Pet. 1. 3. 21. Heb. 6 11 18 19. 3. 6 Tit. 2 13. 3. 7. Col. 1. 5 23 27. And through the Spirit we wait for all this Hope Gal. 5. 5. What is our Love but a desire of Communion with the blessed God initially here and perfectly hereafter As the Sum of Christ's Gospel was Take up the Cross forsake all here and follow me and thou shalt have a Reward in Heaven Luke 14. 26 33. 18. 22 23. and the Consolation of his Gospel is Rejoice and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in Heaven Matt. 5. 11 12. So the same is the Sum of his Spirits Operations For what he teacheth and commandeth that he worketh For he worketh by that Word and the impress must be like the Signet what arm soever set it on He sendeth not his Spirit to make men craftier than others for this World but to make them wiser for Salvation and to make them more Heavenly and Holy For the Children of this World are wiser in their Generation than the Children of Light Heavenliness is the Spirits special work § 5. 3. And in working this it conquereth the inward undisposedness and aversness of a fleshly worldly mind and will and the customs of a Carnal life and the outward Temptations of Satan and all the allurements of the World Christ first overcame the World and teacheth and causeth us to overcome it even its flatteries and its frowns Our Faith is our Vâ—ctory Whether this Victory be easie and any honour to the Spirit of Christ let our experience of the wickedness of the ungodly World and of our own weakness and of our falls when the Spirit of God forsaketh us be our informer § 6. 4. And that None but God can do this work on the Soul of Man both the knowledge of Causes and Experience prove The most learned wise and holy Teachers cannot as they confess and shew The wisest and most loving Parents cannot and therefore must pray to him that can The greatest Princes cannot Evil Angels neither can nor will What Good Angels can do on the Heart we know not but we know that they do nothing but as the obedient Ministers of God And though we have some power on our selves yet that we our selves cannot do it that we cannot Quicken Illuminate or Sanctifie our selves and that we have nothing but what we have received Conscience and Experience fully tell us § 7. 5. And that Christ promised this Spirit in a special measure to all true Believers that it should be in them his Advocate Agent Seal and Mark is yet visible in the Gospel yea and in the former Prophets Isa 44. 34. Ezek. 36. 26. 37. 14. Joel 2. 28 29. Ezek. 11. 19. 18. 31. Eph. 1. 13. Joh. 3. 5. 4. 23 24. 6. 63. 7. 39. Joh. 1. 33. 14. 16 26. Act. 1. 5 8. Joh. 15. 26. 16. 7 8 9 c. Indeed the Spirit here and Heaven hereafter are the chief of all the Promises of Christ § 8. 6. And that this Spirit is given not to Hypocrites that abuse Christ and do not seriously believe him nor to meer pretending nominal Christians but to all that sincerely believe the Gospel is evident not only to themselves in certainty if they are in a condition to know themselves but to others in part by the effects They have other Ends other affections other lives than the rest of Mankind have Though their heavenly Nature and Design be the less discerned and honoured in the World because their chiefest difference is out of the sight of Man in the Heart and in their secret actions and because their imperfections blemish them and because the Malignant World is by Strangeness and Enmity an incompetent judge yet it is discernable to others that they live upon the hopes of a better life and their heavenly Interest is it that over-ruleth all the adverse Interests of this World and that in order thereunto they live under the conduct of Divine Authority and that God's will is highest and most prevalent with them and that to obey and please him so far as they know it is the greatest business of their lives though ignorance and adverse Flesh do make their Holiness and Obedience imperfect The universal noise and opposition of the World against them doth shew that men discern a very great difference which Error and cross Interests and Carnal inclinations render displeasing to those who find themselves condemned by their heavenly Designs and Conversations § 9. But whether others discern it or deny it or detest it the true Believer is conscious of it in himself Even when he groaneth to be better to believe and trust and love God more and to have more of the heavenly life and comforts those very desires signifie another Appetite and Mind than Worldlings have and even when his frailties and weaknesses make him doubt of his own sincerity he would not change his Governour Rule or Hopes for all that the World can
him when he promiseth and hear him before the worldly wise when he teacheth us the way to God Hear him for he knows what he saith Hear him for he is true and faithful and infallible Hear him for he is the Son of God the greatest Messenger that ever God sent Hear him for he purposly came down into Flesh that he might familiarly teach us Hear him for none else in the Word hath made known the things of God like him and none can do it Hear him for he meaneth us no hurt He is our dearest Friend and Love itself and saith nothing but for our Salvation and promiseth nothing but what he will perform Yea Hear him for every Soul that will not hear him shall be cut off Hear him therefore if he contradict thy fleshly Appetite Hear him if great or small if any or all shall be against it Hear him if he set thee on the hardest work or call thee to the greatest suffering Hear him if he bid thee take up the Cross and forsake all and follow him in hope of a reward in Heaven Hear him if he call thee to lay down thy Life for none can be a loser by him Hear him now in the Day of Grace and he will hear thee in the day of thy Extremity in the day of Danger Sickness Death and Judgment when the World forsaketh thee and no ones hearing else can help thee § 37. But I was not one that saw this Vision Had I seen it my self it would have satisfied me and confuted all my doubts Answ But it is the will of God that the Ministry and Testimony of Man shall be a means of our believing It 's Faith and not Sight that must be the ordinary way of our Salvation Else Christ must have shewed himself and his Miracles Resurrection and Ascension to every one in the World that must believe in him And then he must have been visible at once in every Kingdom Parish and Place on Earth and continued so to the end of the World and must have died risen and ascended many Millions of times and in every place They that will put such Laws on their Lawgiver before they will believe in him must be saved without him and against him if they can This is more unreasonable than to tell God that you will not believe that there is a Heaven or Hell unless you see them But God will have us live and be saved by believing and not by sight And he will use Man for the Instruction and Salvation of Man and not send Angels with every Message § 38. But Why did Christ shew this Vision but it Three of his Disciples Answ He is not bound to tell us why But we may know that a sight of heavenly Glory is not to be ordinarily expected on Earth Why did God shew the back parts of his Glory to none but Moses no not to his Brother Aaron Why did he speak to him only in the Bush and in the Mount Why did he translate none to Heaven without dying but Henoch and Elias Why did he save but Noah and Seven with him in the Ark These are not things ordinary nor to be common to many § 39. But by this it appeareth that even among his Twelve Apostles Christ made a difference and preferred some before the rest Though he set no one over the rest in any Governing Authority yet some of them were qualified above the rest and esteemed and used by him accordingly Peter is called the first and it seems was qualified above the rest by his more frequent speaking and familiarity with Christ and his Speeches and Miracles after the Resurrection Though yet the Faction that said I am of Cephas or I am of Paul was rebuked as Carnal so far was Christ from directing the Churches to end all difference by obeying Peter as their Supream Ruler James and John are called the Sons of Thunder They had some more eminent qualification than the rest So that James was the first Martyred Apostle and John the Disciple whom Jesus specially loved Ministers of the same Office and Order may much differ in Gifts and Grace in labour and success and in God's acceptance and reward and in the Churches just esteem and love All Pastors were not such as Cyprian Basil Gregory Nazianzene Chrysostome or Augustine And the rest must not envy at the preference of Peter James and John Andrew seems to be Peters Elder Brother and knew Christ before him as Aaron was Elder Brother to Moses and yet must give God leave to choose to give pre-eminence to whom he will § 40. But Why did not these Three Apostles tell any of this Vision till after Christ's Resurrection Ans Christ did forbid it them And it was according to the Method of his Revelation He would make himself known to the World by degrees and more by his Works than by bare Words And these works were to be finished and all set together to be his convincing Witness to the World And the chief of these were his Resurrection Ascension and sending down the Holy Ghost The Apostles could not say till then Jesus is risen ascended and hath given us the Seal of the Spirit therefore he is the Son of God Christ first preached Repentance like John Baptist And next he told them that the Kingdom of God by the Messiah was come and was among them And then he taught them to believe his Word to be sent from God and to be true And he taught them the Doctrines of Holiness Love and Righteousness towards men And he wrought those Miracles which might convince them that what he said or should say deserved their belief But yet before his Resurrection his Apostles themselves understood not many of the Articles of our Creed they knew not that Christ was to die for sin and so to redeem the World by his Sacrifice nor that he was to Rise Ascend and Reign and Intercede in Glory And yet they were then in a state of Grace and Life such as Believers were in before Christ's Incarnation And sure no more is required of the Nations that cannot hear the Gospel But the Resurrection was the beginning of the proper Gospel State and Kingdom to which all before was but preparatory then by the Spirit Christianity was formed to its setled Consistence and is a known unalterable thing And it is a great confirmation to our Faith that Christ's Kingdom was not settled by any advantage of his personal Presence Preaching and Persuasion so much as by the Holy Ghost in his Apostles and Disciples when he was gone from them into Heaven § 41. But how are we sure that these three men tell us nothing but the Truth Ans This is oft answered elsewhere The Spirit which they spake and work'◠by was Christ's Witness and theirs They healed the Sick raised the Dead spake various Languages which they never learnt and Preached and Recorded that Holy Doctrin committed to them by Christ which
all things And when God sends on a Land the Plagues of Famine Pestilence War Persecution especially a Famine of the Word of God it is a great sin to be insensible of it If any shall say while Heaven is sure we have no cause to accuse God or to cast away comfort hope or duty they say well But if they say Because Heaven is all we must make light of all that befalleth us on Earth They say amiss Good Princes Magistrates and publick Spirited men that promote the safety Peace and true Prosperity of the Common-wealth do thereby very much befriend Religion and mens Salvation and are greatly to be loved and honoured by all If the Civil State called the Common-wealth do miscarry or fall into ruine and calamity the Church will fare the worse for it as the Soul doth by the ruines of the Body The Turkish Muscovite and such other Empires tell us how the Church consumeth and dwindles away into contempt or withered Ceremony and Formality where Tyranny brings Slavery Beggary or long Persecution on the Subjects Doubtless divers passages in the Revelations contain the Churches glorifying of God for their Power and Prosperity on Earth when Emperors became Christians What else can be meant well by Rev. 9. 10. Hath made us Kings and Priests to God and we shall Reign on the Earth but that Christians shall be brought from under Heathen Persecution and have Rule and Sacred Honour in the World some of them being Princes some honoured Church Guides and all a peculiar honoured People And had not Satan found out that cursed way of getting wicked men that hate true godliness and peace into the Sacred places of Princes and Pastors to do his work against Christ as in Christ's Name surely no good Christians would have grudged at the Power of Rulers of State or Church Sure I am that many called Fifth Monarchy men seem to make this their great Hope that Rule shall be in the Hands of Righteous men And I think most Religious Parties would rejoice if those had very great Power whom they take to be the best and trustiest men Which shews that it is not the greatness of Power in most Princes or sound Bishops that they dislike but the badness real or supposed of those whose Power they mislike Who will blame Power to do good Sure the three first and great Petitions of the Lord's Prayer include some temporal welfare of the World and Church without which the Spiritual rarely prospereth extensively though intensively in a few it may since Miracles ceased 4. Be thankful therefore for all the Churches Mercies here on Earth For all the protection of Magistracy the Plenty of Preachers the perservation from Enemies the restraint of Persecution the Concord of Christians and increase of Godliness which in this Land it hath had in our Ages notwithstanding all Satan's malignant rage and all the bloody Wars that have interrupted our tranquillity How many Psalms of joyful thanksgiving be there for Israel's deliverances and the perservation of Zion and God's Worship in his Sanctuary Pray for the Peace of Jerusalem They shall prosper that love it specially that the Gospel is continued while so many rage against it is a Mercy not to be made light of Use IV. Be specially thankful O my Soul that God hath made any use of thee for the Service of his Church on Earth My God my Soul for this doth magnifie thee and my Spirit rejoiceth in the review of thy great undeserved Mercy O what am I whom thou took'st up from the Dunghil or low obscurity that I should live my self in the constant relish of thy Sweet and Sacred Truth and with such encoucouraging success communicate it to others That I must say now my publick work seems ended that these Forty three or Forty four years I have no reason to think that ever I laboured in vain O with what gratitude must I look upon all places where I lived and laboured but above all that place that had my strength I bless thee for the great numbers gone to Heaven and for the continuance of Piety Humiliation Concord and Peace among them And for all that by my Writings have received any saving Light and Grace O my God let not my own Heart be barren while I labour in thy Husbandry to bring others unto Holy fruit Let me not be a stranger to the Life and Power of that saving Truth which I have done so much to communicate to others O let not my own Words and Writings condemn me as void of that Divine and Heavenly Nature and Life which I have said so much for to the World Use V. Stir up then O my Soul thy sincere desires and all thy Faculties to do the remnant of the work of Christ appointed thee on Earth and then joyfully wait for the heavenly Perfection in God's own time Thou canst truly say To live to me is Christ It is his work for which thou livest Thou hast no other business in the World But thou dost his work with the mixture of many oversights and imperfections and too much troublest thy Thoughts distrustfully about God's part who never faileth If thy work be done be thankful for what is past and that thou art come so near the Port of rest If God will add any more to thy daies serve him with double alacrity now thou art so near the end The Prize is almost within sight Time is swift and short Thou hast told others that there is no working in the Grave and that it must be now or never Though the conceit of meriting of commutative Justice be no better than madness dream not that God will save the wicked no nor equally reward the slothful and the diligent because Christ's Righteousness was perfect Paternal Justice maketh difference according to that worthiness which is so denominated by the Law of Grace And as sin is its own punishment Holiness and Obedience is much of its own reward Whatever God appointeth thee to do see that thou do it sincerely and with all thy might If sin dispose men to be angry because it is detected disgraced and resisted if God be pleased their wrath should be patiently born who will shortly be far more angry with themselves If slander and obloquy survive so will the better effects on those that are converted And there is no comparison between these I shall not be hurt when I am with Christ by the Calumnies of men on Earth But the saving benefit will by converted Sinners be enjoyed everlastingly Words and actions are transient things and being once past are nothing But the effect of them on an immortal Soul may be endless All the Sermons that I have preached are nothing now But the Grace of God on Sanctified Souls is the beginning of Eternal life It is unspeakable Mercy to be sincerely thus employed with success therefore I had reason all this while to be in Pauls streight and make no hast in my desires to depart
Effective Teaching of God doth ordinarily suppose a Rational Objective Organical Teaching and Knowledge And the foresaid unlearned Christians are convinced by good evidence that God's Word is true and his Rewards are sure though they have but a confused conception of this evidence and cannot word it nor reduce it to fit notions And to drive these that have fundamental evidence unseasonably and hastily to dispute their Faith and so to puzzle them by words and artificial Objections is but to hurt them by setting the Artificial Organical lower part which is the body of Knowledge against the real Light and Perception of the Thing which is as the Soul even as carnal men set the Creatures against God that should lead us to God so do they by Logical Artificial Knowledge § 15. But they that are prepared for such Disputes and furnished with all artificial helps may make good use of them for defending and clearing up the Truth to themselves and others so be it they use them as a means to the due end and in a right manner and set them not up against or instead of the real and effective Light § 16. But the Revealed and Necessary part must here be distinguished from the unrevealed and unnecessary To study till we as clearly as may be understand the certainty of a future happiness and wherein it consisteth in the sight of God's Glory and in perfect holy mutual Love in Union with Christ and all the blessed this is of great use to our Holiness and Peace But when we will know more than God would have us it doth but tend as gazing on the Sun to make us blind and to doubt of certainties because we cannot be resolved of uncertainties To trouble our heads too much in thinking how Souls out of the body do subsâ—sâ— and act sensitively or not by Organs or without how far they are one and how far still individuate in what place they shall remain and where is their Paradise or Heaven how they shall be again united to the body whether by their own emission as the Sun beams touch their Objects here and whether the body shall be restored as the consumed flesh of restored sick men aliunde or only from the old materials A hundred of these Questions are better left to the knowledge of Christ lest we do but foolishly make snares for our selves Had all these been needful to us they had been revealed In respect to all such curiosities and needless knowledge it is a Believer's wisdom implicitly to Trust his Soul to Christ and to be satisfied that he knoweth what we know not and to fear that vain vexatious knowledge or inquisitiveness into good and evil which is selfish and savoureth of a distrust of God and is that sin and fruit of sin which the Learned world too little feareth § 17. III. That God is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek him and that holy Souls shall be in blessedness with Christ these following Evidences conjoyned do evince on which my Soul doth raise its Hopes § 18. I. The Soul which is an Immortal Spirit must be immortally in a Good or Bad condition But Man's Soul is an Immortal Spirit and the good are not in a bad condition Its Immortality is proved thus A spiritual or most pure invisible substance naturally endowed with the Power Virtue or Faculty of Vital-Action Intellection and Volition which is not annihilated nor destroyed by separation of Parts nor ceaseth or loseth either its Power Species Individuation or Action is an Immortal Spirit But such is the Soul of Man as shall be manifest by parts § 19. I. The Soul is a substance For that which is Nothing can do Nothing but it doth move understand and will No man will deny that this is done by something in us and by some substance and that substance is it which we call the Soul It is not Nothing and it is within us § 20. As to them that say It is the Temperament of several parts conjunct I have elsewhere fully confuted them and proved 1. That it is some one part that is the Agent on the rest which all they confess that think it to be the material spirits or fiery part It is not bones and flesh that understand but a purer substance as all acknowledge 2. What part soever it be it can do no more than it is Able to do And a conjunction of many parts of which no one hath the power of Vitality Intellection or Volition formally or eminently somewhat as excellent can never by contemperation do those acts For there can be no more in the effect than is in the cause otherwise it were no effect The vanity of their Objections that tell us a Lute a Watch a Book perform that by cooperation which no one part can do I have elsewhere manifested 1. Many strings indeed have many motions and so have many effects on the Ear and Phantasie which in us are sound and harmony But all is but a percussion of the Air by the strings and were not that motion received by a sensitive Soul it would be no Musick or Melody so that there is nothing done but what each part had power to do But Intellection and Volition are not the conjunct motions of all parts of the body receiving their form in a nobler Intellective nature as the sound of the strings maketh melody in man If it were so that Receptive Nature still would be as excellent as the Effect importeth 2. And the Watch or Clock doth but move according to the action of the spring or poise but that it moveth in such an order as becometh to man a sign and measure of Time this is from Man who ordereth it to that use But there is nothing in the motion but what the parts have their power to cause And that it signifieth the hour of the daies to us is no Action but an object used by a rational Soul as it can use the shadow of a Tree or House that yet doth nothing 3. And so a Book doth nothing at all but is a meer objective ordination of passive signs by which Man 's active Intellect can understand what the Writer or Orderer did intend so that here is nothing done beyond the power of the Agent nor any thing in the effect which was not in the cause either formally or eminently But for a company of Atoms of which no one hath sense or reason to become sensitive and rational by meer conjunct motion is an â—ffect beyond the power of the supposed cause § 21. But as some think so basely of our noblest Acts as to think that contempered agitated Atoms can perform them that have no natural intellective or sensitive virtue or power in themselves so others think so highly of them as to take them to be the Acts only of God or some universal Soul in the body of Man and so that there is no Life Sense or Reason in the World but God himself or such
offer him He hath the Witness in himself that there is in Believers a sanctifying Spirit calling up their Minds to God and Glory and warring victoriously against the Flesh so that to will is present with them and they love and delight in a Holy conformity to their Rule and it is never so well and pleasant with them as when they can trust and love God most and in their worst and weakest condition they would fain be Perfect This Spirit and its renewing work so greatly different from the temper and desires of worldly men is given by Christ to all sound believers § 10. It is true that some that know not of an Incarnate Saviour have much in them that is very laudable whether it be real saâ—ing Holiness and whether Abraham were erroneous in thinking that even the Sodom's of the World were likely to have had fifty righteous Persens in them I am not now to enquire But it is sure 1. That the World had really a Saviour about Four thousand Years before Christ's Incarnation even the God of pardoning Mercy who promised and undertook what after was performed and shall be to the end 2. And that the Spirit of this Saviour did Sanctifie God's Elect from the beginning and gave them the same holy and heavenly dispositions in some degree before Christ's Incarnation as is given since yea it is called The Spirit of Christ which was before given 1 Pet. 1. 11. 3. That this Spirit was then given to more than the Jews 4. That Christ hath put that part of the World that hear not of his Incarnation into no worse a Condition than he found them in That as the Jews Covenant of Peculiarity was no repeal of the Universal Law of Grace made by God with fallen Mankind in Adam and Noah so the Covenant of Grace of the Second Edition made with Christ's peculiar People is no repeal of the foresaid Law in the first Edition to them that hear not of the second 5. That all that wisdom and Goodness that is in any without the Christian Church is the work of the Spirit of the Redeemer as the light which goeth before Sun rising and after Sun setting and in a cloudy day is of the same Sun which others see even to them that see not the Sun itself 6. That the liker any without the Church are to the Sanctified Believers the better they are and the more unlike the worse so that all these six things being undeniable it appeareth that it is the same Spirit of Christ which now giveth all men what real goodness is any where to be found But it is notorious that no part of the World is in Heavenliness and Virtue comparable to true and serious Christians § 11. 7. And let it be added that Christ who promised the greatest measures of the Spirit which he accordingly hath given did expresly promise this as a Means and Pledge First-Fruits and Earnest of the Heavenly Glory And therefore it is a certain proof that such a Glory we shall have He that can and doth give us a Spiritual change or renovation which in its Nature and tendency is Heavenly and sets our Hopes and Hearts on Heaven and turneth the endeavours of our lives to the seeking of a future Blessedness and told us before hand that he would give us this preparatory Grace as the Earnest of that felicity may well be trusted to perform his Word in our actual glorification § 12. And now O weak and fearful Soul Why shouldst thou draw back as if the case were yet left doubtful Is not thy Foundation firm Is not the way of Life through the Valley of Death made safe by him that conquered Death Art thou not yet delivered from the Bondage of thy fears when the Jaylor and Executioner who had the power of Death hath by Christ been put out of his power as to thee Is not all this Evidence true and sure Hast thou not the Witness in thy self Hast thou not found the motions the effectual Operations the renewing changes of this Spirit in thee long ago and is he not still the Agent and Witness of Christ residing and Operating in thee Whence else are thy groanings after God Thy desires to be nearer to his glory To know him better To Love him more Whence came all the pleasure thou hast had in his Sacred Truth and Ways and Service Who else overcame thy Folly and Pride and vain desires so far as they are overcome Who made it thy choice to sit at the Feet of Christ and hear his Word as the better part and to despise the Honours and Preferments of the World and to account them all as Dung and Dross Who breathed in thee all those Requests that thou hast sent up to God Overvalue not corrupted Nature it bringeth not forth such Fruits as these If thou doubt of that remember what thou wast in the Hour of Temptation even of poor and weak Temptations And how small a matter hath drawn thee to sin when God did but leave thee to thy self Forget not the Days of youthful Vanity Over-look not the case of the miserable World Even of thy sinful Neighbours who in the midst of Light still live in darkness And hear not the loudest Calls of God Look about on Thousands that in the same Land and under the same teaching and after the greatest judgments and deliverance run on to all excess of riot and as past feeling are greedily vicious and unclean Is it no work of Christ's Spirit that hath made thee to differ Thou hast nothing to boast of and much to be humbled for but thou hast also much to be thankful for Thy Holy desires are alas too weak but they are Holy Thy Love hath been too cold but it is Holiness and the Most Holy God that thou hast loved Thy Hopes in God have been too low but it is God thou hast hoped in and his Love and Glory that thou hast hoped for Thy prayers have been too dull and interrupted but it is Holiness and Heaven that thou hast most prayed for Thy labours and endeavours have been too sloathful but it is God and Glory and the Good of Mankind that thou hast laboured for Though thy motion were too weak and slow it hath been Godward and therefore it was from God O bless the Lord that hath not only given thee a Word that beareth the Image of God and is sealed by uncontrolled Miracles to be the matter of thy Belief but hath also fulfilled his Promises so oft and notably to thee in the answer of Prayers and in great and convincing deliverances of thy self and many others And hath by wonders oft assisted thy Faith bless that God of Light and Love who besides the universal attestations of his Word long ago given to all the Church hath given thee the internal Seal the nearer indwelling attestation the effects of Power Light and Love imprinted on thy Nature Mind and Will the Witness in thy self
part not Rem sed aliquid Rei in which sense Sanchez truly saith Nihil scitur But then shall I know even as I am known Not a God knoweth us for our knowledge and his must not be so comparatively likened but as Holy Spirits know us both now and for ever we shall both know and be known by immediate intuition If a Physician be to describe the parts of Man and the latent Diseases of his Patient he is fain to search hard and bestow many Thoughts of it besides his long reading and converse to make him capable of knowing and when all is done he goeth much upon Conjectures and his knowledge is mixt with many uncertainties yea and mistakes but when he openeth the Corps he seeth all and his knowledg is more full more true and more certain besides that it is easily and quickly attained even by a present look A Countrey Man knoweth the Town the Fields and Rivers where he dwelleth yea and the Plants and Animals with ease and certain clearness when he that must know the same things by the study of Geographical Writings and Tables must know them but with a General an unsatisfactory and oft a much mistaking kind of knowledge Alas when our present knowledge hath cost a Man the study of Forty or Fifty or Sixty Years how lean and poor how doubtful and unsatisfactory is it after all But when God will shew us himself and all things and when Heaven is known as the Sun by its own Light this will be the clear suâ—â— and satisfactory knowledge Blessed are the Pure in Heart for they shall see God Mat. 5. And without Holiness none can see him Heb. 12. 14. This sight will be worthy the Name of Wisdom when our present glympse is but Philosophy a love and desire of Wisdom So far should we be from fearing Death through the fear of losing our knowledge or any of the means of knowledge that it should make us rather long for the World of Glorious Light that we might get out of this darkness and know all that with an easie look to our joy and satisfaction which here we know with troublesome doubtings or not at all Shall we be afraid of darkness in the Heavenly Light or of Ignorance when we see the Lord of Glory § 6. And as for the loss of Sermons Books and other means surely it is no loss to cease the means when we have attained the end Cannot we spare our Winter Clothes as troublesom in the heat of Summer and sit by the hot Fire without our Glores Cannot we sit at home without a Horse or Coach Or set them by at our Journeys end Cannot we lie in Bed without Boots and Spurs Is it grievous to us to cease our Physick when we are well Even here he is happier that hath least of the Creature and needeth least than he that hath much and needeth much Because all Creature commodities and helps have also their discommodities and troublesomness And the very applying and using so many remedies of our want is tedious of itself And as God only needeth nothing but is self-sufficient and therefore only perfectly and essentially happy so those are likest God that need least from without and have the greatest plenitude of internal goodness What need we to preach hear read pray to bring us to Heaven when we are there § 7. And as for our Friends and our converse with them as Relations or as wise religious and faithful to us he that believeth not that there are far More and far Better in Heaven than are on Earth doth not believe as he ought that there is a Heaven Our Friends here are wise but they are unwise also They are Faithful but partly unfaithful they are holy but also alas too sinful They have the Image of God but blotted and dishonoured by their faults They do God and his Church much service but they also do too much against him and too much for Satan even when they intend the Honour of God They promote the the Gospel but they also hinder it Their weakness ignorance errour selfishness pride passion division contention scandals and remisness do oft so much hurt that it is hard to discern whether it be not greater than their good to the Church or to their Neigbours Our Friends are our helpers and comforters but how oft also are they our hinderers troubles and grief But in Heaven they are altogether wise and holy and faithful and concordant and have nothing in them nor there done by them but what is amiable to God and Man And with our faithful Friends we have here a mixture partly of useless and burdensom Persons and partly of unfaithful Hypocrites and partly of self-conceited factious Wranglers and partly of malicious envious underminers and partly of implacable Enemies And how many of all these set together is there for one worthy faithful Friend And how great a number iâ— there to trouble you For one that will indeed comfort you But in Heaven there are none but the Wise and Holy No Hypocrites no burdensom Neighbours no treacherous or oppressing or persecuting Enemies are there And is not all good and amiable better than a little good with so troublesome a mixture of noisome Evils Christ loved his Disciples his Kindred yea and all Mankind and took pleasure in doing good to all and so did his Apostles But how poor a requital had he or they from any but from God Christ's own Brethren believed not in him but wrangled with him almost like those that said to him on the Cross If thou be the Son of God come down and we will believe Peter himself was once a Satan to him Matth. 16. and after with Cursing and Swearing denied him And all his Disciples forsook him and fled And what then from others could be expected No Friends have a perfect suitableness to each other and roughness and inequalities that are nearest us are most troublesom The wonderful variety and contrariety of apprehensions interest educations temperaments and occasions and temptations c. are such that whilest we are scandalized at the discord confusions of the World we must recal our selves and admire that all ruling Providence which keepeth up so much order and concord as there is We are indeed like People in crowded Streets who going several ways molest each other with their jostling oppositions Or like Boys at Foot-ball striving to overthrow each other for the Ball But it is a wonder of Divine Power and Wisdom that all the World is not continually in mortal War If I do men no harm yet if I do but cross their Wills it goeth for a provoking injury And when there are as many Wills as Persons who is it that can please them all Who hath Money enough to please all the Poor that need it or the Covetous that desire it Or who can live with displeased men and not feel some of the fruits of their displeasure What day goeth over
the Love of ancient Friends and Hearers I must say What mean you to weep and break my Heart I am ready to leave the dearest Friends on Earth and life and all the pleasures of life for the presence of far better Friends with Christ and the sweeter pleasures of a better life That little amiableness which is in things below is in godly men as life in the Heart which dieth last When that 's all gone when we are dead to the Love of the godly themselves and to Learning Books and mediate Ordinances so far as they serve a selfish interest and tempt down our Hearts from heavenly aspirings the World then is Crucified to us indeed and we to it I rejoice to tread in the Footsteps of my Lord who had some indeed weeping about his cross but was forsaken by all his Disciples while in the Hour of Temptation they all fled But my desertion is far less for it is less that I am fit to bear If God will justifie who shall condemn If he be for me who shall be against me O may I not be put to that dreadfull case to cry out My God my God why hast thou forsaken me And may nothing separate me from his Love And then were I forsaken of the sober and peaceable as I am in part of some quarrelsom Dividers how tolerable a tryal would it be Man is as dust in the Ballance that addeth little to it and signifieth nothing when God is in the other end But I suspect still that I make too much account of Man when this case hath taken up too much of my observation 1. And of all things surely a departing Soul hath least cause to fear the losing of its notice of the Affairs of the World Of Peace or Wars or Church or Kingdoms For 1. If the Sun can send forth its material Beams and operate by motion light and heat at such a distance as this Earth why should I think that blessed Spirits are such local confined and impotent substances as not to have notice of the things of Earth Had I but bodily Eyes I could see more from the top of a Tower or Hill than any one that is below can do And shall I know less of Earth from Heaven than I do now It 's unlike that my Capacity will be so little And if it were it is unlike that Christs and all the Angels will be so strange to me as to give me no notice of things that so much concern my God and my Redeemer to whom I am united and the Holy Society of which I am a part and my self as a Member of Christ and that Society I do not think that the Communion of the Celestial Inhabitants is so narrow and slow as it is of walking Clods of Earth and of Souls that are confined to such dark Lanthorns as this Body is Stars can shine one to another And we on Earth can see them so far off in their Heaven And sure then if they have a seeing faculty each of them can see many of us even the Kingdoms of the World Spirits are most active and of powerful and quick communication They need not send Letters or write Books to one another nor lift up a voice to make each other hear Nor is there any unkindness division or unsociable selfishness among them which may cause them to conceal their notices or their joys But as Activity so Unity is Greatest where there is most Perfection They will so be Many as yet to be One and their Knowledge will be One Knowledge and their Love One Love and their Joy One Joy Not by so perfect a Unity as in God himself who is One and but One but such as is suitable to created imperfection which participate of the Perfection of the Creator as the Effect doth of the virtue of the Cause and therefore hath some participation of his Unity O foolish Soul if I shall fear this Unity with God Christ and all the Holy Spirits lest I should lose my present separate Individuation when Perfection and Union are so near akin In a word I have no cause to think that my Celestial advancement will be a diminution of any desirable Knowledge even of things on Earth but contrarily that it will be unconceivably increased 2. But if indeed I shall know less of things below it will be because that the knowledge of them is a part of Vanity and Vexation which hath no place in Heaven So much knowledge of good and evil in lower matters as came to us by sin is unworthy of our fond tenaciousness and fear of losing it Surely the sad tidings which we have Weekly in our News Books our lamentable notices of Heathen and Infidel Kingdoms of the overspreading prevalency of Barbarousness Idolatry Ignorance and Infidelity of the rage and success of cruel Tyrants of the bloody Wars of proud unquiet worldly men of the misery of the oppressed desolate Countreys the dissipated Churches the persecuted innocent Christians are no such pleasing things as that we should be afraid to hear of such no more To know or hear of the poor in Famine the rich in Folly the Church distracted the Kingdom discontented the godly scandalous by the effects of their Errours imperfections and divisions the wicked outrageous and waxing worse the falseness or miscarriages or sufferings of Friends the fury or success of Enemies is this an intelligence which I cannot spare What is the daily tidings that I hear but of bloody Wars the undone Countreys the persecuted Churches the silenced banished or imprisoned Preachers of the best removed in judgment from an unworthy World by Death and worse succeeding in their rooms of the renewed designs and endeavours of the Churches Enemies the implacable rage of the worldly and unquiet Clergy and the new divisions of self-conceited Sectaries and the obloquy and backbitings of each Party against the other How oft hear I the sad tidings of this Friends sickness or Death and that Friends discontent and of anothers fall and of many very many's Sufferings My Ears are daily filled with the cryes of the poor whom I cannot relieve with the endless complaints of fearful Melancholy despairing Persons with the wranglings of the ignorant and proud Professors and contentious Divines who censure most boldly where they are most Erroneous or dark Or with the troublesom discontents of those that I converse with And should I be afraid of the ending of so sad a Tragedy or of awaking out of such an unpleasant dream Have I not many times thought of the Priviledge of the deaf that hear not these troublesom and provoking things and of the Blind that see not the Vanities and Temptations of this World It is one part of the benefit of solitude or a private life and habitation to free me from many of these unpleasing Objects and a great part of the benefit of sleep that with my Cloaths I may lay by these troubleous Thoughts § 11. But other men
tell me The Church cannot yet spare you There is yet this and that necessary work to be done There is this and that need c. But 1. Is it we or God that must choose his Servants and cut out their work Whose work am I doing Is it my own or his If his is it not he that must tell me what and when and how long And will not his will and choice be best If I beâ—â—eve not this how do I take him for my God Doth God or I know better what he hath yet to do And who is fittest to do it The Churches Service and benefits must be measured out by our Master and Benefactor and not by our selves 2. What am I to those more excellent Persons whom in all Ages he hath taken out of the World And would mens Thoughts of the Churches needs detain them The poor Heathen Infidel Mahometane Nations have no Preachers of the Gospel And if their need prove not that God will send them such no Countreys need will prove that God will continue them such Many more useful Servants of Christ have died in their youth John Janeway preached but one Sermon Joseph Allen and many another excellent Men died young in the midst of his vigorous successful labours Both of them far more fit for God's work and likely to win Souls and glorifie God than I am or ever was However their greater Light was partly kindled from my lesser Yet did both these under painful consuming languishings of the Flesh die as they had long lived in the lively triumphant Praises of their Redeemer and joyful desires and hopes of Glory And shall I at Sixty seven Years of Age after such a life of unspeakable Mercies and after almost Forty four Years of comfortable help in the Service of my Lord be now afraid of my reward and shrink at the Sentence of Death and still be desiring to stay here upon pretence of further service We know not what is best for the Church as God doth The Church and the World are not Ours but his not our desires but his will must measure out its Mercies We are not so Merciful as he is It is not unmeet for us to desire many things which God will not give nor seeth it meet to grant the particulars of such desires Nothing ever lay so heavy on my Heart as the sin and misery of Mankind and to think how much of the World lyeth in folly and wickedness And for what can I pray so heartily as for the Worlds recovery And it is his will that I should shew a Holy and Universal Love by praying Let thy Name be hallowed Thy Kingdom come and Thy will be done on Earth as it is done in Heaven And yet alas how unlike is Earth to Heaven and what Ignorance Sin Confusions and Cruelties here reign and prosper And unless there be a wonderful change to be expected even as by a general Miracle how little hope appeareth that ever these Prayers should be granted in the things It maketh us better to desire that others may be better But God is the free disposer of his own gifts And it seemeth to be his will that the permitted Ignorance and Confusions of this World should help us the more to value and desire that World of Light Love and Order which he calleth us to prefer and hope for And if I am any way useful to the World it is undeserved Mercy that hath made me so for which I must be thankful But How long I shall be so is not my business to determine but my Lords My many sweet and beautiful Flowers arise and appear in their beauty and sweetness but for one Summers time and they murmur not that they flourish for so short a space The Beasts and Birds and Fishes which I feed on do live till I will have them die And as God will be served and pleased by wonderful variety at once of Animals and Vegetables c. So will he by many successive Generations If one Flower fall or die it sufficeth that others shall Summer after Summer arise from the same root And if my Pears Apples Plums c. fall or serve me when they are ripe it sufficeth that not they but others the next Year shall do the same God will have other Generations to succeed us Let us think him that we have had our time And could we overcome the Grand too little observed Crime of SELFISHNESS and could Love others as our selves and God as God above all the World it would comfort us at Death that others shall survive us and the World shall continue and God will be still God and be glorified in his works And Love will say I shall live in my successors and I shall more than Live in the Life of the World and yet most of all in the eternal Life and Glory of God And God who made us not gods but poor Creatures as it pleased him doth know best our measures And he will not try us with too long a Life of Temptations lest we should grow too familiar where we should be Strangers and utterly Strangers to our home No wonder if that World was ready for a deluge by a deluge of sin in which men lived to Six Seven Eight and Nine hundred Years of Age Had our Great Sensualists any hope of so long a life they were like to be like incarnate Devils and there would be no dwelling near them for the Holy Seed If Angels were among them they would like the Sodâ—mites seek furiously to abuse them Nor will God tire us out with too long a life of earthly sufferings We think short cares and fears and sorrows persecutions sickness and crosses to be long And shall we grudge at the Wisdom and Love which shortneth them Yea though holy duty it self be excellent and sweet yet the weakness of the Flesh maketh us liable to weariness and abateth the willingness of the Spirit And our wise and merciful God will not make our warfare or our race too long lest we be wearied and faint and fall short of the prize By our weariness and complaints and fears and groans one would think that we thought this life too long and yet when we should yield to the call of God we draw back as if we would have it everlasting § 12. Willingly submit then O my Soul It is not thou but this Flesh that must be dissolved this troublesom vile and corruptible Flesh It is but the other half thy meat and drink which thy presence kept longer uncorrupted going after the excremental part Thou diest not when Man the compositum dieth by thy departure And as thou livest not to thy self I die not to my self whether I live or die I am the Lords He that set up the Candle knoweth how long he hath use for the light of it Study thy duty and work while it is Day and let God choose thy time and willingly stand to his disposal The Gospel dieth
how to make her nest to lay her Eggs secretly together when and how to sit on them till they are hatched and how to feed them and preserve them and when to forsake them as sufficient for themselves without her help c. If the Bâ—c know when and whence and how to gather her Honey and Wax and how to form the repository Combs and how to lay it up and all the rest of her marvellous Oeconomy shall I think that God doth he knoweth not what or what is not absolutely the best Doth he want either Shill or Will or Power And should the Stone grudge to be hewed the Brick to be burnt the Trees to be cut down and sawed and framed the Lead and Iron to be melted c. when it is but to form an useful Edifice and to adapt and compose every part to the perfecting of the whole Shall the Waters grudge that they must glide away and the Plants that they must die and half die every Winter and the Fruit and Flowers that they must fall or the Moon that it must have its changing motions or the Sun that it must set and rise so oft c. when all is but the action and order which maketh up that harmony and perfection which was designed by the Creator and is pleasing to his will § 7. III. But lawful self-love is yet further herein gratified The Goodness expressed in the Text is that Analogical subordinate Good which is mihi Bonum my own Felicity and that which tendeth thereunto It is most Reasonable to Love God best and that next which is likest him if known And why should it not be the easiest and the sweetest But experience findeth it so easie to Love our selves that certainly if I firmly Believe that it is best for me I shall Desire to depart and be with Christ And have I not reason to believe it § 8. The Reasons of it I will consider in this order I. The general Reason from the Efficients and the Means II. The Final Reasons III. The constitutive Reasons from the state of my Intellect and its Action and Fruition there IV. The constitutive Reasons from the state of my Will V. The constitutive Reasons from my practice there leaving out those which the Resurrection will give me because I am speaking but of my present departure unto Christ § 9. And 1. That is best for me which Love itself my heavenly Father designeth and chooseth for my good I hope I shall never dare to think or say that he is mistaken or that he wanted Skill or Love Or that I could have chosen better for my self than he doth if he had left all to my choice Many a time the wise and good-will of God hath crossed my foolish rebellious will on Earth And afterward I have still perceived that it was best usually for my self but always for a higher good than mine It is not an Enemy nor a Tyrant that made me that hath preserved me and that calls me hence He hath not used me as an Enemy The more I have tried him the better I have found him Had I better obeyed his Ruling will how happy had I been And is not his disposing and rewarding will as good Man's work is like Man and evil corrupteth it but God's work is like God and uncorrupted If I should not die till my dearest Friend would have it much more till I my self would choose it not constrained by misery I should rejoyce and think my life were safe O foolish sinful Soul if I take it not to be far better to be at God's choice than at my own or any Mans And if I had not rather that he choose the time than I. Be of good cheer then O my Soul it is thy Fathers voice that calls thee hence His voice that called thee into the World and bid thee live that called thee out of a state of sin and death and bid thee live hereafter unto him That called thee so oft from the Grave and forgiving thy sins renewed thy strength restored thee to the comforts of his House and Service and hath so graciously led thee through this howling Wilderness and brought thee almost to the sight of the promised Land And wilt thou not willingly go when infinite fatherly Love doth call thee Art thou not desirous of his presence Art thou afraid to go to him who is the only cure of thy fears What was it but this Glory to which he did finally Elect thee Where dost thou read that he Elected thee to the Riches and Honours of this World or to the pleasures of the Flesh But he Elected us in Christ to the heavenly Inheritance Eph. 1. 3 4 c. Indeed he Elected thee also to bear the Cross and to manifold sufferings here But is it that which thou preferrest before the Crown That was but as a Means unto the Kingdom that thou mightest be conformed to Christ and reign with him when thou hast suffered with him If God choose thee to blessedness refuse it not thy self nor behave thy self like a refuser § 10. 2. And surely that state is my Best which my Saviour purchased and promised me as best As he bought me not with Silver and Gold so neither to Silver and Gold Did he live and die to make me Rich or advanced in the World Surely his Incarnation Merits Sacrifice and Intercession had a low design if that were all And who hath more of these than they that have least of Christ But he purchased us to an incorruptible Crown to an Inheritance undefiled that fadeth notaway reserved in Heaven for us that are kept by God's Power through Faith unto Salvation 1 Pet. 1. And is it Heaven that cost so dear a price for me and is the End of so wonderful a design of Grace and shall I be unwilling now to receive the gift § 11. 3. That sure is Best for me for which God's Holy Spirit is preparing me That for which he is given to believers And that which is the End of all his holy Operations on my Soul But it is not to Love this World that he is persuading me from Day to Day but to come off from such Love and to set my Heart on the things above Is it to love this life and fleshly interest this Vanity and Vexation or rather to love the invisible Perfection that this blessed Spirit hath done so much to work my Heart And would I now undo all or Cross and frustrate all his Operations Hath Grace been so long preparing me for Glory and shall I be loath to take possession of it If I am not willing I am not yet sufficiently prepared § 12. 4. If Heaven be not better for me than Earth God's Word and Ordinances have been all in vain Surely that is my Best which is the Gift of the Better Covenant and which is secured to me by so many sealed Promises and which I am directed to by so many sacred Precepts
inclination and such as is agreeable to the nature of his Faculties And therefore our love and delight in all things is that uniting inclination in Man § 14. III. And I shall have a special Love to the Holy Society the triumphant Universal Church consisting of Christ Angels and Saints as they are specially amiable in the Image and Glory of God God himself loveth them more than his inferiour works that is his Essence which is Love and hath no degrees or change doth send forth fuller streams of good upon them or maketh them better and happier than the rest And my love will imitate the love of God in my Capacity And if Societies on Earth more holy and wise than others though imperfectly are very amiable what then will the heavenly Society be Of this I spake before of knowing them § 15. 1. Think here O my Soul how sweet a state unto thee it will be to Love the Lord Jesus thy glorâ—fied Head with perfect love When the glory of God which shineth in him will feast thy love with full and everlasting pleasure The highest created Perfection of Power Wisdom and Goodness refulgent in him will not give leave to thy Love to cease or intermit or abate its fervour When thou shalt see in the glorified Church the precious fruits of Christ's Redemption Grace and Love this also will feed thy love to him from whom this heavenly Glory cometh And when thou shalt feel thy self possest of perfect happiness by his Love to thee will not this also do its part Yea the remembrance of all his former Love what he did for thee and what he did in thee here on Earth how he called thee with a Holy calling how he washed thee in his Blood from all thy sins how he kindled in thee those desires which tended to that perfect Glory how he renewed thy Nature how he instructed and guided and preserved thee from thy Childhood and how many and how great sins enemies dangers and sufferings he saved thee from all this will constrain thee Everlastingly to love him Thus though he give the Kingdom to the Father as ceasing his Mediatory healing saving work of acquisition he will be to thee the Mediator of fruition God in him will be accessible and condescend to a suitable communion with us Joh. 17. 24. And as Christ is thy Life radically and efficiently as he is the giver of Grace and the Spirit of Love so he will be Objectively thy Life as he is Lovely and it will be formally thy Life to Love him and God in him for ever § 16. 2. Think also O my Soul how delectable it will be to Love as well as to know those Angels that most servently love the Lord They will be lovely to thee as they have loved thee and more as they have been Lovers and Benefactors to the Church and to Mankind but far more as they are so many refulgent Stars which continually move and shine and burn in purest love to their Creator O blessed difference between that amiable Society of holy Spirits and this dark mad distracted wicked World Here Devils tempt me within and Devils incarnate persecute me without Blaspheming of God reviling godliness deriding the Sacred Scriptures and Sacred exercises malignant slandering of the Servants of God hating persecuting silencing and saying all manner of evil falsly of them for their Righteousness sake while such Crimes are pretended as they once falsly charged on Christ himself this is the Conversation of those that I have long dwelt with in this World Atheism Infidelity Papal Church tyranny bloody Wars destroying the Righteous oppressing the Poor Adultery and Fornication Stigmatizing-Perjury Ambition Violence Covetousness deceit sottish Ignorance wilfulness in Sin hatred of Reproof revengeful Malice these and such like are the fruits of the Soil where I have long sojourned Though through the Grace of Christ among the faithful there have been better fruits And is not the Company of Holy Angels better than this With whom God is all who are even made up of shining Wisdom and holy Lovâ— and beneficent activity who are the blessed Choâ—e that melodiously sing forth the high Praises of their Maker Among whom God dwelleth as in his presence Chamber or his Temple and in whom he taketh his great delight With these I shall see or hear no evil No mixture of fools or wicked Ones do pollute or trouble their Society There will be no false Doctrine no evil Example no favouring Wickedness no accusing Goodness no hurtful Violence but holy powerful operative Love will be all and do all as their very Nature Life and Work And is it not better be a Door-keeper there than to dwell in the Pallaces of Wickedness And is not a Day with them better than a Thousand here § 17. 3. And with the holy Angels I shall love holy Souls that are made like unto them and joined with them in the same Society and it is likely with them Judge that is Rule the World All their infirmities are there put off with the Flesh they also are Spirits made up of holy Life and Light and Love There is none of their former ignorance errour imprudence selfishness contentiousness impatience or any other troubling hurtful thing When I think with what fervent love to God to Jesus Christ and to one another they will be perfectly united there alas how sad and how shameful is it that they should here be prone to disaffections and divisions and hardly agree to call each other the Servants of God or to worship God in the same Assembliâ—â— But the remnants of dividing Principles viz. Pride Errour and Uncharitableness will be all left behind Society with imperfect Saints is sweet The imperfect Image of God upon them is amiable But their frailties here are so vexatious that it is hard to live with some of them in Peace But perfect Love will make them one and O how delightful will that communion of Saints be I can never forget how sweet God hath made the course of my Pilgrimage by the fragrancy and usefulness of his Servants graces How sweet have my bosom Friends been though mutable How sweet hath the Neighbourhood of the godly been How sweet have the holy Assemblies And how many hours of comfort have I there had How profitable have their Writings their Conference and their Prayers been What then will it be to live in the union of perfect Love with perfect Saints in Heaven for ever and with them concordantly to love the God of Love § 18. III. And as the Act and the Object of LOVE will constitute my felicity so will my Reception from the Love of God and his Creatures be sweeter to me than my own activity can be For it is Mutual Love that makes it up I shall not be the Fountain of my own delights nor can I act till I am acted nor offer any thing to God but what I have first received from him And Receive I shall abundantly
and continually and from thence shall overflow to God and Receiving and Returning are now and will be the circular endless motion and our true perpetual Life and Happiness § 19. I. All my Receivings shall be from God His LOVE is not a meer Immanent Will nor a Wish which toucheth not the Object But it is what Heat is in or from the Sun or Fire It is an efflux of Goodness It is the most powerful sweet communicating Principle or Work All Love is communicative but none in comparison of Gods As there is none primitive and simply good but God How much doth Love in the affairs of men All that is pleasant in the World is it or its effects Were it not for sensual Love there would be no Generation of Man or Bruits God hath made it a generating Principle Hatred causeth not congress but fighting with or flying from one another Were it not for Natural Love Mothers would never endure the pain and trouble and care which is necessary to humane Birth and Education Were it not for Love Parents would never labour all their lives to leave their Children well instructed and well provided for when they are gone My Food would not please me did I not love it and I should neglect it to the neglect of my life Did I not love my Books and Learning itself I should never have bestowed so much of Threescore Years in poring on them and searching for Knowledge as I have done Did I not love my House my Conveniences and necessaries I should neglect them and they would be to me of small use Did I not love my Friends I should be less profitable to them and they to me Did not I love my Life I should neglect it and never have endured the labour and cost about it as I have done If a Man love not his Courtrey Posterity and the common good he will be as a burdensom Drone in the Hive or as pernicious Vermine What is done in the World that is good but by LOVE And if created Love be so necessary so active so communicative how much more will the infinite Love of the Creator be His Love is now the Life of the World His Love is the Life of Nature in the Living the life of Holiness in Saints and the life of glory in the Blessed In this infinite Love it is that I and all the Saints shall dwell for ever more And if I dwell in LOVE and LOVE in me surely I shall have its sweet and plenteous communication and shall ever drink of the Rivers of Pleasure It is pleasant to Nature to be Beloved of others Especially of the great and wise and good much more to have all the communications of Love in converse and gifts in plenty and continuance which may be still expressing it to our greatest benefit Had I a Friend now that did for me but the hundredth part of what God doth how dearly should I love him Think then think believingly seriously constantly O my Soul what a life thou shalt live for ever in the Presence the Face the Bosom of infinite Eternal Love He now shineth on me by the Sun and on my Soul by the Sun of Righteousness but it is as through a Lanthorn or the crevises of my darksom Habitation But then he will shine on me and in me openly and with the fullest streams and beams of Love § 20. God is the same God in Heaven and Earth but I shall not be the same Man Here I receive comparatively little but live in darkness doubtful and frequent sorrows because my Receptivity is less The windows of my Soul are not open to his light Sin hath raised clouds and consequently storms against my comforts The enterances to my Soul by the streights of Flesh and Sense are narrow and they are made narrower by sin than they were by Nature Alas how oft would Love have spoken comfortably to me and I was not at home to be spoken with but was abroad among a world of Vanities or was not at leisure or was asleep and not willing to be awaked How oft would LOVE have come in and dwelt with me and I have unkindly shut my doors against him How oft would he have been with me in secret where he freely would embrace me but I had some pleasing company or business which I was loth to leave How oft would he have feasted me and had made all ready but I was taken up and could not come â—ay when his Table hath been spred before me Christ Grace and Glory have been offered to me my Appetite hath been gone or dull and all hath been almost neglected by me and hath scarce seemed pleasant enough to be accepted or to call off my mind from luscious Poyson How oft would he have shined upon me and I have shut my windows or mine eyes He was jealous indeed and liked not a Partner He would have been All to me if I would have been All for him But I divided my Heart my Thoughts my Love my Desires and my Kindnesses and alas how much did go besides him yea against him to his Enemies even when I knew that all was lost and worse than lost which was not his What wonder then if so foolish and unkind a sinner had little pleasure in his Love and if so great ingratitude and neglect of Soveraign goodness were punished with such strangeness and fears and faintings as I have long with groans lamented Recipitur ad modum recipientis But in Heaven I shall have none of these obstructions All old unkindness and ingratitude will be forgiven The great reconciler in whom I am beloved will then have perfected his work I shall then be wholly separated from the vanity which here deceived me My open Soul will be prepared to receive the heavenly influx With open Face I shall behold the open Face of glorifying Love I shall joyfully attend his Voice and delightfully relish the Celestial Provisions No disease will corrupt my Appetite No sluggishness will make me guilty again of my old neglects The Love of the Father by the Grace of the Son and the Communion of the Holy Spirit will have got the victory over all my deadness folly and disaffection and my God-displeasing and self-undoâ—ng averseness and enmity will be gone for ever The perfect LOVE which God doâ—h first effect in me will be my everlasting Receptivity of the fullest Love of God Benevolent love will make me good that is a Holy lover of God and then pleased love will make me his delight and benevolence will still maintain me in my capacity Study this heavenly work of Love O my Soul these are not dead or barren studies These are not sad unpleasant studies It is only love that can relish love and understand it The will here hath its gust so like to an understanding as maketh some Philosophers say that voluntas percipit is a proper Phrase What can poor carnal Worldlings know of glorious Love who
out a Prayer Book on my Heart He giveth me desires and he loveth to be importuned by them His Spirit is first a Spirit of supplication and after of Consolation and in both a Spirit of Adoption so far is he from being loth to be troubled with my importunity that he seeketh to me to seek his grace and is displeased with me that I will ask and have no more All this is true But how then cometh my Soul to be yet so low so dark so fond of this wretched Flesh and World and so backward to go home and dwell with Christ Alas a taste of Heaven on Earth is a Mercy too pretious to be cast away upon such as have long grieved and quencht the Spirit and are not by diligent and patient seeking prepared to receive it He that proclaimeth a general Peace will give Peace only to the Sons of Peace If after such unkind neglects such wilful sins as I have been guilty of I should expect to be suddenly in my Saviours Armâ— and to be feasted presently with the first Fruits of Heaven I should look that the Most Holy should too little manifest his hatred of my sin My Conscience remembreth the follies of my Youth and many a later odious sin and telleth me that if Heaven were quite hid from my sight and I should never have a glimpse of the Face of glorious eternal Love it were but just I look upward from Day to Day I groan to see his pleased Face and better to know my God and my home I cry to him daily My God this little is better than all the pleasures of sin My Hopes are better than all the Possessions of this World Thy gracious looks have oft revived me and thy mercies have been unmeasurable to my Soul and Body But O how far short am I of what even Fourty Years ago I hoped sooner to have attained Where is the Peace that passeth Understanding that should keep my Heart and Mind in Christ O where is the seeing the longing the rejoicing and triumphing Faith Where is that pleasant familiarity above that should make a Thought of Christ and Heaven to be sweeter to me than the Thoughts of Friends or Health or all the Prosperity and Pleasure of this World Do those that dwell in God and God in them and have their Hearts and Conversations in Heaven attain to no more clear and satisfying perceptions of that blessed state than I have yet attained Is there no more acquaintance above to be here expected No livelier sense of future joyes No sweeter foretast Nor fuller silencing of doubts and fears I am not so loth to go to a Friend nor to the Bed where I oft spend the Night in restless pains and rolling as I have too often been to come to thee Alas how many of thy Servants are less afraid to go to a Prison than to their God! and had rather be banished to a Land of Strangers than sent to Heaven Lord must I that am called Thy Child and an Heir of Heaven and a Co-heir with Christ have no more acquaintance with my glorified Lord and no more love to Thee that art my portion before I go hence and come before thee Shall I have no more of the heavenly Life and Light and Love Alas I have scarce enough in my Meditations to denominate them truly heavenly Meditations I have scarce enough in a Prayer to make it indeed a heavenly Prayer or in a Sermon to make it a heavenly Sermon And shall I have no more when I come to die Must I go hence so like a stranger to my home Wilt thou take Strangâ—â—â— into Heaven know them as thine that do no better know thee here O my God vouchsafe a Sinner yet more of his Spirit that came down on Earth to call up earthly minds to God and to open Heaven to all Believers O what do I beg for so frequently so earnestly for the sake of my Redeemer as the Spirit of Life and Consolation which may shew me the pleased Face of God and unite all my affections to my glorified Head and draw up this dark and drowsie Soul to love and long to be with thee But alas though these are my daily groans how little yet do I ascend I dare not blame the God of Love He is full and willing I dare not blame my blessed Saviour He hath shewed that he is not backward to do good I dare not accuse the holy Spirit It is his work to sanctifie and comfort Souls If I knew no reason of this my low and dark Estate I must needs conclude that it is somewhat in my self But alas my Conscience wants not matter to satisfie me of the cause Sinful resistance of the Spirit and unthankful neglects of Grace and Glory are undoubtedly the cause But are they not a cause that Mercy can forgive That grace can overcome and may I not yet hope for such a Victory before I die Lord I will lie at thy doors and groan I will pour out my moans before thee I will beg and whatever thou wilt do with me Thou describest the kindness of the Dogs to a Lazarus that lay at a rich Man's Doors in Sores Thou commendest the neighbourly pitty of a Samaritan that took care of a wounded Man Thou condemnest those that will not shew mercy to the poor and needy Thou biddest us Be merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful If we see our Brother have need and shut up the Bowels of our compassion from him it is because thy love dwelleth not in us And shall I wait then at thy Doors in vain and go empty away from such a God when I beg but for that which thou hast commanded me to ask and without which I cannot serve thee or come to thee live or die in a habit beseeming a Member of Christ a Child of God and an Hâ—ir of Heaven O give me the wedding Garment without which I shall but dishonour thy bounteous Feast Let me wear a Livery which becometh thy Family even a Child of God! How oft hast thou commanded 〈◊〉 to Rejoice Yea to rejoice with exceeding and unspeakable joy And how fain would I in this obey thee O that I had more faithfully obeyed thee in other preparatory duties in ruling my Senses my Phantasie my Tongue and in diligent using all thy Talents Then I might more easily have obeyed thee in this Thou knowest Lord that Love and Joy are duties that must have more than a Command O bid me do them with an effecting word How can I Rejoice in Death and Darkness When the Bridegroom is absent I must fast and mourn While I look towards Heaven but through the crevises of this dungeon Flesh my Love and Joy will be but answerable to my Light How long is it since I hoped that I had been translated from the Kingdom of Darkness and delivered from the power of the Prince of Darkness and brought into that Light which is the
is here but as in the Seed the perfect union and communion is hereafter Earth and Heaven must be distinguished We must not extend our hopes or pretensions here beyond the Capacity of our Natures As perfect Holiness and Knowledge so perfect Unity and Concord is proper to Heaven and is not here to be expected The Papal pretensions of an impossible Union in one Governour of all the Earth is the means to hinder that Union which is possible But the state of Perfection is the state of perfect union communion Hasten then upwards O my Soul with the ferventest desires and breath after that state with the strongest Hopes where thou shalt not be rich and see thy Neighbours poor about thee nor be poor while they are rich nor be well while they are sick or sick while they are well But their Riches their Health their Joy will be all thine and thine will be all theirs as the common Light and none will have the less for the participation of the rest Yea Communion will be part of every ones felicity It constitueth the very being of the City of God This Celestial Communion of Saints in one holy Church above what is here to be attained is now an Article of our Belief But believing will soon end in seeing and enjoying V. The Constitutive Reasons from the heavenly Life or Practice § 1. Seeing and Loving will be the heavenly Life But yet it seemeth that besides these there will be EXECUTIVE Powers and therefore some answerable PRACTICE There are GOOD WORKS in Heaven and far more and better than on Earth For 1. There will be more Vital Activity and therefore more exercise of it For the Power is for Action 2. There will be more Love to God and one another And Love is active 3. There will be more likeness to God and our Redeemer who is communicative and doth good as he is good 4. Our Union with Christ who will be everlastingly beneficent as well as benevolent will make us in our places also beneficent 5. Our Communion in the City of God will prove that we shall all bear our part as the Members of the Body in contributing to the welfare of the whole and in the common returns to God § 2. But What are the heavenly Works we must perfectly know when we come thither In general we know 1. That they will be the works of love to God and to his Creatures that is such as Love inclineth us to exercise 2. And they will be works of Obedience to God that is such as we shall do to please his will and because he willeth them to be our duty 3. They will be useful works to others 4. They will be pleasant to our selves and part of our felicity 5. And they will carry all to God our End § 3. And somwhat of them is particularly described in the holy Scriptures As 1. We shall in Concord with the whole Society or Chore give Thanks and Praise to God and our Redeemer Rev. 19. 5. 1 Pet. 4. 11. Rev. 7. 4. 4. 7 11. 5. 13. 7. 12. 19. 1. Phil. 4 20. Whether there be any Voice or only such Spiritual activity and exultation as to Man in Flesh is not to be clearly understood is not fit for us here to presume to determine It will be somwhat more high and excellent than our vocal Praise and Singing is and of which this beareth some analogical resemblance or signification As all Passions earnestly desire vent and exercise so specially do our holy affections of Love Joy and Admiration of God Almighty And there is in us a desire of communion with many in such affections and expressions Methinks when we are singing or speaking God's praise in the great Assemblies with joyful and fervent Souls I have the liveliest foretast of Heaven on Earth And I could almost wish that our Voices were loud enough to reach through all the World and unto Heaven itself Nor could I ever be offended as many are at the Organs and other convenient Musick soberly and seasonably used which excite and help to tune my Soul in so holy a work in which no true assistance is to be despised No work more comforteth me in my greatest sufferings none seemeth more congruous and pleasant to me while I wait for Death than Psalms and words of Praise to God nor is there any exercise in which I had rather end my life And should I not then willingly go to the heavenly Chore where God is praised with perfect Love and Joy and harmony Had I more of a Praising frame of Soul it would make me long more for that Life of Praise For I never find my self more willing to be there than when I most joyfully speak or sing God's praise Though the Dead praise not God in the grave and dust doth not give him thanks yet living Souls in Heaven do it joyfully while their fleshly cloathing turns to dust Lord â—une my Soul to thy Praises now that sweet experience may make me long to be where I shall do it better I see where any excellent Musick is Nature maketh men flock to it and they that are but Hearers yet join by a concurrent phantasie and delight Surely if I had once heard the heavenly Chore I should Eccho to their holy Songs though I could not imitaâ— them and I should think it the truest Blessedness to be there and bear my part My God the voice of thy comforting Spirit speaking thy Love effectually to my Soul would make such holy Musick in me that would incline me to the Celestial consort and without it all these thoughts and words will be in vain It is the inward Mâ—lody of thy Spirit and my Conscience that must tune me to desire the hâ—avenly Melody O speak thy love first to my Heart and then I shall joyfully speak it to my Brethren and shall ambitiously seek that communion of them that praise thee better than sinful groaning Mortals can And though my sins here make a loathed jar and discord in my Songs I hope my groans for these sins and their effects will make no discord Sighs and Tears have had the honour to be accepted by thee who despisest not a contrite Soul But if thy Spirit will sing and speak within me and help me against the discordant murmurs of my unbelieving Heart and pained Flesh I shall offer thee that which is more suitable to thy Love and Grace I confess Lord that daily Tears and Sighs are not unsuitable to the Eyes and Voice of so great a Sinner who is under thy correcting Roâ— What better could I expect when I grieved thy Spirit than that it should prove my grief Yea this is far better than the genuine effects of sin But this is not it that is meeâ—est to be offered to the God of Love He that offereth Praise doth glorifie thee And is not this the Spiritual Sacrifice acceptable through Christ for which we were made Priests to God
me the Light of the Sun than the Light of thy Countenance Less miserable had I been without Life or Being than without thy Grace Without thee and my Saviour's help I can do nothing I did not live without thee I could not pray or learn without thee I never could conquer a temptation without thee and can I die or be prepared to die without thee Alas I shall but say as Philip of Christ I know not whither my Soul is going and how then shall I know the way My Lord having loved his own in the World did love them to the end Thou lovest fidelity and perseverance in thy Servants even those that in his sufferings forsook him and fled yet are commended and rewarded by Christ for continuing with him in his temptations Luk. 22. 28. And wilt thou forsake a sinner in his extremity who consenteth to thy Covenant and would not forsake thee My God I have often sinned against thee but yet thou knowest I would fain be thine I have not served thee with the resolution fidelity and delight as such a Master should have been served but yet I would not forsake thy service nor change my Master or my Work I can say with thy Servant Paul Act. 27. 23. that thou art the GOD WHOSE I AM and WHOM I SERVE and O that I could serve thee better For to serve thee is but to Receive thy Grace and to use it for my own and others good and so to glorifie thee and please thy will which being LOVE it self is pleased best when we receive and do most good I have not loved thee as Infinite Goodness and Love it self and fatherly Bounty should have been loved but yet I would not forsake thy Family and nothing in this World is more my grief than that I love thee no more forsake not then a sinner that would not forsake thee that looketh every hour towards thee that feeleth it as a piece of Hell to be so dark and strange unto thee that gropeth and groaneth and gaspeth after thee feeling to his greatest sorrow though thou art every where that while he is present in the body he is absent from the Lord. My Lord I have nothing to do in this World but to seek and serve thee I have nothing to do with a Heart and its affections but to breath after thee I have nothing to do with my Tongue and Pe◠but to speak to thee and for thee and to publish thy Glory and thy Will What have I to do with all my Reputation and Interest in my Friends but to increase thy Church and propagate thy holy Truth and Service What have I to do with my remaining Time even these last and languishing hours but to look up unto thee and wait for thy Grace and thy Salvation O pardon all my carnal thoughts and all my unthankful neglects of thy precious Grace and Love and all my wilful sin against thy Truth and thee and let the fuller Communications of thy forfeited Grace now tell me by experience that thou dost forgive me Even under the terrible Law thou didst tell Man thy very Nature by proclaiming thy Name Exod. 34 6 7. The Lord the Lord God merciful and gracious long-suffering and abundant in goodness and Truth keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin and is not the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ revealed in the Gospel for our more abundant Faith and Consolation My God I know as I cannot Love thee according to thy Loveliness so I cannot Trust thee according to thy Faithfulness I can never be sufficiently confident of thy alsufficient Power thy Wisdom and thy Goodness When I have said as Psal 77. 7. Will the Lord cast off for ever and will he be favourable no more Is his mercy clean gone for ever doth his Promise fail to Generations hath God forgotten to be gracious hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies Conscience hath replied that This is my infirmity I never wanted comfort because thou wantedst mercy but because I wanted Faith and fitness to receive it and perceive it But hast thou not mercy also to give me even that Fitness and that Faith My God all is of thee and through thee and all is to thee and when I have the felicity the Glory of all for ever will be thine None that trusteth in thee according to thy Nature and Promise shall be ashamed If I can live and die in Trusting in thee surely I shall not be confounded § 12. Why then should it seem a difficult Question how I may willingly leave this World and my Soul depart to Christ in Peace The same Grace which regenerated me must bring me to my desired end as the same Principle of Vegetation which causeth the Bud must bring the Fruit to sweet maturity 1. BELIEVE and TRUST thy Father thy Saviour and thy Comforter II. And HOPE for the joyful entertainments of his Love and for the blessed state which he hath promised III. And long by LOVE for nearer Union and Communion with him and thus O my Soul thou mayest depart in Peace I. How sure is the Promise of God How suitable to his Love and to the Nature of our Souls and to the operations of every Grace It is initially performed here whilst our desires are turned towards him and the heavenly seed and spark is here ingenerated in a Soul that was dead and dark and disaffected Is it any strange thing for Fire to ascend yea or the fiery Principle of Vegetation in a Tree to carry up the earthy matter to a great procerity Is it strange that Rivers should hasten to the Sea Whither should Spirits go but to the Region or World of Spirits and whither should Christ's Members and holy Spirits go but to himself and the heavenly Society And is not that a more holy and glorious place and state than this below Earth is between Heaven and Hell a place of gross and passive matter where Spirits may indeed operate upon that which needeth them and where they may be detained a while in such operation or as incorporated Forms if not incarcerate Delinquents but it is not their center end or home Even sight and reason might persuade me that all the noble Invisible powers that operate on this lower World do principally belong unto a higher and what can Earth add to their Essence Dignity or Perfection § 13. But why O my Soul art thou so vainly solicitous to have formal clear distinct conceptions of the Celestial World and the individuation and operations of separated Souls any more than of the Angels While thou art the formal Principle of an animated Body thy conceptions must be but suitable to their present state and use When thou art possessed of a better state thou shalt know it as a possessor ought to do For such a knowledge as thou lookest after is part of the possession And to long to Know and Love in Clearness and Perfection is to
they pretend to and profess are the ordinary case and course of the most of men And when we would plead them out of their deceit and misery it 's well if we are not tempted to imitate them or be not partly infected with their Disease or at least reproached and oppressed as their Enemies Such a Bedlam is most of the World become where madness goeth for the only Wisdom and he is the bravest Man that can sin and be damned with reputation and renown and successfully drive or draw the greatest number with him unto Hell To which the World hath no small likeness forsaking God and being very much forsaken by him This is the World which standeth in competition for my Love with the Spiritual blessed World Much of God's Mercies and Comforts I have here had But their sweetness was their taste of Divine Love and their tendency to heavenly Perfection What was the end and use of all the Good that ever I saw or that ever God did for my Soul or Body but to teach me to Love him and to long for more How many weaning experiences How many Thousand bitter or contemning Thoughts have I had of all the glory and pleasures of this World How many Thousand love tokens from God have called me to believe and taste his Goodness Where ever I go and which way soever I look I see VANITY and VEXATION written upon all things in this World so far as they stand in competition with God and would be the end and portion of a fleshly Mind And I see HOLINESS TO THE LORD written upon every thing so far as it declareth God and leadeth me to him as my ultimate end God hath not for nothing engaged me in a War against this World and commanded me to take and use it as mine Enemy The emptiness dangerousness and bitterness of the World and the All-sufficiency Trustiness and Goodness of God have been the Summ of all the experiences of my life And shall a worldly backward Heart overcome the teachings of Nature Scripture the Spirit of Grace and all Experience Far be it from me But O my God LOVE is thy great and special gift All Good is from thee But LOVE is the God-like Nature Life and Image It is given us from the Love of the Father the Grace of the Son and the quickning illuminating and sanctifying Operation of the Holy Spirit What can the Earth return unto the Sun but its own reflected Beams If those As how far soever Man is a Medium in Generation Nature and that Appetite which is the moving pondus in the Child is thy work so whatever is Man's part in the Mediate work of Believing and Repenting which yet is not done without thy Spirit and grace certainly it is the blessed Regenerator which must make us New Creatures by giving us this Divine Nature holy LOVE which is the holy Appetite and Pondus of the Soul Come down Lord into this Heart for it cannot come up to thee Can the Plants for Life or the Eye for Light go up unto the Sun Dwell in me by the Spirit of Love and I shall dwell by Love in Thee Reason is weak and Thoughts are various and Man will be a slippery uncertain Wight if LOVE be not his fixing Principle and do not incline his Soul to Thee Surely through thy Grace I easily feel that I love thy Word I love thy Image I love thy Work and O how heartily do I Love to Love thee And long to Know and Love thee more And if all things be of Thee and through Thee and to Thee surely this Love to the Beams of thy Glory here on Earth is eminently so It 's Thee Lord that it meaneth To Thee it looketh It 's Thee it serveth For Thee it mourns and seeks and groans In Thee it Trusteth And the Hope and Peace and Comfort which support me are in Thee When I was a returning Prodigal in rags thou sawest me afar off and mettest me with thy embracing feasting Love And shall I doubt whether he that hath better cloathed me and dwelt within me will entertain me with a Feast of greater love in the heavenly Mansions the World of Love The suitableness of things below to my fleshly Nature hath detained my affections too much on Earth And shall not the suitableness of things above to my Spiritual Nature much more draw up my Love to Heaven There is the GOD whom I have sought and served He is also here but vailed and but litâ—le known But there he shineth to heavenly Spirits in heavenly Glory There is the Saviour in whom I have believed He hath also dwelt in Flesh on Earth Bâ—t cloathed in such meanness and humbled to such a Life and Death as was to the Jews a stumbling Block and to the Gentiles matter of reproach But he Shineth and Reigneth now in Glory above the malice and contempt of Sinners And I shall there Live because he liveth and in his Light I shall have Light He loved me here with a Redeeming Regenerating and preserving Love But there he will love me with a perfecting glorifying joyful Love I had here some Raies of heavenly Light But interpositions caused Eclipses and Nights yea some long and winter Nights But there I shall dwell in the City of the Sun the City of God the heavenly Jerusalem where there is no Night Eclipse or Darkness There are the heavenly Hosts whose holy Love and Joyful Praises I would fain be a partaker of I have here had some of their Loving assistance but to me unseen being above our fleshly way of Converse But there I shall be with them of the like Nature in the same Orb and of the same Triumphant Church and Chore There are perfected Souls gathered home to Christ Not as here striving like Esau and Jacob in the Womb not yet as John when he leaped in the Womb because of his Mothers joy nor as wrangling Children that are hardly kept in the same House in Peace Not like the Servants of Abraham and Lot like Paul and Barnabas like Epiphanius and Chrysostom like Luther and Carolostadius like Ridley and Hooper or the many striving Parties now among us nor like the Disciples striving who should be the greatest Not like Noah's Family in a wicked World or Lot in a wicked City or Abraham in an Idolatrous Land nor like Elijah left alone nor like those that wandred in Sheep Skins and Goat Skins destitute afflicted and tormented hid in Dens and Caves of the Earth not like Job on the Dunghil or like Lazarus at the rich Man's Doors Not like the African Bishops whose Tongues were cut out nor like the Preachers silenced by Papist imposers in German by the Intâ—rim or elsewhere Nor like such as Tzegedine Peucer and many other worthy men whose maturest Age was spent in Prisons Not as we poor bewildred Sinners feeling evil and fearing more confounded in folly and mad contention some hating the only way of Peace and
others groping for it in the dark wandring and lost in the clearest Light where the illuminated can but pitty the Blind but cannot make them willing to be delivered What is Heaven to me but GOD GOD who is LIFE and LIGHT and LOVE communicating himself to blessed Spirits perfecting them in the Reception Possession and Exercise of LIFE and LIGHT and LOVE FOR EVER These are not the Accidents but the Essence of that God who is Heaven and All to me should I fear that Death which passeth me to Infinite Essential Life Should I fear a darksom passage into a World of perfect LIGHT Should I fear to go to LOVE itself Think O my Soul what the Suns quickening Light and Heat is to this lower corporeal World Much more is GOD even Infinite LIFE and LIGHT and LOVE to the blessed World above Doth it not draw out thy desires to think of going into a World of LOVE When LOVE will be our Region our Company our Life More to us than the Air is for our Breath than the Light is for our sight than our Food is for our Life than our Friends are for our Solace And more to us than we are to our selves and we more for it as our ultimate end than for our selves O excellent Grace of Faith which doth foresee and blessed Word of Faith that doth foreshew this World of LOVE Shall I fear to enter where there is no WRATH no fear no strangeness nor suspicion nor selfish separation but LOVE will make every holy Spirit as dear and lovely to me as my self and me to them as lovely as themselves and God to us all more amiable than our selves and all Where LOVE will have no defects or distances no damps or discouragements no discontinuance or mixed disaffection but as LIFE will be without Death and LIGHT without Darkness a perfect everlasting Day of Glory so will LOVE be without any hatred unkindness or allay As many Coals make one Fire and many Candles conjoined make one Light so will many living Spirits make one Life and many illuminated Glorious Spirits one Light and Glory and many Spirits innaturalized into LOVE will make one Perfect LOVE of GOD and be LOVED as One by God for ever For all the Body of Christ is One even here it is One in initial Union of the Spirit and Relation to One God and Head and Life 1 Cor. 12. throughout Eph. 4. 1. to 17. and shall be presented as beloved and spotless to God when the great Marriage Day of the Lamb shall come Eph. 5. 24 25 c. Rev. 21. 22. Had thou not given me O Lord the LIFE of Nature I should have had no conceptions of a Glorious everlasting Life But if thou give me not the Life of Grace I shall have no sufficient delightful inclination and desire after it Hadst thou not given me Sight and Reason the Light of Nature I should not have thought how desirable it is to live in the Glorious Light and Vision but if thou give me not the Spiritual Illumination of a seeing Faith I shall not yet long for the Glorious Light and beatifical Vision Hadst thou not given me a Will and Love which is part of my very Nature itself I could not have tasted how desirable it is to live in a World of Universal perfect endless LOVE But unless thou also shed abroad thy LOVE upon my Heart by the Spirit of Jesus the Great Medium of LOVE and turn my very Nature or Inclination into Divine and Holy LOVE I shall not long for the World of LOVE Appetite followeth Nature O give me not only the Image and the Art of Godliness the approaches towards it nor only some forced or unconstant acts but give me the Divine Nature which is Holy Love and then my Soul will hasten towards thee and cry How long O Lord How long O come come quickly make no delay Surely the fear of dying intimateth some contrary Love that inclineth the Soul another way and some shameful unbelief and great unapprehensiveness of the Attractive Glory of the World of LOVE Otherwise no frozen Person so longeth for the Fire none in a Dungeon so desireth Light as we should long for the heavenly Light and Love God's Infinite Essential SELF-LOVE in which he is Eternally delighted in himself is the most Amiable Object and Heaven itself to Saints and Angels And next to that His Love to all his Works to the World and to the Church in Heaven speaketh much more of his Loveliness than his Love to me But yet due Self-love in me is his work and part of his natural Image and when this by sin is grown up to excess through the withdrawing of a contracted narrow Soul from the Union and due Love to my fellow Creatures and to God I must also I cannot but enquire after God's Love to me and by this my desires must much be moved For I am not so capable of ascending above Self-interest and Self-love as in the state of Glorious Union I shall be I am glad to perceive that others do love God and I love those most that I find most love him But it is not other mens love to God that will be accepted by him instead of mine Nor is it God's Love to others which yet rejoiceth me that will satisfie me without his love to me But when all these are still before me God's Essential Self-love and Delight his Love to his Creatures especially the Glorified and his Love to me also even to me a vile unworthy Sinner what then should stay my ascending Love or discourage my desires to be with God And dost thou doubt canst thou doubt O my Soul whether thou art going to a God that loveth thee If the Jews discerned the great love of Christ to Lazarus by his Tears canst not thou discern his Love to thee in his Blood It is never the less but the more obliging and amiable that it was not shed for thee alone but for many May I not say as Paul Gal. 2 20. I live by the Faith of the Son of God that hath loved Me and given himself for me Yea it is not so much I that live as Christ Liveth in me And will he forsake the Habitation which his love hath chosen And which he hath so dearly bought O read often that triumphing Chapter Rom. 8. and conclude What shall separate us from the Love of God If Life have not done it Death shall not do it If leaning on his Breast at Meat was a token of Christ's special love to John is not his dwelling in me by my Faith and his living in me by his Spirit a sure token of his love to me And if a dark saying If he tarry till I come what is that to thee raised a report that the beloved Disciple should not die why should not plain Promises assure me that I shall live with him that loveth me for ever Be not so unthankful O my Soul as to question
doubtingly whether thy heavenly Father and thy Lord doth love thee Canst thou forget the sealed Testimonies of it Did I not even now repeat so many as should shame thy doubts A multitude of thy Friends have loved thee so entirely that thou canst not doubt of it And did any of them signifie their love with the convincing evidence that God hath done Have they done for thee what he hath done Are they Love itself Is their love so full so firm and so unchangeable as his I think the sweetlier of Heaven because abundance of my ancient Lovely and Loving Holy Friends are there and am the willinger by Death to follow them And should I not think of it more pleasedly because my God and Father my Saviour and my Comforter is there And not alone but with all the Society of Love Was not Lazarus in the Bosom of God himself yet it is said that he was in Abraham's Bosom as the Promise runs that we shall sit down with Abraham Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of God And what maketh the Society of Saints so sweet as holy Love It is comfortable to read that To love the Lord our God with all our Heart and Soul and might is the First and great Commandment and the Second is like to it To Love our Neighbours as our selves For God's Commands proceed from that Will which is his Nature or Essence and they tend to the same as their Objective end Therefore he that hath made Love the Great Command doth tell us that LOVE is the Great conception of his own Essence the spring of that Command and that this commanded imperfect Love doth tend to perfect heavenly Love even to our communion with Essential Infinite Love It were strange that the Love and Goodness which is equal to the Power that made the World and the Wisdom that ordereth it should be scant and backward to do good and to be suspected more than the Love of Friends The remembrance of the holiness humility love and faithfulness of my dearest Friends of every Rank with whom I have conversed on Earth in every place where I have lived is so sweet to me that I am oft ready to recreate my self with the naming of such as are now with Christ But in Heaven they will love me better than they did on Earth and my love to them will be more pleasant But all these Sparks are little to the Sun Every place that I have lived in was a place of Divine Love which there set up its obliging Monuments Every Year and Hour of my life hath been a time of Love Every Friend and every Neigbour yea every Enemy have been the Messengers and Instruments of Love Every state and change of my life notwithstanding my sin hath opened to me Treasures and Mysteries of Love And after such a life of Love shall I doubt whether the same God do love me Is he the God of the Mountains and not of the Valleys Did he love me in my youth and health And doth he not love me in my Age and Pain and Sickness Did he love all the Faithful better in their life than at their Death If our hope be not chiefly in this life neither is our state of Love which is principally the heavenly endless Grace My groans grieve my Friends but abate not their love Did he love me for my strength my weakness might be my fear as they that love for Beauty loath them that are deformed and they that love for Riches despise the Poor But God loved me when I was his Enemy to make me a Friend and when I was bad to make me better What ever he taketh pleasure in is his own gift Who made me to differ And what have I that I have not received And God will finish the Work the Building the Warfare that is his own O the multitude of Mercies to my Soul and Body in Peace and War in Youth and Age to my self and friends the many great and gracious deliverances which have testified to me the Love of God! Have I lived in the experience of it and shall I die in the doubts of it Had it been Love only to my Body it would have died with me and not have accompanied my departing Soul I am not much in doubt of the truth of my Love to him Though I have not seen him save as in a Glass as in a Glass seen I love him I love my Brethren whom I have seen and those most that are most in Love with him I love his Word and Works and Ways and fain I would be nearer him and love him more and I loath my self for loving him no better And shall Peter say more confidently Thou knowest that I love thee than I know that thou lovest me Yes he may because though God's Love is greater and stedfaster than ours yet our knowledge of his great love is less than his knowledge of our little love and as we are defective in our own Love so are we in our certainty of its sincerity And without the knowledge of our Love to God we can never be sure of his special love to us But yet I am not utterly a stranger to my self I know for what I have lived and laboured in the World And who it is that I have desired to please The God whose I am and whom I serve hath loved me in my youth and he will love me in my aged weakness My Flesh and my Heart fail my pains seem grievous to the Flesh But it is LOVE that chooseth them that useth them for my good that moderateth them and will shortly end them Why then should I doubt of my Fathers Love Shall pain or dying make me doubt Did God love none from the beginning of the World but Henoch and Elias And what am I better than my fore-Fathers What is in me that I should expect exemption from the common lot of all Mankind Is not a competent time of great Mercy on Earth in order to the unseen felicity all that the best of men can hope for O for a clearer stronger Faith to shew me the World that more excelleth this than this excelleth the Womb where I was conceived Then should I not fear my third Birth day what pangs soever go before it nor be unwilling of my change The Grave indeed is a Bed that Nature doth abhor Yet there the weary be at rest But Souls new born have a double Nature that is Immortal and go to the place that is agreeable to their Nature even to the Region of Spirits and the Region of Holy Love Even passive Matter that hath no other Natural motion hath a Natural Inclination to uniting aggregative motion And God maketh all Natures suitable to their proper ends and use How can it be that a Spirit should not incline to be with Spirits And Souls that have the Divine Nature in holy Love desire to be with the God of Love Arts and Sciences and Tongues become not
a Nature to us Else they would not cease at Death But holy LOVE is our New Nature and therefore ceaseth not with this bodily life And shall accidental love make me desire the company of a frail and mutable Friend And shall not this ingrafted inseparable love make me long to be with Christ Though the love of God to all his Creatures will not prove that they are all Immortal nor oblige them to expect another life that never had Capacity or Faculties to expect it yet his love to such as in Nature and Grace are made capable of it doth warrant and oblige them to believe and hope for the full Perfection of the work of love Some comfort themselves in the love of St. Peter as having the Keys of Heaven And how many could I name that are now with Christ who loved me so faithfully on Earth that were I sure they had the Keys and Power of Heaven and were not changed in their Love I could put my departing Soul into their Hands and die with joy And is it not better in the Hand of my Redeemer and of the God of Love and Father of Spirits Is any love comparable to his Or any Friend so boldly to be trusted I should take it for ungrateful unkindness in my Friend to doubt of my love and trustiness if I had given him all that he hath and maintained him constantly by my kindness But O how odious a thing is sin Which by destroying our love to God doth make us unmeer to believe and sweetly perceive his Love And by making us doubt of the Love of God and lose the pleasant relish of it doth more increase our difficulty of loving him The Title that the Angel gave to Daniel A Man greatly beloved of God methinks should be enough to make one joyfully love and trust God both in life and death Will Almighty LOVE ever hurt me or forsake me And have not all Saints that Title in their degrees What else signifieth their Mark and Name HOLINESS TO THE LORD What is it but our separation to God as his peculiar beloved People And how are they separated but by mutual love and our forsaking all that alienateth or is contrary Let Scorners deride us as self flatterers that believe they are God's Darlings and wo to the Hypocrites that believe it on their false Presumption without such belief or grounded hopes I see not how any Man can die in true Peace He that is no otherwise beloved than Hypocrites and Unbelievers must have his portion with them And he that is no otherwise beloved than as the ungodly unholy and unregenerate shall not stand in judgment nor see God nor enter into his Kingdom Most upright Souls are to blame for groundless doubting of God's Love but not for acknowledging it rejoicing in it and in their doubts being most solicitous to make it sure Love brought me into the World and furnished me with a Thousand Mercies Love hath provided for me delivered me and preserved me till now And will it not entertain my separated Soul Is God like false or insufficient Friends that forsake us in adversity I confess that I have wronged LOVE by sin by many and great unexcusable sins But all save Christ himself were sinners which love did purifie and receive to Glory God who is rich in Mercy for the great love wherewith he loved us even when we were dead in sins hath quickned us together with Christ by Grace we are saved and hath raised us up together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus Eph. 2. 4 5 6. O that I could love much that have so much forgiven The glorified praised him who loved us and washed us from our sins in his own Blood and made us Kings and Priests to God Rev. 1. 5 6. Our Father that hath loved us giveth us consolation and good hope through Grace 2 Thess 2. 16. I know no sin which I repent not of with self-loathing And I earnestly beg and labour that none of my sins may be to me unknown I dare not justifie even what is any way uncertain though I dare not call all that my sin which siding men of differing judgments on each side passionately call so While both sides do it on contrary accounts and not to go contrary ways is a Crime O that God would bless my accusations to my illumination that I may not be unknown to my self Though some think me much better than I am and others much worse it most concerneth me to know the Truth my self flattery would be more dangerous to me than false accusations I may safelier be ignorant of other mens sins than of my own Who can understand his errours Cleanse me Lord from secret sins and let not ignorance or errour keep me in impenitence and keep thou me back from presumptuous sins Psal 19. 12 13. I have an Advocate with the Father and thy Promise that he that confesseth and forsaketh his sins shall have Mercy Those are by some men taken for my greatest sins which my most serious Thoughts did judge to be the greatest of my outward duties and which I performed through the greatest difficulties and which cost me dearest to the Flesh and the greatest self-denial and patience in my reluctant Mind Where-ever I have erred Lord make it known to me that my confession may prevent the sin of others and where I have not erred confirm and accept me in the right And seeing an unworthy Worm hath had so many Testimonies of thy tender love let me not be like them Mal. 1. 1 2. that when thou saidst I have loved you unthankfully asked Wherein hast thou loved us Heaven is not more spangled with Stars than thy Word and Works with the refulgent Signatures of Love Thy well beloved Son the Son of thy Love undertaking the Office Message and Work of the greatest Love was full of that Spirit which is Love which he sheds abroad in the Hearts of thine Elect that the Love of the Father the Grace of the Son and the communion of the Spirit may be their hope and life His Works his Sufferings his Gifts as well as his comfortable Word did say to his Disciples Joh. 15. 9. As the Father loved me so have I loved you continue ye in my love And how Lord shall we continue in it but by the thankful belief of thy love and loveliness desiring still to love thee more and in all things to know and please thy Will Which thou knowest is my Souls desire Behold then O my Soul with what Love the Father Son and Holy Spirit have loved thee that thou should be made and called a Son of God redeemed regenerate adopted into that Covenant-state of Grace in which thou standest Rejoice therefore in hope of the Gâ—ory of God Rom. 5. 1 2. being justified by Faith having Peace with God and access by Faith and Hope that maketh not ashamed that being reconciled when an Enemy by the Death of Christ I shall be saved
hath also used them to do abundance of good against Idolatry in the Heathen World Where-ever they come Idolatry is destroyed Yea the corrupt Christians Greeks and specially Papists that worship Images Angels and Bread are rebuked and condemned justly by Mahometans But O that they who have Conquered so far by the Sword were Conquered by the Sacred Word of Truth and truly understood the Mystery of Redemption and the Doctrin of the Gospel of Jesus Christ Obj. But they think us Idolaters for saying that Christ is God and believing the Trinity I. As to the Trinity it is no contradiction that one Fire or Sun should have Essentially a Virtue or Power to Move Light and Heat Nor that one Soul should have a power of Vegetation Sense and Reason Nor as Rational to have a peculiar power of Vitality Intellection and Free-will Why then should the Trinity seem incredidible II. We do not believe that the Godhead hath any change or is made Flesh or the Manhood made God but that the Godhead is incomprehensibly united to the humane Nature by assumption so as he is united to no other Creature by and for those peculiar Operations on the humanity of Christ which make him our Redeemer They that well think that God is All in All things more than a Soul to all the World and as near to us as our Souls to our Bodies in whom we live and move and have our being will find that it is more difficult to apprehend how God is further from any Soul than that he is so much One with Christ Save that different Operations of God on his Creatures are apparent to us By all this we see that every sanctified Christian hath the certain Witness in himself that Christ is true He is truly a Physician that healeth and a Saviour that saveth all that seriously believe and obey him The Spirit of God in a New and Holy and Heavenly Nature of Spiritual Life and Light and Love is the Witness VI. The Sixth Article in my Text is Received up into Glory That Christ after Forty Days continuance on Earth was taken up into Heaven in the sight of his Disciples is a Matter of Fact of which we have all the forementioned infallible proof which I must not here again repeat And 1. If Christ were not glorified now in Heaven he could not send down his Spirit with his Word on Earth nor have enabled the first Witnesses to speak with all Tongues and heal the Sick and raise the Dead and do all the Miracles which they did A dead Man cannot send down the Holy Spirit in likeness of Firy cloven Tongues nor enable Thousands to do such VVorks nor could he do what is done on the Souls of serious Believers in all Ages and Nations to this Day He is sure alive that makes men live and in Heaven that draws up Hearts to Heaven 2. And this is our Hope and Joy Heaven and Earth are in his Power The Suffering and VVork which he performed for us on Earth was short but his heavenly Intercession and Reign is Everlasting Guilty Souls can have no immediate access to God All is by a Mediator All our receivings from God are by him And all our services are returned by him and accepted for his sake And as he is the Mediator between his Father and us his Spirit interceedeth between him and us By his Spirit he giveth us Holy desires and every Grace and by his Spirit we exercise them in returns to him And our glorified Saviour hath Satan and all our Enemies in his Power Life and Death are at his command All Judgment is committed to him He that hath redeemed us is preparing us for Heaven and it for us and receiveth our departing Souls to his own Joy and Glory He hath promised us that we shall be with him where he is and shall see his Glory He that is our Saviour will be our Judge He will come with Thousands of his Angels to the confusion of wicked Unbelievers and to be glorified in his Saints He will make a New Heaven and a New Earth in which Righteousness shall dwell Angels and Glorified Saints shall with Christ our Head make one City of God or holy Society and Chore in perfect Love and Joy to praise the blessed God for ever I. The differences between this World and that which I am going to I. THis World is God's Footstool That is his Throne II. Here are his Works of Inferiour Nature and of Grace There he shineth forth in Perfect Glory III. Here is gross Receptive Matter moved by Invisible Powers There are the noblest efficient communicative Powers moving all IV. This is the Inferiour subject Governed World That is the Superiour Regent World V. This is a World of Trial where the Soul is his that can win its consent That is a World where the Will is perfectly determined and fixed VI. Satan winning mens Consent hath here a large Dominion of Fools There he is cast out and hath no Possession VII Here he is a 〈◊〉 and Troubler of the Best There he hath neither Power to Tempt or Trouble VIII This World is as the dark Womb where we are regenerated That is the World of Glorious Light into which we are born IX Here we dwell on a World of sordid Earth There we shall dwell in a World of Celestial Light and Glory X. Here we dwell in a troublesom tempting perishing Body There we are delivered from this burden and prison into glorious liberty XI Here we are under a troublesom Cure of our Maladies There we are perfectly healed rejoicing in our Physicians praise XII Here we are using the Means in weariness and hope There we obtain the end in full fruition XIII Here sin maketh us loathsom to our selves and our own annoiance There we shall love God in our selves and our Perfected selves in God XIV Here all our Duties are defiled with sinful imperfection There perfect Souls will perfectly love and praise their God XV. Here Satans temptations are a continual danger and molestation There perfect Victory hath ended our temptations XVI Here still there is a remnant of the Curse and Punishment of sin Pardon and Deliverance are perfected there XVII Repenting Shame Sorrow and Fear are here part of my necessary work There all the troublesom part is past and utterly excluded XVIII Here we see darkly as in a Glass the Invisible World of Spirits There we shall see them as Face to Face XIX Here Faith alas too weak must serve instead of sight There presence and sight suspend the use of such believing XX. Desire and Hope are here our very Life VVork But there it will be full felicity in fruition XXI Our Hopes are here oft mixt with grievous doubts and fears But there full possession ends them all XXII Our holy Affections are here corrupted with Carnal mixtures But there all are purely Holy and Divine XXIII The coldness of our Divine Love is here our sin and
This Nature and its faculties and powers are not made in vain II. Reason assureth me that all men are bound by Nature to prefer the least probability of a Life of Everlasting Joy before all the Prosperity of this World and to suffer the loss of all this short Vanity to escape the least possibility of endless misery And Nature hath such notices of Rewards and Punishments after Death that no Man can say that he is sure there is no such thing From whence it followeth that all men are bound by the very Law of Nature to be Religious and to seek first and most their Salvation in the Life to come And if so It 's certain that there is such a thing to be obtained Else God had made the very Nature of Man to be deceived by itself and to spend the chief part yea all his life through labour and suffering for that which is not and so made his greatest duty to be his greatest deceit and misery And the worst men should be least deceived But all this is not to be imputed to our wise and good Creator III. The universal sense of Moral Good and Evil in all Mankind is a great evidence of another life The vilest Atheist cannot abide to be accounted a Knave a Lyer a bad Man nor will equal a vicious Servant with another All would be thought good who will not be good And doth not God make a greater difference than Man And will he not shew it IV. The World is actually ruled much by the hopes and fears of another life and cannot well be ruled without it according to the Nature of Man But the Almighty most Wise and most Holy God needs not and will not rule the World by meer deceit V. The Gospel of Christ hath brought Life and Immortality into a clearer Light than that of Nature And it must be by believing in Christ that we must have our full satisfaction O what hath God done in the Wonders of Redemption to make us sure And against the doubts that are apt to rise from some hard particular Text of Scripture it must be considered I. That Christ and his Apostles did put the ascertaining Seal of the many uncontrolled Miracles to the Gospel Doctrin primarily which Doctrin 1. Was delivered and sealed Eight years before any of the New Testament was written and almost Seventy before the last 2. And Christ did not speak in the Language that the Gospel is written to us so that being but a Translation as to his own Words the Matter is the thing first sealed II. And that it was the two Legislator-Mediators Moses and Christ who came with the great stream of uncontrolled Miracles It being necessary that men should have full proof that a Law or Doctrin is of God before they believe it But the Priests and Prophets after Moses and the Preachers and Pastors of the Christian Church who were not Commissioned to bring men any New Laws or Gospel but to proclaim and teach that which they received needed no such New Testimony of Miracles III. The Belief of every particular Priest or Prophet after Moses or every Pastor after Christ and his Apostles was not of the same degree of necessity to Salvation as the belief of the Law and Gospel itself Therefore though all the Holy Scripture be true the Law and the Gospel must be much differenced from the rest IV. The History of the Law and Gospel have full ascertaining historical Evidence or else there is none such in the World Therefore the Doctrin must be true V. The Prophesies fulfilled prove the Gospel true VI. And the Divine Impress on the whole VII And the sanctifying work of the Spirit wrought by it in all Nations and Ages on serious Believers is a constant Divine attestation VIII And as my Faith hath so sure a Foundation it confirmeth my Faith and Hope that it hath been so long and great a work of God by his Word and Spirit on my Soul to raise it to believe and love and desire that Holy state of Perfection and Fruition which I hope for That which hath made me so much better than I else had been and turned my Heart and Life though imperfectly to things above the Pleasures of the Flesh must needs be of God And God would never send his Grace to work my Heart to Deceit and Lies and give me such Graces as shall all be frustrate His Spirit is the Earnest and first Fruits of Glory IX And all the course of Religious and Moral duty which he hath commanded me and in which he hath employed my life were never imposed to deceive me I am sure by Nature and Scripture that it is my Duty to love God and my Neighbour to desire Perfection and to serve God and do good with all my time and power and to trust God for my reward believing that all this shall not be in vain nor that which is best be made my loss O blessed be God for Commands and Holy Duty For they are equal to Promises Who can fear that he shall lose by seeking God X. As God hath sealed the Truth of his Word as aforesaid so he hath by an instituted Office and Ordinance sealed and delivered to my self his Covenant with the gift of Christ and Life in Baptism and the Lord's Supper XI He hath given me such a love to Holy Things and Persons that I greatly long to see his Church in perfect Light and Love and Concord Oh how sweet would it be to see all men Wise and Holy and Joyfully praising God Every Christian longs for this And therefore such a state will be XII I have found here the great benefit of the Love and Ministry of Angels such as is described in Psal 91. They have kept me Night and Day which confirmeth my hope that I shall dwell with them for I love them better than men because they love and serve God better XIII That low communion which I have here with God by Christ and the Spirit in his answer to my Prayers Supports Comforts Experiences tends to more XIV The pleasure which I have by Love in thinking of the happiness of my many many many holy departed Friends and of the Glory of Christ and the heavenly Jerusalem is sure some hopeful approach towards their state XV. When I see the Fire mount upward and think that Spirits are of a more sublime and excellent Nature than Fire And when I see that all that is done in this World is done by Spiritual unseen powers which move this gross and drossie Matter it puts me past doubt that my Soul being a Spirit hath a vast and glorious World of Spirits to ascend to God hath by Nature put into all things an aggregative uniting inclination Earth hath no other natural motion The ascent of Fire tells us its Element is above And Spiritâ— naturally incline to Spirits and holy Spirits peculiarly are inclined to the Holy XVI I am sure 1. By understanding
reasoning deduction from that poor Degree which we here in the Kingdom of Grace possess Can I perceive substantiality in the dark terrene appearances which are but mutable lifeless matter agitated and used by invisible Powers and shall I think of those unseen powerful substances as if they were less substantial for being Spiritual or were not Objects for a knowing Thought Are the Stars which I see less substantial than a Carkass in a darksom Grave The Lord that appeared in shining Glory hath Members in their measure like himself and hath promised that we shall shine as Stars in the Kingdom of his Father If some degree of this be here performed in them who are called the Children of Light and the Lights of the World how much more will they shine in the World of Light They that call Light a quality or an Act must confess it hath a substance whose quality or act it is Alas what a deceived thing is a sensual Unbeliever who spendeth his Life in the pursuit of fugitive shaddows and walketh in a vain shew and thinks of Spiritual glorious substances as if they were the nothings or delusions of a Dream § 6. Christ Moses and Elias here visibly appeared as three distinct individual Persons This tells us that it is a false conceit that Death ceaseth Individuation and turneth all Souls into one of which before Perfect indivisible infinite Unity is proper to God From this One is multiplicity Reason forbids us when we see the numberless individuals in this World and see also the numerous Stars above to imagine that all the Worlds above us have so much of Divine Perfection as to be but one undivided substance and to have no multiplicity of Inhabitants Yea some of those Sadduces hold that the Stars are Worlds inhabited as the Earth is And why then should they think whither soever Souls go that they cease their individuation When they go among individuals But Christ hath confuted them even to Sense Moses is Moses still and Elias is Elias still And all our Friends that are gone to Christ are the same still that they were and may be called by the same Names Abraham Isaac and Jacob are the same in Heaven and Lazarus was Lazarus in Abraham's bosom When we lay by Flesh and are uncloathed we put not off our personality Every one shall receive his own reward according to what he hath done in the Body when every one must give account of his own works and talents Why then may I not with distinct conceptions and joyful desires look after the Souls of my departed Friends that are now in the Celestial Kingdom Though malignity hath scorned me for naming some few in my Saints Rest being such as the Despisers hated yet I forbear not on such accounts to Solace my self by naming more but because they are more than it 's fit to number In all places where I have lived how many excellent Souls though here they were not perfect are gone to Christ How sweet is the remembrance of the communion which I had with many of them in Shrewsbury and other parts of Shropshire Of many at Dudley and the adjoining parts Of Multitudes at Kiderminster Bewdley and other parts of Worcestershire Of abundance at Coventry and other parts of Warwickshire And of many where I have sojourned in other parts of the Land And above all in London and the adjoining parts As Mr. How hath elegantly exprest it in his excellent Character of my excellent and dear Friend Mr. Richard Fairclough What a Multitude of Blessed Saints will arise at the last Day out of London and this Earth is as it were hallowed with the Dust and Relicts of so many blessed Souls But it 's Heaven that is spangled with these Spiritual Stars The place honoured with them and they with it and all by Christ We are like Infants or Lambs or other young ones that cry for their Dams if they be but out of sight though they are never so near if they see them not they cry as if they were not or had forsaken them As Christ told his Disciples that it was needful for them that he departed from them and yet their Hearts for this were sorrowful till the Holy Ghost came upon them as better than Christ's fleshly presence to prepare them joyfully to follow him so we think of our Friends as almost lost to us by separation till the heavenly Spirit tell us where they are and prepare us to desire to be with them § 6. Elias hath a Body now in Heaven and so hath Henoch But can we think that only two or three that are there with Christ do so much differ from all the rest as to have Bodies when the rest have none Is there such a dissimilitude of Saints in Heaven What are two or three in such a Society Doubtless their Bodies are not corruptible Flesh and Blood but such Spiritual Bodies as all Saints shall have at the Resurrection But are they in Heaven such visible and shaped Bodies as they appeared on the Mount The same difficulty poseth us about the risen Body of Christ He would not have Mary touch him because he had not yet ascended to his Father He could appear and vanish from their sight at his pleasure And yet Thomas handled him and felt that he had Flesh and Bones That Body of Flesh ascended visibly up toward Heaven And yet it is not Flesh and Blood in Heaven but a Spiritual Body For it is not worse than he will make his Members What shall we say to these things We must say That we are not capable of knowing them but have Reason to be thankful that we may know so much more necessary for us But yet it seemeth probable that the Bodies of Christ and Henoch and Elias were changeable according to the Region in which they were to be Christ could take up a Body of Flesh and Blood and immediately change that state of it into a pure incorruptible Spiritual Body as it entered into the incorruptible Spiritual Region And so God did by Henoch and Elias As Paul saith that we shall not all die those that live till Christ's appearing but we shall all be changed And yet if Elias have business on the Mount he can put on the cloathing of a grosser Body to be so seen of men and can lay it by or return to his more invisible Spiritual state when he returneth to the place from whence he came And no wonder when Angels and the Ancients say Christ before his Incarnation assumed Bodies suitable to their several businesses on Earth yea such as could eat and drink with men when yet they dwelt not in Heaven so coursly cloathed § 7. But how came Moses to have a Body on the Mount who is said to have been buried and therefore took none with him into Heaven We must still remember that we enquire of things above our certain knowledge But in humble conjecture we may say That it 's no
and such as will fully convince the Communicants Without such a miraculous glimpse of Glory God sometime giveth some of his Servants such a Mental illustration and inward glimpse and taste of Heaven as greatly overcometh all the fears of Pain and Death such many old and later Martyrs have had It was a strange word of the godly Bishop of St. Davids Mr. Farrar to his Neighbours If I stir in the Fire believe not my Doctrin and accordingly he stirred not If he had not had some Prophetical Inspiration this could not have been justified from being a presumptuous tempting God And Mr. Baynam's case was a meer wonder who in the Flames called to the Papists to see a Miracle professing to them that in the Fire he felt no more pain than if he had been laid in a Bed of Down or Roses I am just now reading in Adam's Lives of the German Philosophers the Life of Olympia Fulvia Morata which ended with some such experience In many Ages there hath been some one rare Woman who hath excelled men in the Languages Philosophy and other humane Learning Such a one was this Olympia Fulvia Morata of Ferrarrie She married Andr. Gundler a Physician She removed with him into Germany being by the way convinced of the Guard of Angels by her young Brothers falling out of a high Window on cragged Stones without any more hurt than if it had been on the soft ground In Germany she thus wrote to Anna Estensis a Guisian Princess As soon as by the singular goodness of God I was departed from the Italian Idolatry and came with my Husband into Germany it is incredible how God changed my Soul or mind which being formerly most averse or abhorring to the Divine Scriptures am now delighted in them alone and place in them all my Study Labour Care and Mind And as much as possible contemn all the Riches Honours and Pleasures which formerly I was wont to admire But the Cross presently following in God's usual Method her Husband and She were by Souldiers stript naked save the shift next the Body and narrowly scaping with life were put so to wander from place to place none daring to entertain them even when she was sick of a Feaver till at last they found liberal entertainment in which she shortly fell into a mortal Disease of which she died And in her last Sickness and after much torment of Body near Death she pleasantly smiled Her Husband asked her the Cause who said I saw a certain place which was full of a most clear and beauteous Light Intimating that she should be quickly there and saying I am wholly full of Joy And spake no more till her Eye-sight failing she said I scarce know any of you any more But all things else about seem to be full of most beauteous Flowers which were her last words having a long time professed that nothing seemed more desirable to her than to be dissolved and to be with Christ in all her sickness magnifying his Mercies to her Many have thus joyfully laid down the Flesh to go to Christ What wonder then if Peter was loth to lose the pleasure of what he saw Two things are necessary to great and solid joy First That the Object be truly and greatly amiable and delectable and Secondly That the apprehensions of it be clear and strong As to the first we have so great and glorious things to delight us as would feast our Souls with constant Joy were not the Second alas much wanting What Man could choose but be even in Peter's rapture continually if he had but ascertained heavenly Glory apprehended by him in as satisfactory a manner as these sensible things are If I lay in Prison yea or in torment of Colick Stone or any such Disease and had but withal such apprehensions or sight of assured Glory surely the pain would not be able to suppress my joy What a mixture what a discord would there be in my expressions Torment would constrain my Flesh to groan and the sight of Heaven would make me triumph I cannot but think how this great discord would shew the difference between the Spirit and the Flesh What a strange thing it would be to hear the same Man at the same time crying out in pain with groans and magnifying the love of God with transporting joy But we are not yet fit for such joyful apprehensions our weak Eyes must not see the Sun but through the allaying Medium of a humid Air at a vast distance and by the Chrystalline humour and organical parts of the Eye Fain we would get nearer and have sight or clearer apprehensions of the Spiritual Society and glorious World We study we pray we look up we groan under our distance darkness and unsatisfying conceptions But yet it must not be We must be ripened before the Shell will break or the dark Womb will deliver us up to the Glorious Light But Christ vouchsafed that to his three Apostles which we are unworthy of and yet unfit for O happy sight O happy men It is incongruous to say What would I not give for such a sight Lest it should savour of Simon Magus folly And I have nothing to give But it is not incongruous to say What would I not do And what would I not suffer for such a fight Yea Christ puts such kind of Questions to us O that I had better answered them in the Hour of Duty and in the Hour of Temptation When he asked Can ye drink of the Cup that I drink of and be Baptized with the Baptism that I am Baptized with I have been ready with James and John to say I can but when the trial comes as they after in his suffering forsook him and fled how insufficient is my own strength to perform my promise When he imposeth on me the denying of my self forsaking all and taking up the Cross and following him I yielded and covenanted by Vow to do it but it was By the help of the Holy Spirit which he promised to give me I stand Lord to my Covenant Help me to perform it and give me though not his present sight yet some of Peter's Mental apprehensions and a glimpse a taste of that which transported him with delight Let who will or who Thou wilt take the Riches and Grandeur of the World O give me some delightful taste of that which I am made for redeemed for and which thy Spirit hath long taught me to seek and hope for as my All. § 25. Peter was not weary with the sight of this heavenly Apparition Why should I be weary of the believing contemplation of greater things Though sight affect us more sensibly than meer believing and thinking yet these have their happy Office which may be effectual And Christ who thus appeared in Glory to Peter hath said Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed And Peter himself saith of them that see not Christ that They rejoice with joy unspeakable
and full of Glory in believing Oh how unexcusable am I for every weary Prayer or Meditation of such a Glory and for yielding to Satan and a backward Heart which have oft made me shorten these sweet employments when I had time and leave and need to lengthen them What! aweary of communion with Christ Aweary of speaking to my heavenly Father for endless Blessedness upon such joyful terms of Hope as he hath given me Aweary of the Thoughts of the City of God the heavenly Society and Work Aweary of exciting Divine Love and exercising it in Divine Praise which are the works of Angels and all the heavenly Host O how justly might God be as it were aweary of me and of my weary Services yea of the best that I can offer him which hath in it so much to give him cause § 26. Peter did not fly from this glorious Prospect but would fain have had more of it and have dwelt upon the Holy Mount And when God will call me to a more glorious Vision and Fruition in Heaven shall I draw back and be unwilling to go Was that Mount a better place than Heaven Is not Christ now to be there seen in greater Glory Is the Jerusalem above the Glorious Company of Saints and Angels no better and more desirable a sight than Moses and Elias were on the Mount Alas when we have read and heard and thought and talkt so much of Heaven and done and suffered so much for it that yet we should draw back with fear and unwillingness to go to it O what lamentable weakness of Faith and power of Flesh doth this discover when I read Peter's words It 's good to be here I am grieved that I who dwell in a World so near like Hell among the implacable haters of Holiness and Holy Peace and in a painful tired Body and who have thought said and written so much of Heaven do yet say with no stronger desire and joy It is good to be there When I see all natural Appetites desire earnestly their proper food and even the Bruits desire their beloved company shall my holy Appetite be so dull and indifferent Lord quicken it by the fuller communications of thy Spirit and save me from this hated dangerous disease § 27. But Peter spake he knew not what when he talkt of building Tabernacles on Earth for the fruition of that which is proper to Heaven Alas this is our common malady and folly We would have Christ in the Splendour of his Glory but we would have him here We would see Moses and Elias if they will come down to us We would have that in the Flesh which Flesh and Blood cannot possess O if we knew in what Land what City what Countrey what private House we might live in the least glimpse of the heavenly Glory how joyfully should we run to such an Habitation Merchants make towards the most gainful place for trade Poor men enquire after the most fertile and delectable Countries for Plantation Gentlemen delight themselves with a sweet and pleasantly seated Mansion But if Saints on Earth could find a place where they could see what Stephen or Paul or these Apostles saw and have a little of Heaven without dying and putting off this Body what a desirable dwelling would that seem to them And yet alas how cold are our desires to the time and place where we shall have much more We have Christ on Earth in the manner and measure that we are capable We have here some communion with Heaven as verily though not so sensibly as our Eye hath with the Sun God will not deny Believers their Title their Earnest and some first Fruits But when we would have our All or our Best on Earth or that on Earth which is proper to Heaven we know not what we desire or say Are we vile dirty Sinners in Flesh now fit for heavenly sights or joys Or is this World a place for building Tabernacles where we may see the Lord and take up our rest What! in a world of Temptations of wickedness of sufferings where we are daily wrestling for our lives and fighting not meerly against Flesh and Blood but against Principalities and Powers and the Rulers of the Darkness of this World even Spiritual Wickedness or wicked Spirits in high Places above the greatest men that are their Servants Eph. 6. 12. But that which is of the Earth is earthly Our earthly part would have an earthly Felicity But when we know that it is corruptible and a dying thing and that we have here no continuing City both Faith and Reason bid us seek for one to come The unfaithful Steward had so much Wit as to make sure of another Habitation when he knew that he must be no longer Steward God hath so constantly confuted and befooled me by his marvellous Providence when ever I have said Soul take thy ease and have thought of building Tabernacles on Earth as hath convinced me that such folly is not the least part of the danger of a Soul from which his Mercy did so watchfully save me If a little Health and Ease or a pleasant Habitation or beloved Company and Friends have but flattered me into earthly delight and hopes and made me say It 's good to be here I never was long without some pains and dangerous sickness or some loss or cross in Friends or some removal by personal or publick changes to tell me that I knew not what I said and that rest and happiness are not here As the laborious Ants and Bees are long gathering a heap of Treasure and furnishing a Hive with Winter Provision and a contemptuous foot soon spurneth about the one and the chief owner of the Hive destroyeth the other so while I neglected Wealth and Honour when I have but treasured up the choicest Books and taken pleasure in my Work and Friends God saw that such pleasure needed an allay and hath taken away Books and Friends together or driven me oft from them and my Habitation to tell me sensibly that I have higher to look and further to go and that Moses and Elias appeared not to turn Earth into Heaven and make me think that now I am well but to invite my Soul to their Celestial Habitation When Christ hath comforted me by hearing Prayers by great deliverances by wonderful success of my defective labours by comfortable Friends by publick Mercies it was not by making my condition pleasant to keep down my desires from Heaven but to draw them thither by such foretasts Contentment with our Condition as without more of the World is a great duty But to be content with the World or any thing on Earth without more holiness and communion with God and without a part in the heavenly Perfection is a heynous and pernicious sin But alas it is a far worse mistake than Peter's which deceiveth the greatest part of men They say indeed as he It 's good to be here till melancholy or
itself contained the evidence of its Divinity and of their Truth And Christ then and to this Day hath owned it by the sanctifying Efficacy of the same Spirit upon Millions of Souls How Holy a Doctrin doth Peter himself deliver as confirmed by this Apparition 2 Pet. 1. 16 17 18. We have not followed cunningly devised Fables when we made known to you the Power and Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ but were Eye Witnesses of his Majesty For he received from God the Father Honour and Glory when there came such a Voice to him from the excellent Glory This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased And this Voice which came from Heaven we heard when we were with him in the Holy Mount The words In whom I am well pleased are only here and in Matthew Mark and Luke omitting them tell us that the Evangelists undertook not to recite all that was said and done but each one so much as seemed necessary for him to say § 42. And now what remaineth O my Soul but that thou take in the due Impression of this Apparition of the Glory of Jesus and his Saints and that thou joyfully obey this heavenly Voice and Hear the Beloved Son of God in whom the Father is well pleased I. As we that are Born in another Age and Land must know what Christ said by the transmission and certain testimony of them that heard him infallible Tradition by Act Word and Record being our way of notice as immediate sensation was theirs so even the glorious Apparition itself may be the mediation of their infallible Record be partly transmitted to our Imagination An Incorporate Soul is so used to a mixed way of knowing by imagined Idea's received by sense that it would fain have such a sort of knowledge of separated Souls and other Spirits and of their glorious state and place and work and is hardly fully satisfied without it Seeing Christ hath partly condescended to this our culpable weakness lose not the help of his condescension Let this clear description of the heavenly sight make it to thee partly as if thou had been one of the three Spectators till thou canst say Methinks I almost see the Face of Christ shine as the Sun and his raiment whiter than the Snow and Moses and Elias no doubt in some degree of glory standing with him Methinks I almost hear them discoursing of Christ's Death and Man's Redemption And by this sight I partly conceive of the unseen heavenly Company and State Methinks I see the Cloud receive them when Peter had been transported with the sight and I almost feel his pleasant raptures and am ready to say as if I had been with him It is good for us to be hear Methinks I almost hear the heavenly Voice This is my beloved Son Hear him And shall I yet doubt of the Celestial Society and Glory Had I once seen that what a sense would it have left upon my Heart of the difference between Earth and Heaven Man and God Flesh and Spirit Sin and Duty how thankfully should I have thought of the work of Redemption and Sanctification And why may I not accordingly put my self as into the case of them who saw all Christ's Miracles and saw him risen and ascend towards Heaven Or at least of all those ordinary Christians who saw all the wonders done by the Reporters of these things I can easily receive a pleasing Idea of some forreign happy Countrey which a Traveller describeth to me though I never saw it and my Reason can partly gather what great things are if I see but lesser of the same kind or somewhat like them A Candle sheweth somewhat by which we may conceive of the greatest flame Even Grace and Gracious actions do somewhat notifie to us the state of Glory But the sight on the Mount did more sensibly notifie it Think not then that heavenly contemplation is an impossible thing or a meer dream as if it had no conceivable subject matter to work upon the visible things of Earth are the Shaddows the Cobwebs the Bubbles the Shews Mummerries and Masques and it is loving them and rejoicing and trusting in them that is the dream and dotage Our heavenly Thoughts and Hopes and Business are more in comparison of these than the Sun is to a glow-Worm or the World to a Mole-hill or Governing an Empire to the motions of a Fly And can I make somwhat yea too much of these almost nothings and yet shall I make almost nothing of the active glorious unseen World and doubt and grope in my Meditations of it as if I had no substance to apprehend If invisibility to Mortals were a cause of doubting or of unaffecting unsatisfying Thoughts God himself who is All to Men and Angels would be as no God to us and Heaven as no Heaven and Christ as no Christ and our Souls which are our selves would seem as nothing to themselves and all men would be as no men to us and we should converse only with Carkasses and Cloaths Lord shine into this Soul with such an heavenly potent quickening Light as may give me more lively and powerful conceptions of that which is all my hope and life Leave me not to the exercise of Art alone in barren notions but make it as Natural to me to love Thee and breath after Thee Thou teachest the young ones both of men and bruits to seek to the Dam for food and shelter And though Grace be not a brutish Principle but work by Reason it hath its Nature and Inclining force and tendeth towards its Original as its End Let not my Soul be destitute of that holy Sense and Appetite which the Divine and Heavenly Nature doth contain Let me not lay more stress and trust upon my own Sight and Sense than on the Sight and Fidelity of my God and my Redeemer I am not so foolish as to live as if this Earth were no bigger than the little of it which I see Let me not be so much more foolish as to think of the vast and glorious Regions and the Blessed Inhabitants thereof and the Receptacles of justified Souls as if they wanted either substantiality or certainty to exercise a heavenly conversation here and to feast believing Souls with joy and draw forth well grounded and earnest desire to depart and be with Christ § 43. II. Hear then and Hear with Trust and Joy the tydings and promises of him whom the Voice from Heaven commanded Man to hear He is the glorified Lord of Heaven and Earth All is in his power He hath told us nothing but what he knew and promised nothing but what he is able and willing to give Two sorts of things he hath required us to Trust him for Things notified by express particular Promises and things only generally promised and known to us 1. We may know particularly that he will receive our departing Souls and justifie them in judgment and raise the Dead and
taste little more than a Beast may taste Poor Food and Rayment is sweet with the sense of the Love of God Had I more of this I should lie down and rise and walk in Pleasure and content I could bear the loss of other things And though Nature will feel pains I should have Pleasure and Peace in the midst of all my pains and groans This is the white Stone the New Name No Man well knoweth it who never felt it in himself 1. There is no dying comfortably without this experienced taste of the Love of God This will draw up the desires of the Soul Love tasted casteth out fear though God be Holy and Just and Judgment terrible and Hell intollerable and the Soul hath no distinct Idea of its future state out of the Body and though we see not whither it is that we must go the taste of God's love will make it go joyfully as trusting him as a Child will go any whither in his Father's power and hand But all the knowledge in the World without this quiets not a departing Soul A Man may write as many Books and Preach as many Sermons of Heaven as I have done and speak of it and think of almost nothing else and yet till the Soul be sweetned and comforted with the Love of God shed abroad on it by the Holy Ghost death and the next life will be rather a Man's fear than his desire And the common fear of death which we see in the far greatest part even of godly Persons doth tell us that though they may have saving desires and hopes yet this sense of God's love on the Heart is rare What wonder then if our Language our Converse our Prayers have too little savour of it and in comparison of joyful Believers duties be but like green Apples to the mellow ones My God I feel what it is that I want and I perceive what it is that is most desirable O let not guilt be so far unpardoned as to deprive my Soul of this greatest good which thou hast commended to me and commanded and which in my languishing and pains I so much need Did I beg for Wealth or Honour I might have it to the loss of others But thy Love will make me more useful to all and none will have the less for my enjoyment For thou Lord art enough for all Even as none hath the less of the Sun-light for my enjoying it The least well grounded hope of thy Love is better than all the pleasures of the Flesh But without some pleasant sense of it alas what a withered languishing thing is a Soul thy loving kindness is better than life but if I taste it not how shall I here rejoice in God or bear my heavy burdens O let me not be a dishonour to thy Family where all have so great cause to honour thy bounty by their joy and hopes Nor by a sad and fearful Heart tempt men to think that thy love is not real and satisfactory I can easily believe and admire thy Greatness and thy Knowledge Let it not be so hard to me to believe and taste thy Goodness and thy Love Which is as necessary to me If there be any thing as surely there is in which the Divine Nature and Spirit of Adoption consisteth as above all the Art and Notions of Religion which are but like to other acquired Knowledge sure it must be this holy Appetite and Habitual Inclination of the Soul to God by way of Love which is bred by an internal sense of his Loveliness and Loving inclination to Man which differenceth a Christian from other men as a Child differs towards his Father from Strangers or from common Neigbours Till the love of God be the very state or nature of the Soul working here towards his Honour Interests Word and Servants no Man can say that he is God's habitation by the Spirit And how the Heart will ever be thus habited without believing God's Love to us it 's hard to conceive Experience tells the World how strongly it constraineth Persons to love one another if they do but think that they are strongly beloved by one another In the love that tends to marriage if one that is inferior do but know that a Person of far greater worth doth fervently love them it almost puts a necessity and constraint on them for returns of Love Nature can scarce choose but love in such a case Love is the Loadstone of Love A real taste of the Love of God in saving Souls by Christ and grace is it that constraineth them to be holy that is to be devoted to that God in Love III. But this must as necessarily be the work of the Holy Ghost and can be no more done without him than the Earth can be illuminated and the Vegetables live without the Sun But all the approaches of the Holy Spirit suffice not to produce this great effect and give us the Divine holy Nature The same Sun shine hath three different effects on its Objects 1. On most things as Houses Stones Earth it causeth nothing but the Accidents of Heat Colour and Motion 2. On some things it causeth a seminal Disposition to Vegetable life but not Life itself 3. In this disposed matter it causeth Vegetable life itself So doth the Spirit of God 1. Operate on Millions but lifeless Accidents as the Sun on a stone Wall 2. On others Dispose and prepare them to Divine Life 3. On others so disposed it effecteth the Divine life itself When holy Love is turned into a habit like to Nature That none but the Holy Ghost doth make this holy change is evident For the effect cannot transcend the causes 1. Nature alone is dark and knoweth not the attractive amiableness of God till illuminated nor can give us a satisfactory notice of God's special Love to us 2. Nature is Guilty and Guilt breedeth fears of Justice and fear makes us wild and fly from God lest he will hurt us 3. Nature is under penal sufferings already and feeleth pain fear and many hurts and foreseeth Death And under this is undisposed of itself to feel the pleasure of God's Love 4. Nature is corrupted and diverted to Creature vanity and its Appetite goeth another way and cannot cure itself and make itself suitable to the amiableness of God 5. God hateth wickedness and wicked men and meer Nature cannot secure us that we are saved from that enmity Diligence may do much to get religious Knowledge and Words and all that which I call the Art of Religion And God may bless this as a preparation to holy Life and Love But till the Souls Appetite incline with desire to God and Holiness Divine things will not sweetly relish And this is a great comfort to the Thoughts of the Sanctified that certainly their holy Appetite Desire and Complacency is the work of the Holy Ghost For 1. This secureth them of the Love of God of which it is the proper token 2. And
it assureth them of their Union with Christ when they live because he liveth even by the Spirit which is his Seal and Pledge 3. And it proveth both a future life and their title to it For God maketh not all this preparation for it by his Spirit in vain But alas if it were not a work that hath great impediment it would not be so rare in the World What is it in us that keepeth the Sun of Love from so shining on us as to revive our Souls into Holy contentments and delight It must be supposed 1. That all God's gifts are free and that he giveth not to all alike The wonderful variety of Creatures proveth this 2. The reasons of his differencing works are his own will and inferiour reasons are mostly unknown to us of which he is not bound to give us an account 3. But yet we see that God doth his works in a causal order and one work prepareth for another and he maketh variety of capacities which occasion variety of receptions and of gifts and he useth to give every thing that to which he hath brought it into the next capacity and disposition And therefore in general we may conclude that we feel not God's Love shed abroad upon the Heart because the Heart is undisposed and is not in the next disposition thereto And abused free will hath been the cause of that That we have Grace is to be ascribed to God That we are without it is to be ascribed to our selves 1. Heinous guilt of former sin may keep a Soul much without the delights of Divine love And the heinousness is not only in the greatness of the evil done materially but oft in our long and willful committing of smaller sins against Knowledge and Conscience and consideration The Spirit thus grieved by hardened Hearts and willful repulses is not quickly and easily a comforter to such a Soul and when the sinner doth repent it leaveth him more in uncertainty of his sincerity when he thinks I do but repent purpose and promise now and so I oft did and yet returned the next temptation to my sin And how can I tell that my Heart is not the fame and I should sin again if I had the same temptations O what doubts and perplexities doth oft willful sinning prepare for 2. And sins of omission have here a great part The sweetness of God's Love is a reward which sloathful Servants are unmeet for It follows a Well done good and faithful Servant There is needful a close attendance upon God and devotedness to him and improvement of Gospel Grace and Revelation to make a Soul fit for amicable sweet communion with God All that will save a Soul from Hell will not do this He that will taste these Divine Love-tokens must 1. Be no stranger to holy Meditation and Prayer nor unconstant cold and cursory in them but must dwell and walk above with God 2. And he must be wholly addicted to improve his Masters Talents in the World and make it his design and trade on Earth to do all the good in the World he can And to keep his Soul clean from the flesh and worldly vanity And to such a Soul God will make known his Love 3. And alas how ordinarily doth some carnal aâ—fection corrupt the appetite of the Soul When we grow too much in love with mens esteem or with earthly Riches or when our Throats or Phantasies can master us into obedience or vain desires of Meat Drink Recreation Dwelling c. the Soul loseth its Appetite to things Divine and nothing relisheth where Appetite is gone or sick We cannot serve God and Mammon and we cannot at once taste much pleasure both in God and Mammon The old austere Christians found the mortification of the fleshly Lusts a great advantage to the Souls delight in God 4. And many errours about God's nature and works much hinder us from feasting on his Love 5. And especially the slight and ignorant thoughts of Christ and the wondrous workings of God's Love in him 6. And specially if our belief itself once shake or be not well and firmly founded 7. And our slight thoughts of the Office and Work of the Holy Ghost on Souls and our necessity of it and our not begging and waiting for the Spirits special help 8. And lastly our unfaithful forgetfulness of manifold experiences and testimonies of his Love which should still be as fresh before us Alas my Soul thou feelest thy defect and knowest the hinderance but what hope is there of remedy Will God ever raise so low so dull so guilty a Heart to such a foretast of Glory as is this effusion of his Love by the Holy Ghost The lightsom Daies in Spring and Summer when the Sun reviveth the late naked Earth and clothes it with delectable beauties differs not more from Night and Winter than a Soul thus revived with the Love of God doth differ from an unbelieving formal Soul Though this great change be above my power the Spirit of God is not impotent backward barren or inexâ—â—able He hath appointed us means for so high a state and he appointeth no means in vain Were my own Heart obedient to my commands all these following I would lay upon it Yea I 'll do it and beg the help of God I. I charge thee think not of God's Goodness and Love as unproportionable to his Greatness and his Knowledge Nor overlook in the whole frame of Heaven and Earth the manifestation of one any more than of the other II. Therefore let not the the wickedness and misery of the World tempt thee to think basely of all God's Mercies to the World nor the peculiar priviledges of the Churches draw thee to deny or contemn God's common Mercies unto all III. I charge thee to make the study of Christ and the great work of Man's Redemption by him thy chiefest Learning and most serious and constant work and in that wonderful Glass to see the Face of Divine Love and to hear what is said of it by the Son from Heaven and to come boldly as reconciled to God by him IV. O see that thy repentance for former sins against knowledge and Conscience and the Motions of God's Spirit be sound and throughly lamented and abhorred how small soever the matter was in itself That so the doubt of thy sincerity keep not up doubts of God's acceptance V. Let thy dependance on the Holy Ghost as given from Christ be henceforth as serious and constant to thee as is the dependance of the Eye on the light of the Sun and of natural Life upon its heat and motion Beg hard for the Holy Spirit and gladly entertain it VI. O never forget the many and great experiences thou hast had these almost Sixty years observed of marvellous favour and providence of God for Soul and Body in every time place condition relation company or change thou hast been in Lose not all these Love-tokens of thy Father while thou