They had rather live a sinful life if they durst and they had rather be excused from Religious duties except that little outward part which custom and their credit engage them to perform They are but like the caged birds that though they may sing in a Sun-shine day had rather be at liberty in the woâ—ds They love not a life of perfect holiness though they are forced to submit to some kind oâ— Religiousness for fear of being damned If they had their freest choice they had rather live in the Love of the creature than in the love of God and in the pleasures of the fleâ—h than in the holy course that pleaseth God The third state is the state of Love and none but this is a state of true Self-denial and of Justification and Salvation When we reach to this we are sincere we have then the Spirit of Adoption disposing us to go to God as to a Father But this Love is not in the same degree in all the sanctified Three degrees of it we may distinctly observe 1. Oft-times in the beginning of a true Conversion though the seed of Love is cast into the soul and the Convert had rather enjoy God than the world and had rather live in perfect holiness than in any sin yet Fear is so active that he scarce observeth the workings of the Love of God within him He is so taken up with the sense of sin and misery that he hath little sense of love to God and perhaps may doubt whether he hath any or none 2. When these Fears begin a little to abate and the soul hath attained somewhat of the sense of Gods Love to it self it Loveth him more observably and hath some leisure to think of the riches of his grace and of his Infinite excellencies and attractive goodness and not only to Love him because he Loveth us and hath been Merciful to us but also because he is Goodness it self and we were made to Love him But yet in this middle degree of Love the soul is much more frequently and sensibly exercised in minding it self than God and in studying its own preservation than the honour an interest of the Lord. In this state it is that Christians are almost all upon the inquiry after marks of Grace in themselves and asking How shall I know that I have this or that grace and that I perform this or that duty in sincerity and that I am reconciled to God and shall be saved Which are needful questions but should not be more insisted on than questions about our duty and the Interest of Christ In this state though a Christian hath the Love of God yet having much of his ancient Fears and Self-love and the Love of God being yet too weak he is much more in studying his Safety than his Duty and asketh oftner How may I be sure that I am a true believer than What is the duty of a true believer There is yet too much of Self in his Religion 3. In the third degree of Love to God the soul is ordinarily and observably carryed quite above it self to God and mindeth more the Will and Interest of God than its own Consolation or Salvation Not that we must at any time lay by the care of our Salvation as if it were a thing that did not belong to us or that we should separate the ordinate Love of our selves from the Love of God or set his Glory and our Salvation in an opposition But the Love of God in this Degree is sensibly predominant and we refer even our own Salvation to his Interest and Will In this Degree a Christian is grown more deeply sensible he is not his own but his that made him and redeemed him and that his principal study must not be for himself but for God and that his own interest is in it self an inconsiderable thing in comparison of the interest of the Lord and that Rewarding us with Consolation is Gods part and loving and serving him is ours assisted by his grace and that the diligent study and practice of our duty and the lively exercise of Love to God is the surest way to our Consolation In our first corrupt estate we are careless of our souls and are taken up with earthly cares In our estate of Preparation we are careful for our souls but meerly from the principle of Self-love In our first Degree of the state of saving grace we have the Love of God in us but it 's little observed by reason of the passionate fears and cares of our own salvation that most take us up In our second degree of holy Love we look more sensibly after God for himself but so that we are yet most sensibly minding the Interest of our own souls and enquiring after assurance of salvation In our third Degree of saving grace we still continue the care of our salvation and an ordinate self-love but we are sensible that the Happiness of Many even of Church and Common-wealth and the Glory of God and the accomplishment of his Will is incomparably more excellent and desirable than our own felicity And therefore we set our selves to please the Lord and study what is acceptable to him and how we may do him all the service that possibly we can being confident that he will look to our felicity while we look to our duty and that we cannot be miserable while we are wholly his and devoted to his service We are now more in the exercise of Grace when before we were more in trying whether we have it Before we were wont to say O that I were sure that I love God in sincerity Now we are more in these desires O that I could know and love him more and serve him better that I knew more of his holy will and could more fully accomplish it and O that I were more serviceable to him and O that I could see the full prosperity of his Church and the glory of his Kingdom This high degree of the Love of God doth cause us to take our selves as Nothing and God as All and as before conversion we were careless of our souls through ignorance presumption or security and after conversion were careful of our souls through the power of convincing awakening grace so now we have somewhat above our souls much more our bodies to mind and care for so that though still we must examine and observe our selves and that for our selves yet more for God than for our selves When we are mindful of God he will not be unmindful of us When it is our care to please him the rest of our care we may cast on him who hath promised to care for us Even when we suffer according to his will we may commit the keeping of our souls to him in well doing as to a faithful Creator 1 Pet. 4. 19 And it is not possible in this more excellent way 1 Cor. 12. 31 to be guilty of a careless neglect of our
by Christ And therefore it is past dispute that none but the self-denying are sanctified and therefore none bâ— they do truly take the Holy Ghost for their Sanctifier and truly believe in him So far as men are in Love with the disease it is certain they will not use the Physitian Reas 5. No man is a true Christian and in a state of salvation that denyeth renounceth or rejecteth the word of God But all men that have not self-denyal that hear the word of God do renounce deny it or reject it and therefore no man without self-denyal is a true Christian or can be saved In the Scriptures it is that we have eternal life it s they that must make us wise to salvation the man that will be blessed must meditate in them day and night Psal 1. 3. And it is not the hearers but the Doers of them that are blessed But nothing is more clear than that the voice of Scripture calleth aloud on all men to deny themselves and that the scope of it is to cry down self and set up God in Jesus Christ It is the very drift and meaning of it from end to end to take down self and abase men in their own eyes and bring them home to God from whom they are revolted Reas 6. No man can be a Christian or be saved without saving Grace But no man without self-denyal hath saving Grace For it is the nature of every Grace to carry man from himself to God by Christ It is the work of godly sorrow to humble proud man and break the heart of carnal self It is the work of faith for a self-denying soul to pass out for hope and life to Christ It is the work of Love to carry us quite above our selves to that infinite goodness which we love it is the nature of holy fear to confess our guilt and insufficiency and to suspect our selves and dread the fruit of our own ways Confidence doth bottom us upon God and Hope it self doth imply a Despairing in our selves Thankfulness doth pay the homage to him that hath saved us from our selves And every grace hath self-denyal as half its very life or soul And therefore it is certain that no man hath any more grace than he hath self-denyal Reas 7. They that reject the Ministry and the fruit of all the Ordinances of God are not true Christians nor cannot be saved But so do all among us that have not self-denyal For the use of the Ministry is to call home sinners from themselves to God The use of every Ordinance of God is to get or keep down carnal self and exalt the Lord. Confession is nothing but self-abasing and he must confess that will have the faithful and just God to forgive him for he that covereth his sin shall not prosper 1 John 1. 9. Prov. 28. 13. Prayer is a confession of our own emptiness insufficiency and unworthiness and a flying from our selves for help unto another In Baptism we come as condemned prisoners for a pardon as it were with ropes about our necks and strip our selves of the rags of our filthiness that by the blood of the lamb we may be washed from our blood and our sins may be buried as in the depth of the Sea In the Lords Supper we renew the same Covenant and receive the same renewed pardon and still fly from our selves to Christ for life and renounce our carnal selves by solemn Covenant as a people coming home to God So that never was any Ordinance of God effectual and saving on the soul of any further than it brought them to self-denyal or preserved exercised or manifested it Reas 8. He that can do no work sincerely nor go one step in the way of life is no true Christian nor in a state life But this is the case of all that have not self-denyal For self is their Principle Rule and End and he that hath either a false Principle Rule or End cannot be sincere in any of the means much less when he is out in all of these A selfish man is seeking himself in his very Religion and is serving himself when he seemeth to be serving God And indeed he doth not any service sincerely unto God because he makes not God his End And therefore cannot be accepted Reas 9. No man is a true Christian or can be saved that sticks in the depth of his natural misery in his lapsed state But so do all men that have not self-denyal for it is self that they are faln to and must be saved from Reas 10. No man can be a true Christian and be saved that is not a member of the Holy Catholick Church and the Communion of Saints But so is none but the self-denying for every true member of the Church hath a publick spirit preferring the Churches interest to his own and suffering with fellow members in their suffering and having a care of one another 1 Cor. 12. But the self-seeking unsanctified person is a stranger to this disposition Reas 11. He that is led by the greatest enemy of God and his own soul is not a true Christian nor in a state of life But so is every man that hath not learned to deny himself For self is the greatest enemy of God and us Escape but your own hands and you are out of danger All the Devils in Hell cannot destroy you if you would not be your own destroyers Reas 12. Lastly It is a plain contradiction to be saved without self-denyal For as its self that we must be saved from both as our End and Means and greatest enemy so to stick in self is still to be lost and miserable and therefore not to be saved So that the case is as plain as a case can be that no man can be a true Christian or Disciple of Christ without self-denyal and consequently none without it can be saved I have been the briefer upon the Arguments because the matter of some of them may come to be fullier opened anon in the Application CHAP. III. Use 1. A general complaint of the Prevalency of Selfishness Use 1. AND now we have seen from the words of Christ the absolute Necessity of self-denyal and that there is no true Christianity nor salvation without it let us next take a view of our selves and of the world and Judge of our condition by this certain Rule Look well into your selves and into the world and tell me whether you find not cause to lament 1. That true Christianity is so rare a thing even among the professors of Christianity seeing self-denyal is so rare 2. That Grace is so weak and small in the most of the regnerate seeing self-denyal is so little and imperfect O if the name of Christians would prove us Christians and the magnificent Titles we give to Christ would prove that we are his true Disciples if reading and hearing and outward duties and a cheap Religiousness would serve turn we have then great
that use it not for the fashion of this world passeth away 1 Cor. 7. 29 30 31. And when the soul of the worldly fool is required of him then whose shall all their Dignities and Honours and Riches be In the mean time God judgeth not by outward appearance as man judgeth nor honoureth any for being honoured of men Solus honor merito qui datur ille datur These Truths well known to you I thought meet here to set before your eyes not knowing whether I shall any more converse with you in the flesh and also to desire you seriously to read over these popular Sermons perswaded to the Press by the importunity of some faithful Brethren that love a mean Discourse on so necessary a subject Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation I rest Your Friend Richard Baxter Sept 12. 1659. THE PRFFACE Readers I Here present to your serious consideration a Subject of such Necessity and Consequence that the Peace and safety of Churches Nations Families and souls do lie upon it The Eternal God was the Beginning and the End the Interest the attractive the confidence the desire the delight the All of man in his upright uncorrupted State Though the Creator planted in mans Nature the principle of Natural Self-love as the spring of his endeavours for Self-preservation and a notable part of the engine by which he governeth the world yet were the parts subservient to the Whole and the whole to God And Self-love did subserve the Love of the Universe and of God and man desired his own Preservation for these higher Ends. When sia stept in it broke this order and taking advantage from the natural innocent principle of Self-love it turned man from the Love of God and much abated his Love to his neighbour and the publick good and turned him to Himself by an inordinate self-love which terminateth in himself and principally in his Carnal-self instead of God and the Common good so that Self is become All to Corrupted nature as God was All to Nature in its integrity Selfishness is the souls Idolatry and Adultery the sum of its Original and increased Pravity the Beginning and End the life and strength of actual sin even as the Love of God is the Rectitude and Fidelity of the soul and the sum of all our special Grace and the Heart of the new Creature and the life and strength of actual holiness Selfishness in one word expresseth all our Aversion Positively as the want of the Love of God expresseth it Privatively and all our sin is summarily in these two Even as all our Holiness is summarily in the Love of God and in self-denial It is the work of the Holy Ghost by sanctifying grace to bring off the soul again from Self to God Self-denial therefore is half the essence of Sanctification No man hath any more Holiness than he hath Self-denial And therefore the Law which the Sanctifying Spirit writeth on the heart doth set up God in the first Table and our neighbour in the second against the usurpation and encroachment of this Self It saith nothing of Love or Duty to our selves as such expresly In seeking the Honour and Pleasing of God and the Good of our neighbour we shall most certainly find our own Felicity which nature teacheth us to desire So that all the Law is Fulfilled in Love which includeth Self-denial as Light includeth the expulsion of darkness oâ— rather as Loyalty includeth a Cessation of Rebellion and a rejection of the Leaders of it and as conjugal fidelity includeth the rejection of Harlots The very meaning of the first Commandment is Thou shalt Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart c. which is the sum of the first Table and the Commandment that animateth all the rest The very meaning of the last Commandment is Thou shalt Love thy neighbour as thy self which is the summary of the second Table and in General forbiddeth all particular injuries to others not enumerated in the fore-going precepts and secondarily animateth the four antecedent precepts The fifth Commandment looking to both Tables and conjoyning them commandeth us to Honour our Superiours in Authority both as they are the Officers of God and so paticipatively Divine and as they are the Heads of humane Societies and our subjection necessary to Common good so that self-denial is principally required in the first Commandment that is The denying of self as opposite to God and his Interest And self-denial is required in the Last Commandment that is The denying of self as it is an enemy to our neighbours Right and welfare and would draw from him unto our selves Self-love and self-seeking as opposite to our neighbours good is the thing forbidden in that Commandment and Charity or Loving our neighbour as our selves and desiring his Welfare as our own is the thing commanded Self-denial is required in the fifth Commandment in a double respect according to the double respect of the Commandment 1. In respect to God whose Governing Authority is exercised by Governours their Power being a beam of his Majesty the fifth Commandment requireth us to deny our selves by due subjection and by honouring our Superiours that is to deny our own aspiring desires and our refractory minds and disobedient self-willedness and to take heed that we suffer not within us any proud or rebellious dispositions or thoughts that would lift us up above our Rulers or exempt us from subjection to them 2. In respect to humane Societies for whose Good Authority and Government is appointed the fifth Commandment obligeth us to deny our Private interest and in all competitions to prefer the publick good and maketh a promise of temporal peace and welfare in a special manner to those that in obedience to this Law do prefer the Honour of Government and the Publick Peace and welfare before their Own Thus Charity as opposed to selfishness and including self-denial is the very sum and fulfilling of the Law And selfishness is the radical comprehensive sin containing uncharitableness which breaks it all And as the Law so also the Redeemer in his Example and his Doctrine doth teach us and that more plainly and urgently this lesson of self-denial The life of Christ is the pattern which the Church must labour to imitate And Love and self-denial were the summary of his life Though yet he had no sinful self to deny but only natural self He denyed himself in avoiding sin but we must deny our selves in returning from it He loved not his Life in comparison of his love to his Father and to his Church He appeared without desirable form or comeliness He was despised and rejected of men a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief he bore our griefs and carryed our sorrows and was esteemed stricken smitten of God and afflicted he was wounded for our transgressions he was bruised for our iniquities the chastisement of our peace was laid upon him the Lord laid upon him the iniquity of
us all He was oppressed and afflicted yet he opened not his mouth he is brought as a Lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her sheerers is dumb so he opened not his mouth He was taken from prison and from judgement he was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of his people was he stricken It pleased the Lord to bruise him he put him to grief Isa 53. What was his whole life but the exercise of Love and self-denial He denyed himself in Love to his Father obeying him to the death and pleasing him in all things He denyed himself in Love to mankind in bearing our transgressions and redeeâ—ing us from the curse by being made a curse for us Gal. 3. 13. He made himself of no reputation and tock upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men and being found in fashion as a man he humbled himself and became obedient unto death even the death of the Cross Phil. 2. 6 7 8. And this he did to teach us by his example to deny our selves to be like minded having the same love being of one accord of one mind that nothing be done through strife or vain-glory but in lowliness of mind that each esteem others better than themselves Looking not every man after his own matters but every man also after the things of others and thus the same mind should be in us that was in Christ Jesus Phil. 2. 3 4. 5. He denyed himself also in obedient submission to Governours He was subject to Joseph and Mary Luke 2. 51. He paid tribute to Caesar and wrought a Miracle for money rather than it should be unpaid Matth. 17. 24 25 26. He disowned a personal worldly Kingdom Joh. 18. 36. when the people would have made him a King he avoided it Joh. 6. 15. as being not a Receiver but a giver of Kingdoms He would not so much as once play the part of a Judge or divider of inheritances teaching men that they must be justly made such before they do the work of Magistrates Luke 12. 14. And his Spirit in his Apostles teacheth us the same Doctrine Rom. 13. 1 Pet. 2. 13 14 15 16 17. Eph. 6. 1 5. And they seconded his example by their own that we might be followers of them as they were of Christ What else was the life of holy Paul and the rest of the Apostles but a constant exercise of Love and Self-denial Labouring and travelling night and day enduring the basest usage from the world and undergoing indignities and manifold sufferings from unthankful men that they might please the Lord and edifie and save the souls of men and living in poverty that they might help the world to the everlasting riches In a word as Love is the fulfilling of the whole Law as to the positive part so is selfishness the evil that stands in contrariety thereto even self-conceitedness self-willedness self-love and self-seeking and thus far self-denial is the sum of our obedience as to the terminus à quo and Christ hath peremptorily determined in his Gospel that If any man will come after him he must deny himself and take up his Cross and follow him and that whosoever will put in a reserve but for the saving of his Life shall lose it and whosoever will lose his life for his sake shall find it Matth. 16. 24 25. And that he that doth not follow him bearing his Cross and that forsaketh not all he hath for him cannot be his Disciple Luke 14. 27 33. According to the nature of these holy rules examples is the nature of theworkings of the Spirit of Christ upon the soul He usually beginneth in shewing manhis sin and misery his utter insufficiency to help himself his alienation from God and enmity to him his blindness and deadness his emptiness and nothingness and then he brings him from himself to Christ and sheweth him his fulness and sufficiency and by Christ he cometh to the Father and God doth receive his own again It is one half of the work of Sanctification to cast ourSelves from our Understandings our Wills our Affections and our Conversations to subdue self-conceitedness self-willedness self-love and self-seeking to mortifie our carnal wisdom and our Pride and our concupiscence and our earthly members And the other and chiefest part consisteth in setting up God where self did rule that his Wisdom may be our Guide his Will our Law his Goodness the chiefest object of our Love and his service the work business of our lives The Spirit doth convince us that we are not our Own and have no power at all to dispose of our selves or any thing we have but under God as he commands us It convinceth us that God is our Owner and absolute Lord and that as we are wholly his so we must be wholly devoted to him and prefer his interest before our own and have no interest of our own but what is his as derived from him and subservient to him Fear doth begin this work of self-denial but it 's Love that brings us up to sincerity The first state of corrupted man is a state of selfishness and servitude to his own Concupiscence where pride and sensuality bear rule and have no more resistance than now and then some frightening uneffectual check When God is calling men out of this corrupted selfish state he usually or oft at least doth cast them into a state of Fear awakening them to see their lost condition and terrifying them by the Belief of his Threatnings and the sense of his indignation and making use of their Self-love to cause them to fly from the wrath to come and to cry out to the messengers of Christ What shall we do to be saved Some by these Fears are but troubled and restrained a little while and quickly overcoming them settle again in their selfish sensual senseless state some have the beginnings of holy Love conjunct with Fear of whom more anon And some do from this principle of Self-love alone betake themselves to a kind of Religious course and forsake the practise of those grosser sins that bred their Fears and fall upon the practise of Religious duties and also with some kind of faith do trust on the satisfaction and merits of Christ that by this means they may get some hopes that they shall escape the everlasting misery which they fear All this Religion that is animated by Fear alone without the Love of God and Holiness is but preparatory to a state of grace and if men rest here it is but a state of Hypocrisie or self-deceiving religiousness For it is still the old Principle of selfishness that reigns Till Love hath brought man up to God he hath no higher end than Himself The true mark by which these slavish professors and hypocrites may discern themselves is this They do the Good which they would not do and the evil which they do not they would do
How shall he cloath you with his righteousness while self keeps on your own defiled rotten rags Down therefore with self that Christ may be exalted Away with your own conceited righteousness that he may be your righteousness down with your Selfish foolish wisdom that the supposed foolishness of God may be your wisdom Level this mountain which Satan hath built up in enmity against the holy mountain of the Lord. 5. Moreover Self must be denyed as it is the great resister of the Holy Ghost The sanctifying spirit hath no greater enemy at least except the Devil himself One half of the work of sanctification is to destroy this Carnal self And therefore no wonder if hence it find the chief resistance Not an holy motion can be made to the soul but self is against it No work hath the spirit to do upon us but self is ready to gainsay it and contradict it and work against it when ever therefore this mortal Principle is contending against the spirit of God dishonouring holiness disswading you from duty perswading you to sin down with it and deny it as you would be true to the spirit and your selves 6. Moreover self must be denyed as it traiterously complyeth with the enemies of Christ and your own salvation when it takes part with Satan and pleads for sin and saith as wicked men say and entreth a conspiracy with all that would undo you and all this under pretence of your own good When ever it speaks for sin you may be sure it speaks against God and you and therefore it 's reason you should deny it Self also must be denied when it riseth up against the supposed tediousness or difficulty of duty when it grudgeth at an holy life saith What a stir is here what a weary life is this what do I get by serving God Now self is playing the traitor against God and you and therefore deny it 7. Moreover when self doth rise up against sufferings and make you believe that they are intolerable and that it is unreasonable for a man to forsake all that he hath for fear of a sinful word or deed when we sin every day when we have done our best it 's time now to stop the mouth of self for it plays the Devils game against God and you and would perswade you to prefer a short uncertain miserable life before eternal life and to give up your self to wilful sin because God beareth with the sins of mens infirmity It 's reason that you should deny so unreasonable an enemy to God you 8. Moreover self must be denyed when it stands up against the Ordinances of God When it pleadeth against the arguments of the word and findeth fault with the Law that it should obey and quarrelleth with prayer and all holy duties and would make all instituted means uneffectual for your saving good it 's time now that you deny it 9. When self doth rise up against the Officers of Christ and would make you believe your teachers fools and you are wise that they are beside the truth and you are in the right or that they speak against you out of malice or singularity or some such distemper and so would deprive you of the saving benefit of their Doctrine and Office it 's time now to deny self if you know but what belongeth to your peace And though I grant that you must not follow a Teacher into a certain sin and error yet when it is not God but self that riseth up against your Teachers and possesseth you with a spirit of bitterness disobedience contradiction and malignity this self must be denyed 10. Lastly as self is against the good of our neighbour or humane Societies it must be denyed For we must love our Neighbour as our selves that is both self and neighbour must be loved in a due subordination to God as means to his Glory and in this notion of a means the Love should be equal though there is also a Natural Love in order to self-preservation put into us by the Creator which our Love to every Neighbour is not to equal in degree yet our love to Societies should exceed it and our Love to a Neighbour should come so near it that we should diligere proximum proxima delictione love him as a second self and so study his welfare as to promote it to our power and not to covet or draw from him for our selves nor do him any wrong This is the sense of the tenth Commandement and sum of the second Table CHAP. XIII 1. Selfish Dispositions must be denyed and 1. Self-love HAving seen in what respects and upon what accounts it is that self must be denyed I am next to tell you the particulars of that selfish interest that must be denyed and the parts that are contained in this needful work And here you must remember what saving faith is that seeing how self opposeth it you may know wherein it must be denyed Saving faith is such a Belief in Christ for Reconciliation with God and the everlasting fruition of him in Glory as makes us for sake all the things of this world and give up our selves to the conduct of the word and spirit for the obtaining of it When a man can strip himself of all the pleasures and profits and honours of this world first in his estimation and love and resolution and then in the actual forsaking of them at the Call of God because of the firm belief and hope that he hath of the fruition of God in Glory as purchased and promised by Jesus Christ this is a Christian a Disciple of Christ a true believer and none but this And as I have told you as God in Unity and Father Son and Holy Ghost in Trinity is the Object of our saving faith so Carnal Self in unity and Pleasure Profits and Honours in trinity must be renounced and denied by all true Christians as being that which we turn from when we turn to God So that in brief to deny your selves doth generally consist in denying all your own Dispositions and Interests whatsoever as they are against God the Father Son or Spirit or stand not in a due subserviency to him And this Interest which you must deny consisteth in your Pleasures Profits and Honour Of these therefore I shall speak distinctly though but briefly I. You must begin at the denial and mortification of your Corrupt and selfish Disposition or else you can never well deny your selfish interest It is not enough to keep under this selfishness by denying it somewhat that it would have but the selfish Inclination or Nature it self must be so far mortified and destroyed that it shall not reign as formerly it did For this which we call selfishness is not your very Persons nor any spiritual or right natural desire of your owngood But it is the inordinate adhering of the soul to your selves by departing from God to whom you should adhere and so a carrying over Gods
opinions out of their own brain to have a Religion that may be called their own And it 's their Own in two respects 1. Because it is of their own devising and not of Gods revealing or appointing 2. Because it suiteth with their own carnal ends and interests Men are far readier to make themselves a faith than to receive that which God hath formed to their hands And they are far readier to receive a Doctrine that tends to their carnal commodity or honour or delights than one that tends to self-denial and to abase themselves and exalt the Lord. 2. And when they have hatched or received such opinions which are peculiarly their Own they are apt to like them the better because they are their own and to value them because of the Interest of self O Sirs that you did but know the commonness and danger of self-conceitedness in the world Even with many that seem humble and verily think that it is the spirit of God that beareth the greatest sway in their understandings yet self doth there erect its throne O how secretly subtilly will self insinuate and make you believe that it 's a pure self-denying light which guideth you an dt hat what you hold is meerly by the cogent evidence of truth or the illumination of the Spirit when it is but a Viper that self hath hatched and doateth on because it is her own Because the Papists have gone too far in teaching men to depend on the Church and on their Teachers therefore self-conceitedness takes advantage of their error to draw men into the contrary extream and make every Infant-Christian to think himself wiser than his most experienced Brethren and Teachers and every raw unstudied Christian to think himself wiser than those that have been searching into the word of truth by study and prayer almost all their days and therefore to cry down that learning wisdom and study which they are unacquainted with that seeing they have it not themselves they may at least be thought as wise men without it as those that have it and so may provide for the reputation and interest of self O what sad work hath this great sin of self-conceitedness made in the world In too many places men make it their Religion to strive who shall be greatest for wisdom and abilities in the eyes of men and it is the very work of their Prayers and conference and teaching to exercise self-conceitedness and to make it appear that they are some body in knowledge Hence is it that they are so apt to fall upon novelties which either few receive or none before themselves devised that being singular self may be the more observed and they may have something which may be called their Own Hence also it is that they are so little suspicious of their own opinions never bending their studies impartially to try whether they are of God or not but rather to maintain them and to find out all that can be said for them and against the contrary minded Hence is it that men have such light and contemptuous thoughts of the judgment of those that excel them in knowledge and that the voice of Corah and those other Conspirators Numb 16. 3. is grown so common in the mouths of ignorant proud professors Ye take too much upon you say they to their Guides and Teachers seeing all the Congregation are holy every one of them and the Lord is among them wherefore then lift ye up your selves above the Congregation of the Lord It is the Holiness of the Congregation and all its members and the presence of God himself among them that is pleaded against the Superiority of Moses Aaron as if with so Holy a people that had God himself to be their Teacher and Guide there were no need of men to be lift up above the Congregation of the Lord. But it was self that was intended what ever was pretended From this self-conceitedness also it is that the weightiest common truths that self hath no special interest in are so little valued and relished and insisted on and that a less and more uncertain point which self hath espoused shall be more relished insisted on and contended for Hence also is most of the common confidence of men in their own Opinions that when the point is doubtful if not certainly false in the eyes of wiser men than themselves yet the fool rageth and is confident Prov. 14. 16. He can carry on a conceit of his Own with as brazen a face and proud contempt of other mens arguments as if he were maintaining that the Sun is light and other men pleaded to prove it dark when alas it is self-interest that is the life the strength the goodness of the cause Hence also it is that men are so quarrelsom with the words and ways of others that they can scarce hear or read a word but these pugnacious animals are ready to draw upon it as if they had catch'd an advantage for the honouring of their valour and were loth to lose such a prize and opportunity for a victory and triumph Hence it is that hiâ—â—ing at the sayings and doings of others is the first and most common and most sensible part of their Commentaries And that they can make heresies and monsters not only of tolerable errors but of truths themselves if they have but the inexpiable guilt of crossing the wisdom of these self-conceited men Hence it is that opinions of their own are more industriously cultivated and studiously cherished by a double if not a tenfold proportion of Zeal and diligence than common truths that all the godly in the world have as much interest in as they though the common truths be incomparably the greater And hence it is that men are so tenacious of that which is their Own when they easilier let go that which is Gods and must have all come to them and every man deny his own judgment except themselves and that it must be the glory of others to yield to them and their glory to yield to none but to have all men come over and submit to them All these are the fruits and discoveries of self as it reigns in mens understandings who possibly may think that it 's Christ and the Spirit that 's there exalted Yet mistake me not I do not say or think that a man should forsake a certain truth for fear of being accounted self-conceited nor that he must presently captivate his own understanding to a learneder man or the stronger or more numerous side for fear of being self-conceited Much less must I deny that grace of God that hath made me savingly wise by his illumination that was formerly foolish disobedient and deceived in the days of my ignorance The world must give us leave to triumph over our own former folly with Paul Tit. 3. 3 4 5. and say with the same Paul that we were no better than mad when we were enemies to the Gospel Act. 26. 11. and with
the man in Joh. 9. 25. One thing I know that whereas I was blind now I see It 's no self-conceitedness for a man that is brought from the blind distracted state of sin into the light of the sanctified to know that he is wiser than he was before and that he was formerly besides himself but now is come to his understanding again Nor is it any self-conceitedness for the meanest Christian to know that a wicked man is more foolish than he or for a Minister or any man that God hath caused to excel in knowledge to hold fast the truth he knows and to see and modestly oppose the errors of another and to know that in that he is wiser than they God doth not require that we shall turn to every mans opinion and reel up and down from sect to sect and be of the opinion of every party that we come among and all for fear of thinking our selves wiser than they David knew he had more Understanding than his Teachers Psal 119. 98 99. and true believers fear not to say We know that we are of God and the whole world lieth in wickedness 1 Joh. 5. 19. 3. 19. 2. 3. And Paul would not forbear the reproving of Peter for fear of being thought to be self-conceited Gal. 2. some men are so desperately self-conceited that they take every man to be self-conceited that is not of their conceits But when self is mens instructor and chooseth their Text and furnisheth them with matter and nothing is savoury but what is either suited to the common interest of self or which it hath not a special interest in when men are absolutely wise in their own eyes and comparatively wiser than those that know much more than they when self-interest serves instead of evidence to the receiving retaining or contending for a point when men think they know that which indeed they do not know and observe the little which they do know more than an hundred fold more that they are ignorant of doubtless here 's self-conceitedness with a witness and they that will not see it in a lower degree methinks should see it in such a case as this He that will not believe that a man is drunk when he reels and stammereth may know it when he lieth spewing in the streets Well Sirs I beseech you see that self in the understanding be mortified and pulled down It 's the throne of God the Lanthorn of holy truth the temple of the Spirit and shall self Rule there The understanding is it that guideth the soul and all the actions of your lives and if self rule there what a Ruler will you have and what a case will heart and life be in If your eye be dark your Light be dark how great will be your darkness and if it be selfish it is certainly so far dark O believe the Holy Ghost Prov. 26. 12. Seest thou a man wise in his own conceit there is more hope of a fool than of him For a meer fool that is ignorant only for want of teaching hath no such prejudice against the truth as the self-conceited have Nor is it so hard to make him know that he is ignorant nor yet to make him willing to Learn He that knoweth himself to be blind is willing to be led Moreover the self-conceited have much to unlearn before they can be fit to receive the truth in a saving maner O how many thousands are undone by self-conceitedness It is this that keeps out Knowledge and every Grace and consequently all true peace and comfort and this it is that defendeth and cherisheth all sin Let us shew men the plainest word of God for duty and against sin and shew them the clearest reasons and yet self-conceitedness bolts the door against all Yea so wonderfully doth this sin prevail that the ignorant silly people that know almost nothing are as proudly self-conceited as if they were the wisest men They that will not learn and cannot give an account of their knowledge in the very Catechism or Principles of Christian Religion nor cannot pray nor scarce speak a word of sense about the matters of Salvation but excuse themselves that they are no Scholars yet these very people will proudly resist their Teachers though they were the wisest and learned'st men in the Land Let us but cross their conceits of Doctrine or Practice in Religion about their own title to Church-priviledges or fitness for them and they are confident and furious against their Ministers as if we were as ignorant as they and they were the wisest men in the world so that pride and self-conceitedness makes people mad or deal like mad men We cannot humble men for sin nor reclaim them from it till they know the sin and the danger of it and self-conceitedness will not let them know it no nor let them come to us to be taught but they are wise enough already and if we tell them of the sin and danger they are wiser than to believe the Word of God or us They will tell us to our faces they will never believe such and such things which we shew them in the Scripture O the precious light that shineth round about you all and would make you wise if self-conceitedness did not keep it out by making you seem wise already 1 Cor. 3. 18. These men that thus deceive themselves by seeming wise to themselves must become fools in their own eyes if ever they will be truly wise and confess themselves as Paul himself did that they were foolish and deceived when they served their lusts and pleasures Tit. 3. 3. This Pride and Self-conceitedness is like the barm in the drink that seems to fill up the vessel but indeed works it all over This is the Knowledge that puffeth up 1 Cor. 13. like the pot that by boiling seemeth to be filled that was half empty before but it 's empty in the bottom and presently boils over and is emptier than before So is it with the self-conceited that have a superficial knowledge while they are empty at the bottom and by the heat of pride that little they have boileth over to their loss It is the humble that God reveals his secrets to and the hungry that he filleth with good things and the full that he sendeth empty away He will have no Disciples that come not to his School as little Children teachable and tractable not thinking themselves too old or too wise or too good to be taught If you would see the mysteries of the Gospel savingly you must even creep to Christ on your knees and cry Lord be merciful to me a sinner He will not lift up your minds and hearts to heaven till you think your selves unworthy to lift up your very eyes to heaven because you have sinned against heaven And if you were even lifted to heaven should you there but be lifted up with pride or self-conceitedness you should soon have a â—rick in the flesh to
you can have no cure Tell me if you can when ever the Will of God did wrong you when did you speed the worse for the following of his counsel Look back upon your lives and tell me whether all your smart and loss have come from your following Gods Will or your own and which you think you have more cause to repent of 6. There is none followeth self-will to the end but is everlastingly undone by it It leadeth directly to the displeasing of Gods Will and so to Hell But on the contrary there is none that sincerely and finally follow the Will of God that ever do miscarry He is the safest Conductor He never led a soul to hell All that follow him live with him For whither should he lead them but to himself And where God is there is life and glory To obey his Will is to pleas his Will And to please him is our very end It can not go ill with them that please the Lord and Judge of all the word the dispenser of all Rewards and Punishments 7. Your own wills are so mutable as well as misguided that they will bewilder you and toss you up and down in perpetual disquietness though I know you think that is the only way to your content and nothing will content you unless you have your will But you are lamentably deluded your wills are like the will of a man in a sever that would fain have cold water which pleaseth him in the drinking but afterwards may be his death You love that which hurteth you yea that which is no betâ—â—r than poyson to your Souls You would soon undo your selves if you had your own wills It is none of the least of Gods mercies to you to cross your wills and to deny you that which you have a mind to You will not let your Children eat or drink what they will but what you will that know better what 's good for them A patient can deny his own will for his health and submit himself to the will of his Physician And should not you much more submit to God yea you should desire him to deny your own wills when ever he seeth them contrary to his Will and to your own good Had you but the skill of judging aright of Gods dealings I am perswaded that upon the review of your lives you would find that God hath shewed you more mercy in the crossing of your wills then in accomplishing them Be not therefore too eager for the time to come to have what you Love till you are surer that you Love nothing but that which is good for you and which you should love The present contenting of diseased self-will is but the breeding after-disquietness But in the Will of God you may have sull and durable content For his Will is always for good and therefore hath nothing that should cause your discontent His will is still the same unchangeable and therefore will â—ot disquiet you by mutations He knows the end at the beginning and sets you upon nothing but what he is sure will comfort you at the last It belongeth to his will and not to yours to dispose of you and all your affairs And therefore there is all the reason in the world that Gods Will should be set up and in it you should rest your selves content and that self-will should be denied as the disturber of your quietness 8. Moreover Self-will is Satans will stirred up by him against the Lord. How else do you think the Devil rules the children of disobedience but by self-conceit and self-will If therefore you would deny the Devil deny self-will for in being ruled by it you are ruled by him and in pleasing it you please him God himself tells you this in plain expressions Eph. 2. 1 2 3. They that walk in trespasses and sins and so are dead in them according to the course of this world and in the lusts of the flesh fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind these the Holy Ghost there tells you do walk according to the Prince of the power of the air the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience 9. It is the very perfection and felicity of man to be conformed to the Will of God and to rest with full content therein And it is the corruption and misery of man to have a selfish misguided Will of his own and strive against his Makers Will And so far as you stick in your own wills and are set upon them and must have them fulfilled and cannot rest in the Will of God so far are you still unsanctified and unsaved and in the power of your great disease And so far as you are dead to self-will and look up to the Will o God both for direction and content and will that which he willeth even because he willeth it and would have you will it and can rest your souls in this as full satisfaction It is my Fathers Will and therefore best So far are you sanctified and restored to God 10. Lastly let me tell you that it 's best for you to deny self-will in time and give your wills to the Will of God For when you have done all that you can God will have his Will and you shall not have your own will long You may strive against the Will of God but you shall not frustrate it You may break his Laws but shall not scape his judgments You may rebel against his commanding will but you cannot resist his punishing will When you have done your worst it 's Gods will that must stand and such a will as is little to the pleasure of your wills But Self-will is never of long continuance its content is short Now you will have your will let God say what he will to you you Love to please your appetite in meats and drinks you love to be carnally merry and spend your time in vain sports and pleasure you love to be respected and humoured by all and to be honoured and counted some body in the world you love to be provided for for the time to come to be wealthy that you may take out of a full heap or at least not want for the contentment of your flesh and therefore you must have your wills have that you love if you can tell how to get it But how long will you have your wills How long will you have that you love though God forbid it When death comes will you have it then when you lie in pain expecting every hour to appear in another world will you then have your wills when you are in Hell will you then have your wills or that you love O Sirs Self-will is short-lived as to its delights and pleasure But the Will of God is everlasting And therefore if you take up with your own wills how short will be yâ—ur content but if you look for content in the Will of God you will have everlasting content
Your own wills may be crost by every trifle Any man that is greater than you can cross them yea those that are under you can cross them The poorest beggar can rob you or scorn you or raise a slander of you or twenty ways can cross your self-wills A hundred accidents may cross them Your very Beast can cross you and almost any thing in the world can cross you much more can God at any time cross you and cross you certainly he will so that in your own wills there is no rest nor happiness But if you could bring your wills to Gods and take up your full content in this It is the Will of God then what a constant invincible content might you have Then all the world could not disturb you and rob you of your content because they cannot conquer the Will of God Hiswill shall be done and so you should alway have content CHAP. XVI Selfish Passions to be denied 5. ANother part of selfishness to be mortified and denied is selfish Passions The soul is furnished with Passions by God partly for the exciting of the will and other faculties that they do not sluggishly neglect their duties and partly to help them in the execution when they are at work So that they are but the wheels or the sails of the reasonable soul to speed our motion for God and our Salvation and not to be employed for carnal self When Passions and affections are sanctified and used for God they are called such and such particular Graces and the fervour of them is an holy Zeal But when they are used for carnal self they are our vices and the heat of them is but fury or carnal zeal and the height of vice But how rare is it to meet with men that are meek and patient in their own cause and passionate in a holy zeal for God I know many are passionate in disputes and other exercises about Religion and think that it 's purely zeal for God when self is at the bottom of the business and ruleth as well as kindleth the fire when they searce discern it and little know what spirit they are of But pure zeal for God conjoyned with self-denial is exceeding rare How few can say that their Love to God is greater and hotter than their Love to themselves The Desires of men are strong after those things that supply their own necessities and please their own corrupted wills but how cold are they after the honour of God How averse are men from that which hurteth the flesh as to go into a Pest-house or to take deadly poyson or to suffer any pain but few are so averse to the breaking of the Law of God A hard word or a little injury done to themselves will put them into a passion so that their anger is working out in reproach if not in more revenge but God may be abused from day to day and how patiently can they bear it There 's few carnal minds but can more patiently hear a man swear or curse or scorn at Scripture and a holy life than hear him call them Rogue or Knave or Thief or Lyar or any such disgraceful name It seems an intolerable dishonour with selfish persons that are advanced by Pride to be great in their own eyes for a man to give them the lye or to reproach their Parentage or make them seem base but they can hear twenty oaths and reproaches of the truths or ways of God as quietly and patiently as if there were no harm in them Their own enemies whom God commandeth them to love they hate at the heart but the enemies of God and holiness whom David hated with a perfect hatred Psal 139. 21 22. do little or nothing at all offend them It is not thus with self-denying gracious souls When David heard Shimei curle him he commanded his souldiers to let him alone for God had bidden him that is by that afflicting providence on David he had occasioned it and by the withdrawng of his restraint he had let out his malice for a trial to David Thus David could endure a man to go along by him cursing him and reviling him as a Traitor and a man of blood and throwing stones at him and he rebuked Abishai that would have taken off his head 2 Sam. 16. 7 8 9 13. But when the same David speaks of the wicked the froward the slanderer the proud the lyar and the deceitful he resolveth that he will not know them they shall not dwell in his house nor tarry in his sight he hateth them they shall depart from him he will cut them off and early destroy him from the Land and from the city of the Lord Psal 101. So was it with Moses when God was offended by the Idolatry of the Israelites he was so zealous that he threw down the Tables of Stone in which God had written the Law and broke them but when Miriam and Aaron spake against himself he let God alone with the cause and only prayed for them for saith the Text He was very meek above all the men that were on the face of the earth Numb 12. 3. Phinehas his zeal for God did stay the plague and was imputed to him for righteousness when the selfish zeal of Simeon and Levi was called but a cursed anger and brought a curse on them instead of a blessing from their dying Father that they should be divided in Jacob and scattered in Israel and left them the name of Instruments of cruelty Gen. 49. 5 6 7. Take warning then from the word of God use your passions for God that gave them you but when it is meerly the cause of self be dead to passion as if there were no such thing within you If the wrong be done to you think then with your selves alas I am such a silly wretched worm that a wrong done to me is a small matter in comparison of the least that 's done to God it is not great enough for indignation or passion Remember that it's Gods work to right your wrongs and your work to lament and hinder the abuse of God And therefore if men curse you or revile you or slander you if Gods interest in your reputation command you to seek the clearing of it then do it but not for your self but for God but otherwise be as a dead man that hath no eyes to see an injury nor no ears to hear it nor no heart to feel it nor no understanding to perceive it nor no hands to be revenged for it This is to be mortified and dead to self When Passion begins to stir within you ask What 's the matter who is it for and who is it that is wronged If it be God ask counsel of God what he would have you to do and let your passion be well guided and bounded and then it will be acceptable holy zeal but if it be but self that 's wronged remember that you are not your own and therefore
to be harlots It would make the ears of a modest person to glow on his head to hear the ribbaldry that is ordinary in some prophane families especially in many Inns and Alehouses where the quality of the company the nature of the employment is such from whence no better can be expected Let all that would be accounted Christians deny and abhor this part of sensuality in themselves and theirs Again consider the command of God But fornication all uncleanness or Covetousness let it not once be named amongst you as becometh Saints neither filthiness nor foolish talking nor jesting which are not convenient but rather giving of thanks Eph. 5. 3 4. 4. 29 30. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth but that which is good to the use of edifying that it may minister grace unto the hearers und grieve not the holy spirit of God Mark here how such filthy speech is called Corrupt Communication or rotten like Carrion in a ditch which should cause all that pass by to stop their noses And yet this is our peoples sport what say these wretches may we not jest and be merry when we mean no harm without all this ado Have you no honester mirth than this nor no more cleanly jests than these will you feed upon that which is Carrion or corrupt and make it your Junkets to delight your palate will you make merry with that which God condemneth and threatneth to shut you out of his Kingdom for and makes the mark of the unsanctified and chargeth you not once to name it that is not without distaste and rebuke Have you nothing but filthiness and the service of the Devil and the wrath of God to play with and to make merry with Prov. 10. 23. It is a sport to a fool to do mischief I may well say of this as Solomon of another sin Prov. 26. 18 19. As a mad-man that casteth firebrands arrows and death so is the man that deceiveth his neighbour and saith Am not I in sport It 's mad sporting with sin especially to choose it purposely for a recreation and specially such an odious sin as this that infecteth others and banisheth all gracious edifying conference and increaseth the corruption of the mind and prepareth people to actual whoredom self-pollution and abominable uncleanness for thoughts and words are but preparatives to deeds CHAP. XXI Idle and worldly talk to be denied 4. ANother part of sensuality to be denied is Idle and worldly talk which most men make their daily recreation It is not to be made light of that Christ himself hath told you that for every idle word men shall give account in the day of Judgment Matth. 12. 36 37. such an account as that they shall be charged on you as sins and if they be not repented of and pardoned through the blood of Christ they will be your condemnation as well as greater sins By idle words is meant not only all wicked all lying words which are vain in a high degree and worse but also useless unprofitable speeches that tend not to any good and which you have no call to speak Tit. 3. 9. And that which the Apostle calls foolish talking Eph. 5. 4. When that Christian wisdom is left out that should guide and season our speech and direct it to some good end especially when by vain jesting men will make fools of themselves to please others or when they lay by Christian gravity and by jesting affect to become ridiculous Eph. 5. 4. much more when men jest with holy things and speak unreverently contemptuously or scornfully of the matters of God which is impiety in an high degree The same may be said of proud boasting words and of multitude of words even when the matter is good but the multitude of words unseasonable and unprofitable as also of rash unconsidered words that tend to stir up strife and passion as also censuring back-biting reproach flattery dissembling and many the like but the thing that I principally speak of now is the pleasing of a mans self by a course of idle unprofitable talk And alas how common is this sin Not only the fooliâ—â— multitude are guilty of it but persons of judgment and gravity and reputation How many may you come in company with before you shall have any edifying Communication that tends to minister grace to the hearers vanity is become the common breath of the greatest part What the better can any man be for their discourse unless by taking warning by them to avoid the vanity which we hear them guilty of Even antient persons with whom the words of wisdom should be found Job 12. 12. and who should be examples unto youth are yet given up to idle talk and an old story is more savoury with them than heavenly discourse even Parents and Masters that should be examples to their families will in their hearing multiply idle words as if they would teach them to be vain as they are when alas the souls of those about them have need of other manner of discourse and it 's another task that God hath set them Deut. 6. 6 7 8. 11. 18 19. Whence is it that Children learn a course of idle fooliâ—h talking more than of their own parents For one word of God and the Doctrine of the Gospel and the matters of salvation that their families hear from most of them they hear an hundred yea a thousand of the world and of unprofitable things Had God but the Tithe of their words we should account them very pious And they that cannot spare him the tithe of their words I doubt do not allow him the Tithe of their affections and would not allow him the tithe of their increase if they could tell how to keep it Not but that with some persons that are called to much worldly business more than ten parts of their daily speeches may â—â—wfully be about the creatures But then even those with godly men are ultimately for God and so are sanctified and not unprofitable and also they are glad to redeem what time they can for speeches of an higher and more excellent subject And the commonness of this sin of idle talk yea with many that we hope are godly doth make me think that it's thought to be a smaller matter than it is and I doubt this conceit is it that makes it to be so common And therefore I shall here give you some of the aggravations of this sin that you may hereafter judge of it as it is and not be encouraged in it by false apprehensions A custom of vain words is a sign of a vain and empty mind were the heart but full of better things the tongue would be employed in better speeches Either the head or heart or both is empty and vain in that measure as the tongue is vain Eccles 5. 3. A dream cometh through the multitude of business and a fools voice is known by multitude of words Eccles 10.
deluded souls that they do amiss but they say What harm is there in cards or dice or hunting or bowling or such like rerceations How shall we live without recreation Answ But is there no harm in needless flesh-pleasing and in the loss of precious time to men that are ready to step into eternity O that ever men should make such a question Sppose your recreations were the lawfullest in the world in their own nature Can there be a greater villany than to set your hearts on them and make a God of them and cast away pretious hours on them in using them needlesly Recreations are your physick or your sauce therefore must not become your food nor made a meal of They are only as whetting to the mower which must never be used but when there 's need To spend half the day in needless whetting deserves no wages O did you know but what your work and time and what 's before you you would be better husbands and then you might so contrive your business as to lose no time in recreation For either your calling puts you on the labour of the mind as Students or of the body as labouring men If study be your calling you need no exercise of recreation but for your bodies for variety of studies is the best or sufficient for the mind And two hours walking is bodily recreation enough in a day for almost any student that is in a capacity to labour And if you be labouring men or your calling lie in bodily motion then you need no recreation for your bodies besides your Callings but only for your mind And if you love God and his Word what better Recreation for your minds can you devise than thinking of the Love of God in Christ and meditating on the Law of God Psal 1. 2. and calling upon him and rejoycing in his praises and the Communion of his Saints Is not a day in his Courts better than a thousand any where else The Spirit of God by David said so Psal 84. 10. But alas it is this unmortified flesh and tyrannizing sensuality that blindeth you that you cannot see the truth or else all this would be as plain to you as the high way CHAP. XXIV Vain Company to he denied 7. ANother sensual vice to be denied is A love to vain ungodly Company This is a sin that I think none but utterly graceless men are much carried away with For the Godly are all taught of God to love one another 1 Thes 4. 9. and to delight in the Saints as the most excellent on Earth Psal 16. 2 3. and to take pleasure in their communion and to look on the ungodly with a differencing belief as fore-seeing their everlasting misery if they return not so that it is the ungodly that I have now to speak to Some fall in love with the company of good fellows as they call them and some love the company of harlots some of gamesters and most of merry pleasant companions and men that are of their own disposition and the love of such company ticeth them to the frequent committing of the sin They would not go to gaming but for company They would not go to the Alehouse but for company and when they are there perhaps they will swear and drink and mock at godliness for company But are you willing also to go to hell for company Is the company of those sinners better than the company of God and his favour were it not better to be that while with him in prayer or about his work If you love a tipling fellow better than God speak out and say so plainly and never dissemble any more nor say that you love God above all or that you are Christians Have you more delight in the Company of them that would entice to sin than in the Company of the godly that would draw you from it This is a most certain mark that yet you are the children of the Devil and in a state of damnation It is not possible for a sanctified child of God to do so See the description of the man that shall be saved in Psal 15. vers 4. In his eyes a vile person is contemned but he honoureth them that fear the Lord Birds of a feather will flock together The company which you love shews what courses you love and what you are You delight in the company of those that Christ will judge as his enemies and how then will he judge of you You delight most in the company of those notorious fools that know not the plainest and needfullest things in all the world that know not that God is better than the world and holiness than sin and know not the way of their own salvation If you are content to have the company of the ungodly for ever you may take it here But if you would not dwell in hell with them do not go on in sin with them O when you shall see those very men arrested by death and haled at the bar of God and cast into damnation then you will have no mind of their company Then O that you could but say that you were none of them Like a man that is enticed by thieves to joyn with them but when the hue and cry overtakes them and they are apprehended how glad would he be then to be from among them I tell you sinners if grace recover you you shall wish in the sorrow of your hearts that you had never seen the faces of those men that enticed you to evil but if grace do not recover you you shall wish ten thousand times in Hell that you had never seen their faces but then your wishes will be in vain In the name of God bethink your selves whether your companions can bear you out at last and save you from the wrath of God and warrant your Salvation Nay whether they can save themselves Alas you know they cannot God saith If you live after the flesh ye shall die Rom. 8. 13. and if these men say as the Devil to Eve you shall not die are they able think you to make it good What can they overcome the God of heaven O Sirs away as you love your souls from such mad and miserable company as this CHAP. XXV Pleasing Accommodations Buildings Gardens Horses c. 8. ANother sensual delight to be denied is Pleasing accommodations in Buildings Rooms Walks Gardens Grounds Cattle and such like It 's lawful to be thus accommodated and lawful to desire and use such accommodations with such cautions as I gave before about recreations 1. If you do not with Ahab desire to be accommodated by that which is another mans coveting your neighbours possessions or unlawfully procuring it 2. If you be not at too much cost upon such things expending that upon them that should be laid out on greater and better things 3. But especially if you desire such accommodations for right ends sincerely referring all to Gods honour and desiring them
mean that we are employed in yet all is but the serving of God as long as we do them all for him this is the main difference between an unsanctified scholar and a servant of God in all their studies One of them is but recreating his curious fancy or inquisitive mind and seeking matter of honour and applause or some way or other studying for himself but the other is searching after the nature and will of his Creator and learning how to do his work in that manner as may please and honour him most So that when they are reading the same books and studying the same subjects they are upon quite different works as having contrary ends in all their studies the one is content with bare speculation and aery knowledge which puffeth up and the other studieth and knoweth practically to feed the holy fire of love in his heart and to guide and quicken and strengthen him for obedience 3. Moreover there is a difference commonly in the subject which they most desire to know for though there is no truth but a wicked man may know which a true Christian knoweth and also but few truths but what he may for selfish ends be desirous to know yet ordinarily a carnal heart is much more forward to study common Sciences than Divinity and in Divinity to study least the practical part and to be most in points that exercise the brain and lie further from the heart but the sanctified man delighteth most in knowing the mysterie of Redemption the riches of grace the glory which he hopeth for the nature and will of God the way of duty the temptations that are before him and his danger by them and the way to escape with such other useful truths which he must live upon One feeds but upon the air and chaff of words and notions or common truths and the other is taken up with the most spiritual heavenly and necessary matters yea it is not so much the truth as the matter or thing revealed by it which the Christian looks after it is not only to understand the meaning of the Scripture but to find and love and enjoy that God that Christ that Spirit that Life which is revealed in those words of Scripture but the hypocrite sticks most in a Grammatical superficial kind of knowledge 5. Carnal knowledge would break Gods bounds and would needs know that which else they might know and cannot see the strength of a reason which the wise can see yet will they sooner quarrel with the light than with their eyes and suspect the reasons and words of God rather than their purblind minds But spiritual knowledge is modest and humble and obedient presumeth not to climb any higher than the ladder lest he lose more by such a step too high than he got by all his labor hitherto find himself all in pieces at the bottom while he would needs climb above the top He finds work enough in what God hath commanded him to study in his word and therefore hath no leisure to look after things that God hath hid from him It is for the use of knowledge that he would know and therefore he hath no great mind of that which is useless and he knows that God is the best Judge of that and therefore he takes that to be best for him which is prescribed him 6. Carnal Students are apt to learn in the wayes which their interests and fancies lead them to but holy Students learn of God in his prescribed way that is 1. In his Church which is his School 2. And in and by his holy Scripture which is the book he sets us to learn And 3. By his Ministers whom he commandeth to teach us 4. And in obedience to his spirit that must make all effectual And 5. In fervent prayer to God for that spirit and a blessing This is Gods way in which he will bring men to saving knowledge 7. Also Carnal Students observe not commonly Gods order in their learning but they begin at that which suteth best with their carnal interest or disposition as being least against it and they catch here and there a little and make what their list of it and force it to their carnal sense and to speak for that which their minds are most affected to But the sanctified student begins at the bottom and first seeks to know the Essentials of Religion Points that life lieth most upon and so he proceeds in order and takes the lesson which God and his Teachers set him and takes up truths as they lie in order of necessity and use 8. And in the manner also the difference is great The Carnal student searcheth presumptuously self-conceitedly and unreverently and speaks of holy things accordingly and censureth them when he should censure himself and actions by them and bendeth the words of God to his own carnal interest and will But the spiritual student searcheth meekly with fear and reverence with self-suspicion and consciousness of his exceeding darkness and with a willingness and resolution to submit to the light for conviction and for the guidance of his conversation And now you see what carnal studies are remember that to avoid them is part of your self-denial Restrain your ranging phantasies understanding as you would do a ranging appetite If you have a mind that would fain reach higher than God hath given you light in Scripture or a mind that must needs be satisfied of the reasons of all Gods ways and murmureth if any of its doubts be unresolved remember that this is self that must be denied and if any be wise in his own eyes he must become a fool that he may be wise 1 Cor. 3. 18. and as little children must you come to the School of Christ if you will indeed be his Disciples And remember that this Intellectual voluptuousness licentiousness and presumption of Carnal minds is a higher and in some respects greater and more dangerous vice than brutish sensuality And you may cheat and undo your souls in a civil course of carnal selfish studies as well as in a course of more gross and sensual vâ—luptuonsness CHAP. XXXIII Factious Desire of the success of our own Opinions and Parties as such c. 16. ANother selfish Interest to be denied is The factious desire of the success of any odd opinions which we have espoused and of the increase and prosperity of any dividing party in the Church which we have addicted our selves unto It exceedingly delighteth a Carnal mind that his Judgement should be admired and he should be taken as the light of the Country round about him and therefore when he hath hatcht any opinions of his own or espoused any whereby his singularity may be manifested or by which his selfish interest may be promoted he is as careful to promote these opinions and the party that holdeth with him as a Covetous man is to promote his gain There is indeed as much of self in many mens
holiness more abound If so be not too hasty to censure their Zeal But usually all these dividing ways are the diseases of the Church which cause its languishing decay and dissolution 7. Lastly This selfish zeal is commonly censorious and uncharitable and diminisheth Christian Love and sets those a reproaching and despising each other that should have lived in the Union and Communion of Saints Where you find these properties of your zeal and desire for the promoting of your Opinions or parties in Religion you have great reason to make it presently your business to find out that insinuating self which maketh your Religion Carnal and to deny and mortifie it CHAP. XXXIV Carnal Liberty to be denied What. 17. ANother selfish interest to be denied is Carnal Liberty A thing that selfishness hath strangely brought of late into so much credit that abundance among us think they are doing some special service to God their Country the Church and their own souls when they are but deeply engaged for the Devil by a self-seeking spirit in a Carnal Course For the discovery of this dangerous common disease I must first tell you that there is a threefold Liberty which must carefully be differenced 1. There is an Holy Blessed Liberty which no man must deny 2. There is a wicked Liberty which no man should desire 3. And between these two there is a Common Natural and Civil Liberty which is good in its place as other worldly matters are but must be denied when it stands in competition with higher and better things and as all other worldly matters is Holy when it is Holily esteemed and used that is for God but sinful when it is sinfully esteemed and used and that is for Carnal self I. The first of these is not to be denied but all other Liberty to be denied for it This Holy Liberty consisteth in these following Particulars 1. To be freed from the Power of sin which is the disability the deformity the death of the soul 2. From the Guilt of sin and the wrath of God and the Curse of the Law 3. To be restored to God by Christ in Union Reconciliation and Sanctification and our enthralled spirits set free to know and love and serve him and delight in him Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is Libert y 2 Cor. 3. 17. God is the souls freedom who is its Lord and life and end and all 4. To be delivered from Satan as a Deceiver and enemy and executioner of the wrath of God 5. To be freed from that Law or Covenant of Works which requireth that which to us is become impossible 6. To be freed from the burdensome task of useless Ceremonies imposed on the Church in the times of infancy and darkness 7. To be freed from the accusations of a guilty conscience those self-tormentings which in the wicked are the fore-tastes of hell 8. To be freed from such temporal judgments here as might hinder our salvation or our service of God 9. To be free from the condemning sentence at the last day and the everlasting Torments which the wicked must endure 10. And to be delivered into the blessed sight of God and the perfect fruition and pleasing of him in Perfect Love and Joy and Praise to all eternity This is the Liberty which you must not deny which I therefore name that by the way you may see that it is not for nothing that the other sorts of Liberty are to be denied II. The second sort of Liberty is that which is wicked directly evil which all men should deny And this is a freedom from Righteousness as the Apostle calls it Rom. 6. 20. To be free from a voluntary subjection to God and free from his severe and holy Laws and free from the thoughts of holiness and of the life to come and free from those sighs and groans for sin and that godly sorrow which the sanctified undergo and to be free from all those spiritual motions and changing works upon their hearts which the Spirit doth work on all the Saints to be free from holy speeches and holy prayer and other duties and from that strict and holy manner of living which God commandeth to be at liberty to sin against God and to please the flesh and follow their own imaginations and wills let God say what he will to the contrary to be free to eat and drink what we love and have a mind of and to be merry and wanton and lustful and worldly and take our course without being curbed by so precise a Law as God hath given us to be free from an heavenly conversation and those preparations for death and that Communion with God which the Saints partake of This is the wicked Liberty of the world which the worst of carnal men desire And the next beyond this is a Liberty to lie in the fire of hell and a freedom from salvation and from the everlasting Joy and Praises of the Saints If freedom from Grace and Holiness deserve the name of Freedom then you may next call Damnation a Freedom And it is part also of this sinful miserable Liberty to be free from the Government and Officers and good Laws which rule the Church and Commonwealth And such wretches there are in the world that seriously judge it a desirable Liberty to be free from these They think that their Country is Free when every man may do what he list and they have no King or other Governors or none that will look after them and punish their miscarriages And they think the Church is free when they have no Pastors or when Pastors have least power over them and they may do what they list And indeed if they were rid of Magistrates and Ministers they were free As a School is free that hath shut out the Master or have rejected him and teach and rule one another And as a Ship is free when the Master and Pilot are thrown over-board and as an Army is free when they have cast off or lost their commanders or to speak more fitly as an Hospital is free when they are delivered from their Physician and as the madmen in Bedlam are free when they have killed or escaped from their Keepers As Infidels keep their Freedom by refusing Christ in himself so carnal Dividers and Hereticks keep their Freedom by refusing his Officers and Christ in those Officers For he that heareth them heareth him and he that despiseth them despiseth him and he that despiseth despiseth not man but God Luke 10. 16. 1 Thes 4. 8. And another part of this ungodly Liberty is to be free from the exercise at least of this power of Magistrates and Ministers so far as not to be restrained from sin though they be not free from the state of subjects To swear and be drunk and live as most Ale-sellers on the damning sins of others and make a trade of selling men their damnation and to have no Magistrate punish them no
reason and drawn you to excess in meats and drinks for matter or manner for quality or quantity or both Many a groan those sins have cost you and many a smarting day they have caused you and a sad uncomfortable life you have had by reason of them in comparison of what you might have had And this flesh hath been the Mother or the Nurse of all You were engaged by your Baptismal Covenant to fight against it when you entred into the Church and if you are Christians this combate hath been your daily work and much of the business of your lives And yet are you loth to have the victory see your enemy under feet Do you fight against it as for the life of your souls yet are you afraid lest death should hurt it or break it down Have you fought your selves friends with it that you are so tender of it when you are the greatest friends to it it will be the most dangerous enemy to you And do not think that it is only sin and not the body that is the flesh that is called your enemy in Scripture For though it be not the body as such or as obedient to the soul yet is it the Body as inclining to creatures from which the sinful soul cannot restrain it it is the body as having an inordinate sensitive appetite and imagination and so distempered as that it rebels against the Spirit and casteth off the rule of Reason and would not be curbed of its desires but have the rule of all it self Was it not the very flesh it self that Paul saith he fought against and kept under and brought into subjection lest he should be a cast a-way 1 Cor. 9. 26 27. Why should sin be called Flesh and Body but that it is the Body of Flesh that is the principal-seat of those sins that are so called If ye live after the flesh ye shall die but if ye through the Spirit do mortifie the deeds of the Body ye shall live Rom. 8. 13. If ye sow to the flesh of the flesh ye shall reap corruption Gal. 6. 8. That which is first in Being is first in sin But it is the Flesh or Embryo endued with sense that is first in being Be not therefore too tender of that which corruption hath made your prison and your enemy Many a time you have been put to resist it and watch and strive against it and when you have been at the best it hath been hindring you to be better and when the spirit was willing the flesh was weak And quickly hath it caused your cooling declension Many a blessed hours communion between God your souls that flesh hath deprived you of And therfore though still you must love it yet you should the less grieve or be troubled at its sufferings seeing they are but the fruits of its sin and a holy contentedness shold possess your minds that God should thus castigatorily revenge his own quarrel yours upon it 10. But yet consider that were you never so tender of the body it self yet faith and reason should perswade you to be content For God is but preparing even for its felicity His undoing it but to make it up again As in the new birth he broke your hearts and false hopes that he might heal your hearts and give you sounder hopes instead of them so at death he breaketh your flesh and worldly hopes not to undo you and leave it in corruption but to raise it again another manner of body than now it is and give it a part in the blessedness which you hoped for If in good sadness you believe the Resurrection what cause is there for so much fear of death You can be content that your Roses die and your sweetest Flowers fall and perish and the green and beauteous complexion of the earth be turned into a bleak and withered hue because you expect a kind of Resurrection in the Spring You can boldly lie down at night to sleep though sleep be a kind of death to the body and more to the soul and all because you shall rise again in the morning And if every nights sleep or one at least were a gentle death if you were sure to rise again the next morning you would make no great matter of it Were it as common to men to die every night and rise again in the morning as it is to sleep every night and rise in the morning death would not seem such a dreadful thing Those poor men that have the falling-sickness do once in a day or in a few days lie as dead men and have as much pain as many that die And yet because they use to be up and well again in a little time they can go merrily about their business the rest of the day and little fear their approaching fall How much more should the belief of a Resurrection unto life confirm us against the fears of death And why should we not as quietly commit our bodies to the dust when we have the promise of the God of heaven that the Earth shall deliver up her dead and that this body that is sown in corruption shall be raisedin incorruption It is sown in dishonour it is raised in glory it is sown in weakness it is raised in power it is sown a natural body it is raised a spiritual body So great and wonderful the change will be as now is unconceivable we have now a drossie lâ—mp of flesh an aggravation of the Elements to a seed of life which out of them forms it self a body by the Divine influx Like the Silk-worm which in the Winter is but a seed which in the Summer doth move attract that matter from which it gets a larger body by a kind of Resurrection But it is another manner of body I will not say of flesh which at the Resurrection we shall have Not flesh and blood nor a natural body but of a nature so spiritual sublime and pure that it shall be indeed a spiritual body And think not that this is a contradiction and that spirituality and corporeity are inconsistent For There is a Natural Body and there is a Spiritual body The root of the fleshly Natural body was the first man Adam who was made a living soul to be the Root of living souls The root of the spiritual Body is Christ who being a quickning Spirit doth quicken all his members by his Spirit which Spirit of Grace is the seed of Glory as from an holy and gracious Saviour we receive an holy and gracious nature so from a Glorified Saviour we shall receive a glorious nature we are now changed from glory to Glory in the beginning as by the spirit of the Lord But it is another kind of Glory that this doth tend to Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual but the natural and afterwards the spiritual The first man was of the Earth Earthy The second man is the Lord from heaven
And from each of them we partake of an answerable Nature As is the Earthy such are they that are earthy even all of us in our fleshly state having earthy bodies from an earthy Adam and natural bodies from the natural Adam And as is the heavenly such are they that are heavenly for Christ makes men like himself even first gracious and then glorious as Adam begets us like himself that is natural and sinful And therefore all those that have followed Christ in the Regeneration shall follow him into Glory and having conquered by him shall reign by him and with him and having received the holy nature here which is the seed of glory they shall receive the glorious nature there which is the perfection of that Grace And so as Christ hath an heavenly spiritual body and â—â—â— an earthy natural body so shall his Members have that they may be like him And as we have here born the image of the earthy in having first a natural fleshly body we shall also bear the Image of the Heavenly Adam in having a spiritual body that is not fleâ—â— Now lest any doubt of it saith the Spirit of God this I say that Flesh and Blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God neither doth Corruption inherit incorruption 1 Cor. 15. 42. to 51. Object If there were but as much likelihood of a Resurrection as there is of the Reviving of the plants in the Spring I could believe it for there is a life remaining in the Root or Seed but the body of man hath neither Root nor seed of life and therefore it 's contrary to nature that it should revive Answ 1. If it be above nature that is all it is not contrary to it Or not so contrary as to be above the power of the Lord of nature Will you allow no greater works for God than such as you can see a reason of and can assign a natural cause of what did Nature in the creation of nature It was not certainly any cause of it self If Christ rose without a natural cause even so shall we 2. But why may I not say that the dead body of man hath a living Root as truly as the plants in winter The soul is the Root of the body and the soul is still alive And Christ is the Root of the soul and he is still alive For though we are dead yet our Life is hid with Christ in God and when Christ who is our life shall appear at the Spring of Resurrection then we shall also appear with him in Glory Col. 3. 3 4. And though there be no Physical contact between this living soul and the body yet there is a Relative Union and a deep rooted Love of the soul to its body and inclination to it so that it is mindful of it and waiteth with longing for that hour when the command of God shall send it to revive that body It is not incredible that a silly snail should by its natural life and power make for it self a beautiful habitation Or that the life of a Rose-tree that was buried in the root should fabricate a sweet and beauteous Rose by which it may make an ostentation of its invisible self to the world In how small a room doth the life of a silk-worm lie of which I spoke before in the winter That little grain or seed is such as yields no sign of life to the beholder yet doth it form it self a larger body and that body spin its silken web out of its own substance and in that house it self in a husk and take to it self another shape and thence become a winged Fly and so generate more But nearer us in the generation of man the vital principle in the seed doth quickly with concurrent causes form it self a body The warmth of the body of the Hen or other Bird can turn the egge into a Chicken Why then may not the living sâ—ul that is the Root and life of the body in the dust be the instrument of God to reform its own body as certainly it will be the principle that shall reinform it But you say the body being dead hath no natural root nor way of recess to life again because the privation is total To which I answer First the Relative union between the soul and it and the souls disposition to the Return into its body is as potent a cause of its reviving as the natural union of the Root and branches if withal you consider that Christ is the Root of the soul Rational agents if perfect will work as certainly as Natural For natural causes do nothing but by a Power communicated to them from an Intellectual cause even God himself Why should Nature do any of these things but because God that makes and ruleth all will have it to be so Now Jesus Christ is the Political Head of the Church The body in the grave hath its own Relation to him Christ is still living and resolved and engaged by promise and enclined by Love to revive that body And as Christ is the life of the soul so the soul is the life of the body and this soul as I said is waiting to be sent again into it And when the hour comes what can hinder The Love of the soul to its body and its desire to be reunited is a kind of natural cause of the Resurrection A candle not lighted is as far from light and as much without it as a dead body is without life And yet one touch of a lighted candle will light that which never was lighted before And so may one touch of the living soul that 's now with Christ put life into the body that lieth in the dust And as the lighted candle makes the other like it and communicateth of its own nature to it so doth the glorified soul communicate a new kind of excellency to the body which it never had before even to be a spiritual glorious incorruptible and immortal body In the first creating of man the new formed body as to the matter of it was no better than the body of a Beast or any common piece of earth But the soul made the difference when a Rational Soul was breathed into that Body it advanced the very body to a dignity beyond the bodies of brutes even such as the natural body of man had before sin When Christ was about to repair faln man it was the spirit of Christ informing the soul that caused the renewed soul to communicate again a dignity to the bodies of sanctified men above other bodies And so when the body was dead because of sin having the root of sin and death within it and being mortal therefore yet the spirit was life because of Righteousness being the Root of holy and Righteous dispositions and the new life in man himself Rom. 8. 10. For Christ the principal root of life and the spirit and holiness are first in order of nature in the soul and but by
earth or from a carrion in a ditch so will our glorified immortal bodies differ from this mortal corruptible flesh If a skilful workman can turn a little earth and ashes into such curious transparent glasses as we daily see and if a little seed that bears no shew of such a thing can produce the more beautiful flowers of the earth and if a little acorn can bring forth the greatest Oak why should we once doubt whether the seed of everlasting life and glory which is now in the blessed souls with Christ can by him communicate a perfection to the flesh that is dissolved into its elements There 's no true beauty but that which is there received from the face of God And if a glympse made Moses face to shine what glory will Gods glory communicate to us when we have the fullest endless intuition of it There only is the strength and there 's the riches and there 's the honour and there 's the pleasure and here are but the shadows and dreams and names and images of these precious things And the perfection of the soul that 's now imperfect will be such as cannot now be known The very nature and manner of Intellection Memory Volition and Affections will be unconceivably altered and elevated even as the soul it self will be and much more because of the change on the corruptible body which in these acts it now makes use of But of these things I have spoke so much in the Saints Rest that I shall say no more of them now but this that in a Believer that expects this blessed change and knows that he shall never till then be perfect there is much unreasonableness in the inordinate unwillingness and fears of death 12. You know that fears and unwillingness can do no good but much increase your suffering and make your death a double death If it be bitter naturally make it not more bitter wilfully I speak this of a violent death for Christ as well as of a natural death For as the one cannot be avoided if we would so the other cannot be avoided when Christ calleth us to it without the loss of our Salvation and therefore it may be called Necessary as well as the other Necessary suffering and death is enough without thâ— addition of unnecessary fears 13. Nay were it but to put an end to the inordinate fears of death even death it self should be the less fearful to us These very fears are troublesome to many an upright soul and should we not desire to be past them As a woman with Child is in fear of the pain danger of her travel but joyful when it 's over so is the true believer himself too oft afraid of the departing hour but death puts an end to all those fears Is it the pain that you fear Why how soon will it be over Is it the strangeness of your souls to God and the place that you are passing to This also will be quickly over and one moment will give you such full acquaintance with the blessed God and the Celestial inhabitants and the world in which you are to live that you will find your self no stranger there but be more joyfully familiar and content than ever you were in the bosom of your dearest friend The Infant in the Womb is a stranger to this lighter open world and all the inhabitants of it and yet it is nor best stay there You can fail for commodity to a Country that you never saw and why cannot you pass with peace and joy to a God a Christ a Heaven that you never saw But yet you are not wholly a stranger there Is it not that God that you have loved and that hath first loved you Have you not been brought into the world by him and lived by him and been preserved and provided for by him and do you not know him Is it not your Father and he that hath given you his Son and his Spirit have you not found an inclination towards him desires after him and some taste of his love and communion with him and yet are you wholly unacquainted with him Know ye not him whom you have loved above all in whom you have trusted and whom you have daily served in the world Who have you lived to but him for whom else have you laid out your time and labour and yet do you not know him And know you not that Christ that hath purposely come down into flesh that you might know him and that hath shewed himself to you in a holy life and bitter death and in abundant precious Gospel mercies and in Sacramental representations that so he might entertain a familiarity with you and infinite distance might not leave you too strange to God Know you not that Spirit that hath made so many a motion to your soul that hath sanctified you and formed the image of God upon you and hath dwelt in you so long and made your hearts his very work-house where he hath been daily doing somewhat for God It is not possible that you should be utterly strange to him that you Live to and Live from and Live in and not know him by whom you know your selves and all things nor see that Light by which you see whatever you see O but you say you never saw him and have no distinct apprehension of his essence Answ What! Would you make a Creature of him that can be limited comprehended or seen with fleshly mortal eyes Take heed of such imaginations It is the understanding that must see him You know that he is most Wise and Good and Great and that he is the Creator and Sustainer and Ruler of the world and that he is your Reconciled Father in Christ and is this no knowledg of him And then the Heaven that you are to go to is it that you are an Heir of where you have laid up your treasure and where your hearts and conversation hath so long been and yet do you not know it You have had many a thought of it and bestowed many a days labour for it and yet do you not know it O but you never saw it for all this Answ It is a spiritual blessedness that flesh and blood can neither enjoy nor see But by the eye of the mind you have often seen at least some glimpse of it You know that it is the present intuition and full fruition of God himself and your glorified Redeemer with his blessed Angels and Saints in perfect Love and Joy and Praise And if you know this you are not altogether strangers to heaven And for the Saints and heavenly Inhabitants you are not wholly strangers to them Some of them you have known in the flesh and others of them you have known in the spirit You are fellow-Citizens with the Saints and of the houshold of God and therefore cannot be utterly unacquainted with them But me thinks the stranger you are to God and to Heaven and to the Saints
the burdens that are here upon you which should make you long to be with God One would think the feeling of them should force you to consideration and weariness of them and make the thoughts of rest to be sweet to you Have you yet not sin enough and sorrow and fear and trouble enough Or must God lay a greater load on you to make you desire to be disburdened Every hour you spend and every creature you have to do with afford you some occasion of renewing your desires to depart from these and be with Christ Direct 7. Observe and magnifie that of God which is here revealed to you in his word and works Study him and admire him in Scripture study and admire him in the frame of nature And when you look towards Sun or Moon or Sea or Land and perceive how little it is that you know and how desirable it is to know them perfectly think then of that estate where you shall know them all in God himself who is more than all Study and admire him in the course of Providences study and admire him in the person of Christ in the frame of his holy life in the work of Redemption in the holy frame of his Laws and Covenants study and admire him in his Saints and the frame of his holy Image on their souls This life of studying and admiring God and dwelling upon him with all our souls will exceedingly dispose us to be willing to come to him and to submit to death Direct 8. Live also in the daily exercise of holy Joy and Praise to God which is the heavenly Employment For if you use your selves to this heavenly life it will much incline you to desire to be there Exercise fear and godly sorrow and care in their places but especially after Faith and Love be sure to live in holy Joy and Praise Be much in the consideration of all that Riches of grace in Christ communicated and to be communicated to you And be much in Thanks to God for his mercies and chearing and comforting your soul in the Lord your God And thus the Joy of Grace will much dispose you to the Joys of glory the Peace which the Kingdom of God consisteth in will incline you to the peace of the everlasting Kingdom and the chearful Praising of God on Earth in Psalms or other ways of Praise will prepare and dispose you to the heavenly Praises And therefore Christians exceedingly wrong their souls and hinder themselves from a willingness to be with God in spending all their days in drooping or doubting or worldly dulness and laying by so much the Joy of the Saints and the Praises of God Direct 9. Dwell on the believing fore-thoughts of the everlasting glory which you must possess Think what it is that others are enjoying while you are here and what you must be and possess and do for ever Daily think of the Certainty Perfection and Perperuity of your Blessedness What a life it will be to see the blessed God in his Glory and taste of the fulness of his love and to see the glorified Son of God and with a perfected soul and body to be perfectly taken up in the Love and Joy and Praises of the Lord among all his holy Saints and Angels in the heavenly Jerusalem You must by the exercise of Faith and Love in holy Meditation and Prayer even dwell in the Spirit and converse in Heaven while your bodies are on earth if you would entertain the news of death as beseems a Christian But of this at large elsewhere Direct 10. Lastly if you would be willing to submit to death resign up your own understandings and wills to the wisdom and the will of God and Know not good and evil for your carnal selves but wholly trust your lives and souls to the Wisdom and Love of your dearest Lord. Must you be carking and caring for your selves when you have an Infinite God engaged to care for you O saith self I am not able to bear the terrors and pangs of death O saith Faith My Lord is easily able to support me and it is his undertaken work to do it My work is but to Please him and it 's his work to take care of me in life and death and therefore though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death yet will I fear no evil O saith Self I am utterly a stranger to another world I know not what I shall see nor what I shall be nor whither I shall go the next minute after death None come from the dead to satisfie us of these things O but saith Faith My blessed Father and Redeemer is not a stranger to the place that I must go to He knows it though I do not He knows what I shall be and do and whither I shall go and all is in his power And seeing it belongs not to me but to him to dispose of me and give me the promised reward it is meet that I rest in his understanding And it is better for me that his Infinite Wisdom dispose of my departing soul than my shallow insufficient knowledge I may much more acquiesce in his knowledge than my own O but saith self I fear it may prove a change of darkness and confusion to my soul what will become of me I cannot tell O but saith Faith I am sure I am in the hands of Love and such Love as is Omnipotent and engaged for my good and how can it then go ill with me If I had my own will I should not fear And how much less should I fear when I am at the will of God even of most Wise Almighty Love There is no true Centre for the soul to Rest in but the Will of God It is our business to Obey and Please his Will as dutiful Children and to commit our selves contentedly to his Will for the absolute disposal of us It is not possible that the Will of an Heavenly Father should be against his Children whose desire and sincere endeavour hath been to Obey and Please his Will And therefore learn this as your great and necessary Lesson with Joyful Confidence to Commit your selves and your departing souls to your Fathers Will as knowing that your Death is but the execution of that Will which is engaged to cause all things to work together for your good Rom. 8. 28. And say with Paul I suffer but am not ashamed for I know whom I have believed and I am perswaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day 2 Tim. 1. 12. 1 Tim. 4. 10. Therefore we labour and suffer because we trust in the living God who is the Saviour of all men especially of those that believe say therefore as Job Though he kill me yet will I trust in him Or rather as Christ Father into thy hands I commend my Spirit Luke 23. 46. If the hands and Will of the Father was the Rock and
you by God that you may be Accepted by him and offer your selves and all your labors purely to him and to his honour and his will God will take these for honourable services and you are as truly at his work even in your shops and fields as Princes are in Ruling or Pastors in teaching or guiding the flock you that are poor and cannot set so much time apart for reading and other holy duties as some other do see that you neglect no holy opportunity that you can take and then consider that if God set you to do him service even by washing dishes or sweeping channels or the meanest drudgery he will accept it and the more by how much the more humble submission and self-denial is found in it Take him as the only Lord and Master of your souls and lives and all that you have and when you are called to your daily labour look but to your hearts that God be your End and that you can truly say I do not this principally to provide for my self but as an obedient child in my Fathers service because he bids me do it and it is pleasing to him through Christ I do it not principally from self-love but from the Love of God that commandeth me my work and as a traveller that laboureth in his way for the love of his home so I am here at labour in this world in the place that God hath set me that I may in his appointed way attain the everlasting glory that he hath promised I say do but see to it that thus you dedicate your labours to God and you may take comfort in the daily labours of your lives even the meanest and most contemptible as well as Princes and Preachers may in their more honourable works Nay all your labours are honoured and sanctified by this For all is Holy that is heartily devoted to God upon his invitation And thus all things are pure to the pure For it is Gods interest in your work that is the holiness and excellency of them Were servants and labouring people more Holy and self-denying they might have more true comfort in their daily labour than the best of the unsanctified can have from their prayers or other worship of God Not that worship may be therefore neglected but that a Christian must do nothing at all but for God and then he may be sure of Gods Acceptance CHAP. LXX Deny Self or you will deny Christ 8. MOreover the selfish will never suffer as Christians but deny Christ in a day of trial when the self-denying will go through all and be saved Nothing doth so througly try whether self or God be best beloved as suffering for his cause In this it is that Christ useth to try mens self-denial and it is a principal use of persecution When you hear of coming before Rulers and Judges and being hated of all men for Christs name sake then self riseth up to plead for its interest and never maketh more ado than when it seeth the flames The flesh cannot Reason but it can strive against Reason and draw it to its side No Reason seemeth sufficient to it to perswade it to choose a suffering state If you perswade a Carnal man to let go his estate to be poor and despised in the world and to give up life it self if it be called for and all this for the hope of an invisible felicity you lose your labour till God set in and all such reasoning seems to him most unreasonable And what a dreadful case such souls are in my Text and many another passage in Scripture may convince you If you cannot drink of his cup and be baptized with his baptism you cannot be advanced with him to glory Through many tribulations we must enter into the Kingdom of God The pleasing of the flesh is the high way to misery by displeasing God and the voluntary submission to the suffering of the flesh for the cause of Christ is the high way to felicity 2 Tim. 2. 11 12. It is a faithful saying for if we be dead with him we shall also live with him if we suffer we shall also reign with him if we deny him he also will deny us Rom. 8. 17. Yea and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution 2 Tim. 3. 12. The day of trial is a kind of Judgement day to the selfish unsanctified man For it discovereth his hypocrisie and sheweth him to be but dross and separateth him from the suffering servants of Christ But self-denial maketh suffering light and will make you wish that you had any thing worth the resigning unto Christ and any thing by the denial whereof you might serve him For him you would suffer the loss of all things and account them dross and dung that you may win him Phil. 3. 8. He will count us worthy of the Kingdom for which we suffer 2 Thes 1. 5. As the Captain of our salvation was made perfect by suffering Heb. 2. 10. so also must his members by filling up the measure and being made partakers of his sufferings and knowing the fellowship of them 2 Cor. 1. 5 6 7. Phil. 3. 10. And the God of all grace who hath called us into his eternal glory by Christ Jesus after we have suffered a while will make us perfect stable strengthen and settle us 1 Pet. 5. 10. If therefore you would not prove Apostates and deny Christ in a day of trial and be denied by him before his Father aud the holy Angels see that you now learn this needful Lesson of self-denial CHAP. LXXI The selfish deal worse with God than with Satan 9. COnsider also that selfish Carnal men deal worse with God than they do with the Devil and sin it self God offereth them Christ and pardon and eternal life if they will but deny themselves in a thing of nought and they will not be ruled or perswaded by him The Devil offereth them but the delights of the flesh and the pleasures of sin for a season and they will deny ten thousand sold more for this They will deny God their Maker and Redeemer their Lord and Judge their Preserver and their hope though he have the only Title to them and their lives and souls be in his hand They will for the sake of a filthy lust or of a short and miserable life deny him that never did them wrong nay that hath always shewed them kindness even all the kindness that ever they received and that when they know that their everlasting state must stand or fall according to his judgement They will deny the Lord Jesus the Redeemer of their souls They will deny and resist the holy spirit of God They will deny his Laws his Gospel-promises and all his Mercies They will deny his Ministers and all their perswasions and daily labours They will deny their dearest Christian friends and deny their own Consciences and Convictions and deny themselves the Peace and Joy which they might
his soul And now Sirs I must let go this subject as to you that have heard it preacht for we must not be always on one thing but I am exceedingly afraid lest I have lost my labour with most of you and shall leave you as selfish as I found you because sad experience tells me that it is so natural and obstinate an enemy that I have discovered and that you have now to set your selves against I have done my work but self hath not done but is still at work in you I cannot now go home with every one of you but self will go home with you I cannot be at hand with every one of you when the next temptation comes but self will be at hand to draw you to entertain it When you are next tempted to error to pride to lust to contention with your brethren by words or real injuries what will you do then and how will you stand against this enemy If God be not your Interest and the dearest to your souls and you see not with his light and will not by his Will and self-denial be not become as it were your nature you will never stand after all this that I have said but self will be your undoing for ever If you have not somewhat within you as selfishness is within you to be always at hand as it is and ready and constant and powerful to overcome it it will be your ruine after all the warnings that have been given you And this preserving Principle must be the Spirit of God by causing you to Deny your selves Believe in Christ and Love God above all I say again that you may think on it and live upon it The sum of all your Religion or saving grace is in these three Faith Self-denial and the Love of God Departing from Carnal-self Returning home to God by Love and this by faith in the Redeemer is the true Christianity and the Life that leadeth to everlasting life FINIS A DIALOGUE OF Self-denial Flesh Spirit Flesh WHat become Nothing ne're perswade me to it God made me Something and I 'le not undo it Spirit Thy Something is not thine but his that gave it Resign it to him if thou mean to save it Flesh God gave me Life and shall I choose to die Before my time or pine in miserie Spirit God is thy Life If then thou fearest death Let him be all thy soul thy pulse and breath Flesh What! must I hate my self when as my brother Must love me d I may not hate another Spirit Loath what is loathsom Love God in the rest He truly love's himself that love 's God best Flesh Doth God our ease and pleasure to us grudge Or doth Religion make a man a drudge Spirit That is thy Poyson which thou callest Pleasure And that thy drudgery which thou count'st thy treasure lFesh Who can eudure to be thus mewed up And under Laws for every bit and cup Spirit Gods Cage is better than the Wilderness When Winter comes Liberty brings distress Flesh Pleasure 's mans Happiness The Will 's not free To choose our misery This cannot be Spirit God is mans End with him are highest joyes Sensual pleasures are but dreams and toyes Should sin seem sweet Is Satan turn'd thy friend Will not thy sweet prove bitter in the end Hast thou found sweeter pleasures than Gods Love Is a fools laughter like the joyes above Beauty surpasseth all deceitful paints What 's empty mirth to the delights of Saints God would not have thee have less joy but more And therefore shew's thee the eternal store Flesh Who can love baseness poverty and want And under pining sickness be content Spirit He that hath laid his treasure up above And plac'd his portion only in Gods love That waits for Glory when his life is done This man will be content with God alone Flesh What good will sorrow do us Is not mirth Fitter to warm a cold heart here on earth Troubles will come whether we will or no I 'le never banish pleasure and choose wo. Spirit Then choose not sin touch not forbidden things Taste not the sweet that endless sorrow brings If thou love pleasure take in God thy fill Look not for lasting joyes in doing ill Flesh Affliction 's bitter life will soon be done Pleasure shall be my part ere all be gone Spirit Prosperity is barren all men say The soyl is best where there 's the deepest way Life is for work and not to spend in play Now sow thy seed labour while it is day The Huntsman seeks his game in barren plains Dirty land answers best the Plowmans pains Passengers care not so the way be fair Husbandmen would have the best ground and air First think what 's safe and fruitful There 's no pleasure Like the beholding of thy chiefest treasure Flesh Nature made me a man and gave me sonse Changing of Nature is a vain pretense It taught me to love women honour ease And every thing that doth my senses please Spirit Nature hath made thee Rational and Reason Must rule the sense in ends degrees and season Reason's the Rider sense is but the Horse Which then is fittest to direct thy course Give up the reins and thou becom'st a beast Thy fall at death will sadly end thy feast Flesh Religion is a dull and heavy thing Whereas a merry cup will make me sing Love's entertainments warm both heart and brain And wind my fancy to the highest strain Spirit Cupid hath stuck a feather in thy cap And lull'd thee dead asleep on Venus's lap Thy brains are tipled with some wantons eyes Thy Reason is become Lust's sacrifice Playing a game at Folly thou hast lost Thy wit and soul and winnest to thy cost Thy soul now in a filthy channel lies While fancy seems to sore above the skies Beauty will soon be stinking loathsome earth Sickness and death mar all the wantons mirth It is not all the pleasure thou canst find Will contervail the sting that 's left behind Blind brutish souls that cannot love their God! And yet can dote on a defiled clod Flesh Why should I think of what will be to morrow An ounce of mirth is worth a pound of sorrow Spirit But where 's that mirth when sorrows overtake thee Will it then hold when life and God forsake thee Forgetting Death or Hell will not prevent it Now lose thy day thou 'lt then too late repent it Flesh Must I be pain'd and wronged and not feel As if my heart were made of flint or steel Spirit Dost thou delight to feel thy hurt and smart Would not an Antidote preserve thy heart Impatience is but Self-tormenting folly Patience is cordial easie sweet and holy Is not that better which turns grief to peace Than that which doth thy misery encrease Flesh When sport and wine and beauty do invite Who is it whom such baits will not incite Spirit He that perceives the look and sees the end Whither it is that
such useless members forseiting their very sustenance then surely he that is such or worse speeds fair if you leave him food and raiment 4. And the great command of doing all to Gods Glory and serving him with our substance will not be obeyed if you leave your Riches and Estates in the hands of such persons meerly because they are your Children No doubt but that is a selfish and unconscionable course and the thing that sets up the ungodly to disturb the Church Lord it over the world while parents furnish them with Riches to do the Devil eminent service with Object But who knows but God may convert them Answ You cannot guide your actions by things unknown You have no promise of their conversion nor much probability when they have frustrated all your Counsels and means of their good education and grace is supernatural and therefore you must proceed upon grounds that are known And for remoter Kindred if they may be as serviceable to God with what I give them as others nature teacheth me to prefer them before others but otherwise Grace teacheth me both to love a godly stranger better than ungodly kindred and to lay out all that I have as may be most serviceable to God CHAP. LVII Q. How we must love our Neighbours as our selves Quest 7. HOw is it that Self-denial requireth us to love our neighbour as our selves Is it with the same degree of Love Answ I answered this on the by before Briefly 1. The chief part of the precept is Negative thus q. d. Set not up thy self against the welfare of thy neighbour Draw not from him or covet not that which is his to thy self and confine not thy love and care of thyself 2. And it comprehendeth this positive and that as to the kind of Love we should love both our selves and neighbours as means to God and for the interest of God and in that respect there is an equality we must appretiative or estimatively love a better and more serviceable man that hath more of Gods Spirit in him above our selves and an equal person equally with our selves with this Rational Love which intendeth all for God 3. But Natural Love which is put into a man for self-preservation will be stronger to self than to another and alloweth us caeteris paribus to prefer and first preserve and provide for our selves And in this regard our neighbour must be loved but as a second self or next our selves 4. But this Natural Love in the exercise of it at least in imperate acts is to be subservient to our Rational spiritual Love and to be over-mastered by it And therefore it is that as Reason teacheth an Heathen to prefer his Country before his life though the instinct of Nature incline us more to life so faith teacheth a Christian much more to prefer Gods honour and the Gospel Church Common-wealth and his neighbours good when it more conduceth to these ends than his own before himself his liberty or life CHAP. LVIII Q. Is Self-revenge and Penance self-denial Quest 8. WHether self-denial require us after sin to use vindictive penance or punishment of the flesh by fasting watching going barefoot lying hard wearing hair-cloth or to do this ordinarily as some of the Papists Monks and Fryars do Answ The easiness of this case may allow a brief decision 1. The Body must be so far afflicted as is needful to humble it and subdue it to the spirit and tame its Rebellion and fit it for the service of God 2. The exercise of a holy revenge on our selves may be a lower end subservient to this 3. It must also be so far humbled as is necessary to express Repentance to the Church when Absolution is expected upon publick Repentance 4. As also to concur with the soul in secret or open humiliation But 1. He that shall think that whippings or sackcloth or going bare-foot or other self-punishing are of themselves good works and meritorious with God or satisfie his Justice or are a state of perfection doth offer God a hainous sin under the name and conceit of a good work 2. And he that shall by such self-afflicting unfit his Body for the service of God yea that doth not cherish it so far as is necessary to fit it for duty is guilty of self-murder and defrauding God of his service and abusing his creature and depriving others of the help we owe them so that iâ— one word the Body must be so used as may best fit it for Gods service And to think that self-afflicting is a good work meerly as it is penalty or suffering to the body or that we may go further herein is to think 1. That we should use our Body worse than our beast for we will no further afflict him than is necessary to tame him or serve our selves by him and not to disable him for service 2. And it will teach men to kill themselves for that is a greater penalty to the body than whipping or fasting 3. And it is an offering God a sacrifice of cruelty and Robbery which we commit against himself and man But I must needs add that though some Fryars and Melancholy people are apt to go too far in this and pine their bodies or misuse them with conceits of merit and satisfaction yet almost all the common people run into the contrary extream and pamper and please their flesh to the displeasing of God and the ruine of their souls And I know but few that have need to be restrained from afflicting or taking down the flesh too much CHAP. LIX Q. Is self-denial to be without Passion Quest 9. WHether self-denial consist in the laying by of all Passions and bringing the soul to an impassionate serenity Answ The Stoicks and some Behmenists think so But so doth not God or any well informed man For 1. God would not have made the Affections in vain It is not the Passions but the disorder of them that is sinful or the fruit of sin 2. We are commanded to exercise all the Affections or Passions for God and on other sutable objects We must Love God with all the heart and soul and might which is not without affection or passion We must Love his servants his Church his Word his wayes We must fear him above them that can kill us we must hunger and thirst after his Righteousness and pant after him as the Hart doth after the Water-brooks We must be angry and sin not A zeal for God is the life of our Graces we must always be zealous in a good matter fervent in Spirit serving the Lord. We must hate evil and sorrow for it when we are guilty and grieve under the sense of our miscarriages and Gods displeasure And all these expresly commanded in the Word are holy Affections or Passions of the soul 3. Yea it is the Work of the Holy Ghost to sanctifie all these Passions that they may be used for God and they are called by
the names of the several graces of the Spirit And it is not Passion but disordered Passion that must be denied CHAP. LX. How far must we deny our own Reason Quest 10. HOw far must we deny our own Reason Answ 1. We must not be unreasonable nor live unreasonably nor believe unreasonably nor love or choose or let out any affection unreasonably We are commanded to be ready to give a reason of our hopes It is our Rational faculty that proveth us men and is essential to us And without it we can neither understand the things of God or man For how should we understand without an understanding But yet Reason must thus far be denied 1. We must not think highlier of our Reason than it deserves either in it self or as compared to others 2. We must not satisfie its curiosity in prying into unrevealed things 3. Nor must we satisfie or suffer its presumption in judging our Brethren or censuring mens hearts or ways uncharitably 4. Nor must we endure it to rise up against the Word or ways of God or contradict or quarrel with Divine Revelations though we cannot see the particular Evidence or Reason of each Truth nor reconcile them together in our apprehensions Though we may not take any thing to be the Word of God without Reason yet when he have Reason to it take to be his Word we must believe and submit to all that is in it without any more Reson for our belief For the formal Reason of our belief is because God is true that did reveal this Word And we have the greatest Reason in the world to believe all that he revealeth CHAP. LXI Q. Must we be content with affiictions permitted sin c. Quest 11. IF Self-denial require us to Content our souls in the Will of God then whether must we be content with his afflictions or permission of sin or the Churches sufferings and 1. How will this stand with our due sense of Gods displcasure and chastisements 2. And with our praying against them 3. And our use of means for their removal Answ 1. The Will of God is one thing and the Hurt which he willeth us is another and the Good En for which he willeth it is a third The afflicting Will of God is good and must be Loved as good and the End and Benefit of Chastisement is good and must be loved But the hurt as hurt must not be loved It is not Gods Will that we must resist or seek to change nor yet is it the End or Benefit of the Chastisement but only the hurt which our folly hath made a sutable means And we may not seek to remove this hurt till the effect be procured or on terms that may consist with the End of it And this is not against the Will of God that when the good is attained the Affliction be removed 2. And you must distinguish between his Pleased and Displeased Will his complacency and acceptance and his Displacency and Rejecting Will. Every act of Gods Will must be approved and loved as Good in God but it is not every one that we may Rest and Rejoyce in as Good to us and as our felicity We must be grieved for Gods Displeasure and yet Love even that holy will that is displeased with us and we must be sensible of Gods judgments and yet Love the Will that doth inflict them But it is only the Love of God and Pleasure of his Will to us that can be the Rest and felicity of our souls 3. Some acts of Gods Will are about the Means and have a tendency to a further end and some are about the End it self His Commanding Will we must Love and obey his forbidding Will must have the same affections his threatning Will we must love and fear his Rewarding Will we must Love and Rejoyce in His full Accepting Will that is his Love and Complacency in us we must Rest and Delight our souls in for ever And thus we must comply with the Will of God CHAP. LXII Q. May God be finally Loved as our Felicity and Portion Quest 12. YOu tell us that we must seek our selves but as Means to God How then may we make our salvation our End or desire the fruition of God when fruition is for our selves of somewhat that may make us happy Doth he not desire God as a Means for himself as the End that desireth him as his Portion Treasure Refuge and Felicity Answ There are such abundance of abstruse Philosophical Controversies de anima fine that stand here in the way that I must only decide this briefly and imperfectly for vulgar capacities Schoolmen and other Philosophers are not so much as agreed what a final Cause is But this much briefly may give some degree of satisfaction to the Moderate 1. No fleshly Profits Pleasures or Honours must be made our End This we are agreed on 2. The Ultimate End of all the Saints is an End that is sutable to the Nature of Love and that is perfectly to love God and Please him and serve him and to be perfectly beloved of him and behold his glory So that it is not an End of self-love or Love of Concupiscence or for our Commodity only but it is the End of the Love of Friendship Now all Love of friendship doth take in both the party Loving and the party beloved into the End For the End is a perfect Union of both according to their capacities And it being Intentio amantis the End of Love both God and our selves must be comprehended in it as the parties to be united and so it is both for him and for our selves 3. But yet though both parties as united be comprized in the End it is not equally but with great inequality For 1. God being Infinite Goodness it self must appreciative in estimation and affection be preferred exceedingly before our selves so that in desiring this blessed Union we must more desire it to Please and Praise him and give him his due for which he Created Redeemed and Glorified us than to be our selves happy in him 2. And God being not a meer friend but our Absolute Lord of Infinite Power and Glory it must be more in our Intention to bring to him eternally than to receive from him though both must be comprized For Receiving is for our selves further than we intend it for Returns but Returning is for God Not to add to his blessedness but to Please his Will and give him his own For he made all things for himself And so that in union with him we may give him his own in fullest love and Praise and service and thus please him must be the higest part of our Intention about our own felicity in enjoying him So that you may see that self-denial teacheth no man to ask Whether he could be content to be damned for Christ For this is contrary to our propounded End in the whole For a damned man hath no union of Love with God and