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
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
fleshly Pleasures tend He that by faith hath seen both Heav'n and Hell And what sin costeth at the last can tell He that hath try'd and tasted Better things And felt that love from which all pleasure springs They that still watch and for Christs coming wait Can turn away from or despise the bait Flesh Must I be made the foot-ball of disdain And call'd a precise fool or Puritane Spirit Remember him that did despise the shame And for thy sake bore undeserved blame Thy journey 's of small moment if thou stay Because dogs bark or stones lie in the way If life lay on it wouldst thou turn again For the winds blowing or a little rain Is this thy greatest love to thy dear Lord That canst not for his sake bear a foul word Wilt thou not bear for him a scorners breath That underwent for thee a cursed death Is not Heav'n worth the bearing of a flout Then blame not Justice when it shuts thee out Will these deriders stand to what they say And own their words at the great dreadful day Then they 'd be glad when wrath shall overtake them To eat their wrrds and say they never spake them Flesh How Forsake all Ne're mention it more to me I 'le be of no Religion to undo me Spirit Is it not thine more in thy Fathers hand Than when it is laid out at sins command And is that sav'd that 's spent upon thy lust Or which must be a prey to thieves or rust And wouldst thou have thy riches in thy way Where thou art passing on and canst not stay And is that lost that 's sent to Heav'n before Hadst thou not rather have thy friends and store Where thou may dwell for ever in the light Of that long glorious day that fears no night Flesh But who can willingly submit to Death Which will bereave us of our life and breath That laies our flesh to rot in loathsome graves Where brains and eyes were leaves but ugly caves Spirit So nature breaks and casts away the shell Where the now beauteous singing bird did dwell The secundine that once the infant cloath'd After the birth is cast away and loath'd Thus Roses drop their sweet leaves under-foot But the Spring shews that life was in the root Souls are the Roots of Bodies Christ the Head Is Root of both and will revive the dead Our Sun still shineth when with us it's night When he returns we shall shine in his light Souls that behold and praise God with the Just Mourn not because their bodies are but dust Graves are but beds where flesh till morning sleep's Or Chests where God a while our garments keep 's Our folly thinks he spoils them in the keeping Which causeth our excessive fears and Weeping But God that doth our rising day foresee Pittie 's not rotting flesh so much as we The birth of Nature was deform'd by sin The birth of Grace did our repair begin The birth of Glory at the Resurrection Finisheth all and brings both to persection Why should not fruit when it is mellow fall Why would we linger here when God doth call Flesh The things and persons in this world I see But after death I know not what will be Spirit Know'st thou not that which God himself hath spoken Thou hast his promise which was never broken Reason proclaims that noble heav'n-born souls Are made for higher things than worms and moles God hath not made such faculties in vain Nor made his service a deluding pain But faith resolves all doubts and hears the Lord Telling us plainly by his Holy Word That uncloath'd souls shall with their Saviour dwell Triumphing over sin and death and hell And by the power of Almighty Love Stars shall arise from graves to shine above There we shall see the Glorious face of God His blessed presence shall be our abode The face that banisheth all doubts and fears Shuts out all sins and dryeth up all tears That face which darkeneth the Suns bright rayes Shall shine us into everlasting joyes Where Saints and Angels shall make up one Chore To praise the Great Jehovah evermore Flesh Reason not with me against sight and sense I doubt all this is but a vain pretence Words against nature are not worth a rush One bird in hand is worth two in the bush If God will give me Heav'n at last I 'le take it But for my Pleasure here I 'le not forsake it Spirit And wilt thou keep it bruitsh flesh how long Wilt thou not shortly sing another song When Conscience is awakened keep thy mirth When Sickness and Death comes hold fast this earth Live if thou canst when God saith come away Try whether all thy friends can cause thy stay Wilt thou tell death and God thou wilt not die And wilt thou the consuming fire defie Art thou not sure to let go what thou hast And doth not Reason bid thee then forecast And value the least hope of endless joyes Before known vanities and dying toyes And can the Lord that is most just and wise Found all mans duty in deceit and lies GET thee behind me Satan thou dost savour The things of flesh and not his dearest favour Who is my Life and Light and Love and All And so shall be whatever shall befall It is not thou but I that must discern And must Resolve It 's I that hold the stern Be silent Flesh speak not against my God Or else hee 'l teach thee better by the rod. I am resolved thou shalt live and die A servant or a conquered enemy LOrd charge not on me what this rebel sayes That alwaies was against me and thy wayes Now stop its mouth by Grace that shortly must Through just but gainful death be stopt with dust The thoughts and words of Flesh are none of mine Let Flesh say what it will I will be thine Whatever this rebellious Flesh shall prate Let me but serve the Lord at any rate Use me on earth as seemeth good to thee So I in Heav'n thy Glorious face may see Take down my Pride let me dwell at thy feet The humble are for earth and heav'n most meet Renouncing Flesh I Vow my self to thee With all the Talents thou hast lent to me Let me not stick at honour wealth or blood Let all my dayes be spent in doing good Let me not trifle out more precious hours But serve thee now with all my strength and powers If Flesh would tempt me to deny my hand Lord these are the Resolves to which I stand Richard Baxter October 29. 1659. The laâ—e Lord Chief Justice Oliver St. John See my Reasons of the Christ â—â—â—g since written I may with Tertullian call all our enemies to search their Court Records and â—ce how many of us have been cast out or silenced for any immorality but for obeying Conscience against the interest or wills of some who think that Conscience should give place to their Commands Read the two or three last Chapters in Dr. Holden's Analâ—fidei Read Mr. Stubbs and Mr. Rogers books against me and the souldiers openly thâ—â— calumaiâ—â—ed me and thâ—e in eâ— my death as the said Authors â—eâ—red them to call me to a trâ—al even for speaking and writing against their casting dow the Government of the Land â—â—ing 〈◊〉 themselves and aâ—â—â—pting at once to Vo e out all the â—arâ—â—h 〈◊〉 I know that it hardneâ—h thousands in impenitency to say that Others have done worse and Is the matter mended with you And will it also eâ—se men in heâ—l to think that some others suffer more The Quuakers and other Self-esteemers are reverthemore reconcil'd to us now we have been eleven years turned out of all So common it is for selfish meâ— to make their gain sayers as odious as they can devise that I conâ—eâ—s I wondred that I me with no more of this dealing my self from Papists Anabaptists or any that have turned their stiâ—e against me And at last Mr. Pierce hath answered my expectation and from my own confession not knowing me himself hath drawn my picture that I am Proâ—â—i Lazie False an Hypocrite uâ—just a Reader c. And from this Bolsecks credit I make no doubt but the Papists will think they may warrantably descrâ—bâ— me if I be thought worthy their reâ—embrance in all following Ageâ— though now I have nothing from them but good wordâ— But it is a small thing to be judged by man especially when our â—â—uâ—â— enjoy the Lord. They way-laid the Messengers that I sent Letters by to friends took them from the â— by force seâ—â— them to 〈…〉 to the Council of State to the trouble of those I wrote to though nothing was found but â—â—noâ—ency And this was by my old 〈…〉 who differed from â—â—â— in nothing but â—â—tant 〈…〉 Changes of our Government and yet 〈…〉
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
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
So that they were fain to live and die under a Reputation as contrary to the truth as darkness is contrary to light And this usage hath still been the attendant of true Godliness When the Papists burn Gods servants at the stake it is for supposed Heresie and impiety they put a painted cap and coat upon them made of paper on which the Images of Devils are pictur d to make the people believe that they are ungodly persons the servants of the Devil and possessed by him already and unworthy to live any longer among men When they butchered the poor Waldenses and Albigenses by thousands it was under the name of ungodly hereticks The ignorant ungodly rabble among us now that hate and revile those that seek after God more diligently than themselves have yet more devilish wit than to oppose them directly under the name of honest godly men but they first make the world believe that they are Hypocrites and Proud and Self-conceited and Covetous and secretly are as bad as others and these are the things if you will believe them that they hate and speak against them for But then how comes it to pass that it is their Praying and Preciseness that is so much in the scorners mouths Doth that signifie Hypocrisie or Pride Why do they not commend the good while they speak against the evil and joyn with them in the holy Worship and ways of God while they oppose their supposed viciousness Doth the name Puritan signifie a covetous man or a vicious person or rather one that will not be content to venture his soul in the common impure ungodly courses of the world And how comes it to pass that a man may quietly enough follow such vices if he will but forbear the profession of Godliness But to leave these wretches in the dirt where we find them by this you may see the common measure that is to be expected from the world If you will be truly godly you must be taken for ungodly or for hypocrites that seem to be godly when you are not But it 's easie to bear this charge when it falls upon a whole society and takes us but in the crowd among the rest and when we have so much honourable company to suffer with us But it goes nearer us when we are singled out by name and noted and talk'd of all about as Hypocrites or Proud or worse than others But that also must be born by those that will be Christians But the greatest trial of all is when the Servants of God that should help us in our suffering have got a hard report of us and by misinformation we have lost our credit even with them Under all these false and injurious reports direct and stablish your own minds by the help of these Considerations following 1. It may be there is some special cause that you should try and judge your selves and so God doth suffer other men to judge you to awaken you to self-judging However make this use of it and you are sure to be no losers by the reproach Enter into your hearts and search them throughly as before the Lord and see if there be any way of wickedness in them which hitherto you have not discovered Try whether there be Hypocrisie and Pride or not Especially when it is the servants of God that think hardly of you and above all if it be wise impartial men that are acquainted with you it 's then your duty to be very jealous of your hearts and ways and to fear lest you are guilty and to search the more diligently and not be quiet till you either find out your sin or be sure that you are clear And if you be clear in that point yet suspect and search lest there be some other secret or allowed sin which God would detect to you or excite you against by the injurious censures of those that have reproached you 2. When you have search'd and cleared your own Consciences then consider further that though you are not such as you are censured to be yet sinners you are and you know your sins in other kinds are so many and so great that you should bear the more patiently to be hardly thought of when you know your selves to be so bad If indeed you are godly you have seen a sink of uncleanness in your selves and have condemned your selves oft and loathed your selves for your abominations and bewailed them before the Lord. And is it suitable for such a spirit to be eager after the Reputation of sincerity and to be much troubled that you are taken by others to be naught 3. And consider also that your Case may be as Davids was and God may possibly make this reproach a chastisement for some former sin and a means to humble you for it more throughly and to reclaim you from it Perhaps he bids by permissive providence some Shimei curse you It may be the voice of a slanderer must do that which the voice of a Preacher could not do And then it is your work to look behind you and within you more than without you and to hearken more to the voice of God and Conscience than of the slanderer and to take it as the rod of God and a call to a more serious Repentance 4. And consider that when you are under the false Censures of the world you may have the inward peace of a good conscience which is better than all the applause of men And this being a continual feast they cannot do much against your quietness as long as they cannot deprive you of this 5. Yea moreover you have the Approbation of God himself and that should satisfie against the censure of all the world Even a Proud man if he have any wit can bear the Contempt of the ignorant vulgar if he have but the applause of great and wise and learned men As that Orator that valued the judgement of Socrates above all the rest of his auditory But all the wisest men in the world are fools in comparison of God Having his Approbation you have the Greatest the Best and the Wisest on your side and a Judgement for you that will weigh down the judgement of ten thousand worlds 7. And if you value not Gods approbation above mans it 's a sign that you are hypocrites indeed and so the censure is not unjust But if you do then you will acquiesce in it though man condemn you and say as the Apostle Rom. 8. 33 34. Who shall lay any thing to the charge of Gods elect It is God that Justifieth who is he that condemneth And as 1 Cor. 4. 3 4. With me it is a very small thing that I should be judged of you or of mans judgment but he that judgeth me is the Lord. And remember that the great day of Judgment is near at hand that will set all straight which the slanderous tongues of men made crooked Stay but a while and the Glory of Christ and the
say others Miracles say others and indeed it 's what the Interest of selfish men doth dictate to the accusers O that they would tell us what is the due Call and where is the Ministery on Earth that hath it if we have not If they would have all laid by that work not Miracles we may see what they would have done to the Church If we are not what they would have us be and do not what they would have us do why do they not come in charity and meekness and shew us the course that we should take If we are fools or besides our selves it is for them The God whom we serve that will shortly judge us is our witness that we have chosen the Calling that we are in for their salvation and for his glory and that we labour in it in season and out of season toplease Christ and to profit them rather than to please or accommodate our flesh You brought me into the Ministry I am confident you know to what ends and with what intentions I desired it I was then very ignorant young and raw Though my weakness be yet such as I must lament I must say to the praise of the great Shepherd of the slock that he hath since then afforded me precious opportunities much assistance and as much encouragement as to any man that I know alive You know my Education and initial weakness was such as forbiddeth me to glory in the flesh But I will not rob God of his Glory to avoid the appearance of ostentation lest I be proud of seeming not to be proud I doubt not but many thousand souls will thank you when they have here read that you were the man that led me into the Ministry And shall I entertain a suspicion that you will ever hearken to those men that would rob you of the reward of many such works and engage you against the King of Saints Is it gain or ease or worldly advantages that continueth me in this work Let me speak as a fool seeing it is for the Lord in imitation of Paul that was no fool Was I not capable of Secular and Military advancement as well as others that are grown great Did I ever sollicite you so much as for my Arrears which is many hundred pounds You could scarce do the thing that would gratifie my flesh more than to silence and depose me from the Ministry Might I consult with the flesh I should be more against my own employment than many of my enemies are Did I but turn Physitian I â—â—uld get more worldly wealth And my Patients would not be so froward and quarrelsome and unthankful as most Ministers find their carnal Auditors to be When men come to me for Physick for their Bodies how submissive are they and how do they intreat and what thanks after will they return But when we would help their souls what cavils and quarrels and unthankful obstinacy do we meet with We must be much beholden to them to accept our help and all will not serve surn My Patients that have bodily Diseases will pay me if I would take it But if by giving them twice as much as I receive I could satisfie and further the cure of diseased souls how joyful should I be And must we deny our selves and all things in the world for our peoples sakes and after all be reproached as if we were a mercenary generation and sought our selves O how will God confound this ingratitude when he comes to judge Something they might say if the Ministers of England had the provision of the French and other Popish Clergy I will not presume to compare now our Calling fidelity and maintenance with Magistrates Judges and men of other professions Should I suppose the Magistracy epitomized in you and the Ministery in me I should give you an undue advantage For I suppose there are far more Ministers better than me than there are Magistrates better than you And yet I think you would not judge of me as the Ministers are judged of As there are no such Commissioners for ejection of scandalous insufficient negligent Magistrates as are for the ejection of such Ministers so if there were I should not doubt but you would quickly see which part were liable to more exceptions But when I took on the faithful Ministers round about me how many of them could I name with whom my conscience tells me I am not worthy to be compared in Holiness I am then amazed at the ingratitude of the Apostates of this age How constantly and zealously do they preach in publick at home and abroad some of them many times a week How diligently do they instruct the ignorant in private from house to house How unblameably and meekly and self-denyingly do they behave themselves And are men that once made profession of Religion become the enemies of such a Ministry O my soul come not thou into their secret unto their Assembly mine honour be not thou united Gen. 49. 6. I had rather be in the case of Turks yea of Canibals than of those men I know that many think our very ignorant Dividers to have more illumination and that the Pastors of the flocks are carnal ignorant men As the blind man that rusht against another and asked him whether he were blind that could not go out of his way But I have long tryed the spirits and I have found that these Cameleons have nothing within but lungs and that straw and little sticks may make the quickest and the lightest blaze but will not make a durable fire as the bigger fewel doth A Bittern hath a loud â—â— voice than a Swan or Eagle And in some one thing a bungler may excell a better work-man And what if one Minister excel in one gift and another in another and few in all Is not this like the Primitive administration You be not angry with your Apple-tree that it bears not Plumbs nor with your Pear-tree that it bears not Figs But I have been too tedious I beseech you interpret not any of these words as intended for accusation or unjust suspicion of your self God forbid you should ever fall from that integrity that I am perswaded you once had But my eye is on the Times with grief and on my Antient Dearest Friend with Love And in an age of Iniquity and Temptation my conscience and the world shall never say that I was unfaithful to my friend and forbore to tell him of the common dangers Dear Friend take heed of a glittering flattering world Remember that greatness makes few bad men good and few good men better As Seneca saith The Carkase is as truly dead that is embalmed as that which is dragg'd to the grave with hooks And this I say the time is short It remaineth that they that weep be as if they wept not and they that rejoyce as though they rejoyced not and they that buy as though they possessed not and they that use this world as they
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
the Root I HAVE already spoken of Conversion in the foregoing Discourse both opening to you the true nature of it and the reasons of its necessity and perswading men thereunto But lest so great a work should miscarry with any for want of a more particular explication I should next open the three great parts of the work distinctly and in order that is 1. From what it is that we must Turn 2. To whom we must Turn 3. And By whom we must Turn For though I touched all these in the foregoing Directions and through the discourse yet I am afraid lest so brief a touch should be uneffectual The first of these I shall handle at this time from this Text medling with no more but what is necessary to our present business You may easily perceive that the Doctrine which Christ here proclaimeth to all that have thoughts of being his followers is this that All that will be Christians must Deny themselves and take up their Cross and follow Christ and not reserve so much as their very lives but resolve to resign up all for him Self-denyal is one part of true Conversion For the opening of this I must shew you 1. What is meant by Self and 2. What by Denying this Self and 3. The Grounds and Reasons of the point and 4. I shall briefly apply it I. Self is sometime taken for the very person consisting of soul and body simply considered and this is called Natural or Personal Self 2. Self is taken for this Person considered in its capacity of earthly comforts and in relation to the present blessings of this world that tend to the prosperity of man as in the flesh And this may be called Earthly Self yet in an innocent sense 3. Self is taken for the Person as corrupted by inordinate sinful sensuality which may be called Carnal Self 4. Self may be taken for the Person in his sanctified estate which is Spiritual Self 5. And Self may be taken for the person in his Naturals and Spirituals Conjunct as he is capable of a Life of Everlasting Felicity which is the Immortal Self II. By Denying Self is meant disclaiming renouncing disowning and forsaking it Self is here lookt on partly as a party disâ—unct from Christ and withdrawn from its due subordination to God and partly as his Competitor and opposite and accordingly it is to be denyed partly by a neglect and partly by an opposition Before I come to tell you how far self must be denyed I must tell you wherein the disease of selfishness doth consist and for brevity we shall dispatch them both together And on the Negative 1. To be a natural Individual person distinct from God our Creator is none of our disease but the state which we were created in And therefore no man must under pretence of self-denyal either destroy himself or yet with some Hereticks aspire to be essentially and personally one with God so that their individual personality should be drowned in him as a drop is in the Ocean 2. The disease of selfishness lyeth not in having a Body that is capable of â—asting sweetness in the Creature or in having the Objects of our sence in which we be delighted nor yet in all actual sweetness and delight in them nor in a simple love of life it self For all these are the effects of the Creators Will. And therefore this self-denyal doth not consist in a hatred or disregard of our own lives or in a destruction of our appetites or senses or an absolute refusal to please them in the use of the Creatures which God hath given us 3. Yea though our Natures are corrupted by sin self-denyal requireth not that we should kill our selves and destroy our humane natures that we may thereby destroy the sin Self-murder is a most hainous sin which God condemneth 4. Our spiritual self or self as sanctified must not be so denyed as to deny our selves to be what we are or have what we have or do what we do we may not deny Gods Graces nor deny that they are in us as the subject nor may we restrain the holy desires which God exciteth in us or deny to fulfil them or bring them towards fruition when opportunity is offered us 5. We may not deny to accept of any mercy which God shall offer us though but a common Creature nor to use any talent for his service if he choose us for his stewards much less may we refuse any spiritual mercy that may further our Salvation It is not the self-denyal required by Christ that we deny to be Christians or to be sanctified by the spirit or to he delivered from our sins and enemies or that we deny to use the means and helps that are offered us or to accept of the priviledges purchased by Christ Much less to deny our salvation it self and to undo our own souls In a word it is not any thing that is really and finally to our hurt or loss But as to the Affirmative I shall shew you what the disease of selfishness indeed is and so what self-denyal is 1. When God had created man in his own Image he gave him a holy disposition of soul which might incline him to his Maker as his only Felicity and Ultimate End He made him to be blessed in the sight of his Glory and in the everlasting Love of God and delight in him and praises of him This excellent employment and glory did God both fit him for and set before him But the first temptation did entice him to adhere to an inferiour good for the pleasing of his flesh and the advancement of him self to a carnal kind of felicity in himself that he might be as God in knowing good and evil And thus man was suddenly taken with the Creature as a means to the pleasing of his carnal self and so did depart from God his true felicity and retired into himself in his estimation affection and intention and delivered up his Reason in subjection to his sensuality and made himself his Ultimate End With this sinful inclination are we all born into the world so that every man according to his corrupted nature doth terminate all his desires in himself and what ever he may notionally be convinced of to the contrary yet practically he makes his earthly life and the advancement and pleasure which he expecteth therein to be his felicity and end Self-denyal now is the cure of this It carryeth a man from himself again and sheweth him that he was never made to be his own felicity or end and that the flesh was not made to be pleased before God and that it is so poor and low and short a felicity as indeed is but a name and shadow of felicity and when it pretends to that a meer deceit It sheweth him how unreasonable how impious and unjust it is that a Creature and such a Creature should terminate his desires and intentions in himself And this is the principal part
of self-denyal 2. As God was mans ultimate End in his state of innocency so accordingly man was appointed to use all Creatures in order to God for his Pleasure and Glory So that it was the work of man to do his Makers will and he was to use nothing but with this intention But when man was faln from God to himself he afterwards used all things for himself even his carnal self and all that he possessed was become the provision and fuel of his lusts and so the whole creation which he was capable of using was abused by him to this low and selfish end as if all things had been made but for his delight and will But when man is brought to Deny himself he is brought to restore the Creatures to their former use and not to sacrifice them to his fleshly mind so that all that he hath and useth in the world is used to another end so far as he denyeth himself than formerly it was even for God and not himâ—elf 3. In the state of Innocency though man had naturally an aversness from death and bodily pains as being natural evils and had a desire of the welfare even of the flesh it self yet as his body was subject to his soul and his senses to his Reason so his bodily ease and welfare was to be esteemed and desired and sought but in a due subordination to his spiritual welfare and especially to his Makers Will So that though he was to value his Life yet he was much more to value his everlasting life and the pleasure and Glory of his Lord. But now when man is faln from God to Himself his Life and earthly felicity is the sweetest and the dearest thing to him that is So that he preferreth it before the Pleasing of God and everlasting life And therefore he seeketh it more and holdeth it faster as long as he can and parteth with it more unwillingly As Innocent Nature had an appetite to the objects of sense but corrupted nature hath an enraged greedy rebellious and inordinate appetite to them so Innocent nature had a love to this natural earthly life and the comforts of it but corrupted Nature hath such an inordinate love to them as that all things else are made but subordinate to them and swallowed up in this gulf even God himself is so far loved as he befriendeth these our carnal ends and furthereth our earthly prosperity and life But when men are brought to Deny themselves they are in their measures restored to their first esteem of Life and all the prosperity and earthly comforts of life Now they have learned so to love them as to love God better and so to value them as to prefer everlasting life before them and so to hold them and seek their preservation as to resign them to the will of God and to lay them down when we cannot hold them with his Love and to choose death in order to life everlasting before that life which would deprive us of it And this is the principal instance of self-denyal which Christ giveth us here in the Text as it is recited by all the three Evangelists that recite these words He that saveth his life shall lose it c. And what shall it profit a man to win all the world and lose his soul By these instances it appears that by self-denyal Christ doth mean a setting so light by all the world and by our own lives and consequently our carnal Content in these as to be willing and Resolved to part with them all rather than with him and everlasting life even as Abraham was bound to love his Son Isaac but yet so to prefer the Love and Will of God as to be able to sacrifice his Son at Gods Command And the Lord Jesus himself was the liveliest Pattern to us of his Self-denyal that ever the world saw Indeed his whole life was a continued practice of it And it hath oft convinced me that it is a special part of our Sanctification when I have considered how abundantly the Lord hath exercised himself in it for our example For as it is desperate to think with the Socinians that he did it only for our Example so it is also a desperate Error of others to think that it was only for satisfaction to God and not at all for our Example Many do give up themselves to Flesh-pleasing upon a misconceit that Christ did therefore deny his flesh to purchase them a liberty to please theirs As in his Fasting and Temptations and his sufferings by the reproach and ingratitude of men and the outward Poverty and Meanness of his condition the Lord was pleased to deny himself so especially in his last Passion and death As I have shewed elsewhere he loved his natural life and peace and therefore in manifestation of that he prayeth Father if it be thy Will let this Cup pass from me But yet when it came to the comparative practical Act he proceeded to choose his Fathers Will with death rather than life without it and therefore saith Not my Will that is my simple love of life but thy Will be done In which very words he manifesteth another will of his own besides that which he consenteth shall not be done and sheweth that he preferred the pleasing of his Father in the Redemption of the world before his own life And thus in their measure he causeth all his Members to do so that life and all the comforts of life are not so dear to them as the love of God and everlasting life 4. When God had created man he was presently the Owner of him and man understood this that he was God's and not his own And he was not to claim a Propriety in himself nor to be affected to himself as his own nor to live as his own but as His that made him But when he fell from God he arrogated practically though notionally he may deny it a propriety in himself and useth himself accordingly And when Christ bringeth men to deny themselves they cease to be their own in their conceits any more Then they resign themselves wholly to God as being wholly his They know they are his both by the right of Creation and of Redemption And therefore are to be disposed of by him and to glorifie him in body and spirit which are his 1 Cor. 6. 19 20. Rom. 14. 9. To be thus heartily devoted to God as his own is the form of Sanctification and to live as God's own is the truly Holy life 5. As man in Innocency did know that he was not his own so he knew that nothing that he had was his own but that he was the Steward of his Creator for whom he was to use them and to whom he was accountable But when he was fallen from God to himself though he had lost the Right of a Servant yet be graspeth at the Creature as if he had the Right of a Lord He now takes his Goods his
and possess no interest but him and in him and to have nothing that we esteem or love or care for in comparison of him knowing that for him we were made redeemed preserved and sanctified and therefore desiring to be wholly and only his and to have no credit no goods no life no self but what is his for his service at his will and at his Disposal and Government and provision this is the true self-denyal which the spirit of God worketh in a prevailing though not a perfect measure in every gracious believing soul But alas Sirs how strange is this in the world and how weak and low in the souls where it is found And what matter of Lamentation would a survey of the world or of our selves present us with Is not SELF the great Idol which the whole world of unsanctified men doth worship Who is it that ruleth the children of disobedience but carnal self For what is all the stir and stirrings the tumults and contentions of the world but for self This ruleth Kingdoms and this is it that raiseth wars and what is it except the works of Holiness but self is the author of Look unto the Thrones and Kingdoms of the earth and conjecture how many self hath advanced and placed there and how feâ— have stayed till God enthroned them and gave them the Crown and Scepter with his approbation Among all the Nobles and great ones of the earth that abound in riches how few are there that were not set a work by self and ruled by it in the getting or keeping or using their riches dignities and honours Look on the great Revenews of the Nation and of the world and consider whether God or self have the more of it One man hath many thousands a year and another hath many hundreds and how much of this is devoted to God and how much to carnal self And the poor that have but little would think us injurious to them if we should call to them for any thing for God who have not enough for themselves when indeed God must have all and self must have nothing but what it hath by way of return from God again and that for God and not for self but as subservient unto him Alas of many hundred thousand pounds a year which the inhabitants of a Country possess among them how little hath God that should have all and how much hath self that should have nothing O dreadful reckoning when these Accounts must be all cast up Judge by the use of all whether self have not yet Dominion of all If men throw out to God his tenth which is none of their own or if they cast him now and then some inconsiderable alms when in his member he is fain to beg for it first they think they have done fair though self devour all the rest Is it more think you for God or self that our Courts of Law are filled with so many Suits and Lawyers have so much employment Is it more think you for God or self that Merchants compass Sea and Land for commodity Who is it that the Souldier fights for is it for God or self Who is it that the Tradesman deals for that the Plowman labours for that the Traveller goes for is it more for God or self Who is it that the most of mens thoughts are spent for and the most of their words are spoken for and the most of their rents and wealth laid out for and the most of their precious time imployed for is it for God or self Consider of it whether it be not self that finally and morally rules the world What else do most live for or look after And is not the common Piety Religion and Charity of the world a meer sending God some scraps of the leavings of carnal self If the flesh be full or have enough then God shall have the cruâ—â— that fall from its Table or at most so much as it card â—are but till the flesh have done and be satisfied Gâ—â— Gâ—â—st stay even for these scarps and crums and if theâ—… but say I want it my self or have use for it my self they think it a sufficient answer to all demands One may see by the irregularity of the motions of the world the confusions and crossings and mutabilities and contradictions the doing and undoing again the differences and fierce contendings that it is not God but self that is the End and Principle of the motions Nay most men are so dead to God and alive only to themselves that they know not what we mean when we tell them and plainly tell them what it is to live to God and what it is to serve him in all their affairs and to eat and drink and do all things for his glory but they ask in their hearts as Pharaoh Who is the Lord that I should serve him And when they read these passages about self-denyal and about referring all to God they will not understand them for they are unacquainted with God and know no other God indeed but self though in name they do Nay it were well if self were kept out of the Church and out of the Ministers of the Gospel that must teach the world to deny themselves that it did not with too many choose their habitations and give them their call and limit them in their labours and direct them in the manner and measure It were well if some Ministers did not study for self and preach and dispute for self and live for self when they materially preach against self and teach men self-denyal And then for our People alas it rules their families it manageth their business it drives on their trades it comes to Church with them and fights within them against the word and perverteth their judgement and will let them relish nothing and receive nothing but what is consistent with selfish interest in a word it makes men ungodly it keeps thâ—m ungodly and it is their very ungodliness it self O we it not for carnal self how easily might we deal withâ—â—â—â—rts of sinners but this is it that overcometh us CHAP. IV. The Prevalency of Selfishness in all Relations BEside all the generals already mentioned it will not be amiss to give you some particular Instances of the power of selfishness and the rareness of self-denyal in the world that you may see what cause of lamentation is before us 1. How ready and speedy how effectual and diligent how constant and unwearied are they in the service of self and how slow and backward how remiss and negligent how unconstant and tired are they in the works that are meerly for God and their salvation Do I need to prove it to you You may as well call for proof whether there are men in the world I were best for instance begin next home Many Ministers think it a drudgery and a toil that God requireth at their hands to confer with every family in their Parishes and instruct them privately in
another mans case they could tell him that its better displease men than God and that its better venture a short life than an endless life and that it is little profit to win all the world and lose his own soul and that it is the wisest way to make sure work for eternity and not to venture on endless misery And they could consent that another should rather suffer than sin Why else do they commend the Martyrs for it And what is the reason of this strange partiality Why Self is the great Ruler and God hath but the name Self is partial in their own cause but not in another mans and therefore they can consent to his suffering without self-denial And hence comes the difference 15. Moreover when Offenders murmur at their punishment ask but the standers by and they are of another mind When the Ale-seller thinks he is wronged if he be put down ask but the poor women whose Husbands use to be drunk there and whose children lack meat and drink and clothes because the Alehouse devours that which should buy them and they will be quite of another judgment and think you love not God nor the Country if you will not suppress them 16. Also when you hear men extenuating their sin and excusing it put but the case as another mans and let them not understand that it is their own and you shall hear another judgment So Nathan came about David and put but a far lower case as anothers about the robbing a poor man of his only Sheep and he could presently say and swear As the Lord liveth the man that hath done this thing shall surely die because he had no pity and his anger was greatly kindled against the man 2 Sam. 12. 5 6. But why was he not as angry with himself for a greater sin O self had got the better in that grievous fall till grace broke his heart by true repentance So when Judah heard of Thamars fornication he commandeth Bring her out that she may be burnt Gen. 38. 24. But when he understood that it was by himself the case was altered 17. Let a man that his provoked by injuries and ill words have as bad by himself done or spoken against another and he can make but a small matter of them or think they should be easily put up or pardoned when yet the same words spoken against him do seem intolerable 18. Let a man speak with others in poverty sickness or any affliction and what good counsel can he give him to submit to God and take all patiently But let the suffering be his own and he cannot take the counsel that he gives 19. Nay more men are not only partial for themselves but for any that are neer themselves or that self is related to Let another mans Son or Servant do evil and you can be content that he be rebuked or corrected But if it be a Son or Kinsman or Servant of your Own the case is altered it s then a wrong to punish him because of his relation to you Let a Stranger do amiss and you can give way to Justice But if the Drunkard or Ale-seller or Swearer be your friend then he must be born with and forgiven and the justice must be intreated for him Let a scandalous or insufficient Minister or Schoolmaster be offered to any place If he be a Stranger you can be content that he be rejected but if he be a Kinsman or Child or Friend of yours what an alteration doth this make in the case then he must be born with or tried and you hope he will mend and his faults are made the least of his virtues more than indeed they are Nay any man that doth but love your selves and honour you and think highly of you shall have a favourabler construction for all his words and actions and intentions than one that you imagine is against you or hath low thoughts of you or is against your interest or your opinion Sirs I have run into abundance of instances but not a quarter so many as might be given and all is to meet with the turnings and windings of this Serpent self and to let you see if light it self can make you see against the blinding power of self how rare self-denial is in the the world and what a large Dominion self obtaineth I would here have added some more Discoveries as 6. From the excessive care and cost and labour that almost all the world is at for self and the little they are at for God or the good of others 7. The large proportion that is expended on self in comparison of God and others 8. The Zeal of men to vindicate self but the little Zeal for God or others 9. The rigorous Laws that are made in the cause of self Thieves and Traitors must die and the remissness of Law-givers in the cause of God Blasphemy Malignity and Impiety is not so roughly handled 10. The firmness of men to carnal self and their great mutability and unfaithfulness to God But I had rather omit somewhat than to be too tedious and therefore I go no further in these Discoveries save only to add a few of those Aggravations that shew you the extent of selfs Dominion as you have seen the sad discoveries of the reality of it CHAP. IX The great Power and prevalency of selfishness discovered ANd that you may see what cause we have for our Lamentation Consider the greatness of selfish Tyranny in these Particulars 1. Consider what a Power it is that self beareth down in the world The Commands of the God of heaven are overcome by it The promises of eternal life are trod under foot by it The threatnings of endless torments are nothing to it It casts by Heaven it ventures upon Hell It tramples upon the precious blood of Christ It will not hear the voice of wisdom it self Nor the voice of goodness and mercy it self It refuseth him that speaks from heaven Love it self is not lovely where self is Judge It quencheth all the motions of the Spirit it despiseth Ministers It turneth mercies into wantonness and sin Like Sampson it breaks all bonds that are laid on it and till it be weakned it self there is no holding no ruling no saving the soul that 's ruled by it 2. Consider also the exceeding Number of its Subjects Truly if there were no other proof that the sanctified and the saved are very few this one is so full and sad a proof that it tempteth me sometime to think them much fewer than willingly I would do Alas how few self-denying persons do you meet with in the world yea in the Church yea among the stricter Professors Look over all the world and see how few you can find at work for any one but for carnal self If you observe the Courts and see whose work is done most there and look into the Armies of the world and see who it is that ruleth there if you look
say were it not that these step in and cross self and hinder its designs you might fore-see in self-interest the changes that are made in humane affairs Consect 3 And so Potent and common is the Dominion of self that it may warrant an honest moderate incredulity and jealousie of almost all men in cases where the interest of self is much concerned Let him be never so ingenuous let his parts and profession be never so promising let his former engagements to you be never so great let him be your own Brother yet be not too confident of him if his carnal self be concerned or engaged against you For you shall see by experience as long as you live that self will still bear Dominion in the most Consect 4. Above all every wise and godly man should herein maintain the greatest Jealousie of his own heart Keep the heart above all keepings and keep out self above all sins whatever Take heed of selfishness as ever you would be Christians and live as Christians and have the Peace of Christians And to that end be alwayes suspicious of every cause opinion controversie or practice where self is much concerned The very names of SELF and OWN should sound in a watchful Christians ears as very terrible wakening words that are next to the names of Sin and Satan and at least carry in them much cause of suspition And this hath led me up to the next Use of the Point CHAP. XI Use 2. To try our self-denial the sincerity of the least degree Use 2. Of Exhortation BEloved hearers I have now before me as great a sin and danger to deter you from even selfishness and its effects and as great a Duty to offer to your entertainment even self-denial as any save one that I am acquainnted with in the world The raising up the soul to God is indeed the greatest work But the mortifying of the flesh and the Denying of self is surely the next to it being a real part of the change You hear Ministers tell you of the odiousness and danger and sad effects of sin but of all the sins that ever you heard of there is scarce any more odious and dangerous than this and yet I doubt there are many that never were much troubled at it nor sensible of its malignity My principal request therefore to you is that as ever you would prove Christians indeed and be saved from sin and damnation that follows it take heed of this deadly sin of selfishness and be sure you be possessed with true self-denial and if you have it see that you use and live upon it And for your help herein I shall 1. Tell you how your self-denial must be tried and 2. How it must be exercised and 3. I shall give you some further Reasons to perswade you to it and 4. Some Directions for the procuring and strengthening it 1. The trial of your self-denial may be performed by the help of the Signs that have been given you before In the ten particulars mentioned in the beginning you may see what is selfishness and what is self-denial But for your further satisfaction I shall only tell you in a few words how the least measure of true self-denial may be known And in one word that is thus Wherever the Interest of Carnal self is stronger and more predominant habitually than the Interest of God of Christ of everlasting life there is no true self-denial or saving grace But where Gods Interest is the strongest there self-denial is sincere If you further ask me How this may be known Briefly thus 1. What is it that you Live for what is that Good which your mind is principally set to obtain and what is that End which you principally design and endeavour to obtain and which you set your heart on and lay out your hopes upon Is it the Pleasing and glorifying of God and the everlasting fruition of him Or is it the Pleasing of your fleshly mind in the fruition of any inferiour thing Know this and you may know whether Self or God have the greatest interest in you For that is your God which you Love most and Please best and would do most for 2. Which d◠you set most by the means of your Salvation and of the Glory of God or the Means of providing for Self and Flesh Do you set more by Christ and Holiness which are the way to God or by Riches Honour and Pleasures which gratifie the flesh Know this and you may know whether you have true Self-denial 3. If you are truly self-denying you are ordinarily Ruled by God and his word and spirit and not by Carnal Self Which is the Rule and Master of your lives whose Word and Will is it ordinarily that prevails When God draws and self draws which do you follow in the tenor of your life Know this and you may know whether you have true Self-denial 4. If you have true Self-denial the drift of your lives is carried on in a successful opposition to carnal Self so that you not only refuse to be ruled by it and love it as your God but you fight against it and tread it down as your enemy So that you go armed against Self in the course of your lives and are striving against Self in every duty and as others think it then goes best with them when Self is highest and pleased best so you will know that it then goeth best with you when Self is lowest and most effectually subdued 5. If you have true Self-denial there is nothing in this world so dear to you but on deliberation you would leave it for God He that hath any thing which he loveth so well that he cannot spare it for God is a selfish and unsanctified wretch And therefore God hath still put men to it in the trial of their sincerity to part with that which was dearest to the flesh Abraham must be tried by parting with his only Son And Christ makes it his standing rule He that forsaketh not all that he hath cannot be my Disciple Luke 14. 33. Yet it is true that flesh and blood may make much resistance in a gracious heart and many a striving thought there may be before with Abraham we can part with à Son or before we can part with wealth or life But yet on deliberation self-denial will prevail and there is nothing so dear to a gracious soul which he cannot spare at the will of God and the hope of everlasting life If with Peter we should flinch in a temptation we should return with Peter in weeping bitterly and give Christ those lives that in a temptation we denied him For Habitually God is dearest to the soul 6. In a word true self-denial is procured by the Knowledge and Love of God advancing him in the soul to the debasing of self The illuminated soul is so much taken with the Glory and Goodness of the Lord that it carrieth him out of himself to God and as
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
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
sometime all is comprehended in the term world and selfishness in the word flesh the world being that harlot with which the flesh commits adultery So 1 Joh. 2. 15 16. Love not the world nor the things that are in the world If any man Love the world the Love of the Father is not in him For all that is in the world the Lust of the flesh the Lust of the eyes and the Pride of Life is not of the Father but is of the world and the world passeth away and the Lust thereof but he that doth th will of God abideth for ever To these three heads therefore we shall reduce all that we have to say of this matter I. The selfish fleshy Pleasure that must be denied consisteth in these particulars following which I shall but briefly touch because they are so many 1. One Principal part of Sensuality or Self-interest consisteth in meats and drinks to please the Appetite So far as these are taken to fit us for Gods service and used to his Glory so far they are sanctified as before was said but when they are meerly to please the appetite they are offered to an enemy and are the fuel of lust Do you see any thing that your Appetite desireth whether meats or drinks whether for quality or quantity Take it not touch it not meerly upon that account but enquire whether it tend to the strengthning and fitting your bodies or minds for the service of God and if so take it if not let alone If your appetite had rather have Wine than Beer or strong Beer than small take it not meerly upon that account If your appetite would fain have one cup more when nature hath as much as is profitable deny that appetite If your appetite would fain be tasting of any thing that is not for your health deny that appetite If it would fain have one bit more when you have as much before as is wholesom or useful to you deny that appetite Or else you are guilty of flesh pleasing and plain Gluttony Quest But is it not lawful at a feast to taste of another dish or eat another bit when I think that nature needs no more what perplexities then will you cast men into to know just how many morsels they may eat Answ It is gluttony and no beter to take the creatures of God in vain and sacrifice them to a devouring throat which should be used only for his service That which is a mans ultimate end is his God What would you have plainer than express words of Scripture that tell you that whether you eat or drink it must be all to the glory of God 1 Cor. 10. 31. and that the fleshly do make their bellies their Gods Phil. 3. 18. And therefore when you have taken as much as suiteth with your end the service and glory of God you must not take more for another end the pleasing of your fleshly desires But for the scruples that you mention about the just proportion we need not be disquieted with them For God hath given us sufficient means to direct us to know what is for our good and what is superfluous and it is our duty in an even and constant way to use our Reason and keep as near the due proportion as we can and when we know that this is our desire and endeavour it were a sin against God to trouble our selves with continual or causless scruples or fears lest we do exceed or miss the rule For what can we do more than go according to the best skill we have and if for want of skill we should a little mistake it is pardoned with the rest of our daily infirmities and to trouble and distract our selves with causeless fears would more unfit us for Gods service than some degree of mistake in the proportion would do and so would be as great a sin as that which we feared And therefore our way is quietly and comfortably without distracting fears or scruples to do our best and use our prudence with self-denial and remember that we have to do with a Father that knows the flesh is weak when the spirit is willing But yet wilfully to cast away one cup or one morsel on the pleasing of our appetites when it no way fits us for the service of God and will do us no other good this is not self-denial but sensuality Quest But nature knows best what 's good for it self and therefore that which it desireth is to be judged best A Beast liveth as healthfully as a man that obeyeth his appetite only Is it not lawful to take either meat or drink on this account that the Appetite is pleased with it Answ 1. Some Beasts would presently kill themselves in pleasing their appetites if man that is Rational did not rule restrain and moderate them A Swine will burst himself with whey in half an hour A Beast in new after-grass will surfeit if he be suffered No Beast knows poyson from food but would soon perish by it in obeying his appetite 2. And yet as a Bâ—â—st hath no Reason so he is better provided to live without Reason than man is His appetite is not so corrupted by sin as ours is Original sin hath depraved and enraged our appetites And if man had not more use for his reason than a Beast even in ordering his natural actions God would not have given him reason to rule his appetite and commanded him to use it herein And who knows not that if a man did follow his appetite alone as Beasts do he were like to murder himself the next day or week or at least in a very little space The appetite would presently carry us to that for quality or quantity or both that would cast us into mortal diseases and soon make an end of us And in those diseases the pleasing it usually would be certain death And indeed this is a beastly doctrine that man that hath reason to rule his sensual inclinations should lay it by and please his appetite without it like a brute what more do all Gluttons Drunkards and Whoremongers but follow ther fleshly desires And if the desires of the flesh might be followed who would not be such as they in some measure That which is no sin in a Beast is a hainous sin in a man because man hath reason to rule his appetite and a Beast hath none and therefore is not capable of sin And for the body it 's certain that most of the diseases in the world are bred and fed by the pleasing of the appetite and I think that there 's few that are laid in their graves but this was the cause of it though the ignorant know it not and the sensual are loth to believe it And for the question whether we may not take any meat or drink purposely to please the appetite I answer yes as a means to fit us for duty but not as your chief end 1. Sometimes especially in weak bodies the
of so many thousands as Prosperity hath undone and by so many dreadful Passages of Scripture which shew the danger of it and see that if you prosper in any worldly thing you offer it all to God and Deny your selves and prosper not to the flesh CHAP. XXIX Children and Relations how to be denied 12. ANother selfish interest is in friends and children and other near and dear Relations and this is also to be denied Not that you should imitate those unnatural Hereticks that tell us that Fathers and Mothers and Brethren and Sisters and Husbands Princes Wives and Subjects are all Carnal Relations that must be disowned any further than Justice binds us to a retribution to parents or others that have been at pains or cost upon us No this is worse than heathenish impiety and not only against the fifth Commandment but abundance of the plainest passages through the Scripture To be without natural affection and disobedient to parents is part of the Character of those impious professors of whom Paul prophesied 2 Tim. 3. 2 3. If Christian servants have Heathens to their Masters they must not therefore cast off the yoak but count them worthy of all honour that the name of God and his doctrine be not blasphemed And if they have believing Masters they must not despise them because they are brethren but the rather do them service because they are faithful This is the doctrine of the Gospel which stablisheth and not dissolveth our Relations and if any teach otherwise he is proud knowing nothing but doating about questions and strifes of words 1 Tim. 6. 1 2 3 4. Believing wives must stay even with unbelieving husbands and win them to Christ by an eminent subjection chastity modesty and piety 1 Pet. 3. 1 2 3 4 6. 1 Cor. 7. 13 14. And the like may be said of other relations God calls us not as Popish votaries conceive to renounce and separate from our natural or other near relations on pretence of being devoted to him The words of Paul 2 Cor. 5. 16. are abused by them It 's true we must know no man after the flesh no not Christ himself that is as esteeming them principally for carnal excellencies as personage greatness birth c. or to carnal advantages and ends or preferring the body and common relations before the inward spiritual worth and spiritual relations And thus we must not know either parents or children or husbands or wives after the flesh nor should a Christian know or do any thing after the flesh as a Carnal man but yet as we still continue our Relation to Christ as his Disciples and Servants and Members and Redeemed ones for all that we know him not after the flesh so must we continue our Relations to others and be faithful in the duties of those Relations and this after the Spirit and for God So that by this you may see that it is our Relations carnally considered that are the fleshly interest which we must not know that is As they are look'd upon as any part of that self or of the Interest of that self which would be its own End and God and which is opposite to God or not subordinate to him To look upon your children more as yours than as God's is a carnal selfish thought To love them inordinately and more because they are your own than because they are Gods and to love your own interest in your children more than Gods interest in them is a selfish regarding them after the flesh Grace doth not destroy nature nor natural Relations or affections but it sanctifieth them all to God and carrieth us above it and destroyeth it as glorious intuition destroyeth gracious knowing in part that is by perfecting it Before Sanctification we know esteem regard and love our parents children husbands wives meerly as thus related to us and in these Carnal respects and rise no higher and if we had converst with Christ himself and eat and drank in his presence and loved him accordingly it would have been but by a selfish carnal knowledge esteem and love But now we are sanctified as God is exalted and self denied and annihilated as opposed or separated from God so are all things that belong to self And therefore if we had loved parents or Christ himself but with such a carnal selfish love before yet now we love them with higher love that carrieth self and all to God And thus even self is so destroyed as opposite to God and separate from him as thereby to be exalted as united and subservient to him And so is the love of friends Relations or Christ himself if we had loved him as a natural Kinsman or brother as some did that yet believed not in him it 's destroyed but by an exalting perfecting destruction Just so far as self is dead so far Carnal knowledge and self-interest in friends is dead and their dearness to us for that interest and self and they are all advanced and dedicated unto God And thus it is that the Apostle would be understood and thus it is that self must be denied in your Relations but because much duty consisteth herein I shall moreover tell you the several parts of it in a few Directions which shall mostly extend to other Relations but principally to parents because they are aptest to exceed 1. See that it be God more than your selves that you love in your Children and other Relations And to that End see what of God is in them as they are his creatures as devoted to him as any way gifted by him for his service and as sanctified if they are such He that loveth any creature for it self and doth not principally love God in them loveth them but carnally 2. See therefore that you value and love those most that have most of God in them and the best of his endowments Love a crooked deformed child that is Godly better than the most comely or beautiful or witty that is ungodly When Parents have a humorous unreasonable love to one child above the rest without desert or to a worse before a better this is but a carnal selfish Love 3. Love none excessively but with a moderate love such as shall allow God and holiness the preheminence so that when you have the most love for your Relations you may have more for God at least in the Estimation Resolution Adhesion of your souls to him if not in the passionate part of Love 4. See that you subject them to the Government of Christ Labour to win all other relations to him and devote your children to him betimes that they may be his as soon as yours Whiles they have no wills of their own to use they are to choose with your wills that is you are to make choice for them And therefore if you unfeignedly Dedicate them to God you have small reason to doubt of his acceptance This all parents do virtually that are Godly For he that is himself devoted
Heresies and Church-divisions as any Sensualist hath in his way And hence it is that a zeal for selfish opinions is easily got and easily maintained when zeal for the saving truths of God is hardly kindled and hardly kept alive Yea multitudes in the world do make the very truth to be the matter of their carnal interest in it while they some way get a seeming peculiar interest and promote it but as an opinion of their own or of their party and use it for selfish carnal ends And hence it is that many that are called Orthodox can easily get and keep a burning zeal for their Orthodox opinions when Practical Christians do find it a very hard matter to be zealous for the same truths in a Practical way Many ungodly men will be hot in Disputing for the truth and crying down all that are against it and perhaps so far exceed their bounds that the godly dare not follow them And the reason is clear Whether it be Truth or Error that a man holds if he hold it but as a conceit of his Own or as the opinion of his party or to be noted in the world as one that hath found out more truth than others or any way make it but the matter of his selfish interest nature and corruption will furnish him with a zeal for it It 's easie to go where sin and Satan drives and to be zelous where zeal hath so small resistance and to swim down the stream of corrupted nature But it is not so easie to be zealous in the practical saving entertainment of the truth and exercising that faith and love to God and holy obedience which truth is sent to work in us A schismatical or Opinionative use of truth it self is but an using it for self against the God of truth and it is no more wonder to see men zealous in this than to see men forward and hot in any evil We cannot tell how to quench or restrain this selfish carnal kind of zeal But when men should use the truth for God and their salvation against Satan and sin and self then it 's hard to make them zealous They are like green wood or wet fuel on the fire that will not burn without much blowing and soon goeth out when it seemed to be kindled if once you leave it to it self Paul spoke not non-sense when he said For ye are yet Carnal for whereas there is among you envying and strife and divisions are ye not carnal and walk as men For while one saith I am of Paul and another I am of Apollo are ye not Carnal 1 Cor. 3. 3 4 5. How secretly soever it may lurk there is doubtless much of self and flesh in Heresies and unjust Divisions I know that most of them little perceive it James and John in their zeal which would have called for fire from heaven did not know what spirit they were of But God would not have spoke it if it were not true Rom. 16. 17. Now I beseech you brethren mark them which cause Divisions and offences contrary to the Doctrine which ye have learned and avoid them For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple Though they little believe that that there is any such wickedness in them as this yet the Spirit of God that is the searcher of hearts is acquainted with it and assureth us that both at the bottom and the End Church-dividing courses have a carnal selfish nature It is some secret interest of self though scarce discerned that kindleth the zeal and carrieth on the work It is not God that is served by the divisions of his Church Many Sects now among us do put a face of Truth and Zeal upon their cause But self is the more dangerously powerful with them by how much the less suspected or observed The Papists under the pretence of the Churches Union are the great dividers of the Christian world unchurching the far greatest part of the Church and separating from all that be not Subjects of the Pope of Rome And do you think it is self and flesh that is the Principle and Life and End of this their Schism were it not for the upholding of this usurped power and worldly immunities and greatness of the Clergy it is morally impossible that so many men of reason and learning could concur in such a schism and in so many gross conceits as go along with it It is not the Pope that they are principally united in For the far greatest part of them it it too evident that it is selfish and fleshly interest that is their Center to which the Pope is but a means Hence it is that many of their Jesuits and Fryars are carried abroad the world with such a fire of zeal to promote their cause that they will compass sea and land for it and day and night are busie at the work to plot and contrive and insinuate and deceive and think no cost or pains too great For a selfish sinful zeal and diligence hath so many friends and so little hindrance that it 's easily maintained but so is not the healing peaceable practical and holy zeal of true believers Well! Consider what I say to you from the Word of the Lord There is a selfish dividing Zeal in Religion which must be denied as well as whoredom or drunkenness If you ask me how it 's known Briefly now I shallonly tell you this much of it 1. That it is usually for either an Error or a particular Truth against the interest and advantage of the body of unquestionable Christian verities They can let Religion suffer by it so their opinion do but thrive 2. It is usually for an Opinion by reason of some special endearment or interest of their own in it 3. They cry up that opinion with a zeal and diligence much exceeding that which they bestow upon other opinions of equal weight and lay a greater stress upon it than any shew of reason will allow them 4. They usually are zealous for a party and division against the Unity of the Catholick Church 5. Their Zeal is most commonly turned against the faithful Pastors of the Church For it 's hard to keep in with schism and with faithful Pastors too And if the Ministers will not own their sin and error they will disown the Ministers The Anabaptists and other Sects of late would never have been so much against Christ's Ministers if the Ministers had not been against their way 6. Their course doth in the conclusion bring down Religion and hinder the thriving of the Gospel and of Godliness Mark what is the issue of most of those ways that these men are so hot for Doth it go better or worse with the Church and cause of Christ in general where they are than it did before Is Religion in more strength and beauty and life and honour or doth real
quiet the mind when it cannot abate the pain of the body and must use to submit to a lesser evil to avoid a greater or to obtain a greater good than it depriveth us of Paul and Silas could sing with their bodies sore and their feet in the stocks To be joyful in tribulation should be no strange matter to a Saint much more with a patient submission to undergo it We may not thrust our selves into the fire nor choose suffering without a call but we must suffer rather than sin and choose the wounds and hurts of the body before the wounds and losses of the soul But because flesh and blood will draw back and make too great a matter of sufferings I shall briefly give you ten Considerations that may perswade you herein to deny your selves and in two cases I desire you to make use of them First in case you have no way to escape suffering but by sinning then deny your selves and choose to suffer Secondly in case of Gods afflictions which unavoidably lie upon you then deny your selves by a quiet and patient submission And for both consider 1. That is the best condition for us in which we may be most serviceable to God And if we suffer for Righteousness we may serve God as well in such suffering as in a prosperous state Or if God himself afflict us we may serve him in our affliction Our patience then is the service that we are called to The sufferings of the Saints have done very much to the promoting of the Gospel and building of the Church Men will see that there is somewhat worth the suffering for in the Christian Religion and see that Heaven is taken by believers for a certain thing when they can let go earth for it They will be moved to enquire what it is that moves you to such constancy and patience And why should we not be willing of that condition in which we do our Master the best service what ever the doing of it shall cost us The commodity of our end is the chiefest commodity 2. That is the best condition for us in which we may have most of God But certainly we may have as much and usually more of God in suffering especially for his cause than we can have in prosperity especially when we sin to escape these sufferings Is it bodily ease or God that you set most by It will be seen by your choice If you prefer your ease before him you must expect to have no better than you choose If you prefer him before your ease and prosperity you must be gladder of God with adversity and pain than of prosperity and ease without him A beast hath health and ease as well as you and yet you will not think him as happy If you are tormented or lose your health for Christ you lose nothing but what a Turk or Infidel hath yea but what a beast hath as well as you But you may have that of God by the advantage of your suffering that none but Saints have And God's presence can make a suffering state as sweet as a prosperous And he hath given you ground in his promises to expect it Isa 43. 1 2 3. When thou passest through the fire I will be with thee 1 Cor. 10. 13. There hath no temptation taken you but what is common to man but God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that your able but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that you may be able to bear it 1 Pet. 4. 14. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ happy are ye for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you On their part he is evil spoken of but on your part he is glorified ver 16. If any man suffer as a Christian let him not be ashamed but let him glorifie God on this behalf What is the Scripture fuller of than comforting promises to the sufferers for Christ To fly from such sufferings then is but to fly from the presence of God and our own consolations 3. At least these sufferings further our sanctification and make us better And is not that our best condition that makes us best Common experience as well as Scripture may satisfie us that a suffering state doth very much further humiliation and mortification and bring men to a deeper sense of sin help all the truths of God to work and make them more sensible and serious than in prosperity Then we do not only hear but feel that sin is evil and that the world is vain and that the threatnings of God are true Why Christian if thou didst but know that thou shouldst have more of the spirit and its graces and less of sin in a suffering estate than in ease and plenty wouldst thou not even choose it and be glad of it Is not sin worse than suffering to thee and holiness better than ease and peace Alas what senseless careless persons should we be if it were not for the help of suffering Grace useth to work by means and this is the common means 4. Consider that pain and suffering we shall have whether for Christ or not The worst men undergo almost as much by ordinary sicknesses and losses and crosses as the Martyrs do that suffer for Christ sin will bring suffering and it 's better have that which is sanctified by the interest of Christ than that which is not 5. And a Christian that hath so much ado to curb and rule the flesh in prosperity me thinks should the more patiently bear adversity because God sets in by it and helps him to subdue the flesh and tame the body and bring it in subjection And as it is but this burdensome flesh that suffereth which hath been the cause of so much suffering to our minds so our warfare against this flesh which we mannage through the course of our lives goes on more prosperously in the time of its sufferings than in prosperity A weakned enemy is easilier conquered Do not therefore too much take part with the suffering flesh but self-denyingly justifie the proceedings of the Lord. 6. And consider that the pains and suffering will be but short It is but a little while and you shall feel no more than if you had felt nothing And that which shortly will not be is next to that which is not As it makes all the pleasures and glory of the world to be a dream and next to nothing because it 's but a while and they are gone and never return again So it makes our sufferings next to nothing that they are passing away and almost over And then all tears will be wiped from your eyes and pain will be forgotten or remembred only to encrease your joy When you are past the brunt and safe with Christ you will never repent of your sufferings on earth nor will it trouble you then to think of the shame or sickness or pain and torment that here you were put
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
and wasteth comfort and grieveth the spirit of Adoption by which you are sealed to the day of Redemption and by which you have your peace and comforts If by such sin your souls are clouded and estranged from God be diligent in seeking for healing and reconciliation and rest not till your peace be made with God For while you think of him as displeased you will be afraid of coming to him and this will double the fears of Death Direct 3. Deny your selves first in the carnal and worldly comforts of this life or else you are unlikely to deny your selves in the matter of Life it self Disuse your selves from unnecessary pleasures of the flesh And learn to endure dishonour contempt and reproach from the world and sickness and poverty when it 's inflicted on you by the hand of God Till you can deny your ease and profit and appetite and honour and all the delight of this present world you are never likely to deny your lives sincerely To deny your lives doth contain the denying of all these and more and therefore you must learn the lesser if you would do the greater These are the parts of life as it were and it 's easier thus to overcome it in its parts than in the whole when particular Souldiers are destroyed the Army is the weaker And the use of suffering the Afflictions of this life will make you hardy and make death seem a smaller matter For when you thus Die Daily you will the more easily die once Besides Death is half disarmed when the Pleasures Interests of the flesh are first denied For the leaving of fleshly contents and pleasures is much of the reason of mens unwillingness to die And therefore when these are denied before-hand the Reasons of your unwillingness are taken away If you pull down the Nest the Birds will be gone Men that are loth to leave their Country would willingly be gone if their houses were fired or they were turned out of doors and their friends and goods were all sent away This is it that makes men so unwilling to die because they practise not Mortification in their health but contrarily study to live as Pleasingly as may be to the flesh and think it part of their Christian Liberty thus making Christ a carnal Saviour as the Jews conceive of their expected Messiah and taking up with a carnal false salvation not purchased by Christ but given by Satan in the name of Christ and assumed by themselves They make it their business to have buildings and lands and meats and drinks and honours and all things as pleasing as may be to the flesh and then they complain that they are unwilling to die and I easily believe him it is no wonder They make it the work of their lives to feather their nests and make Provision for the flesh and then complain that they are loth to leave those nests that they have been feathering so long and loth to scatter all the heap and treasure which they have been gathering And did you think that gathering it was the way to make you willing to leave it Men load themselves with the lumber and baggage of the world and then complain that they cannot travel on their journey but had rather sit down They fall a building them habitations in their way when they should have none but Inns or Tents and when they have bestowed all their time and cost and charges on them they complain of their hearts for being loth to leave them Such mad doings as these are not the way to be willing to die To provide for self and flesh in your Life-time is not the way to Deny your Lives Sirs the way is this if you will learn it and stick not at the cost and trouble Self must be here stript naked of all its carnal comforts so that it shall have nothing left o fly to or trust upon nor nothing lest tâ—at it can take delight in then it will away If you would drive ouâ—â—n ill Tenant you will cast out all their goods and leave them nothing but the bare walls and not so much as a bed to lie on and uncover the house over their heads and then they will be gone So if you cast out all your sensual commodities and delights that when the flesh looks about it shall see nothing but the bare walls and cannot find a resting place then death will be less grievous and less unwelcome Or rather indeed even the flesh and self must be mortified and in the sense in which it must be denied it must have no being or life that is as it is withdrawn from its subordination to God And then there will be nothing to rise up against your submission to Death Though nature as nature will keep you from Loving death as death yet were but self-denial perfect there would be nothing to keep you from submitting to it and desiring to pass through it to immortality O that you would but try such a self-denying life and you would certainly die an easie comfortable Death Direct 4. Suffer not unworthy thoughts of God to abide in your soul Think not of his Infinite Love and Goodness with doubtfulness or diminution You will never be willing to come to God while you think of him as cruel or as a despiser of his creatures or unwilling to do Good But when once you think of him as the surest greatest Good and your fastest friend and the most lovely object that can be conceived of and these thoughts are deep and wrought into the very nature of your soul then you will be ready more chearfully to die No man can love the presence of a tyrant or an enemy or of him that is so far above him that there is no communion with him to be had If you entertain such blasphemous thoughts of God you are unlikely ever to desire his presence See you think as honourably and magnificently of the Goodness and Love of God as you do of his Knowledge or his Power and as you would abhor any extenuating conceptions of the one so do of the other And then the Loveliness and glory of his face will draw out your desires and make you long to be with God Direct 5. And by such means as this aforesaid Labour to bring up your souls to live in the Love of God It is love that is the Divine and heavenly nature in us and therefore must needs incline us heaven-wards The nature of love is to long after communion with him that we love The more Love the more of God in the soul and the more desire after God This is the grace that must live for ever and therefore bendeth towards the place of its perfection It 's want of Love to God that maketh most of us so contented to be from him Strengthen and exercise all other graces as far as in you lieth but above all live in the exercise of this enjoying heavenly grace Direct 6. Consider of all
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
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