mind and in the same judgement Phil. 2 1 2 3 4. If there be any consolation in Christ if any comfort of love if any fellowship of the Spirit if any bowels and mercies fulfill ye my joy that ye be like minded having the same Love being of one accord of one mind Let nothing be done through strife or vain glory but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves Look not every man on his own things but every man also on the things of others Ephes. 1.2 3 4 5 6 7. I therefore the prisoner of the Lord beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called with all lowliness and meekness with long suffering forbearing one another in love endeavouring to keep the Vnity of the Spirit in the bond of peace There is one body and one spirit even as ye are called in one hope of your calling one Lord one Faith one Baptism one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all But unto every one of us is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ. Read also Ephes. 4.12 13 14 15 16. 1 Cor. 12. throughout He looketh at uncharitableness and divisions with more abhorrence than weak Christians do at drunkenness or whoredom or such other hainous sin He feareth such dreadfull warnings as Acts 20.29 30. For I know this that after my departing shall grievous Wolves enter in among you not sparing the flock Also of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things to draw away Disciples after them And he cannot slight such a vehement exhortation as Rom. 16.17 18. 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 Therefore he is so far from being a divider himself that when he seeth any one making divisions among Christians he looketh on him as on one that is flashing and mangling the body of his dearest friend or as on one that is setting fire on his house and therefore doth all that he can to quench it As knowing the confusion and calamity to which it tendeth He is of a Christian and therefore of a truly Catholick spirit that is He maketh not himself a member of a divided Party or a Sect He regardeth the interest and welfare of the body the universal Church above the interest or prosperity of any party whatsoever And he will do nothing for a party which is injurious to the whole or to the Christian cause The very names of Sects and Parties are displeasing to him And he could wish that there were no name but that of Christians among us save only the necessary names of the criminal such as that of the Nicolaitans Rev. 2.6.15 By which those that are to be avoided by Christians must be known Christianity is confined to so narrow a compass in the world that he is unwilling to contract it yet into a narrower The greatest party of divided Christians whether it be the Greeks or Papists is too small a body for him to take for the Catholick or Universal Church He admireth at the blindness and cruelty of faction that can make men damn all the rest of the Church for the interest of their proper sect and take all those as no Christians that are better Christians than themselves Especially the Papists who unchurch all the Church of Christ except their Sect and make it as necessary to salvation to be a subject of the Pope as to be a Christian and when by their great corruption and abuses of Christianity they have more need of charitable censures themselves than almost any sort of Christians yet are they the boldest condemners of all others The confirmed Christian can difference between the strong and weak the sound and unsound members of the Church without dismembring any and without unwarrantable separations from any He will worship God in the purest manner he can and locally joyn with those Assemblies where all things considered he may most honour God and receive most edification and will not sin for communion with any He will sufficiently difference between a holy orderly Assembly and a corrupt disordered one and between an able faithfull Pastor and an ignorant or worldly hireling And he desireth that the Pastors of the Church may make that due separation by the holy Discipline of Christ which may prevent the peoples disorderly separation But for all this he will not deny his presence upon just occasion to any Christian Congregation that worshipeth God in truth though with many modal imperfections so be it they impose no sin upon him as necessary to his communion with them Nor will he deny the spiritual communion of faith and Love to those that he holdeth not local communion with He knoweth that all our worship of God is sinfully imperfect and that it is a dividing principle to hold that we may joyn with none that worship God in a faulty manner for then we must joyn with none on earth He knoweth that his presence in the worship of God is no sign of his approbation of all the failings of Pastors or people in their personal or modal imperfections as long as he joyneth not in a worship so corrupt as to be it self unacceptable to God While men who are all imperfect and corrupt are the worshippers the manner of their worship will be such as they in some degree imperfect and corrupt The solid Christian hath his eye upon all the Churches in the world in the determining of such questions He considereth what worship is offered to God in the Churches of the several parties of Christians the Greeks Armenians Abassines Lutherans c. as well as what is done in the Country where he liveth and he considereth whether God disown and reject the worship of almost all the Churches in the world or not For he dare no further reject them than God rejecteth them nor will he voluntarily separate from those Assemblies where the presence of Christ in his Spirit and acceptance yet remaineth And his fuller acquaintance with the gracious nature office and tenderness of Christ together with greater Love to his Brethren doth cause him in this to judge more gently than young censorious Christians do And his humble acquaintance with his own infirmities maketh him the more compassionate to others If he should think that God would reject all that order not and word not their prayers aright he would be afraid of being rejected himself who is still conscious of greater faultiness in his own prayers than a meer defect in words and order even of a great defectiveness in that faith and desire and love and zeal and reverence which should be manifested in prayer Though he be more apprehensive than others of the
man unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ that we henceforth be no more children tossed to and fro and carryed about with every wind of Doctrine by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lye in wait to deceive but speaking the truth in Love may grow up into him in all things which is the Head even Christ from whom the whole body fitly joyned together and compacted by that which every joynt supplyeth according to the effectual working in the measure of every part maketh increase of the body to the Edifying of it self in love Here you see the children are apt to be carryed into dividing parties And that they are aptest to be Proud and that way to miscarry see 1 Tim. 3.6 Not a novice or raw young Christian lest being lifted up with Pride he fall into the condemnation of the Devil And then followeth the effect Act. 20.30 Also of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things to draw away Disciples after them I would not have you groundlesly accuse any Christian with a charge of Pride But I must tell you that the childish Pride of apparel is a petty business in comparison of that Pride which many in sordid attire have manifested who in their ignorance do rage and foam out words of falshood and reproach against Christs Ministers and Servants as if they were all fools or impious in comparison of them speaking evil of that which they never understood The lifting up the Heart above the people of the Lord in the Pride of supposed Holiness is incomparably worse than Pride of Learning honour greatness wit or wealth Nay it hath oft been to me a matter of wonder to observe how little all those plain and urgent Texts of Scripture which cry down Division do work upon many of the younger Christians who yet are as quickly toucht as any with a Text that speaketh against prophaneness and lukewarmness In a word they are often of the temper of James and John when they would fain have had Christ have revenged himself on his opposers by fire from Heaven They know not what manner of Spirit they are of Luk. 9.55 They think verily that it is a holy zeal for God when it is the boiling of passion pride and selfishness They feel not the sense of such words as Christs Joh. 17.20 21 22 23 24. I pray also for them who shall believe on me through their word that they All may be one as thou Father art in me and I in thee that they also may be one in us that the World may believe that thou hast sent me c. 3. And as for the seeming Christians in this they are of several sorts When their carnal interest lyeth in complyance with the Major part and stronger side then no men do more cry up Vnity and Obedience what a noise do many thousand Papist-Prelates Jesuites and Fryers make with these two words throughout the world Vnity and Obedience unto them upon their terms do signifie Principally their worldly greatness wealth and power But if the Hypocrite be engaged in point of honour or other carnal interest on the suffering side or be out of hope of any advantage in the common rode then no man is so much for separation and singularity as he For he must needs be noted for some body in the world and this is the chief way that he findeth to accomplish it And so being lifted up with pride be falleth into the Condemnation of the Devil and becomes a firebrand in the Church LIII 1. A Christian indeed is not only zealous for the Unity and Concord of Believers but he seeketh it on the right terms and in the way that is fitest to attain it Vnity Peace and Concord are like Piety and Honesty things so unquestionably good that there are scarce any men of reason and common sobriety that ever were heard to oppose them Directly and for themselves And therefore all that are enemies to them are yet pretenders to them and oppose them 1. In their causes only 2. Or covertly and under some other name Every man would have Vnity Concord and Peace in his own way and upon his own terms But if the right terms had been understood and consented to as sufficient the Christian world had not lain so many hundred years in the sin and shame and ruines as it hath done And the cause of all is that Christians indeed that have clear confirmed judgements and strength of grace are very few and for number and strength unable to perswade or overrule the weak the passionate and the falsehearted worldly hypocritical multitude who bear down all the counsels and endeavours of the wise The judicious faithful Christian knoweth that there are three degrees or sorts of Christian Communion which have their several terms 1. The universal-universal-church Communion which all Christians as such must hold among themselves 2. Particular church-Church-communion which those that are conjoyned for personal Communion in Worship do hold under the same Pastors and among themselves 3. The extraordinary intimate communion that some Christians hold together who are bosome friends or are specially able and fit to be helpful and comfortable to each other The last concerneth not our present business we must hold Church-communion with many that are unfit to be our bosome friends and that have no eminency of parts or piety or any strong-perswading evidence of sincerity But the terms of Catholick Communion he knoweth are such as these 1. They must be such as were the terms of Church Communion in the dayes of the Apostles 2. They must be such as are plainly and certainly expressed in the holy Scriptures 3. And such as the Vniversal Church hath in some ages since been actually agreed in 4. And those points are likest to be such which all the differing parties of Christians are agreed in as Necessary to Communion to this day so we call not those Christians that deny the essentials of Christianity 5. Every man in the former ages of the Church was admitted to this Catholick church-Church-communion who in the Baptismal Vow or Covenant gave up himself to God the Father Son and Holy Ghost as his Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier his Owner Governour and Father renouncing the flesh the world and the Devil And more particularly as man hath an Vnderstanding a Will and an executive power which must all be sanctified to God so the Creed was the particular Rule for the Credenda or things to be Believed and the Lords Prayer for the Petenda or things to be Willed Loved and Desired and the Ten Commandments for the agenda or things to be done so that to Consent to these Rules particularly and to all the Holy Scriptures implicitly and generally was the thing then required to Catholick Communion The belief of the doctrine being necessary for the sanctifying of the heart and life the Belief of so much is of Necessity without which the Heart cannot be sanctified or
Physical passive Reception as Wood receiveth the Fire and as our Souls receive the Graces of the Spirit but it is a Moral Reception or Reputative which is Active and Metaphorical This will be better understood when the object is considered which is Christ Jesus the Lord To receive Christ as Christ or the Anointed Messias and as the Saviour and our Lord is to believe that he is such and to consent that he be such to us and to trust in him and resign our selves to him as such The Relation we do indeed Receive by a proper passive Reception I mean our Relation of being the Redeemed Members Subjects Disciples of this Christ. But the person of Christ we only Receive by such an active moral reputative Reception as a Servant by consent Receives a Master a Patient by Consent receives a Physitian a Wife by consent receives a Husband and a Schollar or Pupil by Consent receives a Teacher or Tutor or the Subjects by Consent receive a Sovereign So that it is the same thing that is called Receiving Jesus the Lord and believing in him as it is expounded Joh. 1.12 There are three great observable acts of Faith essential to it the first is Assent to the truth of the Gospel the second is Consent or Acceptance of Christ and Life as the offered good the third is Affiance in Christ for the accomplishing of the ends of his Office Now the word Faith doth most properly express the first act and the last and the word Receiving doth most properly express the middlemost but which ever term is used when it is Justifying Faith that is spoken of all three are intended or included By what hath been said you may discern whether you have Received Christ or not For your Faith may be known by these acts which are its parts 1. If you sincerely believe the Gospel to be true which must be with a belief so strong at least as that you are resolved to venture your happiness upon this belief and let go all for the hope that is set before you 2. If an offered Christ in his Relation as a full and perfect Saviour be heartily welcom to you If you consent to the Gospel offer and are but truly willing to be his and that he be yours in that Relation Faith is not only called a Receiving of Christ but is oft exprest by this term of Willing him And therefore the Promise is to Whosoever will Rev. 22.17 and the wicked are denyed a part in Christ because they will not have him reign over them Luke 19.27 or Will not come to him that they may have life Joh. 6.40 even because they would none of him Psal. 81.11 12. which is because they are not true Believers or Disciples of Christ. 3. If you thus by consent take Christ for your Saviour Teacher and Lord it must needs follow that you fiducially rely upon him or trust him to accomplish the ends of his Relations that you trust to him for deliverance from the guilt and power and punishment of sin and for quickning strengthening and preserving Grace and for everlasting life that you resign your selves up to him as his Disciples to learn of him with a confidence or trust that he will infallibly teach you the way to happiness And that you also give up your selves to him as his Subjects with a Trust that he will govern you in truth and Righteousness in order to your Salvation and will defend you from destroying enemies This much is of the very Being of Faith or the Receiving Christ Jesus the Lord And these parts are inseparable he that hath one in truth hath all Whenever we find in Scripture the Promise of Justification or Salvation made to us if we believe it is this believing and none but this that is intended It is not only believing in Christ as a Sacrifice or Priest that is the Faith which Justifyeth and believing in him as a Teacher or Lord that sanctifyeth the effects are not thus parcelled out to several essential parts of this same Faith but it is this one entire Faith in all these essential parts that is the undivided condition of all these benefits and in that way of a Condition of the free Promise it doth procure them So much for the meaning of the first words Receiving Christ Jesus the Lord I will be briefer about the next The second is walking in him which is no more but the living as Christians when once we are become Christians and using that Christ to the ends which we received him for when once we have received him Two things are necessary to such as we that have lost our way the first is to get into the right way and that is to get into Christ who is the way the other is to travel on when we are in it For it is not enough to bring us to our Journeyes end that we have found out the right way The next word to be explained is rooted Which doth not intimate that any are really planted into Christ without any rooting in him at all but by rooted is meant deeply rooted For the Roots increase under ground as well as the Tree above ground Rooting hath two ends and both are here implyed The first is for the Firmness of the Tree that blustring winds may not overturn it The second is for nutriment that it may receive that nourishment from the earth which may cause its preservation growth and fruitfulness This is the Rootedness of Christians in Christ that they may be confirmed in him against all assaults and may draw from him that nutriment that is necessary to their growth and fruit The next term is built up in him No house consisteth of a bare Foundation Five things are expresly contained in our being built up in him The first is that we are united or conjoyned to him as the building is on the Foundation The second is that we rest wholly on him as our support as the building doth on the Foundation The third is that we are also conjoyned one unto another and are become one spiritual building in the Lord. The fourth is that the Fabrick doth increase in bigness as the house doth by being built up so that it importeth our increase in Grace and the increase of the Church by us The fifth is the fitness of the building to its intended ends and use Till it be built up it is not fit for habitation And till Christians are built up God hath not that use of them to which he doth intend them The next term is stablished or confirmed in the Faith which signifyeth but that strengthening and fixing of us that may prevent our fall or shaking And it compriseth these two things First that we be soundly bottomed on Christ who is our Foundation And secondly that we be cemented and firmly joyned to each other And this comprehendeth their stability in the doctrine of Faith And therefore he addeth as ye have been taught to fortify
of the godly and especially of the Faithful guides of the Flocks Alas that so many of the children of the Church should become the scourges and troublers of the Church and should set their teeth so deep in the breasts that were drawn out for their nourishment If you were never drawn to do any thing to the reproach of the Church yet what a grief must it be to us to see so many of your selves miscarry Ah thinks a poor Minister What hopes had I once of these Professors and are they come to this O mark Sirs the Apostle's warning Heb. 13.9 Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines And his way of prevention is that the heart be established with Grace 9. Consider also that it is a dishonour to Christ that so many of his Family should be such weaklings so mutable and unsetled and unprofitable as you are I do not mean that it is any real dishonour to him for it all the World should forsake him they would dishonour themselves and not him with any competent Judg As it would dishonour the beholders more than the Sun if all the world should say that it is darkness But you are guilty of dishonouring him in the eyes of the misguided world O what a reproach it is to Godliness that so many Professors should be so ignorant and imprudent and so many so giddy and unconstant and so many that manifest so little of the glory of their holy Profession All the enemies of Christ without the Church are not capable of dishonouring him so much as you that bear his Name and wear his Livery While your Graces are weak your corruptions will be strong and all those corruptions will be the dishonour of your Profession Will it not break your hearts to hear the ungodly pointing at you as you pass by to say yonder goes a Covetous Professor or yonder goes a proud or a tipling or a contentious Professor If you have any love to God and sense of his dishonour methinks such sayings should touch you at the heart While you are weak and unconfirmed you will like children stumble at every stone and catch many a fall and yield to temptations which the stronger easily resist and then being scandalous all your faults by foolish men will be charged on your Religion If you do but speak an ill word of another or rail or deceive or over-reach in bargaining or fall into any scandalous Opinions or practice your Religion must bear all the blame with the World Ever since I can remember it hath been one of the principal hinderances of mens Conversion and strengtheners of the wicked in their way that the Godly were accounted a sort of peevish unpeaceable covetous proud self-seeking persons which was a slander as to many but too much occasioned by the scandalousness of some And methinks you should be afraid of that Wo from Christ Wo be to him by whom offence cometh If you be Children you may have the Wo of sharp castigations and if you be Hypocrites you shall have the Wo of overlasting sufferings The world can judg no farther than they see And when they see Professors of Holiness to be so like to common men and in some things worse than many of them what can you expect but that they despise Religion and judg of it by the Professors of it and say If this be their Religion let them keep it to themselves we are as well without it as they are with it And thus will the holy waies of God be vilified through you If you will not excel others in the beauty of your conversations that in this glass the World may see the beauty of your Religion you must expect that they should take it but for a common thing which bringeth forth but common fruits to their discerning You should be such that God may boast of and the Church may boast of to the face of the accuser then would you be an honour to the Church when God may say of you as he did of Job Hast thou considered my servant Job that there is none like him in the earth a perfect and an upright man one that feareth God and escheweth evil Job 1.8 If we could say so of you to the malignant enemies See what men the godly are there is none such among you men of Holiness Wisdome uprightness sobriety meekness patience peaceable and harmless living wholly to God as strangers on earth and Citizens of Heaven then you would be ornaments to your holy profession Were you such Christians as the old Christians were Act. 4. we might boast of you then to the reproaching adversaries 10. Moreover till you are confirmed and built up you may too easily be made the instruments of Satan to further his designs The weakness of your understandings and the strength of your passions and especially the interest that carnal Self hath remaining in you may lay you open to temptations and engage you in many a cause of Satan to take his part against the truth And how sad a case is this to any that have felt the love of Christ Have you been warmed with his wondrous love and washed with his blood and saved by his matchless mercy and may it not even break your hearts to think that after all this you should be drawn by Satan to wound your Lord to abuse his honour to resist his cause to hurt his Church and to confirm his enemies and gratify the Devil I tell you with shame and grief of heart that abundance of weak unsetled Professors that we hope have upright meanings in the main have been more powerful instruments for Satan to do his work by for the hindering of the Gospel the vilifying of the Ministry the dividing of the Church and the hindering of Reformation than most of the notoriously prophane have been What excellent hopes had we once in England of the flourishing of piety and happy union among the Churches and servants of Christ And who hath not only frustrated these hopes but almost broke them all to pieces Have any had more to do in it than weak unstable Professors of Religiousness What sad confusions are most parts of England in at this day by reason of the breaking of Churches into Sects and shreds and the contentions and reproaches of Christians against Christians and the odious abuse of holy truth and Ordinances And who is it that doth this so much as unstable Professors of Piety What greater reproach almost could have befallen us than for the adversary to stand by and see men pulling out each others Throats and hating and persecuting and reproaching one another and that our own hands should pull down the house of God and tear in pieces the miserable Churches while men are striving who shall be the Master of the Reformation O what a sport is this to the Devil when he can set his professed enemies by the ears and make them fall upon one another when if he have any
notable work to do against the Church and cause of Christ he can call out unstable Christians to do it If he would have Godliness be scandalized who hath he to do it but Professors of Godliness Some of them to give the scandal and others to aggravate and divulge it Would he have a Church divided how quickly doth he find a bone of contention and who should do it but the unstable Members of it Would he have the truth opposed and error and darkness to be promoted who must do it but Professors of the truth perswade some of them that truth is error and error is truth and the work will be done They will furiously march out against their Master and think they do him service while they are fighting against him and scorning and shaming if not killing his Servants Would he have publick divisions maintained among all the Churches of the World It is but possessing the weaker unstable Pastors and people with a perverse zeal for meer words and notions as if the life of the Church did therein consist and they will be the Devils instruments at a beck and carry it perhaps by the major vote and all that will not Word it as they shall be called Hereticks and the Church shall have new Articles added to their Faith under pretence of preserving and expounding the old ones And thus when Satan hath a work to do if Heathens and Infidels cannot do it it is no more but call out Christians to do it If Drunkards and malignant enemies cannot do it it is but calling out some unstable Professors of Godliness to do it and possessing the more injudicious part of the Pastors with some carnal ends or blind consuming zeal O Christians in the Name of God as you would avoid these devilish imployments labour for confirming strengthening Grace and rest not in your childish weakness and instability If you are delivered from Satan and have truly renounced him and tasted the great Salvation of Christ methinks you should even tremble to consider what a thing it would be if after all this you should prove through your weakness so serviceable to the Devil and so injurious to your dearest Lord what must those abuse him whom he hath Redeemed from damnation Must those hands be employed to demolish his Kingdom that were washed by him and should have built it up As if you were like Judas that even now hath his hand with his Master in the dish and presently lifts it up against him 11. Moreover while you are weaklings and unconfirmed you will exceedingly encourage the ungodly in their false hopes by being so like them as you are When they see that you excel them so little and in many things are as bad or worse than they it strongly perswadeth them that their state is as good as yours and that they may be saved as well as others seeing the difference seemeth to be so small They know that Heaven and Hell are much unlike and vastly distant and therefore they will hardly believe that they must be thrust into Hell when men that seem so little to differ from them must go to Heaven You would not believe how it hardeneth them in their sin when they see Professors do as bad and how it setleth them in presumption and impenitency to perceive your faults When a Minister hath laboured to make the sins of the ungodly odious to him and to break his heart with the terrors of the Lord O how it quieteth him and healeth all again to see the like sins or others as bad in the Professors of Religion If these saith he may be saved for all such and such sins what cause have I to fear O wretched unprofitable scandalous Professors when we have studied and Preach'd for mens Conversion many a year you go and undo all that we have done by the scandal or levity or imprudence of an hour When we have almost perswaded men to be Christians you unperswade them and turn them back again and do more harm by the weakness and scandal of your lives than many of us can do good by life and Doctrine When we have brought sinners even to the door of life you prove their enemies and take them out of our hands again and bring them back to their old captivity Doth it not pierce your very hearts to think on it that ever one soul much more so many should be shut out of glory and burn in everlasting misery and you should have a hand in it Consider of this and methinks you should desire confirming Grace 12. And methinks it should be very grievous to you to be so like to the ungodly your selves and that Satan should still have so much interest in you Holiness is Gods Image and doth it not grieve you that you are so little like him By his Graces he keeps possession of you and doth it not grieve you that God hath no more possession of you but that Satan and sin should so defraud him of his own Will he condescend to dwell in so low a worm so oft defiled with the dung of his iniquities and doth it not wound you to think that even there he should be so straitned and thrust into corners by a hellish enemy as if that simple habitation were too much for him and that dirty dwelling were too good for him I and as if you grudged him so much of the leavings of Satan that had taken up the beginning of your dayes in sin Your corruption is the very image of the Devil and doth it not affright you to think that you should be so like him You are charged not to be conformed to this World but to be transformed or metamorphosed by the renewing of your mind that ye may prove what is that good that acceptable and perfect will of God Rom. 12.2 And yet will you stop in a state so like to those that perish He that hath the least measure of saving Grace is likest to the children of the Devil of any man in the world that is not one of them Seek therefore to increase 13. And I beseech you consider that your excellency and the glory and lustre of your Graces is one of Gods appointed means for the honour of his Son and Gospel and Church and for the Conviction and Conversion of the unbelieving Word And therefore if you use not this means you rob God and the Church of that which is their due and deprive sinners of one of the means of their Salvation You are commanded to let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorifie your Father which is in heaven Matth. 5.16 Christians be awakened in the name of God to consider what you have to do with your Graces you have the living God to please and honour by them As the excellency of the work doth honour the Workman so must your Graces and lives honour God You have the Souls of the weak to confirm by your lives and
when you first believed How ill doth it become men to make any stand in the way to Heaven especially when they have been in the way so long that we might have expected before this they should have been as it were almost within sight of it 20. Consider also that Little Grace Little Glory and the greater measure of Holiness the greater measure will you have of Happiness I know that the glory of the lowest Saint in Heaven will be exceeding great but doubtless the greatest measure is unspeakably most desirable And as it will not stand with the truth of Grace for a man to be satisfied with a low degree of Grace though he plead the happiness of the lowest Christian and his own unworthiness of the least degree So at least it ill beseems an Heir of glory to desire but the lowest degree of glory though he plead the happiness of the lowest Saint in Heaven and his own unworthiness of the lowest place For he that will be so content with the smallest Glory as not to have hearty desires of more is accordingly content to have in himself the smallest measure of the knowledg and Love of God and to be Loved in the smallest measure by him and to have the least enjoyment of him and to bear the smallest part in his praises and in pleasing and glorifying him for ever For all these things are our happiness it self And how well this agreeth with a gracious frame of mind I need not any further tell you But because some make question of it whether the degree of glory will be answerable to the degree of Holiness I shall prove it in a few words 1. It is the very drift of the Parable of the Talents in Matth. 25. He that had gotten most by improvement was made Ruler proportionably over most Cities Not he that had been at the greatest bodily labour in Religion nor every one that had past the greatest sufferings but he that had got most holiness to himself and honour to God by the improvement of his Talents and so had doubled them 2. The degrees of Holiness hereafter will be divers as are the degrees of Holiness here for as men sow they will reap and there is no promise in Scripture that men that dye with the smallest Holiness shall be made equal to them that dyed with the greatest Holiness And that the greatest Holiness hereafter must have the greatest Happiness is past denyal For 1. Holiness in Heaven is an essential part of the felicity it self It is the perfection of the Soul 2. The use of it is for perfect fruition and perfect exercise of love and praise which are the other parts of glory And God will not give men powers capacities and dispositions in Heaven which shall be in vain as he giveth hungring and thirsting and Love so will he give proportionable satisfaction and not tantalize his Servants in their blessedness and leave a part of Hell in Heaven 3. And Holiness is pleasing to God in its own nature and therefore the greatest holiness will greatlyest please him and he that most pleaseth God hath the greatest Glory These things are plain 3. Moreover we have great reason to conceive of the stare of the glorified in some congruency with the rest of the workmanship of God But in all the rest there is a difference or imparity therefore we have reason to think it is so here On Earth there are Princes and Subjects in the Commonwealth and Pastors and People in the Churches and several degrees among the people as to gifts and comforts Among the Devils there are degrees and among Angels themselves there are Principalities and Powers and Thrones and Dominions And why then should we imagine that the Heavenly Hierusalem shall not be so too 4. And Christ plainly intimateth that there is a place on his right hand and his left to give in that Kingdom though as the Son of Man he had not the principal disposal of it And then the Kingdom must be delivered to the Father and God be all and in all and therefore the Mediator as such have somewhat less to do than now And when Christ telleth us of Lazarus in Abrahams bosome and of many from the East and West sitting down with Abraham Isaac and Jacob he intimateth to us that every place in Heaven is not so high as Abrahams bosome nor a sitting with Abraham Isaac and Jacob. So that I take it as a plain revealed truth that divers degrees of holiness will have divers degrees of Glory hereafter The chief Argument to the contrary is fetcht from the Parable of the Labourers that coming in at several hours received every one a penny But this is much misunderstood For here is not a word in it contrary to our Assertion The Parable only saith that Glory shall not be proportioned to the Time but they that come later shall have never the less for that Which is nothing to our question about the Degrees of Holiness For many that are first in Time may be least and last in Holiness and many that are last in Time may in that little time come to be best and greatest in Holiness and consequently in Glory The Parable in Matth. 25. shews that God will give different degrees of glory according to the difference in improvement of our Talents And the other Parable shews that he will not give out his Glory according to mens Time and standing in the Church seeing a weaker Christian may be of longer standing and a stronger of a later coming in And what shew of discord is there between these 2. And yet it 's doubt ul in the Judgment of good Expositors whether the Parable of the penny do speak of Heaven at all or not or whether it speak not only of the Vocation of the Gentiles and taking them into the Gospel Church in equality with the Believing Jews though the Jews being Gods ancient people had been longer in the Vineyard and the Gentiles were called but as at the eleventh hour yet God will make the Gentiles equal in the Grace of Vocation because in this he hath not engaged himself but may do with his own as he list Which ever of these two is the thing intended in the Text or possibly both it is certain that this general is the sum of the Parable That the first may be last and the last first that is That God will not give men the greatest reward that were first called but he never said that he would not reward them most that had done him the truest service and were highest in Holiness Object But the reason is May I not do as I will with my own True but you must remember what it is a reason of even of the Cause in question and may not by you be extended to other causes without a warrant You never read that he equally pardoneth the Believer and the unbeliever or saveth the Regenerate and unregenerate and then gives this reason of it
especially that differ from them in lesser things and how unapt to judg themselves O how few are the Christians that are eminent in humility meekness and self-denyal that are content to be accounted nothing so that Christ may be all and his honour may be secured that live as men devoted to God and honour him with their substance and freely expend yea study for advantages to improve all their riches and interest to his service How few are they that live as in heaven upon earth with the World under their feet and their hearts above with God their happiness that feel themselves to live in the workings and warmth of love to God and make him their delight and are content with his approbation whoever disapproveth them that are still groaning or reaching and seeking after him and long to be with him to be rid of sin and see his blessed face and live in his perfect love and praises that love and long for the appearance of Jesus Christ and can heartily say Come Lord Jesus come quickly How few are they that stand in a day of tryal If they are tryed but with a foul word if tryed but with any thing that toucheth their commodity if tryed but with the emptyest reasonings of deceivers much more if they beâ—â—yed with the honours and greatness of the World how few of them stand in tryal and do not fall and forget themselves as if they were not the men that they seemed to be before What then would they prove if they were tryed by the flames Mistake me not in all this sad complaint as I intend not the dishonour of Godliness by this but of ungodliness for it is not because men are godly that they have these faults but because they are not godly more So here is no encouragement to the unsanctifyed to think themselves as good as the more Religious because they are charged with so many faults Nor do I affirm all these things to be consistent with true Grace that I have here expressed But only this that Professors that seem godly to others are thus too many of them guilty and those that have true grace may have any of these faults in a mortified degree though not in a reigning predominant measure But methinks Sirs you should by this time be convinced and sensible how much we dishonour God by our infirmities and what a lamentable case it is that the Church should consist of so many infants and so many should be so little serviceable to God or the common good but rather be troublers of all about them Alas that we should reach no higher that yet no greater things should be attained O what an honour would you be to your Profession and what a blessing to the Church if you did but answer the cost and pains of God and man and answer the high things that you have been acquainted with and profess That we could but boast of you as God did of Job and could say to Satan or any of his instruments Here be Christians rooted and stablished in the Faith try whether you can shake them or make them stagger and do your worst Here is a man eminent in meekness and humility and patience and self-denial discompose and disturb his mind if you can draw him to pride or immoderate passion or censoriousness or uncharitableness if you can Here are a people that are in unity and knit together in Faith and Love of one heart and one soul and one lip do your worst to divide them or break them into parties or draw them into several minds and wayes or exasperate them against each other Here are a people established in Mortification and that have Crucified the Flesh with its affections and lusts Do your worst to draw them to intemperance in eating or drinking or recreations or any of the delights of the Flesh or to puff them up by greatness and prosperity and make them forget themselves or God Try them with Riches or beauty or vain-glory or other sensual delights and see whether they will turn aside and be ever the less in communion with God and enticed to forget the joy that is set before them or will not rather despise your baits and run away from assuring objects as their greatest dangers Daunt them if you can by threatnings Try them by Persecution by Fire and Sword and see whether they are not past your shaking even Rooted Confirmed and built up in Christ. O what a glory would you be to your Profession if you could attain to this degree Could we but truly thus boast of you we might say our people are Christians of the right strain But when we must come about you like men in a swoon and can hardly perceive whether you are alive or dead and can scarce discern whether you have any Grace or none what a grief is this to our hearts what a perplexity to us in our administrations not knowing whether comfort or terror be your due and what a languishing uncomfortable life is this to your selves in comparison of what you might attain to Rouze up your selves Christians and look after higher and greater things and think it not enough that you are barely alive It is an exceeding Righteousness that you must have if you will be saved even exceeding all that the unsanctifyed do attain For Except your Righteousness exceed even the Righteousness of Scribes and Pharises you shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven Matth. 5.20 But it is yet a more exceeding Righteousness that you must have if you will be Confirmed built up and abound and would honour your Profession and cheerfully successfully and constantly go on in the Journey the race the warfare that you have begun You must then exceed your selves and exceed all the feeble unstable wavering infant-Christians that are about you And to perswade you yet further to look after this I shall here annex a few Motives more 1. Consider Christian That it is a God of exceeding infinite greatness and goodness that thou hast to do with and therefore it is not small and low matters that are suitable to his service O if thou hadst but a glimpse of his Glory thou wouldst say that it is not common things that are meet for such a dreadful Majesty Hadst thou but a fuller taste of his Goodness thy heart would say This pittance of Love and Service is unworthy of him You will not offer the basest things to a King much less to the highest King of Kings If ye offer the blind for Sacrifice is it not evil and if ye offer the lame and sick is it not evil offer it now to thy Governour Will he be pleased with thee or accept thy person saith the Lord of Hosts Mal. 1.8 And verse 12 13 14. But ye have profaned it his great name in that ye say The Table of the Lord is polluted and the fruit thereof his meat is contemptible Ye have said also What a weariness is it
Wax when yet the Image on the Seal is perfect And therefore the World hath no just cause to censure God or Christ or the Spirit or the Word to be imperfect because that you are so But yet they will do it and their temptation is great O Sirs how would your Prince take it of you or how would your poorest friend take it of you if you should hang forth a deformed picture of them to the view of all that shall pass by and should represent them as blind or leprous or lame wanting a leg or an arm or an eye Would they not say that you unworthily exposed them to scorn So if you will take on you to be the living Images of God of Christ of the Spirit and the Word and yet will be blind and worldly and passionate and proud and untruly and obstinate or lazy and negligent and little differing from those that bear the Image of the Devil what do you but Proclaim that the Image of God and of Satan and the World do little differ and that God is thus unrighteous and unholy as you are 10. Lastly Consider That the faithful servants of Christ are few and therefore if those few dishonour him and prove not fast to him what do you but provoke him to forsake all the World and make an end of all the Sons of men It is but a little flock to whom he will give the Kingdom Luke 12.32 It is but a few from whom God expecteth any great matter And shall those few prove deceitful to him It must be you or none that must honour the Gospel You or none that must be exemplary to the World and shall it be none at all Shall all the Workmanship of God abuse him Shall he have no honour from any inferiour Creature How can you then expect that he should preserve the World For will he be at so much care to keep up a World to dishonour and abuse him If the turning of mens hearts prevent it not he would come and smite the earth with a Curse Mal. 4.6 For the Land that beareth Thorns and Bryars is rejected and is nigh unto Cursing whose end is to be burned Heb. 6.7 8. If therefore Israel play the Harlot yet let not Judah sin Hos. 4.15 If the Vessels of wrath prepared to destruction will be blind and sensual and filthy still yet let pollution be far from the sanctified Such were some of you but ye are washed ye are sanctified ye are justified 1 Cor. 6.11 O let the Lord be magnified in his Saints Blot not out his Image Receive not his impressions defectively and by the halves Let the Name of the most holy one be written in your very foreheads O that you would be so tender of the honour of the Lord and shine forth so brightly in Holyness and Righteousness that he that runs might read whose servants you are and know the Image Superscription of God upon the face of your conversations that as clearly as light is seen in and from the Sun and the power and wisdom and goodness of God is seen in the frame of the Creation and of Scripture so might the same shine forth in you that you might be Holy as God is Holy 1 Pet. 1.16 and perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect Matth. 5.48 that they that would know God may see him in his Saints where his Image is or should be so lively and discernable And they that cannot read and understand the Scripture or the works of Creation or disposing-Providence may read and understand the holy and heavenly representations of your lives Men are apt to look after Images of the Godhead because they are carnal and far from God O you that are appointed to bear his Image see that you so represent him to the eyes of the world as may be to his glory and not to his dishonour and take not the Name of God in vain It is so desirable for God and for the Church and for your own peace and happiness that Christians should grow up to a ripeness in Grace and be rooted built up confirmed and abound according to my Text that it hath drawn out from me all these words of exhortation thereunto Though one would think that to men of such holy Principles and experience it should be more than needs But if all will but serve to awaken the weak to a diligent progress I shall be glad and have my end The great matter that I intended when I began this discourse is yet behind and that is the giving you such Directions as may tend to your Confirmation and perseverance Which I shall now proceed to But I intreat every Reader that hath any spark of Grace in his Soul that he will resolve to put these Directions in practice and turn them not off with a bare perusal or approbation Let me reap but thus much fruit of all my foregoing Exhortations and I shall not think my labour lost XX. DIRECTIONS FOR CONFIRMATION In a state of Grace DIRECT I. Be sure that the Foundation be well laid both in your Heads and Hearts or else you can never attain to Confirmation nor be savingly built up TO this end you must know what the Foundation is and how it must be soundly laid The Foundation hath two parts or respects according to the faculties of the Soul where it must be laid The first is the Truth of the Doctrine and Matter and the second is the Goodness of it As True the Foundation is laid in our Understandings as Good it is laid in the Will Concerning both these we must therefore first consider of the matter of the Foundation and then of the Manner how that must be received or laid And the Foundation is that matter or object of our Faith and Hope and Love which is Essential to a Christian that is to the Christian saving Faith hope and love This hath been alwayes contained in our Baptism because Baptizing us is making us visible Christians or the solemn entrance into the state of Christianity As therefore we are Baptized into the name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost renouncing the Flesh the World and the Devil so the doing of this unfeignedly without equivocation according to the Scripture sense of the words is the Essence of Christianity or the right laying of the Foundation So that the Foundation-Principal or Fundamental Matter is God the Father Son and Holy Ghost The Secondary Foundation or Fundamental Doctrine is those Scripture Propositions that express our Faith in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost When we name the three persons as the object of the Christian Faith we express names of Relation which contain both the persons nature and Offices or undertaken works Without either of which God were not God and Christ were not Christ and the Holy Ghost were not in the sense of our Articles of Faith the Holy Ghost As we must therfore believe that there is One only God So we must
Mind and used by it And as interposed matter or defective application may cause the Image on the Wax to be imperfect though made by the most perfect Seal so is it in this case when one man doth defectively understand the Scripture-description of a godly man or Christian and another by misunderstanding mixeth false conceptions of his own and another by a corrupt depraved will doth hinder the understanding from believing or remembring or considering and using what it partly apprehendeth what wonder if the Godliness and Christianity in their hearts be unlike the Godliness and Christianity in the Scriptures When the Law of God in Nature and Scripture is pure and uncorrupt and the Law of God written imperfectly on the heart is there mixt with the carnal Law in their members no marvel if it be expressed accordingly in their lives I have therefore much endeavoured in all my writings and especially in this to draw out the full pourtraiture of a Christian or godly man indeed and to describe Gods Image on the soul of man in such a manner as tendeth to the just information of the Readers mind and the filling up of the wants and rectifying the errors which may be found in his former conceptions of it And I do purposely inculcate the same things oft in several writings as when I preached I did in all my Sermons that the Reader may find that I bring him not undigested needless novelties and that the frequent repetition of them may help to make the deeper and fuller impression For my work is to subserve the Holy Ghost in putting Gods Law into mens hearts and writing it out truly clearly and fully upon their inward parts that they may be made such themselves by understanding throughly what they must be and what a solid Christian is And that thus they may be born again by the incorruptible immortal seed the Word of God which will live and abide for ever and may purifie their souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit 1 Pet. 1.22 23 25. He is the best Lawyer Physician Souldier c. who hath his Doctrine in his brain and not only in his Books and hath digested his reading into an intellectual systeme and habit of knowledge If Ministers had an hundred times over repeated the integral pourtraiture or character of a sound Christian till it had been as familiar to the minds and memories of their hearers as is the description of a Magistrate a Physician a School-master a Husband-man a Shephered and such things as they are well acquainted with it would have been a powerfull means to make sound Christians But when mens minds conceive of a Christian as a man that differeth from Heathens and Infidels in nothing but holding the Christian Opinions and using different words and ceremonies of worship and such like no wonder if such be but opinionative lifeless Christians And if their Religion make them no better than a Seneca or Plutarch I shall never believe that they are any surer to be saved than they And such a sort of men there are that suppose Christianity to consist but of these three parts 1. The Christian Doctrine acknowledged which they call Faith 2. The Orders and Ordinances of the Christian Church and Worship submitted to and decently used which they call Godliness And 3. The heart and life of a Cato Cicero or Socrates adjoyned But all that goeth beyond this which is the Life of Christianity and Godliness a Lively Faith and Hope and Love a Heavenly and Holy mind and life from the renewing in dweling Spirit of God which is described in this Treatise they are strangers to it and take it to be but fansie and hypocrisie These No-Christians do much to reduce the Church to Infidelity that there may be indeed No Christians in the world For my part I must confess if there were no better Christians in the world than these I think I should be no Christian my self And if Christ made men no better than the Religion of Socrates Cato or Seneca and did no more to the reparation and perfecting of mens hearts and lives I should think no better of the Christian Religion than of theirs For the means is to be estimated by the End and Vse And that 's the best Physician that hath the Remedies which are fittest to work the cure If God had not acquainted me with a sort of men that have really more Holiness Mortification Spirituality Love to God and to one another and even to enemies and more heavenly desires expectations and delights than these men before described have it would have been a very great hinderance to my Faith The same may I say of those that place Godliness and Christianity only in holding strict opinions and in affected needless singularities and in the fluent Oratory and length of prayer and avoiding other mens forms and modes of worship and in any thing short of a Renewed Holy Heavenly heart and life And undoubtedly if a true full Character of Godliness had been imprinted in their minds we should never have seen the Professors of it so blotted with sensuality selfishness pride ambition worldliness distrust of God self-conceitedness heresie schism rebellions unquietness impatiency unmercifulness and cruelty to mens souls and bodies as we have seen them in this age and all this justified as consistent with Religion And I fear that because this Treatise will speak to few that are not some way guilty every face which hath a spot or blemish will be offended with the glass and lest the faulty will say that I particularly intended to disgrace them But I must here tell the Reader to prevent his misunderstanding that if he shall imagine that I have my eyes upon particular parties and as a discontented person do intend to blame those that differ from my self or to grieve inferiours or dishonour and asperse superiours they will mistake me and wrong themselves and me who professedly intend but the true Description of sound Christians diseased Christians and seeming Christians And for the manner of this writing I am conscious it hath but little to commend it The matter is that for which it is published The Lord Verulam in his Essayes truly saith that much reading makes one full much discourse doth make one ready and much writing doth make a man exact Though I have had my part of all these means yet being parted five years from my Books and three years from my Preaching the effects may decay and you must expect neither Quotations or Oratory Testimonies or ornament of stile But having not yet wholly ceased from Writing I may own so much of the exactness as will allow me to intreat the Reader not to use me as many have done who by over-looking some one word have made the sense another thing and have made it a crime to be exact in Writing because they cannot or will not be exact in Reading or charitable or humane in interpreting The Contents THE Characters of a strong
loveth him more for his Mercy to the Church and for that Goodness which consisteth in his Benignity to the Church But he Loveth him most of all for his Infinite perfections and essential excellencies His Infinite Power and Wisdom and Goodness simply in himself considered For he knoweth that Love to himself obligeth him to returns of Love especially differencing saving grace And he knoweth that the souls of millions are more worth incomparably then his own and that God may be much more honoured by them than by him alone And therefore he knoweth that the mercy to many is greater mercy and a greater demonstration of the goodness of God and therefore doth render him more amiable to man Rom. 9.3 And yet he knoweth that the Essential perfection and goodness of God as simply in himself and for himself is much more amiable than his Benignity to the creature And that he that is the first efficient must needs be the ultimate final cause of all things And that God is not finally for the creature but the creature for God for all that he needeth it not For of him and through him and to him are all things Rom. 11.36 And as he is Infinitely better than our selves so he is to be better Loved than our selves As I love a wise and vertuous person though he be one I never expect to receive any thing from and therefore Love him for his own sake and not for his benignity or usefulness to me So must I love God most for his essential perfections though his benignity also doth represent him amiable As he is blindly selfish that would not rather himself be annihilated or perish than whole Kingdoms should all perish or the Sun be taken out of the world because that which is best must he loved as best and therefore be best loved so is he more blind who in his estimative complacential Love preferreth not Infinite Eternal Goodness before such an imperfect silly creature as himself or all the world We are commanded to love our Neighbour as our selves when God is to be loved with all the heart and soul and might which therefore signifieth more than to love him as our selves or else he were to be loved no more than our Neighbour So that the strong Christian loveth God so much above himself as that he accounteth himself and all his interests as nothing in comparison of God yea and loveth himself more for God than for himself Though his own salvation be loved and desired by him and God must be loved for his mercy and benignity yet that salvation it self which he desireth is nothing else but the love of God Wherein his love is the final felicitating act and God is the final felicitating object and the felicity of loving is not first desired but the attractive object doth draw out our love and thereby make us consequentially happy in the injoying exercise thereof Thus God is All and in all to the soul. Psal. 73.25 Rom. 11.36 1 Cor. 10.31 Deut. 6.5 Mat. 23.37 Mat. 19.17 2. A weak Christian also loveth God as one that is infinitely better than himself and all things or else he did not love him at all as God But in the exercise he is so much in the minding of himself and so seldom and weak in the contemplation of Gods perfections that he feeleth more of his love to himself than unto God and feeleth more of his love to God as for the Benefits which he receiveth in and by himself than as for his own perfections yea and often feeleth the love of himself to work more strongly than his Love to the Church and all else in the world The care of his own salvation is the highest principle which he ordinarily perceiveth in any great strength in him and he is very little and weakly carried out to the Love of the whole Church and to the Love of God above himself Phil. 2.20 21 22. 1 Cor. 10.24 Jer. 45.5 3. A seeming Christian hath a common Love of God as he is Good both in himself and unto the world and unto him But this is not for his Holyness and it is but a general uneffectual approbation and praise of God which followeth a dead uneffectual belief But his chiefest predominant Love is always to his Carnal self and the Love both of his soul and of God is subjected to his fleshly self-love His chiefest Love to God is for prospering him in the world and such as is subservient to his sensuality pride coveteousness presumption and false hopes Luke 18.21 22. 1 Joh. 2.15.2 Tim. 3.2 4. Joh. 12.43 Joh. 5.42 VII 1. A Christian indeed doth practically take this Love of God and the holy expressions of it to be the very life and top of his Religion and the very life and beauty and pleasure of his soul He makes it his work in the world and loveth himself complacentially but so far as he findeth in himself the Love of God And so far as he findeth himself without it he loatheth himself as an unlovely carkass And so far as his prayers and obedience are without it he looks on them but as unacceptable loathsome things And therefore he is taken up in the study of Redemption because he can no where so clearly see the Love and Loveliness of God as in the face of a Redeemer even in the wonders of Love revealed in Christ. And he studieth them that Love may kindle Love And therefore he delighteth in the contemplating of Gods attributes and infinite perfections and in the beholding of him in the frame of the Creation and reading his name in the book of his works that his soul may by such steps be raised in Love and Admiration of his Maker And as it is a pleasant thing for the eyes to behold the sun or light so is it to the mind of the Christian indeed to be frequently and seriously contemplating the nature and glory of God And the exercise of Love in such contemplations is most of his daily walk with God And therefore it is also that he is more taken up in the exercises of thanksgiving and the Praises of the Almighty than in the lower parts of Godliness so that though he neglect not confession of sin and humiliation yet doth he use them but in subserviency to the Love and Praise of God He doth but rid out the filth that is undecent in a Heart that is to entertain its God He placeth not the chief part of his Religion in any outward duties nor in any lower preparatory acts Nor doth he stop in any of these however he neglect them not But he useth them all to advance his soul in the Love of God And useth them the more diligently because the Love of God to which they conduce as to their proper end is so high and exellent a work Therefore in Davids Psalms you find a heart delighting it self in the praises of God and in Love with his word and works in order
care for your state for all seek their own not the things which are Jesus Christs that is They too much seek their own and not entirely enough the things that are Christs which Timothy did naturally as if he had been born to it and Grace had made the Love of Christ and the souls of men and the good of others as naturall to him as the Love of himself Alas how lowdly do their own distempers and soul miscarriages and the divisions and calamities of the Church proclaim that the weaker sort of Christians have yet too much selfishness and that selfdenial is lamentably imperfect in them 3. But in the seeming Christian selfishness is still the predominant principle he loveth God but for himself and he never had any higher end than self All his Religion his opinions his practice is animated by self-love and governed by it even by the Love of carnal self self-esteem self-conceitedness self-love self-willedness self-seeking and self-saving are the constitution of his heart and life He will be of that opinion and way and party in Religion which selfishness directeth him to choose He will go no farther in Religion than self-interest and safety will allow him to go He can change his friend and turn his love into hatred and his praises into reproach when ever self-interest shall require it He can make himself believe and labour to make others believe that the wisest and holiest servants of God are erroneous homorous hypocrites and unsufferable if they do but stand cross to his opinions and interest For he judgeth of them and loveth or hateth them principally as they conform to his will and interest or as they are against it As the godly measure all persons and things by the will and interest of God so do all ungodly men esteem them as they stand in reference to themselves When their factious interest required it the Jews and specially the Pharisees could make themselves and others believe that the Son of God himself was a breaker of the Law and an enemy to Caesar and a blasphemer and unworthy to live on the earth And that Paul was a pestilent fellow and a mover of sedition among the people and a ringleader of a sect and a prophaner of the Temple Act. 24.5 6. and which of the Prophets and Apostles did they not persecute Because Christs doctrine doth cross the interest of selfish men therefore the world doth so generally rise up against it with indignation even as a Country will rise against an invading enemy For he cometh to take away that which is dearest to them As it is said of Luther that he medled with the Popes crown and the Fryars bellies and therefore no wonder if they swarmed all about his ears Selfishness is so generall and deeply rooted that except with a few self-denying Saints self-love and self-interest ruleth the world And if you would know how to please a graceless man serve but his carnal interest and you have done it Be of his opinion or take on you to be so applaud him admire him flatter him obey him promote his preferment honour and wealth be against his enemies in a word make him your God and sell your soul to gain his favour and so it 's possible you may gain it XVI 1. A Christian indeed hath so far mortified the flesh and brought all his senses and appetite into subjection to sanctified Reason as that there is no great rebellion or perturbation in his mind but a little matter a holy thought or a word from God doth presently rebuke and quiet his inordinate desires The flesh is as a well-broken and well-ridden horse that goeth on his journey obediently and quietly and not with striving and chasing and vexatious resisting Though still flesh will be flesh and will be weak and will fight against the spirit so that we cannot do all the good we would Isa. 5.17 Rom. 7.16 17 c. yet in the confirmed Christian it is so far tamed and subdued that its rebellion is much less and its resistance weaker and more easily overcome It causeth not any notable unevenness in his obedience nor blemishes in his life it is no other than consisteth with a readiness to obey the will of God Gal. 5.24 25. 1 Cor. 9.26 27. They that are Christs have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts thereof They run not as uncertainly they fight not as one that beateth the air but they keep under their bodies and bring them into subjection lest by any means they should be castawaies They put on the Lord Jesus Christ and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof Rom. 13.13 14. As we see to a temperate man how sweet and easie temperance is when to a glutton or drunkard or riotous liver it is exceeding hard so it is in all other points with a confirmed Christian. He hath so far crucified the flesh that it is as dead to its former lusts and so far mastered it that it doth easily and quickly yield And this maketh the life of such a Christian not only pure but very easie to him in comparison of other mens Nay more than this he can use his sense as he can use the world the objects of sense in subserviency to faith and his salvation His eye doth but open a window to his mind to hold and admire the Creator in his work His tast of the sweetness of the creatures is but a means by which the sweeter Love of God doth pass directly to his heart His sense of pleasure is but the passage of spiritual holy pleasure to his mind His sense of bitterness and pain is but the messenger to tell his heart of the bitterness and vexatiousness of sin As God in the creation of us made our senses but as the inlet and passage for himself into our minds even as he made all the creatures to represent him to us by this passage so grace doth restore our very senses with the creature to this their holy original use that the goodness of God through the goodness of the creature may pass to our hearts and be the effect and end of all 2. But for the weak Christian though he have mortified the deeds of the body by the spirit and live not after the flesh but be freed from its captivity or reign Gal. 5.24 Rom. 8.1 7 8 9 10 11 12 13. yet hath he such remnants of concupiscence and sensuality as make it a far harder matter to him to live in temperance and deny his appetite and govern his senses and restrain them from rebellion and excess He is like a weak man upon an ill-ridden headstrong horse who hath much ado to keep his saddle and keep his way He is stronglier inclined to fleshly lusts or excess in meat or drink or sleep or sports or some such fleshly pleasure than the mortified temperate person is and therefore is ofter guilty of some excess so that his life is a very tiresome
73.1 2. and that he is the righteous Judge of all the earth and that the righteous shall have dominion in the morning and it shall go well with them that fear the Lord For he goeth into the Sanctuary and foreseeth the end Eccl. 8.11 12 13. Psal. 73.17 Psal. 115.11 13. and 31.19 2. But the weak Christian is very hard put to it when he meeteth with difficult passages of Scripture and when he seeth it go with the righteous according to the work of the wicked and with the wicked according to the work of the righteous Eccl. 8.14 Though he is not over-turned by such difficulties yet his foot is ready to slip and he digesteth them with much perplexity and trouble 3. But the seeming unsettled Christian is often overcome by them and turneth away from Christ and saith These are hard sayings or hard Providences who can bear them Joh. 6.60.66 And thus unbelief thence gathereth matter for its increase XXXI 1. A Christian indeed is one that can exercise all Gods graces in conjunction and in their proper places and proportion without setting one against another or neglecting one while he is exercising another He can be humbled without hindering his thankefulness and joy and he can be thankefull and joyfull without hindering his due humility His knowledge doth not destroy but quicken his zeal His wisdom hindereth not but furthereth his innocency His faith is a help to his repentance and his repentance to his faith His love to himself doth not hinder but help his love to others and his Love to God is the end of both He can mourn for the sins of the times and the calamities of the Church yea for his own sins and imperfections and yet rejoyce for the mercies which he hath in possession or in hope He findeth that piety and charity are necessarily conjunct and every grace and duty is a help to all the rest Yea he can exercise his Graces methodically which is the comeliness and beauty of his heart and life 1 Thess. 5.12 13 16 17 18 19 20 21. 1 Pet. 2.17 2. But the weak Christian though he have every Grace and his Obedience is universal yet can he hardly set himself to any duty but it hindereth him from some other duty through the narrowness and weakness of his mind When he is humbling himself in confession of sin he can scarce be lively in thankfulness for mercy When he rejoyceth it hindereth his humiliation He can hardly do one duty without omitting or hindering another He is either all for joy or all for sorrow all for love or all for fear and cannot well do many things at once but is apt to separate the Truths and Duties which God hath inseparably conjoyned â— And for the seeming Christian he exerciseth no grace in sincerity nor is he universal in his Obedience to God Though he may have the image of every Grace and Duty XXXII 1. A Christian indeed is more in getting and using his Graces than in enquiring whether he have them He is very desirous to be assured that he is sincere but he is more desirous to be so And he knoweth that even assurance is got more by the exercise and increase of Grace than by bare enquity whether we have it already Not that he is a neglecter of self-examination But he oftener asketh What shall I do to be saved than How shall I know that I shall be saved 2. But the weak Christian hath more of self and less of God in his solicitousness And though he be willing to obey the whole Law of Christ yet he is much more solicitous to know that he is out of danger and shall be saved than to be fully pleasing unto God And therefore proportionably he is more in enquiring by what marks he may know that he shall be saved than by what means he may attain more holyness and what diligence is necessary to his salvation 3. But the seeming Christian is most carefull how to prosper in the World or please his flesh and next how he may be sure to escape damnation when he hath done and least of all how he may be conform to Christ in holyness XXXIII 1. A Christian indeed doth study Duty more than Events and is more carefull what he shall be towards God than what he shall have from God in this life He looketh to his own part more than unto Gods as knowing that it is he that is like to sail but God will never fail of his part He is much more suspicious of himself than of God And when any thing goeth amiss he blameth himself and not Gods Providence he knoweth that the hairs of his head are numbred and that his Father knoweth what he needeth and that God is infinitely wiser and fitter to dispose of him than he is to choose for himself and that God loveth him better than he can love himself And therefore he thankfully accepteth that easie indulgent command Cast all your care on him for he careth for you Take no thought what you shall eat or drink or wherewith you shall be cloathed Heb. 12.15 13.5 Job 1.21 22. Mat. 10.30 6.25 31 32. 1 Pet. 5.7 2. But alas how guilty is the weak Christian of medling with Gods part of the work How sinfully carefull what will become of him and of his Family and Affairs and of the Church as if he were afraid lest God would prove forgetfull unfaithfull or insufficient for his work so imperfect is his Trust in God 3. And the seeming Christian really trusteth him not at all for any thing that he can trust himself or the Creature for He will have two strings to his bow if he can but it is in man that he placeth his greatest trust for any thing that man can do Indeed to save his Soul he knoweth none but God is to be trusted and therefore his life is still preferred before his Soul and consequently man whom he trusteth most with his life and prosperity is really trusted before God however God may have the Name Jer. 17 5 7. Psal. 34.8 20.7 34.22 37.3 XXXIV 1. A Christian indeed is much more studious of his own duty towards others than of theirs to him He is much more fearfull of doing wrong than of receiving wrong He is more troubled if he say ill of others than if others speak ill of him He had farre rather be slandered himself than slander others or be censured himself than censure others or be unjustly hurt himself than unjustly hurt another or to be put out of his own possessions or right than to put another out of his He is oftner and sharper in judging and reproving himself than others he falleth out with himself more frequently than with others and is more troubled with himself than with all the world besides he taketh himself for his greatest enemy and knoweth that his danger is most at home and that if he can escape but from himself no one in
of his duties and the concernments of his soul permitting the world to take up too much of the vigour of his spirit Or else he is confident in his mistakes and verily thinks that he understandeth better than many wiser men these things which he never understood at all He chooseth his party by the Zeal that he findeth in them without any judicious tryal of the truth of what they hold and teach He is very earnest for many a supposed truth and duty which proveth at last to be no truth or duty at all And he censureth many a wiser Christian than himself for many a supposed sin which is no sin but perhaps a duty For he is alwayes injudicious and his heat is greater than his light or else his light is too flashy without heat Peremptorily he doth set down some among the number of the most wise and excellent men for keeping him company in his mistakes And he boldly numbreth the best and wisest of his Teachers with the transgressors for being of a sounder understanding than himself and doing those duties which he calleth sins And hence it is that he is a person apt to be mislead by appearances of Zeal and the Passions of his Teachers prevail more with him than the Evidence of Truth He that Prayeth and Preacheth most fervently is the man that carryeth him away though none of his Arguments be truly cogent If he hear any hard name against any opinion or manner of worship he receiveth that prejudice which turneth him more against it than reason could have done so the bug-bear name of Heresie Lutheranism and Calvinism frightneth many a well-meaning Papist both from the Truth and almost from his wits And the names of Popery Arminianism Prelacy Presbyterianism Independency c. do turn away the hearts of many from things which they never tryed or understood If a zealous Preacher do but call any opinion or practice Antichristian or Idolatrous it is a more effectual terrour than the clearest proof Big and terrible words do move the passions while the understanding is abased or a stranger to the cause And Passion is much of their Religion And hence alas is much of the calamity of the Church Rom. 14.1 2 3 4 c. 1 Cor. 3.1 2 3 4. Act. 21.20 Gal. 4.17 18. 3. But the seeming Christian is only zealous finally for Himself or zealous about the smaller matters of Religion as the Pharisees were for their Ceremonies and traditions or for his own inventions or some opinions or wayes in which his honour seemeth to be interessed and pride is the bellows of his zeal But as for a holy zeal about the substance and practice of Religion and that for God as the final cause he is a stranger to it He may have a zeal of God and of and for the Law and Worship of God as the material cause but not a true zeal for God as the chief final cause Rom. 10.2 2 Sam. 21.2 2 King 10.16 Act. 22.3 LI. A Christian indeed can bear the infirmities of the weak Though he love not their weakness yet he pittyeth it because he truly loveth their persons Christ hath taught him not to break the bruised reed and to gather the Lambs in his arms and carry them in his bosome and gently lead them that are with young Isa. 40.11 42.3 If they have diseases and distempers he seeketh in tenderness to cure them and not in wrath to hurt and vex them He turneth not the Infants or sick persons from the family because they cry or are unquiet unclean infirm and troublesome but he exerciseth his love and pitty upon their weaknesses If they mistake their way or are ignorant and peevish and froward in their mistakes he seeketh not to undoe them but gently to reduce them If they censure himself and call him erroneous heretical antichristian idolatrous because he concurreth not with them in their mistakes he beareth it with Love and patience as he would do the peevish chidings of a child or the frowardness of the sick He doth not lose his charity and set his wit against a Child and aggravate the crimes and being reviled revile again and say you are Schismaticks hypocrites obstinate and fit to be severely dealt with but he overcometh them with love and patience which is the conquest of a Saint and the happiest victory both for himself and them It is a small matter to him to be judged of man 1 Cor. 4.3 4. He is more troubled for the weakness and disease of the consorious than for his own being wronged by their censures Phil. 1.16 17 18. Rom. 15.1 2 3. 14.2 3. 2. But the weak Christian is readier to censure others than patiently to bear a censure himself Either he stormeth against the Censurers as if they did him some unsufferable wrong through the over-great esteem of himself and his reputation or else to escape the fangs of censure and keep up his repute with them he complyeth with the censorious and overruns his judgement and conscience to be well spoken of and counted a sincere and stedfast man Gal. 2.12 13 14. 3. But the seeming Christian is so proud and selfish and wanteth Charity and tenderness to the weak that he is impatient of their provocations and would cure the diseases of the servants of Christ by cutting their throats or ridding the Countrey of them If a Child do but wrangle with him he cryeth Away with him he is a troubler of the World He taketh more notice of one of their infirmities than of all their graces yea he can see nothing but obstinacy and hypocrisie in them if they do but cross him in his opinions or reputation or worldly ends Selfishness can turn his Hypocrisie into Malignity and cruelty if once he take them to be against his interest Indeed his interest can make him patient He can bear with them that he looketh to gain by but not with them that seem to be against him The radical enmity against sincerity that was not mortified but covered in his heart will easily be again uncovered Mark 6.18 20 21 22. Phil. 1.15 16. 3 Joh. 9. LII 1. A Christian indeed is a great esteemer of the Vnity of the Church and greatly averse to all Divisions among Believers As there is in the natural body an abhorring of dismembring or separating any part from the whole so there is in the mystical body of Christ The members that have life cannot but feel the smart of any distempering attempt For abscision is destruction The members die that are separated from the body And if there be but any obstruction or hinderance of communion they will be painfull or unusefull He feeleth in himself the reason of all those strict commands and earnest exhortations 1 Cor. 1.10 Now I beseech you Brethren by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that ye all speak the same thing and that there be no divisions among you but that ye be perfectly joyned together in the same
excellency and necessity of the holiness and spirituality of the soul in worship yet withall he is more judicious and charitable than the pievish and passionate infant Christians who think that God doth judge as they do and seeth no grace where they see none and taketh all to be superstitious or fanatical that differ from their opinions or manner of worship or that he is as ready to call every error in the method or the words of prayer Idolatry or Wilworship as those are that speak not what they they know but what they have heard some Teachers whom they reverence say before them He that dwelleth in Love doth dwell in God and God in him and he that dwelleth in God is liker to be best acquainted with his mind concerning his children and his worship than he that dwelleth in wrath and pride and partiality 2. But the weak Christian though so far as he hath grace he is of the same mind and abhorreth discord and division among the flock of Christ yet being more dark and selfish and distempered he is much more prone to unwarrantable separations and divisions than the stronger Christian is He is narrower fighted and looketh little further than his own acquaintance and the Country where he liveth and mindeth not sufficiently the general state of the Churches through the world nor understandeth well the interest of Christ and Christianity in the earth His knowledge and experience being small his charity also is but small and a little thing tempteth him to condemn another and aggravate his faults and think him unworthy of the communion of the Saints He is much more sensible of the judgement and affections and concernments of those few with whom he doth converse and that are of his opinion than of the judgement and practice and concernments of the universal Church He knoweth not how to prefer the judgements and holiness of some that he thinketh more excellent than the rest without much undervaluing and censuring of all others that are not of their opinion He cannot chuse the actual local communion of the best society without some unjust contempt of others or separation from them He hath not so much knowledge as may sufficiently acquaint him with his ignorance And therefore he is apt to be unreasonably confident of his present apprehensions and to think verily that all his own conceptions are the certain truth and to think them ignorant or ungodly or very weak at least that differ from him For he hath not throughly and impartially studied all that may be said on the other side The Authority of his chosen Teacher and sect is greater with him if he fall into that way than the Authority of all the most wise and holy persons in the world besides What the Scripture speaketh of the unbelieving world he is apt to apply to all those of the Church of Christ that are not of his mind and party And when Christ commandeth us to come out of the world he is prone to understand it of coming out from the Church into some stricter and narrower society and is apt with the Papists to appropriate the name and priviledges of the Church to his party alone and to condemn all others Especially if the Church-Governours be carnal and self-seeking or otherwise very culpable and if Discipline be neglected and if prophaneness be not sufficiently discountenanced and godliness promoted he thinketh that such a Church is no Church but a prophane society God hath taught him by repentance to see the mischief of ungodliness but he yet wanteth that experience which is needfull to make him know the mischiefs of Church-divisions He had too much experience himself of the evil of prophaneness before his conversion but he hath not tryed the evil of Schism and without some sad experience of its fruits in himself or others he will hardly know it as it should be known Because it is the custome of some malignant enemies of godliness to call the godly Hereticks Schismaticks factious Sectaries c. therefore the very names do come into credit with him and he thinks there are no such persons in the world or that there is no danger of any such crimes Till he be taught by sad experience that the professors of sincerity are in as much danger on that side as on the other and that the Church as well as Christ doth suffer between two thieves the Prophane and the Dividers Paul was unjustly called the ring-leader of a Sect Acts 24.5 and Christianity called a Heresie and a Sect every where spoken against Acts 28.22 24.14 But for all that Heresie is a fruit of the flesh Gal. 5.20 and some of them called damnable 2 Pet. 2.1 and they are the tryal of the Church to difference the approved members from the chaff 1 Cor. 11.19 And an obstinate Heretick is to be avoided by true Believers Titus 3.10 And the Pharisees and Sadduces are well reputed to be several Sects Acts 5.17 15.5 26.5 And dividers and divisions are justly branded in Scripture as aforesaid There must be no Schism in the body of Christ 1 Cor. 12.25 The following of selected Teachers in a way of division from the rest or opposition to them doth shew that men are carnal in too great a measure though it be not in predominancy as in the prophane 2 Cor. 3.1 2 3. And I Brethren could not speak unto you as unto spiritual but as unto carnal as unto babes in Christ I have fed you with milk and not with meat for hitherto ye were not able to bear it neither yet now are ye able 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 How much more when he that is for Paul doth censure and rail at Cephas and Apollo He that hath seen the course of men professing godliness in England in this age may easily and sadly know how prone weak Christians are to unjust separations and divisions and what are the effects He that had heard many zealous in prayer and other duties and the next year see them turning Quakers and railing in the open Congregations at the ablest holiest self-denying Ministers of Christ and at their flocks with a Come down thou deceiver thou hireling thou wolf ye are all greedy doggs c. and shall see how yet poor souls run into that reviling and irrational Sect to say nothing of all other Sects among us will no longer doubt whether the weak be inclinable to Schism but will rather lament the dangerousness of their station and know that all is not done when a sinner is converted from an ungodly state Study the reason of those three texts Ephes. 4.13 14 15 16. For the edifying the body of Christ till we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect
devoted in Covenant to God our Creator Redeemer and Regenerater and without which we cannot Love God as reconciled to us in Christ above all and our neighbours as our selves So that in a word he that can tell what the Baptismal Vow or Covenant is can tell what is necessary to that Catholick Church-communion which belongeth to Christians as Christians at how great a distance soever they dwell from one another And then for Particular Church-communion which is local and personal it is moreover necessary 1. That each member acknowledge and submit to the same Pastors 2. That they be guided by them in the convenient circumstances and adjuncts of Worship For if some persons will not consent or submit to the same Pastors that the body of the Church consenteth and submiteth to they cannot have communion particularly and locally with that Church nor are they members of it no more than they can be members of the same Kingdom that have not the same King And there being no solemn worship performed but by the Ministry of those Pastors they cannot joyn in the worship that joyn not with the Minister And if some members will not consent and submit to the necessary determination of the adjuncts or external modes of worship they cannot joyn in local particular Church-communion where that Worship is performed As if the Pastor and the body of the Church will meet in such a place at such a day and hour and some members will not meet with them at that place and day and hour they cannot possibly then have their local personal communion Or if the Pastor will use such a Translation of the Scriptures or such a Version of the Psalms or such a Method in Preaching and Prayer or such Notes or books and other like helps if any members will not submit nor hold Communion with the rest unless that Translation or Version or Method of Preaching or Praying or Notes or Books be laid aside he cannot have Communion while he refuseth it If the Pastor and all the rest will not yield to him he must joyn with some other Church that he can agree with And as long as the Catholick Church communion is maintained which consisteth in Vnity of the Christian-covenant or of Christianity or of Faith Love and Obedience the difference of modes and circumstances between particular Churches must be allowed without any breach of Charity or without disowning one another And he that cannot be a member of one particular Church may quietly joyn himself to another without condemning that which he dissenteth from so far as to hinder his Catholick Communion with it even as among the Papists men may be of which Order of Religious persons they best like as long as they submit to their General Government And here the strong judicious Christian for his part will never be guilty of Church-divisions For 1. He will make nothing necessary to Church-communion which any sober pious peaceable minds shall have any just reason to except against or which may not well be manifested to be for the Edification of the Church 2. And he will bear with the weak dissenters so far as will stand with the peace and welfare of the Church 3. And he will particularly give leave to such weak ones as cannot yet hold communion with him being peaceable and not promoting heresie ungodliness or sedition to joyn to another Church where they can hold communion with peace to their own Consciences as long as they continue their foresaid Catholick-communion For the strong know that they must not only bear with but bear the infirmities of the weak and not to please themselves but every one of them to please his neighbour for good to edification For even Christ pleased not himself And so they will receive one another as Christ also received us to the glory of God not despising the weak nor rejecting them that God receiveth Rom. 15.1 2 3 7. 14.1 2 3 4 17 18. And thus you may see how easie a matter it were to unite and reconcile all the Christian World if the principles of the judicious confirmed Christian might be received and prevail and that it is not he that is the cause of the abundance of sin and calamity which divisions have caused and continued in the Church But that which now seemeth an impossible thing may quickly and easily be accomplished if all were such as he And that the difficulty of reconciling and uniting Christians lyeth not first in finding out the terms but in making men fit to receive and practice the terms from the beginning received by the Churches This is Lirinensis his Quod semper ubique ab omnibus receptum est supposing still that the Magistrate be submitted to by every soul even as he is the keeper of both talles Rom. 13.1 2 3. 2. But the weak Christian is too easily tempted to be the divider of the Church by expecting that it be united upon his impossible or unrighteous terms Sometime he will be Orthodox overmuch or rather wise in his own conceit Rom. 12.16 and then none are judged fit for his communion that be not of his opinion in controverted Doctrinals e.g. predestination the manner of the work of grace freewill perseverance and abundance such sometime he will be righteous overmuch or to speak more properly superstitious And then none are fit for his communion that Worship not God in that method and manner for circumstantials which he esteemeth best And his charity is so weak that it freeth him not from thinking evil 1 Cor. 13. and so narrow that it covereth not either many or great infirmities The more need he hath of the forbearance and charity of others the less can he bear or forbear others himself The strong Christian must bear the infirmities of the weak but the weak Christian can scarce bear with the weak or strong Nay he is oft too impatient with some of their virtues and duties as well as with their infirmities He is of too private a spirit and too insensible of the publick interest of the Church of Christ. And therefore he must have all the World come over to him and be conformed to his opinion and party and unite upon his mistaken narrow terms if they will have Communion with him I mean it is thus with him when the temptation on that side prevaileth And sometime he is overcome with the temptation of Domination to make his judgement the Rule to others and then he quite overvalueth his own understanding and will needs be judge of all the controversies in the Church and taketh it as unsufferable if wiser and better men do not take him as infallible and in every thing observe his will And when his brethren give him the reason of their dissent as his judgement is not clear enough to understand them so his passion and partiality are too strong to suffer his judgement to do its part And thus oft-times he is a greater hinderance to the Churches
Vnity than the enemies of the Church themselves For he hath not judgement enough to guide him the right way and yet he hath so much zeal as will not suffer him to keep his errours to himself 3. And all these distempers that are but in a lower degree in the weak Christian are predominant in the Hypocrite The Church shall have no concord or peace if he can hinder it but what is consistent with his carnal interest his honour or wealth or dignity in the world The pride and covetousness which rule himself he would have to make the terms of concord and to rule all others It is Hypocrites in the Church that are the greatest cause of discord and divisions having selfish spirits principles and ends and having alwaies a work of their own to do which suits not well with the work of Christ and yet Christs work must be subjected to it and ordered and over-ruled by it And while they pretend to go to the Scriptures or to Councils or Fathers for their reasons indeed they go first for them to their worldly interest and then would fain hire or press the Scripture Church or Fathers to serve their turn and come in as witnesses on their side And thus the Church as well as Christ is betrayed by the covetous Judas's of his own family And the servants of the world the flesh and Devil that take up the livery of Christ and usurp the name and honour of Christians do more effectually hinder the concord and prosperity of the Church than any open enemies do And those that are indeed no Christians do cause Christianity to be reproached Even as Spies and Traitors that are hired by the enemy to take up arms in the Army which they fight against that they may betray it by their fraud and do more harm to it by raising mutinies and by false conduct than a multitude of professed enemies could have done It is proud and worldly carnal Hypocrites that hinder most the concord of Believers LIV. 1. A confirmed Christian is of a peaceable spirit He is not masterly domineering turbulent hurtfull cruell seditious factious or contentious He is like ripened fruits that are mellow and sweet when the younger greener fruits are sowre and harsh He is not wise in his own conceit Rom. 12.16 and therefore not over urgent in obtruding his conceits on others nor quarrelsome with all that cannot entertain them nor will he easily lay mens salvation or damnation no nor the Churches peace upon them He is kindly affectioned to others with brotherly love yea loveth his neighbour as himself Rom. 12.10 13 9 10. And therefore he doth to others as he would they should do to him and useth them as he would be used by them And then how far they are like to suffer by him you may easily judge For Love worketh no ill to his neighbour Rom. 13.10 He is above the portion of the worldling and a contemner of that vanity which carnal men account their felicity and therefore he preferreth love and quietness before it and can lose his right when the interest of Love and Peace requireth it He is become as a little child in his conversion Matth. 18.3 and is low and little in his own eyes and therefore contendeth not for superiority or preheminence either in place or power or reputation of his learning wisdom or piety but in honour preferreth others before himself Rom. 12.10 He mindeth not high things but condescendeth to men of low estate Rom. 12.16 and therefore will not contend for estimation or precedency nor scramble to he highest though he rise by the ruines of mens bodies and souls If it be possible as much as lyeth in him he will live peaceably with all men Rom. 12.18 For he is not one that by word or deed will avenge himself but when the wrath of others is up like a blustring storm he giveth place to it he boweth before it or goeth out of the way Rom. 12.19 If his enemy hunger he feedeth him if he thirst he giveth him drink when oppressors would deprive not only an enemy but the righteous of their meat and drink and thus he melteth his hardened enemies by heaping kindnesses upon them when they are wrathfull and proud and contentious and do him wrong or use provoking words against him he is not overcome of their evil to imitate them but he overcometh their evil with his good Rom. 12.20 21. If God have given him more knowledge and abilities than others he doth not presently set up himself to be admired for it nor speak disdainfully and contemptuously of those that are not of his mind But he sheweth the eminency of his wisdom with meekness by the works of a good conversation and by doing better than the unwiser do James 3. from verse 1. to 13. He is endued with the wisdom from above which is first pure then peaceable gentle easie to be entreated full of mercy and good fruit without partiality or wavering in persecution as Dr. Hammond renders it and without hypocrisie And thus the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace Jam. 3.17 18. As he is taught of God to love his brother 1 Thes. 4.9 So that same teaching with experience of the effects assureth him that they that pretend to be wiser and better than others when they have bitter envious zeal and strife in their hearts they vainly glory and lie against the truth This wisdom descendeth not from above but is earthly sensual and devilish For where envying and strife is there is confusion and every evil work James 3.14 15 16. Read but the story of the Jewish Zealots in Josephus and the heretical Zealots in all ages of the Church and you will perceive the truth of this when such quarrelsome spirits are filling the Church with contentions or vexations about their meats and drinks and daies c. the Christian indeed understandeth that the Kingdom of God consisteth not of such things as these but in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost and he that in these things serveth Christ is acceptable to God and approved of wise and sober men Therefore he followeth after things which make for peace and things wherewith one may edifie another and will not for meats c. destroy the work of God Rom. 14.17 18 19 20. He stayeth not till peace be offered him or brought home to him but he followeth peace with all men as well as holiness Heb. 12.14 If it fly from him he pursueth it if it be denied him he seeketh it and will not refuse to stoop to the poorest for it and to beg it of his inferiours if it were upon his knees rather than be denied it and live an unpeaceable disquiet life Psal. 34.14 For he believeth that blessed are the Peace-makers for they shall be called the children of God Matth. 5.9 2. And the weak Christian hath the same spirit and therefore the love of peace is most
predominant in him But alas he is too easily tempted into Religious passions discontents contentious disputations quarrelsome and opprobrious words and his judgement lamentably darkened and perverted whenever contentious zeal prevaileth and passions do perturb the quiet and orderly operations of his soul. He wanteth both the knowledge and the experience and the mellowness of spirit which riper Christians have attained He hath a less degree of Charity and is less acquainted with the mischiefs of unpeaceableness And therefore it is the common course of young professors to be easily tempted into unpeaceable waies and when they have long tryed them if they prove not Hypocrites to come off at last upon experience of the evils of them and so the young Christians conjunct with some hypocrites make up the rigorous fierce contentious and vexatious party and the aged riper Christians make up the holy moderate healing party that groan and pray for the Churches peace and mourn in secret both for the ungodliness and violence which they cannot heal Yea the difference is much apparent in the Books and Sermons which each of them is best pleased with The ripe experienced Christian loveth those Sermons that kindle Love and tend to Peace and love such healing Books as do narrow differences and tend to reconcile and heal such as Bishop Halls Peace-maker and Pax terris and all his writings and Bishop Davenants Bishop Mortons and Bishop Hall's Pacificatory Epistles to Duraeus and Mr. Burroughs's Irenicon Ludov. Crocius Amyraldus Junius Paraeus's and many other Irenicons written by forein Divines to say nothing of those that are upon single controversies But the younger sowre uncharitable Christians are better pleased with such Books and Sermons as call them aloud to be very zealous for this or that controverted point of Doctrine or for or against some circumstance of worship or Church discipline or about some fashions or customs or indifferent things as if the Kingdom of God were in them Rom. 14.1 2 15 16. 3. But the seeming Christian is either a meer temporizer that will be of that Religion whatever it be which is most in fashion or which the higher powers are of or which will cost him least Or else he will run into the other extream and lift up himself by affected singularities and by making a bustle and stir in the world about some small and controverted point and careth not to sacrifice the peace and safety of the Church to the honour of his own opinions And as small as the Christian Church is he must be of a smaller society than it that he may be sure to be amongst the best while indeed he hath no sincerity at all but placeth his hopes in being of the right Church or Party or Opinion And for his Party or Church he burneth with a feverish kind of zeal and is ready to call for fire from Heaven and to decieve him the Devil sendeth him some from Hell to consume those that are not of his mind Yet doth he bring it as an Angel of light to defend the Truth and Church of Christ And indeed when the Devil will be the Defender of Truth or of the Church or of Peace or Order or Piety he doth it with the most burning zeal You may know him by the means he useth He defendeth the Church by forbidding the people to read the Scriptures in a known tongue and by imprisoning and burning the soundest and holiest members of it and abusing the most learned faithfull Pastors and defendeth the flock by casting out the Shepherds and such like means as the murders of the Waldenses and the Massacres of France and Ireland and the Spanish Inquisition and Queen Maries Bonefires and the Powder-plot yea and the Munster and the English rage and phrensies may give you fuller notice of He that hath no Holiness nor Charity to be zealous for will be zealous for his Church or Sect or Customs or Opinions And then this zeal must be the evidence of his piety and so the Inquisitors have thought they have religiously served God by murdering his servants and it is the badge of their honour to be the Devils hang-men to execute his malice on the members of Christ and all this is done in zeal for Religion by irreligious Hypocrites There is no standing before the malicious zeal of a graceless Pharisee when it riseth up for his carnal interest or the honour and traditions and customs of his Sect Luk. 6.7 And they were filled with madness and communed with one another what they might do to Jesus Luke 4.28 Acts 5.17 13.45 John 16.2 Rom. 10 2. Phil. 3.6 Acts 36.10 11. The zeal of a true Christian consumeth himself with grief to see the madness of the wicked But the zeal of the Hypocrite consumeth others that by the light of the fire his Religiousness may be seen You may see the Christians fervent Love of God by the fervent flames which he can suffer for his sake And you may see the fervent Love of the Hypocrite by the flames which he kindleth for others By these he cryeth with Jehu Come and see my zeal for the Lord 2 King 10.16 2 Sam. 21.2 LV. 1. A Christian indeed is one that most highly esteemeth and regardeth the interest of God and mens salvation in the world and taketh all things else to be inconsiderable in comparison of these The interest of Great men and Nobles and Commanders yea and his own in corporal respects as riches honour health and life he taketh to be things unworthy to be named in competition with the interest of Christ and Souls The thing that his heart is most set upon in the world is that God be glorified and that the world acknowledge him their King and that his Laws be obeyed and that darkness and infidelity and ungodliness may be cast out and that pride and worldliness and fleshly lusts may not hurry the miserable world unto perdition It is one of the saddest and most amazing thoughts that ever entreth into his heart to consider how much of the world is overwhelmed in ignorance and wickedness and how great the Kingdom of the Devil is in comparison of the Kingdom of Christ that God should forsake so much of his Creation that Christianity should not be owned in above the sixth part of the world and Popish pride and ignorance with the corruptions of many other Sects and the worldly carnal minds of Hypocrites should rob Christ of so much of this little part and leave him so small a flock of holy ones that must possess the Kingdom His soul consenteth to the Method of the Lords Prayer as prescribing us the order of our Desires And in his prayers he seeketh first in order of estimation and intention the Hallowing of Gods name and the coming of his Kingdom and the doing of his Will on Earth as it is done in Heaven before his daily bread or the pardon of his sins or the deliverance of his own soul from temptations
and the evil one Mark him in his prayers and you shall find that he is above other men taken up in earnest petitions for the Conversion of the Heathen and Infidel world and the undeceiving of Mahometans Jews and Hereticks and the clearing of the Church from those Papal tyrannies and sopperies and corruptions which make Christianity hateful or contemptible in the eyes of the Heathen and Mahometan world and hinder their Conversion No man so much lamenteth the Pride and Covetousness and Laziness and Unfaithfulness of the Pastors of the Church because of the doleful consequents to the Gospel and the souls of men and yet with all possible honor to the sacred office which they thus prophane No man so heartily lamenteth the contentions and divisions among Christians and the doleful destruction of charity thereby It grieveth him to see how much selfishness pride and malice prevaileth with them that should shine as lights in a benighted world and how obstinate and uncurable they seem to be against the plainest means and humblest motions for the Churches edification and peace Psal. 120.6 7. 122.6 Phil. 2.1 2 3 4. Psal. 119.136 Zeph. 3.18 Ezek. 9.4 Psal. 69.9 Joh. 2.17 He envieth not Kings and Great men their dominions wealth or pleasure nor is he at all ambitious to participate in their tremendous exaltation But the thing that his heart is set upon is that the Kingdoms of the World may all become the Kingdoms of the Lord Rev. 11.15 and that the Gospel may every where have free course and be glorified and the Preachers of it be encouraged or at least delivered from unreasonable wicked men 2 Thes. 3.1 2. Little careth he who is uppermost or conquereth in the world or who goeth away with the preferments or riches of the earth supposing that he fail not of his duty to his Rulers so that it may go well with the affairs of the Gospel and souls be but helped in the way to Heaven Let God be honoured and souls converted and edified and he is satisfied This is it that maketh the Times good in his account He thinketh not as the proud and carnal Church of Rome that the Times are best when the Clergy is richest and greatest in the world and overtop Princes and claim the secular power and live in worldly pomp and pleasures But when holiness most aboundeth and the members of Christ are likest to their Head and when multitudes of sincere believers are daily added to the Church and when the Mercy and Holiness of God shine forth in the Numbers and Purity of his Saints It is no Riches or Honour that can be heaped upon himself or any others that make the Times seem good to him if Knowledge and Godliness are discountenanced and hindered and the way to Heaven is made more difficult if Atheism infidelity ungodliness pride and malignity do prevail and truth and sincerity are driven into the dark and when he that departeth from evil maketh himself a prey Isa. 59.15 When the godly man ceaseth and the faithful fail from among the children of men when every man speaketh vanity to his neighbour and the poor are oppressed and the needy sigh and the wicked walk on every side when the vilest men are exalted Psal. 12.1 2 5 8. The Times are Good when the Men are good and Evil when the Men are evil be they never so great or prosperous As Nehemiah when he was Cup bearer to the King himself yet wept and mourned for the desolations of Jerusalem Neh. 1.3 4. 2.2 3. Whoever prospereth the Times are ill when there is a famine of the Word of the Lord and when the chief of the Priests and people do transgress and mock Gods messengers and despise his words and misuse his Prophets 2 Chron. 36.14 16. Amos 8.11 12. When the Apostles are charged to speak no more in the name of Christ Act. 4.18 5.40 It is a text enough to make one tremble to think into what a desperate condition the Jews were carryed by a partial selfish zeal 1 Thes. 2.15 16. who both killed the Lord Jesus and their own Prophets and have persecuted us and they please not God and are contrary to all men forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved to fill up their sin alway for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost When the interest of themselves and their own Nation and Priesthood did so far blind and pervert them that they durst persecute the Preachers of the Gospel and forbid them to speak to the people that they may be saved it was a sign that wrath was come upon them to the uttermost A Christian indeed had rather be without Jereboams Kingdom than make Israel to sin make the basest of the people Priests and stretch out his hand against the Prophet of the Lord 1 King 12.30 31. 13.4 He had rather labour with his hands as Paul and live in poverty and rags so that the Gospel may be powerfully and plentifully preached and holiness abound than to live in all the prosperity of the world with the hinderance of mens salvation He had rather be a door-keeper in the house of God than be a Lord in the Kingdom of Satan He cannot rise by the ruines of the Church nor feed upon those morsels that are the price of the blood of souls 2. And the weakest Christian is in all this of the same mind saving that private and selfish interest is not so fully overcome nor so easily and resolutely denyed Luk. 14.26 33. 3. But here the Hypocrite sheweth the falseness of his heart His own interest is it that chooseth his Religion and that he may not torment himself by being wicked in the open light he maketh himself believe that whatsoever is most for his own interest is most pleasing unto God and most for the good of souls and the interest of the Gospel so that the carnal Romish Clergie can perswade their Consciences that all the darkness and superstitions of their Kingdom and all their Opposition of the light of the Gospel of Christ do make for the honour of God and the good of souls because they uphold their tyrannie wealth and pomp and pleasure Or if they cannot perswade their Consciences to believe so gross a lye let Church and Souls speed how they will they will favour nothing that favoureth not their interest and ends And the interest of the flesh and spirit of the world and Christ are so repugnant that commonly such worldlings take the serious practice of Godliness for the most hateful thing and the serious practicers of it for the most unsufferable persons Act. 7.57 21.36 22.22 24.5 6. Joh. 19.15 The enmity of interests with the enmity of nature between the Womans and the Serpent seed will maintain that warfare to the end of the world in which the Prince of the powers of darkness shall seem to prevail as he did against our Crucified Lord but he
were done to himself Mat. 25. and hath commanded the strong to bear with the infirmities of the weak and not to please themselves Rom. 15.1 2 3. and to receive one another as Christ received us Rom. 15.7 and hath told those that offend but one of his little ones that it were good for that man that a milstone were hanged about his neck and he were drowned in the depth of the Sea Matth. 18.6 and hath told him that suiteth his fellow servants that his Lord will come in a day when he looketh not for him and shall cut him asunder and appoint him his portion with the Hypocrites where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth Mat. 24.48 49 50 51. I wonder what men would have Christ do to free himself and the Christian Religion from the imputation of the sins of the Hypocrites and the weak distempered Christians Would they have him yet make stricter Laws when they hate these for being so strict already Or would they have him condemn sinners to more grievous punishment when they are already offended at the severity of his threatnings O what an unrighteous generation are his enemies that blame the Law because men break it and blame Religion because many are not Religious enough As if the Sun must be hated because that shadows and dungeons do want light or Life and Health must be hated because many are sick and pained by their diseases But Christ will shortly stop all the mouths of these unreasonable men and O how easily will he justifie himself his Laws and all his holy waies when all iniquity shall be for ever silent And though it must needs be that offences come yet wo to the world because of offences and wo to the man by whom they come Mat. 18.7 Luke 17.1 The wrong that Christ receiveth from hypocrites and scandalous Christians of all ranks and places is not to be estimated These are the causes that Christianity and Godliness are so contemptible in the eyes of the world that Jews and Heathens and Mahometans are still unconverted and deriders of the Faith Because they see such scandalous tyranny and worship among the Papists and such scandalous lives among the greatest part of professed Christians in the world whereas if the Papal Tyranny were turned into the Christian Ministry Luke 22.25 26 27. and 1 Tim. 5.17 and their irrational sopperies and historical hypocritical worship were changed into a reverent rational and spiritual worship and the cruel carnal worldly lives of men called Christians were changed into Self-denial Love and Holiness In a word if Christians were Christians indeed and such as I have here described from their Rule what a powerfull means would it be of the conversion of all the unbelieving world Christianity would then be in the eye of the world as the Sun in its brightness and the glory of it would dazle the eyes of beholders and draw in millions to enquire after Christ who are now driven from him by the sins of Hypocrites and scandalous Believers And this doth not contradict what I said before of the Enmity of the world to Holiness and that the best are most abused by the ungodly For even this enmity must be rationally cured as by the errour of reason it is sed God useth by the power of intellectual light to bring all those out of darkness whom he saveth and so bringeth them from the power of Satan to himself Acts 26.18 Men hate not Holiness as Good but as misconceived to be evil Evil I say to them because it is opposite to the sensual pleasures which they take to be their chiefest good And the way of curing their enmity is by shewing them their errour and that is by shewing them the excellency and necessity of that which they unreasonably distaste Acts 26.9 10 11 14 19. Luke 15.13 14 15 16. Acts 2.36 37. VI. Lastly In these Characters you have some help in the work of Self-examination for the tryal both of the Truth and Strength of grace I suppose it will be objected that in other Treatises I have reduced all the infallible Marks of Grace to a smaller number To which I answer I still say that the predominancy or prevalency of the Interest of God as our God and Christ as our Saviour and the Spirit as our Sanctifier in the estimation of the Vnderstanding the Resolved Choice of the Will and the Government of the Life against all the worldly interest of the Flesh is the only infallible sign of a justified regenerate soul. But this whole hath many parts and it is abundance of particulars materially in which this sincerity is to be found Even all the sixty Characters which I have here named are animated by that one and contained in it And I think to the most the full description of a Christian in his essential and integral parts yet shewing which are indeed essential is the best way to acquaint them with the nature of Christianity and to help them in the tryal of themselves And as it were an abuse of Humane Nature for a Painter to draw the picture of a man without arms or legs or nose or eyes because he may be a man without them so would it have been in me to draw only a maimed picture of a Christian because a maimed Christian is a Christian. Yet because there are so many maimed Christians in the world I have also shewed you their lamentable defects not in a manner which tendeth to encourage them in their sins and wants under pretence of comforting them but in that manner which may best excite them to their duty in order to their recovery without destroying their necessary supporting comforts O happy Church and State and Family which are composed of such confirmed Christians where the predominate temperature is such as I have here described Yea happy is the place where Magistrates and Ministers are such who are the vital parts of State and Church and the instruments appointed to communicate these perfections to the rest But how much more happy is the New Jerusalem the City of the Living God where the perfected spirits of the just in Perfect Life and Light and Love are perfectly beholding and admiring and praising and pleasing the Eternal God their Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier for ever where the least and meanest is greater and more perfect than the confirmed Christian here described And where Hypocrisie is utterly excluded and Imperfection ceaseth with scandal censures uncharitableness division and all its other sad effects And where the souls that thirsted after Righteousness shall be fully satisfied and Love God more than they can now desire and never grieve themselves or others with their wants or weaknesses or misdoings any more And O blessed day when our most Blessed Head shall be revealed from Heaven with his mighty Angels and shall come to be glorified in his Saints and admired in all them that now believe whose weakness here occasioned his dishonour and their own contempt when
his hand or the Fornicator to cure his lust than to put out his eyes it were a cheap remedy A cheap and easy superficial Repentance may skin over the sore and deceive an Hypocrite but he that would be sure of pardon and free from fear must go to the bottom DIRECT XX. Live as with Death continually in your eye and spend every day in serious preparation for it that when it cometh you may find your work dispatcht and may not then cry out in vain to God to try you once again PRomise not your selves long life Think not of death as at many years distance but as hard at hand Think what will then be needful to your peace and comfort and order all your life accordingly and prepare that now which will be needful then Live now while you have time as you will resolve and promise God to live when on your death-bed you are praying for a little time of tryal more It is a great work to die in a joyful assurance and hope of everlasting life and with a longing desire to depart and be with Christ as best of all Phil. 1.21 23. O then what a burden and terror it will be to have an unbelieving or a worldly heart or a guilty Conscience Now therefore use all possible diligence to strengthen Faith to increase love to be acquit from guilt to be above the World to have the mind set free from the Captivity of the flesh to walk with God and to obtain the deepest most delectable apprehensions of his love in Christ and of the heavenly blessedness which you expect Do you feel any doubts of the state of immortality or staggering at the Promise of God through unbelief Presently do all you can to conquer them and get a clear resolution to your souls and leave it not all to do at the time of sickness Are the thoughts or God and Heaven unpleasant or terrible to you Presently search out the cause of all and labour in the cure of it as for your lives Is there any former or present sin which is a burden or terror to your Consciences Presently seek out to Christ for a Cure by Faith and true Repentance and do that to disburden your Consciences now which you would do on a sick-bed and leave not so great and necessary a 〈◊〉 to so uncertain and short and unfit a time Is there any thing in this World that is swâ—â—tâ—r tâ— your thoughts than God and Heaven 〈◊〉 which you cannot willingly let go Mâ—rtiâ—iâ— it without delay consider of its vanity compare it with Heaven Crucifie it by the Cross of Christ cease not till you account it loss and â—â—ung for the excellent knowledg of Christ and life eternal Phil. 3.7 8 9. Let not death surprize you as a thing that you never seriously expected Can you do no more in preparation for it than you do If no why do you wish a death to be tryed once again and why are you troubled that you lived no better But if you can when think you should it be done Is the time of uncertain painful sickness better than this O how doth sensuality besot the World and inconsiderateness deprive them of the benefit of their reason O Sirs if you know indeed that you must shortly die live then as dying men should live Choose your condition in the World and manage it as men that must shortly dye Use your Power and Command and Honour and use all your Neighbours and especially use the Cause and Servants of Christ as men should do that must shortly die Build and plant and buy and sell and use your Riches as those that must die remembring that the fashion of all these things is passing away 1 Cor. 7.29 30. Yea pray and read and hear and meditate as those that must die Seeing you are as sure of it as if it were this hour in the name of God delay not your preparations It is a terrible thing for an immortal Soul to pass out of the body in a carnal unregenerate unprepared state and to leave a World which they loved and were familiar with and go to a World which they neither know nor love and where they have neither heart nor treasure Matth. 6.19 20 31. The measure of Faith which may help you to bear an easie cross is not sufficient to fortifie and encourage your souls to enter upon so great a change So also bear all your wants and crosses as men that must shortly die Fear the cruelties of men but as beseemeth those that are ready to die He that can die well can do any thing or suffer any thing And he that is unready to die is unfit for a fruitful and comfortable life What can rationally rejoyce that man who is sure to die and unready to dye and is yet unfurnished of dying comforts Let nothing be now sweet to you which will be bitter to your dying thoughts Let nothing be much desired now which will be unprofitable and uncomfortable then Let nothing seem very heavy or grievous now which will be light and easy then Let nothing now seem honourable which will then seem despicable and vile Consider of every thing as it will look at death that when the day shall come which endeth all the joyes of the ungodly you may look up with joy and say Welcome Heaven This is tho day which I so long expected which all my dayes were spent in preparation for which shall end my fears and begin my felicity and put me into possession of all that I desired and prayed and laboured for when my Soul shall see its glorified Lord For he hath said John 12.26 If any man serve me let him follow me and where I am there shall also my servant be If any man serve me him will my Father honour Even so Lord Jesus remember me now thou art in thy Kingdom and let me be with thee in Paradise Luke 23.42 43. O thou that spakest those words so full of unexpressible comfort to a sinful woman in the first speech after thy blessed Resurrection Joh. 20.17 GO TO MY BRETHREN AND SAY VNTO THEM I ASCEND UNTO MY FATHER AND YOUR FATHER AND TO MY GOD AND YOVR GOD. Take up now this Soul that is thine own that it may see the Glory given thee with the Father Joh. 17.24 and instead of this life of temptation trouble darkness distance and sinful imperfection I may delightfully Behold and Love and Praise thy Father and my Father and thy God and my God Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace Lord Jesus receive my Spirit Luke 2.29 Acts 7.59 And now I have given you all these Directions I shall only request you in the close that you will set your very hearts to the daily serious practise of them For there is no other way for a ripe confirmed state of Grace And as ever you regard the glory of God the honour of your Religion the welfare of the Church and those
about you and the living and dying comforts of your selves O do not sluggishly rest in an Infant state of Grace Did you but know how a weak and strong Faith differ and how a weak and a found Confirmed Christian differ as to the honour of God and the good of others and especially to themselves both in life and death it would quickly awaken you to a cheerful diligence for so high and excellent an end Did you but well understand the wrong that Christ and the Gospel have sustained in the World yea in England by weak diseased distempered Christians your hearts would bleed and with shame and grief it would be your secret and open lamentation Stir up then the Grace that is given you and use Christs means and do your best and you will find that Christ is not an insufficient Physician nor an uneffectual Saviour or an empty Fountain but that he is filled with all the fulness of God and hath Spirit and life to communicate to his Members Zech. 12.8 and that there is no want which he cannot supply and no corruption or temptation which his Grace is not sufficient to overcome John 4.14 2 Cor. 12.9 Rom. 6.4 6. Col. 3.1 3 4. FINIS THE CHARACTER Of a Sound Confumed CHRISTIAN As also 2. Of a Weak Christian And 3. Of a Seeming Christian. Written to imprint upon mens minds the true Idea or conception OF Godliness and Christianity By Richard Baxter The Second Part of the Directions for Weak Christians LONDON Printed by R. White for Nevill Simmons at the Three Crowns near Holborn Conduit 1669. THE PREFACE TO THE SECOND PART Directed to my worthy Friend Henry Ashurst Esquire Citizen of London Dear and faithful Friend WHen this Book was Printed and passing into the World without the ordinary ornament of a prefixed honoured Name my thoughts reduced me into the common way though not upon the common reasons assuring me that your name would be more than an accident or ceremony to such a discourse as this even a part more substantial than a Map is in a Treatise of Geography or the well-cut Figures in Tractates of Anatomy Discourses of Navigation Architecture Musick c. may almost as hopefully instruct the Learners without any visible operations or effects as the Characters of well-tempered Christians can duly inform the minds of ignorant ungodly men of so Divine a thing as Christianity and Godliness without acquaintance with some such Persons in whom these Characters are manifestly exemplified Wise and holy precepts are to make wise and holy persons It is such Persons as well as such Precepts which bear the image of God which indeed is most perfect in exactness and integrity in the precepts for in them is no imperfection or errour as they are of God But it is of greater final Excellency in activity and usefulness as it is in men And therefore as God delighteth in his servants and is Glorified in and by them in the world so Satan usually chooseth such Persons to reproach and make odious to the ignorant rather than the holy Precepts immediately by which they are directed both because their Holiness is most exasperating by activity and also most lyable to calumny and contempt through imperfection and mixture of that which indeed is worthy of dislike Till Godliness and Christianity be visible in full perfection and elevated above the contradiction of folly and the contempt of pride the blind distracted minds of hardened forsaken sinners will not acknowledge its divine celestial nature and worth But then it will be too late to become partakers of it They must both know and possess it in its infancy and minority who will ever enjoy it in its heavenly dignity and glory If seasonable illumination and conversion confute not the deceits and standers which pride and ignorance have entertained the too-late confutation of them by death and their following experience will make them wish that they had been wise at cheaper rates when it will be in vain to cry Give us of your Oyle for our Lamps are out Mat. 25.8 But while I offer your name to the malicious world as an instance of the temper which I here describe I intend it not as a singular though an eminent instance For through the great mercy of God there are thousands of examples of confirmed Christians among us in this Land even before those eyes which will not see them But it is not Catalogues but single names which Writers have used in this way And why may I not take the advantage of Custome to leave to the World the testimony of my estimation and great respects to so deserving a person of the primitive Christian Catholick temper And to let them know what sort of men were my most dear and faithful friends And also thus to express my love by telling you closely what you must be as well as by telling the World for their example what you are Upon these accounts without your knowledge or consent I presume thus to prefix your name to this Treatise written long ago but now published by Your faithful Friend Rich. Baxter From my Lodging in New-Prison June 14. 1669. ERRATA Reader When I had gathered the Errata I was separated by a Prison from those Collections and having but two of the Sheets now at hand I shall give you the Errata of them only IN the Contents n. 15. for Lovers of God read Love of God Pag. 163. l. 5. for to six 1. and six pag 163. l. 18. blot out that p. 164. l. 5. for that 1. than p. 169. l. 10. for of 1. for p. 170. l. 1. for câ—re 1. cure All the rest I have forgotten save that some where I remember filthy for slâ—shly TO THE READER Readers IT is a matter of greater moment than I can express what Idea or Image of the nature of GODLINESS and CHRISTIANITY is imprinted upon mens minds The description which is expressed in the sacred Scriptures is true and full The thing described is rational pure perfect unblameable and amiable That which is expressed in the Lives of the most is nothing so but is purblind defiled maimed imperfect culpable and mixt with so much of the contrary quality that to them that cannot distinguish the Chaff from the Wheat the Sickness from the Life it seemeth an unreasonable fancifull loathsome and vexatious thing and so far from being worthy to be preferred before all the Riches Honours and Pleasures of the world that it seemeth worthy to be kept under as a troubler of Kingdoms Societies and Souls And doubtless this monstrous Expression of it in mens Lives is because the perfect expression of it in Gods Word hath not made 〈…〉 impression upon the Mind and consequently upon the Heart For as it is sound doctrine which must make sound Christians so Doctrine worketh on the will and affections not as it is in it self and as delivered but as it is understood believed remembered considered even as it is imprinted on the