whom God requires it to unite for this very purpose This cannot but add unspeakably to the delightfulness of this transaction and of this effusion of the Holy Ghost in the virtue whereof the thing is done how oft soever it be seriously done As our case and state require that it be very often And to receive him as our Lord which is joined with that other capacity wherein we receive him viz. of a Jesus or Saviour As ye have received Christ Jesus the Lord so c. This also and the heart-subduing influence that disposes to it is most highly delectable When the Soul that was so stoutly averse and that once said within it self I will not have him to reign over me is brought freely to yeild and with sincere loyal resolutions and affections devotes it self to him consents to his government submits its neck and shoulder to his yoke and burden says to him with an ungainsaying heart as its full sense Now thou Lord of my life and hope who hast so long striven with me so oft and earnestly prest me hereto so variously dealt with me to make me understand thy merciful design and who seekest to rule with no other aim or intent but that thou may'st save and who hast founded thy dominion in thy blood and didst dy and revive and rise again that thou mightest be Lord of the living and the dead and therefore my Lord Accept now a self-refigning Soul I make a free surrender of my self I bow and submit to thy Sovereign Power I fall at the footstool of thy Throne Thou Prince of the Kings of the Earth who hast loved sinners and washt them from their sins in thy blood Glory in thy conquest Thou hast overcome I will from henceforth be no longer mine own but thine I am ready to receive thy commands to do thy will to serve thy interests to sacrifice my all to thy Name and Honour my whole life and being are for ever thine I say as before there is pleasure in the very doing this it self as often as it is sincerely done And it adds hereto if it be more distinctly considered It is no mean or any way undeserving person to whom this homage is paid and obligation taken on unto future obedience He is the brightness of the Fathers glory the express Image of his person the Heir of all things and who sustains all things by the word of his power It is he whose name is Wonderful Counsellor the mighty God the everlasting Father the Prince of peace 'T is he to whom all power is given both in heaven and earth and more especially power over all flesh that he might give eternal life to as many as were given him 'T is he who spoiled Principalities and Powers and made an open shew of them He whom because when he was in the form of God and thought it no robbery to be equal with God he humbled himself made himself of no reputation took on him the form of a servant became obedient to death the Father hath therefore highly exalted and given him a Name above every name that in his Name every knee should bow And of whom when he brought him his first-born into the world he said Let all the Angels of God worship him And such a one he is whose temper is all goodness and sweetness Tell Sion thy King cometh meek and lowly He came into this world drawn down only by his own pity and love beholding the desolations and ruins that were wrought in it every where Sin universally reigning and death by sin and spreading its dark shadow and a dreadful cloud over all the earth In which darkness the Prince thereof was ruling and leading men captive at his will having drawn them off from the blessed God their life and sunk them into a deep oblivion of their own original and disaffection to their true happiness that could only be found there This great Lord and Prince of life and peace came down on purpose to be the Restorer of Souls to repair the desolations and ruins of many generations He came full of grace and truth and hath scattered blessings over the world wheresoever he came hath infinitely obliged all that ever knew him and is he in whom all the nations of the earth must be blessed And who would not with joy swear fealty to him and take pleasure to do him homage Who would not recount with delight the unexpressible felicity of living under the governing power of such a one And if the tenor and scope of all his Laws and Constitutions be viewed over what will they be found but obligations upon men to be happy How easie his yoke how light his burden what is the frame of his Kingdom or whereof doth it consist but Righteousness Peace and Joy in the Holy Ghost And who would not now say This Lord reigneth let the earth rejoyce let the multitude of the Isles be glad thereof Why should it not be triumphingly said among the Heathen That the Lord reigneth that the world also shall be established that it cannot be moved Let the heavens rejoice and the earth be glad let the sea roar and the fulness thereof let the fields rejoice and all that is therein and all the trees of the wood rejoice It s plain that be the matter of joy here what it will be there never so much cause of exultation and glorying in him The righteousness and peace which his Kingdom promises never actually take place nor the joy that is connexion therewith till the Holy Ghost dispose and form mens spirits thereto For all this is but meer dream and idle talk to those who hear only of these things and feel not that vital influence insinuating it self that may give the living sense and savor of them And we may rather expect seas and fields beasts and trees to sing his triumphant Song and chant his praises than those men whose hearts are not attempered to his Government and who are yet under the dominion of another Lord not being yet by the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus made free from the law of sin and death But where this is effectually done How large matter of most rational pleasure do they find here while there is nothing in that whole System of Laws by which he governs that is either vain unequal or unpleasant or upon any account grievous only this is not the estimate of distempered spirits or of any other than them in whose hearts his Law is written and who because they love him keep his Commandments Unto Love his commands are most connatural For this is the love of God that we keep his commandments They are not grievous i. e. by the Meiosis which some do reasonably enough apprehend in those words they are joyous delightful pleasant but to them only who being born of God have overcome the world This holy influence and communication of God is therefore grateful and contributes not
or be thought so because either variety of occasions may divert from minding or some imbittering distemper of spirit may hinder the present relishing of that pleasure which is truly in it As a man may eat and feed on that which is very savoury and good and yet though his taste be not vitiated but because he reflects not may not every moment have that present apprehension that it is so much more if the Organs of taste be under a present distemper But if they be not so any one's asking him how he likes that dish because that occasions a more express animadversion will also draw from him an acknowledgment that it is pleasant and savoury 2. That a dead Religion may be thought delightful and through the ill temper of the subject a pleasure may be apprehended in it which doth not naturally arise from it that is The meer external part of Religion may be flexible and be accidentally perverted into a subserviency to some purposes which Religion of it self intends not in respect whereof a delight may injuriously and as by a rape be taken in it as is said by the Prophet of an hypocritical people Yet they seek me daily and delight to know my ways as a Nation that did righteousness they take delight in approaching to God Therefore that which is here intended is not that the Religion should be rejected in some present exercises whereof we have not the actual relish of a present pleasure as that should not be embraced wherein upon any whatsoever terms we find it but that which can rightfully and upon just terms afford us none and which upon our utmost enquiry and search cannot in reason as it is not unfit that spiritual reason should be imployed in making a judgment what may be thought spiritually delectable We shall therefore in some particular heads give a short account of such Religion as rationally cannot but be judged undelightful or which hath not that in it which can yield pleasure to a sound and well-complexioned spirit but that if any be taken therein that very pleasure is so unnatural and out of kind as to be the argument rather of a disease in the Subject than of any real goodness in the thing it self Whereunto we only premise this two-sold general Rule whereby an undue and unnatural delight may be estimated and judg'd of 1. That such delight may be justly deem'd unnatural which is taken in any thing besides and with the neglect of the proper use and end which it most fitly serves for 2. Such as is accompanied with a real hurt greater than the delight can countervail or as is so far from taking in profit and benefit in conjunction with it as that the damage and prejudice which it cannot recompence is inseparable from it which rules will be the more fitly applicable to the present case for that as hath been formerly observed the delight which accompanies the acts and exercises of Religion or that flow from it though it be natural thereto yet is not the only or chief end of those acts but they have another more important end unto the prosecution whereof by such acts delight is only adherent Whence the delight cannot but be most preposterous and perverse which is taken in such things as do either not serve the more principal design of Religion or much more that are repugnant and destructive of it By these Rules we may plainly see what delight in the general is to be accounted undue As by the former Rule we would justly reckon that an undue delight which a man should take in his food if he only please himself with the looking on the handsom garnishing of the dishes which he loaths in the mean time and refuses to taste or which a covetous miser takes in having wealth hoarded up which he is pleased often to view and cannot endure to use And by the latter That were most irrational delight which in a Fever one should take in gratifying his distempered appetite whereby he doth not so much relieve nature as feed his disease And so we may say that Religion is undelightful i. e. not duly delightful 1. Which consists wholly in revolving in ones own mind the notions that belong to Religion without either the experience or the design and expectation of having the heart and conversation formed according to them So the case is with such as content themselves to yield the principles of Religion true and behold with a notional assent and approbation the connexion agreement of one thing with another But do never consider the tendency and aim of the whole or that the Truth of the Gospel is the Doctrine that is according to godliness or such as is pursuant to the design of making men godly of transforming them into the Image of God and framing them to an entire subjection to his holy and acceptable will that bethink not themselves the Truth is never learned as it is in Jesus except it be to the renewing the Spirit of the mind the putting off the old man and the putting on of the new When this is never considered but men do only know that they may know and are never concerned further about the great things of God than only to take notice that such things there are offered to their view which carry with them the appearance of Truth but mind them no more than the affairs of Eutopia or the world in the Moon what delight is taken in this knowledg is surely most perverse There is a pleasure indeed in knowing things and in apprehending the coherence of one Truth with another but he that shall allow himself to speculate only about things wherein his life is concerned and shall entertain himself with delight in agitating in his mind certain curious general notions concerning a disease or a crime that threatens him with present death or what might be a remedy or defence in such a case without any thought of applying such things to his own case or that the case is his own one may say of such pleasure it is mad or of this delight What doth it or he that only surfeits his eye with beholding the food he is to live by and who in the mean time languishes in the want of appetite and a sickly loathing of his proper nutriment surely such a one hath a pleasure that no sober man would think worth the having And the more any one doth only notionally know in the matters of Religion so as that the temper of his spirit remains altogether unsutable and opposite to the design and tendency of the things known the more he hath lying ready to come in judgment against him and if therefore he count the things excellent which he knows and only please himself with his own knowledg of them 't is but alike case as if a man should be much delighted to behold his own condemnation written in a fair and beautiful hand Or as if one should be pleased
with the glittering of that sword which is directed against his own heart and must be the present instrument of death to him And so little pleasant is the case of such a person in it self who thus satisfies his own curiosity with the concernments of eternal life and death that any serious person would tremble on his behalf at that wherein he takes pleasure and apprehend just horrour in that state of the case whence he draws matter of delight 2. 'T is yet a more insipid and gustless Religion which too many place in some peculiar opinions that are either false and contrary to Religion or doubtful and cumbersome to it or little and inconsiderable and therefore certainly alien to it and impertinent For if that Religion only be truly delightful which hath a vital influence on the heart and practice as that must needs be indelectable which is only so notionally conversant about the greatest truths as that it hath no such influence much more is that so which is so wholly coversant about matters either opposite or irrelative hereto as that it can have none It must here be acknowledg'd that some Doctrines not only not revealed in the Word of God but which are contrary thereto may being thought true occasion the excitation of some inward affection and have an indirect influence to the regulating of practice also so as to repress some grosser enormities As the false notions of Pagans concerning the Deity which have led them to Idolatry have struck their minds with a certain kind of reverence of invisible powers and perhaps rendered some more sober and less vicious than had they been destitute of all Religious sentiments And yet the good which hath hence ensued is not to be refer'd to the particular principles of Idolatry which were false but to the more general principles of Religion which were true Yea and though such false principles viewed alone and by themselves may possibly infer somwhat of good yet that is by accident only and through the short-sightedness and ignorance of them with whom they obtain who if they did consider their incoherence with other common notions and principles most certainly true would receive by them if thought the only Principles of Religion so much the greater hurt and become so much the more hopelesly and incurably wicked As most manifestly the principles which lookt upon by themselves while they are reckon'd true do lead to Idolatry and consequently by that mistake only to some Religion do yet being really false lead to Atheism and of themselves tend to subvert and destroy all Religion Therefore such Doctrines as cohere not with the general frame of Truth whatever their particular aspect may be considered apart and by themselves are yet in their natural tendency opposite and destructive to the true design of Religion and the pleasure which they can any way afford is only stol'n and vain such as a person takes in swallowing a potion that is pleasant but which if it perform what belongs to it he must with many a sickly qualm refund and disgorge back again We also acknowledg some Truths of less importance may be said to concern practice though not so immediately Nor is it therefore the design of this Discourse to derogate from any such that are of apparently Divine Revelation or Institution which however they justly be reckoned less than some other things yet for that very reason as they are reveal'd by God for such an end are by no means to be esteemed little or inconsiderable be their subserviency to the great design of Religion never so remote Vpon the account of which subserviency they are also to be esteem'd delectable that is in proportion thereto but when they are so esteem'd beyond that proportion and are exalted into an undue preference to their very end it self so as that in comparison of them the great things of Religion are reckoned low frigid sapless things when men set their hearts upon them abstractly and without consideration of their reference and usefulness to the greater things of Religion The delight that is so taken in them argues but the disease of the mind that takes it and so great a degree of dotage that a serious person would wonder how men can please themselves with such matters without considering and with the neglect of so great things they have relation to 3. And hither is to be refer'd the much less rational pleasure which is taken by some in the meer dress wherewith such notions and opinions may be artificially clothed by themselves or others Rhetorical flourishes a set of fine words handsom cadencies and periods fanciful representations little tricks and pieces of wit and which cannot pretend so high pitiful quibbles and gingles inversions of sentences the pedantick rhyming of words yea and an affected tone or even a great noise things that are neither capable of gratifying the Christian nor the man without which even the most important weighty matters do to so squeamish stomachs seem gustless and unsavoury and are reckon'd dull and flat things And most plain it is though it is not strange that so trifling minds should impose upon themselves by so thin a sophism that such are in a great mistake whose delight being wholly taken up in these trifles do hereupon think they taste the delights of Religion for these are nothing of it are found about it only accidentally and by a most unhappy accident too as ill for the most of these things agreeing to it and no more becoming it than a Fool 's Coat doth a prudent grave person and the best of them agreeing to it but in common with any thing else about which such arts may be used so that they are no way any thing of it or more peculiarly belonging to it than to any theam or subject besides unto which such ornaments as they are thought can be added How miserably therefore do they cheat themselves who because they hear with pleasure a discourse upon some head of Religion thus garnished according to their idle trifling humour and because they are taken with the contrivance of some sentences or affected with the loudness of the voice or have their imagination tickled with some phantastical illustrations presently conclude themselves to be in a Religious transport when the things that have pleased them have no affinity or alliance with Religion befal to it but by chance and are in themselves things quite of another Country 4. Of the like strain is the Religion that is made up all of talk And such like are that sort of persons who love to discourse of those great things of God wherewith it was never their design or aim to have their hearts stamped or their lives commanded and governed Who invert that which was the ancient glory of the Christian Church We do not speak great things but live them And are pleased with only the noise of their own most commonly insigficant sensless words unto whom how ungrateful a relish