Constitution but are so happy as to have a sound Mind and Body both at once 'T is not with relation to such that I write this Preface but for such as are under a deep and a rooted Melancholly And to the Friends of such I think it is very necessary to give the following Advices First Look upon your distressed Friends as under one of the worst Distempers to which this Miserable Life is obnoxious Melancholly seizes on the Brain and Spirits and incapacitates them for Thought or Action it confounds and disturbs all their thoughts and unavoidably fills them with anguish and vexation of which there is no resemblance in any other Distemper unless it be that of a Raging Fever I take it for granted and I verily believe I say nothing but what is true When this ugly Humour is deeply fixed and hath spread its Malignant Influence over every part 't is as vain a thing to strive against it as to strive against a Fever or a Plurisie the Gout or the Stone which are very grievous to Nature but which a man by resolution and the force of briskness and courage cannot help One would be glad to be rid of such oppressing things but all our striving will not make them go away And of all the Inconveniences of Melancholly The want of sleep which it usually brings along with it is one of the worst It is very reviving to a man that is in pain all the day to think that he shall sleep at night but when he has no prospect nor hope of that for several nights together oh what confusion does then seize upon him he is then like one upon a rack whose anguish will not suffer him to rest by this means the Faculties of the Soul are weakned and all its Operations disturbed and clouded and the poor Body languishes and pines away at the same time And this Disease is more formidable than any other because it commonly last very long It is a long time before it come to its height and usually as long ere it decline again and all this long season of its continuance is full of fear and torment of horror and amazement It is in every respect sad and overwhelming it is a state of darkness that has no discernable beams of Light 'T is as a Land of darkness on which no Sun at all seems to shine It does generally indeed first begin at the Body and then conveys its venom to the Mind and if any thing could be found that might keep the Blood and Spirits in their due temper and motion this would obstruct its further progress and in a great measure keep the Soul clear I pretend not to tell you what Medicines are proper to remove it and I know of none I leave you to advise with such as are learned in the Profession of Physick and especially to have recourse to such Doâ—tors as have themselves felt it for it is impossible fully to understand the nature of it any other way than by Experience and that Person is highly to be valued whose endeavours God will bless to the removal of this obstinate and violent Disease And as old Mr. Greenham says * In his Comfort for Afflicted Consciences p. 137. There is a great deal of wisdom requisite to consider both the state of the Body and of the Soul If a man saith he that is troubled in Conscience come to a Minister it may be he will look all to the Soul and nothing to the Body if he come to a Physician he considereth the Body and neglecteth the Soul for my part I would never have the Physician 's Counsel despised nor the Labour of the Minister negected because the Soul and Body dwelling together it is convenient that as the Soul should be cured by the Word by Prayer by Fasting or by Comforting so the Body must be brought into some temperature by Physick and Diet by harmless Diversions and such like ways providing always that it be so done in the fear of God as not to think by these ordinary means quite to smother or evade our Troubles but to use them as preparatives whereby our Souls may be made more capable of the spiritual Methods that are to follow afterwards Secondly Look upon those that are under this woful Disease of Melancholly with great pity and compassion And pity them the more by considering that you your selves are in the body and liable to the very same trouble for how brisk how sanguine and how chearful soever you be yet you may meet with those heavy Crosses those long and painful and sharp Afflictions which may sink your spirits Many that are far from being naturally inclined to Melancholly have been accidentally overwhelmed with it by the loss of Children by some sudden and unlooked for disappointment that ruines all their former Projects and Designs O let every groan that you hear from persons so afflicted deeply affect your hearts and never look upon them but with a compassionate and a concerned eye never look upon them but make this use to your selves Man at his best Estate is altogether vanity Let it wean you from the world when you see that by such a Disease as this a man is quickly taken off of all his business and unfit to manage his Affairs or to pursue his former most delightful work Melancholly is a complication of violent and sore Distresses t is full of miseries 't is it self a fierce Affliction and bring to our Thoughts and to our bodies one Evil fast upon another Any other Distemper may trouble us but this does astonish and amaze O look upon your Friends in this case with great tenderness for they alas are wounded both in Soul and Body and in all the world there are none for the time in so doleful a state as they They are usually walking as in the midst of Fire and Brimstone and most frequently under the very pangs of death and the pains of Hell in great bodily danger and in no less spiritual Calamity Their Burthen is very often heavier than their groaning their sighs are deep their hearts are sunk their minds are in a slame and they are fallen very low They are thinking on what is sad and frightful and they cannot banish those Idea's that are so terrible If you saw a person wounded and torn and mangled on the High-Way the sight of so deplorable an Object would fill you with compassion the sight of your Friends under this Disease which I am now speaking of ought much more to move you for it is every moment tearing them to pieces every moment it preys upon their Vitals and they are continually dying and yet cannot dye When you visit a Melancholly person make this Reflection This Friend of mine awhile ago rejoyced in the love of God as I do he met with me in Holy Assemblies and sung the Praises of the Most High with as pleasant a countenance with as chearful an heart as I and now he
souls were driven in Chariots of Fire to their Father's House Whether there be Musick in the Revolution of the Celestial Spheres as some of the Philosophers imagined we know not but 't is very likely that the separated soul of the Patient and Triumphant Christian will have those Angels that rejoiced at its Conversion that wait to carry it to its blessed Home to present it to the Throne of God with joyful Praises and united Hallelujahs Thus we should admire and imitate the Patience of the Saints whose Life was begun with darkness and sorrow but ended with Light and Pleasure began with a Combat but concluded with Victory And then shall the Soul that a few moments before was disconsolate have cause to say in that day Isa 12.1 2. O Lord I will praise thee tho thou wast angry with me thine anger if turned away and thou comfortest me Behold God is my salvation the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song he also is become my salvation CHAP. IV. Of the Great Love of Christ in suffering the wrath of God in his Soul which is the more to be admired in that he bore it for us and not for the fallen Angels and because now he is from his own experience more qualified to relieve us under all our temptations Inf. 3. HOW great cause have we to value Jesus Christ who by suffering the wrath of God in his own person has procured this priviledge for Believers That the Anger of God towards them shall be only for a moment Had it not been for his spotless satisfaction the Divine Justice would have perpetually flam'd out against us and he would not only have been angry with us now but for ever He has delivered us from the wrath to come That which is easy to us upon our Faith was purchased by him at a very dear Price he shed his own Blood to obtain Peace and Mercy for us Oh how great was the Burden of that heavy Cross which he bore for us how terrible and amazing was that wrath which he felt in his bitter and his doleful agonies when he saw not one Smile in his Father's face when it was with him an hour of thick darkness and when under the smart of what he felt and the view of what he was to feel he said My Soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto death And when the agonies of his Soul did affect his Body and made it even in a cold Season to sweat as it were drops of Blood What a gloomy time was that when he fell upon his face and in a sorrowful posture with strong Cries and Tears prayed O my Father if it be possible let this Cup pass from me What flaming wrath was that which scorcht him when he uttered those dreadful words My God my God why hast thou forsaken me The Angel told Mary That a Sword should pierce through her Son Luk. 2.35 to see what injurious usage her Soul met withal but how much sharper was the Sword that pierc'd the Soul of Christ himself The wrath that he bore would have totally overwelm'd and destroyed Angels and Men had they joyned their strength together There was none but he that was able to sustain such a Combat and to bear such a Load Oh where had we guilty Creatures been had not he dyed for us God would have been our Enemy and Hell our Portion His Holiness would not allow him to be gracious to us without a Satisfaction and there was none that was able to make it but his own dearly beloved Son and this excellent Person freely did it And what cause have we to admire the breadth and length and depth and height of this Love which passes Knowledg Eph. 3.18 Angels in Heaven wonder at it it was so great in it self and accomplished in such a painful and a costly way and we may justly be fill'd with a wondring joy for we are more concern'd and our Sin and Guilt makes us to need it more than they do There was nothing in us to move him to begin or to finish the blessed work of our Redemption nothing but misery He saw us lost and he came to find us He saw us perishing his bowels earned within him and his own Pity and Compassion made him to come and save us What punishment had we deserved for our manifold transgressions And he came and bore the punishment that was our due and discharg'd that debt which we were never able to pay How kind was he that thought not his own Life nor his own Blood too much for us Who ever expos'd his Person and his Life for an Enemy and yet he dyed for us when we were so as marvellous an Act of Mercy as if a Prince's Son should lay his Head upon the block to save one that had rebell'd against the Crown and Government of his own Father What does he require from us for all that he has done he asks nothing but our Love and shall we not give him our best Affections our highest thoughts and our hearts which he has so dearly bought have even any of those things to which we give our love done so much for us as he has done He has the best Title and will prove our truest Friend in the latter end had it not been for him we could never have prayed to God with hope nor liv'd without a fearful expectation of Vengeance We were Children of wrath and must but for him have been the Heirs of wrath too Who would not love such a Benefactor Who would not give him all who gave himself for us It is by his death that God is appeas'd and that his Anger is but for a Moment to those who receive his Son God hath smelt a sweet favour in this Sacrifice and is highly pleased with it and is pleas'd with us upon this account He does not now follow us with wrath but invites us to himself in mercy he has sheath'd his flaming Sword and is ready to embrace us in his Arms and though he sees nothing in us to excite his goodness yet every time he looks upon our blessed Lord he sees one who has entirely pleased him who has done his will and who is the beloved of his Soul and it 's for his sake that his anger towards us is so long delayed and that when it comes it is but for a Moment Let us love this Redeemer with all our hearts remembring that terrible sentence of our Apostle If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be Anathema Maranatha i. e. Cursed till he come again 1 Cor. 16.22 There are two things that should engage us to love him for his bearing the wrath of God 1. That he bore it for us and not for the fallen Angels 2. That from his own experience he is able to help us under all our temptations and when we are under the sense of God's displeasure 1. Christ bore not the wrath of God for the fallen Angels they fell
so he hath Bowels of Compassion What Mercy may we not expect from so gracious a Mediator that took our Nature on him that he might be Gracious Let us therefore go to God by Christ who has satisfied his Justice by his Death and who without him is to us Sinners as a consuming fire Let us go boldly to his Throne in the name of Jesus and we shall find that the God of whom we were afraid will become our Friend and we shall experience him to be better to us than we ever thought he would have been Our unbelieving hearts whilst they are such will be full of darkness and of trouble but upon our Faith the Storm will cease and the Morning will begin to dawn upon us and instead of that wrath which we feared and had deserved we shall find there is Mercy with the Lord and plenteous Redemption Psal 130. The first thing that a convinced awakened sinner thinks of is his own danger and how he may avoid the Wrath of God and what it is that he must do in order to it now it is not to be accomplished by pompous ceremonious Services not by external mortifications nor by offering the fruity of his Body for the sin of his own Soul but by Faith in Jesus Christ and his Death by the means of which God is become propitious and favourable to us And the first view that as one says an humble Soul is to take of Christ is of his being a Saviour as made a Sin and a Curse and obeying to the death And Christ must be considered not only with respect to the Excellencies of his person but as cloathed with his Garments of Blood and the Qualifications of a Mediator and a Reconciler and this renders him the fit object of a Sinners Faith If we think of God without thinking of Christ he is vastly terrible and amazing to us but in and through him those otherwise-overwhelming apprehensions become very pleasant and comfortable to us Let us honour the Love that he hath shewed in him with admiring thoughts and never have low nor mean apprehensions of his Grace Christ is near unto God and pitiful to us able to help us and most willing to do so for those that come unto him he will in no wise cast out He will not upbraid us for our former follies he will not encrease our grief but when he sees us once lying at his feet and washing them with the tears of an unfeigned humiliation he will raise us up and bid us be of good cheer V. Faith will remove the troubles that we have from the sense of God's displeasure by conveying to us that life and strength from Christ which will enable us to subdue all our spiritual Enemies Phil. 4.13 It will bring him to us and when he is in our Vessel let the Waves threaten us with never so formidable a noise we are sure not to be cast away And all the Spectres that afright us will vanish if we do but hear him once say as to his Disciples It is I be not afraid This Grace will unite us to Christ and communicate to us of his Power in the several measures that we need and without his assistance long and sore afflictions will tire our Spirits and destroy our Hope He is necessary for us for he has a perfect knowledg of our Enemies of their Force their Policies and their Designs He has by his own Combat learn'd to Fight and by his Experience can teach us to get the Victory neither the multitude nor violence nor obstinacy of our Enemies can hinder the Success and the glory of his Triumph Col. 1.11 He prayeth that they might be strengthned with all might because as we have to do with divers Enemies and are sick of divers Infirmities we have need to receive not one or two kinds of strength but many different ones * Vide Daille in loc For as in nature you see the strength of Bodies is different one resisting one thing and yielding to another one has the virtue to repulse the force of one Element but not to guard it self from another So in a manner is it in the Souls of Men such a Man will free himself from the temptation of one sin that will not be able to defend himself from another such a Man will resist the temptations of prosperity whom adversity will overthrow such an one will bear troubles for a while whom the length or tediousness of them will overcome and if one of our Spiritual Enemies succeed against us we are undone for ever Therefore as the Apostle says we have need to have recourse to Christ who can furnish us with skill and strength to defeat whatsoever stands in the way of our Peace or our Salvation To have one on our side that has returned from the Field of Battel as a Conqueror is a mighty encouragement and privilege Such is our Lord he is a Victorious and a Triumphant Saviour he will not leave his Conquests incompleat for he goes on Conquering and to Conquer and the glory of his enterprizes has not fill'd him with disdain or contempt of the poor and needy for he that is the King of Zion is as I said before a meek and lowly King By Faith in Christ we obtain his Spirit which by opening our eyes will shew us that Fountain of Living-waters where we may both quench our thirst and wash away our filth This Spirit will take away the sting of guilt and sweeten the Cross that was very bitter to us and when our Lord is come to help us when we know that he is afflicted in our affliction that yoak which gall'd us before will become as an Ornament about our Necks and when we have the pardon of our sins and the hope of God's acceptance that affliction that we thought a burthen too heavy for us to bear will become light and easie to us Out of the devourer shall come forth sweetness From those very fears that overwhelmed us shall spring glorious hopes and those hearts which a slavish fear of the Wrath had contracted shall be enlarged with a sense of his Goodness and his Love and we shall not look upon him as an Enemy but as a Friend not as a Judge but as a Father Isa 33.14 The inhabitants shall not say I am sick the people that dwell therein shall be forgiven their iniquities Alas when God leaves us the smallest danger terrifies us the least Dart of Satan makes an impression on our spirits the least trouble sinks such low such inconsiderable creatures are we But if the Lord be with us if Christ be on our side neither the Law nor Sin nor Death can hinder us from bidding a defiance to all that is against us 2 Cor. 15. 56 57. VI. Faith will give us relief under the apprehensions of God's displeasure or our Sin as it will shew us the period and conclusion of those miseries which we now are groaning under our
to get the Victory if Christ pray for us that our faith do not fail Luk. 22.31 VVhere can we go for shelter but unto God our Maker when this Lyon of the Forest does begin to roar how will he terrify and vex us till he that permits him for a while to trouble us be pleased to chain him up again 5. Gods Favour is Life even in Death it self He cures all the disorders of the Soul He weans it from the Body and makes the passage to another World sweet and easie He can take away the frightful ghastly aspect of Death and bestow upon it a pleasant and amiable look and hence it is that sick People are often heard to say Oh! If I had but the Favour and the Love of God I could he freely willing to dye even in this moment If I had but his Love I could bear all these pains and quietly submit though I have restless nights and weary days for then I should be sure of Eternal Rest It is our estrangedness from God that makes us live in bondage all our days and when our time to dye is come makes us so very loth to depart This sense of God's displeasure makes a Death-bed to be a Bed of sorrow and makes Death to be indeed the King of Terrors and who can but tremble when he finds himself leaving this World and knows not what will be his portion in the next That finds himself going to the Judgment-feat but knows not whether he shall be acquitted or condemned there how many times do the very thoughts of Death cut us in our Sickness to the very Soul because our spirits are clouded and our evidence for Salvation is departed even before we depart so that we stand trembling on the borders of Eternity and would fain stay on Earth though we cannot VVhat but the favour of God will help us When our heart and our flesh fails He will be the strength of our heart and our portion for ever Ps 73.26 VVhat but this will attend us through the shady Vale How can we part with our Friends if God be not our Friend How can we leave this Earthly Tabernacle if we have not an House not made with Hands How shall we look upon so vast a Change as that of Time into Eternity if we are not to change this Mortal for a better Life But one smile of the Face of God in that great and concluding-work will keep us that we shall not be afraid to dye one fore-taste of Heaven will make us with undaunted hearts to bid this sinful VVorld adieu we shall then like Moses undress our selves and dye we shall with the same chearfulness go down to the Grave which Jacob went with into Egypt because our Mediator and our elder Brother lives and has made good provision for us VVe shall not be amazed to lie down in the dust when once we have the hope of a blessed and a glorious Resurrection and the day of our death will be a comfortable day if our blessed Lord be then pleased to tell us that on the same day we shall be with him in Paradise CHAP. II. Of Heaven and Hell and of that spiritual death which hath seized the greatest part of the World As also the Reason why Good people are many times very willing to dye and of the inexcusableness and misery of those who are without Gods favour And whence it is that some grow in Grace more than others and are more earnest for a share in the Love of God WHat a blessed and glorious place is Heaven Inf. 1. that is full of God's favour The City bad no need of the sun neither of the moon to shine in it for the glory of God did lighten it and the Lamb is the light thereof Rev. 21.23 Rev. 22.2 3 4 5. It is the Land of the Living and 't is no wonder that death shall never enter thither here indeed he is a God that hides himself he is hid under the veil of the Creatures and under abundance of mysterious Providences for tho' his Throne be established in Righteousness yet Clouds and Darkness are round about it Psal 97.7 Beams of his Glory do every where break forth through every Creature Providence Law and Ordinance of his yet much of his Glory that shines in the Creation is hid by a train of second Causes through which few look to the first his work in the World is carried on in a mystery his Interest lives but is deprest they who are devoted to him are supported indeed by his invisible hand but are in the mean time low for the most part and afflicted But in that Eternal state Mr. How of delighting in God p. 353. the Veil shall be rent and he will in a brighter manner shew himself his Glory will shine out with direct and pleasant Beams to all the beholding and admiring eyes he will there give forth the full and satisfying Communications of his Love that will chear and satisfy and refresh a vast multitude of grateful and adoring spirits Here the Souls of good Men are deprest by the misrepresentations of Satan and by the frequent jealousies and suspitions of their own guilty souls but there they shall see him as he is and which will encrease their joy see him to be their own God for ever No storms shall there molest their Peace nothing shall interrupt their Eternal Calm Not a vain tumultuous repining or uneasie thought shall assault their peaceful and quiet hearts for ever No more shall they cry out Is his Mercy clean gone Has he forgotten to be gracious for they shall be with him in his own presence Here his Family is composed of several distressed mourning Children and when some praise him their praises are disturb'd by the groans of others or their own sins but there they shall all be clothed with praise and none shall be sick or dye If we did but know that there were a place in the World where the people never dye the love that all have of Life would put them upon many inquiries how they might get thither This Countrey is Heaven thence death and fear and consternation is banished for ever and thither should we lift up our eyes thither should we direct our hearts in Heaven the favour of God shines with an unclouded brightness they that are Inhabitants of that holy place are employed in an honourable attendance on their mighty King they need not they desire not any of those enjoyments which are here below no more than favourites of their Prince desire a meaner station or a poor Cottage or some obscure and forlorn retreat And alas what are all our pleasures and our most splendid entertainments to that Bread and to those spiritual and intellectual Joys which Angels and glorified souls feed on The first hour the first day of joy there is better than an Age of joys here below if one day spent in his Courts in his Love and Praises here
humble saying 1 Cor. 15.10 By the grace of God I am what I am I laboured more abundantly than they all yet not I but the grace of God that was with me He calls himself the chief of Sinners and admires the grace of our Lord that towards him was exceeding abundant 1 Tim. 1.14 And elsewhere he styles the mercies of the Gospel the exceeding riches of the grace of Christ Eph. 2.7 As ever you would have the favour of God continued strive against all pride A man is then proud 1. When he attributes that to himself to his own Industry Wisdom or Prudence which he hath received from God 2. When he attributes to or expects that by merit which is a free gift Or 3. When he thinks he hath that which he hath not Or 4. When he despises others and affects preheminence It is usual with us to take the measures of Pride from the garb or attire from the outward behaviour gesture or the use of some less grave or decent Fashions and indeed there may be an excess in these things that may be very justly blameable But my Friends there is a Pride worse than all this even spiritual Pride that hath in it the very Image of the Apostate Spirit and is truly Diabolical when a man is proud of the Graces or the Gifts of God it alienates from him the Divine Favour for which we are more prepared when we are covered with shame and sorrow And when we are poor in spirit then we may hope that he will enrich us with his Love When we are emptied of all Self-conceit or a flattering opinion of our own Actions then we may hope that he will fill us both with grace and glory VVhat a sorry unbecoming thing is it for a man even the best of men to be proud Alas How soon can the Great God cause all his glory to wither and to fade away What a vain thing is it for a man to pride himself in things that relate to the Body when it is liable to Agues Fevers Consumptions Convulsions and many tedious days and years of pining sickness and must at last be the prey of death and moulder in the Grave And it is no less evil and foolish for a man to pride himself in any thing that relates to his Soul in his knowledge in his faith in his serviceableness for upon his sin an hour of temptation may come upon him that will be an hour of darkness that will cause the light of all these to vanish and what is man when his Conscience is awakened with a sense of guilt when his Sins are set in order before him when the Devil is permitted to sift and vex him to ruffle him with amazing Terrors and the constant view of Hell If God depart from us that Envious raging Spirit who is of great power and malice does with ease insult over us and tread us under his feet Oh! how vain is it for us to be proud that live a miserable life and may dye a very painful death All the Designs of God are to exalt himself and abase the Creature The Consciousness that the Saints have of their own Unworthiness will produce an eternal admiration of his Love and they will all cast down their Crowns before the Throne 1 Cor. 4.7 Who maketh thee to differ from another And what hast thou that thou didst not receive 1 Pet. 5.5 6. 3. That you may not lose the Favour of God you must beware of formality and all slightness of spirit in the performance of holy duties It will be also very prejudicial to us when we can omit them and have no great trouble or regret for so great a Sin Whereas if we were duly tender of the welfare of our Souls we should refresh them with frequent thoughts and meditations as we do our Bodies with two or three meals a day When we bring dead Sacrifices to the Altar of God we need not wonder that we have so little spiritual and heavenly life we need not wonder that we have no more sense of his Favour when we often pray for it as if we prayed not the coldness and indifference of our Petitions shews that we do not much care whether they be granted or denyed and God will not thrust his Mercies upon us whether we will or not none shall enjoy his gracious comfortable Presence but those that strive and wrestle and such as have the zeal of Jacob that will not let him go till he bless them Heaven and Salvation we would all have but God knows we beg it after a very poor fashion and he may justly expel us from the sight of himself because we draw near to him with so little fervour and give him cause to complain of us as of those in Isa 29.13 We are guilty of slightness and formality in duty in these following Instances 1. When we perform them as a task and not with delight and love 2. When we do not excite and stir up our selves to call upon the Lord. 3. When we are satisfied in the bare outward performance and have not those inward exercises of contrition faith and holy sorrow and vigorous desires which are as the life and the soul of Prayer 4. When we suffer our Thoughts to wander or when we run to such Duties from a hurry and a croud of worldly business not considering the greatness of our wants and of that Majesty that fills the Throne before which we pray and how he will be sanctified of all that draw nigh to him 5. When we look not for the answer of our Prayers and when having done our duty we are unsollicitous whether it produce any good effect or no. 6. When we are more studious to approve our selves to the eyes of Men than to the eye of God I might add That if we would not lose the Favour of God we must duly improve all his other Ordinances we must hear as for our lives and take heed that his word do not at any time slip out of our minds We must receive the glad tidings of Salvation with obedient and joyful hearts and upon all fit occasions in the Celebration of the Lord's Supper with holy Affections and a melting zeal keep up the remembrance of the Love of Christ till he come again and with great constancy and seriousness read the Scriptures that direct us how to obtain this Favour of God that is our life but if any person has so little value for the Favour of God that he will not earnestly pray for it he must go without it and smart for his refusal of so excellent a Blessing when it shall be too late to repent 4. That you may not lose the Favour of God that is your life you must avoid all sloth What pains hath God taken what Exhortations what Promises has he used to bring you near to himself what hardships and sufferings did Christ undergo to gain your love and will you do nothing in answer to
Parents that have long prayed for Children and have at length obtained them see them snatcht away with an early stroke and the flower wither in the blossom that they began to doat upon and their eyes closed by death as soon as they had but peep'd into the World and how many do we find in tears because they do but bring forth Children to the Grave and will not be comforted because they are not and find a greater sorrow in parting with them than in bringing them forth How many Parents are there whose Children live several years to whose Education they contribute all they can and hope to have them to be the staff and comfort of their Old Age and when they begin to flourish a storm comes and blasts the fair and the goodly Fruit and while they look for abiding-joys from their dutiful obedience and holy conversation they are forced to follow the promising and hopeful Youths to the Grave and mourn as David even for a bad Son O Absalom my son my son would God I had died for thee O Absalom my son my son Nay again How many Parents are there weeping for the disobedience of their Children that are like to be the Heirs of Wrath and to fall into destruction it costs them many a tear and a sigh to think that their Children are Children of the Devil and Brands of Hell How does it sink their Souls to see that all their Prayers and Exhortations and all their cost and charge is like to be in vain What sorrow can be greater than to think that what they have done for them will aggravate their condemnation and that they must find their Children their now dear and beloved Children at the Left-hand of Christ in the great day and the thoughts of this sends them mourning to the Grave How many Congregations are there mourning for the death of their faithful Ministers whom they shall never hear nor with whom they shall never pray more it grieves them to see those Stars set that gave them light and those Embassadors called home that entreated them to be reconciled How many Soldiers are bewailing the death of their General who in the midst of all his Victories and their Applauses was on a sudden snatcht away 6. Death is another occasion of weeping to the sons of men as are also many of its violent and quick approaches Eccl. 9.12 For man knoweth not his time as the fishes that are taken in an evil net and as the birds that are caught in the snare so are the sons of men snared in an evil time when it cometh suddenly upon them Hezekiah turn'd his face to the wall and wept when he had his summons to depart and if so good a man was so much concern'd how much more may the generality be supposed to be concern'd It is a very melancholly thought to one in flesh to think that he and his dear Body must shortly part and that the Body in which he has eat and drank and slept at ease which has been treated so kindly and cloathed so neatly shall be turned into the Grave and there in a very hideous manner consume away As Children cry when they come into the World so do they generally weep when they go out again Must I often says a dying man leave you my dear Friends my comfortable Cildren my pleasant Acquaintance and never see you any more I must never eat nor drink nor talk with you any more I must not walk in my pleasant Gardens nor survey my Habitation nor visit my Friends nor they me any more for ever I am going into the cold and the lonely Grave and must by my self without your company travel that unknown and solitary path The change of state the greatness of the next World and the different way of living out of the Body and the many dreadful pains that are in their last concluding Agonies make men to see the period of Life with weeping eyes and when they are dying it dissolves their Friends to tears to see their wan and pale looks to hear their last and dreadful groans and immediately after death it melts them to see the person with whom a few days before they comfortably discours'd and lived now changed into a mere lump of Earth for that Soul that made it active and vigorous is fled away when they follow him to the Grave it troubles them to part it troubles them to think what their Friend is and what they themselves are shortly like to be and when they come home the House is no more so pleasant as it was they miss one that made it to be so and one whom it must never know again for ever Thus mourners not only go about the street but are almost every-where to be found in every Countrey and in every Family Job 14.1 Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble 7. As to his Soul man is exposed to abundance of sorrows He labours under a miserable darkness in his understanding and his natural ignorance creates him abundance of trouble and vexation in his soul He has foolish hopes and extravagant desires and a vain curiosity of knowing many things which he shall never know and then the light of his understanding is apt to be eclipsed and confounded with the irresistible diseases of the body so that it is impossible for him to think in sickness after the same manner as he used to do in health His Will also ministers to his sorrow for he wills and affects abundance of things that are contrary to his real interest and if he have the things that he is apt to will they give him new torment and disquiet and he suffers innumerable miseries from his precepitant and eager inclinations Knowledg is the greatest ornament of a rational soul and yet that hath its troubles Eccles 1.18 For in much wisdom there is much grief and he that increaseth wisdom encreaseth sorrow It is not to be attained without great pains and difficulties without laborious and diligent search and vast perplexities Whether we consider the blindness of our understandings or the intricacy of things themselves the many dark recesses of Nature the implication of Causes and Effects besides those accidental difficulties which are occasioned by the subtilty and intanglement of Error The variety of intricate Opinions the many involutions of Controversies and Disputes which are apt to whirl a Man about with a Vertigo of contradictory probabilities and instead of setling to amuse and distract the mind so that much study is a wearisomness to the flesh * Bp. Wilkin's Sermons p. 174. and besides it makes a further trouble to the soul in regard the more a Man knows the more he sees there is yet to be known as a Man the higher he climbs sees more and more of the journey that he is to go and then he that is vers'd in the knowledg of the World sees abundance of mistakes and disorders which he
A DISCOURSE Concerning TROUBLE of MIND AND THE Disease of Melancholly In Three PARTS Written for the Use of such as are or have been Exercised by the same By TIMOTHY ROGERS M. A. who was long afflicted with both To which are Annexed Some LETTERS from several DIVINES relating to the same Subject LONDON Printed for Thomas Parkhurst and Thomas Cockerill at the Bible and Three Crowns in Cheapside and at the Three Legs in the Poultrey MDCXCI To the very much HONOURED and RESPECTED LADY The Lady MARY LANE MADAM YOUR LADYSHIP has a very just claim to this DEDICATION and under your Patronage this BOOK can with good assurance venture abroad You more than any other have enquired of me concerning the following Treatise and more frequently urged me to Print it You were pleased to Honour me during my long Affliction with your kind Visits and though I was greatly afflicted and in degrees beyond what are very common to Men yet you did not a little revive me by your Compassionate and Gentle words and by the Charitable hopes that you had of my deliverance though you have often heard me say That I should never be delivered I thought that I should never have any more ease in my pained Body nor ever any more hope or quiet in my troubled Soul But that God who is Omnipotent and who heard your Prayers and the Prayers of many others in my behalf hath wrought a double Salvation for me He who is the Lord of Nature has healed my Body and He who is the Father of Mercies and the God of all Grace has given rest to my weary Soul None have any Cause to presume when they consider what miseries I felt for a long time and how I was overwhelmed with the deepest sorrows for many doleful Months together neither have any cause to despair they cannot be more low more near to Death and Hell than I thought my self to be and yet I live and am not without some refreshing hope of God's acceptance and can say with the Prophet Let Israel hope in the Lord for with the Lord there is mercy And with him is plenteous redemption Your LADYSHIP has never indeed been afflicted with that Distemper and those Anxieties of Soul whereof I treat in the following Book and I heartily pray you never may For MELANCHOLLY is the worst of all Distempers and those sinking and guilty Fears which it brings along with it are inexpressibly dreadful But I know that you have been in manifold Afflictions and you have had several very great Losses You lost some years ago a Father who was indeed in all respects for his Holiness his Even-temper and his Publick and Charitable Spirit worthy to be loved and I am sure you greatly loved him as he you to the very last You lost a Mother whom all that knew her greatly valued for the skill and experience that she had in matters of Religion and especially for her admirable acquaintance with the Holy Scriptures and tho in the latter part of her Life she saw not the Light of this World yet her Soul was recreated with a Light Spiritual and Divine and the loss of her sight was abundantly recompenced to her by the clearer views which she had of God and of a Life to come And not to mention other Losses you have lost several Children in whom there was all the sweetness of youth all that good temper and those blooming appearances of hopefulness which could make such little Plants desirable but you have born even so great a Loss with a submissive and a Christian Patience as knowing that you have not so much cause to mourn for those that are gone as to rejoyce in those that are left and who are a very great Comfort to you and may they long be so As I have had for some time heretofore the Honour to sojourn in your Family I always observed in you that Meekness and Good Temper that Affability and Condescention to your Inferiors which made your Conversation very exemplary and made it easie and pleasant for any persons to be in your House If all the Ladies and Women in the World that are called Good were of a Temper so happy as your Ladyship 's What a quiet and peaceable World should we then have The mutual Love in which Sir THOMAS and You live renders indeed the Married state very excellent and Honourable I thought when I came to describe my inward Troubles I should have described them much more largely but I durst not review them too particularly lest the very thoughts of them should again in some measure overwhelm me And indeed Inward Terrors are things that may be sadly felt but they cannot be fully express'd To have the sense of Tormenting Racking Pain the immediate prospected of Death and together with this an apprehension of God's Displeasure and the fear of being cast out of his Glorious Presence for ever this was a part of my Case And who can describe that Anguish and Tribulation which such apprehensions cause in a desolate and a mourning Soul I have in the following Treatise said as much as will I suppose be believed by those who have never been in such a woful state and if I had said more it might perhaps sink some poor souls who are already low enough and if I cannot help them which I design yet I will be sure as far as in me lies not to make them worse MADAM I Could say a great many excellent things of your LADYS â—â— and which in the opinion oâ— all that have the happiness to be acquainted with you would be no flattery but I know your Virtues are Illustrious and evident enough of themselves without my endeavouring to place them in a more open Light Excuse I entreat your the boldness of this DEDICATION in which to speak sincerely I have a great deal of selfishness for I question not but by the means of your Name this BOOK will be more publick and so be more serviceable to people under long and sore afflictions whereof this miserable World is very full I wish you a continuance of the Blessings of Heaven with those of this Earth which you have in great abundance And that the Candle of the Lord may constantly shine on your Tabernaâ—â—â— on Sir Thomas your Self and all your Children and I desire you to be assured That there is none that moâ— heartily prays for your present and Eternal welfare than London Sept. 8. 1691. Honoured MADAM Your Ladyship 's Most Obliged Servant TIMOTHY ROGERS THE PREFACE CONTAINING Several Advices to the Relations and Friends of Melancholly People THERE is a very great difference between such as are only under trouble of Conscience and such whose Bodies are greatly diseased at the same time A sense of Sin and great sorrow for it may in some persons not change at all their former state of health and the mercy of God may so speedily relieve them that they suffer no visible decays in their
Edinburgh was Twenty years in terrors of Conscience and yet delivered afterwards You may also direct them to the Lives of Mrs. Brettergh Mrs. Drake Mr. Peacock and Mrs. Wight where they will see a very chearful day returning after a black and stormy night and that the Issue from their Afflictions was more glorious than their Conflict was troublesom They went forth weeping they sowed in Tears but they reaped an Harvest of wonderful Joys afterwards You have in the Book of Martyrs written by Mr. Fox an instance of Mr. Glover who was worn and consumed with inward trouble for the space of Five years that he neither had any comfort in his Meat nor any quietness of Sleep nor any pleasure of Life he was so perplexed as if he had been in the deepest Pit of Hell yet at last this good Servant of God after so sharp temptations and the strong buffetings of Satan was freed from all his trouble and was thereby framed to great Mortification and was like one already placed in Heaven and led a Life altogether Celestial abhorring in his mind all prophane things and you have a remarkable instance of mighty joy in Mr. Holland a Minister who having the day before he died meditated upon the 8th of the Romans he cried on a sudden Stay your Reading What brightness is it that I see They told him it was the Sun-shine Nay saith he my Saviour's shine Now farewell World and welcome Heaven the day-star from an high hath visited my heart O speak it when I am gone and let it be Preached at my Funeral God dealeth familiarly with Man I feel his Mercy I see his Majesty whether in the Body or out of the Body God he knoweth but I see things unutterable And in the Morning following he shut up his blessed Life with these blessed words O! what an happy change shall I make from Night to Day from Darkness to Light from Death to Life from Sorrow to Solace from a factious World to an Heavenly Being O! my dear Friends it pitieth me to leave you behind yet remember what I now feel I hope you shall find ere you dye That God doth and will deal familiarly with Men. And now thou fiery Chariot that came down to fetch up Eliah carry me to my happy hold and all the blessed Angels who attended the soul of Lazarus to bring it up to Heaven bear me O bear me into the bosome of my best Beloved Amen Amen Come Lord Jesus come quickly And so he fell asleep See this and several other instances in Mr. Robert Bolton's Instructions for afflicted Consciences p. 87. and 235 c. Eleventhly The next kindness you are to shew to your Melancholly Friends is heartily to pray for them Let your eyes weep for them in secret and there let your souls melt in fervent holy Prayers they are not able in a composed or a lively manner to recommend their own Case to God you may use many arguments in your Prayers their forlorn state and the greatness of their miseries may be a very powerful motive to your Supplications You know that none but God himself can help them For as Mr. Greenham says If our assistance were as an Host of Armed Soldiers if our Friends were the Princes and Governors of the Earth if our Possessions were as large as between the East and the West if our Meat were as Mannah from Heaven if our Apparel were as costly as the Ephod of Aaron if every day were as glorious as the day of Christ's Resurrection yet if our Minds are appalled with the Judgments of God all these things would not yield us any help or consolation * See Mr. Greenham's Comfort for an Afflicted Conscience p. â—27 And you must wrestle with him on their behalf you may plead with him That his Power and Goodness will be more illustrious if he save those whom none but he himself can save and that his Grace will be more remarkable if he please to create Peace for those troubled Souls in which none but he can make a Calm and you know not but that his Light on your request may begin to shine on those who have bewailed his absence with many dreadful groans And tho your eyes be even weary with looking upwards yet continue still to wait and pray for it shall not be in vain Thus you will do them a great kindness and perform your own Duty tho perhaps they may be ready to say to you as Mr. Peacock to his Friends Take not the Name of God in vain by praying for a Reprobate And as Mr. Dod said to him when he said he could not pray Tho saith he most sicknesses hinder Prayer and therefore the Apostle James says If any Man be sick let him send for the Elders c. Yet if God stir up your Friends to pray for you he will stir up himself to hear their Prayers And do you consider that nothing but Prayer can do them good It is an obstinate disease that nothing else will overcome for it is a very slight Melancholly and which is not deeply rooted that can be drowned in Wine or chased away with sociable divertisements Some indeed tell us When they find themselves troubled their way is to bid their thoughts Battel and to oppose Thoughts against Thoughts and with the dint of Reason to subdue this peevish Humour But such must give me leave to say That they are not under the disease of Melancholly for that will neither hear Faith nor Reason till God himself by his Almighty Power work Salvation for us XII Not only pray for them but get other serious Christians to pray for them also When many good people join their requests together the cry is more acceptable and prevalent When those in the Acts joined to remember Peter in his Chains he was after that very soon delivered and in the very time of their Prayers All believers have through Jesus Christ a great interest in Heaven and the Father is willing to grant what they beg in the Name of his dear Son I my self have been greatly helped by the prayers of others and I heartily thank all those that kept any particular days wherein more solemnly to remember my distressed condition blessed be God that has not cast off their prayer nor turned away his mercy from me Every day gives us several experiences of many that have been rescued from their diseases their temptations and their fears by the Prayers of others And I might also add you have very great cause to pray for your selves that God may give you strength to bear so heavy a Cross as you are afflicted with in the afflictions of your friends Their doleful complaints their repeated groans and their long and sore trials are enough to sink you too if God do not give you wonderful support You have need to beg strong faith and great patience that you may not be unhinged with their passionate or hasty speeches XIII Put your poor
Commandments with inlarged hearts Some Families are filled with Lamentations and some with songs of Praise And all this gives us still greater occasions to magnify his Grace and Love that we have a moments ease that we can observe one Sabbath or make one Prayer with hope deserves our highest thanks and admiration Secondly Do not presume for all this for tho' he is not angry yet with you he may be so This was the fault of David Psal 30.6 In my prosperity I said I shall never be moved but it immediately follows vers 7. Thom didst hide thy face and I was troubled The Sun shines now upon you the Candle of the Lord does refresh your Tabernacle but you may meet with many Storms and Clouds and Darkness before you come to your journies end The Disciples were once greatly pleased with the glory of the Transfiguration and during the delightful interview between Christ and Moses and Elias they thought themselves as in Heaven but a cloud came and obscured the preceding glory and then the poor Men were afraid 'T is true the Anger of God endureth but a moment but even that moment is very sad and terrible beyond expression Weeping endures but for a night but it may be a very bitter and a doleful night for all that It is a night like that of the Egyptians when they arose they saw all their first-born slain and there was an hideous universal cry and mourning throughout all the Land So this night of the Anger of the Lord may destroy all our Comforts and make the first-born of our strength the confidence and the pleasure of our hopes to give up the Ghost Psal 77.2 3 4. My Sore ran in the night and ceased not my soul refused to be comforted I complained and my spirit was overwhelm'd Thou holdest mine eyes waking I am so troubled that I cannot speak Tho you are at ease to day and feel no trouble no disquiet Are you sure that it shall be so to morrow Are you sure that you shall never see any frowns in the face of God Presume not upon the strength of your grace nor the brightness of your evidence for Salvation for that may languish and this may be obscured and those of you that now think your selves at the door of Heaven may be brought for ought you know to the contrary to the very Gates of Hell Tho' God is pleased at the present to deal gently with you yet your sins may cause him to send his dreadful rebukes upon you your Souls lye open and naked to him Heb. 4.13 and he can make what impressions either of his goodness or his severity he pleases there Be not secure for it is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God Who can stand when he is angry Who can bear his blows or what hand can strike so hard a stroak as his There are these things in the sense of his Anger that may prevent your security and I will tell you not only what I have seen and heard but what I have experienced and felt in my own Soul 1. If you have once a serious and a fixed apprehension of the displeasure of God no creature can yield you the least comfort if you be never so rich all your Gold cannot purchase one hours Peace and Joy You may complain indeed to your Friends and you cannot but complain but alas they can give you no relief Their Language is Vnless the Lord help we cannot help You may go to your Ministers they may speak kindly to you but they cannot make their own words to take effect If the Heavens above you be as Brass they cannot give you Rain nor make the Dew of God to fall upon your Branches as it used to do they can mourn with you but they cannot wipe your tears away If you once apprehend that God is angry with you in vain shall you seek for rest in pleasures or diversions or change of Company for such a stinging thought as this will always pierce you to the quick God is mine enemy and what will these avail The sense of his Anger will put even your natural spirits into a strange unquiet agitation and after this you will not find your very bodies at ease as they used to be Psal 38.2 Thine arrows stick fast in me and thy hand presseth me sore there is no soundness in my flesh because of thine anger neither is there any rest in my bones because of my sin When I say My bed shall comfort we my couch shall ease my complaint then thou scarest me with dreams and terrifiest me through visions Job 7.13 14. All the Fountains on Earth will never quench your thirst if the Fountain of Living Waters be shut up Your Bed will not then be a place of rest nor your Meat delightful to your taste your sorrows will keep you waking all the night and your fears will haunt and pursue you in rhe day My sighing cometh before I eat and my roarings are poured out like Waters Job 3.24 Your Soul will then abhor all dainty Meat and your Life will draw nigh unto the Grave and when you have tired your selves in seeking rest among the creatures and have found none you must then sit down and say by a sad experience Miserable Comforters are you all for tho' you run to never so many crowds of quiet people you can meet with no quietness as the wounded Hart tho she run into the common herd yet by that means does not lose her pain but carries her wound with her where ever she goes 2. Whilest you are under the sense of God's displeasure you will find no comfort in his Ordinances every part of his blessed Word will be as a Sword cutting to your very Soul You will find every Threat to be as a dart thrown at you and see every promise that is full of Consolation to others yet to be as dry to you That Scripture which was once your delight will fill you with Gall and Wormwood That which you once reckoned to be the book of Life will then seem to be the book of Death and you will be afraid to read there for fear of reading your own Condemnation So great a change does the sense of God's displeasure make Those-Assemblies that were once your joy will then be terrible to you I go not says the troubled Soul there to meet a friend as I used to do but to see an Enemy To see others joyfully serving God and singing of his Praise whilst I am silent with deep Affliction and can only Mourn whilest they Rejoyce What pleasure is it to see others feasting at his Table whilst my Sins have destroyed my appetite and there is not one crumb of the bread of Life that belongs to me I pray and he shuts out my cry regards not my entreaties does not ease my distress nor seems to relent with all my Groans I have Sinned against him and I dare not say My God
more clearly to us the corruption and defilement of our nature In a calm the waters of the Sea appear to be clear enough but when the storm comes then it throws up the mire and dirt in prosperity and health we think we have very good hearts and considerable degrees of sanctification but when sin is set home upon us the spiritual Law of God begins to shew its purity Oh what multitudes of iniquities do then appear what unbelief what impatience what murmuring what unbecoming thoughts of God such hideous and strange thoughts as we never had before In health and strength and peace there are a thousand secular Affairs and Contrivances that take up our time and divert our minds and turn us to the view of things without but in the trouble of our Consciences our eyes are turned another way to behold with attention our own Souls and to see what lusts what impurities what venomous Creatures what Vipers have been entertained there and oh what a ghastly formidable sight is this to see such a numerous brood of Transgressions when we imagined that all had been very well with us it is even a wonder that God who saw so much evil in us should let us alone so long These spiritual Afflictions shew us what a sorry contemptible Creature man is what cause he has to be debased when he is most proud and what cause he has to be covered with shame and blushing when he is most fearless and undaunted when God does not blow upon our Garden instead of those Spices those Graces blowing forth that may be for his glory and for our comfort there is nothing but Weeds and Thistles nothing but Thorns and Briars that tear and wound us our Soul is then just like a dead Carkass full of putrefaction no sprightly motions towards Heaven no spiritual no warm desires like the cold Regions of the North which the Sun does only visit with his fainter and weaker beams and not like those Eastern Countries where his greater heat does produce Spices and fragrant Flowers 5. Another End that God hath in the continuance of Spiritual Troubles and Afflictions and the Sense of his Wrath long upon us is that from our own Experience Christ may be for ever very precious to us when we are at ease and think our selves whole we seldom think of him but our pain and our smart our guilt and our fears the sight of our present Danger and of approaching Wrath causes us to run to this Physician and to beg his help when we are sinking it will make us to stretch out our hands and say Master save us or else we perish Never did a poor Man with more earnestness beg an Alms than we shall beg his help never did a diseased Person after violent racking Pain more long for Rest and a Cure than we shall for Christ and having fallen among Lyons having been the flaves of fear and held in Captivity by the Temptations of Satan we shall most gladly shake of our Chains and embrace Liberty and Salvation when our Lord comes to set us free The fight of him to be our Saviour will make us run to meet him and to say Welcome thou only Friend of our Souls welcome thou dear Physician and Healer of our Souls Hosannah to the Son of David blessed is he that comes to us in the name of the Lord. Oh! how will our very hearts melt with love when we remember that as we have been distressed for our Sins against him so he was in greater Agonies for us We have had Gall and Wormwood but he tasted a more bitter Cup. The Anger of God has dried up our Spirits but he was scorched with a more flaming Wrath. He was under violent pain in the Garden and on the Cross ineffable was the sorrow that he felt being forsaken of his Father deserted by his Disciples affronted and reproached by his Enemies and under a Curse for us This Sun was under a doleful Eclipse this Living Lord was pleased to dye and in his Death was under the Frowns of an Angry God That Face was then hid from him that had always smiled before and his Soul felt that horror and that darkness which it had never felt before So that tho there was no Separation between the divine and humane Nature yet he suffered Pains equal to those which we had deserv'd fo suffer in Hell for ever God so suspended the Efficacies of his Grace that it displayed in that hour none of its force and virtue on him He had no Comfort from Heaven none from his Angels none from his Friends even in that sorrowful hour when he needed comfort most Like a Lyon that is hurt in the Forest so he roared and cryed out tho there was no despair in him and when he was forsaken yet there was trust and hope in those words My God My God Have we been abandoned of God He was much more so and was deserted for a while that we might not be so for ever Oh! how frequently should we remember such a Saviour How delightful should we think and speak of him who thought nothing too much for us We have by feeling of the Wrath of God drank in some measure of the Cup whereof he drank We justly for our Sins He out of Love and Kindness that he might make an Atonement and a Propitiation and if what we have felt was so terrible how much more dreadful was that which he endured If the smaller drops that have put our Souls into a flame have filled us with anguish what torment did he undergo that was plunged as into a Sea of Wrath Surely such a Friend such a Physician as he has been to us must be ever valued We cannot pray but in his Name we cannot be justified but with his Righteousness we can hope for nothing but by his Merits and his Intercession we cannot Live we cannot dye without him Let this be the constant Language of our Souls None but Christ none but Christ Cant. 3.1 2 3 4. 6. That we may put an high Value on the Scripture that we may search and look into it with more earnestness and frequency to see if there be any Promises in it that are reviving any place in it that may afford hope and comfor to Souls so miserable and so guilty For when our Consciences are awakened and pierced with the sense of Wrath from God if his Word would speak peace to us we could have ease but the terrible threatnings thereof are the things that wound us deep and that put us to the greater smart and we then know and fully believe beyond all doubt that this is the word by which we are to be tried in the great and solemn day 7. Another end of God in continuing Afflictions and a long remaining sense of his Wrath upon us is That we may be everlasting admirers of the freeness of his Grace when we are delivered Oh! with what wonder should we behold his
be better than a thousand elsewhere What will one day in Heaven be There we shall not live upon things meaner than our selves we shall there have no mean complacencies nor dishonourable cares in the favour and the sight of God we shall have a taste of all excellencies and delights without the least mixture of evil and what transports shall we have when we come to the full view of him the sight of whom even at this distance was so sweet and comfortable to us When after all our doubtings our fears and our sad thoughts we find that we have through many dangers gain'd our Port. Inf. 2. If the favour of God be life O! what a doleful place is hell where this favour never comes Job 10. last vers How black is their darkness and how long and tedious is their night that shall never have the dawn of day Oh! how terrible and how frightful is the second death A death that torments the separated soul A death that banishes it from the presence of the Lord A death that excludes it from all comfortable sight of God! There the Damned see him as a Judge feel his amazing terrors but they would gladly if they could wrap themselves in darkness and never see such a frowning and a dreadful God there is anguish and wo and tribulation and the continual groan and cry of that place God is gone away from us for ever His Face and his Light chears his Saints but it scorches us and puts us all into a flame This is the language of their misery That God will shew them no pity That he is deaf to their cries and has shut up his bowels that once earned over them in Eternal wrath That he once indeed would have been reconciled and they would not and now they shall never have an offer of his favour any more Oh! poor forsaken souls what shall they do that have no God to give them help no Mediator to plead their Cause no Physician to bind up their wounds no kind hand to give them the least comfort nothing but wrath and no love nothing but vengeance and destruction and no mercy with it The Servants of God never taste so much of Hell as when his face is hid it brings upon them desolation terror and the very pangs of death but they have now and then some support some little beams of light but in that doleful place there is nothing else but sorrow and despair Here in all the temptations of his Servants Christ is concerned sympathizes with them and in his due time sends them relief But he will never concern himself with the Damned nor cast one gracious eye upon them they are fallen and he will not raise them up they are perish'd and they must perish they thirst indeed but shall never have a drop of water to cool their tongues What will the poor creatures do when they are overwhelm'd with the wrath of one that is Almighty Oh! how loud will be their Cries and how dreadful their complaints when after millions of years are past they have still as many more to come When they have been long tost upon the lake of fire they will never be nearer to the shore never hear one comfortable word from the mouth of God! Oh! how glad would they be to have one smile of his face one days refreshment but it must not be the gulph is fix'd and the sentence is irrevocable Isa 27.11 He that made them will not have mercy on them and he that formed them will shew them no favour Oh! what can be thought more desolate than to be forsaken of God! to be forsaken of God in whom alone is Life and to be cast into outer darkness And what will be the consternation of the great day when he shall say to the wicked Depart from me c. To hear that voice and that word Depart from me will be their Hell They shall not be able to turn their thoughts from the contemplation of their own miseries nor their eyes from the sight of those objects that will fill them with grief and horror and be themselves abominable for what a despicable deformed â—â—ing even now is an Apostate Angel that is stript of the Life of God! Inf. 3. If Life be in the favour of God then the greatest part of the World is dead for the most are alienated from him by their evil works the most are stupid and insensible in a dead slumber and are his enemies She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she lives 1 Tim. 5.6 And if this be a symptom and a mark of death How many dead have we among us How many that find time enough for their Games their Sports and their Recreations and find no time wherein to call upon the Lord and to seek his favour How many eat and drink and are merry even when their Souls are in the greatest danger and their Maker is their enemy 'T is a sign that when they are so little sensible of their greatest interest and have so little taste and liking of Divine Joys that they are spiritually dead How much greater is the number of the dead than of the living How many Families are there that are without Prayer without any sense of God at all and in which all the whole Family is dead And in those where there are some alive How many are there yet not quickned How many good Parents are mourning over their dying Children whom they cannot bring to life They see them stepping into the Grave and all their intreaties all their Tears all their Prayers cannot bring them thence And in our Congregations how many are there that have indeed a name to live but are dead Rev. 3.1 that have never yet been in earnest for their Salvation that suffer days and years unconcernedly to rowl over their heads and are never the nearer Heaven at the conclusion of the year than they were at the beginning of it They have indeed it may be risen early and sate up late but all their cares have been as much for the Body as if they had no Soul They are grown crooked with looking downward and are as earthly and as sensual as if they had no Heaven to mind And what an heartless thing is it to the Ministers to find that they spend their labour in speaking to the dead and who in a great measure remain dead still Tho' they do it not without hope that at some time or another their Master will say to them as to the Prophet Ezek. 37.2 3. 4 c. Oh! what a Plague is among us and we feel it not Gray hairs are here and there upon us and we discern it not How many Captives has the Prince of darkness that are no way grieved at their own Captivity How many are strangers to the favour of God that never saw his reconciled face never felt the quickning Influences of his Spirit to this very day And yet rejoyce as if all
were safe and well That sit down to eat and to drink and rise up to play and in the midst of those diversions Death seizes on their Bodies and when their Bodies dye their Souls dye and are past our help Oh! my Friends if you have any Life any Compassion put on the bowels of Christ and take up a lamentation for the dead Inf. IV. Why good Christians are so willing to depart from this World 'T is because the favour of God is their Life and when they are dead they live again because they cannot see God and live they are content to dye that they may enjoy the blessed sight They remember very well that they are strangers and pilgrims on earth that Affiction is as proper to this World as Heat in Summer and Storms and Snow in Winter they know how course soever their fare be how harsh soever the usage they meet withal that they are travelling to their dearest Countrey and every one of those Holy Pilgrims in the way to Sion is continually crying out as one says after this or the like manner As for thee Scituation of Paradise p. 95. O City of God how great and how transcendent is thy beauty Nothing but thee do I desire I think of nothing but thee I pant I thirst I long for thy felicity How do I long for thee thou sure reversion of never-fading pleasures O! Paradise thou art the recompence of my Travels and the sole aim of all my Hopes How fain would I leave these habitations of Clay to dwell in thy eternal and delightful Mansions What would I not give to enjoy the liberty of thy Citizens O! Jerusalem Jerusalem when shall I leave this ruinous and shaken House O that I had the Wings of a Dove for then would I fly away and be at rest O! when when shall I arrive there How long will it be ere I enter the Court of Heaven Oh! how have many on whom the face of God hath comfortably shined long'd to depart and to be with him They bear all disappointments and vexations in the hope of this and pain and sickness are welcome because they are as the wheels of their Chariots and drive them nearer to their home Such as these are like a Ship well fraighted that is ready to Sail and stays only till a favourable Wind present it self They dye not by surprise for these happy Travellers to Glory are always on the road that leads to the blessed place above Death is not frightful to them because they have often meditated what it is to dye and what is required for so vast a change There are indeed a great many formidable things in Death the separation of the Soul the many foregoing pains and an innumerable Army of Sorrows and Griefs that march before the King of Terrors all which by Faith these holy persons overcome they know that Christ hath taken from Death all its poysonous and hurtful qualities Their distance from God is the trouble of all good people and when he shews himself they rejoyce as when he hides himself they mourn And hence many a Religious Person when he came to dye has been heard to say I would not now for all the World be without an Interest in Christ I always found him to be a good Master and I still find him to be so he has taken away the sting of death and I am willing to go unto the House prepared for all living for my Lord hath been there before and has perfumed and sanctified the Grave Thou lookest O Grave with a dreadful aspect to Flesh and Blood but not so to Faith and I bid thee welcome as the way to Glory I commit my Body to thee to keep it safe till the Resurrection when my Soul that I now commit into the hands of my Saviour shall come and fetch it back again With the sense of this favour of God did the Martyrs so chearfully persevere and look upon their dying day as the day of their Coronation this Favour made them to scorn the threats and the frowns of Tyrants and all their rage and fury by this they went to the fiery furnace as to a bed of Roses because they knew God would be with them there In the hope of his acceptance old and young grave Matrons and tender Virgins have embraced the Stakes and kist the Flames and freely dyed and have rejoiced and look'd with an unmoved countenance on all the preparations of death whil'st those that were the spectators of their patience could not look upom them without flowing eyes To whom they have said Death would be frighful if we looked no further but it comforts us when we see the Crowns the Hallelujahs and the Glories that wait for us on the further side This will deliver us from an evil World from our corrupt hearts and from all those sins which we have long groaned under this will bring us to him whom all our days we have long'd to see Our Friends bewail us here but Angels are waiting for our Souls and will be glad to convey them to their Lord Christ and ours and conformably to this did those Forty Martyrs whom Basil and so many of the Fathers celebrate encourage one another when neither Promises nor Threats would prevail with them to forsake their God they were condemned to be exposed on Ice to be kill'd with Cold when they beheld the place casting away their Garments they ran to it with delight not as if they had been going to Death but to gather the spoils of Victory VVith our Garments said they we shall put off our old man our Sin and all the corruptions of our Nature VVhat great thing is it if the servant suffer that which his Lord endured before VVe were the cause that he was disrobed and afflicted the cold said these happy Souls is troublesome but Paradise is sweet This Ice afflicts us but the Rest there will delight us Let us endure this cold a litte while longer and the warmth of Abraham's Bosom will refresh us for ever VVe shall exchange this bitter and tempestuous Night for an Eternal Day Let us turn our backs upon the world and seeing we are once to dye Let us now Dye that we may Live And O Lord let us be acceptable to thee when we are offered to thee by this painful Death Thus they endured in the cold night rejoycing in the hope of Glory VVhat wonders of courage and of zeal have been produced by the sense of the Favour and the Love of God! Inf. 5. How inexcusable are they that refuse this Favour of God in which alone is Life Who would chuse to be a Beggar when he might be the King's Favourite Who would chuse to embrace a Dunghill when he might be treated with Plenty and all suitable accommodations Who would chuse to be Sick or Blind when he might receive his Sight And yet this is the sad case of Sinners God would be their friend and they
should wish to be learned and yet never read or study as if a Soldier should wish for victory and yet never fight or an Husbandman for a gainful Crop and yet neither plow nor sow It is not a careless wish for God's favour that will serve the turn you must pray constantly and resort to those places of Worship where he usually manifests his presence in his own Ordinances and read his word with reverence humility and frequency you must seek him with your whole heart you must expect and wait tho it be long for a gracious answer of your Prayers how many days will men give their attendance for some Preferment or High Place in a Prince's Court And it should not grieve us to stay for the Favour and the Love of God for when it is once bestowed it will requite all your pains and labour 1 Cor. 15. last verse You will meet in the quest of this with manifold trials and with great oppositions your Carnal Nature and your old Sins will present motives to your sense to draw you back Satan will perplex you with a thousand doubts and troubles for you may be sure this Lyon will roar when he is like to lose his Prey but nothing of this must discourage you The Favour of God is so great a mercy that you may justly be importunate and restless till you get it notwithstanding all the dangers that you meet withal No great things are obtained but with difficulty you 'll see hereafter that it was worth the while to take pains in a matter of so great consequence You now find that after all the pleasure of Sin is past it leaves a sting and fills your minds with bitterness and trouble but you 'll hereafter find nothing but comfort nothing but an overflowing-pleasure in the love of God and you 'll find it to be so very pleasant that you will wish that you had done more for him than you have done There 's not a Soul in Heaven that repents of the pains he took to get thither 3. You must he deeply sensible of your own miserable and undone state without it Luke 5.31 They that are whole need not a Physician but they that are sick Matth. 18.11 The Son of Man is come to save that which is lost Job 33.27 He looketh upon men and if any say I have sinned and perverted that which was right and it profiteth me not he will deliver his soul from going down to the pit and his life shall see the light If you are once convinced that your sins have made him angry that his Anger is very just and yet so severe that if it continue it will be intolerable If you are once sensible what a great God you have provoked what an holy Law you have broken what an Hell you have deserved you will reckon it as a great mercy that you are not already there whence there is no return If your Conscience have been awakened with a deep impression of his Wrath all the Riches the Honours and the Pleasures of this World will seem to you to be very poor and empty things The sight of Sin that has deceived you that has defiled you that has exposed you to so great danger will fill you with shame and sorrow with fear and trouble Of all your desires this will be your chief and your only desire Let me have the Favour of God whatever else I want Let me have his Favour or I dye for ever you will be restless and unsatisfied till you have the hope of this The reason why men are so industrious for all other things and so little concerned for the Favour of God is because they are blinded by the Devil and their own Lusts and under a spiritual insensibility But if you once find Sin to be bitter this will be very sweet If that has thrown you into painful Agonies and deep distress of Soul this will greatly comfort and revive you you will see then great cause to humble and to loath your self and not find any cause of pride or of the boast of the Pharisee but in the better posture and temper of the Publican say Lord be merciful to me a sinner Never did a Traveller after a tedious Journey more desire his home or a Mariner long tost with Tempests to see the quiet Shore than you will desire this Favour of God When you have been scorcht with inward thirst you will pant for this Fountain of Love wherein you may quench your thirst when you have been in a long war with God and come at length to see the danger of it Oh how beautiful will be the feet of those who are Ambassadors of Peace You will then say as it is in Luke 1.53 He bath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent empty away 4. The Favour of God is only to be had in and through Jesus Christ and you must apply your selves tn him for it It is not all your Zeal your Repentance your Self-denial or your Mortifications that of themselves will be sufficient to bring you to the Favour of God Tho you labour in his Service all the day and mourn for your Miscarriages all the night what satisfaction will this give to his offended Justice and to the honour of his violated Law We were happy indeed at our first Creation in his Love and happy had we been still had we persevered but our first Apostacy by the fall from that Innocent Condition has made a large breach between God and us and there is none found in Heaven or in Earth that can make it up but his only Son The loss of Original Righteousness has made us to lose his Favour and occasioned a vast distance between him and us this has brought forth all the miseries of the World Irregular Seasons overflowing Inundations and dreadful Wars all the sickness and pain of our Bodies and all the guilt and unquietness and disorder of our Souls in Adam we all died both natural and spiritual death came upon all because all have sinned but God has in his mercy not left us hopeless As soon as Adam fell He was pleased to provide for his rising a-again and as soon as ever he had wounded himself he did prepare a Balsom to heal and cure his Wounds and when he was stung and poisoned with the Venom of the Serpent he did prepare an Antidote The poor guilty Creature could have expected nothing but a Curse and yet God gave him the Promise of Redemption and of a Blessing by the Seed of the Woman that should break the Serpent's head when he drive Adam out of Paradise he might have put him out of Heaven and out of his Presence for evermore and have said Go and dwell with that Devil that tempted thee to sin Upon the Fall he withdrew indeed his usual Favour this raised a cloud that obscured the beauty of his morning-glory and that intercepted the beams that a little while before
shone upon his head but tho we had destroyed our selves in God was our help He sent his own Son to dye for us to give a satisfaction to his Justice which would otherwise have slamed against us and though we are enemies yet he is willing to reconcile us by the death of his Son Rom. 5.10 It is by him that he will treat with us to him must we address our selves as being ordain'd of God to make our peace To his Righteousness must we look as being very sensible that our own at the best is miserably defective If our Persons and our Services be accepted it must be through his Beloved he is the Principal and the great Favourite of Heaven all the mercy that we need will be bestowed for his sake alone all the miseries that we deserve will he keep from us it pleases God to behold what Christ has done he will be pleased with us if we are in him It is the Blood of Jesus and the merit of his Death and our application of these by faith that will re-instate us in his Favour and 't is the power and the virtue of his Intercession that will preserve us in it Christ is the way and the truth and the life 't is he that will conduct and lead us to his Father and make him that was our Enemy because of our Sin to be our Friend a-again It is his Office as a Mediator and a Saviour to heal the Wounded to reduce the Wanderers to call home the banished to make the Lame to walk and the blind to see Isa 61.1 and our blessed Lord is willing to plead our Cause and to help our Wants for those that come unto him he will in no-wise cast out if you believe his Father shall be your Father and his God your God for God has resolved that all the communication of his Grace shall be made through his dearly beloved Son and if you do sincerely beg his Favour for Christ's sake you shall not be denied He that hath the Son hath life You shall indeed flourish when you are united to this great and glorious Head and the death that you found by the first shall be removed by the second Adam As in Adam all died even so in Christ shall all be made alive 1 Cor. 1.22 The Office of our Redeemer in Heaven is still to be a Reconciler and not all the Angels or the Saints there can do for us what he does When you are complaining of the yet remaining defilement and power of Sin and saying with the great Apostle Oh wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death Then remember that there is help laid upon one that is mighty one that is compassionate and hath a tender sense of all your griefs and miseries and therefore when you are amazed with the view of your own guilt terrified with the Accusations of your own Consciences and perplext with the violent Assaults and Temptations of the Devil when you are afraid you shall be the Stubble to the devouring Wrath of God then lay hold of his strength Isa 27.5 i. e. on Christ who is the power of God and the wisdom of God 1 Cor. 1.24 And it may be said of you as in Ephes 2.12 Though in time past ye were without Christ being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise having no hope and without God in the World but now in Christ Jesus you who sometimes were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ for he is our peace 5. That you may have an interest in the favour of God which is Life your natures must be renewed It is not enough that your Consciences are delivered from guilt and from an obnoxiousness to punishment but they must also be delivered from the dominion and the power of sin If your Lusts are unsubdued they will by their unquiet and disorderly motions create an Hell within and then you cannot expect an Heaven without if you relish only temporary carnal joys you must not expect to taste the Joy of God nor think that if you will wallow in the mire that he will place you on his Throne Tho' his Sun gives refreshment with his chearful beams to all the World to the bad as well as to the good yet the beams of his special favour will not shine upon a Dunghil nor visit those hearts which are full of all manner of pollution his pure and holy nature will not allow him to behold iniquity with approbation Think not to see the reviving smiles of his face so long as you turn your backs upon him so long as you love what he abhors so long as without any remorse or grief you scorn his Government and violate his Laws Till you are born again by the Spirit of God you are in a state of death and are unfit for the communications of the Divine favour You are in that condition no members of the Body of Christ for all that are joyned to that glorious Head have life and strength from him to mortify their Lusts What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness and what communion hath light with darkness and what concord hath Christ with Belial 2 Cor. 6.14 15. There is no Communion between God and you till your natures your inclinations your principles your designs are all changed from what they once were The righteous Lord loveth righteousness Psal 11.7 Till you have his image and a resemblance of him wrought in you by the Holy Ghost you are not his favourites nor such in whom he can take a peculiar delight without holiness his presence will not seem amiable to you or at least without it you cannot see his face Isa 59.1 2. Your iniquities have separated between you and your God and your sins have hid his face from you And thâ—refore t hey are compared to a thick Cloud they obstruct and dim the light that otherwise would shine upon your heads Therefore David prays Create in me a clean heart and then restore unto me the joy of thy salvation Psal 51.10 12. Whil'st sin is lodged and entertained in the soul it is like wind in the bowels of the Earth it will cause Convulsions and troublesome agitations there It was the sin of Adam that made so many frowns in the face of God that caused the first eruption of his Wrath that makes it so frequently to flame out with terror against the guilty Sons of Men. Till you are born again you will have an aversion to God And how can you expect that his favour should be given to you whilest you care not to think of him Till your darkness be removed and you be acquainted with him you cannot be at peace VI. That you may have the favour of God you must in conformity to the new Nature and those holy dispositions that you receive by his Grace yield him a sincere and a constant obedience all your lives His countenance
heed that you do not weaken your selves for the joy of the Lord is your strength Neh. 8.10 Is it not motive enough to say that his Favour is your Life and his Displeasure is your Death Let us but take as much pains for our spiritual as for our natural Life and all will be very well When we find the least decays of Nature we are very industrious to repair them when we find the least faintness or indisposition on our spirits we have recourse to Cordials or to something that is very comfortable and reviving to refresh them when we are sick we complain of our illness we make abundance of inquiries and use a great deal of care to know what it is that will do us good we have a great value for our dear Life and are afraid of every thing that may deprive us of it and when we are in Health What do we not attempt for our own preservation What Arts do we use What provisions do we make for Meat and Drink and Cloaths and Houses and Gardens and other accommodations that we may live at ease And my Friends is not our Soul of more worth than the Body Are not its decays and its death more painful and more intollerable than all the languishing and decays of our outward Man Let us therefore as we have a great horror of natural death have no less for that which is spiritual Let us keep with a greater care the Favour of God that is our Spiritual and Eternal Life And that we may not lose it 1. Let us not grieve his Holy Spirit Ephes 4.30 Tho' we are not so happy as to have a familiar Conversation with Christ as those had who enjoyed his presence here on Earth tho' he be withdrawn from our eyes and we see him not in his exalted and glorified state yet he has sent his Spirit to dwell in our hearts and we ought with all manner of obedience and respect to treat and entertain so Divine a Guest to do nothing that is unsuitable to so great a Presence not to pollute our selves nor to defile his Temple with any sort of sin lest we grieve and vex him The Divine Nature indeed is incapable of our passions 't is above our joys and our sorrows and as 't is said of those that are upon Mount Olympus they see the Clouds gather below their feet they see the Hail and the Thunder disturb and lighten on the Plain whilest they rejoice in the pure light of the Sun In such manner the Divine Essence sees all the troubles and agitations of the Creatures remaining always in its own peace and tranquility * Claude Serm. Sur. Eph. 4.30 p. 29. This expression is borrowed from humane affections and when the Holy Spirit does that in us which our nature does when it is seized with sorrow then he is said to be grieved And if we make him sad we cannot expect that he will make us to rejoyce if we affront and abuse him he will not be our comfort if he retire all our Evidences will be covered with darkness and we shall be plunged in the lowest depths Let us therefore obey all his suggestions whatever he bids us do let us do let our minds always be yielding to his good and profitable motions let us not slight the Revelation he hath made nor be unmindful to grow in all the Graces that are pleasing to him let us remember the kindness that he does us how he chases away our darkness and when we are fainting how seasonably he does apply the Promises and brings to our remembrance those Truths that are most suitable and refreshing to us let us not grieve him by neglecting to read or meditate upon the Word which he endited or by foolish Communications by rash Anger 's or Malice or Bitterness or Wrath or Contention Ephes 4.31 but let him be the absolute Master of our souls when we are afflicted let us not grieve him by our murmuring or impatient complaints in our afflictions nor by security and hardness of heart in our prosperity And when he would carry us towards Heaven on the wings of spiritual desire and love let us not suffer our selves to be seduced by the World the Devil or the Flesh and if we obey him he will maintain a sense of the Divine Favour on our souls and the Life that he will give us will not be like that of the sick the feeble and the dying but like the Life of the most strong and healthful 2. Let us beware of Spiritual pride The contrite and humble are those that he regards The proud he looks upon afar off Psal 138.6 Though the Lord be high yet hath he respect unto the lowly but the proud he knoweth afar off That is with disdain and scorn 'T is nothing but our ignorance that makes us Proud We are ignorant of God and of the multitude and greatness of our Sins were it possible for us to be Proud if we frequently considered the Great Majesty of God and our own Vileness His Holiness and our Pollution His Almighty Power and our Weakness His Glory and our Darkness His Eternity and our own fading being What comparison can be made between the Great Ruler of the World and us that dwell in houses of clay It was a mighty Condescention in our Blessed Lord and one of the chiefest parts of his Humiliation to be cloathed with our Nature that is in it self so mean and low And as one says The whole World from East to VVest lies very sick but to cure this very sick world there descends an Omnipotent Physician who humbled himself even to the assumption of a Mortal Body as if he had gone into the Bed of the diseased 'T is an Ignorance of our selves that is the cause of our Pride we remember not how often it is that we offend in Thought VVord and Deed How we are by Nature children of wrath And how we make our selves more so by repeated acts of Sin God resists the Proud but he hath a regard to the Contrite and Humble Soul Isa He fills the hungry with good things but the rich he sends empty away Luke 1.53 All on whom he bestows his Favour he first convinces of their own misery shews to them the Curse the Hell the Condemnation that they have deserved and when they are pardoned after such a sight that Pardon fills them with low and self-abasing thoughts and when he comes to embrace them he finds them in the posture of the poor Prodigal Luke 15.18 19. Father I have sinned against heaven and before thee and am no more worthy to be called thy son One sight of the face of God will dash all our Confidence and lower all our Pride and the more this is revealed and discovered to the Souls of the Faithful the more they see cause to loath and abhor themselves in dust and ashes Hence it is that our Apostle that knew so much of God was so very
there are several ways like to this way that have a resemblance to it and yet vastly differ from it there is the Peace of God and there is the Peace of Satan it is the design of that malicious Spirit to let you be quiet in your Sins that you may not see their evil nor feel their bitterness and then you save him the labour to make you miserable for you make your selves so Suffer not him to blind your eyes nor to lead you to destruction whilst you never so much as make one halt nor startle at it You hear others complaining of their Sins and crying out that they are forsaken and undone and miserable and you thank God you have no trouble your Consciences are still and quiet I beseech you take heed that it be founded upon good Reasons that it prove not to be only a short slumber and not a lasting peace It may be you never doubted of God's love to you and it is very well if you have no cause to doubt You think it may be that such as are in Soul distresses are so because they have committed greater sins than other men and that Vengeance therefore like the Viper on Paul's Hand fastens on them because they have been guilty of some very great and monstrous Sin but you must know the Judgments of God are too great a deep for you to fathom he has wise Ends in those severe Dispensations though those that are at ease may have committed as great Sins as those that are in trouble many times a great Calm precedes an Earthquake many times the Sky is very clear just before the Clouds gather and the Lightning and Thunder comes Beware lest you be unsafe whilst you are most confident Beware lest you go down to the Grave as thousands do with a foolish and ungrounded hope Remember the foolish Virgins and that of the Apostle 1 Thess 5.3 CHAP. VI. Shewing by what means we may know whether we have God's Favour or not And first by the graces of his Spirit though the acting of them is neither so strong nor so comfortable at one time as at another And secondly by our hatred of Sin and our being satisfied with all his Providences THE next thing is to Examine and to try whether you have indeed this Favour of God in which is Life There are a great many people that think God to be their Friend when he is their Enemy and a great many troubled distressed Christians think that he is their Enemy when he is their Friend Let us I beseech you be very careful in a thing that so nearly concerns both our present and our future peace Let us take heed that neither the Devil nor our own hearts cheat us in a matter that is of so vast a consequence and we have need of the greater care because if we should flatter our selves with a foolish hope that we are God's Favourites when we are not truly so as our vain Expectations would leave us at the last so the Ruine that it would bring forth would come with a double weight upon us for to fall from great hopes is worse than never to have hoped at all to be miserable after we have thought our selves happy gives a more acute and bitter sting to that misery There is many an one in Hell now groaning under the Eternal Wrath of God that thought he should have seen the Smiles of his Face and not have been terrified with his Frowns that thought he should have walkt in the Streets of the New Jerusalem in liberty and light and peace whereas he is now in Chains of darkness and in anguish inexpressible With what tenderness with what caution and with what holy fear should we manage such an Affair as this with what solemnity ought I to proceed when I am enquiring whether I am a Favourite of God or not whether I belong to the Living or yet remain among the Dead whether I am an Heir of Heaven or an utter stranger to the blessed place and the God that makes it to be so blessed as it is And there is not one person that reads this but has cause to make such an Enquiry and to say with himself I feel by the warmth and vigorous motion of my spirits that I have a natural Life I eat and drink and sleep and take abundance of care and use a thousand projects to maintain this same dear and pleasant Life but whilst my Body is indulged and thrives is not my poor slighted Soul in a state of death and whilst men shew me favour and are friendly to me have I the favour of that God that is to be my Judge and who is either the best Friend or the worst Enemy Now in this matter we may proceed by such Rules as these 1. Have you those graces of the Spirit wrought in you which are the certain pledges and tokens of his Favour Are you rich in faith and yet poor in spirit Are you hungring and thirsting after Righteousness And when you find your own best Actions fall vastly short of the strict and pure demands of the Divine Law do you prize and seek the Righteousness that is in Christ Is that Sin now bitter to your taste and grievous to your thoughts which was once highly esteemed and prized Do you hate and bewail that with a relenting spirit that was once your dearly beloved and your joy Are you mortified to this World and do you walk humbly as wisely considering how weak you are and how liable to be surprized and to fall always considering that you are very sinful and very frail These Graces of Faith Mortification Humility and the like are certain tokens of the Love of God and in a Soul thus qualified he delights to fix his Habitation Isa 57.15 in such a Soul there is a Heaven begun and it not only lives but will attain new strength and proceed to further degrees of life though it now flourish in the Courts of the Lord yet his Light shining upon it will cause it to take the deeper root and to look with a more amiable freshness the Self-conceited shall miss abundance of refreshments that a Soul so lowly will meet withall as those showers of Rain that slide away from the tops of Mountains descend into the Valleys and make them more fruitful Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is Liberty He does not give this to remain for a small space only but to remain with his Servants till their work be done it is called the earnest of our Inheritance Ephes 1.14 An Earnest you know is part of the Payment not to be returned again and we are said to be sealed with this Spirit unto the day of Redemption Eph. 4.30 i. e. that is as one explains it God does by that distinguish Believers from other men as Seals are employed to make a difference from other things that are not so much to be regarded and as we seal our own Goods or Papers
do not flow forth nor do the sweetest of the flowers smell with such a perfume and such a fragrant scent as they then do If we would have a warm sense of the Love of Christ shed abroad in our hearts it must be done by the efficacy and influence of the Holy-Ghost he brings the most suitable Truths to remembrance and he seasonably applies those Promises that are most comfortable and reviving he raises in us holy courage and hope and he fills our Sails with his favourable blasts he banishes that fear and those perplexing doubts that enslave us and sets before us the Mercy and the Loving-kindness of God and pours into our smarting and bleeding Wounds the Consolations of the Gospel There are indeed some particular times when God is pleased to give to the soul the clear manifestations of his favour and they are usually by Divines said to be in such particular circumstances as these 1. He is pleased to condescend to New Converts that are suddenly cheared with mighty Joys and filled with an admiration of his Grace He considers the weakness of these tender Pilgrims and his joy becomes their strength he feeds them as with Angels food for he knows they have a great way to go and therefore he carries them in his Arms and leads them gently along and they meet not with those sharp and heavy Tryals that more experienced Christians meet withal The sudden change that such perceive when they go from gross darkness into a marvellous light when their Chains are struck off and their Prison-doors set open makes them to wonder and adore Hence it is that they have vigorous affections and are very active for the Glory of their Saviour hence it is that their Zeal is so fervent and the flame of their Love burns so clear and bright 2. Another season when God Communicates to his Servants peculiar manifestations of his favour is at the Lord's Supper when they see their Redeemer Crucified before their eyes when they see the torments of his Body and the Agonies of his Soul how pained how amazed he was and that all this pain was for them and for their Salvation and that as surely as they receive the Bread and the Wine so surely do they receive this Jesus and all his benefits Direction for the present and a title to everlasting Glory this carries them up to the top of the Mount this makes them to tast of the Tree of Life This sight of a dying Saviour and of the Heaven that he purchased makes them to worship him with praise and to think themselves even as already there where he is To this Table of the Lord the believing soul goes hungry and a thirst and from the same Table returns greatly pleased with so Divine a Banquet tho' not without the most earnest desires of that entertainment that is reserved for it above 3. God is pleased to give his Servants a clearer manifestation of his Love when he intends to employ them in some remarkable or extraordinary service and as he encouraged Joshua that met with great difficulties by saying Fear not but be of good courage I am with thee Josh 1.9 When he sets before them the Labours and Dangers of the Combat he displays at the same time the greatness of the Reward and the glory of the Victory Thus docs he animate his Soldiers to fight his Battels thus he prepares his Martyrs to witness to his Truth and with such a sense of his favour no Cup seems too bitter for them to drink no danger too great for them to Conquer Hence Moses said If thy presence go not with me carry us not up hence Exod. 33.15 But with that he was content to go to what place of difficulty soever he was called he would rather as one says * Culverwell's White Stone p. 125. be in a desolate and howling Wilderness than in a pleasant and a fruitful Land without the presence of his God he knew there was no sweetness in Canaan without him there is more Sting than Honey in the Land of Promise unless he be there and Canaan it self will prove a Wilderness if he withdraw himself Thus God as the same person says when he called Abraham to that great expression of obedience in the sacrificing of his Isaac he first warms his heart with his Love and seals up the Covenant of Grace to him he spreads before him ample and comprehensive Promises I am thy God alsufficient I am thy buckler and thine exceeding great reward and this will bear up and support Abraham though the staff of his old Age be taken away and by his own hands cast into the Fire Or 4. In Prayer God is many times pleased to shew his favour to the Soul giving it a secret assurance of his Mercy saying I am thy God and portion and so sends it away filled with good things Or 5. In great straits and pinching wants when there is least of the creature there is usually most of the Alsufficient Creator when all the Cisterns of Earthly Comforts are broken then this Fountain overflows and sends out his comfortable streams He carries his people into a Wilderness and there he speaks comfortably to them Hos 2.14 And is then most kind when the World will shew them no kindness Or 6. after they have got the victory over some Lusts and Corruptions that were both dishonourable to him and uneasie to them such a Conquest is attended with his approbation and that gives them a mighty joy like the joy that the poor Israelites had when they saw their Enemies drowned in the Red Sea Or 7. in the day of death When all the shine of Earthly delights is clouded and their Sun is just upon his setting they lift up their feeble and their longing eyes toward Heaven and he draws away the Vail and they see the Son of God standing at his Right hand as their Advocate and Mediator and then it is that a poor weary Soul says with Paul I desire to depart and to be with Christ As Mr. Flavel says of old Mr. Lyford that being desired a little before his death to let his Friends know in what condition his Soul was and what his thoughts were about that Eternity to which he seemed very near he answered with a cheerfulness suitable to a Believer and a Minister I will let you know how it is with me and then stretching out an hand that was withered and consumed with Age and Sickness Here is says he the Grave the Wrath of God and devouring Flames the just punishment of Sin on the one side and here am I a poor sinful soul on the other side but this is my comfort the Covenant of Grace which is established on so many sure Promises hath salved all There is an Act of Oblivion passed in Heaven I will forgive their iniquities and their sins will I remember no more This is the blessed Privilege of all within the Covenant among whom I am one What
a quiet and a blessed soul was this How full of joy in a time of usual amazement and terror With what strength was he furnish'd to fight with his last Enemy God grant that you and I may have such strength and such comfort when it shall be our time to dye 2. That you may know whether you have the Favour of God in which is life you must examine whether you esteem him more than the world There are two Qualifications of this Esteem 1. That it be serious and deliberate 2. That it be prevalent 1. That it be serious It must be the product of many solemn repeated thoughts a viewing of him as invested with many glorious Perfections as he is represented in his Word and as he shines in the face of Jesus Christ a due considering both what he is in himself and what he will be to you This Esteem is not wrought by a hasty glance or a passant view but by deep thoughtfulness attended with calm and sedate reflections on our own guiltiness and his mercy on our own emptiness and miseries and his Alsufficiency and then a ballancing of all things that pretend to a share in our Affections and submitting at length to the juster claim of God Saying after this or the like manner Lord I yield up my self to Thee as Thine own I was a little while dazled with the gay Pleasures of a vain World but now I bid them all farewell that I may come and taste thy Joys I have served Sin and Satan but they have cheated and deceived me they have given me Vexation instead of Rest and Husks instead of Bread therefore now O my Father in Heaven poor Prodigal as I am I return to Thee to live in Thy Family to do Thy Work and never to wander or to be extravagant any more Oh! give me not all my portion in this World but let me have an Inherittance in that which is to come Let others pursue their several projects and obtain what they pursue let them succeed in their Affairs and bathe themselves in the softest pleasures It is God that I seek it is he that I will most value 'T is a sign that a beam of heavenly light hath shined upon your souls if this be your frame 2. Your esteem must be prevalent the worst of Men have some esteem of God as of a Glorious a Powerful a good and happy Being and they think those the safest and the most Honourable persons that enjoy his favour but then there are a thousand trifles that they more esteem and labour after as Riches or Ease or Gain or Applause But can you truly say I would not if I might have all the World without God himself I had rather have him tho in Poverty and Disgrace and trouble than to be compass'd with throngs of flowing joys without his Love If you have this Favour of God you will easily look through all the painted Varnish of the World and see its real vanity God and things Divine will not only gain your hearts but gain them in a Soveraign and a Powerful degree and till we thus prize and value him he is not our God nor is his favour our portion If you have this you will say with David Psal 4.6 Lord lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon me It is not outward prosperity or grandeur or the favour of Men or the ease of the flesh that I seek but thy self Thou art my Exaltation my Joy my every Good all that I wish for and all that I desrire 3. If you have this favour of God you will know it by the hatred that you have of sin Where-ever this comes it will banish that it will weaken and expel it and tho it do not altogether destroy it yet it will take away from it all its former amiableness and beauty you will not sin with such boldness as you used to do nay you will be so far from that that you will not dare to commit the least iniquity and if there be fixed in your souls a real and abiding hatred of Sin and if you use all good endeavours against it it 's a most certain mark that you are past from death to life you cannot but remember what bitterness the remembrance of your former iniquities filled your souls withal what consternation did then seize upon your poor spirits when you thought God your Enemy and Hell your Portion What would you then have given for the least beam of that Sun that now shines with his gentle beams upon your heads How welcome was the voice of that Messenger that brought you glad tidings and that assured you there was Mercy and Hope even for you Era you obtained this favour of God you have had many a restless night and many a weary day in a sollicitous enquiry what would become of your immortal souls for ever 4. If you have this favour of God in which is Life you will be satisfied with all his dispensations that will bring you nearer to himself It is an observation not without its Truth That where-ever God gives Grace he will send afflictions to exercise that Grace and those that have the strongest Grace must look for such conflicts such temptations and such assaults from the Devil in their way to Heaven as will put all their Grace to the utmost and the largest stretch None shall come to Heaven without suffering none can tell how many Millions of sufferings he may endure before the day of Salvation dawns upon him but he is a very happy person that is not overwhelmed with these innumerable calamities That whilest he swims as in a Sea of grief can lift up his head and exercise his Faith and say Lord let thy will be done It thou wilt be with me in the fiery Furnace and in the deep Waters I shall not fear tho those Flames be very hot and these Waves roul fast one upon another Tho it is our Duty to deprecate long and severe and heavy Tryals it is a common thing in our Prayers to say Lord if thou wilt save me at last bring any sort of affliction on me I will refuse nothing But alas alas we generally do not know what we say there are those Arrows in God's Quiver which if they should be shot against us would cut us to the very soul and make us quickly to change our language There is that unspeakable weight in his hand when he lays it much upon us that we cannot bear There are those Pains at his disposal and which our sins deserve that are in all things setting aside their duration as the very pains of Hell He is the good Man that does not desire affliction for he will be sure to have it whether he do or not but that can submit to it when it comes upon him that does not make to himself a Cross but takes it up when he finds it lying in the way that can say Lord if I must be poor in
close with Death keep your mind full of these pleasant Ideas endeavour to get a greatness of soul that may not cease aspiring after these glorious Privileges and look with contempt upon all other Grandeur and Magnificence Having seen how honourable it is to be favoured by the Lord of Hosts Let us all resolve that we will never admire this vain World any more for we have now discerned a better World The End of the Second Part. A DISCOURSE Concerning TROUBLE of MIND AND THE DISEASE of MELANCHOLY PART III. PSAL. XXX 5. Weeping may endure for a night but joy cometh in the morning CHAP. I. Of the many miseries of this mortal Life that are the usual occasions of sorrow to the Sons of Men with respect both to their bodies and souls 1. THE Life of Man is full of sorrow which yet is not so to be understood as that it is in every part full of darkness and calamity We have indeed stormy days but then we have fair weather too we have not only the sharpness of the Winter that pierces us with its Cold and Frosts and Snow but we have the mild and the favourable Summer afterwards that causes all the whole frame of Nature to rejoice and brings to us many grateful pleasant things that gives us occasion to praise the Wisdom of our Maker that has made a World so beautiful wherein we are to dwell That has provided for us all innumerable Comforts not only such as are absolutely necessary to maintain our Life but such as may give us delight and recreate our sense We can no way turn our Eyes but they behold wonders of his goodness his Sun his Moon in his Stars whose influences are for our benefit as well as for his Glory give us daily cause to say with David Lord what is man that thou art mindful of him or the son of man that thou visitest him He does not willingly grieve the Children of Men he does not make us always to weep but affords us frequent occasions of rejoicing whereas all our time might be as one Rainy day from the rising of our Sun to its going down but his Providence does permit us however to be laden with many Miseries before we come to another World And let us take a view of them for it will be useful to subdue our Pride to keep us from Vain-glory to make us to remember that we are not at Home that here is not our Rest and that we ought earnestly to desire a better State 1. Let us consider Man in his first arrival in the World or in his Infant-state And there we discern this same Creature that in his after years makes so great a noise and bustle in the VVorld to be a poor helpless thing that is no way able to cherish the newly begun Life nor to keep the Candle that is lighted from expiring the same minute wherein it began to shine Man comes crying into the VVorld an action very suitable to him at the entrance into a VVorld whose pleasures are floating and transcient but whose griefs are very sure Other Creatures are endued with instincts and inclinations for their own preservation and know in some measure as soon as they begin to live how to maintain their own Life but Man of all others is most destitute and helpless in this respect he is so tender and so frail that the least cold or dangers do more easily affect him Tho God has put that great love into Parents that they do as well as they can support and comfort and help their Children and with his blessing and their own great care and labour they make a shift to rear these little Plants But then there are abundance of diseases that begin to set upon the new-born Creatures Convulsions and other pains which greatly torment and vex them but which they are not able to express and which we do not know But we are sure they begin betimes to weep and to be sorrowful and their pains and sorrows make their Parents also to be afflicted and to weep with them when they see their miseries indeed but cannot help them This soft and tender Age is easily troubled and disquieted every little thing troubles and molests them so that the first hour of the night in which we travel when we begin to live is an hour of sorrow 2. When we are got over the weakness of our Infant-state and begin to have more strength and Reason dawns a little and yields us a little light to guide our selves That Light is mingled with darkness our small skill hath abundance of imprudence and we run into a thousand dangers that we do not see and those dangers make us to weep and to be sorrowful our careless youth is full of miseries and the blooming Rose has many Thorns about it When our Reason begins to display it self with our increasing-years then the several tasks that are set us the several things we are obliged to learn in order to a good and well-improved Education bring forth grief and pain our unwillingness to Labour and the Corrections that we meet with if we do it not do both afflict us our Ignorance is our misery and the difficulties that are planted about the Tree of Knowledg do fright and vex us Many of our early days are spent in digging for this hidden treasure and which we cannot find but with a vast toil and sweating for it and which when we have found does not satisfy It 's true indeed our first youth has to sweeten it many pleasures many recreations and diversions and we are then void of the many Cares of Life that afterwards do pierce our hearts but even then we are so confident and so foolish so apt to trust our own understandings and so backward to receive the advice of others who are more experienced that we do often wound our selves and sow those seeds of sorrow that yield us an uncomfortable Harvest many years afterwards And when in our freer time we come to reflect upon what we have done that reflection makes us weep to think that we have done so little for God or for our own Souls and that we lost so great a part of our Age in Trifles and Vanities For we can then say by sad experience Childhood and youth are vanity Eccles 11.10 The Joys that we then were pleased with are past and gone but the Wounds that we then received do many times smart and bleed afresh 3. When we have got the yoak of out Masters and Instructors off our necks and begin to manage and guide our selves and our Actions then we have many sorrows still And that 1. With reference to the Common Affairs of Life 2. With respect to knowledg and understanding 1. With reference to the Common Affairs of Life They are usually very many they bring along with them a huge Train of Cares of grave anxieties and sollicitude if Men have no imployment or business they grieve for the want
the thoughts of life are frightful because t is with anguish and horror that we live nor can we bear the thoughts of death because we dare not die Seventhly 'T is a night of weeping to deserted souls because they find no heart to pray and no life in prayer they fall upon their knees and cover the Altar of the Lord with tears but he seems not to regard them they beg and he gives them no relief they cry and he does not answer and this fills them with shame and grief Lam. 3.7 8. the thoughts of such poor people are in a continual hurry and so are very full of wandrings in the performance of their duty Grief by saddening the spirits destroys the freedom of our speech for joy is the mother of Eloquence and fluency and when they would move up towards Heaven this sorrow damps their vigor and makes them that they cannot fly and finding they are still perplex'd even after prayer and still as uncomfortable as before they are apt to throw it off and say It is vain to pray as Saul 1 Sam. 28.15 God is departed from me and answers me no more And sorrow is naturally a very dull and sluggish thing a man has no heart to go about any work when he is very sad and this faintness occasions a new trouble we are vext when we do not pray and when we would we cannot Sorrows damp our faith our love and our hope and so spoil our duties for without these they are without life and without acceptance and sometimes our grief is so violent that it finds no vent it strangles us and we are overcome I am so troubled that I cannot speak Psal 77.4 It is with us in our desertions as with a man that gets a slight hurt at first he walks up and down but not looking betimes to prevent a growing mischief the neglected wound begins to fester or to gangrene and brings him to greater pain and loss so it is with us many times in our Spiritual sadness when we are first troubled we pray and pour out our souls before the Lord but afterwards the waters of our grief drown our crys and we are so overwhelmed that if we might have all the world we cannot pray or at least we can find no enlargement no life no pleasure in our prayers and God himself seems to take no delight in them and that makes us more sad Psal 22.1 Eighthly Such have no patience wherewith to bear their evils Oh who is he that can bear the wrath of God! one thought of him as a reconciled Father would sweeten the most heavy Cross but one view of him as an enemy causes all our strength to depart and melts our very souls In bodily evils the mind lends its assistance and furnishes the natural spirits with courage but when its self is weakned and troubled what is it able to do the wounded soul is most commonly fretful and impatient the sight of Heaven inspires our breasts with vital heat and makes us quiet and submissive under every dispensation but the daily sight and fear of Hell fills us with tumult and disorder the language of deserted people for the most part is in groans and in their prayers they chatter as a Crame or a Swallow or mourn as a Dove Isa 38.14 Job 13.20 21. Ninthly They usually see no prospect of relief or deliverance and that encreases the sorrows of their doleful Night they are covered in the deep pit and see no way to fly from it Job 9.27 28. they are wounded and carry their wounds with them where they go they are continually fixing their mournful eyes upon destruction and the Grave Job 7.7 8. they have indeed now and then some intermissions but they are like the small breathings and refreshments of a person that is newly taken off the Rack to be carried to the Rack again The Tears of these poor deserted people are not like the Tears of Mary in the Garden for as soon as she began to weep she beheld the Lord He quickly came to her help and changed her Sorrows into Consolations and his sweet Voice did in a moment run through all the powers of her soul and made her heart to leap with Joy and scattered light upon it But in this case he suffers his Servants to be tost for a long and doleful night ere he be pleased to speak and to calm the storms so that they are as persons straitly besieged and have no relief at hand as persons athirst and have no Water hungry and have no Bread Psal 113.4 I looked on my right hand and beheld but there was no man that would know me refuge failed me Tenthly This Night of weeping is the more sorrowful because it is the time of Satan's Cruelty When our Spirits are broken with long and painful afflictions then this Cowardly Spirit sets upon us he knows that he can easily perplex us when we are already thrown upon the Ground When the Sun sets then the Beasts of the Field creep abroad When God is departed then the Devil comes He comes and torments us with innumerable fears comes and Triumphs over us insults and says Where is now your God What think you now of Sin What is now become of all your Hearing your Reading and your many Prayers You thought to have escaped my Power and now I have you within my reach now remember that at such or such a time you sinned and therefore God has forsaken you you weep and your Tears are just for you are miserable and are like to be with me for ever He makes use of our sore Afflictions to represent God to us as Tyrannical and as one that will certainly destroy us and it is our grief and our misery that we have so little in our desertions to answer to him When we really believe that God is departed from us What can we say How does this Roaring Lion most cruelly molest us when our Glory and our Strength is gone though at other seasons we can oppose his malice and confidently say The Lord that hath chosen Jerusalem rebuke thee He is indeed a knowing and a subtile Spirit he knows our weakness sees our trouble and urges even the very Scriptures and Providences of God upon us to our disadvantage and that with a marvellous importunity and diligence He shoots at us with fiery Darts that are extreamly painful and comes to shoot them when we are under a sense of God's displeasure which is like thrusting of a Red Iron into a Wound that is already very sore It pleases the Devil to hear us groan and to see us sad and when we are already pressed down with our Evils he will be sure to throw upon us more weight our Groans are his Musick and when we wallow in Ashes drown our selves in Tears and spread our Hands for help and roar till our Throat is dry he gluts his cruel heart with looking on our woes it is the pleasantest sight
dissipated and that dissipation causes fear when a soul has long had in it self the sentence of condemnation a pardon from God is very comfortable our former darkness does encrease our present comfort as shadows set off the light 2. Joy arises from the possession of a present good Thus is the presence of God unspeakably sweet to a soul from which he was once departed I. As it now thinks upon him as reconciled 2. As it has by faith possession of Christ by whom his favour is restored as our sadness came by unbelief so does our joy by faith When it was in anguish every thought of God was terrible and amazing but now nothing is so refreshing so desirable so satisfying as to think of him Psal 94.19 In the multitude of my thoughts within me thy comforts delight my soul Now the poor finner does not look upon him as an enemy but as a Father sees no more in his hand a flaming Sword but a Scepter of Grace hear 's no more his angry voice but his gentle comfortable Calls and Invitations according to that in Isa 66.13 As one whom his mother comforteth so will I comfort you and ye shall be comforted and when ye see this your heart shall rejoyce and your bones shall flourish like an herb Oh what a joy is it to the soul to find God with it to behold the wonders of his pardoning mercy to see that all its unbelief all its impatience all its murmurings in its wilderness-condition shall not finally obstruct its Journey to the Land of Promise to be pardoned when they thought themselves actually dying in their guilt does aggravate the mercy of escape 'T is true God loves his people even when he is angry with them he designs their good by the sharpest and severest strokes and when he withdraws 't is that they may give a better welcome to him at his return when our lower Region is most cloudy the Sun is still full of light but it is pleasant to us to see the clouds vanish and the sky clear and to be refreshed with his inlivening beams again God indeed is the same for ever our distresses our fears and our troubles do not alter his kindness these several variations in us make no change in him no more than the several alterations in the air infer a diversity in the Sun which is one and the same it self tho the changes be multiplied here below but yet even Paternal wrath is wrath still and his Love is what we ought earnestly to desire and at the manifestation of which we should greatly rejoyce It was once the saying of Mr. Peacock under great distress of Conscience Oh God reconcile me to thee that I may tast one dram of thy Grace by which my miserable soul may receive comfort Such was his longing after him and afterwards when the storm began to cease being put in mind of God's mercy to him he said Oh the Sea is not so full if water nor the Sun of light as God is of Goodness his Mercy is ten thousand times more The good man long'd but for a drop before and he had given him full draughts of Consolation so far are the ways of God above our ways and his thoughts above our thoughts in our sore trials we think of God as a frowning Judge but when we are deliver'd we see him to be our best friend that he is really kind to us of whom we were so much afraid who can express the joy of having him at peace with us There is a Heaven in the smiles of a Reconciled God Figure to your selves as one expresses it De Lang-Treize Sermons pag. 850. a person that is condemned to death for his Crimes and who at the same time that he prepares to undergo it sees an Herald from the King bringing his pardon in his hand and stops the Execution by crying Mercy mercy to the miserable man with what transports of joy does the poor Malefactor see this Messenger and hear these tidings such and so pleasant is the joy that a deserted Christian finds after he heard the sentence of ruin and saw it near when the Law condemned him and his Conscience ecchoed to the voice of the Law to find that he is absolved that the Sentence is reversed and the sins that made him afraid are blotted out then it is that the mourning foul dares to look up to God as being no more at war with him nor afraid of the Thunder of his Power then it is refresht with his sweet and amiable Attributes and then the disorders and the pangs that it felt within are vanisht and all is quiet then it dwells not as in the shadow of death nor as on the borders of eternal grief Secondly As the deserted soul does by faith obtain a possession of Christ so it is full of joy and Christ is both the Object and the Author of it he has purchas'd it by his own blood and has born our griefs that we might not mourn for ever the having of him is a constant inexhaustible source of joy to the believer to be possessed of this Saviour who is the brightness of the glory and the express Image of the Father His Word his Wisdom his Love and his Good-will the Treasury of his Graces in whom his Fulness dwells this Divine Saviour is our Light that chases away the darkness of our night and who with his Gracious hand dries our eyes this is that Glorious Sun that arises with healing on his wings that not only chears our hearts but cures our wounds dispells the night and makes the voice of sighing to expire at the first dawning of the day this is the Tree of Life the Coelestial Manna that gives us Immortality * See Daille on Phil. IV. v. IV. This is our David that defeats our Enemies our Solomon that establishes among us a sweet and inviolable peace he expiates our Crimes and gives our minds rest he saves us from the wrath to come he delivers us from our sins from Hell from our slavish fears and causes us at length in our darkest and most tempestuous nights to hear his Voice saying It is I be not afraid We are first sadned by unbelief and faith doth first revive us and this faith is attended with joy and peace when the poor deserted soul begins to apprehend its Interest in Christ how are all its apprehensions changed saying Heretofore in my terrible anguish I thought that he was my certain enemy that I had no portion in his Blood nor any share in his Intercession That as I was under unbelief so I should be vastly more miserable than those that never heard of him than Heathens and Pagans and all the rest of men to whom the Gospel never came I then thought and was fully perswaded that I should not hear of him with comfort any more I then thought that I should see him coming in the Clouds to my terror that I should be placed at his
enough Enter into thy rest O my soul for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee When it can reflect and think of him as its own portion then the sorrows and darkness of the Night are gone for it has God that is all light and with him is no darkness at all and to see the light and to possess it is the same thing There is as one observes a reflected and a direct Light I see Palaces and Mountains and Towns and Fields and Trees with a reflected Light and hence it is that I see them without possessing them but I see the light of the Sun and of the Stars by direct rays and in seeing them I possess for to rejoice in the light of the Sun and to possess it is the same thing We now see God indeed by a reflected light which comes to us from the Creatures and hence it is that all those that see him do not possess him but in Heaven God will be seen without Vails and Reflexions His light will be a direct light which will fill us throughout it was a comfort to the Patriarchs and holy men of old to have the hope of Christ's appearance they saw his day afar off and they rejoyced but how much more is it to that soul that has actually seen him come and not only spreading his beams to remove the general darkness of the world but shining with a peculiar light and heat into its self It is peculiarity that endears the most of things to us our own Friends our own Relations our own Joys are the most pleasant It is not from Christ's being singly considered as a Mediator that we derive this comfort but from the reflexion that we are able to make of our happiness in him it is that which creates the sweetest motions in our hearts Before this propriety there may be a calmness of spirit and lesser degrees of Complacency expressing themselves in love and hope and desire but 't is the actual possession of a good as our own that is the Parent of a real joy the Christian may find some comfort in beholding the Incarnation the Sufferings and the Promise of his second Coming but when the soul can say He died and rose again for me this touches it with a very lively satisfaction and makes it say as in Hab. 3.17 CHAP. VIII Of the further Properties of the Joy that comes to a Soul after long desertion 'T is Irresistible tho usually Gradual it revives the body and the natural spirits It fills the late mourner with the hope of Glory and causes him to express his delight to others From all which we may justly admire the Wisdom of the Divine Providence 7. THis Joy is Irresistible As all the darkness of the Night cannot hinder the approach of the welcome day so neither can all our doubts nor our fears nor all the horrors of the Night hinder the beams of God's favour when he is pleased to shine upon us Job 34.29 When he giveth quietness who then can make trouble Notwithstanding all the directions and the helps that our Ministers or our friends give us in our trouble we refuse to be comforted but when he speaks the word we must obey He creates the fruit of the lips peace peace and we can no more resist his Almighty power than the first Chaos could withstand his Command when in the Language of a God he spoke and said Let there be Light Our escape from our Spiritual troubles bears some proportion with the Resurrection of our Lord from the Dead as that was owing not to a power ordinary or created so neither is ours but to a power that is Coelestial and Divine It was not as * Claude Traite de Jesus Christ Liv. v. 12. one observes the effect of the Power of God in the ways of nature such as is the Rising of the Sun the Return of Seasons the Fruitfulness of the Earth but the effect of a power altogether Infinite and Supernatural it is not according to the usual Laws of Nature or the course of Ordinary Providence 8. This Joy is usually Gradual and not all at once I say usually for sometimes persons in great distress and agonies of soul have been suddenly relieved in their darkest Night and in the deepest Dungeon a great Light has shined upon them so that those that have one hour cried out they were damned and lost have the next triumphed in the hope of glory and from the fear of Hell have come to a glorious view of Heaven to their own exceeding comfort and the comfort of all that heard them But tho God may do what he pleases this is not his ordinary way as the Night comes and the Sun goes down by degrees so does the morning come and the Sun arise by the same degrees as it rarely happens that any fall into great distress of Conscience on a sudden some lesser afflictions make way for greater strokes so seldom are any comforted immediately but their comfort comes like the break of day there are some faint streaks of light some little supports and quiet hopes before the Sun arise And God in this accommodates himself to the weakness of our nature for a sudden passage from a great Affliction to a great Joy is a thing which our tender nature is hardly capable to bear and usually the Consciences of those that have been very long terrified and afflicted begin to be calm as the humours of the body that have been disordered return to their Ancient course for so long as the Spirits and the Blood are disordered so long the Soul will unavoidably be in some unpleasant agitation 9. This joy has a pleasant influence on the Body and revives that with the reviving mind they fall sick and droop and they recover and rejoyce together When God is our God it causes health in our Countenances as well as pleasure in our Hearts and though I know that abundance of poor people that have been long amazed with the fear of God's Wrath have very feeble sickly Bodies to the day of death yet this calmness and peace of mind does greatly mitigate their pains and pour Honey and Sweetness into the most bitter Cup For what is it that makes affliction in trouble of mind to be so intollerable but that the afflicted person looks upon it as the beginning of sorrows as a few drops before a more dreadful storm and as the introduction to hell and woe But when the sting of guilt is removed and sin is pardoned the yoak sits very easie on their shoulders that used to gall them before Prov. 15.13 A merry bea rt maketh a chearful countenance Joy as well as grief cannot be dissembled if it be real and very strong Joy in the Heart is like the Rain at the Root of the Grass it will after being moistned to the bottom appear much more green and flourishing Prov. 17.22 A merry heart doth good like a medicine Even that chearfulness which arises
than he did as you may see 2 Cor. 11.25 26. What is a moment to a day and a day to a year And yet such and infinitely less are our longest afflictions here to that Eternity What is one grain of sand as one says Jurieu Balance du Sanctuaire p. 72. to all those vast heaps of sand that are in all the Sea What is one drop of Water to the vast Collections of it that are in the large Ocean What is a little gnat to the whole Universe So is all the affliction of this life which passes away when compared with the glory which is to come And yet a grain of sand is something in respect of the whole earth and a drop is not altogether nothing tho compared with the Ocean for by a continual heaping of grain upon grain it were possible to make a Globe as great as the Earth and the Ocean might be emptied of its Water but Eternity cannot be diminished it suffers no changes after Millions of Years in Happiness it will be as sweet arid as comfortable as it was the first moment It is the Length of our Troubles and our Pain that makes them more grievous And as when we do not sleep the night seems very long and the doleful hours of our sickness seem to move with a much slower pace than those of our pleasant health Thus Job discourses as if his time being clogg'd with miseries seem'd an Eternity Job 7 15 16. My soul chuseth strangling and death rather than life I loath it I would not live always let me alone for my days are vanity He was weary of being in so long pain and thought that his afflicted life would never have an end But yet all the afflictions of the present time are not worthy to be compared with that glory which shall be revealed Rom. 8.18 We are near to a Blessed Change and who would not undergo the dangers of a troublesome Voyage for a month if he knew that ho should return laden with great Treasures to his home and live in Splendor ever after What a pleasure is it to such as are besieged to know that they shall certainly be relieved in a little time It causes them tho press'd very close by their Enemies to resume a new Courage and to hearten one another So should it be with all Believers the day of their Lord's coming draws near and then he will put all their Enemies to the flight and reward their Diligence and Perseverance The Enemy of our Souls is full of Rage but that which fills him with fury may yield us comfort even because we know that his time is short The God of peace will bruise Satan under your feet shortly Rom. 16.20 Oh what comfortable words are these that enemy that fills us with vexation and whose malice is both great and constant shall in a little time not molest nor interrupt our satisfactions any more Your tears that you shed for your offences now are very just 't is what we owe to God for having sinned so much against him but shortly we shall be with him and never complain of his absence from us any more When a man is tost with storms and sees no prospect of the shore 't is very dismal but it is not so with us who have our Haven in our view What if our troubles should continue for Twenty or Thirty Years this would be very overwhelming to our sense and yet it is nothing when compared with an Eternity of Joys above How soon will this be over but how long will that remain It casts a great damp upon all things under the Sun that they are unsatisfying and that they are very short how pleasant soever they are to us they will depart Our Friends and all the Delight of their Conversation our Riches and all the Respect and Service they procure us will fade away Our beloved Bodies which we maintain with great Expence and Care will leave us and must go into the Grave but our Happiness will be for ever it is Eternal Happiness and what that is our thoughts cannot comprehend nor our words express we shall then know what it is when we are in actual Possession of it To be for ever with the Lord what an encouragement does this afford to Patience and Resignation To be with him who is our Portion and our all to be with him and to be without our sin that provoked him to wrath and made our spirits sad what an Heaven will this be As this life by its tedious afflictions seems to those that are in distress to be as an Eternity so the pleasures of that undecaying life will seem but a moment to us it will be so very pleasant and we are near to it Tho the pains that forerun our departure prove to be very sharp yet in a moment death whenever it comes will be past in a moment we shall see the face of God that was hid from us here we shall be changed as in the twinkling of an eye and when we are in that Eternity shall we then say that we cleansed our hearts in vain Shall we not then see that we had no cause to murmur or repine All our Faculties will be gratified with proper Objects and with suitable Employment and all overspread and swallowed up with a quick and a lively Joy Oh how blessed are the Tears that will lead us to such a Joy Blessed is the Cross that will yield us such fruit as this and blessed be that God who will bestow such a reward upon us When we come there we shall sing in the consideration of those very afflictions that while we were on earth made us sigh and groan It is good to be there and how freely should we suffer our thoughts always to dwell upon the pleasant Subject but that our worldly business and the necessary affairs of Life call us away from the Mountain of our Transfiguration However let us not forget that these things are the Truths of God which he hath shewed to his servants and which shall shortly come to pass and they are very near too and should have a suitable influence upon us How did the Martyrs of old rejoice when they saw the day wherein they were to suffer How did they embrace and encourage one another saying We want but an hour or two of Heaven We have but one combat more to finish and we shall be with Christ We dine upon bitter Herbs but we shall sup with him Ere the Crowd that came to see us dye be disperst we shall be with God and with innumerable Angels and the spirits of the Just With what calmness have the blessed Sufferers bid this world adieu saying Farewel Sun Moon and Stars and welcome better Lights Farewel Wives and Children Friends and Acquaintance Farewel ye deceiving Pleasures of the World and now welcome ye joys of Paradise welcome thou sweet Cross of Christ and welcome death that will convey us thither And thus their
think our Sighs better than Praises and Hallelujahs Let us hasten in our desires from this diseased World which by its low scituation is apt to suffer an inundation of innumerable miseries and prepare for that World where there is an Eternal Health and Joy CHAP. IV. Shewing what dreadful apprehensions a soul has that is under desertion and in several respects how very sad an doleful its condition is from the Author 's own Experience THE next thing I design to insist upon is To shew that the time of God's forsaking of a soul is a very dark and mournful time 't is not only night but a weeping stormy night and it may not be unuseful to you who have it may be hitherto lived in the beams and chearful light of day to know what passes in this forrowful and doleful night And in this matter I will not borrow Information from others but give you My own Experience 1. In this night the deserted soul it overwhelmed with continual thoughts of the Holiness and Majesty and Glory of the Lord nor does it think of him with any manner of delight according to that of Asaph Psal 77.3 I remembred God and was troubled I complained and my spirit was overwhelmed And in how deplorable a Case is such a Soul that cannot think of its God and its Creator but with grief and sorrow That fixes upon nothing in him but his terrible and severe Attributes In other Cases when a Man is distressed on Earth and beholds vexation and disquiet there he can lift up his eyes towards Heaven and see joy and comfort for him there but in this woful Case there is neither the light of the Sun the Moon or the Stars for many days the face of God is hid and covered with a dreadful Cloud Job 31.23 Destruction from God was a terror to me and because of his highness I could not endure Secondly The deserted soul in this mournful night does look upon God at its enemy and as intending its hurt and ruin by the sharpness of his dispensations and this makes it to be incapable of receiving any consolation from the Creatures for will it say to them Alas if God be mine enemy as I apprehend him to be which of you can be my friend I have a dreadful sound of his displeasure in my ears and which of you can bring me any glad tidings If his power his Irresistible power be against me who can keep off the killing-blow Job 19.6 Know now that God hath overthrown we and hath compassed me with his net he hath fenced up my way that I cannot pass and he hath set darkness in my paths And so v. 9 10 11. and Psal 88.7 Thy wrath lyeth hard upon me and thou hast afflicted me with all thy waves If in such desertion God were apprehended to be upon a design of the future happiness and welfare of the soul it would bear up with courage or with hope but having no such belief it must needs sink and languish The stroke that wounds us in such a case is the more painful as edged with a sense of wrath Psal 102.9 10. I have eaten ashes like bread and mingled my drink with weeping because of thine indignation and thy wrath for thou hast lifted me up and cast me down Thus does the weeping person vent his sorrows God never gives to his people such a bitter Cup but he mingles love and mercy with it but alas I taste nothing but gall and wormwood nothing but misery and vexation He is with his people but he has forsaken me he has cast me into a fiery furnace where I am daily burnt and scorcht and he is not with me there He is unto me as a Roaring Lion and who can turn away his powerful wrath Ruth 1.20 The Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me I have often heard that it is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the Living God and I now find it to be so all the wrath of men is nothing to his one frown of his is more intolerable than all their rage and persecution Job 16.12 13 14. I was at ease but he hath broken me asunder he hath also taken me by my neck and shaken me to pieces and set me up for his mark his Archers compass me round about he cleaveth my reins asunder and doth not spare he poureth out my gall upon the ground Job 10.16 17. Oh what anguish what desolation is caused in the soul by such thoughts as these I dare not says the mourning person look up to Heaven for there I see how great a God I have against me I dare not look into his word for there I see all his threats as so many barbed arrows to strike me to the heart I dare not look into the Grave because thence I am like to have a doleful Resurrection And what can a poor Creature do that apprehends the Almighty to be his enemy It is a common thing to say why do you so lament and mourn you have many mercies left many friends that pray for you and that pity you Alas what help is there in all this it God himself be gone nothing is then lookt upon as a mercy And as for the prayers of others will the distressed person say they can do me no good unless I have faith and I find I have none at all for that would purifie and cleanse my heart and I do nothing else but sin and God as he is holy must set himself against me his Enemy 3ly In this doleful night the soul hath no evidence at all of its former grace so that in this night the Sun is not only set but there is not one Star appears such an one looks upon himself as altogether void of the Grace of God he looks upon all his former duties to have been insincere or hypocritical he feels his heart hardned at present and concludes that it was never tender finds himself at present listless and indisposed and concludes that he never had any true life and motion and expresses his sorrows after this or the like manner I thought I had belong'd to God but now I find I am none of his I thought I had been upright but now I see I was mistaken the storm is come and that house that I built upon the sand is now washt away those that are Christ's he will enable to persevere to the end but I am fallen from grace I am an Apostate if I had any share in the Intercession of the Great Redeemer he would not leave me thus sad and desolate I thought that I had been planted in his Vineyard and brought forth fruit but now I am cut down as a barren tree Oh how greatly have I been deceived that imagined my self to be an Heir of Heaven and am now seizd with the pangs of Hell I now see that I was never right never born again never renewed by the Spirit never changed from death to life And Oh
what will become of me that flattered my own soul to ruin that thought my self safe when I was not and well when I was diseased To come to misery after I thought so long of happiness is a double misery I am like after all my prayers my endeavours and my hopes to be a Reprobate and a cast-away And such a soul concludes it self to be in a condition much more dangerous than they are that never named the name of Christ nor ever pretended to Religion because it reckons their misery will be much more tollerable than its own it judges it self to be an Hypocrite and then all the threats that are made against such do every moment overwhelm it with inexpressible confusion Thus the Graces of the Spirit and the former fruits of holiness are not discerned in this sad and mournful night Fourthly During this sadness the soul cannot thinly of Christ himself with any comfort For thus it argues He will be a Saviour to none but those that believe I have no faith and therefore he will be no Saviour to me he that is to his Servants as the Lamb of God will be to me as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah he that deals gently with them will tear me to pieces I have heard of his sufferings and his death but if his blood has not cleansed and purified me I am like to perish for all that I heard his voice and I disobeyed it I heard his Gospel and did not improve it and now even the glad tidings of Salvation are not so to me I did not know in the long day that I had the things that belong'd unto my peace and now they are hid from mine eyes Now I have to deal with the great and the dreadful God himself and I have none to plead my cause Oh how can I resist his power or bear his wrath Christ indeed called me but I did not open to him and now he calls no more he seems to be angry and enraged against me for my disobedience and tho I have cried sometimes Have mercy on me thou Son of David he passes away and does not regard my cryes And O what shall I do when he comes in the Clouds of Heaven when I am to stand at his Bar and to be punished as an unbeliever To others that will be a day of Refreshment but what will it be to me the thoughts of it are now amazing And thus by a sense of unbelief the deserted soul is plunged in the waves and sees no way of escape and by this Unbelief it thinks of God as absolutely considered and the thoughts of him are as terrible as if there were no Mediator and it is continually saying I have all my sins to answer for and have none to undertake for me I am condemned and have none to procure a pardon and salvation for me Fifthly In this Night the soul is full of terror and how can it be otherwise when every thought of God and of Christ overwhelms it Job 6.4 For the arrows of the Almighty are within me the poyson whereof drinketh up my spirit the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me Such arrows that are shot by an Almighty arm with a great power and force they must needs being so directed pierce very deep deep and painful must the wounds be that a God makes and then they are poysoned arrows too that being dipt in his wrath inflame the wounds they make and put the distressed person into pain and anguish inexpressible Night is a time of terror especially in commotions uproars and the like mischiefs Psal 91.5 and in this night it is much more so when a man 's own Conscience discharges a thousand accusations against him for his guilt for then every sin gives a blow and altogether being set in array make a formidable force and when God sets on peculiar impressions of his wrath and it falls upon the naked soul with its scorching burning drops there is not then one quiet thought nor one easie moment all is amazement confusion and wo. Lam. 3.3 Surely against me is he turned he turneth his hand against me all the day A person that is thus distress'd sits and muses on his misery and would gladly find something that might be comfortable but he cannot what he first thinks of is tormenting he changes that uneasie thought for another and that is as tormenting as the first there is a circulation of flaming disquiet thoughts and such a person dwells as in a nery Furnace or as in a thicket of briers which way soever he turns himself he is pained and wounded all the terrible places of Scripture that are made against the wicked do continually present themselves to his consideration and he thinks that he shall most certainly have their portion every thing in nature that is frightful frights him as still believing God to be against him from all the terrible things imaginable he fetches something that does still more afflict him and thus he will be imagining Suppose I were to be sawn asunder to be burnt to be flea'd alive or to be torn to pieces Oh what a sad thing would that be and yet I am in a case worse than all this for I am now continually racked with guilt and am like to be in Hell for ever The terrors of the Lord we may seel indeed but we cannot express them they are so very terrible they wound our most sensible and tender part they cause our very souls to pine and languish away they fix our minds to the contemplation of every thing that is sad and doleful they fill us with confusion and Heman says Ps 88.15 they are terrors that compass us round about they seize upon every faculty and distress us in every part to have God against us his holiness to dazle us his Power to overthrow us his Law to condemn us our Consciences to accuse us is the sum of terrors Sixthly Fear is another occasion of sorrow and the night is usually a time of horror we are apt then to be imposed upon with false as well as with real dangers We can think of nothing but out misery and the continual unavoidable thinking of it makes us more miserable Job 13.21 these fears are as so many Fetters from which we cannot fly and when we think to shake them off we put our selves to more pain If I say I will forget my complaints I will leave off my heaviness and comfort my self I am afraid of all my sorrows I know that thou wilt not hold me innocent Job 9.27 28. we are frighted with the Greatness and Majesty of God with the Glory of his Being and the Thunder of his Power We are frighted with the view of our innumerable sins and with the dangers that attend them the thoughts of Heaven fright us because we think we have lost that blessed place and the thoughts of Hell are no less frightful because we think we shall soon be there