the soul to this full subjection and Obedience to God is so Difficult and yet so How to bring the soul into subjection to God reasonable so necessary and so excellently good that we should not think any diligence too great by which it is to be attained The Directions that I shall give you are some of them to Habituate the mind to an Obediential frame and some of them also practically to further the exercise of Obedience in particular acts § 4 Direct 1. Remember the unquestionable plenary Title that God hath to the Government of you Direct 1. and of all the world The sense of this will awe the soul and help to subject it to him and to silence all rebellious motions Should not God Rule the Creatures which he hath made Should not Christ Rule the souls which he hath purchased Should not the Holy Ghost Rule the souls which he hath 〈◊〉 and quiâ—kned § 5. Direct 2. Remember that God is perfectly fit for the Government of you and all the world You can desire nothing reasonably in a Governour which is not in him He hath perfect wisdom to know what is best He hath perfect Goodness and therefore will be most regardful of his subjects good and will put no Evil into his Laws He is Almighty to protect his Subjects and see to the execution of his Laws He is most Iust and therefore can do no wrong but all his Laws and Judgements are equal and impartial He is infinitely perfect and self-sufficient and never needed a Lye or a deceit or unrighteous means to Rule the world nor to oppress his subjects to attain his Ends. He is â—ur very End and Interest and felicity and therefore hath no Interest opposite to our good which should cause him to destroy the innocent He is our dearest friend and Father and loveth us better than we love our selves and therefore we have reason confidently to Trust him and chearfully and gladly to obey him as one that Ruleth us in order to our own felicity Direct 3. § 6. Direct 3. Remember how unable and unfit you are to be Governours of your selves So blind and ignorant so byassed by a corrupted will so turbulent are your passions so uncessant and powerfull is the temptation of your sense and appetite and so unable are you to protect or reward your selves that methinks you should fear nothing in this world more than to be given up to your own hearts lusts to walk in your own seducing counsels Psal. 81. 11 12. The brutish appetite and sense hath got such dâ—minion over the Reason of carnal unrenewed men that for such to be governed by themselves is for a man to be governed by a Swine or the Rider to be ruled by the Horse § 7. Direct 4. Remember how great a matter God maketh of his Kingly prerogatives and of mans Direct 4. obedience The whole tenour of the Scripture will tell you this his precepts his promises his threatnings his vehement exhortations his sharp reproofs the sending of his Son and Spirit the example of Christ and all the Saints the Reward prepared for the obedient and the punishment for the disobedient all tell you aloud that God is far from being indifferent whether you obey his Laws or not It will teach you to regard that which you find is so regarded of God § 8. Direct 5. Consider well of the excellency of full obedience and the present benefits which it bringeth Direct 5. tâ— your selves and others Our full subjection and obedience to God is to the world and the soul as Health is to the body When all the humours keep their due temperament proportions and place and every part of the body is placed and used according to the intent of nature then all is at eâ—se within us Our food is pleasant our sleep is sweet our labour is easie and our vivacity maketh Life a pleasure to us we are useful in our places and helpful to others that are sick and weak So is it with the soul that is fully obedient God giveth him a Reward before the full reward He findeth that obedience is a Reward to it self and that it is very pleasant to do good God owneth him and Conscience speaketh peace and comfort to him His mercies are sweet to him his burdens and his work are easie He hath easier access to God than others Yea the world shall find that there is no way to its right order unity peace and happiness but by a full subjection and obedience to God § 9. Direct 6. Remember the sad effects of disobedience even at present both in the soul and in Direct 6. the world When we rebell against God it is the confusion ruine and death of the soul and of the world When we disobey him it is the sickness or disordering of the soul and will make us groan Till our bones be set in joynt again we shall have no ease God will be displeased and hide his face Conscience will be unquiet The soul will lose its peace and joy It s former mercies will grow less sweet It s former rest will turn to weariness Its duty will be unpleasant Its burden heavy who would not fear such a state as this § 10. Direct 7. Consider that when God doth not Govern you you are Ruled by the flesh the world Direct 7. and the Devil And what right or fitness they have to govern you and what is their work and final reward methinks you should easily discern If ye live after the flesh ye shall die Rom. 8. 13. And if ye saw to the flesh of the flesh ye shall reap corruption Gal. 6. 8. It will strike you with horror if in the hour of temptation you would but think I am now going to disobey my God and to obey the flesh the world or the Devil and to prefer their Will before his Will § 11. Direct 8. Turn your eye upon the rebellious Nations of the earth and upon the state of the Direct 8. most malignant and ungodly men and consider that such madness and misery as you discern iâ— them every wilful disobedience to God doth tend to and partaketh of in its degree To see a swinish Drunkard in his Vomit to hear a raging Bedlam curse and swear or a malignant Wretch blaspheme and scorn at a holy life to hear how foolishly they talk against God and see how maliciously they hate his servants one would think should turn ones stomach against all sin for ever To think what Beaâ—s or incarnate Devils many of the ungodly are to think what confusion and inhumanity possesseth most of those Nations that know not God one would think should make the least degree of sin seem odious to us when the dominion and ripeness of it is so odious Direct 9. § 12. Direct 9. Mark what obedience is expected by men and what influence Government hath upon the state and affairs of the would and what the
Come to him therefore as the Saviour of souls that be may Teach you the will of God and Reconcile you to his Father and pardon your sins and renew you by his spirit and acquaint you with his Fathers Love and save you from damnation and make you heirs of life eternal For all this may yet possibly be done as short as your time is like to be And it will yet be long of you if it be not done The Covenant of Grace doth promise pardon and salvation to every Penitent Believer when ever they truly turn to God without excepting any hour or any person in all the world Nothing but an unbelieving hardened heart resisting his grace and unwilling to be Holy can deprive you of pardon and salvation even at the last It was a most foolish wickedness of you to put it off till now but yet for all that if you are not yet saved it shall not be long of Christ but you Yet he doth freely offer you his mercy and he will be your Lord and Saviour if you will not refuse him yet the match shall not break on his part see that it break not on your part and you shall be saved Know therefore what he is as God and Man and what a blessed work he hath undertaken to Redeem a sinful miserable world and what he hath already done for us in his life and doctrine in his death and sufferings by his Resurrection and his Covenant of Grace and what he is now doing at his Fathers right hand in making intercession for penitent believers and Heb. Rom. 5. what an endless Glory he is preparing for them and how he will save to the uttermost all that come to God by him O yet let your heart even leap for Joy that you have an allsufficient willing gracious Saviour whose Grace aboundeth more than sin aboundeth If the Devils and poor damned souls in Hell were yet but in your case and had your offers and your hopes how glad do you imagine they would be Cast your selves therefore in Faith and Confidence upon this Saviour Trust your souls upon his Sacrifice and Merit for the pardon of your sins and peace with God Beg of him yet the renewing grace of his spirit Be willing to be made holy and a new Creature and to live a holy life if you should survive Resolve to be wholly ruled by him and give up your self absolutely to him as your Saviour to be justified and sanctified and saved by him and then trust in him for everlasting happiness O happy soul if yet you can do thus without deceit § 8. Direct 4. Believe now and consider what God is and will be to your soul and what Love he Direct 4. hath shewed to you by Christ and what endless Ioy and Glory you may have with him in Heaven for For a new heart and the Love of God and a Resolution for a holy obedient life ever notwithstanding all the sins that you have done And think what the world and the flesh hath done for you in comparison of God Think of this till you fall in Love with God and till your hearts and hopes are set on Heaven and turned from this world and flesh and till you feel your self in Love with Holiness and till you are firmly Resolved in the strength of Christ to live a holy life if God recover you and then you are truly sanctified and shall be saved if you die in this condition Take heed that you take not a Repentance and good purposes which come from nothing but Fear to be sufficient If you recover all this may die again when your fear is over You are not sanctified nor God hath not your hearts till your Love be to him that which you do through fear alone you had rather not do if you might be excused And therefore your Hearts are still against it When the feeling of Gods unspeakable Love in Christ doth melt and overcome your hearts when the infinite Goodness of God himself and his mercies to your souls and bodies do make you take him as more Lovely and desirable than all the world when you so believe the Heavenly Joyes above as to desire them more than earthly pleasures when you Love God better than worldly prosperity and when a life of such ☜ Love and Holiness seemeth better to you than all the merriments of sinners and you had rather be a Saint than the most prosperous of the ungodly and are firmly resolved for a holy life if God recover you then are you indeed in a state of grace and not till then This must be your case or you are undone for ever And therefore meditate on the Love of Christ and the Goodness of God and the Joyes of Heaven and the happiness of Saints and the misery of worldlings and ungodly men meditate on these till your eyes be opened and your hearts be touched with a holy love and Heaven and Holiness be the very things that you desire above all and then you may boldly go to God and believe that all your sins are pardoned And it is not bare terrour but these believing thoughts of God and Heaven and Christ and Love that must change your hearts and do the work § 9. These four Directions truly practised will yet set you on safe ground as sad and dangerous as your condition is But it is not the hearing of them or the bare approbation of them that will serve the turn To find out your sinful miserable state and to be truly humbled for it and to discern the Remedy which you have in Christ and penitently and believing to enter into his Covenant and to see that your Happiness is wholly in the Love and fruition of God and to believe the Glory prepared for the Saints and to prefer it before all the prosperity of the world and Love it and set your hearts upon it and to resolve on a holy life if you should recover forsaking this deceitful world and flesh all this is a work that is not so easily done as mentioned and requireth your most serious fixed thoughts and indeed had been fitter for your youthful vigor than for a painful weak distempered state But necessity is upon you It must needs be yet done and throughly and sincerely done or you are lost for ever And therefore do it as well as you can and see that your hearts do not trifle and deceive you In some respect you have greater helps than ever you had before You cannot now keep up your hard-heartedness and security by looking at death as a great way off You have now fuller experience than ever you had before what the flâ—sh and all its pleasures will come to and what good your sinful sports and recreations and merriments will do you and what all the riches and greatness and gallantry and honours of the world are worth and what they will do for you in the day of your necessity You stand so
united your Heart unto himself and turned it from sin to Holiness from the world to God and from Earth to Heaven and made you a new creature to live for Heaven as you did for earth Surely this is not so small and indiscernable a work or change but he that hath felt it on himself may know it It is a great work to bring a sinner to feel his unrighteousness and misery and to apply himself to Christ for Righteousness and life It is a great work to take off the heart from all the felicity of this world and to set it unfeignedly upon God and to cause him to place and seek his happiness in another world what ever become of all the prosperity or pleasure of the flesh It is thus with every true Believer for all the remnant of his sins and weaknesses And may you not know whether it be thus or not with you One of these is your case And it 's now time to know which of them it is when God is ready to tell you by his judgement If indeed you are in Christ and his Spirit be in you and hath renewed you and sanctified you and turned your heart and life to God I have then nothing more than Peace and Comfort to speak to you as in the following Exhortation But if it be otherwise and you are yet in a carnal state and were never renewed by the spirit of Christ Will you give me leave to deal faithfully with you as is necessary with one in your condition and to set before you at once your sin and your Remedy and to tell you what yet you must do if you will be saved IV. And first will you here lay to heart your folly and unfeignedly lament your sinful life before the Lord Not only this or that particular sin but principally your fleshly heart and life that in the main you have lived to this corruptible flesh and loved and sought and served the world before your God and the happiness of your soul. Alas friend did you not know that you had an immortal soul that must live in joy or misery for ever Did you not know that you were made to Love and serve and honour your maker and that you had the little time of this life given you to try and prepare you for your endless life and that as you lived here it must go with you in heaven or hell for ever If you did not believe these things why did you not come and give your Reasons against them to some judicious Divine that was able to have shewed you the Evidence of their truth If you did believe them alas how was it possible that you could forget them Could you believe a Heaven and a Hell and not regard them or suffer any transitory worldly vanity to be more regarded by you Did you know what you had to do in the world and yet is it all undone till now Were you never warned of this day Did never Preacher nor Scripture nor book nor friend nor conscience tell you of your end and tell you what would be the fruit of sin and of your contempt and slighting of Christ and of his grace Did you know that you must Love God above the world if ever you would be saved and that you must to that end be partaker of Christ and renewed by his spirit and yet would you let out your heart upon the world and follow the bruitish pleasures of the flesh and never earnestly seek after that Christ and spirit that should thus renew and sanctifie you Do you not think now that it had been wiser to have sought Christ and grace and set your affections first on the things above and to have made sure work for your soul against such a day as this than to have hardened your heart against Gods grace and despised Christ and Heaven and your salvation for a thing of nought You see now what it was that you preferred before Heaven what have you now got by all your sinful Love of the world where now is all your fleshly pleasure Will it all now serve turn to save you from death or the wrath of God and everlasting misery will it now go with you to another world Or do you think it will comfort a soul in Hell to remember the wealth which he gathered and left behind him upon earth would it not now have been much more comfortable to you if you could say My dayes were spent in Holiness in the Love of my dear Redeemer and in the hearty service of my God in praising him and praying to him in learning and obeying his holy word and will My business in the world was to please God and seek a better world and while I followed my lawful trade or calling my eye was chiefly on eternal life Instead of pleasing the flesh I delighted my soul in the Love and praise and service of my Redeemer and in the hopes of my eternal blessedness and now I am going to enjoy that God and happiness which I believ'd and sought Would not this be more comfortable to you now than to look back on your time as spent in a worldly fleshly life which you preferred before your God and your salvation Christ would not have forsaken you in the time of your extremity as the world doth if you had cleaved faithfully to him You little know what peace and comfort you might have found even on earth in a holy life How sweet would the word of God have been to you How sweet would prayer and meditation and holy conference have been Do you think it is not more pleasant to a true Believer to read the promises of eternal life and to think and talk of that blessed state when they shall dwell with God in Ioy for ever than it was to you to think and talk of worldly trash and vanity If you had used the world as a traveller doth the necessaries of his journey the thought of heaven would have offorded you solid rational comfort all the way O little do you know the sweetness of the Love of God in Christ and how good a Christian findeth it when he can but exercise and increase his knowledge and faith and Love to God and thankfulness for mercy and hopes of Heaven and walk with God in a heavenly conversation Do you not wish now that this had been your course But that which is done cannot be undone and time that is past can never be called back But yet there is a sure Remedy for your soul if you have but a heart to entertain and use it God so loved the world Joh. 3. 16 18. that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever Believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life Iesus Christ being God and Man is the Mediator between God and man His death is a sufficient Sacrifice for our sins It is his Office to save all those that come to God by him Do but unfeignedly
secret to another Q. 4. Must I keep a secret when I am trusted with it but promise it not Q. 5. What if a secret be revealed to me without desire to conceal it Q. 6. What if it be against the King or State Q. 7. What if it be against the good of a third person Q. 8. What if a man in Debt do trust his Estate with me to defraud his Creditors Q. 9. What if a delinquent intrust his Person or Estate with me to secure it from penalty Q. 10. What if a friend entrust his Estate with me to secure it from some great Taxes to the King Q. 11. What if a man that suffereth for Religion commit his person or Estate to my trust Q. 12. If a Papist or erroneous person entrust me to Educate his Children in his errour when he is dead I being of his mind must I perform it when I am better informed Q. 13. What if one turn Papist c. after another hath committed his Children to him Q. 14. Must I wrong my Estate to satisfie a dying friend in taking a trust Q. 15. What if after the trust prove more to my hurt than I could foresee Q. 16. What if he cast the trust on me without my promise to accept it Q 17. May I not ease my self of a trust of Orphanes by casting it on the surviving kindred if they calumniate me as unfaithful Tit. 2. Directions about Trusts and Secrets p. 166 CHAP. XXVI Directions against SELFISHNESS as it is contrary to the love of our Neighbour The nature and evil of the sin and the Cure ibid. CHAP. XXVII Cases and Directions for Loving our Neighbours as our selves p. 168 Tit. 1. The Cases Q 1. How must I Love another as my self in degree or kind or only reality Q. 2. What is the true nature of Love to my self and others Q. 3. If none must be Loved above their worth how doth God love sinners Q. 4. Must I love all in degree as much as my self Q. 5. Must I love any more than my self Q. 6. Must I love other mens Wife Children c. better than my own when they are better Q. 7. Who is that Neighbour whom I must love as my self Q. 8. Must we Love and pray for Antichrist and those that sin against the Holy Ghost Q. 9. Must we not hate Gods enemies Q. 10. May I not wish hurt to another more than to my self p. 168 Tit. 2. Directions to Love our Neighbours as our selves p. 171 Tit. 3. The Reasons and Motives of Love to our Neighbour ibid. CHAP. XXVIII Cases of and Directions for the Love of Godly persons as such p. 173 Tit. The Cases Q. 1. How can we love the Godly when none can know another to be sincere Q. 2. Must we Love them as Godly that give no account of the time manner or means of their Conversion Q. 3. What if they are so ignorant that they know not what faith repentance conversion c. are Q. 4. Must I take the Visible members of the Church for truly Godly Q. 5. Must we take all visible members equally to be Godly and Lovely Q. 6. Must we love all equally strong and weak that seem sincere Q. 7. Must we love those better that have much grace and little useful gifts or those that have less grace and more profitable gifts for the Church Q. 8. Must we love him as Godly who liveth in any heinous sin Q. 9. Must an Excommunicate person be Loved as Godly or not Q. 10. Can an unsanctified man truly Love a Godly man Q. 11. Can he love him because he is Godly Q. 12. May he love a Godly man because he would make him Godly Q. 13. Doth any such love the Godly more than others Q. 14. Do all true Christians love all the Godly that wrong them or differ from them Q. 15. What is that love of the Godly which proveth our sincerity and which no Hypocrite can reach to Tit. 2. Directions for true Loving the Children of God p. 176 Tit. 3. Motives or Meditative helps to Love the Godly p. 177 Tit. 4. The hindâ—rances and enemies of Christian Loâ—â— p. 178 Tit. 5. The Counterfeits of Christian Love p. 179 Tit. 6 â—ases and Directions for Intimate special friends p. 180 Q. 1. Is it lawful to have an earnest desire to be loved by others Especially by some one above all others Q. 2. Is it lawful meet or desirable to entertain that extraordinary affection to any which is called spâ—cial Friendship or to have one endeared intimate friend whom we prefer before all others Q. 3. Is it meet to have more bosome friends than â—e Q. 4. Is it meet for him to choose any other bosome friend that hath a pious Wife and is any so fit for this friendship as a Wife Q. 5. Is it meet to Love a friend for our own commodity Must I or my friend be the chief end of my Love or friendship Q. 6. May we keep any secret from such a friend or have any suspicion of him or suppose that he may prove unfaithful Q. 7. May we change an old bosome friend for a nâ—w one Q. 8. What Love is due to a Minister that hath been the means of my Conversion Q. 9. What is the sin and danger of Loving another too much Q. 10. What must be the Qualifications of a bosome friend Twenty things necessary to such friendship so rare as prove it rare Directions for the right use of special friendship p. 184 CHAP. XXIX Cases and Directions for Loving Enemies and doing them good beside what is said before Chap. 9. of forgiving them p. 189 Tit. 1. Q. 1. Whom must I account and Love as an Enemy Q. 2. Why and how must an Enemy be loved Q. 3. Must I dâ—sire God to forgive him while he repenteth not Q. 4. What if he be my Enemy for Religion and so an Enemy to God Q. 5. What if my benefits enable and embolden him to do hurt Q. 6. May I not hurt an Enemy in my own Defence and wish him as much hurt as I may do him Q. 7. Must Kings and States Love their Enemies How then shall they make Waâ— Tit. 2. Motives to Love and do good to Enemies p. 187 Tit. 3. Directions for the practice p. 188 CHAP. XXX Cases and Directions about works of Charity p. 189 Tit. 1. The Cases Q. 1. What are the Grounds and Motives of good works Q. 2. What is a good work which God hath promised to reward Q. 3. What particular good works should one choose at this time that would best improve his masters stock Q. 4. In what order must we do good works and who must be preferred Q. 5. Is it better to give in life time or at death Q. 6. and 7. Must we devote a certain proportion of our incomes and what proportion A Letter to Mr. Gouge on that question p. â—92 Tit. 2. Directions for works of Charity besides those Tom. 1. Ch. 3.
head-strong Horse that must be kept in at first and is hardly restrained if it once break loose and get the head If you are bred up in temperance and modesty where there are no great temptations to gluttony drinking sports or wantonness you may think a while that your natures have little or none of this concupiscence and so may walk without a guard But when you come where baits of lust abound where Women and Playes and Feasts and Drunkards are the Devils snares and tinder and bellows to enflame your lusts you may then find to your sorrow that you had need of watchfulness and that all is not mortified that is asleep or quiet in you As a man that goeth with a Candle among Gunpowder or near Thatch should never be careless because he goeth in continual danger so you that are young and have naturally eager appetites and lusts should remember that you carry fire and Gunpowder still about you and are never out of danger while you have such an enemy to watch § 2. And if once you suffer the fire to kindle alas what work may it make ere you are aware James 1. 14 15. Every man is tempted when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed Then when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death Little knoweth the Fish when he is catching or nibling at the bait that he is swallowing the hook which will lay him presently on the bank When you are looking on the cup or gazing on alluring beauty or wantonly dallying and pleasing your senses with things unsafe you little know how far beyond your intentions you may be drawn and how deep the wound may prove how great the smart or how long and difficult the cure As you love your souls observe Pauls counsel 2 Tim. 2. 22. Flee youthful lusts Keep at a full distance Come not near the bait If you get a wound in your consciences by any wilful heinous sin O what a case will you be in How heartless unto secret duty afraid of God that should be your joy deprived of the comforts of his presence and all the pleasure of his wayes How miserably will you be tormented between the tyranny of your own concupiscence the sting of sin the gripes of conscience and the terrors of the Lord How much of the life of faith and love and heavenly zeal will be quenched in a moment I am to speak more afterwards of this and therefore shall only say at present to all young Converts that care for their salvation Mortifie the flesh and alwayes watch and avoid temptations Direct 15. BE exceeding wary not only what Teachers you commit the guidance of your souls unto Direct 15. Nam si falsi solo nomine tumidi non modo non consulendi sed vitandi sunt quibus nihil est importunius nihil insu siâ—s c. Pâ—tâ—a câ— Dâ—al 117. li. 2. but also with what company you familiarly converse That they be neither such as would corrupt your minds with error or your hearts with viciousness profâ—neness lukewarmness or with a feavorish factious zeal But choose if possible judicious holy heavenly humble unblameable self-denying persons to be your ordinary companions and familiars but especially for your near Relations § 1. It is a matter of very great importance what Teachers you choose in order to your salvation In this the free grace of God much differenceth some from others For as poor Heathens and Infidels have none that know more than what the Book of Nature teacheth if so much so in the several Nations of Christians it is hard for the people to have any but such as the Sword of the Magistrate forceth on them or the stream of their Countreys Custom recommendeth to them And it is a wonder Scientiâ— est posse dâ—cere Provâ—â—b Sub indocto tamen doctus evadâ—re potes â—fflaâ—u aliquo divino ut Ciâ—â—ro loquitur Augustinus de seipso testatur cui non omnia credere nefas est quod Aristotelicas Categorias quae inter difficillima numerantur artes liberales quas singulas a praeceptoribus didicisse magnum dicitur nullo tradeâ—te omnes intellexit â—â—â—â—ardus item vir doctrina sanctitate clarissimus omnes suas literas quarum inter cunctos sui temporis abundantissimus fuâ—â— in sâ—lvis in agris didicit non hominum magisterio sed meditando orando nec ullos unquam alios praeceptores habuit quam quercus sagos Pâ—trâ—â—ch li. 2. Dialog 40. if pure Truth and Holiness be countenanced by either of these But when and where his mercy pleaseth God sendeth wise and holy Teachers with compassion and diligence to seek the saving of mens souls so that none but the malignant and obstinate are deprived of their help § 2. Ambitious proud covetous licentious ungodly men are not to be chosen for your Teachers if you have your choice In a Nation where true Religion is in credit and hath the Magistrates countenance or the Major Vote some graceless men may joyn with better in preaching and defending the purity of doctrine and holiness of life And they may be very serviceable to the Church herein especially in expounding and disputing for the truth But even there more experienced spiritual Teachers are much more desirable They will speak most feelingly who feel what they speak And they are fittest to bring others to faith and love who believe and love God and holiness themselves They that have life will speak more lively than the dead And in most places of the world the ungodliness of such Teachers makes them enemies to the Truth which is according to godliness Their natures are at enmity to the life and power of the doctrine which they should preach And they will do their worst to corrupt the Magistrates and make them of their mind And if they can but get the Sword to favour them they are usually the cruellest persecutors of the sincere As it is notorious among the Papists that the baits of Power and Honour and Wealth have so vitiated the body of their Clergy that they conspire to uphold a worldly Government and Religion and in express contradiction to Sense and Reason and to Antiquity and the judgement of the Church and to the holy Scriptures they captivate the ignorant and sensual to their tyranny and false worship and use the seduced Magistrates and multitude to the persecuting of those that will not follow them to sin and to perdition Take heed of proud and worldly Guides § 3. And yet it is not every one that pretendeth Piety and Zeal that is to be heard or taken for a Teacher But 1. Such as preach ordinarily the substantial Truths which all Christians are agreed in 2. Such as make it the drift of their preaching to raise your souls to the Love of God and to a holy heavenly life and are zealous against confessed sins 3. Such as contradict not the
destroying the Kingdom of the Devil and next the purifying his peculiar people and calling home all that are ordained to eternal life § 60. But more particularly he looketh principally at the heart to plant there 1. Holy Knowledge 2. Faith 3. Godlyness or holy devotedness to God and Love to him above all 4. Thankfulness 5. Obedience 6. Humility 7. Heavenly-mindedness 8. Love to others 9. Self-denial and Mortification and contentment 10. Patience And in all these 1. sincerity 2. tenderness of heart 3. â—eal and holy strength and resolution And withal to make us actually serviceable and diligent in our masters work for our own and others salvation § 61. II. Christs order in working is direct and not backward as the Devils is He first revealeth saving truth to the understanding and affecteth the will â—â— shewing the Goodness of the things revealed And these employ the Thoughts and Passions and Senses and the whole body reducing the inferiour faculties to obedience and casting out by degrees those images which had deceived and prepossessed them § 62. The matter which Christ presenteth to the Soul is 1. Certain Truth from the Father of Lights set up against the Prince and Kingdom of darkness ignorance error and deceit 2. Spiritual and everlasting Good even God himself to be seen and Loved and Enjoyed for ever against the Tempters temporal corporal and seeming good Christs Kingdom and work are advanced by Light He is for the promoting of all useful knowledge and therefore for clear and convincing Preaching for reading the Scriptures in a known tongue and meditating in them day and night and for exhorting one another daily which Satan is against § 63. III. The Means by which he worketh against Satan are such as these 1. Sometime he maketh use of the very temper of the body as a preparative and being Lord of all he giveth such a temperature as will be most serviceable to the soul As a sober deliberate meek quiet and patient disposition But sometime he honoureth his Grace by the conquest of such sins as even bodily disposition doth entertain and cherish § 64. 2. Sometimes by his providence he withdraweth the matter of temptations that they shall not be too strong for feeble souls But sometimes his Grace doth make advantage of them all and leave them for the magnifying of its frequent victories § 65. 3. Sometimes he giveth his cause the major vote among the people so that it shall be a matter of dishonourable singularity not to be a professed Christian and somtime but exceeding rarely it is so with the life of Godliness and practice of Christianity also But ordinarily in the most places of the world Custom and the Multitude are against him and his grace is honoured by prevailing against these bands of Satan § 66. 4. He maketh his Ministers his principal Instruments qualifying disposing and calling them to his work and helping them in it and prospering it in their hands § 67. 5. He maketh it the duty of every Christian to do his part to carry on the work and furnisheth them with Love and Compassion and Knowledge and Zeal in their several measures § 68. 6. He giveth a very strict charge to Parents to devote their Children with themselves to God encouraging them with the promise of his accepting and blessing them and commandeth them to teach them the word of God with greatest diligence and to bring them up in the nurture and fear of God § 69. 7. He giveth Princes and Magistrates their power to promote his Kingdom and protect his servants and encourage the good and suppress iniquity and further the obedience of his Laws Though in most of the world they turn his enemies and he carrieth on his work without them and against their cruel persecuting opposition § 70. 8. His Light detecteth the nakedness of the Devils cause and among the Sons of Light it is odious and a common shame And as wisdom is justified of her children so the judgement of holy men condemning sin doth much to keep it under in the world § 71. 9. His providence usually casteth the sinner that he will do good to into the bosome and communion of his holy Church and the familiar company and acquaintance of the Godly who may help him by instruction affection and example § 72. 10. His providence fitteth all conditions to their good but especially helpeth them by seasonable quickning afflictions These are the means which ordinarily he useth But the powerful inward operations of his Spirit give efficacy to them all Tit. 2. Temptations to particular sins with Directions for preservation and Remedy IN Chapter 1. Part 2. I have opened the Temptations which hinder sinners from Conversion to God I shall now proceed to those which draw men to particular sins Here Satans Art is exercised 1. In fitting his baits to his particular use 2. In applying them thereto § 1. Tempt 1. The Devil fitteth his Temptations to the sinners age The same bait is not suitable Tempt 1. to all Children he tempteth to excess of playfullness lying disobedience unwillingness to learn the things that belong to their salvation and a senselesness of the great concernments of their souls He tempteth youth to wantonness rudeness gulosity unruliness and foolish inconsiderateness In the beginning of manhood he tempteth to lust voluptuousness and luxury or if these take not to designs of worldliness and ambition The aged he tempteth to covetousness and unmoveableness in their error and unteachableness and obstinacy in their ignorance and sin Thus every age hath its peculiar snare § 2. Direct 1. The Remedy against this is 1. To be distinctly acquainted with the Temptations of Direct 1. your own age and watch against them with a special heedfullness and fear 2. To know the special duties and advantages of your own age and turn your thoughts wholly unto those Scripture hath various precepts for the various ages study your own part The young have more time to learn their duty and less care and business to divert them Let them therefore be taken up in obedient learning The middle age hath most vigor of body and mind and therefore should do their masters work with the greatest vigor activity and zeal The Aged should have most judgement and experience and acquaintedness with Death and Heaven and therefore should teach the younger both by word and holy life § 3. Tempt 2. The Tempter also fitteth his Temptations to mens several bodily tempers as I Tempt â— shewed § 22. The hot and strong he tempteth to lust The sad and fearful to discouragement and continual self-vexations and to the Fear of Men and Devils Those that have strong appetites to Gluttony and Drunkenness Children and Women and weak-headed people to Pride of Apparel and trifling Complement And masculine wicked-unbelievers to Pride of Honour Parts and Grandeur and to an ambitious seeking of Rule and Greatness The meek and gentle he tempteth to a yieldingness unto the perswasions
19. And he that will not work must be forbidden to eat 2 Thes. 3. 6 10 12. And indeed it is necessary to our selves for the health of our bodies which will grow diseased with idleness and for the help of our souls which will fail if the body fail And man in flesh must have work for his body as well as for his soul And he that will do nothing but pray and meditate it 's like will by sickness or Melancholy be disabled e're long either to pray or meditate Unless he have a body extraordinary strong § 26. Direct 22. Be very watchful redeemers of your Time and make conscience of every hour and Direct 22. minute that you lâ—se it not but spend it in the best and most serviceable manner that you can Of this I intend to speak more particularly anon and therefore shall here add no more § 27. Direct 23. Watchfully and resolutely avoid the entanglements and diverting occasions by Direct 23. which the tempter will be still endeavouring to waste your time and hinder you from your work Know what is the principal service that you are called to and avoid avocations especially Magistrates and Ministers and those that have great and publick work must here take heed For if you be not very wise and watchful the Tempter will draw you before you are aware into such a multitude of diverting cares or businesses that shall seem to be your duties as shall make you almost unprofitable in the world You shall have this or that little thing that must be done and this or that friend that must be visited or spoke to and this or that civility that must be performed so that â—rifâ—es shall detain you from all considerable works I confess friends must not be neglected nor â—ivilities be denied but our Greatest duties having the Greatest necessity all things must give place to them in their proper season And therefore that you may avoid the offence of friends avoid the place or occasions of such impediments And where that cannot be done whatever they judge of you neglect not your most necessary work Else it will be at the will of men and Satan whether you shall be serviceable to God or not § 28. Direct 24. Ask your selves seriously how you would wish at death and judgement that you Direct 24. had used all your wit and time and wealth and resolve accordingly to use them now This is an excellent Direction and Motive to you for doing good and preventing the condemnation which will pass upon unprofitable servants Ask your selves will it comfort me more at death or judgement to think or hear that I spent this hour in plays or idleness or in doing good to my self or others How shall I wish then I had laid out my estate and every part of it Reason it self condemneth him that will not now choose the course which then he shall wish that he had chosen when we foresee the consequence of that day § 29. Direct 25. Understand how much you are beholden to God and not be to you in that he Direct 25. will imploy you in doing any good and how it is the way of your own receiving and know the excellency of your work and â—nd that you may do it all with Love and Pleasure Unacquaintedness with our Master and with the nature and tendency of our work is it that maketh it seem tedious and unpleasant to us And we shall never do it well when we do it with an ill will as meerly forced God loveth a cheerful servant that Loveth his Master and his work It is the main policie of the Devil to make our duty seem grievous unprofitable undesirable and wearisom to us For a little thing will stop him that goâ—th unwillingly and in continual pain § 30. Direct 26. Expect your Reward from God alone and look for unthankfulness and abuse Direct 26. from men or wonder not if it befall you If you are not the servants of Men but of God expect your recompence from him you serve You serve not God indeed if his Reward alone will not content you unless you have also mans reward Verily you have your reward if with the Hypocrite you work for mans approbation Mat. 6. 2 5. Expect especially if you are Ministers or others that labour directly for the good of souls that many prove your enemies for your telling them the truth and that if you were as good as Paul and as unwearied in seeking mens salvation yet the more you love the less you will by many be loved and those that he could have wisht himself accursed from Christ to save did hate him and persâ—cute him as if he had been the most accursed wrâ—tch A peâ—â—ilent fellow and a mover of sedition among the people and one that turneth the world upside down were the names they gave them and where ever he came bonds and imprisonment did attend him and slandering and reviling and whipping and stocks and vowing his death are the thanks and requital which he hath from those for whose salvation he spared no pains but did spend and was spent If you cannot do good upon such terms as these and for those that will thus requite you and be contented to expect a reward in Heaven you are not fit to follow Christ who was worse used than all this by those to whom he shewed more love than any of his servants have to shew Take up your cross and do good to the unthankful and bless them that curse you and love them that hate you and pray for them that despightfully use you and persecute you if you will be the children of God Mat. 5. § 31. Direct 27. Make not your own judgements or Consciences your Law or the maker of your Direct 27. duty which is but the Discerner of the Law of God and of the duty which he maketh you and of your own obedience or disobedience to him There is a dangerous error grown too common in the world that a man is bound to do every thing which his Conscience telleth him is the will of God and that every man must obey his Conscience as if it were the Law-giver of the world whereas indeed it is not our selves but God that is our Law-giver And Conscience is not appointed or authorised to make us any duty which God hath not made us but only to discern the Law of God and call upon us to observe it And an erring Conscience is not to be obeyed but to be better informed and brought to a righter performance of its office § 32. In prosecution of this Direction I shall here answer several cases about doubting Quest. 1. What if I doubt whether a thing be a duty and good work or not Must I do it while I Quest. doubt Nay what if I am uncertain whether it be duty or sin Answ. 1. In all these cases about an erring or a doubting Conscience forget not to distinguish be
senâ—lis Quid â—nâ—m absurdâ—us quam quo mi 〈…〉 viae 〈…〉 stat eo plus vâ—atici 〈…〉 ere â—i 〈…〉 â—at Maâ— thou hast provided So is every one that layeth up Riches for himself and is not Rich towards God If If thou be rich to day and be in another world tomorrow had not poverty been as good Distracted soul Dost thou make so great a matter of it whether thou have much or little for so short a time and takest no more care either where thou shalt be or what thou shalt have to all eternity Dost thou say thou wilt cast this care on God I tell thee he will make thee care thy self and care again before he will save thee And why canst thou not cast the care of smaller matters on him when he commandeth thee Is it any great matter whether thou be Rich or poor that art going so fast unto another world where these are things of no signification Tell me if thou were sure that thou must die tomorrow yea or the next month or year wouldst thou not be more indifferent whether thou be Rich or Poor And look more after greater things Then thou wouldst be of the Apostles mind 2 Cor. 4. 18. We look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen for the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal Our eye of faith should be so fixed on invisible eternal things that we should scarce have leisure or mind to look at or once regard the things that are visible and temporal A man that is going to execution scarce looks at all the bussle or business that is done in Streets and Shops as he passeth by because these little concern him in his departing case And how little do the wealth and honours of the world concern a soul that is going into another world and knows not but it may be this night Then keep thy wealth or take it with thee if thou canst § 25. Direct 4. Labour to feel thy greatest wants which worldly wealth will not supply Thou Direct 4. hast sinned against God and money will not buy thy pardon Thou hast incurred his displeasure and money will not reconcile him to thee Thou art condemned to everlasting misery by the Law Prov. 11. 4. Riches 〈…〉 fiâ— not in the â—ay of wâ—ath and money will not pay thy ransom Thou art dead in sin and polluted and captivated by the flesh and money will sooner encrease thy bondage than deliver thee Thy Conscience is ready to tear thy heart for thy willful folly and contempt of grace and money will not bribe it to be quiet Iudas brought back his money and hanged himself when Conscience was but once awaked Money will not enlighten a blinded mind nor soften a hard heart nor humble a proud heart nor justifie a guilty soul. It will not keep off a Feavor or Consumption nor ease the Gowt or Stone or Tooth-ache It will not keep off ghastly death but dye thou must if thou have all the world Look up to God and remember that thou art wholly in his hands and think whether he will love or favour thee for thy wealth Look unto the day of Judgement and think whether money will there bring thee off or the Rich speed better than the poor § 26. Direct 5. Be often with those that are sick and dying and mark what all their Riches will Direct 5. do for them and what esteem they have then of the world and mark how it useth all at last Then you shall see that it forsaketh all men in the hour of their greatest necessity and distress when they Jer. 17. 11. would cry to friends and wealth and honour if they had any hopes If ever you will help me let it be now If ever you will do any thing for me O save me from death and the wrath of God Jam. 5. 1 2 3. But alas such cryes would be all in vain Then O then one drop of mercy one spark of grace the smallest well gâ—ounded hope of Heaven would be worth more than the Empire of Caesar or Alexander Is not this true sinner Dost thou not know it to be true And yet wilt thou cheat and betray thy soul Is not that best now which will be best then And is not that of little value now which will be then so little set by Dost thou not think that men are wiser then than now Wilt thou do so much and pay so dear for that which will do thee no more good and which thou wilt set no more by when thou hast it Doth not all the world cry out at last of the deceitfulness of riches and the vanity of pleasure and prosperity on Earth and the perniciousness of all worldly cares And doth not thy conscience tell thee that when thou comest to dye thou art like to have the same thoughts Chilon in Laâ—rt p. 43. Damnum potius quam â—uâ—pe lucrum eligendum nam id semel tantum dolori esse hâ—c semper thy self And yet wilt thou not be warned in time Then all the content and pleasure of thy plenty and prosperity will be past And when its past it s nothing And wilt thou venture on everlasting wo and cast away everlasting joy for that which is to day a dream and shadow and to morrow or very shortly will be nothing The poorest then will be equal with thee And will honest poverty or over-loved wealth be sweeter at the last How glad then wouldst thou be to have been without thy wealth so thou mightst have been without the sin and guilt How glad then wouldst thou be to dye the death of the poorest Saint Do you think that Poverty or Riches are liker to make a man loth to dye or are usually more troublesome to the Conscience of a dying man O look to the end and live as you dye and set most by that and seek that now which you know you shall set most by at last when full experience hath made you wiser § 27. Direct 6. Remember that Riches do make it much harder for a man to be saved and the love Direct 6. of this world is the commonest cause of mens damnation This is certainly true for all that Poverty also hath its temptations and for all that the poor are far more â—umerous than the rich For even Socrates dixit Opes nobiâ—itates non solum nihil in se habere honestatis verum omne malum ex eis oboâ—iâ—i Laâ—rt in Socrat the poor may be undone by the love of that wealth and plenty which they never get and those may perish for over-loving the world that yet never prospered in the world And if thou believe Christ the point is out of Controversie For he saith Luke 18. 24 25 26 27. How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God For it is easier for a Camel to go
any more than Spirit or any thing else If it were only in respect of their object they should be called the World also because that is their object It is a certain Rule that That faculty is most predominant in man whose Object is made his chiefest End Sensitive delights being made the felicity and end of the unsanctified it followeth that the sensitive faculties are predominant which being called Flesh by a nearer Trope the Mind from it receives the denomination The Scriptures also shew this plainly I remember not any one place in the Old Testament where there is any probability that the word flesh should signifie only the Rational soul as unrenewed Matth. 16. 17. Flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee that is mortal man hath not revealed it Matth. 26. 41. The Spirit is willing but the flesh is weak that is your Bodies are weak and resist the willingness of your souls For sinful habits are not here called weak John 3. 6. That which is born of the flesh is flesh that is Man by natural Generation can beget but natural man called Flesh from the visible part and not the spiritual life which nature is now destitute of Rom 7. 25. With my flesh I serve the Law of sin that is with my sensitive powers and my mind so far as captivated thereto Rom. 8. 1 5. Flesh and Spirit are oft opposed They that are of the flesh mind the things of the flesh c. that is They in whom the sensitive interest and appetite are predominant For it is called the Body here as well as the flesh v. 10 11 13. The mind is here included but it is as serving the flesh and its interest Gal. 5. 16 17 19. Flesh and Spirit are in the same manner opposed And 2 Pet. 2. 18. the Lusts of the flesh are in this sense mentioned And Ephes. 2. 3. Rom. 7. 18. Rom. 13. 14. 1 Cor. 5. 5. 1 Pet. 2. 11. in which there is mention of fleshly lusts which fight against the Spirit and fleshly wisdom making provision for the flesh c. And Col. 2. 18. there is indeed the name of a fleshly mind which is but a mind deceived and subservient to the flesh so that the flesh it self or sensitive interest and appetite are first signified in all or most places and in some the Mind as subservient thereto § 4. It is of the greater consequence that this be rightly understood lest you be tempted to imitate the Libertines who think the flesh or sensitive part is capable of no moral good or evil and therefore all its actions being indifferent we may be indifferent about them and look only to the superiour powers And others that think that the Scripture by flesh meaneth only the Rational soul ☜ as unâ—enewed do thereupon cherish the Flesh it self and pamper it and feed its unruly lusts and never do any thing to tame the body but pray daily that God would destroy the flesh within them that is their sinful habits of Reason and Will while they cherish the cause or neglect a chief part of the cure And on the contrary some Papists that look only at the Body as their enemy are much in fastings and bodily exercises while they neglect the mortifying of their carnal minds § 5. II. How far flesh-pleasing is a sin I shall distinctly open to you in these propositions What Flesh-pleasing is a sin 1. The Pleasing or displeasing of the sensitive appetite in it self considered is neither sin nor duty good or evil but as commanded or forbidden by some Law of God which is not absolutely done 2. To please the flesh by things forbidden is undoubtedly a sin and so it is to displease it too Therefore this is not all that is here meant that the Matter that pleaseth it must not be things forbidden 3. To overvalue the Pleasing of the Flesh is a sin And to prefer it before the Pleasing of God and the holy preparations for Heaven is the state of carnality and ungodliness and the common cause of the Damnation of souls The Delight of the Flesh or Senses is a Natural Good and the natural desire of it in it self as is said is neither vice nor vertue But when this little natural Good is preferred before the Greater Spiritual Moral or Eternal Good this is the sin of Carnal minds which is threatned with death Rom. 8. 1 5 6 7 8 13. 4. To buy the pleasing of the flesh at too dear a rate as the loss of time or with care and trouble above its worth and to be too much set on making provisions to please it doth shew that it is overvalued and is the sin forbidden Rom. 13. 14. 5. When any desire of the Flesh is inordinate immoderate or irregular for matter or manner quantity quality or season it is a sin to please that inordinate desire 6. When Pleasing the flesh doth too much pamper it and cherish filthy lusts or any other sin and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 aâ—â—â—â—o sufficiâ—â—â—â—â—â—â—â—â— satâ—s est â—â—â—â—um â—â—â—â—pus namque propter animi servitium seciffe naturam nemo tam corporis servus est qui nesciat Id si proprio munere fungitur quid 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 quid ampâ—ius requiras Petraâ—ch li. 2 Dial. 2 Vires corporis sunt vires carceris ut Petrarch li. 1. Dial. 5. What mean you to make your prison so strong said Plato to one that over-pampered his flesh Mars Ficin iâ— Vita Plat. is not necessary on some other account as doing greater good it is a sin But if Life require it lust must be subdued by other means 7. When pleasing the flesh doth hurt it by impairing health and so making the body less fit for duty it is a sin And so almost all intemperance tendeth to breed diseases And God commandeth Temperance even for the Bodies good 8. When unnecessary Flesh-pleasing hindereth any duty of Piety Justice Charity or self-preservation in thought affection word or deed it is sinful 9. It any Pleasing of the Flesh can be imagined to have no tendency directly or indirectly to any moral Good or Evil it is not the Object of a moral Choosing or Refusing but like the winking of the eye which falls not under deliberation it is not within the compass of morality 10. Every Pleasing of the flesh which is capable of being referred to a higher end and is not so referred and used is a sin And there is scarce any thing which is eligible which a vacant waking man should deliberate on but should be referred to a higher end even to the glory of God and our salvation by cheering us up to Love and Thankfulness and strengthening or fitting us some way for some duty This is apparently a sin 1. Because else Flesh-pleasing is made our ultimate end and the Flesh an Idol if ever we desire it only for it self when it may be referred to a higher end For though the sensitive Appetite of it self hath no intended end yet
didst omit Thou hast an offended God to be reconciled to and for thy estranged soul to know as thy Father in Jesus Christ what abundance of Scripture truths hast thou to learn which thou art ignorant of How many holy duties as Prayer Meditation holy conference c. to learn which thou art unskilful in and to perform when thou hast learned them How many works of Justice and Charity to mens souls and bodies hast thou to do How many needy ones to relieve as thou art able and the sick to visit and the naked to cloath and the sad to comfort and the ignorant to instruct and the ungodly to exhort Heb. 3. 13. Heb. 10. 25. Ephes. 4. 29. what abundance of duty hast thou to perform in thy Relations to Parents or Children to Husband or Wife as a Master or a Servant and the rest Thou little knowest what sufferings thou hast to prepare for Thou hast Faith and Love and Repentance and patience and all Gods graces to get and to exercise daily and to increase Thou hast thy accounts to prepare and assurance of salvation to obtain and Death and Judgement to prepare for what thinks thy heart of all this work Put it off as lightly as thou wilt it is God himself that hath laid it on thee and it must be done in time or thou must be undone for ever And yet it must not be thy toyl but thy delight This is appointed thee for thy chiefest recreation Look into the Scripture and into thy Heart and thou wilt find that all this is to be done And dost thou think in thy Conscience that this is not greater business than thy gawdy dressings thy idle visits or thy needless sports which is more worthy of thy Time § 10. Direct 3. Remember how gainful the Redeeming of Time is and how exceeding comfortable Direct 3. in the review In Merchandize or any trading in husbandry or any gaining course we use to say of a man that hath grown rich by it that he hath made use of his Time But when Heaven and communion with God in the way and a life of holy strength and comfort and a death full of joy and hope is to be the gain how cheerfully should Time be Redeemed for these If it be pleasant for a man to find himself thrive and prosper in any rising or pleasing employment How pleasant must it be continually to us to find that in redeeming Time the work of God and our souls do prosper Look back now on the Time that is past and tell me which part is sweetest to thy thoughts However it be now I can tell thee at death it will be an unspeakable comfort to look back on a well spent life and to be able to say in humble sincerity My time was not cast away on worldliness ambition idleness or fleshly vanities or pleasures but spent in the sincere and laborious service of my God and making my calling and election sure and doing all the good to mens souls and bodies that I could do in the world It was entirely devoted to God and his Church and the good of others and my soul What a joy is it when going out of the world we can in our place and measure say with our blessed Lord and pattern John 17. 4 5. I have Glorified thee on earth I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do and now O Father glorifie me with thy self Or as Paul 1 Tim. 4. 6 7 8. I am now ready to be offered and the time of my departure is at hand I have fought a good fight I have finished my course I have kept the faith Henceforth there is laid up for me a Crown of Righteousness which the Lord the Righteous Iudge shall give And 2 Cor. 1. 12. For our rejoycing is this the testimony of our Conscience that in simplicity and godly sincerity not with fleshly wisdâ—m we have had our conversation in the world It s a great comfort in sickness to be able to say with Hezekiah Isa 38. 3. Remember now O Lord I beseech thee how I have walked before thee in truth and with a perfect heart and have done that which is good in thy sight O Time well spent is a precious cordial to a soul that is going to its final sentence and is making up its last and general accounts Yea the reviews of it will be joyful in Heaven which is given though most freely by the Covenant antecedently yet as a Reward by our most righteous judge when he comes to sentence men according to that Covenant § 11. Direct 4. Consider on the contrary how sad the review of ill spent time is and how you will Direct 4. wish you had spent it when it is gone Hast thou now any comfort in looking back on thy despised hours I will not so far wrong thy understanding as to question whether thou know that thou must die But thy sin alloweth me to ask thee Whether at thy dying hour it will be any comfort to thee to remember thy pastimes And whether it will then better please thee to find upon thy account so many hours spent in doing good to others and so many in prayer and studying the Scriptures and thy Heart and in preparing for death and the life to come so many in thy calling obediently managed in order to eternity or to hear so many hours spent in idleness and so many in needless sports and plays hawking and hunting courting and wantonness and so many in gathering and providing for the flesh and so many in satisfying its greedy lusts Which reckoning doth thy Conscience think would be most comfortable to thee at the last I put it to thy own Conscience if thou were to die to morrow how thou wouldst spend this present day Wouldst thou spend it in idleness and vain pastimes Or if thou were to die this day where wouldst thou be found and about what exercises Hadst thou rather death found thee in a Play-house a Gaming-house an A L E house in thy fleshly jollity and pleasure Or in a holy walking with thy God and serious preparing for the life to come Perhaps you 'l say that If you had but a day to live you would lay by the labours of your calling and yet that doth not prove them sinful But I answer There is a great difference between an evil and a small unseasonable Good If death found thee in thy honest calling holily managed Conscience would not trouble thee for it as a sin And if thou rather choose to die in prayer it is but to choose a greater duty in its season But sure thou wouldst be loth on another account to be found in thy Time-wasâ—â—ing pleasures And Conscience if thou have a Conscience would make thee drâ—ad it as a sâ—n Thou wilt not wish at death that thou hadst never laboured in thy lawful calling though thou wouldst be found in a more seasonable work But thou wilt wish then if thou
the men on earth with all their power and all their wit are not able to recall one minute that is gone All the riches in this world cannot redeem it by reversing one of those hours or moments which you so prodigally cast away for nothing If you would cry and call after it till you tear your hearts it will not return Many a thousand have tryed this by sad experience and have cryed out too late O that we had now that Time again which we made so light of But none of them did ever attain their wish No more will you Take it therefore while you have it It is now as liberal to the poorest beggar as to the greatest Prince Time is as much yours as his Though in your youth and folly you spend as out of the full heap as if Time would never have an end you shall find it is not like the widdows oyl or the loaves and fishes multiplyed by a Miracle But the hour is at hand when you will wish you had gathered the fragments and the smallest crums that nothing of so precious a commodity had been lost even the little minutes which you thought you might neglect and be no losers Try whether you can stop the present moment or recall that which is gone by already before you vilifie or loiter away any more lest you repent too late § 17. Direct 10. Think also how exceeding little Time thou hast and how near thou allway standest Direct 10. to eternity Job 7. 1. Is there not an appointed time to man upon earth Are not his days also like the Ex ipsà vitâ discedimus tanquam ex hospitio non tanquam ex domo Commorandi enim nobis natura diversorium non habitandi domum dedit Cic. i◠Cat. Maj. days of an hireling Job 14. 1 2. Man that is born of a woman is of few days and full of trouble He cometh forth like a flower and is cut down He fleeth also as a shadow and continueth not Job 9. 25 26. Now my days are swifter than a post they flee away they see no good they are passed away as the swift ships as the Eagle that hasteth to the prey O what is this inch of hasty Time How quickly will it all be gone Look back on all the Time that 's past If thou have lived threescore or fourscore years what is it now Doth it not seem as yesterday since thou wast a child Do not days and nights wheel on apase O man how short is thy abode on earth How small a Time will leave thee in eternity What a small and hasty moment will bring thee to the state in which thou must remain for ever Every night is as the death or end of one of the few that are here allotted thee How little a while is it till thy mortal sickness Till thou must lie under languishing decays and pain Till thy vital powers shall give up their office and thy pulse shall cease and thy soul shall take its silent undiscerned flight and leave thy body to be hid in darkness and carried by thy friends to the common earth How short a Time is it betwixt this and the digging of thy grave Betwixt thy pleasures in the flesh and thy sad farewel when thou must say of all thy pleasures They are gone Betwixt thy cares and businesses for this world and thy entrance into another world where all these vanities are of no esteem How short is the Time between thy sin and thy account in judgement Between the pleasure and the pain And between the patient holiness of the Godly and their full reward of endless joys And can you spare any part of so short a life Hath God allotted you so little Time and can you spare the Devil any of that little Is it not all little enough for so great a work as is necessary to your safe and comfortable death O remember when sloth or pleasure would have any how little you have in all And out of how small a stock you spend How little you have for the one thing necessary The providing for eternal life And how unseasonable it is to be playing away time so neer the entrance into the endless world § 18. Direct 11. Remember also how uncertain that little Time is which you must have As you Direct 11. know it will be short so you know not how short You never yet saw the day or hour in which you were sure to see another And is it a thing becoming the Reason of a man to slug or cast away that day or hour which for ought he knows may be his last You think that though you are not certain yet you are likely to have more But nothing that is hazardous should be admitted in a business of such moment Yea when the longest life is short and when so frail a body liable to so many hundred maladies and casualties and so sinful a soul do make it probable as well as possible that the thred thy of life should be cut off ere long even much before thy natural period When so many score at younger years do come to the grave for one that arriveth at the ripeness of old age is not then the uncertainty of thy Time a great aggravation of the sinfullness of thy not-redeeming it If you were sure you had but one year to live it would perhaps make you so wise as to see that you had no Time to spare And yet do you wast it when you know not that you shall live another day Many a one is this week trifling away their Time who will be dead the next week who yet would have spent it better if they had thought but to have dyed the next year O man what if death come before thou hast made thy necessary preparation Where art thou then When Time is uncertain as well as short hast thou not work enough of weight to spend it on If Christ had set thee to attend and follow him in greatest holiness a thousand years shouldst thou not have gladly done it And yet canst thou not hold out for so short a life Canst thou not watch with him one hour He himself was provoked by the nearness of his death to a speedy dispatch of the works of his life And should not we Matth. 26. 18. He sendeth to prepare his last communion feast with his Disciples thus My time is at hand I will keep the passover at thy house with my Disciples And Luke 22. 15. With desire have I desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer So should you rather say My time is short my death is at hand and therefore it concerneth me to live in the knowledge and communion of God before I go hence into his presence especially when as Eccles. 9. 12. Man knoweth not his time Many thousands would have don◠better in their preparations if they had known the period of their time Matth. 24. 43. But know this
s prohibited delights None of these Enemies will make a Truce or a Cessation with you to sit still as long as you sit still So far are they from forbearing you while you are idle or gratifying the flesh that even this is the fruit and evidence of their industry and success Lose no Time then and admit of no interruptions of your work till you can perswade your enemies to do the like § 23. Direct 16. Consider what a sensless contradiction it is of you to over-love your Lives and Direct 16. yet to cast away your Time What is your Time but the duration of your lives You are loth to dye and loth your Time should be at an end and yet you can as prodigally cast it away as if you were weary of it or longed to be rid of it Is it only the last hours that you are loth to lose Are not the middle parts as precious and to be spared and improved Or is it only to have Time and not to use it that you desire No means is good for any thing but to further the attainment of the end It is not good to you if it do you no good To have food or rayment without any use of them is as bad as not to have them If you saw a man tremble with fear lest his purse be taken from him and yet take out his money himself and cast it away or give it all for a straw or feather what would you think of that mans wit And do not you do the like and worse when you are afraid lest Death should end your Time and yet you your selves will idle it away and play it away and give it for a little worldly pelf But I know how it is with you It is for the present pleasure of the flesh and for the sweetness of life it self that you value life and are so loth to dye and not for any higher ends But this is to be bruitish and to unman your selves and simply to vilifie your lives while you idolize them Such mad contradictions sin infers You make your Life your ultimate end and desire to Live but for Life it self or the pleasures of life and so you make it instead of God and Heaven which should be intended as your proper end And yet while you refer it not to these higher ends and use it but for the present pleasure you vilifie your selves and it as if man did differ from a Dog or other Brute but in some poor degree of present pleasure § 24. Direct 17. Consider that in your loss of Time you lose all the mercies of that time For Direct 17. Time is pregnant with great unvaluable mercies It is the Cabinet that containeth the Iewels If you throw away the purse you throw away the money that is in it O what might you get in those precious hours which you cast away How much better a treasure than money might you win How much sweeter a pleasure than all your Games and Sports might you enjoy You might be soliciting God for life eternal You might be using and increasing grace You might be viewing by faith the blesâ—â—d place and company in which you may abide for ever All this and more you are loâ—ing while you are losing time You choose as a pleasure that heavy curse Levit. 26. 20. Your strength shall â—e spent in vain Why do you not also take it for a pleasure to cast away your gold or health I tell you a very little time is wâ—rth a great deal of Gold and Silver You cast away a more precious commodity § 25. Direct 18. Think seriously how Christ and his Apostles and holiest servants in all ages Direct 18. spent their Time They spent it in praying and preaching and holy conference and in doing good and in the works of their outward callings in subserviency to these But not in Cards or Dice or Dancing or Stage-playes or pampering the flesh nor in the pursuit of the profits and honours of the world I read where Christ was all night in praying Luke 6. 12. but not where he spent an hour in pâ—aying I know you will say that you expect not to reach their degree of holiness But let me remember you that he is not sincere that desireth not to be perfect And that he is graceless who wilfully keepeth any beloved sin which he had not rather be delivered from and that wilfully refuseth any duty and had not rather perform it as he ought And that you are the more needy though Christ and his Apostles and Servants were the more Holy And that the poor have moâ—e need to beg and work and be sparing of what they have than the rich And therefore if Christ and his holiest servants were spâ—ring of their time and spent it in works of holâ—nâ—ss and obedience have not you greater need to do so than they Have not you more need to pray and learn Gods Word and prepare for death than Christ and his Apostles Are you not more behind hand as having lost much time Let your wants instruct you § 26. Direct 19. Forget not that a spending time may come when you will think all too little Direct 19. that now you can provide by the most diligent redeeming of your time If a Garrison expect a Siege so sharp and long as will spend up their provisions they will prepare accordingly that they perish not by famine Temptations may be stronger and then you will find that you should now have gathered strength to overcome them and have bestirred you in the getting day that you might be able to stand in the evil day Ephes. 6. 13. It is those that now loyter and lose their time and gather not knowledge and strength of grace who fall in tryal when sufferings for righteousness â—ake shall be as a â—iege to you and when poverty wrongs provocations sickness and the face of death shall be as a â—iege to you then you will find all your faith and hope and love and comfort to be too little and then you will wish that you had now bestir'd you and laid in better provision and laid up a good foundation or treasure in store for the time to come 1 Tim. 6. 19. § 27. Direct 20. Lasâ—ly Forget not how Time is esteemed by the damned whose time and hope is Direct 20. gone â—or ever and how thâ—u wilt value it thy self if thou sin thy soul into that woful state What thinkest thou would those miserable creatures now give if they had it but for one dayes time Moâ—â— iâ—â—â—â—â—ribi iâ— eâ—â— quorum cum vita omnia extinguâ—â—â—â—uâ— Ciâ—â—â—â—o â—a a. l. 1. upon those terms of mercy which thou dost now enjoy it Would they sleep it away or be at their games and meâ—riments while God is offering them Christ and Grace Dost thou think they set not a higher price on Time and mercy than sinners upon earth Doth it not tear their very hearts for ever to
think how madly they consumed their lives and wasted the only Time that was given them to prepare for their salvation Do those in Hell now think them wise that are idling or playing away their time on earth O no! their feeling and experience sufficiently confuteth all that Time-wasters now plead for their â—ottish prodigality I do not believe that thou canst at once believe the Word oâ— God concerning the state of damned souls and yet believe that thy idle and vain expence of Time would not vex thy conscience and make thee even rage against thy self if ever sin should bring thee thither O then thou wouldst see that thou hadst greater matters to have spent thy time in and that it deserved a higher estimation and improvement O man beseâ—ch the Lord to prevent such a conviction and to give thee a heart to prize thy time before it is gone and to know the worth of it bâ—â—ore thou know the want of it Tit. 2. Directions Contemplative for Redeeming Opportunity Seâ— the many aggravaâ—ions oâ—â—inâ—ul Dâ—lay in my Dirâ—ctions for â—ound Convâ—â—sion § 28. OPportunity or Season is the flower of Time All Time is precious but the season is most precious The present Time is the season to works of present necâ—ssity And for others they have all their particular seasâ—ns which must not be let slip Direct 1. Remember that it is the great difference between the happy Saint and the unhappy world Direct 1. that one is wise in time and the other is wise too late The godly know while knowledge will do good The wicked know when knowledge will but torment them All those that you see now so exceedingly contrary in their judgement to the godly will be of the very same opinion shortly when it will do them no good Bear with their difference and contradiction for it will be but a very little while There is not one man that now is the furious enemy of holiness but will confess ere long that Holiness was best Do they now despise it as tedious fantastical hypocrisie They will shortly know that it was but the cure of a distracted mind and the necessary duty to God which Religion and right reason do command Do they now say of sin What harm is in it They will shortly know that it is the poyson of the soul and worse than any misery or death They will think mâ—re highly of the worth of Christ of the necessity of all possible diligence for our souls of the preciousness of Time of the wisdom of the Godly of the excellencies of Heaven and of the Word of God and all holy Means than any of those do that are now reproached by them for being of this mind But what the better will they be for this No more than Adam for knowing good and evil No more than it will profit a man when he is dead to know of what disease he dyed No more than it will profit a man to know what is poyson when he hath taken it and is past remedy The Thief will be wise at the Gallows and the Spendthrift-prodigal when all is gone But they that will be safe and happy must be wise in Time The godly know the worth of Heaven before it is lost and the misery of damnation before they feel it and the necessity of a Saviour while he is willing to be a Saviour to them and the evil of sin before it hath undone them and the preciousness oâ— Time before it is gone and the worth of mercy while mercy may be had and the need of praying while praying may prevail They sleep not till the door is shut and then knock and cry Lord open to us as the foolish ones Matth. 25. They are not like the miserable world that will not believe till they come where Devils believe and tremble nor Repent till torment force them to repent As ever you would escape the dear-bought experience of fools be wise in time and leave not Conscience to answer all your cryes and moans and fruitless wishes with this doleful peal Too late Too late Do but know now by an effectual faith what wicked men will know by feeling and experience when it is too late and you shall not perish Do but live now as those enemies of Holiness will wish they had lived when it is too late and you will be happy Now God may be found Seek the Lord while he may be found and call upon him while he is near Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts and let him return unto the Lord and he will â—ave mercy upon him and to our God for he will abundantly pardon Isa. 55. 6 7. Read but the doleful lamentation of Christ over Ierusalem Luke 19. 41 42. and then bethink you what it is to neglect the season of mercy and salvation He beheld the City and wept over it saying If thou hadst known even thou at lest in this thy day the things which belong unto thy peace But now they are hidden from thine eyes § 29. Direct 2. Remember that the neglecting of the season is the frustrating and destroying of the Direct 2. work When the season is past the work cannot be done If you sow not in the time of sowing it will be in vain at another time If you reap not and gather not in harvest it will be too late in Winter to hope for fruit If you stay till the Tide is gone or take not the Wind that fits your turn it may be in vain to attempt your Voyage All works cannot be done at all times Christ himself saith I must walk while it is day the night cometh when none can work John 9. 4. Say not then The next day may serve the turn The next day is for another work and you must do both § 30. Direct 3. Consider that if the work should not be impossible yet it will be difficult out of Direct 3. season when in its season it might be done with ease How easily may you swim with the Tide and sail with the Wind and form the Iron if you hammer it while it is hot How easily may many a disease be cured if it be taken in Time which afterwards is uncurable How easily may you bend a tender Twig and pluck up a Plant which will neither be pluckt up nor bended when it is grown up to be a Tree When you complain of difficulties in Religion bethink you whether your loss of the fittest season and acquainting your selves no sooner with God be not the cause § 31. Direct 4. Consider that your work out of season is not so good or acceptable if you could Direct 4. do it Every thing is beautiful in its season Eccles. 3. 11. To speak a word in season to the weary Numb 9. 2 3 7 13. Exod. 13. 10. is the skill of the faithful messengers of peace Isa. 50. 4. When out of season good may be turned into
a clock in the morning when honest labourers have done one half of their dayes work While you are in health were not six a clock in the morning a fitter hour for you to be drest that you might draw near to the most Holy God in holy prayer and read his Word and set your souls and then your families in order for the duties of the following day I do not say that you may go no neaâ—er than poor labouring people or that you may bestow no more time than they in dressing you But I say that for your souls and in your callings you are bound by God to be as diligent as they and have no more Time given you to lose than they and that you should spend as little of it in neatifying you as you can and be sensible that else the loss is your own And that abundance of precious hours which your Pride consumeth will lye heavy one day upon your consciences And then you shall confess I say you shall confess it with aking hearts that the duties you owed to God and man and the care of your souls and of your families should have been preferred before your appearing neat and spruce to men If you have but a journey to go you can rise earlier and be sooner drest but for the good of your souls and the redeeming of your precious time you cannot O that God would but shew you what greater work you have to do with those precious hours and how it will cut your hearts to think of them at last If you lay but hopelesly sick of a Consumption you would be cured it is like of this proud disease and bestow less of your time in adorning the flesh which is hasting to the grave and rottenness And cannot you now see how time and life consumes and what cause you have with all your care and diligence to use it better before it is gone I know they that are so much worse than childish as prodigally to cast away so many hours in making themselves fine for the sight of men and be not ashamed to come forth and shew their sin to others will scarce want words to excuse their crime and prove it lawful be they sense or non-sense But conscience it self shall answer all when Time is gone and make you wish you had been wiser You know not Ladies and Gallants how precious a thing Time is You little feel what a price your selves will set upon it at the last You little consider what you have to do with it you see not how it hasteth and how near you stand to vast eternity you little know how despised Time will look a wakened Conscience in the face Or what it is to be found unready to dye I know you lay not to heart these things For if you did you could not I say you could not so lightly cast away your time If all were true that you say that indeed your place and honour requireth that your precious morning hours be thus spent I profess to you I should pity you more than Gally-slaves and I would bless me from such a place and honour and make haste into the course and company of the poor and think them happy that may better spend their time But indeed your excuses are frivolous and untrue and do but shew that Pride hath prevailed to captivate your Reason to its service For we know Lords and Ladies as great as the rest of you though alas too few that can quickly be up and drest and spend their early hours in prayer and adorning their souls and can be content to come forth in a plain and incurious attire and yet are so far from being derided or thought the worse by any whose judgement is much to be regarded that they are taken justly for the honour of their order And if it were not that some few such keep up the honour of your ranck I will not tell you how little in point of Morality it would be honoured § 53. Th. 4. Another Time-wasting Thief is Unnecessary pomp and curiosity in retinue attendance Thief 4. â—ouse furniture provision and entertainments together with excess of complement and ceremony and servitude to the humours and expectations of Time-wasters I crowd them all together because they are all but wheels of the same Engine to avoid prolixity Here also I must prevent the cavils of the guilty by telling you that I reprove not all that in the rich which I would reprove if it were in the poor I intend not to levell them and judge them by the same measure The rich are not so happy as to be so free as the poor either from the temptation or the seeming necessity and obligation Let others pity the poor I 'le pity the Rich who seem to be pinched with harder Necessities than the poor even this seeming Necessity of wasting their precious Time in complement curiosity and pomp which the happy Poor may spend in the honest labours of their Callings wherein they may at once be profitable to the Common-wealth and maintain themselves and meditate or confer of holy things But yet I must say that the Rich shall give an account of Time and shall pay dear for that which unnecessary excesses do devour And that instead of envying the state and curiosity of others and seeking to excell or equal them to avoid their obloquy they should contract and bring down all customs of excess and shew their high esteem of Time and detestation of Time-wasting curiosity and imitate the most sober grave and holy and be a pattern to others of employing Time in needful great and manly things I say Manly for so childish is this Vice that men of gravity and business do abhor it and usually men of Vanity that are guilty of it lay it all on the Women as if they were ashamed of it or it were below them What abundance of precious Time is spent in unnecessary state of attendance and provisions What abundance under pretence of cleanliness and neatness is spent in needless curiosity about rooms and furniture and accommodations and matters of meer pride vain-glory and ostentation covered with the honest name of decency What abundance is wasted in entertainments and unnecessary visits complements ceremony and servitude to the humours of men of Vanity I speak not for nastiness and uncleanness and uncomeliness I speak not for a Cynical morosity or unsociableness When Conscience is awakened and you come to your selves and approaching death shall better acquaint you with the worth of Time you will see a mean between these two Nimia omnia nimium exhibâ—nâ— negotium and you will wish you had most feared the Time-wasting prodigal extream Methinks you should freely give me leave to say that though Martha had a better excuse than you and was cumbered about many things for the entertainment of such a guest as Christ himself with all his followers who lookt for no curiosity yet Mary is more
approved of by Christ who neglected all this to Redeem the Time for the good of her soul by sitting at his feet to hear his Word she chose the better part which shall not be taken from her Remember I pray you that One thing is necessary I hope I may have leave to tell you that if by you or your servants God and your souls and prayer and reading the Scriptures and the profitable labours of an honest Calling be all or any of them neglected while you or they are neatifying this room or washing out that little spot or setting strait Abundance of little things that have all their conveniences have all their inconvenices also and take up our time and sâ— would sâ—â—â—â— out greater things â—â— they be not caâ—â— aside themselves and would become great sins by such a consumption of our Time Luke 10. 42. the other wrinckle or are taken up with foeminine trifling proud curiosities this is a preferring of dust before Gold of the least before the greatest things And to say that decency is commendable is no excuse for neglecting God your souls or families or leaving undone any one greater work which you or your servants might have been doing that while I say any work that is greater all things considered O that you and your families would but live as those that see how fast Death cometh how fast Time goeth and what you have to do and what your unready souls yet want This is all that I desire of you And then I warrant you it would save you many a precious hour and cut short your works of curiosity and deliver you from your slavery to Pride and the esteem of vain Time-wasters § 54. Th. 5. Another Time-wasting sin is needless and tedious feastings gluttony and tipling Thief 5. which being of the same litter I set together I speak not against moderate seasonable and charitable Conâ—â—â—â—a quae dicunâ—ur â—um siâ—t commesâ—â—tionâ— modestia 〈…〉 mihi 〈…〉 sum inuâ—â—le ratus vocare vâ—cari c. Iâ—â—â—â— Feasts But alas in this luxurious sensual age how commonly do men sit two hours at a Feast and spend two more in attending it before and after and not improving the Time in any pious or profitable discourse yea the Rich spend an hour ordinarily in a common Meal while every Meal is a Feast indeed and they fare as their predecessor Luke 16. deliciously or sumptuously every day Happy are the poor that are free also from this temptation You spend not so much Time in the daily addresses of your souls to God and reading his Word and taking an account of the affairs of conscience and preparing for death as you do in stuffing your guts perhaps at one Meal And in Taverns and Ale-houses among their pots how much Time is wasted by Rich and poor O remember while you are eating and drinking what a corruptible piece of flesh you are feeding and serving and how quickly those mouths will be filled with dust and that a soul that is posting so fast unto eternity should find no Time to spare for vanity And that you have important work enough to do which if performed will afford you a sweeter and a longer Feast § 55. Th. 6. Another Time-wasting sin is idle Talk What abundance of precious Time doth Thief 6. this consume Hearken to most mens discourse when they are sitting together or working together or travelling together and you shall hear how little of it is any better than silence and if not better it is worse So full are those persons of Vanity who are empty even to silence of any thing that is good that they can find and feed a discourse of nothing many hours and days together and as they think with such foecundity and floridness of style as deserveth acceptance if not applause I have marvelled oft at some wordy Preachers with how little matter they can handsomly fill up an hour But one would wonder more to hear people fill up not an hour but a great part of their day and of their lives and that without any study at all and without any holy and substantial Subject with words which if you should write them all down and peruse them you would find that the sum and conclusion of them is nothing How self-applaudingly and pleasingly they can ex tempore talk idly and of nothing a great part of their lives I have heard many of them marvel at a poor unlearned Christian that can pray ex tempore many hours together in very good order and well-composed words But are they not more to be marvelled at that can very handsomly talk of nothing ten times as long with greater copiousness and without repetitions and that ex tempore when they have not that variety of great commanding Subjects to be the matter of their speech I tell you when Time must be reviewed the consumption of so much in idle talk will appear to have been no such venial sin as empty careless sinners now imagine § 56. Th. 7. Another Thief which by the aforesaid means would steal your Time is Vain and sinful Thief 7. company Among whom a spiritual Physicion that goeth to cure them or a holy person that is full and resolute to bear down vain discourse I confess may well employ his Time when he is cast upon it or called to it But to dwell with such or choose them as our familiars or causlesly or for complacency keep among them will unavoidably lose abundance of your time If you would do good they will hinder you If you will speak of good they will divert you or reproach you or wrangle and cavil with you or some way or other stop your mouths They will by a stream of vain discourse either bear down and carry you on with them or fill your ears and interrupt and hinder the very thoughts of your minds by which you desire to profit your selves when they will not let you be profitable to others § 57. Th. 8. Another notorious Time-wasting Thief is needless inordinate sports and games which Thief 8. are commonly stigmatized by the offenders themselves with the infamous name of PASTIMES Laertius saith of Solon that Thâ—spini tragedias agere docere prohibuit inuâ—â—lem eas falsiloquentiam vocaâ—â—â—â— and masked with the deceitful title of Recreations such as are Cards and Dice and Stage-plays and Dancings and Revellings and excesses in the most lawful sports especially in Hunting and Hawking and Bowling c. whether all these are lawful or unlawful in themselves is nothing to the present question but I am sure that the precious hours which they take up might have been improved to the saving of many a thousand souls that by the loss of Time are now undone and past recovery except malicious enemies of Godliness I scarce know a wretcheder sort of people on the earth and more to be lamented than those fleshly persons who through the love of sensual
pleasure do waste many hours day after day in Plays and Gaming and Voluptuous courses while their miserable souls are dead in sin enslaved to their fleshly lusts unreconciled to God and find no delight in him or in his service and cannot make a recreation of any Heavenly work How will it torment these unhappy souls to think how they plaid away those hours in which they might have been pleasing God and preventing misery and laying up a treasure in Heaven And to think that they sold that precious time for a little fleshly sport in which they should have been working out their salvation and making their calling and election sure But I have more to say to these anon § 58. Th. 9. Another Time-wasting Thief is excess of worldly cares and business These do not Thief 9. only as some more disgraced sins pollute the soul with deep stains in a little time and then recede but they dwell upon the mind and keep possession and keep out good They take up the greatest part of the lives of those that are guilty of them The world is first in the morning in their thoughts and last at night and almost all the day The world will not give them leave to entertain any sober fixed thoughts of the world to come nor to do the work which all works should give place to The World devoureth all the Time almost that God and their souls should have It will not give them leave to Pray or Read or Meditate or Discourse of holy things even when they seem to be Praying or hearing the Word of God the World is in their thoughts And as it 's said Ezek. 33. 31. They come unto thee as the people cometh and they sit before thee as my people and they hear thy words but they will not do them for with their mouth they shew much love but their heart goeth after their Covetousness In most families there is almost no talk nor doings but all for the world These also will know that they had greater works for their precious time which should have always had the precedency of the World § 59. Th. 10. Another Time-waster is vain ungoverned and sinful thoughts When men are wearied Thief 10. with vain works and sports they continue unwearied in vain thoughts when they want company for vain Discourse and Games they can waste the time in idle or lustful or ambitious or Covetous thoughts alone without any company In the very night time while they wake and as they travail by the way yea while they seem to be serving God they will be wasting the Time in useless thoughts so that this devoureth a greater proportion of pretious Time than any of the former when Time must be reckoned for what abundance will be found upon most mens accounts as spent in idle sinful thoughts O watch this Thief and remember though you may think that a vain Thought is but a little sin yet Time is not a little or contemptible commodity nor to be cast away on so little a thing as idle thoughts and to vilifie thus so choice a treasure is not a little sin And that it is not a little work that you have to do in the Time which you thus wast And a daily course of idle thoughts doth waste so great a measure of time that this aggravation maketh it more heynous than many sins of greater infamy But of this more in the next part § 60. Th. 11. Another dangerous Time-wasting sin is the Reading of vain-Books Play-books Romances Thief 11. and feigned Histories and also unprofitable studies undertaken but for vain-glory or the pleasing of a carnal or curious mind Of this I have spoken in my Book of Self-denyal I speak not here how pernicious this vice is by corrupting the fancy and affections and breeding a diseased appetite and putting you out of relish to necessary things But bethink you before you spend another hour in any such Books whether you can comfortably give an account of it unto God! and how precious the Time is which you are wasting on such Childish toys You think the Reading of such things is lawful but is it lawful to lose your precious Time you say that your petty studies are desirable and laudable But the neglect of far greater necessary things is not laudable I discourage no man from labouring to know all that God hath any way revealed to be known But I say as Seneca We are ignorant of things necessary because we learn things superfluous and unnecessary Art is long and life is short And he that hath not time for all should make sure of the greatest matters and if he be ignorant of any thing let it be of that which the Love of God and our own and other mens salvation and the publick good do least require and can best spare It s a pitiful thing to see a man waste his time in criticizing or in growing wise in the less necessary Sciences and arts while he is yet a slave of pride or worldliness and hath an unrenewed soul and hath not learned the mysteries necessary to his own salvation But yet these studies are laudable in their season But the Fanatick studies of those that would pry into unrevealed things and the lascivious employment of those that read Love-books and Play-books and vain stories will one day appear to have been but an unwise expense of Time for those that had so much better and more needful work to do with it I think there is few of those that plead for it that would be found with such Books in their hands at death or will then find any pleasure in the remembrance of them § 61. Th. 12. But the Master-Thief that robs men of their Time is an unsanctified ungodly heart Thief 12. For this loseth Time whatever men are doing Because they never truly intend the Glory of God and having not a right principle or a right end their whole course is Hell-wards and whatever they do they are not working out their salvation And therefore they are still losing their Time as to themselves however God may use the Time and gifts of some of them as a mercy to others Therefore a New and Holy Heart with a Heavenly intention and design of life is the great thing necessary to all that will savingly Redeem their Time Tit. 5. On whom this duty of Redeeming Time is principally incumbent § 62. THough the Redeeming of Time be a duty of grand importance and necessity to all yet all these sorts following have special obligations to it Sort. 1. Those that are in the youth and vigour of their Time nature is not yet so much corrupted in Sort 1. you as in old accustomed sinners your hearts are not so much hardened sin is not so deeply rooted and confirmed Satan hath not triumphed in so many victories you are not yet plunged so deep as others into worldly incumbrances and cares your understanding memory and
nothing to disturb you or carry you into sin § 7. Direct 3. Dwell in the delightful Love of God and in the sweet contemplation of his Love in Christ Direct 3. and â—owl over his tender mercies in your thoughts and let your conversation be with the Holy ones in Heaven and your work be Thanksgivings and Praise to God And this will habituate your souls to such a sweetness and mellowness and stability as will resist sinful passion even as heat resisteth cold § 8. Direct 4. Keep your Consciences continually tender and then they will check the first appearance Direct 4. of sinful passions and will smart more with the sin than your passionate natures do with the provocation A scared Conscience and a hardened senseless heart is to every sin as a man that 's fast asleep is to thieves They may come in and do what they will so they do not waken him But a tender Conscience is always awake § 9. Direct 5. Labour after wisdom strength of Reason and a solid judgement for Passion is cherished Direct 5. by folly Children are easily overthrown and leaves are easily shaken with every little wind when men keep their way and rocks and mountains are not shaken Women and children and old and weak and sick people are usually most passionate If a wise man should have a passionate nature he hath that which can do much to controle it When folly is a weathercock at the winds command § 10. Direct 6. See that the will be confirmed and resolute and then it will soon command down Direct 6. passion Men can do much against Passion if they will Nature hath set the will in the Throne of the soul It is the sinful connivance and negligence of the will which is the guilty cause of all the rebellion As the connivance of the commanders is the common cause of mutinies in an Army The will Sâ—e 〈◊〉 of Tranquility of mind either consenteth or is remisâ— in its office and in forbidding and repressing the rage of passion When I say you can do it if you will you think this is not true because you are willing and yet passion yieldeth not to your wills command But I mean not that every kind of willingness will serve It is not a sluggish wish that will do it But if the will were resolute without any compliance or connivance or negligence in its proper office no sinful passion could remain For it is no further sin than it is voluntary either by the wills compliance or omission and neglect Therefore let most of your labour be to waken and confirm the will and then it will command down passion § 11. Direct 7. Labour after holy fortitude courage and magnanimity Great minds are above all Direct 7. troubles desires or commotions about little things A poor base low and childish mind is never quiet longer then it is rockt asleep or flattered § 12. Direct 8. Especially see that you want not self-denial and that worldliness and fleshly-mindedness Direct 8. be throughly mortified For sinful passion is the very breath and pulse of a selfish fleshly worldly mind It is not more natural for dogs to fight about a bone than for such to snarl and quarrel or be in some distempered Passion about their selfish carnal-interest Covetousness will not let the mind be quiet It s as natural for a selfish man to be under the power of sinful Passions as for a man to shake that hath an ague or to fear that is melancholy Fleshly men have a Canine appetite and feaverish thirst continually upon them after some flesh-pleasing toy or other § 13. Direct 9. Keep a Court of Iustice in your souls and call your selves daily to account and Direct 9. let no passion scape without such a censure as is due If Reason and Conscience thus exercise and maintain their authority and passion be every day soundly rebuked it will wither like a plant that is cropt as fast as it springeth § 14. Direct 10. Deliberate and foresee the end examine whether passion tend to that which will be Direct 10. approveable when its past Looking to the end doth shame all sinful passions They are blind and moved only by things present They cannot endure the sight of the time to come nor to be examined whether they go or where is their home § 15. Direct 11. Keep a continual apprehension of the danger and odiousness of sinful passions by Direct 11. knowing how full they are of the spawn of many other sins See the evil of them in the effects Mark what passion doth in others and your selves what abundance of evil thoughts and words and deeds do come from sinful passions § 16. Direct 12. Observe the immediate troublesome effects and the disorders of your soul and so Direct 12. turn the fruit of passions against themselves Mark how they discompose you and disturb your Reason and make your minds like muddyed waters and breed a diseased unquietness in you unfitting you for your work and breaking your peace so that you can neither know nor use nor enjoy your selves § 17. Direct 13. Let Death look your passions frequently in the face It hath a mortifying vertue Direct 13. and as it sheweth us the vanity of the creature so it taketh down those passions which creature-interest and deceit have caused It exciteth reason and restoreth it to its dominion and silenceth the rebellion of the senses A man that is to die to morrow and knoweth it would easilier repell to day a temptation to lust or covetousness or drunkenness or revenge than at another time he could have done One look into eternity will powerfully rebuke all carnal passions § 18. Direct 14. Remember still that God is present Will you behave your selves passionately before Direct 14. him When the presence of your Prince would calm you Shall God and his holy Angels see thee like a Bedlam lay by thy reason and mis-behave thy self § 19. Direct 15. Have still some pertinent scripture ready to rebuke thy passions That thou mayst Direct 15. say as Christ to Satan Thus it is written Speak to it in the name and word of God Though the bare words will not charm these evil spirits yet the authority will curb them For this word is quick 2 Cor. 10. 4 5. and powerful a discerner of the throughts Heb. 4. 12. mighty though God to the pulling down of stroâ—â— holds casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalteth it self against the knowledge of God and bringeth into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. § 20. Direct 16. Set Christ continually before you as your pattern who calleth you to learn of him Direct 16. to be meek and lowly Matth. 11. 29. Who desired not the wealth or glory of the world who loved his own that were in the world but loved not the things of the world who never was lifted up or sinfully
soon as Isaac had given it to Iacob Answ. When he had sold his birth-right it was too late to recall it for the right was made over to his Brother It seemeth to be Isaac's Repentance which â—â—aw found no place â—â—â—â— But â—â— it be spoken oâ— the unacceptableness of his own Repentance when it was too late it signifieth not that any mans is too late in this life as to 〈…〉 and it was not Repentance and cryes and tears that could recal the right he had sold nor recal the words that Isaac had spoken But this doth not prove that our day of grace doth not continue till death or that any man Repenting before his death shall be rejected as Esau's repentance was The Apostle neither saith nor meaneth any such thing The sense of his words are only this much Take heed lest there be any so prophane among you as to set so light by the blessings of the Gospel even Christ and life eternall as to part with them for a base lust or transitory thing as Esau that set more by a morsel of meat than by his birth-right For let them be sure that the time will come even the time mentioned by Christ Matth. 25. 10 11. when the door is shut and the Lord is come when they will dearly repent it and then as it was with Esau when the blessing was gone so it will be with them when their blessing is gone Repentance and cries and tears will be too late For the Gospel hath its justice and terrors as well as the Law This is all in the Text but there is no intimation that our day of Grace is as short as Esau's hope of the blessing was § 15. Obj. 4. Saul had but his time which when he lost he was forsaken of God Obj. 4. Answ. Saul's sin provoked God to reject him from being King of Israel and to appoint another in Answ. his stead But if Saul had Repented he had been saved after that though not restored to the Crown And its true that as God withdrew from him the spirit of Government so many before death by the greatness of their sins cause God to forsake them so far as to withhold those motions and convictions and fears and disquietments in sin which sometime they had and to give them over to a reprobate mind Rom. 1. 28. to commit all uncleanness with greediness and glory in it as being past feeling Eph. 4. 18 19. If it be thus with you you would be no better you would not be recovered you think sin is best for you and hate all that would reform you § 16. Obj. 5. It is said 2 Cor. 6. 2. Behold now is the accepted time behold now is the day of salvavation Obj. 5. And Heb. 3. 7 12 13. To day if ye will hear his voice harden not your hearts lest any of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin Answ. This saith no more than that the present time is the hest yea the only certain time and we Answ. are not sure that the day of salvation will continue any longer because death may cut us off But if it do not yet sin is a hardening thing and the longer we sin the more it hardeneth yea God may withhold the motions of his spirit and leave us to our selves to the hardness of our hearts and thus he doth by thousands of wicked persons who are left in impenitency and hatred of the truth But most certainly if those men Repented they might be saved and the very reason why they have not Christ and life is still because they will not consent § 17. Direct 6. Understand by what help and strength it is that the Obedience to the Gospel must be Direct 6. performed not meerly by your own strength but by the help of grace and strength of Christ If he have but made you willing he will help you to perform the rest You are not by this Covenant to be a Saviour and sanctifier to your selves but to Consent that Christ be your Saviour and the Holy Spirit your Sanctifier You might else despair indeed if you were left to that which you are utterly unable to do Though you must work out your own salvation with fear and trembling it is he that worketh in you to will and to do of his good pleasure Phil. 2. 13. § 18. Direct 7. Understand well the difference between mortal sins and Infirmities that you may not Direct 7. think that every sin is a sign of death or gracelesness but may know the difference between those sins which should make you think your selves unjustified and those sins which only call for particular humiliation being such as the justified themselves commit Though in the Popish sense we take no sin to be venial that is which in it self is properly no sin nor deserveth death according to the Law of works yet the distinction between Mortal and Venial sin is of very great necessity that is between sins which prove a man De quâ vide Tract Râ—b Baâ—oâ—â—â—â— Of Mortal and Venial sin in a state of death or unjustified and sins which consist with a state of Grace and justification between sins which the Gospel pardoneth not and those which it pardoneth that is all that stand with true Repentance There are some sins which every one that Repenteth of them doth so forsake as to cease committing them And there are some lesser sins which they that Repent of them do hate indeed but yet frequently renew as our defective degrees in the exercise of Repentance it self faith love trust fear obedience our vain thoughts and words some sinful passions omissions of many duties of thought affection word or deed towards God or man some minutes of time over-slip us prayer and other duties have a sinful coldness or remissness in them and such like Many such sins are fitly called Infirmities and Venial because they consist with Life and are forgiven It is of great use to the peace of our Consciences to discern the difference between these two for one sort require a Conversion to another state and the other require but a particular repentance and where they are unknown are forgiven without particular repentance because our general repentance is virtually though not actually particular as to them One sort are cause of judging our selves ungodly and the other sort are only cause of filial humiliation Any one may see the great need of discerning the difference but yet it is a matter of very great judgement doctrinally to distinguish them much more actually to discern them in every instance in your selves The way is to know first what is the condition of the New-Covenant and of absolute necessity to salvation or justification and then every sin that is inconsistent with that condition is mortal and the rest that are consistent and do consist with it are venial or but infirmities As Venial signifieth only that sort of sin which is
Direct 6. It must be well considered how powerful and dangerous things sensible are and how Direct 6. high and hard a work it is in this our depraved earthly state to live by faith upon things unseen and to rule the sense and be carryed above it that so the soul may be awakened to a sufficient fear and watchfulness and may fly to Christ for assistance to his faith It is no small thing for a man in flesh to live above flesh The way of the souls reception and operation is so much by the senses here that its apt to grow too familiar with things sensible and to be strange to things which it never saw It s a great work to make a man in flesh to deny the pleasures which he seeth and tasteth and feeleth for such pleasures as he only heareth of and heareth of as never to be enjoyed till after death in a world which sense hath no acquaintance with O what a glory it is to faith that it can perform such a work as this How hard is it to a weak believer And the strongest find it work enough Consider this that it may awake you to set upon this work with that care that the greatness of it requireth and you may live by faith above a life of sight and sense For it is this that your Happiness or misery lyeth on § 9. Direct 7. Sense must not only be kept out of the Throne but from any participation in the Government Direct 7. and we must take heed of receiving it into our counsels or treating with it or hearing it plead its cause and we must see that it get nothing by striving importunity or violence but that it be governed despotically and absolutely as the Horse is governed by the Rider For if the Government once be halved between sense and reason your lives will be half bestial And when Reason ruleth not Faith and Grace ruleth not For faith is to reason as sight is to the eye There are no such Beasts in humane shape who lay by all the use of Reason and are governed by sense alone unless it be idcots or madmen But sense should have no part of the Government at all And where it is chief in power the Devil is there the unseen Governour You cannot here excuse your selves by any plea of necessity or corstcaint For though the sense be violent as well as entising yet God hath made the Reason and Will the absolute Governours under him and by all its rebellion and violence sense cannot depose them nor force them to one sin but doth all the mischief by procuring their consent Which is done sometime by affecting the fantasâ—e and passions too deeply with the pleasure and alluring sweetness of their objects that so the higher faculties may be drawn into consent and sometime by wearying out the resisting mind and will and causing them to remit their opposition and relax the reins and by a sinful privatiâ—n of restraint to permit the sense to take its course A head-strong Horse is not so easily ruled as one of a tender mouth that hath been well ridden And therefore though it be in the power of the Rider to rule him yet sometime for his own case he will loose the reins and a Horse that is used thus by a slothful or unskilful Rider to have his will when ever he striveth will strive when ever he is crossed of his will and so will be the Master As ill-bred Children that are used to have every thing given them which they cry for will be sure to cry before they will be crost of their desire So is it with our sensitive appetite If you use to satisfie it when it is eager or importunate you shall be mastered by its eagerness and importunity And if you use but to regard it over much and delay your commands till sense is heard and taken into counsel it s two to one but it will prevail or ar least will be very troublesome to you and prove a traytor in your bosome and its temptations keep you in continual danger Therefore be sure that you never loose the reins but keep sense under a constant government if you love either your safety or your ease § 10. Direct 8. You may know whether Sense or Faith and Reason be the chief in Government by Direct 8. knowing which of their objects is made your chiefest End and accounted your Best and loved and delighted in and sought accordingly If the objects of sense be thus taken for your Best and End then certainly sense is the chief in Government But if the objects of faith and Reason even God and life eternal be taken for your Best and End then faith and reason are the ruling power Though you should use never so great understanding and policy for sensual things as Riches and honour and worldly greatness or fleshly delights this doth not prove that Reason is the ruling power but proveth the ☜ more strongly that sense is the Conquerour and that Reason is depraved and captivated by it and truckleth under it and serveth it as a voluntary slave And the greater is your learning wit and parts and the nobler your education the greater is the victory and dominion of sense that can subdue and rule and serve it self by parts so noble § 11. Direct 9. Though sense must be thus absolutely ruled its proper power must neither be disabled Direct 9. prohibited nor denyed You must keep your Horse strong and able for his works though not head-strong and unruly And you must not keep him from the use of his strength though you grant him not the Government Nor will you deny but that he may be stronger than the Rider though the Rider have the ruling power He hath more of the power called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 natural power though the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 be yours So is it here 1. No man must destroy his bodily sense The quickest sense is the best servant to the soul if it be not headstrong and too impetuous The Body must be stricken so far as to be kept under and brought into subjection 1 Cor. 9. 27. but not be disabled from its service to the soul 2. Nor must we forbid or forbear the exercise of the senses in subordination to the exercise of the interior senses Heb. 4. 14. It is indeed a smaller loss to part with a right hand or a right eye than with our salvation But that proveth not that we are put to such streights as to be necessitated to either unless persecution put us to it 3. Nor must we deny the certainty of the sensitive apprehension when it keepeth its place as the Papists do that affirm it necessary to salvation to believe that the sight and taste and smell and feeling of all men in the world that take the Sacrament are certainly deceived in taking that to be Bread and Wine which is not so For if all the senses of all
stealeth from beauty and ornaments a spark to kindle that fire which prepareth for everlasting fire 3. Take heed of a greedy covetous eye which with Achan and Gehezi looketh on the bait to tempt you to unlawful love and desire and to bring you by their sin unto their ruine 4. Take heed of a Luxurious Gluttonous and Drunken eye which is looking on the forbidden fruit and on the tempting dish and the delicious cup till it have provoked the appetite of that greedy worm which must be pleased though at the rate of thy damnation 5. Take heed of a gazing wandring eye which like a vagrant hath no home nor work nor master Prov. 4. 25. but gaddeth about to seek after death and find out matter for temptation Prov. 17. 24. Wisdom is before him that hath understanding but the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth Prov. 21. 10. See Dr. Hammoâ—d on Mat. 6. 22. Prov. 22. 9. Ezek. 16. 5. 6. Take heed of an envious eye which looketh with dislike and discontent at the prosperity of others especially such as stand cross to your own interest Matth. 20. 15. Is thine eye evil because I am good It is the envious eye that in Scripture most usually is called by the name of an evil eye 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is an eye that would see evil rather than good upon another as Deut. 15. 9. Lest thy eye be evil against thy poor brother c. Prov. 23. 6. it is an eye that grudgeth another any thing that is ours So Prov. 28. 22. Mar. 7. 22. 7. Take heed of a passionate cruel eye that kindleth the hurting or reviling Isa. 23. 18. Prov. 28. 27. fire in thy breast or is kindled by it that fetcheth matter of rage or malice from all that displeaseth thee in another 8. Take heed of a self-conceited and censorious eye that looketh on all the actions of Maâ—th 7. 3. â—uk 6. 41. another with quarrelling undervaluing censure or reproach 9. Take heed of a fond and fanciful eye that falls in Love too much with Houses or Friend or Child or Goods or whatsoever pleaseth it 10. Take heed of a sleepy sluggish eye that is shut to good and had rather sleep than watch and read Prov. 6. 4. Psal. 35. 21. Psal. 10 8. Psal. 36. 1. and pray and labour 11. Abhor a malignant eye which looketh with hatred on a godly man and upon the holy assemblies and communion of Saints and upon holy actions and can scarce see a man of exemplary zeal and holiness but the heart riseth against him and could wish all such expelled or cut off from the earth This is the heart that hath the Image of the Devil in most lively colours he being the Father of such as Christ calleth him Iohn 8. 44. 12. Abhor an Hypocritical eye which Maâ— 6 22 23. Luk. 11. 34. is lifted up to Heaven when the heart is on earth on lusts on honours on sports or pleasure or plotting mischief against the just Know the evil and danger of all these diseases of the eye § 3. Direct 3. Remember that the eye being the noblest and yet the most dangerous sense must have Direct 3. the strictest watch Sight is often put in Scripture for all the senses And living by sight is opposed to living or walking by faith 2 Cor. 5. 7. We walk by faith not by sight And a sensual life is called a walking in the ways of our heart and in the sight of the eyes Eccles. 11. 9. An ungoverned eye doth shew the power of the ungoverned senses Abundance of good or evil entreth by these doors All lieth open if you guard not these § 4. Direct 4. Remember that as your sin or duty so your sorrow or joy do depend much on the government Direct 4 of your eyes And their present pleasure is the common way to after sorrow What a flood of grief did David let in to his heart by one unlawful look § 5. Direct 5. Remember that your eye is much of your honour or dishonour because it is the index of Direct 5. your minds You see that which is next the mind it self or the most immediate beam of the invisible Prov. 23. 29. soul when you see the eye How easily doth a wandring eye a wanton eye a proud eye a luxurious eye a malitious eye a passionate eye bewray the treasure of sin which is in the heart Your soul lyeth opener to the view of others in your eye than in any other part your very reputation therefore should make you watch § 6. Direct 6. Remember that your eye is of all the senses most subject to the will and therefore there Direct 6. is the more of duty or sin in it For Voluntariness is the requisite to Morality both good and evil Your will cannot so easily command your feeling tasting hearing or smelling as it can your sight so easily can it open or shut the eye in a moment that you are the more unexcusable if it be not governed For all its faults will be proved the more voluntary C ham was cursed for not turning away his eyes from his Fathers shame and Shem and Iapheth blessed for doing it The righteous is thus described Isa. 33. 15. He that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil he shall dwell on high c. Mens Idols which they are commanded to cast away are called The abomination of their eyes Ezek. 20. 7. Covetousness is called The lust of the eyes 1 John 2. 16. It 's Psal. 6. 7. Lam. 3. 48 49 51 said of the unclean that they have eyes full of adultery 2 Pet. 2. 14. And as sin so punishment is placed on the eye Isa. 5. 15. The eyes of the lofty shall be humbled Yea the whole bodys of the daughters of Zion are threatned to be dishonoured with nakedness scabs and stink and shame because they walked with wanton eyes haughtily and mincing as they go c. Isa. 3. 16. § 7. Direct 7. Therefore let believing reason and a holy resolved fixed will keep a continual Law upon Direct 7. your eyes and let them be used as under a constant government This Iob calleth the making a covenant with them Job 31. 1. Leave them not at liberty as if a look had nothing in it of duty or sin or as if you might look on what you would Will you go to foolish tempting plaies and gaze on vain alluring objects and think there is no harm in all this Do you think your eye cannot sin as well as your tongue undoubtedly it 's much sin that is both committed by it and entereth at it Keep away therefore from the bait or command your eye to turn away § 8. Direct 8. Remember still how much more easie and safe it is to stop sin here at the gates and out-works Direct 8. than to beat it out again when it is
pound of â—â—m 〈…〉 but a pâ—nny â—â— thâ— nâ—â—â—â— Because â—aith he I may oft receive of them but God knows whether ever I shall have more of him Laert. in Diog. Prov. 28. 19. scattereth and yet increaseth Prov. 11. 24. But this is not the issue of thy scattering Prov. 23. 19 20 21. Hear thou my son and be wise and guide thy heart in the way Be not amongst wine bibbers amongst riotous eaters of flesh For the Drunkard and the Glutton shall come to poverty and drowsiness shall cloath a man with rags § 28. 5. Thou art an enemy to thy family Thou grievest thy friends Thou impoverishest thy children and robbest those whom thou art bound to make provision for Thou fillest thy house with discontents and brawlings and banishest all quietness and fear of God A discontented or a brawling wife and ragged dissolute untaught Children are often signs that a Drunkard or Riotous person is the mâ—â—â—â—er of the family § 29. 6. Thou art a heynous consumer of thy pretious Time This is far worse than the wasting of thy estate O that thou didst but know as thou shalt know at last what those hours are worth which thou wastest over thy pots and how much greater work thou hadst to lay it out upon How many thousands in Hell are wishing now in vain that they had those hours again to spend in prayer and repentance which they spent in the ALE-house and senselesly cast away with their companions in sin Is the glass turned upon thee and death posting towards thee to put an end to all thy time and â—ay thee where thou must dwell for ever and yet canst thou sit tipling and prating away thy time as if this were all that thou hadst to do with it O what a wonder of sottishness and stupidity is a hardned sinner that can live so much below his reason The senses neglect of thy souls concernment and greater matters is the great part of thy sin more than the drunkenness it self § 30. 7. How base a Price dost thou set upon thy Saviour and salvation that wilt not forbear so much as a cup of drink for them The smallness of the thing sheweth the smallness of thy Love to God and the smallness of thy regard to his word and to thy soul. Is that loving God as God when thou lovest a cup of drink better Art thou not ashamed of thy Hypocrisie when thou saiest thou lovest God above all when thou lovest him not so well as thy Wine and Ale Surely he that loveth him not above Ale loveth him not above all Thy choice sheweth what thou lovest best more certainly than thy tongue doth It is the dish that a man greedily eateth of that he loveth and not that which he â—â—h 14 15. â— Jâ—â— 5. 2 3. commendeth but will not meddle with God tryeth mens Love to Him by their keeping his commandments It was the aggravation of the first sin that they would not deny so small a thing as the forbidden fruit in obedience to God! And so it is of thine that wilt not leave a forbidden cup for him O miserable wretch dost thou not know thou canst not be Christ Disciple if thou forsake not all for him and hate not even thy life in comparison of him and wouldst not rather die than forsake him Luk. 14. 26 33. And art thou like to lay down thy life for him that wilt not leave a cup of drink for him Canst thou burn at a stake for him that canst not leave an ALE-house or vain company or excess for him What a sentence of condemnation dost thou pass upon thy self Wilt thou â—â—ll thy God and thy soul for so small a matter as a cup of drink Never delude thy self to say I hope I do not so when thou knowest that God hath told thee in his word that Drunkards shall not inherit the Kingdom of God 1 Cor. 6. 10. Nay God hath commanded those that will come to Heaven to have no familiarity with thee upon earth no not so much as to eat with thee 1 Cor. 5. 11. Read what Christ himself saith Matth. 24. 48 49 50 51. But if that evil servant shall say in his heart My Lord delayeth his coming and shall begin to smite his fellow servants and to eat and to drink with the drunken the Lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him and in an hour that he is not aware of and shall cut him asunder and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth Read Deut. 29. 19 20. If when thou hearest the words of Gods curse thou bless thy self in thy heart and say I shall have peace though I walk in the imagination of my heart to add drunkenness to thirst the Lord will not spare that man but then the anger of the Lord and his jealousie shall smoak against him and all the curses that are written in this Book shall lye upon him and the Lord shall blot out his name from under Heaven and the Lord shall separate him to evil Thou seest here how God will spice thy Cups § 31. 8. Thou art the shame of humane nature Thou representest man in the likeness of a Beast And a shame to thy fâ—mâ—ly As its said thâ—â— Ciâ—â—ro's son pâ—oved a drunkard to whom he directed his Book de offiâ—iâ—sâ— which is made his fathers reproach and worse As if he were made but instead of a Barrel or a sink Look on a drunkard filthing and spewing and reeling and bawling and see if he be not uglyer than a bruit Thou art a shame to thy own Reason when thou shewest the world that it cannot so much as shut thy mouth nor prevail with thee in so small a thing Wrong not Reason so much as to call thy self Rational and wrong not mankind so much as to call thy self a man Non homo sed ampbora said one of Bonâ—sus the drunken Emperour when he was hang'd It is a barrel and not a man § 32. 9. Thou destroyest that Reason which is the Glory of thy Nature and the natural part of the Image of God upon thy mind If thou shouldst deface the Kings Armes or Image in any publick place and set in the stead of it the image of a dog would it not be a Traiterous contempt How much worse is it to do thus by God If thou didst mangle and deform thy body it were less in this respect for it is not thy body but thy soul that is made after the Image of God Hath God given thee Reason for such high and excellent ends and uses and wilt thou dull it and drown it in obedience to thy throat Thy Reason is of higher value than thy house or land or money and yet thou wilt not cast them away so easily Had God made thee an ideot or mad and lunatick thy case had been to be pityed but to make thy self mad and despise
2. 1â— see God and that Christ shall come in flaming fire to render vengeance to them that obey not his Gospel and that all they shall be damned that obey not the truth but have pleasure in unrighteousness when God hath resolved that Hell shall be the wages of ungodliness dost thou not desire them to damn themselves when thou desirest them to be ungodly If thou believe that there is any Hell at all then tell me what its possible for any man to do to murder his soul and damn himself but only to be ungodly If this way do it not there is no danger of any other Tell me dost thou think that the Devil deserveth to be called A Murderer of souls If not it seems thou wilt openly take the Devils part But if he do deserve it then the reason of all the World be judge whether that man deserve it not much more that will do much more against himself than the Devil ever did or can do The Devil can but tempt but thou wouldst have men do the thing that he tempts them to and actually to sin and neglect a holy life And which is the worse he that doth the evil or he that only perswadeth them to it If the Devil be called Our Adversary that like a roaring Lyon goeth about night and day seeking whom he 1 Pâ—t 5. 8. may devour what should that man be called that doth far more against himself than all the Devils in Hell do against him Sure he is a devourer or destroyer of himself Tell me thou distracted scorner Is the Devils work thinkest thou Good or Bad If it be Good take thy part of it and boast of it when thou seest the end If it be Bad to deceive souls and entise them to sin and Hell why wouldst thou have men do worse by themselves He that sinneth doth worse than he that tempteth Tell me what way doth the Devil take to do men hurt and damn their souls but only by drawing them to sin He hath no other way in the World to undoe any man but by tempting him to that which thou temptest men to even to sin against God and to neglect a Holy life So that it 's plain that thou scornest and opposest men because they will not be worse than Devils to themselves § 19. 13. Moreover thou opposest men for not forsaking God! What is it to forsake God but to refuse to Love and honour and obey him as God He hath told us himself that He that cometh to God must believe that God is and that he is the Rewarder of them that diligently seek him Heb. 11. 6. And is it not this diligent seeking him that thou deridest It 's plain then that thou wouldst scorn men away from God and have them forsake him as thou hast done § 20. 14. Thou scornest men for not being Hypocrites Because they will be that in good earnest which thou hypocritically callest thy self and wouldst be thought Thou callest thy self a Christian and what is it but for being serious Christians that thou deridest them Thou takest on thee to believe in God and what is it but for obeying and serving God that thou deridest them Thou takest on thee to believe the Scripture to be the Word of God And what is it but for following the holy Scriptures that thou deridest them Thou saist thou believest the Communion of Saints and deridest them that hold the Communion of Saints in practice Thou saist thou believest that Christ shall judge the world and yet scornest them that are serious in preparing for his judgement Thou prayest that Gods name may be hallowed and his Kingdom come and his will-be done on Earth as it is in Heaven And yet thou deridest them that Hallow his name and are Subjects of his Kingdom and endeavour to do his will O wretched Hypocrite And yet that tongue of thine pretendeth that it is their Hypocrisie for which thou hatest and deridest them when thou dost it because they be not such blind and sensless Hypocrites as thy self Can there be grosser Hypocrisie in the World than to hate and scorn the serious practice of thy own profession and the diligent living according to that which thy own tongue professeth to believe If thou say that it is for doing too much and being too strict I answer thee If it be not the will of God that they do though I would not deride them I would seek to change them as well as thou But if it be the will of God then tell me dost thou think they do more than those that are in Heaven do or do they live more strictly than those in Heaven If they do then oppose them and spare not If not why prayest thou that Gods will may be done on Earth as it is in Heaven § 21. 15. Thou deridest men for doing that which they were made for and that which they have their Reason and will and all their faculties for Take them off this and they are good for nothing A Beast is good to serve Man and the Plants to feed him But what is Man good for or what was he made for but to serve his Maker And dost thou scorn him for that which he came into the World for Thou maist as well hate a Knife because it can cut or a Sythe for Mowing or a Clock for telling the hour of the day when it was made for nothing else § 22. 16. Thou deridest men for being saved by Christ and for imitating his example What came Christ for into the World but to destroy the works of the Devil and to save his people from 1 Joh. Matth. 1. 21. Tit. 2. 12. their sins and to redeem us from all iniquity and Purifie to himself a peculiar people zealous of good works And hath Christ to the astonishment of men and Angels come down into flesh and lived among men and given them his holy doctrine and example and suffered death for them and all this but to bring men to zealous Purity and darest thou make a scorn of it after this What is this but to scorn thy Saviour and scorn all the work of Redemption and tread under foot the Son of God and despise his blood his life and precepts § 23. 17. Thou scornest men for being renewed and sanctified by the Holy Ghost What is the work of the Holy Ghost on us but to sanctifie us And what is it to sanctifie us but to cleanse us from sin and cause us entirely to devote our souls and lives to God Dost thou believe in the Holy Ghost or not If thou do what is that but to Believe in him as the sanctifier of Gods Elect. And what didst thou take Sanctification to be but this purity and holiness of heart and life And yet darest thou deride it § 24. 18. Thou deridest men for imitating those ancient Saints whose names thou seemest thy self to honour and in honour of whom thou keepest Holy-days Thou takest on thee
it will do its duty well in nothing and zeal will quickly be extinct Diligence will die when Conscience is corrupted or fallen aslèep § 39. Direct 8. Live in a constant expectation of death Do not foolishly flatter your self with Direct 8. groundless conceits that you shall live long There is a great power in Death to rowze up a drowsie soul when it is taken to be near And a great force in the conceit of living long to make even good men grow more negligent and secure § 40. Direct 9. Live among warm and serious Christians especially as to your intimate familiarity Direct 9. There is a very great power in the zeal of one to kindle zeal in others as there is in fire to kindle fire Prov. 22. â—4 â—5 27. 17. Heb. 3 13. 10 24 25. Rom. 15. 14. Serious hearty diligent Christians are excellent helps to make us serious and diligent He that travelleth with speedy travellers will be willing to keep pace with them and tired sluggards are drawn on by others When he that travelleth with the slothful will go slowly as they do § 41. Direct 10. Lastly Be oft in the use of quickning means Live if you can attain it under a Direct 10. quickning zealous Minister There is life in the word of God which when it 's opened and applied lively will put life into the hearers Read the holy Scriptures and such lively writings as help you to understand and practise them As going to the fire is our way when we are cold to cure our benummedness so reading over some part of a warm and quickning book will do much to warm and quicken a benummed soul And it is not the smallest help to rowze us up to prayer or meditation and put life into us before we address our selves more nearly unto God I have found it my self a great help in my studies and to my preaching when studying my own heart would not serve the turn to awake me to serious servency but all hath been cold and dull that I have done because all was cold and dull within I have taken up a book that was much more warm and serious than I and the reading of it hath recovered my heat and my warmed heart hath been fitter for my work Christians take heed of a cold and dull and heartless kind of Religion and think no pains too much to cure it Death is cold and life is warm and labour it self doth best excite it PART II. Directions about Sports and Recreations and against excess and sin therein § 1. Direct 1. IF you would escape the sin and danger which men commonly run into by unlawful Direct 1. sporting under pretense of lawful recreations you must understand what lawful recreation is and what is its proper end and use No wonder else if you sin when you know not what you do § 2. No doubt but some sport and recreation is lawful yea needful and therefore a duty to some What lawful recreation is men Lawful sport or recreation is the use of some Natural thing or action not forbidden us for the exhilerating of the natural spirits by the fantasie and due exercise of the natural parts thereby to fit the body and mind for ordinary duty to God It is some delightful exercise § 3. 1. We do not call unpleasing Labour by the name of sport or recreation though it may be better and more necessary 2. We call not every Delight by the name of sport or recreation For eating and drinking may be delightful and holy things and duties may be delightful and yet not properly spâ—â—ts or recreations But it is the fantasie that is chiefly delighted by sports § 4. Qual 1. All these things following are necessary to the Lawfulness of a sport or recreation and the want of any one of them will make and prove it to be unlawful 1. The end which you really intend in using it must be to fit you for your service to God that is either for your callings or for his worship or some work of obedience in which you may Please and Glorifie him 1 Cor. 10. 31. Whether ye eat or drink or whatever you do do all to the Glory of God It is just to your Duty as the Mowers whetting to his Sithe to make it for to do his work § 5. Qual 2. Therefore the person that useth it must be one that is heartily devoted to God and his Service and really liveth to do his work and please and glorifie him the world which none but the Godly truly do And therefore no carnal ungodly person that hath no such Holy end can use any recreation lawfully because he useth it not to a due end For the end is essential to the moral good of any action and an evil end must needs make it evil Tit. 1. 15. Unto the Pure all things are Pure that is all things not forbidden but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing Pure but even their mind and Conscience is defiled § 6. Quest. But must all wicked men therefore forbear recreation Answ. 1. Wicked men are such as Quest. will not obey Gods law if they know it and therefore they enquire not what they should do with any purpose sincerely to obey But if they would obey that which God commandeth them is immediately to forsake their wickedness and to become the servants of God and then there will be no room for the question 2. But if they will continue in a sinful ungodly state it is in vain to contrive how they may sport themselves without sin But yet we may tell them that if the sport be materially lawful it is not the matter that they are bound to forsake but it is the sinful end and manner And till this be reformed they cannot but sin § 7. Qual 3. A lawful recreation must be a means fitly chosen and used to this end If it have no aptitude to fit us for Gods service in our ordinary Callings and duty it can be to us no lawful recreation Though it be lawful to another that it is a real help to it is unlawful to us § 8. Qual 4. 4. Therefore all Recreations are unlawful which are themselves preferred before our Callings or which are used by a man that liveth idly or in no Calling and hath no ordinary work to make him need them For these are no fit means which exclude our end instead of furthering it § 9. Qual 5. 5. Therefore all those are unlawful sports which are used only to delight a carnal fantasie and have no higher end than to please the sickly mind that loveth them § 10. Qual 6. 6. And therefore all those are unlawful sports which really unfit us for the dutys of our Callings and the service of God which laying the benefit and hurt together do hinder us as much or more than they help us Which is the case of all voluptuous wantons § 11. Qual 7.
a state of meer delight lest it prove but a fools Paradice to you See that you be furnished with Marriage-strength and patience for the duties and sufferings of a married state before you venture on it Especially 1. Be well provided against Temptations to a Worldly mind and life For here you are like to be most violently and dangerously assaulted 2. See that you be well provided with Conjugal affections For they are necessary both to the Duties and Sufferings of a married life And you should not enter upon the state without the necessary preparations 3. See that you be well provided with Marriage-prudence and understanding that you may be able to instruct and edifie your families and may live with them as men of knowledge 1 Pet. 3. 7. and may manage all your business with discretion Psal. 112. 15. 4. See that you be provided with Resolvedness and Constancy that you vex not your self and relations by too late repentings and come not off with a Had I wist or non putâram Levity and mutability is no fit preparative for a state that only death can change Let the Love and Resolutions which brought you into that state continue with you to the last 5. See that you be provided with a diligence answerable to the greatness of your undertaken duties A slothful mind is unfit for one that entereth himself voluntary upon so much business as a cowardly mind is unfit for him that listeth himself a Souldier for the Wars 6. See that you are well provided with Marriage-patience to beat with the infirmities of others and undergo the daily crosses of your life which your business and necessities and your own infirmities will unavoidably infer To Marry without all this preparation is as foolish as to go to Sea without the necessary preparations for your Voyage or to go to War without Armor or Ammunition or to go to work without Tools or Strength or to go to buy Meat in the Market when you have no money § 43. Direct 4. Take special care that fansie and passion over-rule not Reason and Friends advice in the choice of your condition or of the person I know you must have Love to those that you match with But that Love must be Rational and such as you can justifie in the severest tryal by the evidences of worth and fitness in the person whom you love To say you Love but you know not why is more beseeming children or mad folks than those that are soberly entring upon a change of life of so great importance to them A blind Love which maketh you think a person excellent and amiable who in the eyes of the wisest that are impartial is nothing so or maketh you overvalue the person whom you fansie and be fond of one as some admirable creature that in the eyes of others is next to contemptible this is but the Index and evidence of your folly And though you please your selves in it and honour it with the name of Love there is none that is acquainted with it that will give it any better name than LUST or FANCY And the marriage that is made by Lust and Fancy will never tend to solid Content or true Felicity But either it will feed till death on the fewell that kindled it and then go out in everlasting shame or else more ordinarily it proveth but a blaze and turneth into loathing and weariness of each other And because this passion of Lust called Love is such a besotting blinding thing like the longing of a woman with child it is the duty of all that feel any touch of it to kindle upon their hearts to call it presently to the tryal and to quench it effectually and till that be done if they have any relicts of wit or reason to suspect their own apprehensions and much more to trust the judgement and advice of others § 44. The means to quench this Lust called Love I have largely opened before I shall now only How to cure Lustful Love remember you of these few 1. Keep asunder and at a sufficient distance from the person that you dote upon The nearness of the fire and fewel causeth the combustion Fancy and Lust are enflamed by the senses Keep out of sight and in time the Feavor may abate 2. Overvalue not vanity Think not highly of a Silken Coat or of the great Names of Ancestors or of Money or Lands or of a painted or a spotted face nor of that natural comeliness called beauty Judge not of things as children but as men Play not the fools in magnifying trifles and overlooking inward real worth Would you fall in Love with a Flower or Picture at this rate Bethink you what work the Pox or any other withering sickness will make with that silly beauty which you so admire Think what a spectacle death will make it And how many thousands once more beautiful are turned now to common earth And how many thousand souls are now in Hell that by a beautiful body were drowned in lust and tempted to neglect themselves and how few in the world you can name that were ever much the better for it what a childish thing it is to dote on a Book of tales and lyes because it hath a beautiful gilded cover and to undervalue the writings of the wise because they have a plain and homely outsides 3. Rule your thoughts and let them not run masterless as fansie shall command them If Reason cannot call off your thoughts from following a lustful desire and imagination no wonder if one that rideth on such an unbridled Colt be cast into the dirt 4. Live not idly but let the business of your callings take up your time and employ your thoughts An idle fleshly mind is the carkass where the Vermine of Lust doth crawl and the nest where the Devil hatcheth both this and many other pernicious sins 5. Lastly and chiefly forget not the concernments of your souls Remember how near you are to Eternity and what work you have to do for your salvation Forget not the presence of God no◠the approach of death Look oft by faith into Heaven and Hell and keep Conscience tender and then I warrant you you will find something else to mind than Lust and greater matters than a silly carkass to take up your thoughts and you will seel that Heavenly Love within you which will extinguish earthly carnal Love § 45. Direct 5. Be not too hasty in your choice or resolution but deliberate well and throughly Direct 5. know the person on whom so much of the comfort or sorrow of your life will necessarily depend Where Repentance hath no place there is the greater care to be used to prevent it Reason requireth you to be well acquainted with those that you trust but with an important secret much more with all your honour or estates and most of all with one whom you must trust with so much of the comfort of your lives and your
the Enemies of Religion that forbad Christs Ministers to preach his Gospel and forbad Gods servants to meet in Church-assemblies for his Worship the support of Religion and the comfort and edification of believers would then lye almost all upon the right performance of family-duties There Masters might teach the same truth to their housholds which Ministers are forbid to preach in the Assemblies There you might pray together as fervently and spiritually as you can There you may keep up as holy converse and communion and as strict a discipline as you please There you may celebrate the praises of your blessed Creator Redeemer and Sanctifier and observe the Lords Day in as exact and spiritual a manner as you are able You may there provoke one another to Love and to good works and rebuke every sin and mind each other to prepare for death and live together as passengers to eternal life Thus holy families may keep up Religion and keep up the life and comfort of believers and supply the want of publick preaching in those Countreys where persecutors prohibit and restrain it or where unable or unfaithful Pastors do neglect it § 8. Motive 8. The duties of your families are such as you may perform with greatest peace and least exception Motive 8. or opposition from others When you go further and would be instructing others they will think you go beyond your Call and many will be suspicious that you take too much upon you And if you do but gently admonish a rowt of such as the Sodomites perhaps they will say This one fellow came in to sojourn and he will needs be a Iudge Gen. 19. 9. But your own house is your Castle Your family is your charge You may teach them as oft and as diligently as you will If the ungodly rabble scorn you for it yet no sober person will condemn you nor trouble you for it if you teach them no evil All men must confess that Nature and Scripture oblige you â—o it as your unquestionable work And therefore you may do it among sober people with approbation and quietness § 9. Motive 9. Well governed Families are honourable and exemplary unto others Even the worldly and Motive 9. ungodly use to bear a certain reverence to them For Holiness and Order have some witness that commendeth them in the consciences of many that never practised them A worldly ungodly disordered family is a Den of Snakes a place of hissing railing folly and confusion It is like a Wilderness overgrown with Bryars and Weeds But a holy family is a Garden of God It is beautified with his Graces and ordered by his Government and fruitful by the showres of his heavenly blessing And as the very sluggard that will not be at the cost and pains to make a Garden of his thorny Wilderness may yet confess that a Garden is more beautiful and fruitful and delightful and if wishing would do it his Wilderness should be such Even so the ungodly that will not be at the cost and pains to order their souls and families in holiness may yet see a beauty in those that are so ordered and wish for the happiness of such if they could have it without the labour and cost of self-denyal And no doubt the beauty of such holy and well governed families hath convinced many and drawn them to a great approbation of Religion and occasioned them at last to imitate them § 10. Motive 10. Lastly Consider That holy well governed families are blest with the special presence Motive 10. and favour of God They are his Churches where he is worshipped His houses where he dwelleth He is engaged both by Love and Promise to bless protect and prosper them Psal. 1. 3. 128. It is safe to sail in that Ship which is bound for Heaven and where Christ is the Pilot. But when you reject his Government you refuse his company and contemn his favour and forfeit his blessing by despising his presence his interest and his commands § 11. So that it is an evident truth that most of the mischiefs that now infest or seize upon mankind throughout the earth consist in or are caused by the disorders and ill-governedness of families These are the Schools and Shops of Satan from whence proceed the beastly ignorance lust and sensuality the devilish pride malignity and cruelty against the holy wayes of God which have so unman'd the progeny of Adam These are the Nests in which the Serpent doth hatch the Eggs of Covetousness Envy Strife Revenge of Tyranny Disobedience Wars and Bloodshed and all the Leprosie of sin that hath so odiously contaminated humane nature and all the miseries by which they make the world calamitous Do you wonder that there can be persons and Nations so blind and barbarous as we read of the Turks Tartarians Indians and most of the inhabitants of the earth A wicked education is the cause of all which finding nature depraved doth sublimate and increase the venome which should by education have been cured And from the wickedness of families doth National wickedness arise Do you wonder that so much ignorance and voluntary deceit and obstinacy in errors contrary to all mens common senses can be found among professed Christians as Great and small High and low through all the Papal Kingdom do discover Though the Pride and Covetousness and Wickedness of a worldly carnal Clergie is a very great cause yet the sinful negligence of Parents and Masters in their families is as great if not much greater than that Do you wonder that even in the Reformed Churches there can be so many unreformed sinners of beastly lives that hate the serious practice of the Religion which themselves profess It is ill education in ungodly families that is the cause of all this O therefore how great and necessary a work is it to cast Salt into these corrupted fountains Cleanse and cure these vitiated Families and you may cure almost all the calamities of the earth To tell what the Emperours and Princes of the earth might do if they were wise and good to the remedy of this common misery is the idle talk of those negligent persons who condemn themselves in condemning others Even those Rulers and Princes that are the Pillars and Patrons of Heathenisme Mahometanisme Popery and Ungodliness in the world did themselves receive that venome from their Parents in their birth and education which inclineth them to all this mischief Family-reformation is the easiest and the most likely way to a common Reformation At least to send many souls to Heaven and train up multitudes for God if it reach not to National reformation CHAP. VI. More special Motives for a holy and careful Education of Children BEcause the chief part of Family-Care and Government consisteth in the right Education of Children I shall adjoyn here some more special Motives to quicken considerate Parents to this duty And though most that I have to say for it be already said
works of charity the other is covetous and is alwayes hindring them § 37. Direct 12. Lastly It is a great part of the duty of Husbands and Wives to be helpers and Direct 12. comforters of each other in order to a safe and happy death 1. In the time of Health you must often and seriously remember each other of the time when death will make the separation and live together in your daily converse as those that are still expecting the parting hour Help to awaken each others souls to make ready all those graces which then will prove necessary and to live in a constant preparation for your change Reprove all that in one another which will be unsavoury and ungrateful to your review at death If you see each other dull and slow in your preparations or to live in vanity worldliness or sloth as if you had forgotten that you must shortly dye stir up one another to do all that without delay which the approach of such a day requireth 2. And when Death is at hand O then what abundance of tenderness and seriousness and skill and diligence is needful for one that hath the last office of love to perform to the departing soul of so near a friend O then what need will there be of your most wise and faithful and diligent help When nature faileth and the pains of flesh divert the mind and temptations are strongest while the body is weakest when a languishing body and a doubting fearful troubled mind do call for your compassion and help O then what skill and holy seriousness will be necessary O what a calamity is it to have a carnal unsanctified Husband or Wife which will neither help you to prepare for death nor can speak a serious word of counsel or comfort to you at a dying hour that can do nothing but stand by and weep over you but have not a sensible word to say about the life that you are going to nor about the duty of a departing soul nor against the temptations and fears which then may be ready to overwhelm you They that are utterly unprepared and unfit to dye themselves can do little to prepare or help another But they that live together as the heirs of Heaven and converse on earth as fellow-travellers to the Land of Promise may help and encourage the souls of one another and joyfully part at death as expecting quickly to meet again in life eternal § 38. Were it not lest I be over tedious I should next speak of the Manner how Husbands and Wives must perform their duties to each other As 1. That it should be all done in such entire Love as maketh the case of one another to you as your own 2. That therefore all must be done in Paâ—ience and mutual forbearance 3. And in familiarity and not with strangeness distance sowerness noâ— affected complement 4. And in secresie where I should have shewed you in what cases secresie may be broken and in what not 5. And in confidence of each others fidelity and not in suspicion jealousie and distrust 6. And in prudence to manage things aright and to foresee and avoid impediments and inconveniences 7. And in holiness that God may be the first and last and all in all 8. And in constancy that you cease not your duties for one another until death But necessary abbreviation alloweth me to say no more of these CHAP. VIII The special Duties of Husbands to their Wives § 1. HE that will expect Duty or Comfort from his Wife must be faithful in doing the duty of a Husband The failing of your selves in your own duty may cause the failing of another to you or at least will some other way as much afflict you and will be bitterer to you in the end than if an hundred failed of their duty to you A good Husband will either make a good Wife or easily and profitably endure a bad one I shall therefore give you Directions for your own part of duty as that which your happiness is most concerned in § 2. Direct 1. The Husband must undertake the principal part of the Government of the whole family Direct 1. even of the Wife her self And therefore I. He must labour to be fit and able for that Government which he undertaketh This ability consisteth 1. In holiness and spiritual wisdom that he may be acquainted with the End to which he is to conduct them and the Rule by which he is to guide them and the principal works which they are to do An ungodly irreligious man is both a stranger and an enemy to the chiefest part of family-government 2. His ability consisteth in a due acquaintance with the works of his Calling and the labours in which his servants are to be employed For he that is utterly unacquainted with their business will be very unfit to govern them in it unless he commit that part of their government to his Wife or a Steward that is acquainted with it 3. And he must be acquainted both with the common temper and infirmities of mankind that he may know how much is to be born with and also with the particular temper and faults and virtues of those whom he is to govern 4. And he must have Prudence to direct himself in all his carriage to them and Iustice to deal with every one as they deserve and Love to do them all the good he can for soul and body II. And being thus able he must make it his daily work and especially be sure that he govern himself well that his example may be part of his government of others § 3. Direct 2. The Husband must so unite Authority and Love that neither of them may be omitted Direct 2. or concealed but both be exercised and maintained Love must not be exercised so imprudently as to destroy the exercise of Authority And Authority must not be exercised over a Wife so Magisterially and imperiously as to destroy the exercise of Love As your Love must be a Governing Love so your Commands must all be Loving Commands Lose not your Authority for that will but disable you from doing the Office of a Husband to your Wife or of a Master to your servants Yet must it be maintained by no means inconsistent with Conjugal Love and therefore not by fierceness or cruelty by threatnings or stripes unless by distraction or loss of reason they cease to be uncapable of the carriage otherwise due to a Wife There are many cases of equality in which Authority is not to be exercised but there is no case of inequality or unworthiness so great in which Conjugal Love is not to be exercised and therefore nothing must exclude it § 4. Direct 3. It is the duty of Husbands to preserve the Authority of their Wives over the Children Direct 3. and Servants of the family For they are joint-governours with them over all the inâ—eriors And the infirmities of women are apt many times to expose
Mr. Perkins and Mr. Boltons Works and many the like § 5 Direct 5. Next these read over those Books which are more suited to the state of young Christians for their growth in grace and for their exercise of Faith and Love and Obedience and for the mortifying of selfishness pride sensuality worldliness and other the most dangerous sins My own on this subject are my Directions for weak Christians my Saints Rest a Treatise of Self-denyal another of the Mischiefs of Self-ignorance Life of Faith of Crucifying the World the Unreasonableness of Infidelity of Right Rejoycing c. To this use these are excellent Mr. Hildershams Works Dr. Prestons Mr. Perkins Mr. Boltons Mr. Fenners Mr. Gurnalls Mr. Anthony Burgesses Sermons Mr. Lockier on the Colossiâ—ns with abundance more that God hath blest us with § 6. Direct 6. At the same time labour to methodize your knowledge and to that end read first and Direct 6. learn some short Catechism and then some larger as Mr. Balls or the Assemblies larger and next some Body of Divinity as Amesius his Marrow of Divinity and Cases of Conscience which are Englished And let the Catechisme be kept in memory while you live and the rest be throughly understood § 7. Direct 7. Next read to your selves or families the larger Expositions of the Creed Lords Direct 7. Prayer and Ten Commandments such as Perkins Bishop Andrews on the Commandments and Dod c. that your understanding may be more full particular and distinct and your families may not stop in Generals which are not understood § 8. Direct 8. Read much those Books which direct you in a course of daily communion with God and Direct 8. ordering all your conversations As Mr. Reyners Directions the Practice of Piety Mr. Palmers Mr. Scudders Mr. Boltons Directions and my Divine Life § 9. Direct 9. For Peace and Comfort and encrease of the Love of God read Mr. Symmonds Deserted Direct 9. Soul c. and his Life of Faith All Dr. Sibbs Works Mr. Harsnets Cordials Bishop Halls Works c. my Method for Peace and Saints Rest c. § 10. Direct 10. For the understanding of the Text of Scripture keep at hand either Deodates or Direct 10. the Assembly of Divines or the Dutch Annotations with Dr. Hammonds or Dicksons and Hutchinsons brief Observations § 11. Direct 11. For securing you against the Feavor of uncharitable Zeal and Schism and contentious Direct 11. wranglings and erâ—elties for Religion sake read diligently Bishop Halls Peacemaker and other of his Books Mr. Burroughs Irenicon Acontius Stratagems of Satan and my Catholick Unity Catholick Church Universal Concord c. § 12. Direct 12. For establishing you against Popery on the soundest grounds not running in the Direct 12. contrary extream read Dr. Challoners Credo Ecclesiam c. Chillingworth Dr. Field of the Church c. and my True Catholick and my Key for Catholicks and my Safe Religion and Winding-sheet for Popery and Disputation with Mr. Johnson § 13. Direct 13. For special preparation for affliction sufferings sickness death read Mr. Hughs Direct 13. Rod Mr. Lawrence Christs power over sicknesses Mr. S. Rutherfords Letters c. my Treatise of Self-denyal The Believers Last Work the Last Enemy Death and the fourth Part of my Saints Rest. I will add no more lest they seem too many CHAP. XXII Directions for the right Teaching of Children and Servants so as may be most likely to have success I Here suppose them utterly untaught that you have to do with and therefore shall direct you what to do from the very first beginning of your Teaching and their learning And I beseech you study this Chapter more than many of the rest for it is an unspeakable loss that befalls the Church and the souls of men for want of skill and will and diligence in Parents and Masters in this matter § 1 Direct 1. Cause your younger Children to learn the words though they be not yet capable of Direct 1. understanding the matter And do not think as some do that this is but to make them Hypocrites and to teach them to take Gods Name in vain For it is neither Vanity nor Hypocrisie to help them first to understand the words and signs in order to their early understanding of the matter and signification Otherwise no man might teach them any language nor teach them to read any words that be good because they must first understand the words before the meaning If a child learn to read in a Bible it is not taking Gods Name or Word in vain though he understand it not For it is in order to his learning to understand it And it is not vain which is to so good a Use If you leave them untaught till they come to be twenty years of age they must then learn the words before they can understand the matter Do not therefore leave them the children of darkness for fear of makeing them hypocrites It will be an excellent way to redeem their Time to teach them first that which they are capable of learning A child of five or six years old can learn the words of a Catechisme or Scripture before they are capable of understanding them And then when they come to years of understanding that part of their work is done and they have nothing to do but to study the meaning and use of those words which they have learnt already Whereas if you leave them utterly untaught till then they must then be wasting a long time to learn the same words which they might have learnt before And the loss of so much time is no small loss or sin § 2. Direct 2. The most natural way of teaching children the Meaning of Gods Word and the Direct 2. Matters of their salvation is by familiar talk with them suited to their capacities Begin this betimes with them while they are on their Mothers laps and use it frequently For they are quickly capable of some understanding about greater matters as well as about less And knowledge must come in by slow degrees Stay not till their minds are prepossest with vanity and toyes Prov. 22. 6. § 3. Direct 3. By all means let your children learn to read though you be never so poor whatever Direct 3. shift you make And if you have servants that cannot read let them learn yet at spare hours if they be of any capacity and willingness For it is a very great mercy to be able to read the holy Scripture and any good Books themselves and a very great misery to know nothing but what they hear from others They may read almost at any time when they cannot hear § 4. Direct 4. Let your children when they are little ones read much the History of the Scriptures Direct 4. For though this of it self is not sufficient to breed in them any saving knowledge yet it enticeth them to delight in reading the Bible and then they
and hope for audience when they beg for mercy and offer up prayer or praises to him § 15. III. In the Communication though the Sacrament have respect to the Father as the Joh. 3. 5. 1 Cor. 12. 12 â—3 1 Cor. 15 45. Gal. 3. 14. 4. 6. Eph. 2. 22. principal Giver and to the Son as both the Gift and Giver yet hath it a special respect to the Holy Ghost as being that spirit given in the flesh and blood which quickeneth souls without which the flesh will profit nothing And whose Operations must convey and apply Christs saving benefits to us Ioh. 6. 63. 7. 39. § 16. These three being the parts of the Sacrament in whole as comprehending that sacred Action and participation which is essential to it The material Parts called the Relate and correlate are 1. Substantial and Qualitative 2. Active and passive 1. The first are the Bread and Wine as signs and the Body and Blood of Christ with his graces and benefits as the things signified and given The second are the Actions of Breaking Pouring out and Delivering on the Ministers part after the Consecration and the Taking Eating and Drinking by the Receivers as the sign And the thing signified is the Crucifying or Sacrificing of Christ and the Delivering himself with his benefits to the believer and the Receivers thankful Accepting and using the said gift To these add the Relative form and the ends and you have the definition of this Sacrament Of which see more in my Univers Concord p. 46 c. § 17. Direct 3. Look upon the Minister as the Agent or Officer of Christ who is commissioned by Direct 3. him to seal and deliver to you the Covenant and its benefits And take the Bread and Wine as if you heard Christ himself saying to you Take my Body and Blood and the pardon and Grace which is thereby purchased It is a great â—â—â—â—p in the application to have Mercy and pardon brought us by the hand of a commissioned Officer of Christ. § 18. Direct 4. In your preparation before hand take heed of these two extreams 1. That you Direct 4. come not prophanely and carelesly with common hearts as to a common work For God will be sanctified in them that draw near him Lev. 10. 3. And they that eat and drink unworthily not discerning the Lords Body from common bread but eating as if it were a common meal do eat death to Quinam auteâ—â— indigâ—i ineptive sint quibus Angelorum panis praebeatur sacerdoâ—um ipsoâ—um audâ—ta confessione â—aeâ—erisque perspectis judicium esto Acosta â— 6. c. 10. p. 549. themselves instead of life 2. Take heed lest your mistakes of the nature of this Sacrament should possess you with such fears of unworthy receiving and the following dangers as may quite discompose and unfit your souls for the joyful exercises of faith and Love and Praise and Thanksgiving to which you are invited Many that are scrupulous of Receiving it in any save a feasting gesture are too little careful and scrupulous of Receiving it in any save a feasting frame of mind The first extream is caused by Prophaneness and negligence or by gross ignorance of the nature of the Sacramental work The later extream is frequently caused as followeth 1. By setting this Sacrament at a greater distance from other parts of Gods worship than there is cause so that the excess of Reverence doth overwhelm the minds of some with terrours 2. By studying more the terrible words of eating and drinking damnation to themselves if they do it unworthily than all the expressions of Love and mercy which that blessed feast is furnished with So that when the Views of infinite Love should ravish them they are studying wrath and vengeance to terrifie them as if they came to Moses and not to Christ. 3. By not understanding what maketh a Receiver worthy or unworthy but taking their unwilling infirmities for condemning unworthiness 4. By Receiving it so seldom as to make it strange to them and increase their fear whereas if it were administred every Lords day as it was in the Primitive Churches it would better acquaint them with it and cure that fear that cometh from strangeness 5. By imagining that none that want Assurance of their own sincerity can receive in faith 6. By contracting an ill habit of mistaken Religiousness placeing it all in poâ—ing on themselves and mourning for their corruptions and not in studying the Love of God in Christ and living in the daily Praises of his name and joyful Thanksgiving for his exceeding mercies 7. And if besides all these the Body contract a weak or timerous melancholy distemper it will leave the mind capable of almost nothing but fear and trouble even in the sweetest works From many such causes it cometh to pass that the Sacrament of the Lords Supper is become more terrible and uncomfortable to abundance of such distempered Christians than any other ordinance of God And that which should most comfort them doth trouble them most § 19. Quest. 1. But is not this Sacrament more holy and dreadful and should it not have more preparation Quest. 1. than other parts of worship Answ. For the degree indeed it should have very careful preparation And we cannot well compare it with other parts of worship as Praise Thanksgiving Covenanting with God Prayer c. because that all these other parts are here comprized and performed But doubtless God must also be sanctified in all his other worship and his name must not be taken in vain And when this Sacrament was received every Lords day and often in the week besides Christians were supposed to live continually in a state of general preparation and not to be so far from a due particular preparation as many poor Christians think they are § 20. Quest. 2. How often should the Sacrament be now administred that it neither grow into contempt Quest. 2. or strangeness Answ. Ordinarily in well disciplined Churches it should be still every Lords day For 1. We have no reason to prove that the Apostles example and appointment in this case was proper to those times any more than that Praise and Thanksgiving daily is proper to them And we may as well deny the obligation of other institutions or Apostolical orders as that 2. It is a part of the seâ—led order for the Lords days worship And omitting it maimeth and altereth the worship of the day and occasioneth the omission of the Thansgiving and Praise and lively commemorations of Christ which should be then most performed And so Christians by use grow habited to sadness and a mourning melancholy Religion and grow unacquainted with much of the worship and spirit of the Gospel 3. Hereby the Papists lamentable corruptions of this ordinance have grown up even by an excess of reverence and fear which seldom receiving doth increase till they are come to Worship Bread as their God 4. By seldom communicating men are
seduced to think all proper Communion of Churches lyeth in that Sacrament and to be more prophanely bold in abusing many other parts of worship 5. There are better means by Teaching and Discipline to keep the Sacrament from contempt than the omitting or displacing of it 6. Every Lords Day is no ofter then Christians need it 7. The frequency will teach them to Live prepared and not only to make much ado once a Moneth or Quarter when the same work is neglected all the year beside Even as one that liveth in continual expectation of death will live in continual preparation when he that expecteth it but in some grievous sickness will then be frightned into some seeming preparations which are not the habit of his soul but laid by again when the disease is over 2. But yet I must add that in some undisciplin'd Churches and upon some occasions it may be longer omitted or seldomer used No duty is a duty at all times And therefore extraordinary cases may raise such impediments as may hinder us a long time from this and many other priviledges But the ordinary faultiness of our imperfect hearts that are apt to grow customary and dull is no good reason why it should be seldome Any more than why other special duties of Worship and Church-communion should be seldome Read well the Epistles of Paul to the Corinthians and you will find that they were then as bad as the true Christians â—â—e now and that even in this Sacrament they were very culpable and yet Paul seeketh not to cure them by their seldomer communicating § 21. Quest. 3. Are all the members of the visible Church to be admitted to this Sacrament or Quest. 3. communicate Answ. All are not to seek it or to take it because many may know their own unfitness when the Church or Pastors know it not But all that come and seek it are to be admitted by the Pastors except such Children Ideots ignorant persons or Hereticks as know not what they are to receive and do and such as are notoriously wicked or scandalous and have not manifested their repentance But then it is presupposed that none should be numbered with the adult members of the Church but those that have personally owned their Baptismal Covenant by a Credible Profession of true Christianity § 22. Quest. 4. May a man that hath knowledge and civility and common gifts come and Quest. 4. take this Sacrament if he know that he is yet void of true Repentance and other saving Grace Answ. No For he then knoweth himself to be one that is uncapable of it in his present state § 23. Quest. 5. May an ungodly man receive this Sacrament who knoweth not himself to be Quest. 5. ungodly Answ. No For he ought to know it and his sinful ignorance of his own condition will not make his sin to be his duty nor excuse his other faults before God § 24. Quest. 6. Must a sincere Christian receive that is uncertain of his sincerity and in continual Quest. 6. doubting Answ. Two preparations are necessary to this Sacrament The general preparation which is a state of grace and this the doubting Christian hath And the particular preparation which consisteth in his present actual fitness And all the question is of this And to know this you must further distinguish between Immediate duty and more Remote and between the degrees of doubtfulness in Christians 1. The nearest immediate duty of the doubting Christian is to use the means to have his doubts resolved till he know his case and then his next duty is to receive the Sacrament And both these still remain his duty to be performed in this order And if he say I cannot be resolved when I have done my best yet certainly it is some sin of his own that keepeth him in the dark and hindereth his assurance and therefore Duty ceaseth not to be duty the Law of Christ still obligeth him both to get assurance and to receive and the want both of the knowledge of his state and of Receiving the Sacrament are his continual sin if he lye in it never so long through these scruples though it be an infirmity that God will not condemn him for For he is supposed to be in a state of grace But you will say What is still he cannot be resolved whether he have true faith and Repentance or not What should he do while he is in doubt I answer It is one thing to ask what is his duty in this case and another thing to ask Which is the smaller or less dangerous sin Still his duty is both to get the knowledge of his heart and to communicate But while he sinneth through infirmity in failing of the first were he better also omit the other or not To be well resolved of that you must discern 1. Whether his judgement of himself do rather incline to think and hope that he is sincere in his repentance and faith or that he is not 2. And whether the consequents are like to be good or bad to him If his hopes that he is sincere be as great or greater than his fears of the contrary then there is no such ill consequent to be feared as may hinder his communicating but it is his best way to do it and wait on God in the use of his Ordinance But if the perswasion of his gracelesness be greater than the hopes of his sincerity then he must observe how he is like to be affected if he do communicate If he find that it is like to clear up his mind and increase his hopes by the actuating of his grace he is yet best to go But if he find that his heart is like to be overwhelmed with horror and sunk into despair by running into the supposed guilt of unworthy Receiving then it will be worse to do it than to omit it Many such fearful Christians I have known that are fain many years to absent themselves from the Sacrament because if they should receive it while they are perswaded of their utter unworthiness they would be swallowed up of desperation and think that they had taken their own damnation As the twenty fifth Article of the Church of England saith the unworthy receivers do So that the chief sin of such a Doubting Receiver is not that he receiveth though he doubt for doubting will not excuse us for the sinful omission of a duty no more of this than of Prayer or Thanksgiving But only Prudence requireth such a one to forbear that which through his own distemper would be a means of his despair and ruine As that Physick or food how good soever is not to be taken which would kill the taker Gods Ordinances are not appointed for our destruction but for our edification and so must be used as tendeth thereunto Yet to those Christians who are in this case and dare not communicate I must put this Question How dare you so long refuse it He that
be proportionable to your possessions John 15. 5. Mar. 12. 41. Luke 12. 48. Do as much more good in the world than the poor as you are better furnished for it than they Let your servants have more time for the learning of Gods Word and let your families be the more religiously instructed and governed To whom God giveth much from them he doth expect much Direct 12. Direct 12. Do not only take occasions of doing good when they are thrust upon you but study how to do all the good you can as those that are zealous of good works Tit. 2. 14. Zeal of good Matth. 5. 16. Gal. 6. 7 8 9 10. 1 Pet. 2. 12. Heb. 10. 24. Tit. 3. 8 14. 2. 7. Ephes. 2. 10. 1 Tim. 2. 10. 5. 10. Acts 9. 36. works will make you 1. Plot and contrive for them 2. Consult and ask advice for them 3. It will make you glad when you meet with a hopeful opportunity 4. It will make you do it largely and not sparingly and by the halves 5. It will make you do it speedily without unwilling backwardness and delay 6. It will make you do it constantly to your lives end 7. It will make you pinch your own flesh and suffer somewhat your selves to do good to others 8. It will make you Labour in it as your Trade and not only consent that others do good at your charge 9. It will make you glad when good is done and not to grudge at what it cost you 10. In a word it will make your neighbours to be to you as your selves and the Pleasing of God to be above your selves and therefore to be as glad to do good as to receive it Direct 13. Do good both to mens souls and bodies but alwayes let bodily benefits be conferred in Direct 13. order to those of the soul and in due subordination and not for the body alone And observe the many other Rules of Good Works more largely laid down Tom. 1. Cap. 3. Direct 10. Direct 14. Ask your selves often How you shall wish at death and judgement your estates had been Direct 14. laid out and accordingly now use them Why should not a man of Reason do that which he knoweth before hand he shall vehemently wish that he had done Direct 15. As your care must be in a special manner for your children and families so take heed Direct 15. of the common error of worldlings who think their children must have so much as that God and their own souls have very little When selfish men can keep their wealth no longer to themselves they leave it to their children who are as their surviving selves And all is cast into this gulf except some inconsiderable parcels Direct 16. Direct 16. Keep daily account of your use and improvement of your Masters Talents Not that Mat. 25. 14 15 you should too much remember your own good works but remember to do them and therefore ask your selves What Good have I done with all that I have this Day or Week Direct 17. Look not for long life for then you will think that a long journey needeth great provisions Direct 17. But dye daily and live as those that are going to give up their account And then Conscience 1 Tim. 6. 18. 1 Cor. 4. 1 2. Luke 16. 10. will force you to ask whether you have been faithful Stewards and to lay up a treasure in Heaven and to make you friends of the Mammon that others use to unrighteousness and to lay up a good foundation for the time to come and to be glad that God hath given you that the improvement of 1 Tim. 5. 25. which may further the good of others and your salvation Living and Dying let it be your care and business to Do Good CHAP. XXIX Directions for the Aged and weak HAving before opened the Duties of Children to God and to their Parents I shall give no other particular Directions to the Young but shall next open the special Duties of the Aged § 1. Direct 1. The old and weak have a lowder call from God than others to be accurate Direct 1. in examining the state of their souls and making their calling and election sure Whether they Iâ— Augustines speech to the people of Hippo for Fradius his succession he saith In Infantiâ spâ—raâ—ur pueritia in pueritia speratur adolescentia in adolescentià spâ—râ—â—ur juventuâ— in juventure speratur gravitas in gravitate speratur senectus Utrum contingat incertum est est tamen quod sperâ—tur Senâ—ctus autem alâ—am â—â—atem quam speret non habet Vid. Papâ—r Massoâ— in vita Coelâ—sti fol. 58. are yet Regenerate and Sanctified or not is a most important question for every man to get resolved but especially for them that are nearest to their end Ask counsel therefore of some able faithful Minister or friend and set your selves diligently to try your Title to eternal life and to cast up your accounts and see how all things stand between God and you And if you should find your selves in an unrenewed state as you love your souls delay no longer but presently be humbled for your so long and sotâ—ish neglect of so necessary and great a work Go open your case to some able minister and lament your sin and fly to Christ and set your hearts on God as your felicity and change your company and course and rest not any longer in so dangerous and miserable a case The more full Directions for your Conversion I have given before in the beginning of the Book and in divers others and therefore shall say no more to such it being others that I am here especially to Direct § 2. Direct 2. Cast back your eyes upon the sins of all your life that you may perceive how humble Direct 2. those souls should be that have sinned so long as you have done and may feel what need you have of Christ to pardon so long a life of sin Though you have repented and been justified long ago yet you have daily sinned since you were Justified And though all be forgiven that is repented of yet must it be still before your eyes both to keep you humble and continue the exercise of that Repentance and drive you to Christ and make you thankful Yea your forgiveness and Iustification are yet short of perfection whatever some may tell you to the contrary as well as your sanctification For 1. Your Justification is yet given you but conditionally as to its continuance even upon condition of your perseverance 2. And the temporal chastisement and the pains of death and the long absence of the body from Heaven and the present wants of grace and comfort and communion with God are punishments which are not yet forgiven executively 3. And the final sentence of Justification at the day of Judgement which is the perfectest sort is yet to come And therefore you have
sects and parties and what divisions and contentions tend to as you have done And therefore it belongeth to your gravity and experience to call them unto Unity Charity and Peace and to keep them from proving fire-brands in the Church and rashly over-running their understandings and the truth § 8. Direct 8. Of all men you must live in the greatest contempt of earthly things and least entangle Direct 8. your selves in the Love or needless troubles of the world You are like to need it and use it but a little while A little may serve one that is so neer his journeys end You have had the greatest experience of its vanity You are so near the great things of another World that methinks you should have no leisure to remember this or room for any unnecessary thoughts or speeches of it As your bodies are less able for worldly employment than others so accordingly you are allowed to retire from it more than others for your more serious thoughts of the life to come It is a sign of the bewitching power of the world and of the folly and unreasonableness of sin to see the Aged usually as Covetous as the young and men that are going out of the world to love it as fondly and scrape for it as eagerly as if they never lookt to leave it You should rather give warning to the younger sort to take heed of Covetousness and of being ensnared by the world and while they labour in it faithfully with their hands to keep their hearts entirely for God § 9. Direct 9. You should highly esteem every minute of your time and lose none in idleness or unnecessary Direct 9. things but be alwayes doing or getting some good and do what you do with all your might For you are sure now that your time will not be long How little have you left to make all the rest of your preparation in for eternity The young may die quickly but the old know that their time will be but short Though Nature decay yet grace can grow in life and strength and when your outward man perisheth the inner man may be renewed day by day 2 Cor. 4. 16. Time is a most pretious commodity to all but especially to them that have but a little more to determine the question in Whether they must live in Heaven or Hell for ever Though you cannot do your worldly businesses as heretofore yet you have variety of holy exercises to be imployed in Bodily ease may beseem you but Idleness is worse in you than in any § 10. Direct 10. When the decay of your strength or memory or parts doth make you unable to read Direct 10. or pray or meditate by your selves so much or so well as heretofore make the more use of the more lively gifts and help of others Be the more in hearing others and in joyning with them in prayer that their memory and zeal and utterance may help to lift you up and carry you on § 11. Direct 11. Take not a decay of nature and of those gifts and works which depend thereon Direct 11. for a decay of grace Though your memory and utterance and fervour of affection abate as your Natural heat abateth yet be not discouraged but remember that you may for all this grow in grace if you do but grow in holy wisdom and judgement and a higher esteem of God and holiness and a greater disesteem of all the vanities of the world and a firmer resolution to cleave to God and trust on Christ and never to turn to the world and sin This is your growth in grace § 12. Direct 12. Be patient under all the infirmities and inconveniences of old age Be not discontented Direct 12. at them nor repine not nor grow pievish and froward to those about you This is a common temptation which the Aged should carefully resist You knew at first that you had a body that must decay If you would not have had it till a decaying age why were you so unwilling to dye If you would why do you repine Bless God for the dayes of youth and strength and health and ease which you have had already and grudge not that corruptible flesh decayeth § 13. Direct 13. Understand well that passive obedience is that which God calleth you to in your Direct 13. age and weakness and in which you must serve and honour him in the conclusion of your labour When you are unfit for any great or publick works and active obedience hath not opportunity to exercise it self as heretofore it is then as acceptable to God that you honour him by patient suffering And therefore it is a great errour of them that wish for the death of all that are impotent decrepit and bed-rid as if they were utterly unserviceable to God I tell you it is no small service that they may do not only by their prayers and their secret Love to God but by being examples of faith and patience and heavenly-mindedness and confidence and joy in God to all about them Grudge not then if God will thus imploy you § 14. Direct 14. Let your thoughts of death and preparations for it be as serious as if death were Direct 14. just at hand Though all your life be little enough to prepare for death and it be a work that should be done as soon as you have the use of Reason yet age and weakness call lowder to you presently to prepare without delay Do therefore all that you would fain find done when your last sickness cometh that unreadiness to die may not make death terrible nor your age uncomfortable § 15. Direct 15. Live in the joyful expectations of your change as becometh one that is so near to Direct 15. Heaven and looketh to live with Christ for ever Let all the high and glorious things which faith apprehendeth now shew their power in the Love and joy and longings of your soul. There is nothing in which the weak and aged can more honour Christ and do good to others than in joyful expectation of their change and an earnest desire to be with Christ. This will do much to convince unbelievers that the promises are true and that Heaven is real and that a holy life is indeed the best which hath so happy an end When they see you highest in your joyes at the time when others are deepest in distress and when you rejoyce as one that is entring upon his happiness when all the happiness of the ungodly is at an end this will do more than many Sermons to perswade a sinner to a holy life I know that this is not easily attained But a thing so sweet and profitable to your selves and so useful to the good of others and so much tending to the honour of God should be laboured after with all your diligence and then you may expect Gods blessing on your labours Read to this use the fourth part of my Saints Rest. CHAP.
XXX Directions for the Sick THough the chief part of our preparation for Death be in the time of Health and it is a work for which the longest life is not too long yet because the folly of unconverted sinners is so great as to forget what they were born for till they see Death at hand and because there is a special preparation necessary for the best I shall here lay down some Directions for the sick And I shall reduce them to these four heads 1. What must be done to make Death safe to us that it may be our passage to Heaven and not to Hell 2. What must be done to make sickness profitable to us 3. What must be done to make Death comfortable to us that we may Dye in Peace and Ioy 4. What must be done to make our Sickness Profitable to others about us Tit. 1. Directions for a safe Death to secure our Salvation THe Directions of this sort are especially necessary to the unconverted impenitent sinner yet needful also to the Godly themselves and therefore I shall distinctly speak to both 1. Directions for an uncoverted sinner in his sickness It is a very dreadful case to be found by sickness in an unconverted state There is so Great a work to be done and so little time to do it in and soul and body so unfit and undisposed for it and the misery so great even everlasting torment that will follow so certainly and so quickly if it be undone that one would think it should overwhelm the understanding and heart of any man with astonishment and horrour to foresee such a condition in the time of his health much more to find himself in it in his sickness And though one would think that the near approach of Death and the nearness of another world should be unresistibly powerful to convert a sinner so that few or none shold Die unconverted however they lived yet Scripture and sad experience declare the contrary that most men Die as well as live in an unsanctified and miserable state For 1. A life of sin doth usually settle a man in Ignorance or Unbelief or both so that sickness findeth him in such a dungeon of Darkness that he is but lost and confounded in his fears and knoweth not whither he is going nor what he hath to do 2. And also sin wofully Hardeneth the Heart and the long resisted spirit of God forsaketh them and giveth them over to themselves in sickness who would not be ruled and sanctified by him in their health And such remain like blocks or beasts even to the last 3. And the Nature of sickness and approaching death doth tend more to affright than to renew the soul and rather to breed fear and trouble than Love And though Grief and fear be good preparatives and helps yet it is the Love of God and Holiness in which the souls Regeneration and Renovation doth consist and there is no more Holiness than there is Love and Willingness And many a one that is affrighted into strong Repentings and cryes and prayers and promises and seem to themselves and others to be Converted do yet either Die in their sins and misery or return to their unholy lives when they recover being utter strangers to that true Repentance which reneweth the heart as sad experience doth too often testifie 4. And many poor sinners finding that they have so short a time do end it in meer amazement and terrour not knowing how to compose their thoughts to examine their hearts and lives nor to exercise faith in Christ nor to follow any Directions that are given them but lye in trembling and astonishment wholly taken up with the fears of Death much worse than a beast that is going to be butchered 5. And the very pains of the body do so divert or hinder the thoughts of many that they can scarce mind any spiritual things with such a composedness as is necessary to so great a work 6. And the greatest number being partly confounded in ignorance and partly withheld by backwardness and undisposedness and partly disheartned by thinking it impossible to become new-creatures and get a regenerate heavenly heart on such a sudden do force themselves to hope that they shall be saved without it and that though they are sinners yet that kind of Repentance which they have will serve the turn and be accepted and God will be more merciful than to damn them And this false Hope they think they are necessitated to take up For there is but two other wayes to be taken The one is utterly to Despair and both Scripture and Reason and Nature it self are against that The other way is to be truly converted and won to the Love of God and Heaven by a lively faith in Iesus Christ And they have no such faith and to this they are strange and undisposed and think it impossible to be done And if they must have no Hopes but upon such terms as these they think they shall have none at all Or else if they hear that there is no other Hope and that none but the holy can be saved they will force themselves to hope that they have all this and that they are truly converted and become new creatures and do Love God and holiness above all not because indeed it is so but because they would have it so for fear of being damned And instead of finding that they they are void of faith and Love and Holiness and labouring to get a renewed soul they think it a nearer way to make themselves believe that it is so already And thus in their presumption self-deceiving and false hopes they linger out that little time that is left them to be converted in till death open their eyes and hell do undeceive them 7. And the same Devil and wicked men his instruments that kept them in health from true Repentance will be as diligent to keep them from it in their sickness and will be loth to lose all at the last cast which they had been winning all the time before And if the Devil can but keep them in his power till sickness come and take them up with pain and fear he will hope to keep them a few dayes longer till he have finished that which he had begun and carryed on so far And if there be here and there one that will be held no longer by false hopes and presumption he will at last think to take them off by desperation and make them believe that there is no remedy § 4. And indeed it is a thing so difficult and unlikely to convert a sinner in all his pain and weakness at the last that even the Godly friends of such do many times even let them alone as thinking that there is little or no hope But this is a very sinful course As long as there is life there is some hope And as long as there is hope we must use the means A Physicion will try the best Remedies
he hath in the most dangerous disease which is not desperate For when it is certain that there is no hope without them if they do no good they do no harm So must we try the saving of a poor soul while there is life and any hope For if once death end their time and hopes it will be then too late and they will be out of our reach and help for ever To those that sickness findeth in so sad a case I shall give here but a few brief Directions because I have done it more at large in the first Tome and first Chapter whither I refer them § 5. Direct 1. Set speedily and seriously to the Iudging of your selves as those that are going to Direct 1. be judged of God And do it in the manner following 1. Do it willingly and resolvedly as knowing For Examination that it is now no time to remain uncertain of your everlasting state if you can possibly get acquainted with it Is it not time for a man to know himself whether he be a sanctifiâ—d believer or not when he is just going to appear before his maker and there be judged as he is found 2. Do it impartially as one that is not willing to find himself deceived as soon as death hath acquainted him with the truth O take heed as you love your souls of being foolishly tender of your selves and resolving for fear of being troubled at your misery to believe that you are safe whether it be true or false This is the way that thousands are undone by Thinking that you are sanctified will neither prove you so nor make you so no more than thinking that you are well will prove or make you well And what good will it do you to think you are pardoned and shall be saved for a few days longer and then to find too late in Hell that you were mistaken Is the ease of so short a deceit worth all the pain and loss that it will cost you Alas poor soul God knoweth it is not needlesly to affright thee that we desire to convince thee of thy misery We do not cruelly insult over thee or desire to torment thee But we pity thee in so sad a case To see an unsanctified person ready to pass into another world and to be doomed unto endless misery and will not know it till he is there Our principal reason of opening your danger is because it is necessary to your escaping it If soul diseases were like bodily diseases which may sometimes be cured without the patients knowing them and the danger of them we would never trouble you at such a time as this But it will not be so done You must understand your danger if you will be saved from it Therefore be impartial with your self if you are wise and be truly willing to know the worst 3. In Iudging your selves proceed by the same Rule or Law that God will judge you by that is by the word of God revealed in the Gospel For your work now is not to steal a little short-lived quiet to your Consciences but to know how God will judge your souls and whether he will doom you to endless joy or misery And how can you know this but by that Law or Rule that God will judge you by And certainly God will judge you by the same Law or Rule by which he Governed you or which he gave you to Live by in the world It will go never the better or worse there with any man for his good or bad conceits of himself if they were his mistakes But just what God hath said in his word that he will do with any man that will he do with him in the day of judgement All shall be justified whom the Gospel justifieth and all shall be condemned that it condemneth and therefore judge your self by it By what signes you may know an unsanctified man I have told you before Tom. 1. Chap. 1. Dir. 8. And by what signes true grace may be known I told you before in Preparation for the Sacrament 4. If you cannot satifie your self about your own condition advise with some Godly able Minister or other Christian that is best acquainted with you that knoweth how you have lived towards God and man or at least open all your heart and life to him that he may know it And if he tell you that he feareth you are yet unsanctified you have the more reason to fear the worst But then be sure that he be not a carnal ungodly worldly man himself For they that flatter and deceive themselves are not unlike to do so by others Such blind deceivers will dawb over all and bid you never trouble your self but even comfort you as they comfort themselves and bid you believe that all is well and it will be well or will make you believe that some forced confession and unsound Repentance will serve instead of true Conversion But a man that is going to the bar of God should be loth to be deceived by himself or others § 6. Direct 2. If by a due examination you find your self unsanctified bethink you seriously of your Direct 2. case both what you have done and what a condition you are in till you are truly humbled and willing of For Humiliation and Repentance any conditions that God shall offer you for your deliverance Consider how foolishly you have done how rebelliously how unthankfully to forsake your God and forget your souls and lose all your time and abuse all Gods mercies and leave undone the work that you were made and preserved and redeemed for Alas did you never know till now that you must dye and that you had all your time to make preparation for an endless life which followeth death Were you never warned by Minister or friend Were you never told of the necessity of a holy heavenly life and of a regenerate sanctified state till now O what could you have done more unwisely or wickedly than to cast away a life that eternal life so much depended on and to refuse your Saviour and his grace and mercies till your last extremity Is this the time to look after a new birth and to begin your life when you are at the end of it O what have you done to delay so great a work till now And now if you die before you are regenerate you are lost for ever O humble your souls before the Lord Lament your folly and presently condemn your selves before him and make out to Him for mercy while there is hope Direct 3. § 7. Direct 3. When you are humbled for your sin and misery and willing of mercy upon any terms For Faith in Christ. believe that yet your case is not Remediless but that Iesus Christ hath given himself to God a sacrifice for your sins and is so sure and allsufficient a Saviour that yet nothing can hinder you from pardon and salvation but your own impenitence and unbelief
advantage of a Tempt 1. Christians bodily weakness to shake his faith and question his foundations and call him to dispute Hic labor extremus longaâ—um haec meta viarum est Virgil. over his principles again Whether the soul be immortal and there be a Heaven and a Hell and whether Christ be the Son of God and the Scriptures be Gods Word c. As if this had never been questioned and scanned and resolved before It is a great deal of advantage that Satan expecteth by this malitious course If he could he would draw you from Christ to infidelity But Christ prayeth for you that your faith may not fail If he cannot do this he would at least weaken your faith and hereby weaken every grace And he would hereby divert you from the more needful thoughts which are suitable to your present state and he would hereby distract you and destroy your comforts and draw you in your perplexities to dishonour God Away therefore with these blasphemous and unseasonable motions Cast them from you with abhorrence and disdain It is no time now to be questioning your foundations You have done this more seasonably when you were in a fitter case A paiâ—ed languishing body and a disturbed discomposed mind is unfit upon a surprize to go back and dispute over all our principles Tell Satan you owe him not so much service nor will you so cast away those few hours and thoughts for which you have so much better work You have the witness in your selves even the Spirit and Image and Seal of God You have been converted and renewed by the power of that word which he would have you question and you have found it to be owned by the Spirit of grace who hath made it mighty to pull down the strongest holds of sin Tell Satan you will not gratifie him so much as to turn your holy heavenly desires into a wrangling with him about those truths which you have so often proved You will not question now the being of that God who hath maintained you so long and witnessed his being and goodness to you by a life of mercies nor will you now question the being or truth of him that hath Redeemed you or of the Spirit or Word that hath sanctified guided comforted and confirmed you If he tell you that you must prove all things tell him that this is not now to do you have long proved the truth and goodness of your God the mercy of your Saviour and the power of his Holy Spirit and Word It is now your work to live upon that Word and fetch your hopes and comforts from it and not to question it § 10. Tempt 2. Another dangerous Temptation of Satan is when he would perswade you to Tempâ— â— Despair by causing you to mis-understand the tenour of the Gospel or by thinking too narrowly and unworthily of Gods mercy or of the satisfaction of Christ. But because this Temptation doth usually tend more to discomfort the soul than to damn it I shall speak more to it under Tit. 3. § 11. Tempt 3. Another dangerous Temptation is when Satan would draw you to overlook your Tempt 3. sins and overvalue your graces and be proud of your good works and so lay too much of your comfort upon your selves and lose the sense of your need of Christ or usurp any part of his office or hiâ— honour I shall afterward shew you how far you must look at any thing in your selves But certainly that which lifteth you up in pride or incroacheth on Christs Office or would draw you to undervalue him is not of God Therefore keep humble in the sense of your sinfulness and unworthiness and cast away every motion which would carry you away from Christ and make your selves and your works and righteousness as a Saviour to your selves § 12. Tempt 4. Another perillous Temptation is by causing the thoughts of death and the grave Tempt 4. and your doubts and fears about the world to come to overcome the Love of God and not only the comforts but also the desires and willingness of your hearts to be with Christ. It will abate your Love to God and Heaven to think on them with too much estrangedness and terror The Directions under Tit. 3. will help you against this Temptation § 13. Tempt 5. Another dangerous Temptation is fetcht from the remnants of your worldly Tempt 5. mindedness when your dignity or honor your house or lands your relations and friends or your pleasures and contentments are so sweet to you that you are loth to leave them and the thoughts of death are grievous to you because it taketh you from that which you over-love and God and Heaven are the less desired because you are loth to leave the world Watch carefully against this great Temptation Observe how it seeketh the very destruction of your grace and souls and how it fighteth against your Love to God and Heaven and would undo all that Christ and his Spirit have been doing so long Observe what a root of matter it findeth in your selves and therefore be the more humbled under it Learn now what the world is and how little the accommodations of the flesh are worth when you perceive what the end of all must be Would you never dye Would you enjoy your worldly things for ever Had you rather have them than to live with Christ in the Heavenly glory of the New Ierusalem If you had it is your grievous sin and folly And yet you know that it is a desire that you can never hope to attain Dye you must whether you will or not What is it then that you would stay for Is it till the world be grown less pleasant to you and your Love and minds be weaned from it When should that rather be than now And what should more effectually do it than this dying condition that you are in It is time for you to spit out these unwholsome pleasures and now to look up to the true the holy the unmeasurable everlasting pleasures Tit. 2. Directions how to Profit by our Sickness WHether it shall please God to recover you or not it is no small Benefit which you may get by his Visitation if you do your part and faithfully improve it according to these Directions following § 1. Direct 1. If you hear Gods call to a closer tryal of your hearts concerning the sincerity of your Direct 1. conversion and thereby are brought to a more exact examination and come to a truer acquaintance with your state be it good or bad the benefit may be exceeding great For if it be good you may be much comforted and confirmed and fitted to give thanks and praise to God And if it be bad you may be awakened speedily to look about you and seek for a recovery § 2. Direct 2. If in the review of your lives you find out those sins which before you overlookâ— or Direct 2. perceive
that be gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life Act. 13. 39. And by him all that believe are justified from all things from which ye could not be justified by the Law of Moses Heb. 8. 12. For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness and their sins and iniquities will I remember no more If it be the weakness of his grace that troubleth him let him choose such passages as these Isa. 40. 11. He shall gather the lambs with his arm and carry them in his bâ—som and shall gently lead those that are with young Gal. 5. 17. The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary one to the other so that ye cannot do the things that ye would Matth. 26. 41. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak Joh. 6. 37. All that the father giveth me shall come to me and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out Luk. 17. 5. The Apostles said unto the Lord Increase our faith If it be the fear of death and strangeness to the other world that troubleth you remember the words of Christ before cited and 2 Cor. 5. 1 2 4 5 6 8. For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God an house not made with hands eternal in the Heavens For in this we groan earnestly desiring to be cloathed upon with our house which is from Heaven For we that are in this tabernacle do groan being burdened not for that we would be uncloathed but cloathed upon that mortality might be swallowed up of life we are confident and willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord. Phil. 1. 23. For I am in a strait between two having a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better Rev. 14. 13. Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth yea saith the spirit that they may rest from their labours and their works do follow them 1 Cor. 15. 55. O Death where is thy sting O grave where is thy victory Act. 7. 59. Lord Iesus receive my spirit Fix upon some such word or promise which may support you in your extremity § 6. Direct 6. Look up to God who is the Glory of Heaven and the Light and Life and Ioy of souls Direct 6. and believe that you are going to see his face and to live in the perfect everlasting fruition of his fullest Love among the glorified If it be delectable here to know his works what will it be to see the Cause of all All Creatures in Heaven and Earth conjoyned can never afford such content and joy to holy souls as God alone O if we knew him whom we must there behold how weary should we be of this dungeon of mortality and how fervently should we long to see his face The Chicken that cometh out of the shell or the Infant that newly cometh from the womb into this illuminated world of humane converse receiveth not such a joyful change as the soul that is newly loosed from the flesh and passeth from this mortal life to God One sight of God by a blessed soul is worth more than all the Kingdoms of the earth It is pleasant to the eyes to behold the Sun But the Sun is as darkness and useless in his Glory Rev. 21. 23. And the City had no need of the Sun nor of the Moon to shine in it For the Glory of God did lighten it and the Lamb is the Light thereof Rev. 22. 3 4 5. And there shall be no more curse but the Throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it and his servants shall serve him and they shall see his face and his name shall be in their foreheads and there shall be no night there and they need no candle nor light of the Sun for the Lord God giveth them Light and they shall reign for ever and ever If David in the Wilderness so impatiently thirsted to appear before God the living God in his Sanctuary at Ierusalem Psal. 42. How earnestly should we long to see his Glory in the Heavenly Ierusalem The glimpse of his back-parts was as much as Moses might behold Exod. 34. yet that much put a shining glory upon his face v. 29 30. The sight that Stephen had when men were ready to stone him was a delectable sight Act. 7. 55 56. The glimpse of Christ in his transfiguration ravished the three Apostles that beheld it Mat. 17. 2 6. Pauls vision which rapt him up into the third Heavens did advance him above the rest of mankind But our Beatifical sight of the Glory of God will very far excell all this When our perfected bodies shall have the perfect Glorious Body of Christ to see and our perfected souls shall have the God of Truth the most perfect uncreated Light to know what more is a created understanding capable of And yet this is not the top of our felicity For the Understanding is but the passage to the Heart or Will and Truth is but subservient to Goodness And therefore though the Understanding be capable of no more than the Beatifical Vision yet the Man is capable of more even of receiving the fullest communications of Gods Love and feeling it poured out upon the heart and living in the returns of perfect Love and in this entercourse of Love will be our highest Ioyes and this is the top of our heavenly felicity O that God would make us foreknow by a lively faith what it is to behold him in his Glory and to dwell in perfect Love and Ioy and then death would no more be able to dismay us nor should we be unwilling of such a blessed change But having spoken of this so largely in my Saints Rest I must stop here and refer you thither § 7. Direct 7. Look up to the Blessed Society of Angels and Saints with Christ and remember their Direct 7. blessedness and joy and that you also belong to the same society and are going to be numbred with them It will greatly overcome the fears of death to see by faith the Joyes of them that have gone before us and withall to think of their relation to us As it will encourage a man that is to go beyond Sea if the far greatest part of his dearest friends be gone before him and he heareth of their safe arrival and of their Joy and happiness Those Angels that now see the face of God are our special friends and guardians and entirely Love us better than any of our friends on earth do They rejoiced at our Conversion and will rejoice at our Glorification And as they are better and Love us better so therefore our Love should be greater to them than to any upon earth and we should more desire to be with them Those blessed souls that are now with Christ were once as
Sacrifice for their sins and to make a promise of pardon and salvation to all that will accept him and his gift and he intreateth all that hear the Gospel to accept it And accordingly he will save all that consent unto his Covenant I am a sinful child of Adam and therefore am one that Christ became a Sacrifice for and I consent unto his Covenant and therefore I am one that Christ by that Covenant doth justifie and will save § 29. Tempt 6. Sometime the Tempter troubleth the soul with Temptations to Blasphemy and Tempt 6. Infidelity and asketh him How knowest thou that there is a God or a life to come or that souls are immortal or that the Scripture is true Of this I spake before To this we must then answer I abhor thy suggestions These things I have seen proved long ago and I will not so far gratifie thee in my weakness and extremity as to question and dispute these sealed fundamental truths no more than I will dispute whether there be a Sun or earth § 30. Tempt 7. Sometimes the Tempter will say At best thou hast no Assurance of salvation Tempt 7. and how canst thou choose but tremble to think of dying when thou knowest not whether thou shalt go to Heaven or Hell To this the soul that hath not Assurance must answer It is my own mistake or weakness that keepeth me unassured And I will neither take part with my infirmities nor increase them by their effects My hopes are such as should draw up my desires though I want full assurance The Child delighteth in the company of the Mother and every man of his friend though he is not certain that the Mother or friend will not hurt him or take away his life Why should I trouble my self with improbabilities Or fear that which I have no found reason to fear Rather I should be glad to dye that death may perfect my Assurance and put an end to all my doubts and fears § 31. Tempt 8. But saith the Tempter How strange art thou to God and the life to come Thou Tempt 8. never sawest it Is it not dreadful to enter upon an unchangeable life in a world which thou art so great a stranger to Answ. But Christ is not a stranger to it He seeth it for me and I will implicitely trust him where should my eyes be but in my head I shall never see it till I come thither When I have been there a while this darkness and fear and strangeness will be gone I was as strange to this world before I came into it and more And all those holy souls in Heaven were strange to it once as well as I I should therefore long to be with Christ that I may be strange to him no more § 32. Tempt 9. But saith the Tempter thy fears and unwillingness is a sign that thou hast no Tempt 9. Love to God nor heavenly mind and how then canst thou hope to come to Heaven Answ. My fears come from strangeness and weakness of faith and a natural enmity to death If I could come to Christ in joy and glory and be perfected in holiness without dying I should not be unwilling of it God looketh not that my Nature should be willing to dye but that Grace make me willing to be with Christ and patiently submit to so dark a passage Even Christ himself prayed that if it were possible that Cup might pass from him § 33. Tempt 10. But what will thy Wife and Children do when thou art gone Answ. God hath Tempt 10. more interest in them than I have He will look to his own without my care Doth all the world depend upon him and is he not to be trusted with my Wife and Children § 34. Tempt 11. But thou wilt never more be serviceable to the Church All thy work will for Tempt 11. euer â—e at an end And there are many things which thou mighâ—st have done before thou dyest which will all be lost Answ. 1. I shall have higher and holier and sweeter work whether it will any thing conduce to the good of those on earth I know not but I know it will more conduce to the highest most desirable ends 2. As my work will be done so my trouble and weariness and fears and sufferings from a malignant unthankful world will all be done 3. And when my work is done my Reward and Everlasting Rest begin 4. And God needeth not such a Worm as I The work is his and it is reason that he should choose his workmen § 35. Tempt 12. But when thou hast said all Death will be death the King of terrors Answ. And Tempt 19. when thou hast said all God will be God and Heaven will be Heaven and Christ will be Christ that Mat. 28. 19 20. John 17. 2. Rev. 1. 18. Rom. 10. 9 10 11 12. hath conquered death and hath the keyes or power of Death and Hell and the promise will be sure and those that trust on him shall never be ashamed or confounded And therefore the Spirit is willing though the flesh be weak Tit. 4. Directions for doing Good to others in our Sickness § â— THe whole life of a Christian should be a serving of his God And though his body in sickness seem to be unserviceable yet it is not the least or lowest of his services which he is then at last to do Partly by his holy example and partly by his speeches which are both more obsorved in dying men than in any others For now all suppose that if there were before any mask of hypocrisie it is laid aside and the soul that is going to the Barr of God will deal sincerely And now it is supposed that we are delivered much from all the befooling delusions of prosperity and therefore fitter to be Counsellors to others And every Christian should be very desirous to do good to the last and be found so doing § 2. Direct 1. Shew not a distempered impatient mind Though pain will be pain and flesh will Direct 1. he flesh yet shew men that you have also Reason and Spirit And that it calmeth your soul though Heb. 12. 7 8 9. Rom. 8. 28. it ease not your body Speak good of God as beseemeth one that indeed believeth that it is good for us when we are afflicted by him and that all shall work together for good to us Speak not a repining word against him Job 1. 22. In all this Job sinned not nor charged God foolishly And speak not too pievishly and impatiently to those about you Though weakness incline you to it yet let the power of grace appear § 3. Direct 2. Let those that are about yoâ— see that you take the life to come for a reality and that Direct 2. you verily expect to live with Christ in joyes for ever Let them see this in your holy joy and confidence and your thankfulness to God for the
is through the faith of Christ that being made conformable unto his death I may attain to the Resurrection of the dead and may by him be presented without spot or blemish My God thou hast encouraged my fearful soul by the multitude of thy mercies as well as by thy promises to trust thee and yield it self to thee Thou hast filled up all my dayes with mercy Every place that I have lived in and every relation and all that I have had to do with in the world are the witnesses of thy Love and mercy to me Thy eyes beheld my substance being yet imperfect and all my members were written in thy Book My parents were instructed by thee to educate me and all things commanded by thee to serve for my preservation comfort and salvation Thou hast brought me forth in a land and age of mercies and caused me to hear and see the things which others have not seen or heard The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places My life hath not been spent in a howling wilderness nor in banishment from thy Sanctuary or the communion of thy Saints nor hath it been wholly consumed in darkness and sorrow and unserviceable barrenness But often have I heard the joyful sound and I have gone with the multitude to the house of God and there have seen the light of thy countenance and drank of the Rivers of thy pleasure even of the waters of life and have been solaced with the voice of joy and praise How oft have I cryed unto thee in my trouble and thou hast delivered me out of my distresses When for my folly and transgression I was afflicted thou broughtst me out of darkness and the shadow of death Thou renewedst my age as Hezekiahs and causedst the shadow of my Dyal to go back and hast set me at liberty to praise thee for thy Goodness and declare thy Psal. 107. 8. 15 Psal. 50. 15. 2 Cor. 1. 9 10. Psal. 23. Psal. 139. 17 18. Heb. 13. 5. John 13. 1. Psal 57. 10. 108. 4. 36. 5. 103. 17. 136. Psal. 63. 3. Phil. 1. 23. Luke 2. 29 30. 2 Cor. 1. 2 3 4 5 7 8. works to the children of men In the day of trouble I called upon thee and thou didst deliver me that I might glorifie thee Thou causedst me to receive the sentence of death that I might trust in God that raiseth the dead My Shepheard hath led me in his pleasant pastures by the silent streams He restored my soul and conducted me in the paths of righteousness How pretious are thy thoughts unto me O God! how great is the summ of them If I should count them they are more in number than the sand And will that mercy now forsake me which hath abounded to me and supported me so long Thou hast said I will never fail thee nor forsake thee Having loved thy own that are in the world thou wilt love them to the end For thy mercy is great and reacheth to the Heavens and it endureth for ever O therefore when I awake let me be with thee And as thy loving kindness is better than Life and to depart and be with Christ is far better than the best condition upon earth so let thy servant depart in peace his eye of faith beholding thy salvation And when my earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved let me have that building of God the house not made with hands eternal in the heavens Let my present burden of sin and suffering make me more earnestly to groan not to be unclothed but to be clothed upon that mortality may be swallowed up of life that being absent from the body I may be present with the Lord. And seeing this Cup may not pass from me and I must not look for the Chariot of Elias to carry me unto Heaven let thy Will be done and let me rest therein and let death be the gain and advantage of my soul And Phil. 1 21. 2 Cor. 4. 16 â—8 1 Kings 19. 4. while this outward man is perishing let the inner man be renewed from day to day For what am I better than my Fathers and all thy Saints and the generations of mankind that I should think of any other passage than this of Death to the world of immortality O let this fainting heart be glad and let my glory rejoyce and in Love and Ioy in Thankfulness and Praise let me pass into the world of Love and Ioy where Thanksgiving and Praise shall be my work for ever And though my flesh and heart will fail Psal. 73. 26. be thou the strength of my heart O God and my portion for ever Though I must walk through the valley of the shadow of death let me fear no evil But be thou still with me and let me be comforted by thy rod Psal. 23. 4 5 6. and staff Let the goodness and mercy which hath followed me thus far all my dayes receive me at the last that I may dwell with thee for ever For it is the will of my Redeemer that those which thou hast given him be with him where he is to behold the glory which thou hast given him And that his servants John 17. 24. John 12. 26. Acts 7. 59. Luke 23. 43. John 20. 17. Joh. 14. 1 2 3. Psal. 16. 11 12. should follow him that where he is there also may his servants be Amen Lord Iesus Good is thy Will and the Word which thou hast spoken Into thy hands I commend my Spirit which thou hast Redeemed Receive it and let me be with thee in Paradise O thou that hast called us thy Brethren when thou didst ascend to thy Father and our Father and to thy God and our God take up this poor unworthy soul to the mansions which thou hast prepared for us that I may be with thee where thou art And though this flesh must perish let it rest in hope and be but sowed as a grain of wheat till thy powerful Call shall raise it from the dust and this corruptible shall put on incorruption and this mortal shall put on immortality and this 1 Cor. 15. 53 54 55. natural body shall be raised a spiritual body and death shall be swallowed up in Victory For though I be dead my life is hid with Christ in God And when thou appearest who art my Life then let me appear with Col. 3. 3 4 5. 2 Thess. 1. 10 11. thee in glory O hasten that appearance and come with thy holy glorious Angels to be glorified in thy Saints and admired in and by Believers When thou wilt change our vile bodies and make them like to thy Glorious Body by the mighty working by which thou canst subdue even all things to thy self Hast Phil. 3. 21. Rev. 2â— 20 17 Eph. 5. 26 27. 1 Cor. 15. 45. Acts 3. 5. John 14. 19. Rev. 14. 13. Matth. 10. 30. Luke 21. 18. Heb. 12. 22 23 Rev. 1. 6. Rom. 11. 36. Rev.
from Vineyards and Wine as the Rechabites were nor every man to go forth to Preach in the garb as Christ sent the twelve and seventy Disciples Nor every man to administer or receive the Lords Supper in an upper room of a house in the Evening with eleven or twelve only c. nor every one to carry Pauls Cloak and Parchments nor go up and down on the messages which some were sent on And here in precepts about Worship you must know what is the thing primarily intended in the command and what it is that is but a subservient means For many Laws are universal and immutable as to the matter primarily intended which are but local and temporary as to the matter subservient and secondarily intended As the command of saluting one another with a holy Kiss and using Love feasts in their sacred Communion primarily intended the exercising and expressing holy Love by such convenient signes as were then in use and suitable to those times But that it be done by those particular signes was subservient and a local alterable Law as appeareth 1. In that it is actually laid down by Gods allowance 2. In that in other places and times the same signes have not the same signification and aptitude to that use at all and therefore would be no such expression of Love or else have also some ill signification So it was the first way of Baptizing to dip them overhead which was fit in that hot Countrey which in colder Countreys it would not be as being destructive to health and more against modesty Therefore it is plain that is was but a local alterable Law The same is to be said of not-eating things strangled and blood which was occasioned by the offence of the Jews and other the like This is the case in almost all precepts about the external worshipping gestures The thing that God commandeth universally is a humble reverent adoration of him by the mind and body Now the adoration of the mind is still the same but the bodily expression altereth according to the custome of Countreys In most Countreys kneeling or prostration are the expressions of greatest veneration and submission In some few Countreys it is more signified by sitting with the face covered with their hands In some it is signified best by standing kneeling is ordinarily most fit because it is the most common sign of humble reverence but where it is not so it is not fit The same we must say of other gestures and of habits The Women among the Corinthians were not to go uncovered because of the Angels 1 Cor. 11. 10. and yet in some places where long hair or covering may have a contrary signification the case may be contrary The very fourth Commandment however it was a perpetual law as to the proportion of time yet was alterable as to the seventh day Those which I call Universal Laws some call Moral But that 's no term of distinction but signifieth the common nature of all Laws which are for the Governing of our Manners Some call them Natural Laws and the other Positive But the truth is There are some Laws of Nature which are Universal and some that are particular as they are the Result of Universal or Particular Nature And there are some Laws of Nature that are perpetual ☜ which are the result of an unaliered foundation and there are some that are Temporary when it is See the Advertisement before my Book against Infidelity some Temporary alterable thing in Nature from whence the duty doth result So there are some Positive Laws that are Universal or unalterable during this World and some that are Local particular or temporary only § 24. Direct 13. Remember that whatever duty you seem obliged to perform the obligation still Direct 13. supposeth that it is not naturally impossible to you and therefore you are bound to do it as well as you can See Mr. Trumans book of Natural and Moral Impotency And when other mens force or your natural disability hindereth you from doing it as you would you are not therefore disobliged from doing it at all but the total omission is wâ—rse than the defective performance of it as the defective performance is worse than doing it more perfectly And in such a case the Defects which are utterly involuntary are none of yours imputatively at all but his that hindereth you unless as some other sin might cause that As if I were in a Countrey where I could have liberty to Read and Pray but not to Preach or to Preach only once a moneth and no more It is my duty to do so much as I can do as being much better than nothing and not to forbear all because I cannot do all Obj. But you must forbear no part of your duty Answ. True but nothing is my duty which is Object 1. naturally impossible for me to do Either I can do it or I cannot If I can I must supposing it a duty in all other respects but if I cannot I am not bound to it Obj. But it is not suffering that must deter you for that is a carnal reason and your suffering Object 2. may do more good than your preaching Answ. Suffering is considerable either as a pain to the flesh or as an unresistible hindrance of the work of the Gospel As it is meerly a pain to the flesh I ought not to be deterred by it from the work of God But as it forcibly hindereth me from that work as by Imprisonment death cutting out the tongue c. I may lawfully foresee it and by lawful means avoid it when it is sincerely for the work of Christ and not for the saving of the flesh If Paul foresaw that the Preaching of one more Sermon at Damascus was like to hinder his preaching any more because the Jews watcht the gates day and night to kill him it was Pauls duty to be let down by the wall in a basket and to escape and preach elsewhere Act. 9. 25. And when the Christians could not safely meet publickly they met in secret as Ioh. 19. 38. Act. 12. 12 c. whether Pauls suffering at Damascus for Preaching one more Sermon or his preaching more elsewhere was to be chosen the interest of Christ and the Gospel must direct him to resolve That which is best for the Church is to be chosen § 25. Direct 14. Remember that no material duty is formally a duty at all times that which Direct 14. is a duty in its season is no duty out of season Affirmative precepts bind not to all times except only to habits or the secret intention of our ultimate end so far as is sufficient to animate and actuate the means while we are waking and have the use of reason Praying and Preaching that are very great duties may be so unseasonably performed as to be sins If forbearing a prayer or Sermon or Sacrament one day or month be rationally like to procure
carnal mind is enmity against God and is not subject to his Law nor can be Rom. 8. 7. And they that are in the flesh cannot please God v. 8. And you may easily conceive what work will be made in the Ship when an enemy of the Owner hath subtilly possessed himself of the Pilots place He will charge all that are faithful as mutineers because they resist him when he would carry all away And if an enemy of Christ shall get to be Governour of one of his Regiments or Garrisons all that are not Traytors shall be called Traytors and cashiered that they hinder not the treason which he intendeth And as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the spirit even so it is now But what saith the Scripture cast out the bond-woman and her son c. Gal. 4. 29 30. It is not the sacred office of the Ministry nor the profession of the same religion that will cure the enmity of a carnal heart against both Holiness and the Holy seed The whole business of the world from age to age is but the management of that war proclaimed at sins first entrance into the World between the seed of the woman and the Serpent And none of the serpents seed are more cruel or more successful Gen. 3. 15. than those of them that creep into the Armies of Christ and especially that get the conduct of his Regiments Neither Brotherhood nor Unity of profest Religion would hold the hands of Poetae nunquam perturbarunt Respublicas Oratores non raro Buchoâ—tz malignant Cain from murdering his Brother Abel The same Religion and father and family reconciled not scoffing Ishmael to Isaac or prophane Esau to his brother Iacob The family of Christ and an Apostles office did not keep Iudas from being a Traytor to his Lord. If carnal men invade the Ministry they take the way of ease and honour and worldly wealth and strive for Dominion and who shall be the greatest and care not how great their Power and Iurisdiction is nor how little their profitable work is and their endeavour is to fit all matters of Worship and discipline to their ambitious covetous ends and the spiritual Worshipper shall be the object of their hate And is Acosta l. 6. c. 23. p. 579. Nothing so much hurteth this Church as a rabble of hirelings and self-seekers For what can natural men that scarce have the Spirit do in the cause of God A few in number that are excellent in vertue will more promote the work of God But they that come hither being humble and lovers of souls taking Christ for their pattern and bearing in their bodies his Cross and death shall most certainly find heavenly treasures and inestimable delights But when will this be When men cease to be men and to savour the things of men and to seek and gape after the things of men With men this is utterly impossible but with God all things are possible Because this is hard in the eyes of this people shall it therefore be hard in my eyes saith the Lord Zech. 10. pag. 580. I may say to some Ministers that cry out of the schismatical disobedience of the people as Acosta doth to to those that cryed out of the Indians dulness and wickedness It is long of the Teachers Deal with them in all possible love and tenderness away with Covetousness Lordliness and Cruelty give them the example of an upright life open to them the way of truth and teach them according to their capacity and diligently hold on in this way who ever thou art that art a Minister of the Gospel and saith he as ever I hope to enjoy thee O Lord Jesu Christ I am perswaded the harvest will be plentiful and joyful l. 4. p. 433. passim But saith he we quickly cease our labours and must presently have hasty and plenteous fruit But the Kingdom of God is not such Verily it is not such but as Christ hath told us like seed cast into the earth which groweth up by degrees we know not how p. 433 434. Hieroms case is many anothers Concivit odia perditorum Oderunt eum haeretici quia eos impugnare non desinit Oderunt Clerici quia vitam eorum insectatur crimina Sed plane eum boni omnes admirantur diligunt Posthumianus in Sulp. Severi Dialog 1. And Dial. 2. Martinus in Medio caetu conversatione populorum inter Clericos dissidentes inter Episcopos saevientes cum fere quotidianis scandalis huic atque inde premeretur inexpugnabili tamen adversus omnia virtute fundatus stetit Nec tamen huic crimini miscebo populares soli illum Clerici soli nesciunt Sacerdotes nec immerito Nosce illum invidi noluerunt quia si virtutes illius nossent suorum vitia cognovissent it any wonder if the Churches of Christ be torn by Schism and betrayed to prophaneness where there are such unhappy guides § 85. Direct 8. In a special manner take heed of pride Suspect it and subdue it in your selves Direct 8. and do what you can to bring it into disgrace with others Only by Pride cometh contention Prov. How the Jesuites have hereby distracted the Church read Mariana Archiâ—pisc Pragensis Censur de Bull. Iesâ—it Daâ— Hospital ad Reges c. Auâ— Ardingbelli Paradoxa Iesuitica Galindus Giraldus c. Arcana Iesuit 13. 10. I never yet saw one schism made in which Pride conjunct with Ignorance was not the cause nor never did I know one person forward in a schism to my remembrance but Pride was discernably his disease I do not here intend as the Papists to charge all with Schism or Pride that renounce not their understandings and choose not to give up themselves to a beastial subjection to Usurpers or their Pastors he that thinks it enough that his Teacher hath Reason and be a man instead of himself and so thinketh it enough that his Teacher be a Christian and Religious must be also content that his Teacher alone be saved But then he must not be the Teacher of such a damning way But by Pride I mean a plain over-valuing of his own understanding and Conceits and Reasoningâ— quite above all the Evidences of their worth and an undervaluing and contempt of the judgements and reasonings of far wiser men that had evidence enough to have evinced his folly and â—rror to a sober and impartial man Undoubtedly it is the Pride of Priests and people that hath so lâ—mensably in all ages â—orn the Church He that readeth the Histories of Schisms and Church-confusions and marketh the effects which this age hath shewed will no more doubt whether Pride were the cause than whether it was the wind that blew down Trees and houses when he seeth them one way overturned by multitudes where the tempest came with greatest force Therefore a Bishop must be no Nâ—vice lâ—st being lifted up with pride 〈◊〉
see how millions are there safely landed that once were in as dangerous a station as you are Through many tribulations and temptations they arrived at the Heavenly Rest Satan once did his worst against them They were tost on the Seas of this tempestuous world But they were kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation and so may you 1 Pet. 5. 1. § 19. Direct 19. When you would duly value all your present means and mercies and see whither Direct 19. they tend look up then to the souls with Christ and see whither the like mercy hath conducted them The poorest Cottage and the hardest fare are great mercies as they tend to endless blessedness This now and Heaven after is great though the thing in it self be never so small Heaven puts the value and signification upon all your mercies The wicked make Cyphers of their greatest blessings by separating them in their esteem and use from God and Heaven which is the measure of their estimate § 20. Direct 20. When you see Divisions among believers and hear one for this party and another Direct 20. for that and hear them bitterly censuring each other look up then to the Saints with Christ and think what perfect Love and Peace and Concord i◠among them Consider how unlike our factions and Schisms are to their fervent Love and Unity And how how unlike our jarring strifes and quarrels are to their harmonious Praise of God Remember in what work it is that they are so happily united even Love and Praise uncessant to Jehovah And then think whether it would not unite the Saints on earth to lay by their contendings for the preheminence in knowledge covered with the guilded name of Zeal for the Truth of God and to employ themselves in Love and Praise and to shew their emulation here in striving who shall Love God and each other with the more pure heart and fervent Love 1 Pet. 1. 22. and who shall Praise him with the most heavenly alacrity and delight Consider whether this work of blessed souls be not like to be more desirable and excellent than the work of self-conceited wrangling Sophisters And whether there be any danger of falling into Sects and Factions or falling out by emulations or contentions while we make this work of Love and Praise the matter of our religious converse And consider whether almost all the Schisms that ever vext the Church of God did not arise either by the Pastors striving who should be the greatest Luk. 22. 24 26. or by the rising up of some Sciolist or Gnostick proudly pretending to know more than others and to vindicate or bring to light some excellent Truth which others know not or oppose And when you see the hot contendings of each party about their pretended Orthodoxness or wisdom which Iam. 3. is purposely written against remember how the concord of those blessed souls doth shame this work and should make it odious to the heirs of Heaven § 21. Direct 21. When you are afraid of Death or would find more willingness to dye look up to Direct 21. the blessed souls with Christ and think that you are but to pass that way which all those souls have gone before you and to go from a world of enmity and vanity to the company of all those blessed spirits And is not their blessed state more desirable than such a vain vexatious life as this There is no malice nor slandering nor cruel persecuting no uncharitable censures contentions or divisions no ignorance nor unbelief nor strangeness unto God nothing but Holy Amiable and Delightful Joyn your selves daily to that Coelestial Society suppose your selves spectators of their Order Purity and Glory and Auditors of their harmonious Praises of Jehovah Live by faith in a daily familiarity with them say not that you want company or are alone when you may walk in the Streets of the Heavenly Ierusalem and there converse with the Prophets and Apostles and all the glorious Hosts of Heaven Converse thus with them in your Life and it will overcome the fear of death and make you long to be there with them Like one that stands by the River side and seeth his friends on the further side in a place of pleasure while his enemies are pursuing him at his back how gladly would he be over with them And it will embolden him to venture on the passage which all they have safely past before him Thus Death will be to us as the Red Sea to pass us safe to the Land of Promise while our pursuers are there overthrown and perish We should not be so strange to the World above if we thus by faith conversed with the blessed ones § 22. Direct 22. When you are overmuch troubled for the death of your Godly friends look up to Direct 22. that world of blessed souls to which they are translated and think whether it be not better for them to be there than here and whether you are not bound by the Law of Love to rejoyce with them that are thus exalted Had we but a sight of the world that they are in and the company that they are gone to we should be less displeased with the will of God in disposing of his own into so Glorious a state § 23. All these improvements may be made by a Believer of his daily converse with the souls above This is the Communion with them which we must hold on earth Not by Praying to them which God hath never encouraged us to do nor by praying for them For though it be lawful to pray for the Resurrection of their Bodies and the perfecting of their blessedness thereby yet it being a thing of absolute certainty as the day of Judgement is we must be very cautelous in the manner of our doing this lawful act it being a thing that their happiness doth not at all depend on and a thing which will-worshippers have shewed themselves so forward to abuse by stepping further into that which is unlawful as the horrid abuses of the Names and dayes and shrines and relicts of real or supposed Saints in the Papal Kingdom sadly testifieth But the necessary part of our Communion with the Saints in Heaven being of so great importance to the Church on Earth I commend it to the due consideration of the faithful whether our forgetfulness of it is not to be much repented of and whether it be not a work to be more seriously minded for the time to come § 24. And I must confess I know not why it should be thought unlawful to celebrate the memorial of the life or martyrdome of any extraordinary servant of God by an Anniversary solemnity on a set appropriate day It is but to keep the thankful remembrance of Gods mercy to the Church and sure the life and death of such is not the smallest of the Churches mercies here on earth If it be lawful on the 5 of November to celebrate the memorial of
Rom. 10. 15 1â— translate it Age it is the Age of the Church of the Messiah incarnate which is all one 4. Because it was a small part of the world comparatively that heard the Gospel in the Apostles dayes And the far greatest part of the world is without it at this day when yet God our Saviour would have all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth 5. Even where the Gospel hath long continued for the most part there are many still that are in infidelity And so great a work is not left without an appointed suitable means for its performance And if an Office was necessary for it in the first age it is not credible that it is left to private mens charity ever since 6. Especially considedering that private men are to be supposed insufficient 1. Because they are not educated purposely for it but usually for something else 2. Because that they have other Callings to take them up 3. Because they have no special obligation And that which is no mans peculiar work is usually left undone by all II. The peoples Call or Consent is not necessary to a Ministers reception of his Office in General nor for this part of his work in special But only to his Pastoral Relation to themselves 1. It is so in other functions that are exercised by skill The Patients or People make not a man a Physicion or a Lawyer but only choose what Physicion shall be their Physicion and what Lawyer shall be their Counsellor 2. If the peoples Call or Consent be necessary it is either the Infidels or the Churches Not the Infidels to whom he is to preach for 1. He is Authorized to preach to them as the Apostles were before he goeth to them 2. Their Consent is but a Natural-consequent-requisite for the Reception and success of their Teaching but not to the Authority which is pre-requisite 3. Infidels cannot do so much towards the making of a Minister of Christ. 4. Else Christ would have few such Ministers 5. If it be Infidels either all or some If some why those rather than others Or is a man made a Minister by every Infidel auditory that heareth him 2. Nor is it Christian people that must do this much to the making of a General Minister For 1. They have no such Power given for it in Nature or the Word of God 2. They are generally unqualified and unable for such a work 3. They are no where obliged to it nor can fitly leave their Callings for it Much less to get the abilities necessary to judge 4. Which of the people have this power Is it any of them or any Church of private men Or some one more than the rest Neither one nor all can lay any claim to it There is some reason why this Congregation rather than another should choose their own Pastors But there is no Reason nor Scripture that this Congregation choose a Minister to convert the World III. I conclude therefore that the Call of a Minister in General doth consist 1. Dispositively in the due Qualifications and â—nablement of the person 2. And the Necessity of the people with opportunity is a providential part of the Call 3. And the ordainers are the Orderly Electors and determineâ—s of the person that shall receive the power from Christ. 1. For this is part of the power of the Keyes or Church-Government 2. And Paul giveth this direction for exercising of this power to Timothy which sheweth the ordinary way of Calling 2 Tim. 2 Tim. 3. 6 7. Tâ—t 1. 5 6. 2. 2. And the things which thou hast heard of me among many witnesses the same commit thou to faithful men who shall be able to teach others also Act. 13. 1 2 3. There were in the Church at Antioch certain Prophets As they ministred to the Lord the Holy Ghost said separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them And when they had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them they sent them away And they being sent forth by the Holy Ghost departed In this whether it be to be called an Ordination or rather a Mission there is somewhat Ordinary that it be by men in office and somewhat extraordinary that it be by a special inspiration of the Holy Ghost And Timothy received his Gifts and Office by the Imposition of the hands of Paul and of the Presbytery 1 Tim. 4. 14. 2 Tim. 1. 6. 1 Tim. 5. 22. Lay hands suddenly on no man These instances make the case the clearer 1. Because it is certain that all that Governing power which is given by Christ to the Church under the name of the Keyes is given to the Pastors 2. Because there are no other competitors to lay a reasonable claim to it Quest. 19. Wherein consisteth the Power and Nature of Ordination And to whom doth it belong And is it an Act of Iurisdiction And is Imposition of hands necessary in it I. THis is resolved on the by before 1. Ordination performeth two things 1. The designation election or determination of the person who shall receive the Office 2. The Ministerial Investiture of him in that office which is a Ceremonial delivery of Possession As a servant doth deliver possession of a house by delivering him the Key who hath before received the power or Right from the Owner 2. The office delivered by this Election and Investiture is the sacred Ministerial office in General to be after exercised according to particular Calls and opportunities As Christ called the Apostles and the Spirit called the ordinary general Teachers of those times such as Barnabas Silas Silvanus Timothy Epaphroditus Apollo c. And as is before cited 2 Tim. 2. 2. As a man is made in General a Licensed Physicion Lawyer c. 3. This Ordination is Ordinis gratiâ necessary to order and therefore so far necessary as Order is necessary which is Ordinarily when the greater interest of the substantial duty or of the Thing Ordered is not against it As Christ determined the case of Sabbath keeping and not eating the Shew-bread As the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath and the end is to be preferred before the separable means so ordination was instituted for order and order for the thing ordered and for the work of the Gospel and the good of souls and not the Gospel and mens souls for that Order Therefore when 1. The death 2. Distance 3. Or malignity of the Ordainers depriveth a man of Ordination these three substitutes may notifie to him the Will of God that he is by him a person called to that office 1. Fitness for the works in Understanding Willingness and Ability 2. The Necessity of souls 3. Opportunity II. The power of ordaining belongeth not 1. To Magistrates 2. Or to private men either single or as the body of a Church but 3. To the Senior Pastors of the Church whether Bishops or Presbyters
your labour is in vain How easie is it for you to overlook some one thing among a multitude that must be seen about the Causes and Cure of diseases unless God shall open it to you and give you a clear discerning and an universal observation And when twenty considerable things are noted a mans life may be lost for want of your discerning one point more What need have you of the help of God to bring the fittest remedies to your memory And much more to bless them when they are administred as the experience of your daily practice may inform you where Atheism hath not made men fools § 5 Direct 5. Let your continual observation of the fragility of the flesh and of mans mortality Direct 5. make you more spiritual than other men and more industrious in preparing for the life to come and greater contemners of the vanities of this world He that is so frequently among the sick and a spectator of the dead and dying is utterly unexcusable if he be himself unprepared for his sickness or for death If the heart be not made better when you almost dwell in the house of mourning it is a bad and deplorate heart indeed It is strange that Physicions should be so much suspected of Atheism as commonly they are and Religio medici should be a word that signifieth irreligiousness Sure this conceit was taken up in some more irreligious Age or Countrey For I have oft been very thankful to God in observing the contrary even how many excellent pious Physicions there have been in most Countreys where the purity of Religion hath appeared and how much they promoted the work of Reformation such as Crato Platerus Erastus and abundance more that I might name And in this Land and Age I must needs bear witness that I have known as many Physicions Religious proportionably as of any one profession except the Preachers of the Gospel But as no men are more desperately wicked than those that are wicked after pious education and under the most powerful means of their reformation so it is very like that those Physicions that are not truly good are very bad because they are bad against so much light and so many warnings And from some of these it 's like this censorious Proverb came And indeed mans nature is so apt to be affected with things that are unusual and to lose all sense of things that are grown common that no men have more need to watch their hearts and be afraid of being hardened than those that are continually under the most quickening helps and warnings For it is very easie to grow customary and sensless under them and then the danger is that there are no better means remaining to quicken such a stupid hardened heart Whereas those that enjoy such helps but seldom are not so apt to lose the sense and benefit of them The sight of a sick or dying man doth usually much awaken those that have such sights but seldom But who are more hardened than Souldiers and Sea men that live continually as among the dead when they have twice or thrice seen the fields covered with mens Carkasses they usually grow more obdurate than any others And this is it that Physicions are in danger of and should most carefully avoid But certainly an Atheistical or ungodly Physicion is unexcusably blind To say as some do that they study nature so much that they are carryed away from God is as if you should say They study the work so much that they forget the workman or They look so much on the Book that they overlook the sense or that They study medicine so much that they forget both the patient and his health To look into Nature and not see God is as to see the creatures and not the light by which we see them or to see Trees and Houses and not to see the Earth that beareth them For God is the Creating Conserving Dirigent Final Cause of all Of him and Through him and To him are all things He is All in all And if they know not that they are the subjects of this God and have immortal souls they are ill proficients in the study of Nature that know no better the nature of man To boast of their acquisitions in other Sciences while they know not what a Man is nor what they are themselves is little to the honour of their understandings You that live still as in the fight of death should live as in the sight of another world and excell others in spiritual wisdom and holiness and sobriety as your advantages by these quickening helps excell § 6. Direct 6. Exercise your Compassion and Charity to mens souls as well as to their Bodies and Direct 6. speak to your patients such words as tend to prepare them for their change You have excellent opportunities if you have hearts to take them If ever men will hear it is when they are sick and if ever they will be humbled and serious it is when the approach of death constraineth them They will hear that counsel now with patience which they would have despised in their health A few serious words about the danger of an unregenerate state and the necessity of holiness and the use of a Saviour and the everlasting state of Souls for ought you know may be blest to their conversion and salvation And it is much more comfortable for you to save a soul than to cure the body Think not to excuse your selves by saying It is the Pastors duty For though it be theirs ex officio it is yours also ex charitate Charity bindeth every man as he hath opportunity to do good to all and especially the greatest good And God giveth you opportunity by casting them in your way The Priest and Levite that past by the wounded man were more to be blamed for not relieving him than those that never went that way and therefore saw him not Luk. 10. 32. And many a man will send for the Physicion that will not send for the Pastor And many a one will hear a Physicion that will despise the Pastor As they reverence their Landlords because they hold their estates from them so do they the Physicion because they think they can do much to save their lives And alas in too many places the Pastors either mind not such work or are insufficient for it or else stand at ods and distance from the people so that there is but too much need of your charitable help Remember therefore that he that converteth a sinner from the errour of his way shall save a soul from death and shall hide a multitude of sins Jam. 5. 20. Remember that you are to speak to one that is going into another world and that must be saved now or never And that all that ever must be done for his salvation must be presently done or it will be too late Pity humane nature and harden not your hearts against a man
Arabick and sending it to Indostan and Persia. And what excellent labour hath good Mr. Iohn Eliots with some few assistants bestowed these twenty years and more in New England where now he hath translated and Printed the whole Scriptures in their Americane tongue with a Catechism and Call to the Unconverted by the help of a press maintained from hence 2. The attempt of Restoring the Christian Churches to their primitive purity and Unity according to mens several opportunities is a most excellent and desirable work which though the ignorance and wickedness of many and the implacableness and bloodiness of the carnal proud domineering part and the too great alienation of some others from them do make it so difficult as to be next to desperate at the present yet is not to be cast off as desperate indeed For great things have been done by wise and valiant attempts Princes might do very much to this if they were both wise and willing And who knoweth but an age may come that may be so happy The means and method I would willingly describe but that this is no fit place or time 3. The planting of a learned able holy concordant Ministry in a particular Kingdom and setling the primitive Discipline thereby is a work also which those Princes may very much promote whose hearts are set upon it and who set up no contrary interest against it But because these lines are never like to be known to Princes unless by way of accusation it is private mens works which we must speak to 4. It is a very good work to procure and maintain a worthy Minister in any of the most ignorant Parishes in these Kingdoms of which alas how many are there where the skilful preaching of the Gospel is now wanting or to maintain an assistant in populous Parishes where one is not able to do the work or by other just means to promote this service 5. It is a very good work to set up Free-Schools in populous and in ignorant places especially in Wales that all may be taught to read and some may be prepared for the Universities 6. It is an excellent work to â—ull out some of the choicest wits among the poorer sort in the Countrey Schools who otherwise would wither for want of culture and to maintain them for Learning in order to the Ministry with some able godly Tutor in the University or some Countrey Minister who is fit and vacant enough thereunto 7. It is an excellent work to give among poor ignorant people Bibles and Catechisms and some plain and godly Books which are most fitted to their use But it were more excellent to leave a setled revenew for this use naming the Books and choosing meet Trustees that so the Rent might every year furnish a several Parish which would in short time be a very extensive benefit and go through many Countries 8. It is a very good work to set poor mens children Apprentices to honest religious Masters where they may at once get the blessing to their souls of a godly education and to their bodies of an honest way of maintenance 9. It will not be unacceptable to God to relieve some of the persons or poor children of those very many hundred faithful Ministers of Christ who are now silenced and destitute of maintenance many having nothing at all but what charity sendeth them to maintain themselves and desolate families who were wont to exercise charity to the bodies and souls of others Read Matth. 25. Gal. 6. 5 6 7 8. 10. It is a good work of them who give stocks of money or yearly rents to be lent for five or six or seven years to young Tradesmen at their setting up upon good security choosing good Trustees who may choose the fittest persons And if it be a rent it will still increase the stock and if any should break the loss of it may be born 11. It would be a very good work for Landlords to improve their interest with their Tenants to further at once their bodily comfort and salvation To hire them by some abatement at their Rent dayes to learn Catechisms and read the Scripture and good Books in their families and give the Pastor an account of their proficience Whether the Law will enable them to bind them to any such thing in their Leases I cannot tell 12. And the present work of Charity for every one is to relieve the most needy which are next at hand To know what poor families are in greatest want and to help them as we are able and to provoke the rich to do that which we cannot do our selves and to beg for others And still to make use of bodily relief to further the good of their souls by seconding all with spiritual advice and help Quest. 4. In what order are works of Charity to be done And whom must we prefer when we are Quest. 4. unable to accommodate all Answ. 1. The most publick works must be preferred before private 2. Works for the soul caeteris paribus before works for the body And yet bodily benefits in order of time must oft go first as preparations to the other 3. Greatest necessities caeteris paribus must be supplyed before lesser The saving of anothers life must be preferred before your own less necessary comforts 4. Your own and families wants must caeteris paribus be supplyed before strangers even before some that you must love better Because God hath in point of provision and maintenance given you a nearer charge of your selves and families than of others 5. Nature also obligeth you to prefer your kindred before strangers if there be a parity as to other reasons 6. And caeteris paribus a good man must be preferred before a bad 7. And yet that charity which is like to tend to the good of the soul as well as of the body is to be preferred And in that case oft-times a bad man is to be preferred when a greater good is like to be the effect 8. A friend caeteris paribus is to be preferred before an enemy But not when the Good is like to be greater which will follow the relieving of an enemy Many other rules might be given but they are laid down already Tom. 1. Cap. where I treat of Good Works whither I refer you Quest. 5. Should I give in my life time or at my death Quest. 5. Answ. According as it is like to do most good But none should needlesly delay Both is best Quest. 6. Should one devote or set by a certain part of daily incomes Quest. 6. Quest. 7. What proportion is a man bound to give to the poor Quest. 7. Answ. These two Questions having answered in a Letter to Mr. Thomas Gouge now printed and the Book being not in many hands I will here recite that Letter as it is published Most Dear and very much Honoured Brother EVen the Philosopher hath taught me so to esteem you who said that He is likest
works of charity both because the Tythes are now more appropriate to the maintenance of the Clergy and because as is aforesaid the people give them not out of their own I confess if we consider how Decimation was used before the Law by Abraham and Iacob and established by the Law unto the Iews and how commonly it was used among the Gentiles and last of all by the Church of Christ it will make a considerate man imagine that as there is still a Divine Direction for one day in seven as a necessary proportion of Time to be ordinarily consecrated to God besides what we can spare from our other dayes so that there is something of a Divine Canon or direction for the Tenth of our revenews or increase to be ordinarily consecrated to God besides what may be spared from the rest And whether those Tythes that are none of your own and cost you nothing be now to be reckoned to â—rivate men as any of their Tenths which they themselves should give I leave to your consideratiâ—â— Amongst Augustines works we find an opinion that the Devils were the Tenth part of the Angels and that man is now to be the Tenth order among the Angels the Saints filling up the place that the Devils fell from and there being nine orders of Angels to be above us and that in this there is some ground of our paying Tenths and therefore he saith that Haec est Domini justissima consuetudo ut si tu illi decimam non dederis tu ad decimam revocaberis id est daemonibus qui sunt decima pars angelorum associaberis Though I know not whence he had this opinion it seemeth that the devoting of a tenth part ordinarily to God is a matter that we have more than a humane Direction for 15. In times of extraordinary necessities of the Church or State or Poor there must be extraordinary bounty in our Contributions As if an enemy be ready to invade the Land or if some extraordinary work of God as the Conversion of some Heathen Nations do require it or some extraordinary persecution and distress befall the Pastours or in a year of famine plague or war when the necessities of the poor are extraordinary The tenths in such cases will not suffice from those that have more to give Therefore in such a time the Primitive Christians sold their possessions and laid down the price at the feet of the Apostles In one word an honest charitable heart being presupposed as the root or fountain and prudence being the discerner of our duty the Apostles general Rule may much satisfie a Christian for the proportion 1 Cor. 16. 2. Let every one of you lay by him in store as God hath prospered him And 2 Cor. 8. 12. According to that a man hath though there be many intimations that ordinarily a Tenth part at least is requisite III. Having thus resolved the question of the quota pars or proportion to be given I shall say a little to the question Whether a man should give most in his life time or at his Death Answ. 1. It is certain that the best work is that which is like to do most good 2. But to make it best to us it is necessary that we do it with the most self-denying holy charitable mind 3. That caeteris paribus all things else being equal the present doing of a good work is better than to defer it 4. That to do good only when you dye because then you can keep your wealth no longer and because then it costeth you nothing to part with it and because then you hope that this shall serve instead of true Repentance and Godliness this is but to deceive your selves and will do nothing to save your souls though it do never so much good to others 5. That he that sinfully neglecteth in his life time to do good if he do it at his death from true repentance and Conversion it is then accepted of God though the sin of his delay must be lamented 6. That he that delayeth it till Death not out of any selfishness backwardness or unwillingness but that the work may be the better and do more good doth better than if he hastened a lesser good As if a man have a desire to set up a Free School for perpetuity and the money which he hath is not sufficient if he stay till his Death that so the improvement of the money may increase it and make it enough for his intended work this is to do a greater good with greater self-denial For 1. He receiveth none of the increase of the money for himself 2. And he receiveth in his life time none of the praise or thanks of the work So also if a man that hath no Children have so much Land only as will maintain him and desireth to give it all to charitable uses when he dyeth this delay is not at all to be blamed because he could not sooner give it and if it be not in vain-glory but in love to God and to good works that he leaveth it it is truly acceptable at last So that all good works that are done at death are not therefore to be undervalued nor are they rejected of God but sometimes it falleth out that they are so much the greater and better works though he that can do the same in his life time ought to do it IV. But though I have spent all these words in answering these Questions I am fully satisfied that it is very few that are kept from doing good by any such doubt or difficulty in the case which stalls their judgements but by the power of sin and want of grace which leaveth an unwillingness and backwardness on their hearts Could we tell how to remove the impediments in mens wills it would do more than the clearest resolving all the cases of Conscience which their judgements seem to be unsatisfied in I le tell you what are the impediments in your way that are harder to be removed than all these difficulties and yet must be overcome before you can bring men to be like true Christians rich in good works 1. Most men are so sensual and so selfish that their own flesh is an insatiable gulf that devoureth all and they have little or nothing to spare from it to good uses It is better cheap maintaining a family of temperate sober persons than one fleshly person that hath a whole litter of vices and lusts to be maintained So much a year seemeth necessary to maintain their pride in needless curiosity and bravery and so much a year to maintain their sensual sports and pleasures and so much to please their throats or appetites and to lay in provision for Feavers and Dropsies and Coughs and Consumptions and an hundred such diseases which are the natural progeny of gluttony drunkenness and excess and so much a year to maintain their Idleness and so of many other vices But if one of these persons have the Pride