are in me and I think by presenting my self before God to be bettered and to get more quickening and enlarging a heart more prepared to seek and to see God in all my ways but I find still a crooked spirit and a heart unwrought upon I get no good by it But is it so indeed dost thou get no good at no time then there is no life in you certainly thou art dead if thou get no good from him that is all good But yet there are that get good that know it not Be not discouraged but endeavor to have your eyes set toward God and toward him alway One Cause more I shall name why this Duty is so much neglected and omitted and that 's this That the heart is set upon some other object Observe this For where the heart is set the thoughts of the heart run out and are poured forth You have got something that pleaseth you more then God and that hath entertainment and place in your understandings Where a mans treasure is 't is Christs rule Mat. 6.21 there will the heart be also If God be in your hearts he will be in your eyes if you love him you will mind him what you mind most you love most Love makes the mind quick in motion and strong in resting on the thing whereon 't is set They that are taken with the glory of divine goodness cannot keep themselves from the remembrance of it nay they will force on themselves and spur up all their powers unto it Praise the Lord O my Soul and all that is within me bless his holy Name Praise the Lord O my Soul and forget not all his benefits Psal 103.1 2. If you would mind mercies more you would mind more the God of mercies If you did remember the sweetness and fulness of this stream of grace by which you are maintained you would eye more the fountain from whence they flow and if you would get your selves under the engagement of this love it would constrain you that you could not live forgetters of God but your eye would turn readily toward him If we were sensible of our engagements could we deny God that attendance that he calls for from us as his servants Could we deny him dwelling in his own house Could we shut the doors of our hearts against him that is the place where he should rest Could we deny him communion who is our Lord who is our Husband who is our Friend and Father A heart under the effectual impress and strong touch of divine grace and mercy will not be able to keep from minding of him David was a man that had a strong touch of this and therefore saith he in Psal 145.2 I will praise thee O Lord my King and I will bless thy Name for ever and ever Every day will I bless thee and I will praise thy Name for ever and ever c. Where bonds of love take hold they bind to God as well as draw Another thing is Keep your hearts in a lively sense of your own necessities You need much The world groans whence is it it is from want You want much even they that have received much want much and you want nothing so much as God and here your wants are great and constant and it were good you did always live in the sense of this want Can a hungry man forget his bread Can the heart that pants for thirst forget the river Can a man in bonds forget freedom Can a child in distress forget a father in honour and wealth And if you lived in the sense of your necessities could you forget God that is the fountain and he by whom all your wants are to be supplyed according to his riches in glory by Jesus Christ Again Keep your hearts pure and then you will be meet for this work Guilt brings fear and fear brings torment The natural effect of guilt is flying and hiding from God and dying in our selves Adam would not be seen when he had sinned David was afraid to come before God when under guilt In Psal 32. see how he did contend with fear Go saith Conscience and fall down before that God against whom thou hast sinned I dare not saith David I am afraid to stand in his presence he saith it was his torment for day and night thy hand was heavy upon me my moisture was turned into the drought of summer so in vers 5. I said I will confess my sins Fear said Do not but saith David I will do this But this is sure a man that hath a spirit that is sullied by sin a spirit that hath guilt upon it a man that is under the power of an accusing Conscience that man will be afraid of God as a Prisoner of the Judg And certainly sometimes if God did not by a mighty power draw in his people they would rather hazard their eternal life then look up when they have lift up their heel against him so dreadful is the sight of God that it exceeds the strength of any creature not only the natural strength but also the spiritual It is with man in this case as with servants when they have committed some notorious fault against their Master away they run forsake their service and Master too This is the disposition of man when he hath rebelled against God he is apt to take a run from him and go with those that wander from God and live without God in the world See what is said in 1 Sam. 12.20 The people sinned and Samuel said unto the people Fear not ye have done all this wickedness yet turn not aside from following the Lord but serve the Lord with all your hearts and turn not aside for then shall you go after vain things that cannot profit nor deliver for they are vain For the Lord will not forsake his people c. He saw such a disposition in them that through discouragement of heart finding themselves in sin they were ready to sink and fall off from their attendance and service unto God and therefore he gives this counsel by no means to harken to this suggestion of an evil and a torturing spirit Let me add this as another means That you must pray for sanctification of mind What a strange wilde thing is the mind of man by nature Sanctification is the taming the composing the ordering and seasoning of the understanding it is the bringing of the mind into a right frame and the setting of it in its proper course until that be it lies open for all comers all the powers of darkness snatch and catch and rend it in pieces and bear it away and every vanity commands it but when grace comes that appropriates it unto God so that it becomes the Lords Therefore pray for Sanctification which is the induction of a new nature into the spirits of a man and a new propensity so that as naturally it had its tendency towards vanity now it will have its tendency toward
THREE TREATISES Being the Substance of sundry DISCOURSES VIZ. I. The Fixed Eye or the Mindful Heart on Psal 25.15 II. The Principal Interest or the Propriety of the Saints in God on Micah 7.7 III. Gods Interest in Man Natural and Acquired on Psal 119.4 By that Judicious and Pious Preacher of the Gospel Mr JOSEPH SYMONDS M. A. late Vice-provost of Eaton Colledg LONDON Printed by J Macock for LUKE FAVVN and are to be sold at his Shop at the sign of the Parrot in Pauls Church-yard M.DC.LIII The Pourtraiture of Mr. Joseph Symonds Late Vice Prouost of Eaton Colledge Aetat Suae 50. To all that desire to live godly in CHRIST JESUS IT is not unknown to very many of Gods people in this Nation with what entire affection and happy success the pious Authour of these Meditations now asleep in Jesus laid out himself in the service of the Gospel Divers of you sate somtimes under the shadow of his Ministry with great delight And of those who had not the enjoyment of him but in more removed distances what serious eye ever read as it ought that truly incomparable piece The Deserted Souls Case and Cure and was not thereby enlightned startled humbled lifted up nearer to God Or what good heart for that end that it might be better duly perused his later piece Of Faith and Sight but it was by increased faith and its just appendages more fitted for sight The Holy Spirit was his spring and plentiful emanations from thence filled his Cistern and made him free to communication He dwelt in the presence of Christ d so was at home in Heavenly Negotiations and the content that he had there made him delight to stand still between Christ and his people to receive and give though he gave away his own life withall And when he perceived the shadow of the evening to be stretched forth upon him they did nothing to him but only provoke him to make more haste in the finishing of his work Those holy Tapers which receive their light from the golden Lamp of the Sanctuary shine and burn down to the socket and are burning and shining lights thereto In his wearinesses and weaknesses grown constant in his later time when the effects of his pains made strong sollicitations to desist it was an expression which he often used with pleasance to his friends Yet praying and preaching is too good work to be weary of In the continuance of it he poured forth himself as a drink-offering to Christ upon the service of his Saints and so passed to eternal life through the best forms of death And indeed that way as is roported of Moses God doth kiss away the souls of his Servants But that he might prevent death he took much pains with his own pen besides constant expence of mony for the assistance of another that his love in permanent testimonies might out-live his life and the first neglects of his hearers He knew well how precious discourses are lost to the inconsiderate part of men and women who either do not give due heed while a Sermon is preached and so take it not into their understandings and hearts or else cannot remember it having heard it but once Of his good will to such he hath left many evidences which will be produced if God pleases as soon as time health and other work will give leave to make up the Chasin's and mend other errours of the writer in those copies which were taken from the Pulpit and were not corrected by himselfe For the present it was judged meet to print these three small Tracts The first touching Spiritual remembrance of God as a most seasonable praelibation This being a time when a careless Devil hath after too eminent a manner possessed a multitude of Professours and many Christians have recklesly lost Jesus Christ in the crowd of worldly affections designes diversions The aim of this is to quicken all that have the root of eternal life in them to more frequent Addresses of Soul to God and to rivet them in contentful abode and holy reposes in him The Second is an excellent discovery of the Saints interest in God in which all holy souls may see how happy they are or may be in God their God The Third holds forth Gods interest in us by which as by a true glass we may learn to reflect upon God all his goodness and love contained in the former Treatise if it be also revealed in our hearts and so God will be to us as he is to all true Christians the beginning and end of our life All which Discourses the Godly Reader will find enrich'd with many clear descriptions of heavenly truths many rational considerations which in way of Exhortation do strike fitly and weightily upon those capable principles which God hath put into the soul as Ears for him to take hold of both with very lovely representations and right dreadful terrours and as he goes up and down he will meet methodicall and sure directions like benigne Guides telling the way of happy life to all the children of wisdom and truth So you have a short account of what you may find in these papers Be their Patronage the living influence of the all-quickning Spirit who only is able to make these and all other well-ordered tendencies effectual to their desirable ends and who can protect them from unprofitable reading and forgetful neglects which are the wrongful abuses and unjust imprisonment of the most useful truths I who in this matter do only carry the staff of Elisha which he hath left behind do and shall pray that it may not only be laid upon the child which is ready to dye but that this Spirit would joyn himself to it and make it the ministration of life even the beauty and bands of God upon the spirits of his own That the misplaced eye of some Reader may be set right and then fixed that some heart may be undeceived And Oh that the time were come when no Child of God would write his name in the earth which to do is to be cursed and to make the Divels sport Alas whil'st we through their false representations and cozening impulses sell our comfort our life our soul for cheap things at easie rates do they not laugh do they not insult Though it is a poor sport and proper only to Divels to rejoyce in the follies and sorrows of humanity The Lord Jesus who came to break the power of spiritual wickednesses drive them out of the souls of men and women and if they must have leave to enter any where let it be onely into swine The Lord appear more to the Inhabitants of this world that they may see the glory of truth and be transformed into its Image delivered into the spirit and life of truth and out of the power of detaining falshoods and seducing vanities the chains of evil spirits Then the capacity of the children of men so empty hungry and sore distressed though
am still with Thee The mind may slip from God and sometime be taken up with other things but cannot be long kept from him because God is its Center and it 's natural for a holy mind to move toward God as for a needle touch'd with a Load-stone to point toward the North Pole Psal 16.8 I have set the Lord alway before me This was the practise of Christ our Head Acts 2. It 's applyed to him though spoken by David as the Type You and I may suspect our hearts if there be an elongation of our minds from God if our minds be scattered up and down the world If our business be not with him we have reason to look sadly upon our selves for where God hath no place with us wee have none with him A good man must be with God he hath many things puts him upon it and inclines him to it he wants much and therefore cannot forbear Can a man forget to drink that is athirst can a man forget to eat his meat that is hungry Certainly when David Psal 102.4 saith He forgot to eat his bread sorrow had taken away his stomack that he found not the want of his meat but a man that feels his want cannot forget it neither can a man forget God that lives in the sensible want of God his Soul is still breathing after God Love will send out a mans thoughts and not suffer a man to live at home but to be where it is best of all to be Can a Bridegroom forget his Bride or a Bride her attire Jerem. 3.32 Men cannot forget what they love Can a mother forget her childe Isai 49.14 and can a man forget God that loves God There 's a necessity that a man should be minding what he loves he will send his understanding on errands to Heaven that it may bring him matter of delight from the Visions of God to refresh his Soul And not onely so but Christ awakens the heart and calls it forth Indeed were it left to us should we have no more heavenly-mindedness and meditations of God then our own spirits bring forth it would be little or none but Christ calls to the spirits of his people as he called to John Come up hither and see he knocks at the door that we may open and go forth with him The King led me into his wine celler Cant. 1. She was there but how came she in the King led me Christ will not be long from his if their hearts come not up to him he will come into them and if he be there all is taken up with attending upon him as you may see abundantly by experience Though the heart stands still like a Clock when the plummets are off and the wheels move not yet when Christ comes in he puts all into motion If a Loadstone be cast among many Needles though they did he still yet now how do they all move and hang about it So all the affections run towards him and the thoughts go out like motes in the Sun the mind is at work hard The presence of Christ not only excites the mind but contracts it and makes the working of the mind more strong It 's reported of the Flower de luce That when the Sun goes down it opens and scatters it self abroad but when the Sun appears it shuts and contracts it self There is in the presence of Christ such a contracting of the heart towards himself Mary when she saw Christ though her mind were scattered before and about the Sepulchre yet now â—t concenters in Christ A man that loves God cannot live in a course of forgetfulness of God either want brings him or love constrains him or Christ draws him here cannot be a lusting alienation of mind in those that belong to God CHAP. IV. Disconformity to the forementioned Principles a great fault in Christians The Discovery of it Slumbering Eyes and wandering Hearts â— Exerâ—ise HAving spoken something to the opening of the thing I shall now endevor that you and I may lay our selves to this pattern and compare our selves with this Rule Do you thus mind God Let me ask you where your Eyes are The truth is the Eyes of the whole World are misplaced all the World either wholly dwell out of God or extreamly wander from God all sorts of men are extreamly guilty of notorious forgetfulness of God and of this God complains and that often and that not only in reference to the dead and dark part of the world who have eyes and see not but are like Images but with respect to his own My people my people have forgotten me days without number Ier. 2.32 negligently have they suffered me to be out of their minds and that for a long time My work now shall be to lay before you the Fault and the Causes of it The fault with respect to the godly and ungodly that both may see how guilty they stand and may see whence it is that their understandings are so alienated and estranged from God As for the godly their frequent excursions from God their inordinate affections to the world their sad dejections of spirit their many withdrawings and a world of these are too clear and deplorable demonstrations that their eyes are not always upon God The Fault I 'le express in these four things 1. In not sending out the understanding toward God not pointing of the mind towards its Maker The mind of man is a nimble thing nothing is of that agility it 's the swiftest creature God hath made next the Angels yet towards God it must be moved directed ordered and pointed For though the way on high was natural yet man not keeping his first state it 's now become a way hardly passable that the Soul cannot walk it of it self neither can it dwell on high more then we can live in the Ayr without the drawing and holding of divine Power I have written saith the Apostle 2 Pet. 3.1 to stir up your pure minds to awaken you 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and it was but need See how David calls upon himself Psal 103. Praise the Lord O my Soul and forget not all his benefits be sure to remember God Psal 5.3 In the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee or I will set it in order I will order my self in my addresses to Thee And in Psal 57.8 Awake my glory Though his spirit was holy and set towards God yet it had need to be called on that it might be put forward in a right motion towards God and answer the voyce that calls Come up hither Awakening is a word imports rouzing 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as birds that provoke their young ones by flight to make use of their wings or as men call one upon another to their business Judg. 5.12 Awake awake Deborah awake awake utter a song Men do not thus call on themselves It 's a great fault that a man loseth that watch and that
command over his spirit which he should have so that his mind either stands still as a lake or if it move it runs at waste as indeed a mans mind doth if it be not toward God and for God A great fault it is when men take not pains with themselves as the Prophet complains Isai 64.7 No man stirs up himself to take hold on God It 's said in Exod. 35.28 They came every one whose heart stir'd him up Your hearts had need be stir'd up else they will not do their work Is it fit that so noble a faculty then which there is none under Heaven more glorious as that understanding which God hath entrusted you withall should be no more improved Was this golden Candlestick given you for any other light then that which is from above that may shew you the way to union with God and enjoyment of him Were these golden Cabinets given you and have you the keys of them that you should keep them empty when you might fill them with heavenly treasure which is invaluable David calls his Soul his glory you stain the crown of your glory when you make such glorious creatures to lacquey after every creature which should be in attendance upon God like Angels in the presence of their Father When the mind runs after vanity you become vain Jer. 2. What iniquity have your fathers found in me that they run far from me and walk after vanity and are become vain The vain out-goings of your minds and spirits will make you vain yea worse then nothing What injury do you do your selves that have such nimble winged messengers that can mount up to the highest Heavens can walk with Angels can lodg themselves in the bosom of the glorious God can present all your Cases to him can bring back again reports of mercy to you if you use them not Do you not see how God is sending out to you continually The thoughts of his heart are Love eternal Love and the fruits of his Love are always sent out like the beams of the Sun He hath sent out his own Son and will not you send out your thoughts towards him Will not you order your thoughts toward him who hath directed his greatest Love towards you What is your life but a continual emanation and emission of divine Love And is God thus flowing forth to you and will you stand still and not have your minds runing out to him 2. In the next place As this is a fault that there is not that sending out of the thoughts toward God and that setting of the mind to this work so this is another fault that there is not a bending of the mind in this work Oftentimes the mind looks up but it 's so feeble that a mans thoughts are like an arrow shot from a Bow weakly bent which reacheth not the mark It 's wise counsel that the Wise-man gives Whatsoever thine hand findeth to do do it with all thy might I am sure in nothing more it concerns us to act with all our might then when we act towards God in whom all our life is 1 Chron. 22.19 Now set your hearts and souls to seek the Lord your God This is our work 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 give your hearts to act with life and vigor when you go to take into your eyes the greatness of that glory which you hear of God The Apostle's phrase is Have the loyns of your mind girt when you are upon this work I ask you that question which Christ put to some in another case What went you out to see When you crawl and move as if you had no heart nor spirits whom go you forth to see What him that is the Lord of Glory the only Potentate What are such heavy and lazy aspects to take in such a Glory You see in what large streams your thoughts fly forth to other things and are you only languishing weak and feeble in things of so great concernment Mal. 1.14 Cursed be the deceiver that hath in his flock the sound and the strong but offers the blind and lame Certainly this is the way to procure a curse to be so exceeding remiss in your addresses to God hence it is you get no more Then God comes most to the heart when the eyes are most set upon him The child that draws with strength is soonest filled The Brests of Consolation are full but therefore you are empty and complain because you bend not your selves to draw from the Wells of Salvation You take not pains with your selves to make your way to God lively 3. As this is a fault not to send our your minds toward God and not to bend your minds to the work so this is another the not binding of your minds to it You should not only go to God but stay with him The right minding of God is not a transient glance and sudden cast of the eye that is presently wheel'd off from God again Psal 143.5 I remember the days of old I meditate on all thy works I remember them and not only bring them to remembrance but I meditate on them my mind talks of them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is the force of the word I muse and stand looking on the works of thy hands this is that which fires the heart when a mans eye is fixed on God Psal 39.4 5. My heart was hot within me while I was musing the fire kindled then spake I with my tongue c. Indeed that is a season of kindling when the mind is musing but when the mind is fleeting and floating little impression is made little good comes of it There are many days at Court wherein strangers come to see and are soon gone and what get they Nothing But they that abide in the presence of the Prince live by him It 's not a pointing and casting of your eye towards Heaven that makes God your portion If you do not dwell with him he useth you like strangers Think well of it Certainly where the Eye abides not it 's because either the thing displeaseth or there is some better thing that draws away your hearts What is there in Heaven or in Earth should draw away your minds from these Visions When you look upon him who is most glorious is he not worthy on whom your Souls should dwell and your minds rest themselves with all their might Certainly what we love that will hold us that will be in our thoughts we need not call out our minds and if once the eye be set upon it it holds as the Loadstone having drawn the Iron keeps it fast to it self Christ himself acknowledgeth such an operation of love upon himself Cant. 6.5 Turn away thine eyes Or taken away mine heart 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 excordiasti me for they have overcome me And in Cant. 4.9 Thou hast ravisht my heart my Sister my Spouse with one of thine eyes Christ was as one that had lost his heart
unto other things there cannot be much of them left for God Take heed of being too prodigal in cutting out too large portions of your selves otherwise When you fill your spirits with the world Intus existens prohibet alienum you are put into an incapacity of communion with God that which is within keeps out that which is without Mark what Christ saith Luk. 21.34 Take heed to your selves lest at any time your hearts be over-charged with surfeiting and drunkenness with the cares of this life and so that day come upon you unawares What ever doth put you out of possession of your selves what ever incapacitates you to that obedience whereunto you are called these things as you would not have the evil day come upon you unawares are to be taken heed of O what a dread is it to the Soul of a man when the evil day the day of affliction the day of temptation especially when the day of dissolution comes on him before he looks for it while he is busie in the world in hunting after this and that vanity snatcht away like a fish taken in the net that it lookt not for The cares and the pleasures of this world are unto the spirit of a man as wine it doth intoxicate and put a man out of himself and under the power of Satan he is a man in bonds the Devil hath his foot upon his head and his hand upon his heart he hath the possession of him when he is taken with any thing in this world You know what Christ saith that these cares and pleasures choak the Word Hear and read never so much let the wisdom of Angels speak to you let men put themselves to the utmost improvement of Reason and understanding and lay out their bodies to the very last to perswade you yet if your hearts be taken if the world hath gotten you away you are choaked that as the corn that is over-grown with weeds faints away and as a man that is surfeited cannot breathe so is a man in this case The effusion of your self upon the creature weakens you towards God that as a drunken man that hath not the use of his limbs nor of his Reason that is like a child in strength and a fool in understanding so is a man whose mind is cut out and shared among the creatures he is separated from God that he cannot draw near to him The body cannot be in two places at once and your understandings and spirits cannot be strongly in Heaven and strongly in the world The streams will run strongly but one way If you will therefore be in the world you must be content to own your selves banished from God You have set your selves from God you make your selves strangers to your own life and put your selves at a distance from your own eternal good Take heed therefore of filling your selves with the world take heed of sinful fulness worldly fulness takes up the whole capacity of the Soul that there will be no room left for God Tell me I pray you what use are your Chrystal glasses for do you keep them to be filled with puddle water Will you fill your stomacks with chaff or carrion and will you fill your precious and glorious minds those high and excellent creatures with the vanities of the world nay the things of Hell it self Take heed of prepossessing your selves for if you be not free we speak to dead men it is all one to bid you look towards God as to bid a deaf man look Eastward when his eyes are fixed Westward it is all one to bid a man walk with God and in mindfulness of him as to bid a man that is bound in chains of Iron rise up and walk Another thing is Maintain in your selves a deep sense of those divine Engagements that lie upon you Indeed we have all of us many bonds upon us but yet we are too free and disobliged to God and whence is it but because we forget our Engagements Another Discouragement Alas say some 〈…〉 this troubles me Soepe in libro experientia legimus quomodo a corde nostro relinquimur nunc est nobiscum nunc alibi nunc avolat nunc recurrit in sola lubricitate manens in nullo unquam sui soliditate consistit Bern. Opusc c. 33. I cannot hold my self to the work I am oftentimes assailing and putting on toward Heaven forcing on and driving out some thoughts but I cannot lodg them there they roul down again and I cannot fasten them truly this is my grief I beseech you consider it This rouling of the mind downwards is either from remisness of heart or from weakness if from the former it 's very sinful and imputed if from weakness it is sinful but not imputed the evil is not charged upon you What think you of your selves if you had a child that hath a palsie hand that cannot hold fast what is put into it you are not angry with your child but pity him He that is so * Tam pius nâ—mâ— tam pater neâ—o Bern. a Father that there is none like him who saith he will accept according to what we have and not according to what we have not 2 Cor. 8.12 he will not charge his children with their weakness All the Saints on this side Heaven are troubled with dimness and instability of sight when they look upwards there is a turning and wheeling of their minds downwards of which they shall be perfectly cured when they come to Heaven in the mean time be not discouraged but do as well as you can the more weak your eyes are the more frequently do you look he had need look often that cannot look long Another Discouragement is this I would look up to God but what sweetness will it be when I have not an Interest in him 'T is true he is a glorious Father but the more unhappy I that he is not my Father He is a blessed fountain but the more unhappy I that I may not sit and drink of those waters What though thy case be so that God be not thy Father yet he is thy Lord if he be not thy Portion yet he is thy Pattern and thy Rule thou must mind him But withall consider It 's your minding of God that is the means to bring God and you into one that he may be yours and you his We are transformed from glory to glory by beholding him 2 Cor. 3.18 Sights of God are of great force and therefore men lie dead because they are in the dark Light hath something of an awakening and a quickening power therefore if your minds were more in conjunction with God this would form and fashion your hearts more unto God and bring God more into you Again saith another This disheartens me that though I endeavor dayly this course of bending my self to eye God yet I get no good by it I know my pride and the stoutness of my spirit and many evils that
themselves and clears them it leaves them without doubt it strengthens and fixeth fast the Soul in the knowledg of its Interest in God God stands obliged for this unto his people for their comfort lies in it and that makes to the fulfilling of his last end which is his glory for how shall we give him praise if we know not that God is ours Besides he hath given us visible Seals to ratifie all the Promises to us He hath given the earnest of his Spirit to his He hath set Christ on the Throne for us an indubitable Pawn of his Love and many other which are still with us Secondly A second Consideration is this That the people of God in the want of this knowledg and assurance do not what they may they do not improve that ability and those means which God hath put into their hands and so they spin out their days in heaviness mourning and anxiety Either there is slothfulness of spirit or some discouragement of spirit upon them Slothfulness and so they are careless idle and vain having lost the sweetness of the enjoyment of God their hearts are poured out upon vanities they have gone a whoring after other things and have placed their Souls upon things that will not profit and are not industrious to seek after God When the Soul is thus gone out from God then it commits folly under every green tree there 's no plant that may yield any kind of refreshing but they will suck something from it Whilest the Soul is busied about other Interests and securing them the other great business lies by Another sort are under discouragement they say The work is hard it 's a very hard thing to find out this matter to do that whereby it should be found Saith another I have endevored and sought and done all I can and cannot compass it Consider you that say it is hard what a vain thing is it for a man to plead that a thing is difficult which must be done Will you plead difficulty against necessity You must do it or your life will be as death you will lose the comfort of all Promises of all Performances the Promises will be as a sealed Fountain that you cannot drink of them But again It is false to say it is hard That false Prophet within us communicates of his own spirit to us and we oftentimes speak untruths against God Is it hard to walk in the way of life Is it hard to enquire after God Is it easie to be hunting after the world and getting something in this life Is it hard to reach after the fruit of the Tree of Life When you seek after God you are in that very way of Life wherein they now are that shall enjoy God to all Eternity Another Discouragement is this I have endevored but it is a fruitless thing I see I shall never be satisfied Poor Soul Wilt thou indulge that remissness of spirit that is in thee to a contradiction against the God of Truth He hath said If thou seek him thou shalt find him He hath said he will comfort the mourners He hath spoken as much as can be desired What would you have God to do more Rather blame your seeking then your success Say not It is in vain to seek because I have not found nay rather say Because I have not found therefore I must seek more and seek better What saith Christ in Joh. 14.23 If any man love me he will keep my words and my Father will love him and we will come unto him and make our abode with him If any man love me be he what he will be though he hath been a notorious wretch though he hath been a grief and burden to me and offended me days without number yet if he love me my Father will love him and we will come and make our abode with him Will you rather blame the truth of the Promise then your selves The fault must be layd on us Let God be true and every man a lyar It is manifest that we do not what we might do in these particulars 1. We do not call our minds in and bend them to this work of enquiring after God and setling this great question of our Interest in God for ever And indeed if we do not call in and bend our minds and use some enforcements upon them they will never do their work There is upon our minds anatural fluidness and dulness they go out easily to all things but unto God The mind must be summoned prest bound and buckled to this work Saith the Apostle 2 Pet. 3.1 2. This second Epistle Beloved I now write unto you to stir up your pure minds To stir up your pure minds The Apostle was afraid of them lest dulness and sluggishness should fall upon their minds If you do not stir up your selves to the work and gird up the loyns of your minds the work will not be done Another fault is That as men do not bend their minds to the work so they do not hold them in a way of beleeving and cheerful expectation of what they seek for Saith the Church in Micah 7.9 I will bear the indignation of the Lord until he plead my cause So long as I seek the Lord I will wait and expect that he will hear me and answer my desires In Hos 10.12 saith the Prophet Sow to your selves in righteousness reap in mercy break up your fallow ground for it is time to seek the Lord till he come and rain righteousness upon you You must seek the Lord till he come In Isai 62.7 This is the counsel of God by his Prophet That you give him no rest until he establish and till he make Jerusalem a praise Again There may be this fault We do not bring things to an effectual judgment Many queries are raised about this business but there is not a full hearing and determining of them but either the Court breaks up before things are concluded and so the Soul is left to hang upon a poor thred of a feeble hope I hope God is my God or else the Soul is contented to bear the burden of many fears and sorrows not stirring up it self as it ought to get free of them So that doubtless it 's our fault that we have not so clear a knowledg of our Interest in God as to make us to triumph or glory therein One way or other we are defective either in our seeking of God or in our not receiving what God gives unto us Thirdly A third Consideration is That we have often offended and sinned against the Spirit and then God weakens his Testimony towards us and doth not so make himself known to us as we desire David by his sin brought himself into that sad condition that he knew not what to make of himself as appears by that prayer of his in Psal 51. He lookt on himself almost as one in bonds estranged from God a man without spirit In Isai