moved with fear prepared an Ark to the saving of his house by the which be condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith Note here how much the belief of Gods threatnings doth to the constitution of that faith which is justifying and saving Direct 2. Judge not of Gods threatnings by the evil which is threatned but by the obedience to which the threatnings should drive us and the evil from which they would preserve us and the order of the world which they preserve and the wisdom and holiness and justice of God which they demonstrate When men think how dreadful a misery Hell is they are ready to think hardly of God both for his threatning and execution as if it were long of him and not of themselves that they are miserable And as it is a very hard thing to think of the punishment it self with approbation so is it also to think of the threatning or Law which binds men over to it or of the Judgement which will pass the sentence on them But think of the true nature use and benefits of these threats or penaâ— Laws and true reason and faith will not only be reconciled to them but see that they are to be loved and honoured as well as feared 1. They are of great use to drive us to obedience And it is easier to see the amiableness of Gods commands than of his threats And obedience to these commands is the holy rectitude health and beauty of the soul And therefore that which is a suitable and needful means to promote obedience is amiable and beneficial to us Though Love must be the principle or chief spring of our obedience yet he that knoweth not that Fear must drive as Love must draw and is necessary in its place to joyn with Love or to do that which the weaknesses of Love leave undone doth neither know what a man is nor what Gods Word is nor what his Government is nor what either Magistracy or any civil or domestical Government is and therefore should spend many years at School before he turneth a disputer 2. They are of use to keep up order in the world which could not be expected if it were not for Gods threatnings If the world be so full of wickedness rapine and oppressions notwithstanding all the threatnings of Hell what could we expect it should be if there were none such but even as the suburbs of Hell it self When Princes and Lords and Rich men and all those thieves and rebels that can but get strength enough to defend themselves and all that can but hide their faults would be under no restraints considerable but would do all the evil that they have a mind to do Men would be worse to one another than Bears and Tygers 3. Gods threatnings in their primary intention or use are made to keep us from the punishment threatned Punishment is naturally due to evil doers And God declareth it to give us warning that we may take heed avoid it and escape 4. That which doth so clearly demonstrate the Holiness of God in his righteous Government his Wisdom and his Justice is certainly good and amiable in it self But we must not expect that the same thing should be good and amiable to the wicked who run themselves into it which is good to the world or to the just about them or to the honour of God Assizes Prisons and Gallows are good to the Country and to all the innocent to preserve their peace and to the honour of the King and his Government but not to murderers thieves or rebels Isa 26.7 8 9. Psal 48.11 9.16 89.14 97.2 149.9 146.7 37.6 28. Jude 6. 15. Rev. 4.7 15.4 16.7 19.2 Eccles 12.14 Direct 3. Judge of the severity of Gods threatnings partly by the greatness of himself whom we offend and partly by the necessity of them for the Government of the world 1. Remember that sinning wilfully against the infinite Majesty of Heaven and refusing his healing mercy to the last deserveth worse than any thing against a man can do 1 Sam. 2.25 2. And remember that even the threatning of Hell doth not serve turn with most of the world to keep them from sinning and despising God and therefore you cannot say that they are too great For that plaister draweth not too strongly which will not draw out the thorn If Hell be not terrible enough to perswade you from sin it is not too terrible to be threatned and executed He that should say Why will God make so terrible a Law and withall should say As terrible as it is I will venture on it rather than leave my pleasures and rather than live a holy life doth contradict himself and telleth us that the Law is not terrible enough to attain its chief and primary end with such as he that will not be moved by it from the most sordid base or bruitish pleasure Direct 4. Remember how Christ himself even when he came to deliver us from Gods Law did yet come to verifie his threatning in the matter of it and to be a sacrifice for sin and publick demonstration of Gods Justice For this end was Christ manifested to destroy the works of the Devil 1 John 3.5 8. And the first and great work of the Devil was to represent God as a lyar and to perswade Eve not to believe his threatnings and to tell her that though she sinned she should not die And though God so far dispensed with it as to forgive man the greatest part of the penalty it was by laying it on his Redeemer and making him a sacrifice to his Justice that his Cross might openly confute the Tempter and assure the world that God is just and that the wages of sin is death Rom. 6.23 though eternal life be the gift of God through Jesus Christ And he that well considereth this that the Son of God would rather stoop to sufferings and death than the Dâ—vils reproach of Gods threatnings should be made true and than the Justice of God against sin should not be manifested will sure never think that this Justice is any dishonour to the Almighty Direct 5. Let this be your use of the threatnings of God to drive you from sin to more careful obedience and to help you against the defects of love and to set them against every temptation when you are assaulted by it When a tempting bait is set before you set Hell against it as well as Heaven and say Can I take this cup this whore this preferment this gain of Judas with Hell for my part instead of Heaven If men threaten death imprisonment or any other penalty or if losses or reproaches be like by men to be made your reward remember that God threatneth Hell and ask whether this be not the most intollerable suffering And if any Antinomian revile you for thus doing and say You should set only Free Grace before you to keep you
done But that which unavoidably must be seen should be foreseen But the unseen world is not thus mutable Eternal life is begun in the Believer The Church is built on Christ the Reck and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it Fix here and you shall never be removed 4. Hence followeth another difference The mutable creature doth impart a disgraceful mutability to the soul that chuseth it It disappointeth and deceiveth And therefore the ungodly are of one mind to day and another to morrow In health they are all for pleasure and commodity and honour and at death they cry out on it as deceitful Vanity In health they cannot abide this strictness this meditating and seeking and preparing for the life to come but at death or judgement they will all be of another mind Then O that they had been so wise as to know their time and O that they hâ—d lived as holily as the best They are now the bold opposers and reproachers of an holy life But then they would be glad it had been their own They would eat their words and will be down in the mouth and stand to never a word they say when sight and sense and judgement shall convince them But things unchangeable do fix the soul Pâ—eâ—y is no matter for Repentance Doth the Believer speak against sin and sinners and for an holy sober righteous life He will do so to the last Death and Judgement shall not change his mind in this but much confirm it And therefore he perseveres through sufferings to death Rom. 8.35 36 37. For this cause we faint not but though our outward man perish yet the inward man is renewed day by day For our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding eternal weight of glory While we look not at the things that 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 2 Cor. 4.16 17. 6. Lastly let this move you to live by a foreseeing Faith that it is of necessity to your salvation Believing Heaven must prepare you for it before you can enjoy it Believing Hell is necessâ—ry to prevent it Mark 16.16 John 3.18 36. The just shall live by Faith but if any man draw back or be lifted up the Lord will have no pleasure in him Heb. 10.38 Hâ—b 2.4 Take heed that there be not in any of you an evil heart of unbelief to depart from the living God Heb. 3.12 And be not of them that draw back to perdition but of them that believe to the saving of the soul Heb. 10.39 It is God that saith They shall all be damned that believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness 2 Thes 2.10 11 12. May I now in the conclusion more particularly exhort you 1. That you will live upon things foreseen 2. That you will promote this life of faith in others according to your several capacities Princes and Nobles live not alwaies You are not the Rulers of the unmoveable Kingdom but of a boat that is in an hasty stream or a ship under sail that will speed both Pilot and Passengers to the shore Dixi estis Dii at moriemini ut homines It was not the least or worst of Kings that said I am a stranger vpon earth Psal 119.19 Vermis sum non homo I am a worm and no man Psal 32.6 You are the greater worms and we the little ones but we must all say with Job ch 17.13 14. The grave is our house and we must make our beds in darkness Corruption is our Father and the Worm our Mother and our Sister The inexorable Leveller is ready at your backs to convince you by unresistible argument that dust you are and to dust you shall return Heaven should be as desirable and Hell as terrible to you as to others No man will fear you after death much less will Christ be afraid to judge you Luke 19.27 As the Kingdoms and glory of the world were contemned by him in the hour of his temptation so are they inconsiderable to procure his approbation Trust not therefore to uncertain riches Value them but as they will prove at last As you stand on higher ground than others it is meet that you should see further The greater are your advantages the wiser and better you should be and therefore should better perceive the difference between things temporal and eternal It is alwaies dark where these glow-worms shine and a rotten post doth seem a fire Your difficulties also should excite you You must go as through a Needles eye to Heaven To live as in Heaven in a crowd of business and stream of temptations from the confluence of all worldly things is so hard that few such come to Heaven Withdraw your selves therefore to the frequent serious fore-thoughts of eternity and live by faith Had time allowed it I should have come down to some particular instances As 1. Let the things unseen be still at hand to answer every temptation and shame and repel each motion to sin 2. Let them be still at hand to quicken us to duty when backwardness and coldness doth surprize us What shall we do any thing coldly for eternity 3. Let it resolve you what company to delight in and what society to be of even those with whom you must dwell for ever What side soever is uppermost on earth you may foresee which side shall reign for ever 4. Let the things invisible be your daily solace and the satisfaction of your souls Are you slandered by men Faith tells you it is enough that Christ will justifie you O happy day when he will bring forth our righteousness as the light and set all strait which all the false histories or slanderous tongues or pens in all the world made crooked Are you frowned on or contemned by men Is it not enough that you shall everlastingly be honoured by the Lord Are you wronged oppressed or trodden on by pride or malice Is not Heaven enough to make you reparation and eternity long enough for your joyes O pray for your malicious enemies lest they suffer more than you can wish them 2. Lastly I should have become on the behalf of Christ a petitioner to you for protection and encouragement to the heirs of the invisible world For them that preach and them that live this life of faith not for the honours and riches of the world but for leave and countenance to work in the Vineyard and peaceably travel through the world as strangers and live in the Communion of Saints as they believe But though it be for the beloved of the Lord the apple of his eye the people that are sure to prevail and raign with Christ for ever whose prayers can do more for the greatest Princes than you can do for them whose joy is hastened by that which is intended for their sorrow I shall now lay
and beastly pleasures why should you expect to have them continued or at least why should he not use you as Nebuchadnezzar and take away your reason and turn you into beasts if the life and pleasure of a beast be all that you desire Could not you eat and drink and sleep and play without an intellectual soul Cannot the birds make their nests and breed and feed their young and sit and sing without an intellectual nature Cannot a swine have his ease and meat and lust without reason what should you do with reason for such uses 5. You shew a stupid sensless heart that can live idly and have so much to do and have so many spurrs to rouse you up To live continually in the sight of God to have a soul so ignorant so unbelieving so unholy so unfurnished of faith and love so unready for death so uncertain of salvation nay in such apparent danger of damnation and to be still uncertain of living one day or hour longer and yet to live idly in such a case as if all were well and your work were done and you had no more to fear or care for O what a mad what a dead what a sottish kind of soul is this to see the graves before your eyes to see your neighbours carryed thither to feel the tokens of mortality daily in your selves to be called on and warned to prepare and yet under this to live as if you had nothing to do but to shew your selves in the neatest dress and as a Peacock to spread your plumes for your selves and others to look upon or to pamper a carkass for worms and rottenness O what a deplorable case is this The Lord pitty you and awaken your understandings and bring you to your wits and you will then wonder at your own stupidity 6. Idleness is a sin which is contrary to Gods universal Law The Law which extended to all times and places Adam in innocency was to labour He that had all things prepared for his sustenance by God was yet himself to labour He that was Lord of all the world and was richer than any of our proud ones whosoever was yet to dress and keep the garden Cain was a tiller of land and Abel was a keeper of cattel when they were heirs of all the earth Noah also was Lord of all the world and richer than you and yet he was an Husbandman Abraham Isaac and Jacob were Princes and yet keepers of sheep and cattle It is not a bare permission but a precept of diligence in the fourth Commandment Six daies shalt thou labour and do all that thou hast to do Christ himself did not live idly but before his Ministry they said Mark 6.3 Is not this the Carpenter And afterward how incessantly was he doing good to mens bodies and souls And what laborious lives did his Apostles live See 2 Cor. 6.5 11.23 Acts 18.3 And are you exempt from the universal Law 7. You shew a base and fleshly mind The noblest natures are the most active and the basest the most dead and dull The earth it not baser than the fire in a greater degree than an idle soul is baser than one that is active and spendeth themselves in doing good Methinks your Pride it self should keep you from proclaiming such a dead and earthen disposition 8. Idleness is of the same kind with fornication gluttony drunkenness and other such beastly sins For all is but sinful flesh-pleasing or sensuality The same fleshly nature which draweth them to the one doth draw you to the other and they do but gratifie their flesh in one kind of vice as you do in another And it 's pitty that Idleness should be in so much less disgrace than they And truly if you cannot deny your flesh it's ease I cannot see if the temptation lay as strong that way how you should deny it in any of those lusts so that you sâ—em to be vertually fornicators gluttons drunkards c. and ready to commit the acts 9. And hereby you strengthen the flesh as it is your enemy for the time to come When you have long used to please it by idleness it will get the victory and must be pleased still And then you are undone for ever if grace do not yet cause you to overcome it For if you live after the flesh you shall die but if by the Spirit you mortifie the deeds of the body you shall live Rom. 8.13 None are freed from condemnation nor are members of Christ but they that walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit Rom. 8.1 For the carnal mind is enmity against God v. 7. 10. Idleness is a sin much aggravated by its continuance A drunkard is not alwaies drunken nor a swearer is not alwaies swearing nor a thief is not alwaies stealing but an idle person is almost alwaies idle whole hours and daies if not weeks and years together O what a continual course of sin do our rich and gentile drones still live in As if they were afraid to do any thing which when death cometh they could comfortably be found doing 11. And O what a time-wasting sin is Idleness O precious time how art thou despised by these drowsie despisers of God and of their souls O what would the despairing souls in Hell give for some of that time which these Bedlams prate away and game and play away and trifle and fool away and sleep and loiter away And what would they give for a little of it themselves upon the same terms when it 's gone and when wishing is too late 12. Idleness is a self-contradicting sin None are so much afraid of dying as the idle and I do not blame them if they knew all and yet none more cast away their lives They die voluntarily continually He that loseth the use and benefit of life doth lose his life it self For what is it good for but as a means to its ends What difference between a man asleep and dead but only that one is more in expectation of usefulness when he awaketh It is a pittiful sight to a man in his wits to see the Bedlam world afraid of dying and trembling at every sign of death and in the mean time setting as little by their lives as if they were worth no more than to spend at cards or dice or stage-playes or dressings or feastings or ludicrous complements 13. You teach your servants that life which yet you will not endure in them For why should they be more careful and diligent in the work which you command them than you in the work which God commandeth you Are you the better Masters or will you find them better work or will you pay them better wages I know God needeth not your service as you do theirs But he commandeth it for other ends though he need it not And should any be more carefulâ— to please you that are but worms and dust than you should be to please your Maker If an idle
Nos quoque floruimus sed flos fuit ille caducus Flammaque de stipula nostra brevisque fuit Ov. VERA EFFIGIES RICHARDI BAXTERI MIN IES CH IN OP ET PATA FIDEI SPEI ET CHARITATIS An. 1670. AETAT SUAE 55º Farewell vaine World as thou hast been to me Dust and a Shadow those I leave with thee The vnseen Vitall Substance I committ The Leaves Fruit are dropt for soyle and Seed Heaven's heirs to generate to heale and feed Them also thou wilt flatter and molest But shalt not keep from Everlasting Rest THE LIFE OF FAITH THE Life of Faith In Three PARTS The First is a Sermon on Heb. 11.1 formerly preached before His Majesty and published by his Command with another added for the fuller Application The Second is Instructions for confirming Believers in the Christian Faith The Third is Directions how to live by Faith or how to exercise it upon all occasions By RICHARD BAXTER 2 Cor. 5.7 For we walk by faith not by sight 2 Cor. 4.16 17 18. For which cause we faint not but though our outward man parish yet the inward man is renewed day by day For our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory While 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 Heb. 12.27 By faith he forsook Egypt not fearing the wrath of the King for he endured as seeing him that is invisible LONDON Printed by R. W. for Nevill Simmons at the three Crowns over against Holbern Conduit 1670. To the Worshipfull my much honoured Friend Richard Hampden of Hampden Esquire and the Lady Laetitia his Wife Grace and Peace be multiplied SIR YOur Names stand here in the front of this Treatise on a double account First that the custom of Writers having given me such an advantage I may tell the present and future Ages how much I love and honour your Piety Sobriety Integrity and Moderation in an Age when such Vertues grow into contempt or into lifeless Images and Names And how much I am my self your debter for the manifold expressions of your love and that in an Age when 〈…〉 the superioâ—â—â—â—culties is ouâ— of fâ—shion and towards such as I is grown â— crime Sincerity and 〈◊〉 are things that shall be honourable when Hypocrisie and Malice have done their worst But they are most conspicuous and refulgent in times of â—â—rity and when the shame of their contraries seâ— them off Secondly To signifie my Love and Gratitude by the best 〈◊〉 which I can make which is by tendering to you and to your family the surest Directions for the most noble manly life on earth in order to a blessed life in Heaven Though you have proceeded well you 〈…〉 need of help so great a 〈…〉 for skilfull counsel and 〈…〉 and industrious and unweaâ—â—◠〈…〉 And your hopeful children may 〈…〉 to learn this excellenâ— Life from these Directions for the love of your prefixed Names And how happy will they bâ— if they converse with God 〈…〉 are wallowing in the 〈◊〉 of 〈…〉 When the dead heaâ—ted sinner thinketh not of 〈…〉 be dragg'd out of 〈◊〉 paâ—pered corruptible flesh to divinie 〈◊〉 and â—â—â—with the beginnings of endless 〈◊〉 to the world where they might have found everlasting rest what joy will then be the portion of mortified and patient Believers whosâ— Treasâ—â—â—s and Hearts and Conversatiâ—â— in Heâ—ven are now the foretaste of their possession as the Spirit of Christ which causeth this iâ— the seâ—â— of God and the pledge and earnest of their inheritance If a 〈◊〉 pleasing life in a dark distracted 〈◊〉 world were better than a life with God and Angels methinks yet they that know they cannot have what they 〈◊〉 should make sue of what they may haâ—â— And they that cannot keep what they 〈◊〉 should learn to 〈◊〉 what 〈◊〉 may keep Wonderfull stupidity â—hâ—t they 〈…〉 dead bodies 〈…〉 grave is as common a work 〈…〉 children into the world and that this life is but the road to another and that all men are posting on to their 〈…〉 should think no more considerately whither so many thousand souls do go that daily shoot the gulf of death and return no more to the world which one they called their home That men will have no house or home but the ship which carryeth them so swiftly to eternity and spend their time in furnishing a dwelling on such a tempestuous Sea where winds and tide are hasting them to the shore and even to the end are contriving to live where they are daily dying and care for no â—â—bitation but on horse-back That almost all men die much wiser than they lived and yet the certain foreknowledge of death will not serve to make them more seasonably and more safely wiâ—e Wonderful that it should be possible for a man awake to believe that he must shortly be gone from earth and enter into an unchangeable endless life and yet not bend the thoughts of his soul and the labours of his life to secure his true and 〈…〉 Adam hath given sin the 〈…〉 grace and madness the priority to wisdom and our wisdom health and safety must now come after by the way of recovery and cure The first born of lapsed man was a malignant persecuting Cain The first born of believing Abraham was a persecutor of him that was born after the Spirit 1 John 3.12 Gal. 4.29 And the first born of this Isaac himself was a profane Esau that for one morsel sold his birth-right Heb. 12.16 And naturally we are all the off-spring of this profaneness and have not acquaintance enough with God and with healthful holiness and with the everlasting heavenly Glory to make us cordially preferr it before a forbidden cup or morsel or a game at foolery or a filthy lust or before the wind of a gilded fools acclamation and applause or the cap and counterfeit subjection of the multitude But the fortunae non tua turba ut Ov. quos sportula fecit amici ut Juv. who will serve mens lusts and be their servants and humble attendants to damnation are regarded more than the God the Saviour the Sanctifier to whom these perfidious rebels were once devoted That you and yours may live that more wise and delightful life which consisteth in the daily sight of Heaven by a Living Faith which worketh by Love in constant Obedience is the principal end of this publick appellation That what is here written for the use of all may be first and specially useful to you and yours whom I am so much bound to love and honour even to your safe and comfortable life and death and to your future joy and glory which is the great desire of Your obliged Servant RICH. BAXTER Feb. 4. 1669. THE PREFACE Reader 1. IF it offend thee that the Parts of
they become the heirs of that Righteousness which is by faith and condemn the unbelieving careless world that take not the warning and use not the remedy By this time you may see that the Life of Faith is quite another thing than the lifeless opinion of multitudes that call themselves believers To say I believe there is a God a Christ a Heaven a Hell is as easie as it is common But the faith of the ungodly is but an uneffectual dream To dream that you are fighting wins no victories To dream that you are eating gets no strength To dream that you are running ridâ— no ground To dream that you are plowing or sowing or reaping procureth but a fruitless harvest And to dream that you are Princes may consist with beggery If you do any more than dream of Heaven and Hell how is it that you stir not and make it not appear by the diligence of your lives and the fervour of your duties and the seriousness of your endeavours that such wonderful unexpressible over-powering things are indeed the matters of your belief As you love your souls take heed lest you take an image of faith to be the thing it self Faith sets on work the powers of the soul for the obtaining of that joy and the escaping of that misery which you believe But the image of faith in self-deceivers neither warms nor works it conquereth no difficulties it stirs not up to faithful duty It 's blind and therefore seeth not God and how then should he be feared and loved Iâ— seeth not Hell and therefore the senseless soul goes on as fearlesly and merrily to the unquenchable fire as if he were in the safest way This image of faith annihilateth the most potent objects as to any due impression on the soul God is as no God and Heaven as no Hâ—aven to these imaginary Christians If a Prince be in the room an image reverenceth him not If musick and feasting be there an image finds no pleasure in them If fire and sword be there an image fears them not You may perceive by the senseless neglectful carriage of ungodly men that they see not by faith the God that they should love and fear the Heaven that they should seek and wait for or the Hell that they should with all possible care avoid He is indeed the true Believer that allowing the difference of degrees doth pray as if he saw the Lord and speak and live as alwaies in his presence and redeem his time as if he were to die to morrow or as one that seeth death approach and ready to lay hands upon him that begs and cries to God in prayer as one that foreseeth the day of judgement and the endless joy or misery that followeth that bestirreth him for everlasting life as one that seeth Heaven and Hell by the eye of faith Faith is a serious apprehension and causeth a serious conversation for it is instead of sight and presence From all this you may easily and certainly infer 1. That true faith is a Jewel rare and precious and not so common as nominal careless Christians think What say they Are we not all believers will you make Infidels of all that are not Saints are none Christians but those that live so strictly Answer I know they are not Infidels by profession but what they are indeed and what God will take them for you may soon perceive by comparing the description of faith with the inscription legible on their lives It 's common to say I do believe but is it common to find men pray and live as those that do believe indeed It is both in works of charity and of piety that a living faith will shew it self I will not therefore contend about the name If you are ungodly unjust or uncharitable and yet will call your selves Believers you may keep the name and see whether it will save you Have you forgotten how this case is determined by the holy Ghost himself James 2.14 c. What doth it profit my Brethren if a man say he hath faith and hath not works Can faith save him Faith if it hath not works is dead being alone Thou believest that there is one God thou dost well the Devils also believe and tremble If such a belief be it that thou gloriest in it 's not denyed thee But wilt thou know oh vain man that faith without works is dead c. Is there life where there is no motion Had you that Faith that is instead of sight it would make you more solicitous for the things unseen than you are for the visible trifles of this world 2. And hence you may observe that most true Believers are weak in Faith Alas how far do we all fall short of the love and zeal and care and diligence which we should have if we had but once beheld the things which we do believe Alas how dead are our affections how flat are our duties how cold and how slow are our endeavours how unprofitable are our lives in comparison of what one hours sight of Heaven and Hell would make them be O what a comfortable converse would it be if I might but joyn in prayer praise and holy conference one day or hour with a person that had seen the Lord and been in Heaven and born a part in the Angelical Praises Were our Congregations composed of such persons what manner of worship would they perform to God How unlike would their heavenly ravishing expressions be to these our sleepy heartless duties Were Heaven open to the view of all this Congregation while I am speaking to you or when we are speaking in prayer and praise to God imagine your selves what a change it would make upon the best of us in our services What apprehensions what affections what resolutions it would raise and what a posture it would cast us all into And do we not all profess to believe these things as revealed from Heaven by the infallible God Do we not say that such a Divine Revelation is as sure as if the things were in themselves laid open to our sight Why then are we no more affected with them Why are we no more transported by them Why do they no more command our souls and stir up our faculties to the most vigorous and lively exercise and call them off from things that are not to us considerable nor fit to have one glance of the eye of our observation nor a regardful thought nor the least affection unless as they subserve these greater things When you observe how much in your selves and others the frame of your souls in holy duty and the tenour of your lives towards God and man do differ from what they would be if you had seen the things that you believe let it mind you of the great imperfection of faith and humble us all in the sense of our imbâ—cility For though I know that the most perfect Faith is not apt to raise such high affections in
by any further suit on their behalf But for your selves O use your seeing and fore-seeing faculties Be often looking through the prospective of the promise and live not by sense on present things but live as if you saw the glorious things which you say you do believe That when worldly titles are insignificant words and fleshly pleasures have an end and Faith and Holiness will be the marks of honour and unbelief and ungodliness the badgeâ— of perpetual shame and when you must give account of your Stewardship and shall be no longer Stewards you may then by brought by Faith unto Fruition and see with joy the glorious things that you now believe Write upon your Palaces and goods that sentence 2 Pet. 3.11 Seeing all these things shall be dissolved What manner of persons ought ye â—o be in all holy conversation and godliness looking for and hasting to the coming of the day of God! HEBREWS 11.1 Now Faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen CHAP. I. For Conviction IN the opening of this Text I have already shewed that it is the nature and use of Faith to be instead of presence and sight or to make things absent future and unseen to be to us as to our Estimation Resolution and Conversation as if they were present and before our eyes Though not as to the degree yet as to the sincerity of our acts In the handling of this Doctrine I have already shewed that this Faith is a grounded justifiable knowledge and not a fancy or uneffectual opinion having for its object the infallible Revelation and certain Truth of God and not a falshood nor a meer probability or verisimile I have shewed how such a Faith will work how far it should carry us if its evidence were fully entertained and improved and how far it doth carry all that have it sincerely in the least degree and I have shewed some of the moving considerations that should prevail with us to live upon the things unseen as if they were open to our sight I think I may suddenly proceed here to the remaining part of the Application without any recital of the explication or confirmation the truth lying so naked in the Text it self The Life of Faith and the Life of Sense are the two waies that all the world do walk in to the two extreamly different ends which appear when death withdraws the veil It is the ordination of God that mens own estimation choice and endeavours shall be the necessary preparative to their Fruition Nemo nolens bonus aut beatus est Men shall have no better than they value and chuse and seek Where earthly things are highest in the esteem and dearest to the mind of man such persons have no higher nor more durable a portion Where the heavenly things are highest and dearest to the soul and are practically preferred they are the portion of that soul Where the Treasure is the heart will be Matth. 6.21 The sanctifying spirit doth lead the spiritual man by a spiritual Rule in a spiritual way to a spiritual glorious durable felicity The sensual part with the sensual inclination communicated to the corrupted mind and will doth by carnal reasonings and by carnal means pursue and embâ—ace a present fading carnal interest and therefore it findeth and attaineth no more The flâ—sh lusteth against the Spirit and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary the one to the other Gal. 5.17 They that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh but they that are after the spirit the things of the spirit To be carnally minded is death but to be spiritually minded is life and peace Because the carnal mind is enmity against God for it is not subject to the Law of God neither indeed can be So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God If any man have not the Spirit of Christ the same is none of his If we live after the flesh we shall die but if by the spirit we mortifie the deeds of the body we shall live Rom. 8. to v. 14. Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap everlasting life Gal. 6.7 8. As a man is so he loveth and desireth as he desireth he seeketh and as he seeketh he findeth and possesseth If you know which world what riches a man prefers intends and liveth for you may know which world is his inheritance and whither he is going as to his perpetual abode Reason enableth a man to know and seek more than he seeth And Faith informeth and advanceth Reason to know that by the means of supernatural Revelation that by no other means is fully known To seek and hope for no better than we know and to know no more than is objectively revealed while we hinder not the revelation is the blameless imperfection of a creature that hath limited faculties and capacities To know what 's Best and yet to chuse and seek an inferiour inconsistent Good and to refuse and neglect the Best when it is discerned is the course of such as have but a superficial opinion of the good refused or a knowledge not wakened to speak so loudly as may be effectual for choice and whose sensuality mastereth their wills and reason and leads them backward And those that know not because they would not know or hear not because they would not hear are under that same dominion of the flâ—sh which is an enemy to all knowledge that is an enemy to its delights and interest To profess to know good and yet refuse it and to profess to know evil and yet to chuse it and this predominantly and in the main is the description of a self-condemning Hypocrite And if malignity and opposition of the Truth professed be added to the Hypocrisie it comes up to that Pharisaical blindness and obdurateness which prepareth men for the remediless sin Consider then but of the profession of many of the people of this Land and compare their practice with it and judge what compassion the condition of many doth bespeak If you will believe them they profess that they verily believe in the invisible God in a Christ unseen to them in the Holy Spirit gathering a holy Church to Christ and imploying them in a communion of Saints that they believe a judgement to come upon the glorious coming of the Lord and an everlasting life of joy or torment thereupon All this is in their Creed they would take him for a damnable Heretick that denyeth it and perhaps would consent that he be burnt at a stake So that you would think these men should live as if Heaven and Hell were open to their sight But O what an Hypocritical Generation are the ungodly how their lives do give their tongues the lye Remember that I apply this to no better men It is a
me How long O scorner wilt thou delight in scorning How long wilt thou go on impenitently in thy folly And now I must cry out How long How long must I feel the wrath of the Almighty the unquenchable fire the immortal worm Alas for ever When shall I receive one moments ease when shall I see one glimpse of hope O never never never Now I perceive what Satan meant in his temptations what â—in intended what God meant in the threatnings of his Law what grace was good for what Christ was sent for and what was the design and meaning of the Gospel and how I should have valued the offers and promises of life Now I understand what Ministers meant to be so importunate with me for my conversion and what was the cause that they would even have kneeled to me to have procured my return to God in time Now I understand that holiness was not a needless thing that Christ and Grace deserved better entertainment than contempt that precious time was worth more than to be wasted idly that an immortal soul and life eternal should have been more regarded and not cast away for so short so base a fleshly pleasure Now all these things are plain and open to my understanding But alas it 's now too late I know that now to my woe and torment which I might have known in time to my recovery and joy For the Lords sake and for your souls sake open your eyes and foresee the things that are even at hand and prevent these fruitless lamentations Judge but as you will all shortly judge and live but as you will wish that you had lived and I desire no more Be serious as if you saw the things that you say you do believe I know this serious discourse of another life is usually ungrateful to men that are conscious of their strangeness to it and taking up their portion here are loth to be tormented before the time This is not the smoothing pleasing way But remember that we have flesh as well as you which longs not to be accounted troublesome or precise which loves not to displease or be displeased And had we no higher light and life we should â—aâ—k as men that saw and felt no more than fight and flesh can reach But when we are preaching and dying and you are hearing and dying and we believe and know that you are nâ—w going to see the things we speak of and death will straightway draw aside the veil and shew you the great amazing sight it 's time for us to speak and you to hear with all our hearts It 's time for us to be serious when we are so near the place where all are serious There are none that are in jest in Heaven or Hell pardon us therefore if we jest not at the door and in the way to such a serious state All that see and feel are serious and therefore all that truly believe must be so too Were your eyes all opened this hour to see what we believe we appeal to your own consciences whether it would not make you more serious than we Marvel not if you see Believers make another matter of their salvation than those that have hired their understandings in service to their sense and think the world is no bigger or better than their globe or map and reacheth no further than they can kennâ— As long as we see you serious about Lands and Lordships and titles and honours the rattles and tarrying Irons of the cheating world you must give us leave whether you will or no to be serious about the life eternal They that scramble so eagerly for the bonds of worldly riches and devour so greedily the drâ—ffe of sensual delights methinks should blush if such animals had the blushing property to blame or deride us for being a little alas too little earnest in the matters of God and our salvation Can you not pardon us if we love God a little more than you love your lusts and if we run as fast for the Crown of Life as you run after a feather or a fly or if we breath as hard after Christ in holy desires as you do in blowing the bubble of vain-glory If a thousand pound a year in passage to a grave and the chains of darkness be worth your labour give us leave to belieâ—â— that mercy in order to everlasting mercy grace in order to glory and glory as the end of grace is worth our labour and infinitely more Your end is narrow though your way be broad and our end is broad though our way be narrow You build as Miners in Cole-pits do by digging downwards into the dark and yet you are laborious Though we begin on earth we build towards Heaven where an attractive loadstone draws up the workmen and the work and shall we loiter under so great encouragements Have you considered that Faith is the beholding grace the evidence of things not seen and yet have you the hearts to blame Believers for doing all that they can do in a case of such unspeakable everlasting consequence If we are Believers Heaven and Hell are as iâ— were open to our sight And would you wish us to trifle in the sight of Heaven or to leap into Hell when we see it as before us what name can express the inhumane cruelty of such a wish oâ— motion or the unchristian folly of those that will obey you O give us leave to be serious for a Kingdom which by Faith we see Blame us for this and blame us that we are not beside our selves Pardon us that we are awake when the thunder of Jehovah's voice doth call to us denouncing everlasting wrath to all that are sensual and ungodly Were we asleep as you are we would lie still and take no heed what God or man said to us Pardon us that we are Christians and believe these things seeing you profess the same your selves Disclaim not the practice till you dare disclaim the profession If we were Infidels we would do as the ungodly world we would pursue our present pleasures and commodity and say that things above us are nothing to us and would take Religion to be the Troubler of the world But till we are Infidels or Atheists at the heart we cannot do so Forgive us that we are men if you take it to be pardonable Were we bruits we would eat and drink and play and never trouble our selves or others with the care of our salvation or the fears of any death but one or with resisting sensual inclinations and meditating on the life to come but would take our ease and pleasure while we may At least forgive us that we are not blocks or stones that we have life and feeling Were we insensate clods we would not see the light of Heaven nor hear the roaring of the Lion nor fear the threats of God himself we would not complain or sigh or groan because we feel not If therefore we may
world passeth away 1 Cor. 7.29 30. 3. Imploy your time as becomes Believers Faith only can acquaint you what an unconceivable weight doth lye upon this inch of hasty time As you behave your selves for a few daies it must go with you in joy or misery for ever You have your appointed time for your appointed work God hath turned the glass upon you much of it is run out already No price can call back one hour that you have lost No power or policy can retard its course Sic fugiunt fraeno non remorante dies When it comes to the last sand and time is gone you 'l know the worth of it You 'l then confess it should have seemed more precious in your eyes than to have been cast away upon things of nought O precious time more worth than all the riches of the world How highly is it valued by all at last And how basely is it esteemed new by the most Now it is no more worth with them than to be sold for unnecessary sports and ease and wasted in idleness and vain delights But then when it 's gone and all 's too late how loud would they cry if cryes could call back Time again O then what a mercy would it seem if God would try them once again and trust them but with another life or with Hezekiah's fifteen years or but with fifteen daies or hours upon such terms of grace as they held that life which they abused It amazeth me to observe the lamentable stupidity of the world how hard they beg for time when they think it is near an end and how carelesly they let it slide away when they have strength and faculties to improve it They are grievously afraid lest death deprive them of it and yet they are not afraid to deprive themselves of the use and fruit of it and to cast it away as contemptuously as if it were an useless thing I seldom come near a dying man but I hear him complain of the loss of Time and wish it were to spend again that it might be better valued and used And yet the living will not be warned O value Time as wise men while you have it and not as miserable fools when it is gone If our Lord said I must do the work of him that sent me while it is day for the night cometh when no man can work Joh. 9.4 What need then have such as we to be doing and make much of time O let not company mirth or business make you forget the work of Time Can you play or loiter away your hours with Eternity in your eye Get the Sun to stand still and Time to make a truce with you and to waste no more of the oyl of life before you lose another hour O what heads what hearts have all those men that standing against the verge of an endless world can think they have any time to spare Hath God given you too much If not why do you lose it If he hath why are you loth that he should shorten it You would not throw away your gold as contemptuously as you do your time when an hours time is more valuable than gold Frown on that company that would rob you of half an hours time Tell them you have something else to do than to feast or play or talk away your time unnecessarily O tell them you were not made for nothing You are in a race and must not stand still You are in a fight and must not cease Your work is great much of it is undone Your enemies are not idle Death will not stop the Judge is coming and still beholds you and Heaven or Hell are ready to receive our ending life and tell us how we spent our time And can you find time to spare You are not made as Weather-cocks to stand up on high for men to look at and by turning about with every wind to shew them which way it standeth Turn not your lives into that curse Levit. 26.20 You shall spend your strength in vain Believe it Time must be reviewed The day is near when every man of you had rather find it in your accounts so many hours spent in self-examination and holy meditation so many in reading the Word of God so many spent in fervent prayer and so many in doing good to others than so many spent in needless sports and pleasures so many in idleness and vain discourses and so many in the less necessary matters of the world Ask those that tempt you to mis-spend your time whether at death and Judgement they had rather themselves have a life of holy diligence to review or a life consumed in vanity and transitory delights You will not suffer impertinencies to interrupt your counsels and serious business in the world You 'l tell intruders that you are busie and cannot have while to attend them And are you going into Heaven or Hell and have but a few daies time of preparation God knows 〈…〉 and yet can you have while to pass this precious 〈…〉 vain O what would you not give ere long for one of the hours that you now mis-spend When the oath is performed Rev. 10.6 That Time shall be no longer Wonderful that men can find Time for any thing save that for which they had their time Non tam bene vivant sed quamdiu confiderant inquit Seneca cum omnibus pâ—ssit contingere ut bene vivant ut diu nulli To live well is both possible and necessary and yet is disregarded To live long is neither possible nor necessary and yet is sought by almost all Incipiunt vivere cum definendum est immo quidam ante desierunt vivere quam inciperent Sen. It 's unseasonable we should begin to live when we should make an end but it 's most unhappy to have made an end before they do begin Pulchrum est inquit idem consummare vitam ante mortem expectare secure reliquam temporis partem Do the great work and then you may comfortably spend the rest in waiting for the conclusion Yet you have time and leave and helps you may read and meditate and pray if you will but shortly Time will be no more O let not Satan insult over your carkasses and tormented souls and say Now it is too late Now murmure and repent as long as you will Now pray and cry and spare noâ— O use that Faith which beholdeth the invisible world and maketh future things as present and then delay and loiter if you can Then waste your hours in idleness or vanity if you dare either light or fire shall awake you 4. Suffer as Believers Fear not the wrath of man but indure as seeing him that is invisible Heb. 11.27 shew plainly that you seek a better Country vers 14 16. Read often Heb. 11 and 12 chapters Behold the Kingdom prepared and secured for you by Christ and then you will be indifferent which way the wind of humane favour or applause
sinful world and flesh linger not now as unwilling to depart repent not of thy choice when all that the world can do for thee is past repent not of thy warfare when thou hast got the victory nor of thy voyage when thou art past the storms and waves and ready to land at the haven of felicity Thus Faith may sing our Nunc dimittis when the flesh is lothest to be dissolved But we must live by faith if we would thus die by faith Such a death doth not use to be the period of a fleshly worldly life nor of a careless dull and negligent life Nature which brought us into the world without our forecast or care will turn us out of the world without it But it will not give us a joyful passage nor bring us to a better world without it It costeth worldlings no small care to die in an honourable or plentiful estate that they may fall from an higher place than others and may have something to make death more grievous and unwelcome to them and may have a greater account to make at Judgement and that their passage to Heaven may be as a Camels through a Needle And may a believing joyful death be expected without the preparations of exercise and experience in a believing life Nature is so much afraid of dying and an incorporated soul is so incarcerated in sense and so hardly riseth to serious and satisfying apprehensions of the unseen world that even true Believers do find it a work of no small difficulty to desire to depart and be with Christ and to die in the joyful hopes of faith A little abatement of the terrours of death a little supporting hope and peace is all that the greater part of them attain instead of the fervent desires and triumphant joyes which the lively belief of endless glory should produce O therefore make it the work of your lives of all your lives your greatest work your constant work to live by faith that the faith which hath first conquered all the rest of your enemies may be able also to overcome the last and may do your last work well when it hath done the rest CHAP. I. Directions how to live by Faith And first how to strengthen Faith And secondly the natural Truths presupposed to be considered THe Directions which I shall give you as helps to live by Faith are of two ranks 1. Such as tend to the strengthening of your Faith 2. Such as tell you how to use it The first is the greatest part of our task for no man can use that faith which he hath not nor can use more of it than he hath And the commonest reason why we use but little is because we have but little to use But on this subject supposing it most weighty I have written many Treatises already The second part of the Saints Rest The Unreasonableness of Infidelity And last of all The Reasons of the Christian Religion Besides others which handle it on the by And somewhat is said in the beginning of this discourse But yet because in so great a matter I am more afraid of doing too little than too much I will here give you an Index of some of the chief Helps to be close together before you for your memories to be the constant fuel of your Faith In the work of Faith it is first needful that you get all the prerequisite Helps of Natural Light and be well acquainted with their Order and Evidence and their Vsefulness to befriend the supernatural revelations For it is supposed that we are men before we are Christians We were created before we were redeemed And we must know that there is a God before we can know that we have offended him or that we need a Saviour to reconcile us to him And we must know that we have reasonable souls before we can know that sin hath corrupted them or that grace must sanctifie them And we must know that whatsoâ—ver God saith is true before we can believe that the Scripture is true as being his revelation Faith is an act of Reason and Believing is a kind of knowing even a knowing by the testimâ—ny of him whom we believe because we have sufficient reason to believe him 2. And next we must be well acquainted with the evidence of supernatural Truth which presupposeth the foresaid Natural Verities I shall set both bâ—fore you briefly in their order 1. Think well â—f the nature of your souls of their faculties or pâ—wers their excellency and their proper use And then you will find that you are not meer brutes who know not their Creatâ—ur nor live noâ— by a Law nor think not of another world nor â—â—ar any â—â—fferings after death But that you have reasâ—n free-will and executive power to knâ—w your Maker and to live by â—ule aâ—d to hope for a Reward in another life and to fear a pâ—nâ—shmeâ—t hereafter And that as no wise Artificer maketh any thing in vain so God is mâ—ch less to be thought to havâ— given you such souls and faculties in vain 2. Coâ—sidâ—r next how all the world declareth to you that there is a Gâ—d whâ— is infiniteâ—y pâ—werful wise and good And thaâ— it is not possible that all things which we see should have no cause or that the derived Power and Wisdom and Goodnesâ— of the creature should not proceed from that which is more excellent in the first and total cause Or that God should give more than he had to give 3. Consider nexâ— in whâ—t Relation such a creature must needs stand to such a Creatour If he made us of Nâ—â—hing 〈◊〉 is not pâ—ssible but that he must be 〈◊〉 Owner and wâ— aâ—d all things absolutely his Own And if he be our Maker and Owner and be infinitely powerful wise and good and we be Reasonable-free-agents made to be guided by Laws or Moral Means unto our end it is not possible but that we should stand related to him as subjects to their rightful Governour And if he be our Creatour Owner and Ruler and also infinitely Good and the grand Benefactor of the world and if the nature of our souls be to Love Good as Good it cannot be possible that he should not be our End who is our Creatour and that we should not be related to him as to the Chiefest Good both originally as our Benefactor and finally as our End 4. And then it is easie for you next to see what duty you owe to that God to whom you are thus related That if you are absolutely his Own you should willingly be at his absolute dispose And iâ— he bâ— your Soveraign Ruler you should labour most diligently to know his Laws and absolutely to obey them And if he be infinitely Good and your Benefactor and your End you are absolutely bound to Love him most devotedly and to place your own felicity in his Love All this is so evidently the duty of man to God by nature that nothing but madness can deny
it And this is it which we call Sanctification or Holiness to the Lord. And our cohabitation and relation to men will tell us that Justice and Charity are our duty as to them And when a man is fully satisfied that Holiness Justice and Charity are our duty he hath a great advantage for his progress towards the Christian Faith To which let me add that as to our selves also it is undeniably our duty to take more care for our souls than for our bodies and to rule our senses and passions by our Reason and to subject our lower faculties to the higher and so to use all sensible and present things as conduceth to the publick good and to the advancement of our nobler part and to our greatest benefit though it cross our sensual appetites All this being unquestionably our natural duty we see that man was made to live in Holiness Justice Charity Temperance and rational regularity in the world 5. When you have gone thus far consider next how far men are generally from the performance of this duty And how backward humane nature is to it even while they cannot deny it to be their duty And you will soon perceive that God who made it their duty did never put in them this enmity thereto nor ever made them without some aptitude to perform it And if any would infer that their indisposednâ—ss proveth it to be none of their duty the nature of man will fully confute him and the conscience and confession of all the sober part of the world What wretch so blind if he believe a Deity who will not confess that he should love God with all his heart and that Justice Charity and Sobriety are his duty and that his sense should be ruled by his reason c The evidence before given is not to be denyed And therefore something is marr'd in nature Some enemy hath seduced man And some deplorable change hath befallen him 6. Yea if you had no great backwardness to this duty your self consider what it must cost you faithfully to perform it in such a malignant world as we now live in what envy and wrath what malice and persecution what opposition and discouragements on every side we must expect Universal experience is too full a proof of this Besides what it costeth our restrained flesh 7. Proceed then to think further that certainly God hath never appointed us so much duty without convenient Motives to perform it It cannot be that he should make us more noble than the brutes to be more miserable Or that he should make Holiness our duty that it might be our loss or our calamity If there were no other life but this and men had no hopes of future happiness nor any fears of punishment what a Hell would this world be Heart-wickedness would be but little feared nor heart-duty regarded Secret sin against Princes States and all degrees would be boldly committed and go unpunished for the most part The sins of Princes and of all that have power to defeat the Law would have little or no restraint Every mans interest would oblige him rather to offend God who so seldom punisheth here than to offend a Prince or any man in power who seldom lets offences against himself go unrevenged And so man more than God would be the Ruler of the world that is our God Nay actually the hopes and fears of another life among most Heaâ—hens Infidels and Hereticks is the principle of Divine Government by which God keepeth up most of the order and virtue which is in the world Yea think what you should be and do your self as to enemies and as to secret faults and as to sensual vices if you thought there were no life but this And is it possible that the infinitely powerful wise and good Creatour can be put to govern all mankind by meer deceit and a course of lyes as if he wanted better means By how much the better any man is by so much the more regardful is he of the life to come and the hopes and fears of another life are so much the more prevalent with him And is it possible that God should make men good to make them the most deceived and most miserable Hath he commanded all these cares to be our needless torments which brutes and fools and sottish sinners do all scape Is the greatest obedience to God become a sign of the greatest folly or the way to the greatest loss or disappointment We are all sure that this life is short and vain No Infidel can say that he is sure that there is no other life for us And if this be so reason commandeth us to prefer the pâ—ssibilities of such a life to come before the certain vanities of this life So that even the Infidels uncertainty will unavoidably infer that the preferring of the world to come is our duty And if it be our duty then the thing in it self is true For God will not make it all mens duties in the frame of their nature to seek an Vtopia and pursue a shadow and to spend their daies and chiefest cares for that which is not Godliness is not such a dreaming night-walk Conscience will not suffer dying men to believe that they have more cause to repent of their Godliness than of their sin and of their seeking Heaven than of wallowing in their lusts Nay then these hâ—avenly desires would be themselves our sins as being the following of a lye the aspiring after a state which is above us and the abuse and loss of our faculties and time And sensuality would be liker to be our virtue as being natural to us and a seeking of our most real felicity The common conscience of mankind doth justifie the wisdom and virtue of a temperate holy heavenly person and acknowledgeth that our heavenly desires are of God And doth God give men both natural faculties which shall never come to the perfection which is their End and also gracious desires which shall but deceive us and never be satisfied If God had made us for the enjoyments of brutes he would have given us but the knowledge and desires of brutes Every King and mortal Judge can punish faults against Man with death And hath God no greater or further punishment for sins as committed against himself And are his rewards no greater than a mans These and many more such Evidences may assure you that there is another life of Rewards and punishments and that this life is not our final state but only a â—ime of preparation thereunto Settle this deeply and fixedly in your minds 8. And look up to the heavenly Regions and think Is this world so replenished with inhabitants both Sea and Land and Air it self And can I dream that the vast and glorious Orbs and Regions are all uninhabited Oâ— that they have not more numerous and glorious possessors than this small opacous spot of earth And then think that those higher creatures are intellectual spirits This is
these things and to expound all these Solemnities Laws and Ceremonies to them so that the frame of Church and State and Families was a preservative hereof 5. But to pass by all the rest in the Old Testament the Incarnation of Christ was such a work of Omnipotent Love as caâ—not by us be comprehended That God should be united to humanity in person that humanity should thus be advanced into union with the Deity and Man be set above the Angels that a Virgin should conceive that men from the East should be led thither to worship an Infant by the conduct of a Star which Caesarius thinketh was one of those Angels or Spirits which are called a flame of fire Psal 104.4 That Angels from Heaven should declare his nativity to the Shepherds and celebrate it with their praises that John Baptist should be so called to be his forerunner and Elizabeth Zachary Simeon and Anna should so prophesie of him That the Spirit should be seen descending on him at his Baptism and the voice be heard from Heaven which owned him that he should fast forty daies and nights and that he should be transfigured before his three Disciples on the Mount and Moses and Elias seen with him in that glory and the voice from Heaven again bear witness to him These and many such like were the attestations of Divine Omnipotency to the truth of Christ 6. To these may be next joyned the whole course of miracles performed by Christ in healing the sick and raising the dead and in many other miraculous acts which are most of the substance of the Gospel-history and which I have recited together in my Reasons of the Christian Religion see Heb. 2.2 3 4. 7. And to these may be added the Power which was given over all the creatures to Christ our Mediatour All power in Heaven and Earth was given him Joh. 17.2 13.3 Mat. 28.19 Rom. 14.9 Ephes 1.22 23. He was made Head over all things to the Church and all principalities and powers were put under him And this was not barely asserted by him but demonstrated He shewed his power over the Devils in casting them out and his power over Angels by their attendance and his power of life and death by raising the dead and his power over all diseases by healing them and his power over the winds and waters by appeasing them and his power over our food and natures by turning water into wine and by feeding many thousands miraculously yea and his power over them into whose hands he was resolved to yield himself by restraining them till his hour was come and by making them all fall to the ground at his name and his power over Sun and Heaven and Earth by the darkening of the Sun and the trembling of the Earth and the rending of the Rocks and of the Vail of the Temple Mat. 27.45 51. And his power over the dead by the rising of the bodies of many Mat. 27.52 And his power over the Saints in Heaven by the attendance of Moses and Elias and his power to forgive sins by taking away the penal maladies and his power to change hearts and save souls by causing his Disciples to leave all and follow him at a word and Zacheus to receive him and believe and the thief on the cross to be converted and to enter that day into Paradise 8. And his own Resurrection is an undoubted attestation of Divine Omnipotency If God gave him such a victory over death and raised him to life when men had killed him and rolled a stone upon his Sepulchre and sealed and guarded it there needeth no further evidence of the Power of God impressing and attesting the Christian Religion than that which ascertaineth to us the truth of Christs Resurrection For he was declared to be the Son of God by POWER by resurrection from the dead Rom. 1.4 9. And his bodily appearance to his congregated Disciples when the doors were shut his miracle at their fishing his walking on the Sea his vanishing out of their sight Luke 24. when he had discoursed with the two Disciples his opening their hearts to understand his Word c. do all shew this part of Gods Image on our Religion even his Power 10. And so doth his bodily ascending into Heaven before the face of his Disciples Acts 1. 11. But especially the sending down the Holy Ghost upon his Disciples according as he promised To cause them that were before so low in knowledge to be suddenly inspired with languages and with the full understanding of his own will and with unanimity and concord herein this made his Disciples the living monuments and effects of his own Omnipotency Acts 2. 12. And accordingly all the miracles which they did by this power recorded partly in the Acts of the Apostles or rather the Acts of Paul by Luke who was his companion which you may there read and no doubt but other Apostles in their measures did the like as Paul though they are not recorded for they had all the same Promise and Spirit This is another impression of POWER 13. Whereto must be added the great and wonderful gifts of communicating the same Spirit or doing that upon which God would give it to those converted Believers on whom they laid their hands which Simon Magus would fain have bought with money Acts 8. To enable them to speak with tongues to heal diseases to prophesie c. as they themselves had done which is a great attestation of Omnipotency 14. And the lamentable destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans foretold by Christ was an attestation of Gods POWER in the revenge or punishment of their unbelief and putting Christ to death 15. And so was the great fortitude and constancy of Believers who underwent all persecutions so joyfully as they did for the sake of Christ which was the effect of the corroborating Power of the Almighty 16. And so was the Power which the Apostles had to execute present judgements upon the enemies of the Gospel as Elimas and Simon Magus and on the abusers of Religion as Ananias and Saphyra and on many whom they excommunicated and delivered up to Satan 17. The same evidence is found in Christs Legislation as an universal Soveraign making Laws for heart and life for all the world Taking down the Laws of the Jewish Polity and Ceremonies which God by Moses had for a time set up Commanding his Ministers to proclaim his Laws to all the world and Princes and people to obey them And by these Laws conferring on Believers no less than forgiveness and salvation and binding over the impenitent to everlasting punishment 18. But the great and continued impress of Gods Power is that which together with his Wisdom and Love is made and shewed in the conveâ—sion of mens souls to God by Christ You may here first consider the numbers which were suddenly converted by the preaching of the Apostles at the first And in how little time there were Churches planted
cast in the light of Faith extraordinarily which is indeed the life of Faith Nor is it seeming to stir up Faith in a Prayer or Sermon and looking no more after it all the day This is but to give God a salutation and not to dwell and walk with him And to give Heaven a complemental visit sometimes but not to have your conversation there 2 Cor. 5.7 8. Direct 3. Be not too seldom in solitary meditation Though it be a duty which melancholy persons are disabled to perform in any set and long and orderly manner yet it is so needful to those who are able that the greatest works of Faith are to be managed by it How should things unseen be apprehended so as to affect our hearts without any serious exercise of our thoughts How should we search into mysteries of the Gospel or converse with God or walk in Heaven or fetch either joyes or motives thence without any retired studious contemplation If you cannot meditate or think you cannot believe Meditation abstracteth the mind from vanity and lifteth it up above the world and setteth it about the work of Faith which by a mindless thoughtless or worldly soul can never be performed 2 Cor. 4.16 17 18. Phil. 3.20 Mat. 6.21 Col. 3.1 3. Direct 4. Let the Image of the Life of Christ and his Martyrs and holiest servants be deeply printed on your minds That you may know what the way is which you have to go and what patterns they be which you have to imitate think how much they were above things sensitive and how light they set by all the pleasures wealth and glory of this world Therefore the Holy Ghost doth set before us that cloud of witnesses and catalogue of Martyrs in Heb. 11. that example may help us and we may see with how good company we go in the life of Faith Paul had well studied the example of Christ when he took pleasure in infirmities and gloryed only in the Cross to be base and afflicted in this world for the hopes of endless glory 2 Cor. 11.30 12.5 9 10. And when he could say I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord for whom I have suffered the loss of all things and do count them but dung that I may win Christ that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable to his death Phil. 3.8 9 10. No man will well militate in the life of Faith but he that followeth the Captain of his salvation Heb. 2.10 who for the bringing of many Sons to glory even those whom he is not ashamed to call his Brethren was made perfect as to perfection of action or performance by suffering thereby to shew us how little the best of these visible and sensible corporeal things are to be valued in comparison of the things invisible and therefore as the General and the souldiers make up one army and militate in one militia so he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one Heb. 2.10 11 12. Though that which is called the life of Faith in us deserved a higher title in Christ and his faith in his Father and ours do much differ and he had not many of the objects acts and uses of Faith as we have who are sinners yet in this we must follow him as our great example in valuing things invisible and vilifying things visible in comparison of them And therefore Paul saith I am crucified with Christ Nevertheless I live yet not I but Christ liveth in me and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the Faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me Gal. 2.20 Direct 5. Remember therefore that God and Heaven the unseen things are the final object of true Faith and that the final object is the noblest and that the principal use of Faith is to carry up the whole heart and life from things visible and temporal to things invisible and eternal and not only to comfort us in the assurance of our own forgiveness and salvation It is an exceeding common and dangerous deceit to overlook both this principal object and principal use of the Christian Faith 1. Many think of no other object of it but the death and righteousness of Christ and the pardon of sin and the promise of that pardon And God and Heaven they look at as the objects of some other common kind of Faith 2. And they think of little other use of it than to comfort them against the guilt of sin with the assurance of their Justification But the great and principal work of Faith is that which is about its final object to carry up the soul to God and Heaven where the world and things sensible are the terminus à quo and God and things invisible the terminus ad quem And thus it is put in contradistinction to living by fight in 2 Cor. 5.6 7. And thus mortification is made one part of this great effect in Rom. 6. throughout and many other places and thus it is that Heb. 11. doth set before us those numerous examples of a life of Faith as it was expressed in valuing things unseen upon the belief of the Word of God and the vilifying of things seen which stand against them And thus Christ tryed the Rich man Luke 18.22 whether he would be his Disciple by calling him to sell all and give to the poâ—r for the hopes of a treasure in Heaven And thus Christ maketh bearing the Cross and denying our selves and forsaking all for him to be necessary in all that are his Disciples And thus Paul describeth the life of Faith 2 Cor. 4.17 18. by the contempt of the world and suffering afflictions for the hopes of Heaven For our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory while 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 Faith is our victory over the world even in the very nature of it and not only in the remote effect for its aspect and believing approaches to God and the things unseen and a proportionable recess from the things which are seen is one and the same motion of the soul denominated variously from its various respects to the terminus ad quem and à quo Direct 6. Remember that as God to be believed in is the principal and final object of Faith so the kindling of love to God in the soul is the principal use and effect of Faith And to live by Faith is but to love obey and suffer by Faith Faith working by Love is the description of our Christianity Gal. 5.6 As Christ is the Way to the Father Joh. 14.6 and came into the world to recover Apostate
to despise the Idol of the ungodly and to lay that under our feet which is nearest to their heart and to be able without impatiency to be scorned spit upon buffeted and abused to be poor and of no reputation among men and though not to enslave our selves to any but if we can be free to use it rather 1 Cor. 7.21 yet to be the loving and voluntary servants of as many as we can to do them good and not to desire to have a great retinue and to be such voluntary burdens to the world as to be served by many while we serve none as if we who are taught by Christ and Nature that it is more honourable to give than to receive and to be helpful unto many than to need the help of many would declare our impotency to be so great that when every poor man can serve himself and others we are and had rather be so indigent as not to live and help our selves without the help of many servants yea scarce to undress and dress our selves or to do any thing which another can do for us Only such persons are willing to eat and drink and sleep for themselves and to play and laugh and to sin for themselves but as to any thing that 's good and usefull without their present sensitive delight they are not only unserviceable to the world but would live like the lame or dead that must be moved and carryed about by others Among Christs servants he that is the chief must be the chief in service even as a servant unto all Luke 22.26 Matth. 23.11 And all by love must serve one another Gal. 5.13 4. His submission unto death and conquest of the natural love of life for a greater good even the pleasing of God and the Crown of Glory and the good of many in their salvation To teach us that not only the pleasures of life but life it self must be willingly laid down when any of these three ends require it Matth. 20.28 John 10 11. 15.13 1 John 3.16 Joh. 10.17 Acts 20.24 Matth. 10.39 16.25 Mark 14.26 Phil. 2.30 1 John 3.16 Rev. 12.11 Direct 16. Let Faith behold Christ in his relation to his universal Church and not unto your selves alone 1. Because else you overlook his most honourable relation It is more his glory to be the Churches Head and Saviour than yours Ephes 5.23 1.21 22. And 2. You else overlook his chief design and work which is for the perfecting and saving of his body Ephes 1.23 Col. 1.24.18 And 3. Else you overlook the chief part of your own duty and of your conformity to Christ which is in loving and edifying the body Ephes 4.12 16 Whereas if you see Christ as the undivided and impartial Head of all Saints you will see also all Saints as dear to him and as united in him and you will have communion by faith with them in him and you will love them all and pray for all and desire a part in the prayers of all instead of carping at their different indifferent manner and forms and words of prayer and running away from them to shew that you disown them And you will have a tender care of the unity and honour and prosperity of the Church and regard the welfare of particular Brethren as your own 1 Cor. 12. throughout John 13.14 34. 15.12 17. Rom. 13.8 stooping to the lowest service to one another if it were the washing of the feet and in honour preferring one another Rom. 12.10 Not judging nor despising nor persecuting but receiving and forbearing one another Rom. 14. throughout 15.1 2 3 4 7 8. Gal. 5.13 6.1 2 3. Ephes 4.2 32. Col. 3.13 Edifying exhorting and seeking the saving of one other 1 Thes 5.11 4.9 18. Heb. 3.13 10.24 Not speaking evil one of another James 4.11 Much less biting and devouring one another Gal. 5.15 But having compassion one of another as those that are members one of another 1 Pet. 3.8 Rom. 12.5 Direct 17. Make all your opposition to the temptations of Satan the world and the flesh by the exercise of Faith in Christ From him you must have your weapons skill and strength It is the great work of Faith to militate under him as the Captain of our salvation and by vertue of his precepts example and Spirit to overcome as he hath overcome Of which more anon Direct 18. Death also must be entertained and conquered by Faith in Christ We must see it as already conquered by him and entertain it as the passage to him This also will be after spoken to Direct 19. Faith must believe in Christ as our Judge to give us our final Justification and sentence us to endless life Rom. 14.9 10. John 5.22 24 25. Direct 20. Lastly Faith must see Christ as preparing us a place in Heaven and possessing it for us and ready to receive us to himself But all this I only name because it will fall in in the last Chapters CHAP. III. Directions to live by Faith on the Holy Ghost THis is not the least part of the life of Faith If the Spirit give us Faith it self then Faith hath certainly its proper work to do towards that Spirit which giveth it And if the Spirit be the worker of all other grace and Faith be the means on our part then Faith hath somewhat to do with the Holy Ghost herein The best way that I can take in helping you to believe aright in the Holy Ghost will be by opening the true sense of this great Article of our Faith to you that by understanding the matter aright you may know what you are here both to do and to expect Direct 1. The name of the Holy Ghost or Spirit of God is used in Scripture for the third person in the Trinity as constitutive and as the third perfective principle of operation and most usually as operating ad extra by communication And therefore many Fathers and ancient Divines and Schoolmen say That the Holy Ghost the third person and principle is THE LOVE OF GOD which as it is Gods Love of himself is a constitutive person or principle in the Trinity but as it is pregnant and productive it is the third principle of operation ad extra and so that it is taken usually for the pregnant operative Love of God And thus they suppose that the Divine POWER INTELLECT and WILL or Wisdom and Love are the three constitutive persons in themselves and the three principles of operation ad extra To this purpose writeth Origen Ambrose and Richardus the Schoolman but plainlier and fullier Damascene and Bernard and Edmundus Cantuariensis and Potho Prumensis cited by me in my Reasons of the Christian Religion page 372 373 374. Augustine only putteth Memory for Power by which yet Campanella thinketh he meant Power Metaphys par 2. l. 6. c. 12. art 4. pag. 88. what Caesarius and many other say de triplici lumine I pass by The Lux
to one that liveth like a man What did God ever forbid you that was not hurtful to you And what did he ever command you which was not for your benefit either for your present delight or for your future happiness for the healing of your diseases or the preventing them And if Reason can discern the goodness of Gods Laws to us Faith can acknowledge it with more advantage For we can see by Faith the goodness of their Author and the goodness of the reward and end more fully than by reason only And a Believer hath found by sad experience how bad and bitter the waies of sin are and by sweet experience how good and pleasant the waies of God are He hath found that it is the way to peace and hope and joy to deny his lusts and obey his Maker and Redeemer And it is the way to terrour and a troubled soul and a broken heart to sin and to gratifie his sensuality Prov. 3.17 All her waies are pleasantness and all her paths are peace Psal 119.165 Great peace have they which love thy Law and nothing can offend them Psal 37 37. Mark the upright man and behold the just for the end of that man is peace Rom. 14.17 Righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost are the Kingdom of God Grace Mercy and Peace are Gods entertainment of the faithful soul Titus 1.4 1 Tim. 1.2 2 Tim. 1.2 1 Cor. 1.3 c. But there is no peace to the wicked saith my God Isa 57.21 48.22 For the way of peace they have not known They have made them 〈◊〉 paths whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace Isa 54.8 Direct 3. Mark well how those Commands of God which seem not necessary for your selves are plainly necessary for the good of others and for the publick welfare which God must provide for as well as yours He is not your God only but the God of all the world And the welfare of many especially of Kingdoms and Societies is more to be regarded than the welfare much more than the humouring or pleasing of any one You may think that if you had leave to be fornicators and adulterers to be riotous and examples of evil to be covetous and to deceive and steal and lye that it would do you no harm But suppose it were so yet a little wit may serve to shew you how pernicious it would be to others and to societies And Faith can tell a true Believer what is like to be the end And that sin is a reproach to any people Prov. 14.34 You may think perhaps that if you were excused from many duties of Charity and Justice in Ministry Magistracy or a more private state it would be no harm to your selves But suppose it were so must not others be regarded If God should regard but one why should it fall to your lot rather than to anothers And why should any others be bound to use Justice or Charity to you any more than you to them There is no member of the body politick or ecclesiastick which will not receive more good to it self by the Laws of Communion if truly practised than it can do to others For you are but one who are bound to be charitable and do good to others and that but according to your own ability But it may be hundreds or thousands who may be all bound to do good to you You have the vital influences and assistances of all the parts you have the prayers of all the Christians in the world Suppose that the Laws were made to secure your selves of your estate and lives but to leave the estates and lives of your children to the will of any one that hath a will to wrong them would you be content with such kind of Laws as these And why should not others good be secured as well as your posterities 1 Cor. 12.12 14 20 c. Rom. 12.4 5 16.2 1 Cor. 10.17 33. Ephes 4.3 11 12 14 15 16. Diâ—ect 4. The chief work of Faith is to make the obedience of Gods Commands to be sweet and pleasant to us by seeing still that intrinsecal goodness and the extrinsecal motives and the eternal rewards which may cause the soul to imbrace them with the dearest love They are much mistaken who know no use for Faith but to comfort them and save them from Hell the great work of Faith is to bring up the soul to Obedience Thankfulness and Love Therefore iâ— hath to do with the Precepts as well as with the Promises and with the Promises to sweeten the Precepts to us Believers are not called to the obedience of slaves nor to be acted only by the fear of pain but to the obedience of redeemed ones and Sons that Faith may cause them to obey in Love and the essential act of Love is complacency Therefore it is the work of Faith to cause us to obey God with pleasure and delight Forced motives endure not long They are accompanied with unwillingness and weariness which at last will sit down when the fears do by distance delay or dulness abate Love is our Nature but Fear is only a servant to watch for us while we do the work of Love As many as are led by the Spirit of God are the Sons of God and therefore will obey as Sons For we have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear but we have received the Spirit of Adoption whereby we cry Abba Father Rom. 8.14 15. Christ suffâ—red death to overcome the Devil that had the power of death and to deliver us from the fears of it which was the bondage of our lives Heb. 2.14 15. That we might serve God without fâ—ar in holiness and righteousness all the daies of our lives Luke 1.74 There is no fear in love but perfect love casteth out fear because fear hath torment 1 John 4.18 The meaning is not only that the Love of God casteth out the fear of men and persecution but also that it maketh the fear of tormenting punishment to become unnecessary to drive us to obedience so far as the Love of God and of obedience doth prevail He that loveth more to feast than to fare hardly to be rich than to be poor and so to be obedient and holy than to be unholy need not so far any fear of punishment to drive him to it Even as the Love of the world as adverse to the Love of God is overcome by Faith 1 John 2.15 and yet the Love of the world as Gods creature and as representing him and sanctified to his service is but subordinate to the Love of the Father so also Fear as adverse to Love or as disjunct from it is cast out by it But as it subserveth it in watching against the enemies of Love and is truly filial it is a fruit of Faith and the beginning of wisdom Employ Faith therefore day by day in looking into the Love of God in Christ and the Kingdom of Glory the
be loved of my Father and I will love him and will manifest my self to him Prov. 8.17 I love them that love me John 14.15 If ye love me keep my Commandments and I will pray the Father and he shall give you another Comforter that he may abide with you for ever John 16.27 The Father himself loveth you because ye have loved me and believed 17. Promises to them that love the godly and that are merciful and do the works of love John 13.35 By this shall all men know that ye are my Disciples if ye have love one to another Gal. 5.6 13 22. In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision but faith which worketh by love By love serve one another for all the Law is fulfilled in one word in this Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self The fruit of the Spirit is love joy peace long-suffering gentleness goodness Against such there is no Law Heb. 6.10 God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love 1 John 3.14 We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brethren 18. My little children lâ—t us not love in word nor tongue but in deed and in truth And hereby we know that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before him 1 John 4.7 Beloved let us love one another for love is of God and every one that loveth is born of God and knoweth God v. 16. God is Love and he that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God and God in him v. 12. If we love one another God dwelleth in us and his love is perfected in us 2 Cor. 9.7 God loveth a chearful giver v. 6. He that soweth bountifully shall reap bountifully Mat. 5.7 Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy Matth. 10.41 42. He that receiveth a Prophet in the name of a Prophet shall receive a Prophets reward and he that receiveth a righteous man in the name of a righteous man shall receive a righteous mans reward And whosoever shall give to drink to one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a Disciple verily I say unto you he shall in no wise lose his reward Matth. 25.34 40 46. Come ye blessed of my Father inherit the Kingdom Verily I say unto you in as much as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren ye have done it unto me The righteous shall go into life eternal Heb. 13.16 But to do good and to communicate forget not for with such sacrifices God is well pleased Phil. 4.17 I desire fruit which may abound to your account 2 Cor. 9.9 As it is written He hath dispersed abroad he hath given to the poor his righteousness remaineth for ever 18. Promises to the poor and needy Christians Matth. 6.30 32 33. If God so clothe the grass of the field which to day is and to morrow is cast into the Oven 〈◊〉 he not much more clothe 〈◊〉 O ye of little faith Your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added to you Heb. 13.5 Let your conversations be without covetousness and be content with such things as ye have for he hath said I will never fail thee nor forsake thee James 2.5 Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith and heirs of the Kingdom Psal 34.10 They that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing Psal 23.1 The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want Psal 4.19 My God shall supply all your need Phil. 4.11 12 13 I have learned in whatsoever state I am therewith to be content I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry both to abound and to suffer need Psal 9.18 The needy shall not alway be forgotten the expectation of the poor shall not perish for ever 19. Promises to the oppressed and wronged Christian Psal 12.5 6 7. For the oppression of the poor and for the sighing of the needy now will I arise saith the Lord I will set him in safety from him that puffeth at him Thou shalt keep them O Lord thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever Psal 35.10 All my bones shall say Lord who is like unto thee which deliverest the poor from him that is too strong for him yea the poor and the needy from him that spoileth him Psal 40.17 But I am poor and needy yet the Lord thinketh on me thou art my helper and deliverer Psal 42.2 4 12 13. He shall judge thy people with righteousness and thy poor with judgement He shall judge the poor of the people he shall save the children of the needy and shall break in pieces the oppressor For he shall deliver the needy when he cryeth the poor also and him that hath no helper He shall spare the poor and needy and shall save the souls of the needy He shall redeem their souls from deceit and violence and precious â—â—all their blood be in his sight Psal 113.7 He raiseth up the poor out of the dust and lifteth the needy out of the dunghill See Isa 25.3 4 5. 14.30 Zech. 9.8 Isa 51.13 Eccles 5.8 If thou seest the oppression of the poor and violent perverting of judgement and justice in a Province marvel not at the matter for he that is higher than the highest regardeth and there be higher than they 20. Promises to the persecuted who suffer for righteousness Matth. 5.10 11 12. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you and say all manner of evil against you falsly for my sake Rejoyce and be exceeding glad for great is your reward in Heaven for so persecuted they the Prophets which were before you Matth. 10.28 29 30 31 32. Fear not them which kill the body but are not able to kill the soul Are not two Sparrows sold for a farthing and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father But the very hairs of your head are all numbered Fear you not therefore ye are of more value than many Sparrows Whosoever shall confess me before men him will I confess also before my Father which is in Heaven v. 39. He that loseth his life for my sake shall find it Matth. 19.29 And every one that hath forsaken houses or brethren or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my Names sake shall receive an hundred-fold and shall inherit everlasting life 2 Thes 1.4 5 6. Your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations which ye suffer is a manifest token of the righteous judgement of God that ye may be counted worthy of the Kingdom of God for which ye
also suffer seeing it is a righteous thing with God to recompence tribulation to them that trouble you and to you who are troubled rest with us when Christ shall come to be glorified in his Saints and admired in all them that believe Acts 9.4 Saul Saul why persecutest thou me Read Rom. 8.28 to the end Rev. 2. 3d. Heb. 11. 12. 1 Cor. 10.13 There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man but God is faithful who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able but will with the temptation also make a way to escape that ye may be able to bear it 2 Tim. 2.9 10 11 12. I suffer trouble as an evil doer unto bonds but the Word of God is not bound I endure all things for the Elects sake It is a faithful saying For if we be dead with him we shall also live with him If we suffer we shall also reign with him Rom. 8.17 18. If so be that we suffer with him that we may be also glorified together For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory ready to be revealed on us 2 Cor. 4.17 For our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding eternal weight of glory 1 Pet. 3.14 15. But if ye suffer for righteousness sake happy are ye and be not afraid of their terrour neither be troubled Read 1 Pet. 4.12 13 14 15 16 18 19. Rom. 5.1 2 3 4. 1 Pet. 5.10 The God of all grace who hath called us to his eternal glory by Christ Jesus after ye have suffered a while make you perfect stablish strengthen settle you 21. Promises to the faithful in dangers daily and ordinary or extraordinary Psal 34.7 The Angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear him and delivereth them v. 17. The righteous cry and the Lord heareth and delivereth them out of all their troubles v. 19 20 22. Many are the afflictions of the righteous but the Lord delivereth him out of them all He keepeth all his bones nor one of them is broken The Lord redeemeth the soul of his servants and none of them that trust in him shall be desolate Psal 91.1 He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the tabernacle of the Almighty v. 2 3. I will say to the Lord He is my refuge and my fortress my God in him will I trust Surely he will deliver thee from the snare of the fowler and from the noisome Pestilence v. 5. Thou shalt not be afraid for the terrour by night v. 11 12 For he shall give his Angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy waies They shall bear thee up in their hands lest thou dash thy foot against a stone Read the whole Psal 121.2 3 4 5 6 7 8. My help cometh from the Lord which made Heaven and Earth He will not suffer thy foot to be moved he that keepeth thee will not slumber The Lord is thy keeper the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil he shall preserve thy soul The Loâ—d shall preserve thy going out and coming in from this time forth and even for ever more Psal 145.20 The Lord preserveth all them that love him Psal 31.23 97.10 116.6 Prov. 2.8 Isa 43.2 When thou passest thorow the waters I will be with thee 1 Pet. 5.7 Casting all your care on him for he careth for you 22. Promises fâ—r help against Temptations to believers 1 Cor. 10.13 before cited 2 Pet. 2.9 The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations Compare Matth. 4. where Christ was tempted even to worship the Devil c. with Heb. 4.15 2.18 For we have not an High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities but was in all points tempted like as we are without sin Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren that he might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things God-ward for us For in that he himself hath suffered bâ—ing tempted he is able to succour them that are tempted James 1.2 My Brethren count it all ioy when ye fall into divers temptations that is by sufferings for Christ v. 12. Blessed is the man that endureth temptation for when he is tryed he shall receive the Crown of life 2 Cor. 12.9 My grace is sufficient for thee My strength is made perfect in weakness Phil. 4.13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me 1 Pet. 5.9 Whom resist stedfast in the faith with v. 10. James 4.7 Resist the Devil and he will flee from you Eph. 6.10 11 c. Rom. 6.14 For sin shall not have dominion over you for ye are not under the Law but under Grace John 16.33 Be of good cheer I have overcome the world 1 John 5.4 This is the victory that overcometh the world even our faith 23. Promises to them that overcome and persevere Rev. 2.7 To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the Paradise of God V. 11. He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death V. 17. To him that overcometh will I give to eat of the hidden Manna and will give him a white stone c. V. 10. Be faithful unto death and I will give thee a Crown of life V. 26 28 He that overcometh and keepeth my words unto the end to him will I give power over the Nations and he shall rule them with a Rod of Iron Even as I received of my Father and I will give him the morning star Rev. 3 5. He that overcometh the same shall be clothed in white rayment and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life but I will confess his name before my Father and before his Angels V. 12. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the Temple of my God and he shall go no more out And I will write upon him the name of my God and the name of the City of my God New Jerusalem which cometh down out of Heaven from my God and my new name V. 21. To him that overcometh will I grant to sit down with me on my Throne even as I overcame and am set down with my Father on his Throne John 8.31 If ye continue in my word then are ye my Disciples indeed and ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free Col. 1.22 23. To present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled and be not moved away from the hope of the Gospel John 15.7 If ye abide in me and my words abide in you ye shall ask what ye will and it shall be done unto you Matth. 10.22 He that endureth to the end shall be
saved 24. Promises to believers in sickness and at death 1 Cor. 11.32 But when we are judged we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world Heb. 12.6 7 8 11. For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth and scourgeth every Son whom he receiveth If ye endure chastening God dealeth with you as with Sons Shall we not be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live But he for our profit that we might be partakers of his holiness No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them which are exercised thereby James 5.14 Is any sick let them send for the Elders of the Church The prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up and if he have committed sins they shall be forgiven him John 11.3 He whom thou lovest is sick Psal 41.1 2 3. Blessed is the man that considereth the poor the Lord shall deliver him in time of trouble The Lord shall preserve him and keep him alive The Lord will strengthen him upon the bâ—d of languishing Thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness 2 Cor. 5.1 c. 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 clothed upon with our house which is from Heaven For we that are in us tabernacle do groan being burdened not for that we would be unclothed but clothed upon that mortality may be swallowed up of life Now he that hath wrought this for the self same thing is God who also hath given to us the earnest of the Spirit Therefore we are alwaies confident knowing that whilst we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith not by sight we are confident I say and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. Phil. 1.20 21 23 Now also Christ shall be magnified in my body whether it be by life or by death For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain I am in a strait betwixt two having a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better Luke 23.43 To day shalt thou be with me in Paradise Rev. 14.13 I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me write 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 Heb. 2.14 Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood he also himself likewise took part of the same that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death that is the Devil and deliver them who through fear of death were all their life time subject to bondage Psal 68.20 He that is our God is the God of salvation and to God the Lord belong the issues from death 2 Tim. 1.10 Who hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light by the Gospel 1 Cor. 15.54 O death where is thy sting O grave where is thy victory The sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is the Law but thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ 25. Promises to persevering Believers of the Resurrection unto life and of Justification in Judgement and of Glorification 1 Cor. 15. throughout John 5.22 24 28 29. He that heareth my Word and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation but is passed from death to life The hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth they that have done good to the resurrection of life and they that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation John 14.19 Because I live ye shall live also Col. 3.1 3 4. If ye be risen with Christ seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God Set your affections on things above not on things on the earth For ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God When Christ who is our life shall appear then shall ye also appear with him in glory 2 Thes 1.10 He shall come to be glorified in his Saints and admired in all them that believe Matth. 25 34 46. Come ye blessed c. The righteous into life eternal John 12.26 If any man serve me let him follow me and where I am there shall also my servant be If my man serve me him will my Father honour John 14.1 2 3. Let not your heart be troubled In my Fathers house are many mansions I go to prepare a place for you And if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you to my self that where I am there ye may be also John· 17.24 Father I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am that they may behold the glory which thou hast given me John 2.17 GO TO MY BRETHREN and SAY VNTO THEM I ASCEND TO MY FATHER and YOVR FATHER TO MY GOD and TO YOVR GOD. 1 Cor. 6.2 3. Know ye not that the Saints shall judge the world Know ye not that we shall judge Angels Acts 3.19 Repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out when the time of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord and he shall send Jesus Christ Luke 14.14 Thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just Let the Reader here take notice of that most important observation of Dr. Hammond that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Resurrection doth often signifie in general our living in the next world or our next state of life in the Scriptures and not the last Resurrection only unless it be called The Resurrection of the flesh or of the body for distinction or the context have before explained it otherwise By which 1 Cor. 15. and Christs answer to the Sadducees may be the better understood 26. Promises to the godly for their children supposing them to be faithful in dedicating them to God and educating them in his holy waies Exod. 20. Commandment 2d Shewing mercy to thousands in them that love me and keep my Commandments Acts 2.39 For the promise is made to you and to your children and to all that are afar off c. Psal 37.26 His seed is blessed 1 Cor. 7.14 Else were your children unclean but now are they holy Matth. 23.37 O Jerusalem Jerusalem how oft would I have gathered thy children together even as a Hen gathereth hee chickens under her wings and ye would not Rom. 11.11 Through their fall salvation is come to the Gentiles 16 17 18 c. shew that they were broken off by unbelief and we are graffed in and are holy as they were Matth.
28.19 20. Go and Disciple all Nations baptizing them c. Rom. 4.16 That the promise might be sure to all the seed And 9.8 The children of the Promise are counted for the seed Matth. 19.13 14. Jesus said suffer little children and forbid them not to come unto me for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven 27. Promises to the Church of its increase and preservation and perfection Rev. 11.15 The Kingdoms of the world are become the Kingdoms of the Lord and of his Christ Luke 1.33 He shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever and of his Kingdom there shall be no end Matth. 13.31 33. The Kingdom of Heaven is like to a grain of Mustard-seed which a man took and sowed in his field which is indeed the least of all seeds but when it is grown it is the greatest among herbs and becometh a tree so that the birds of the air lodge in the branches of it The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto leven which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was levened John 12.32 And I if I be lifted up will draw all men unto me Dan. 2.44 In the daies of these Kings shall the God of Heaven set up a Kingdom which shall never be destroyed and the Kingdom shall not be left to other people but it shall break in pieces and consume all these Kingdoms and it shall stand for ever Matth. 16.18 Upon this Rock will I build my Church and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it Ephes 4.12 16. For the perfecting of the Saints for the work of the Ministry for the edifying of the body of Christ till we all come in the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ that henceforth we may be no more children tossed to and fro and carryed about with every wind of Doctrine by the sleight of men and cunning craftiness whereby they lye in wait to deceive but speaking the truth in love may grow up into him in all things who is the head Christ from whom the whole body fitly joyned together and compacted by that which every joynt supplieth according to the effectual working in the measure of every part maketh increase of the body to the edifying of it self in Love Ephes 5.25 26 27. Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it that he might sanctifie and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word that he might present it to himself a glorious Church not having spot or wrinckle or any such thing but that it should be holy and without blemish Read Rev. 21 22. Matth. 28.20 Lo I am with you to the end of the world Matth. 24.14 And this Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness to all Nations and then shall the end come Matth. 21.44 Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken but on whomsoever it shall fall it will grind him to powder The obscure Prophetick passages I pass by So much for living by Faith on the Promises of God CHAP. VI. How Faith must be exercised on Gods Threatnings and Judgments THE exercise of Faith upon Gods Threatnings and Judgments must be guided by such rules and helps as these Direct 1. Think not either that Christ hath no Threatning penal Laws or that there are none which are made for the use of Believers If there were no penalties or penal Laws there were no distinguishing Government of the world This Antinomian fancy destroyeth Religion And if there be threats or penal Laws none can be expected to make so much use of them as true Believers 1. Because he that most believeth them must needs be most affected with them 2. Because all things are for them and for their benefit and it is they that must be moved by them to the fear of God and an escaping of the punishment And therefore they that object that Believers are passed already from death to life and there is no condemnation to them and they are already justified and therefore have no use of threats or fears do contradâ—ct themselves For it wâ—ll rather follow Therefore they and they only do and will faithfully use the threatnings in godly fears For 1. Though they are justified and passed from death to life they have ever faith in order of nature before their Justification and he that believeth not Gods threatnings with fear hath no true Faith And 2. They have ever inherent Righteousness or Sanctification with their Justification And this Faith is part of that holiness and of the life of grace which they are passed into For this is life eternal to know the only true God and Jesus Christ John 17.3 And he knoweth not God who knoweth him not to be true And this is part of our knowledge of Christ also to know him as the infallible Author of our Faith that is of the Gospel which saith not only He that believeth and is baptiz'd shall be saved but also He that believeth not shall be damned Mark 16.16 And this is the record which God gave of his Son which he that believeth not maketh him a lyar that God hath given us eternal life and this life is in his Son He that hath the Son hath life and he that hath not the Son hath not life 1 John 5.12 Yea as he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life so he that believeth not the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on him John 3.36 And therefore 3. The reason why there is no condemnation to us is because believing not part only but all this Word of Christ we fly from sin and wrath and are in Christ Jesus as giving up our selves to him and walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit being moved so to do both by the promises and threats of God This is plain English and plain and necessary truth the greater is the pitty that many honest well-meaning Antinomians should fight against it on an ignorant conceit of vindicating Free Grace If the plain Word of God were not through partiality over-lookt by them they might see enough to end the controversie in many and full expressions of Scripture I will cite but three more Matth. 10.28 and Luke 12.5 But fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell or when he hath killed hath power to cast into Hell yea I say unto you fear him Doth Christ thus iterate that it is he that saith it and saith it to his Disciples and yet shall a Christian say it must not be preached to Disciples as the Word of Christ to them Hâ—b 4.1 Let us therefore fear lest a promise being left us of entering into his rest any of you should seem to come short of it Heb. 11.7 By Faith Noah being warned of God of things not seen as yet that is of the deluge
from sinning and not hell and damnation Tell him that it is Christ the Mediatour of Free Grace which hath set Hell before you in the Scripture and not you And that you do but consider of that which Christ hath set there before you to be considered of Ask them whether it be not God that prepared hell for the Devil and his Angels and Christ himself that will adjudge all impenitent sinners to it Matth. 25. And ask them why Christ doth so often talk of it in the Gospel Matth. 13. of the worm that never dyeth and the fire that never shall be quenched Luke 19.27 Mark 16.16 John 3.36 2 Thes 1.8 9. c. And whether they know why Fear was given to man and whether Christ mistook in all such commands Luke 12.4 Heb. 11.7 Heb. 4.1 And whether God hath made any part of his Laws in vain If they say that the Law was not made for a righteous man 1 Tim. 1.9 Tell them that the words are expounded Gal. 5.23 Against such there is no Law The Law was not made to condemn and punish a righteous man because he feared the threatning of it and so fell not under the condemnation If you speak of the Law of Christ or any Law which supposeth the subject righteous There is no Law can be pleaded against such to their damnation That there is no Law against them is but as Rom. 8.1 There is no condemnation to them And we grant also that in that measure as mens souls are habituated with love to God and duty and hatred of sin they need no Law to urge and threaten them no more than a loving wife need to have a Law to forbid her murdernig her husband or abusing him But withall we know that no man on earth is perfect in the degrees of Love and therefore all need Laws and fear Use all Gods penal Laws to the ends that he appointed them to quicken you in your obedience and restrain you from yielding to temptations and from sinning and then your own benefit will reconcile you to the Wisdom Holiness and Justice of the Laws Direct 6. Remember that all Christians have solemnly professed their own consent to the threats and punishments of the Gospel Though God will punish sinners whether they consent or not and though none consent to the execution upon themselves when it comes to it yet all that profess Christianity do profess their consent to the condemning as well as to the justifying part of Gods Word For every Christian professeth his consent to be governed by Christ and therefore he professeth his consent to be governed by Christs Laws For if Christ be a King he must have Laws and if he govern us at all he governeth us by Laws And this is Christs Law He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved and he that believeth not shall be damned Mark 16.16 He that professeth to be governed by Christ professeth his consent to be governed by this very Law and therefore he professeth his consent to be damned if he believe not Christ told you that you must consent to both parts or to neither and will you grudge at the severity of that Law which you have professed your consent to The curses of the Covenant Deut. 29.21 were to be repeated to the people of Israel and they were expresly to say Amen to each of them For life and death were set before them blessings and cursings Deut. 30.1 19. and not life and blessings alone And so the Gospel which we are to believe containeth though principally and eminently the Promises yet secondarily also the threatnings of Hell to impenitent unbelievers And our consent doth speak our approbation Direct 7. Observe that the belief of Christs threatnings of damnation to impenitent unbelievers is a real part of the Christian saving Faith and that when ever it is joyned with a true love and desire after holiness it certainly proveth that the Promises also are believed though the party think that he doth not believe them Note here 1. That I do not say that all belief or fear of Gods threatnings is saving Faith But 2. That all saving Faith containeth such a belief of the threatnings 3. And that many times poor Christians who believe and tremble at the threatnings do truly believe the Promises and yet mistake and verily think that they do not believe them 4. But their mistake may certainly be manifested if their Faith do but work by a love and desire after holiness and the fruition of God For 1. It is evident that the same Gospel which saith He that believeth shall be saved doth say He that believeth not shall be damned Therefore the same faith believeth both 2. It is plain that the same formal object of faith which is Gods Veracity will bring a man to believe one as well as the other if he equally know it to be a divine revelation He that believeth that All that God saith is true and then believeth that God saith that All true Believers shall be saved must needs believe that this Promise is true And he that understandeth that Christ saith Vnbelievers shall be damned cannot but find also that he saith True Believers shall be saved And if he believe the one because it is the word of Christ he doth sure believe the other because it is the word of Christ 3. Yea it is in many respects harder to believe Gods threatnings than his promises partly because sinners are more unwilling that they should be true and they have more enmity to the threatning than to the promise and partly because they commonly feign God to be such as they would have him be Psal 50. Thou thoughtest I was such a one as thy self c. And partly because Gods Goodness being known to be his very essence and all men being apt to judge of Goodness by the measure of their own interest it is far more obvious and facil to mans understanding to conclude that some are saved than that some are damned and that the penitent believers are saved than that the impenitent unbelievers are damned We hear daily how easily almost all men are brought to believe that God is merciful and how hard it is to perswade them of his damning Justice and severity Therefore he that can do the harder is not unlike to do the easier And indeed it is meer ignorance of the true nature of faith which maketh those whom I am now describing to think that they do not believe Gods Promises when they believe his Threatnings They think that because they believe not that they themselves are pardoned justified and shall be saved that therefore they believe not the promise of God But this is not the reason but it is because you find not the condition of the promise yet in your selves and therefore think that you have no part in the benefits But its one thing to doubt of your own sincerity and another thing to doubt whether the promise of God be
and the everlasting miseries of the damned in Hell being the due effects or punishment of sin are the second cause of our necessity of pardon And therefore these also must be thought on seriously by him that will seriously believe in Christ 4. The Law of God which we have broken maketh this punishment our due Rom. 3. 5. 7. And the Justice of God is engaged to secure his own honour in the honour of his Law and Government Direct 2. Vnderstand well what Christ is and doth for the Justification of a sinner and how not one only but all the parts of his office are exercised hereunto In the dignity of his person and perfect original holiness of his natures divine and humane he is fitly qualified for his work of our Justification and Salvation His undertaking which is but the Divine Decree did from eternity lay the foundation of all but did not actually justifie any His Promise Gen. 3.15 and his new Relation to mâ—â— thereupon did that to the Fathers in some degree which his after-incarnation and performance and his Relation thereupon doth now to us His perfect Obedience to the Law yea to that Law of Mediation also peculiar to himself which he performed neither as Priest or Prophet or King but as a subject was the meritorious cause of that Covenant and Grace which justifieth us and so of our Justification And that which is the meritorious cause here is also usually called the material as it is that matter or thing which meriteth our Justification and so is called Our Righteousness it self As he was a sacrifice for sin he answered the ends of the Law which we violated and which condemned us as well as if we had been all punished according to the sense of the Law And therefore did thereby satisfie the Law-giver and thereby also merited our pardon and Justification so that his Obedience as such and his Sacrifice or whole humiliation as satisfactory by answering the ends of the Law are conjunctly the meritorious cause of our Justification His New Covenant which in Baptism is made mutual by our expressed consent is a general gift or act of oblivion or pardon given freely to all mankind on condition they will believe and consent to it or accept it so that it is Gods pardoning and adopting instrument And all are pardoned by it conditionally and every penitent Believer actually and really And this Covenant or Gift is the effect of the foresaid merit of Christ both founded and sealed by his blood As he merited this as a mediating subject and sacrifice so as our High Priest he offered this sacrifice of himself to God And as our King he being the Law-giver to the Church did make this Covenant as his Law of grace describing the terms of life and death And being the Judge of the world doth by his sentence justifie and condemn men as believers or unbelievers according to this Covenant And also executeth his sentence accordingly partly in this life but fully in the life to come As our Teacher and the Prophet or Angel of the Covenant he doth declare it as the Fathers will and promulgate and proclaim this Covenant and conditional Pardon and Justification to the world and send out his Embassadours with it to beseech men in his Name to be reconciled to God and to declare yea and by sacramental investiture to seal and deliver a Pardon and actual Justification to Believers when they consent And as our Mediating High Priest now in the Heavens he presenteth our necessity and his own righteousnesses and sacrifice as his meritâ— for the continual communication of all this grace by himself as the Head of the Church and Administrator of the Covenant So that Christ doth justifie us both as a subject meriting as a sacrifice meriting as a Priest offering that sacrifice as a King actually making the Justifying Law or enacting a general Pardon as a King sententially and executively justifying as a Prophet or Angel of the Covenant promulgating it as King and Prophet and Priest delivering a sealed Pardon by his Messengers And as the Priest Head and Administrator communicating this with the rest of his benefits By which you may see in what respects Christ must be believed in to Justification if Justifying Faith were as it is not only the receiving him as our Justifier It would not be the receiving him as in one part of his office only Direct 3. Vnderstand rightly how far it is that the righteousness of Christ himself is made ours or imputed to us and how far not There are most vehement controversies to this day about the Imputation of Christs Righteousness in which I know not well which of the extreams are in the greater errour those that plead for it in the mistaken sense or those that plead against it in the sober and right sense But I make no doubt but they are both of them damnable as plainly subverting the foundation of our faith And yet I do not think that they will prove actually damning to the Authors because I believe that they misunderstand their adversaries and do not well understand themselves and that they digest not and practise not what they plead for but digest and practise that truth which they doctrinally subvert not knowing the contrariety which if they knew they would renounce the errour and not the truth And I think that many a one that thus contradicteth fundamentals may be saved Some there be besides the Antinomians that hold that Christ did perfectly obey and satisfie not in the natural but in the civil or legal person of each sinner that is elect representing and bearing as many distinct persons as are elect so fully as that God doth repute every Elect person or say others every Believer to be one that in Law sense did perfectly obey and satisfie Justice himself and so imputeth Christs Righteousness and satisfaction to us as that which was reputatively or legally of our own performance and so is ours not only in its effects but in it self Others seeing the pernicious consequences of this opinion deny all imputed Righteousness of Christ to us and write many reproachful volumes against it as you may see in Thorndikes last works and Dr. Gell and Parker against the Assembly and abundance more The truth is Christ merited and satisfied for us in the person of a Mediator But this Mediator was the Head and Root of all Believers and the second Adam the fountain of spiritual life and the Surety of the New Covenant Heb. 7.22 1 Cor. 15.22 45. and did all this in the nature of man and for the sake and benefit of man suffering that we might not suffer damnation but not obeying that we might not obey but suffering and obeying that our sinful imperfection of obedience might not be our ruine and our perfect obedience might not be necessary to our own Justification or Salvation but that God might for the sake and merit of this his perfect obedience and
Covenant and he inflicteth penalties yea some that are very grievous even the with-holding of much of his Spirits help and grace all which are inconsistent with that conceit nor would he so have used us if we had been perfectly innocent and had fully satisfied for our sins our selves 8. All men would have had present possession of Glory if God had so reputed us the perfect meriters of it For his Justice would no more have delayed our reward than denyed it 9. All that are saved would have equal degrees of holiness and happiness as well as of righteousness because all would equally be reputed the perfect fulfillers of the Law And as no penalty could ever be justly inflicted on them here so no degree of glory could be denyed them hereafter for their sin or for want of perfect righteousness 10. The opinion of this kind of imputation is a most evident contradiction in it self For he that is imputatively a satisfier for all his own sin is therein supposed to be a sinner And he that is imputatively a perfect innocent fulfiller of the Law is thereby supposed to need no satisfaction to Justice for his sin as being imputatively no sinner 11. By this all Christs sacrifice and satisfaction is made a work of needless supererrogation yea unjust or rather impossible For if we perfectly obeyed in him he could not suffer for our disobedience 12. Hereby pardon of sin is utterly denyed for he that is reputatively no sinner hath no sin to pardon If they say that God did first impute the satisfaction for sin then there was no room after for the imputation of perfect obedience We cannot feign God to receive all the debt or inflict all the penalty and then to say now I will esteem thee one that never didst deserve it If they say that he doth neither impute the obedience or the suffering to us simply and to all effects but in tantum ad hoc or secundum quid only so that we shall be pardoned for his suffering and then judged worthy of Heaven for his obedience this is but to come up towards the truth before you are aware and to confess that neither of them is given us in it self but in the effects as being it self paid to God to procure those effects But withall the matter must be vindicated from their unfound inventions and it must be said that Christ dyed not only for our sins of commission but of omission also and that he that is pardoned both his sins of commission and omission is free from the punishment both of sense and loss yea and is reputed as one that never culpably omitted any duty and consequently fell short of no reward by such omission so that there remaineth no more necessity of Righteousness in order to a reward where the pardon is perfect save only N. B. to procure us that degree of reward which must be superadded to what we forfeited by our sin and which we never by any culpable omission deserved to be denyed And thus much we do not deny that somewhat even Adoption which is more than meer Pardon and Justification must confer on us But withall as we hold not that the Sun must bring light and somewhat else must first banish darkness that one thing must cure death and another cause life that satisfaction must procure the pardon of sins of omission and commission as to the poenae damni sensus and make us esteemed and used as no sinners and then imputed obedience must give us right to that reward which the poenae damni deprived us of so N. B. we maintain that Christs sufferings have merited our eternal salvation and our Justification and Adoption and that his obedience hath merited our forgiveness of sin And that both go together the merit of the one and of the other to procure all that we receive and that the effects are not parcelled out as they have devised Though yet we believe that Christs sufferings were paid to God as for our sins to satisfie Justice and that in the Passive Obedience it is first satisfactory and then and therefore meritorious and in the active it is meerly meritorious 13. And the maintainers of the contrary opinion besides all the forementioned evils could never agree how much of Christs Righteousness must be in their sense imputed some holding only the passive a second sort the active and passive a third sort the habitual active and passive a fourth sort the divine the habitual the active and the passive But of all these things there is so much written against them by Cargius Vrsinus Olevian Piscator Paraeus Scultetus Alstedius Wendeline Camero Bradshaw Gataker and many more that I need not to add any more for confutation Errour 3. That no one shall suffer whose sins lay on Christ and were suffered for by him Contr. Many such shall suffer the sorer punishment for sinning against the Lord that bought them and treading under foot the blood of the Covenant wherewith they were so far sanctified as to be a people by their own Covenant separated to God Heb. 10.25 26. Heb. 6.4 5 6. 2 Pet. 2.2 Heb. 4.1 2.3 12.29 Errour 4. That no godly man say some or Elect person though ungodly say others is ever punished by God because Christ suffered all their punishment himself Contr. Every godly man is chastened of God and all chastisement is a fatherly correcting punishment And many justified persons are punished to their final loss by the denyal of forfeited degrees of grace and consequently of glory Heb. 12.7 8 9 10. 1 Cor. 11.32 1 Thes 5.19 Ephes 4.30 But sad experience is too full a proof See my Confession Errour 5. That God were unjust if he laid any degree of punishment on those that Christ died for or say others on the justified because he should punish one sin twice Contr. It is certain that God punisheth the Justified in some degree much more the Elect before conversion and it is certain that God is not unjust Therefore it is certain that the ground of this accusation is false for it was not our deserved punishment it self or the same which was due in the true sense of the Law which Christ endured but it was the punishment of a voluntary sponsor which was the equivalens and not the idem that was due and did answer the ends of the Law but not fulfill the meaning of the threatning which threatned the sinner himself and not another for him seeing then it was a satisfaction or sacrifice for sin which God received for an attonement and propitiation and not a solution or suffering of the sinner himself in the sense of the Law the charge of injustice on God is groundless And no man can have more right to Christs sufferings or benefits than he himself is willing to give And it is not his own will into whose hands all power and judgement is committed that we should be subject to no punishment because he suffered
his due And that every good man and every good action deserveth praise that is to be esteemed such as it is And that there is also a comparative merit and a not meriting evil As a Believer may be said not to deserve damnation by the Covenant of Grace but only by or according to the Law of Nature or Works But to pass from the word merit which I had rather were quite disused because the danger is greater than the benefit the thing signified thus by it is past all dispute viz. that whatever duty God hath promised a Reward to that duty or work is Rewardable according to the tenour of that promise And they that deny this deny Gods Laws and Government and Judgement and his Covenant of Grace and leave not themselves one promise for faith to rest upon So certainly would all these persons be damned if God in mercy did not keep them from digesting their own errours and bringing them into practice Errour 47. God is pleased with us only for the righteousness of Christ and not for any thing in our selves Contr. This is sufficiently answered before He blasphemeth God who thinketh that he is no better pleased with holiness than with wickedness with well doing than with ill doing They that are in the flesh cannot please God Rom. 8.6 7. but the spiritual and obedient may Without faith it is impossible to please him because unbelievers think not that he is a Rewarder and therefore will not seek his reward aright But they that will please him must believe that he is and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him Heb. 11.6 They forget not to do good and distribute because with such sacrifices God is well pleased Heb. 13. And in a word it is the work of all their lives to labour that whether living or dying they may be accepted of him 2 Cor. 5.8 9. and to 〈◊〉 â—uch and to do those things as are pleasing in his sight Nay 〈◊〉 add that as the glory of God that is the glorious demonstâ—â—â—ion or appearance of himself in his works is materially the ultimate end of man so the pleasing of himself in this his glory shining in his Image and Works is the very apex or highest formal notion of this ultimate end of God and of man as far as is within our reach No mans works please God out of Christ both because they are unsound and bad in the spring and end and because their faultiness is not pardoned But in Christ the persons and duties of the godly are pleasing to God because they have his Image and are sincerely good and because their former sins and present imperfections are forgiven for the sake of Christ who never reconciled God to wickedness Errour 48. It is mâ—rcenary to work for a reward and legal to set men on doing for salvation Contr. It is legal or foolish to think of working for any reward by such meritorious works as make the reward to be not of grace but of debt Rom. 4.4 But he that maketh God himself and his everlasting love to be his reward and trusteth in Christ the only reconciler as knowing his guilt and enmity by sin and laboureth for the food which perisheth not but endureth to everlasting life and layeth up a treasure in Heaven and maketh himself friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness and layeth up a good foundation for the time to come laying hold upon eternal life and striverh to enter in at the strait gate and fighteth a good fight and finisheth his course for the Crown of Righteousness and suffereth persecution for a reward in Heaven and prayeth in secret that God may reward him and alwaies aboundeth in the work of the Lord because his labour is not in vain in the Lord and endureth to the end that he may be saved and is faithful to the death and overcometh that he may receive the Crown of Life this man taketh Gods way and the only way to Heaven and they that thus seek not the reward being at the use of reason are never like to have it Errour 49. It is not lawful for the justified to pray for the pardon of any penalties but temporal Contr. The ground of this is before overthrown Errour 50. It is not lawful to pray twice for the pardon of the same sin because it implieth unbelief as if it were not pardoned already Contr. It is a duty to pray oft and continuedly for the pardon of former sins 1. Because pardon once granted must be continued and therefore the continuance must be prayed for If you say It is certain to be continued I answer then it is as certain that you will continue to pray for it and to live a holy life 2. Because the evils deserved are such as we are not perfectly delivered from and are in danger of more daily And therefore we must pray for daily executive pardon that is impunity and that God will give us more of his Spirit and save us from the fruit of former sin Because our right to future impunity is given before all the impunity it self 3 And the compleat Justification from all past sins is yet to come at the day of Judgement And all this besides that some that have pardon know it not may and must be daily prayed for Errour 51. The Justified must not pray again for the pardon of the sins before conversion Contr. What was last said confuteth this Errour 52. No man at all may pray for pardon but only for assurance For the sins of the Elect are all pardoned before they were born and the non-elect have no satisfaction made for their sins and therefore their pardon is impossible Contr. Matth. 6. Forgive us our trespasses c. These consequences do but shew the falshood of the antecedents Errour 53. No man can know that he is under the guilt of any sin because no man can know but that he is elect and consequently justified already Contr. No infidel or impenitent person is justified Errour 54. Christ only is covenanted with by the Father and he is the only Promiser as for us and not we for our selves Contr. Christ only hath undertaken to do the work of Christ but man must undertake and promise and covenant even to Christ himself that by the help of his grace he will do his own part Or else no man should be baptized What a Baptism and Sacramental Communion do these men make He that doth not covenant with the Father Son and Holy Spirit hath no right to the benefits of Gods part of the Covenant And no man at age can be saved that doth not both promise and perform Errour 55. We are not only freed from the condemning sentence of the Law but freed also from its commands Contr. We are not under Moses Judaical Law which was proper to their Nation and their Proselites Nor are we under a necessity or duty of labouring after perfect obedience in our selves as the condition of our
he that readeth Law-books or Philosophy or Medicine it is to learn Law Philosophy or Physick so whenever you read the Gospel meditate on Christ or hear his Word if you are askt why you do it be able to say I do it to learn the Love of God which is no where else in the world to be learnt so well No wonder if Hypocrites have learned to mortifie Scripture Sermons Prayers and all other means of grace yea all the world which should teach them God and to learn the letters and not the sense But it is most pittiful that they should thus mortifie Christ himself to them and should gaze on the glass and never take much notice of the face even of the Love of God which he is set up to declare Direct 4. Therefore congest all the great discoveries of this Love and set them all together in order and make them your daily study and abhor all doctrines or suggestions from men or devils which tend to disgrace diminish or hide this revealed Love of God in Christ Think of the grand design it self the reconciling and saving of lost mankind Think of the gracious nature of Christ of his wonderful condescention in his incarnation in his life and doctrine in his sufferings and death in his miracles and gifts Think of his merciful Covenant and Promises of all his benefits given to his Church and all the priviledges of his Saints of pardon and peace of his Spirit of Holiness of preservation and provision of resurrection and justification and of the life of glory which we shall live for ever And if the Faith which looketh on all these cannot yet warm your hearts with love nor engage them in thankful obedience to your Redeemer certainly it is no true and lively Faith But you must not think narrowly and seldom of these mercies not hearken to the Devil or the doctrine of any mistaken Teachers that would represent Gods Love as vailed or ecclipsed or shew you nothing but wrath and flames That which Christ principally came to reveal the Devil principally striveth to conceal even the Love of God to sinners that so that which Christ principally came to work in us the Devil might principally labour to destroy and that is our love to him that hath so loved us Direct 5. Take heed of all the Antinomian Doctrines before recited which to extol the empty Name and Image of Free Grace do destroy the true principles and motives of holiness and obedience Direct 6. Exercise your Faith upon all the holy Scriptures Precepts Promises and Threatnings and not on one of them alone For when God hath appointed all conjunctly for this work you are unlike to have his blessing or the effect if you will lay by most of his remedies Direct 7. Take not that for Holiness and Good Works which is no such thing but either mans inventions or some common gifts of God It greatly deludeth the world to take up a wrong description or character of Holiness in their minds As 1. The Papists take it for Holiness to be very observant in their adoration of the supposed transubstantiated Host to use their reliques pilgrimages crossings prayers to Saints and Angels anointings Candles Images observation of meats and daies penance auricular confession praying by numbers and hours on their beads c. They think their idle ceremonies are holiness and that their hurtful austerities and self-afflictings by rising in the night when they might pray as long before they go to bed and by whipping themselves to be very meritorious parts of Religion And their vows of renouncing marriage and propriety and of absolute obedience to be a state of perfection 2. Others think that Holiness consisteth much in being rebaptized and in censuring the Parish-Churches and Ministers as Null and in withdrawing from their communion and in avoiding forms of prayer c. 3. And others or the same think that more of it consisteth in the gifts of utterance in praying and preaching than indeed it doth and that those only are godly that can pray without book in their families or at other times and that are most in private meetings and none but they 4. And some think that the greatest parts of Godliness are the spirit of bondage to fear and the shedding of tears for sin or finding that they were under terrour before they had any spiritual peace and comfort or being able to tell at what Sermon or time or in what order and by what means they were converted It is of exceeding great consequence to have a right apprehension of the Nature of Holiness and to escape all false conceits thereof But I shall not now stand further to describe it because I have done it in many Books especially in my Reasons of the Christian Religion and in my A Saint or a Bruit and in a Treatise only of the subject called The character of a sound Christian Direct 8. Let all Gods Attributes be orderly and deeply printed in your minds as I have directed in my book called The Divine Life For it is that which must most immediately form his Image on you To know God in Christ is life eternal John 17.3 Direct 9. Never separate reward from duty but in every religious or obedient action still see it as connext with Heaven The means is no means but for the end and must never be used but with special respect unto the end Remember in reading hearing praying meditating in the duties of your callings and relations and in all acts of charity and obedience that All this is for Heaven It will make you mend your pace if you think believingly whither you are going Heb. 11. Direct 10. Yet watch most carefully against all proud self-esteeming thoughts of proper merit as obliging God or as if you were better than indeed you are For Pride is the most pernicious vermine that can breed in gifts or in good works And the better you are indeed the more humble you will be and apt to think others better than your self Direct 11. So also in every temptation to sin let Faith see Heaven open and take the temptation in its proper sense q. d. Take this pleasure instead of God sell thy part in Heaven for this preferment or commodity cast away thy soul for this sensual delight This is the true meaning of every temptation to sin and only Faith can understand it The Devil easily prevaileth when Heaven is forgotten and out of sight and pleasure commodity credit and preferment seem a great matter and can do much till Heaven be set in the ballance against them and there they are nothing and can do nothing Phil. 3.7 8 9. Heb. 12.1 2 3. 2 Cor. 4.16 17. Direct 12. Let Faith also see God alwaies present Men dare do any thing when they think they are behind his back even truants and eye-servants will do well under the Masters eye Faith seeing him that is invisible Heb. 11. is it that sanctifieth heart and life As
they are the sins of those faculties over which the will hath not a despotical power As a man may be truly willing to have no sluggishness heaviness sleepiness at prayer no forgetfulness no wandering thoughts no inordinate appetite or lust at all stirring in him no sudden passions of anger grief or fear he may be willing to love God perfectly to fear him and obey him perfectly but cannot These latter are the ordinary infirmities of the godly The former sort are if at all his extraordinary falls Rom. 7.14 to the end 6. Lastly The true Christian riseth by unfeigned Repentance when his conscience hath but leisure and helps to deliberate and to bethink him what he hath done And his Repentance much better resolveth and strengtheneth him against his sin for the time to come To summ up all 1. Sin more loved than hated 2. Sin wilfully lived in which might be avoided by the sincerely willing 3. Sin made light of and not truly repented of when it is committed 4. And any sin inconsistent with habitual Love to God in predominancy is mortal or a sign of spiritual death and none of the sins of sanctified Believers CHAP. XIV How to live by Faith in Prosperity THE work of Faith in respect of Prosperity is twofold 1. To save us from the danger of it 2. To help us to a sanctified improvement of it 1. And for the first that which Faith doth is especially 1. To see deeper and further into the nature of all things in the world than sense can do 2 Cor. 4.17 18. 1 Cor. 7.29 30 31. To see that they were never intended for our Rest or portion but to be our wilderness provision in our way To foresee just how the world will use us and leave us at the last and to have the very same thoughts of it now as we foresee that we shall have when the end is come and when we have had all that ever the world will do for us It is the work of Faith to cause a man to judge of the world and all its glory as we shall do when death and judgment come and have taken off the mask of splendid names and shews and flatteries that we may use the world as if we used it not and possess it as if we possest it not because its fashion doth pass away It is the work of Faith to crucifie the world to us and us to the world by the Cross of Christ Gal. 6.14 that we may look on it as disdainfully as the world looked upon Christ when he hanged as forsaken on the Cross That when it is dead it may have no power on us and when we are dead to it we may have no inordinate love or care or thoughts or fears or grief or labour to lay out upon it It is the work of Faithâ—o â—o make all worldly pomp and glory to be to us but loss and dross and dung in comparison of Christ and the righteousness of Faith Phil. 3.7 8 9. And then no man will part with Heaven for dung nor set his God below his dung nor further from his heart nor will he feel any great power in temptations to honour wealth or pleasure if really he count them all but dung nor will he wound his conscience or betray his peace or cast away his innocency for them 2. Faith sheweth the soul those sure and great and glorious things which are infinitely more worthy of our love and labour And this is its highest and most proper work Heb. 11. it conquereth Earth by opening Heaven and shewing it us as sure and clear and near And no man will dote on this deceitful world till he have turned away his eyes from God and till Heaven be out of his sight and heart Faith saith I must shortly be with Christ and what then are these dying things to me I have better things which God that cannot lye hath promised me with Christ Titus 1.2 Heb. 6.18 I look every day when I am called in The Judge standeth before the door James 5.9 The Lord is at hand Phil. 4.5 And the end of all these things is at hand 1 Pet. 4.7 And shall I set my heart on that which is not Therefore when the world doth smile and flatter faith setteth Heaven against all that it can say or offer And what is the world when Heaven stands by Faith seeth what the blessed souls above possess at the same time while the world is alluring us to forsake it Luke 16. Heb. 11. 12.1 2. c. Faith setteth the heart upon the things above as our concernment oâ—r only hope and happiness It kindleth that Love of God in the soul and that delight in higher things which powerfully quencheth worldly love and mortifieth all our carnal pleasures Matth. 6.20.21 Col. 3.1 2 3 4. Rom. 8.5 6 7. Phil. 30.20 21. 3. Faith sheweth the soul those wants and miseries in it self which nothing in the world is able to supply and cure Nay such as the world is apter to increase It is not gold that will quench his thirst who longs for pardon grace and glory A guilâ—y conscience a sinful and condemned soul will never be cured by riches or high places by pride or flâ—shly sports and pleasures James 5.1 2 3. This humbling work is not in vain 4. Faith looketh to Christ who hath overcome the world and carefully treadeth in his stâ—ps John 16.33 Heb. 12.2 3 4 5. It looketh to his person his birth his life his cross his grave and his resurrection to all that strange example of contempt of worldly things which he gave us from his manger to his shameful kind of death And he that studieth the Life of Christ will either despise the world or him He will either vilifie the world in imitation of his Lord or vilifie Christ for the pleasures of the world Faith hath in this warfare the surest and most onourable guide the ablest Captain and the most powerful example in all the world And it hath with Christian unerring Rule which furnisheth him with armour for every use Yea it hath through him a promise of Victory before it be aâ—tained so that in the beginning of the fight it knows the end Rom. 16.20 John 16.33 It goeth to Christ for that Spirit which is our strengâ—h Ephes 6.10 Câ—l 2.7 And by that it mortifieth the desires of the flesh and when â—he flesh is mortified the world is conquered for it is loved only as it is the provision of the flâ—sh 5. Moreover Faith doth observe Gods particular Providence who distributeth his talents to every man as he pleaseth and disposeth of their estates and comforts so that the Race is not to the swift nor the Victory to the strong nor Riches to men of understanding Eccles 9.11 Therefore it convinceth us that our lives and all being in his hand it is our wisdom to make it our chiefest care to use all so as is most pleasing unto him 2 Cor. 5.8
2. It setteth you at enmity with God and holiness because God controlleth and condemneth your beloved lusts and because it is contrary to the carnal things which have your hearts 2. By this means it maketh men malignant enemies of the godly and persecutors of them because they are of contrary minds and waies As then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit even so it is now Gal. 4.29 The world cannot love us because we are not of the world John 15.19 20. Pride covetousness and sensuality are the matter which the burning Feaver lodgeth in which hath consumed so much of the Church of Christ 4. It is the sin that hath corrupted the sacred Office of the Ministry throughout most of the Christian Churches in the world And thereby caused both the Schisms and Cruelties and the decay of serious godliness among them which is their present deplorable case Ignorant persons are like sick men in a Feaver They lay the blame on this and that and commonly on that which went next before the paroxism and know not the true cause of the disease We are all troubled or should be to see the many minds the many waies the confused state of the Christian Churches and to hear them cry out against each other And one layeth the blame on this party or opinion and another on that But when we come to our selves we shall find that it is The worldly mind that causeth our calamity Many well meaning friends of the Church do think how dishonourable it is to the Ministry to be poor and low and consequently despicable and what an advantage is it to their work to be able to relieve the poor and rather to oblige the people than to depend upoâ— them and to be above them rather than below them And supposing the Pastors to be mortified holy heavenly men all this is true and the zeal of these thoughts is worthy of commendation But that which good men intend for good hath become the Churches bane So certain is the common saying that Constantines zeal did poison the Church by lifting up the Pastors of it too high and occasioning those contentions for grandure and precedency which to this day separate the East and West When well-meaning Piety hath adorned the office with wealth and honour it is as true as that the Sun shineth that the most proud ambitious worldly men will be the most studious seekers of that office and will make it their plot and trade and business how by friends and observances and wills to attain their ends And usually he that seeks shall find when in the mean time the godly mortified humble man will not do so but will serve God in the state to which he is clearly called And consequently except it be under the Government of an admirably wise and holy Ruler a worthy Pastor in such a wealthy station will be a singular thing and a rarity of the age whilst worldly men whose hearts are habited with that which is utterly contrary to holiness and contrary to the very ends and work of their own office will be the men that must sit in Moses Chair that must have the doing and ruling of the work which their hearts are set against And how it will go with the Church of Christ when the Gospel is to be preached and Preachers chosen and Godliness promoted by the secret enemies of it and when ambitiâ—us fleshly worldly men are they that must cure the peoples souls under Christ of the love of the flesh and the world it were easie to prognosticate from the causes if the Christian world could not tell by the effects so that except by the wonderful Piety of Princes there is no visible way in the eye of reason to recover the miserable Churches but to retrive the Pastoral Office into such a state as that it may be no bait to a worldly mind but may be desired and chosen purely upon heavenly accounts And then the richer the Pastors are the better when they are the Sons of Nobles whose Piety bringeth with them their honour and their wealth to serve God and his Church with and they do not find it there to be their end or inducement to the work But instead of invitations or encouragements to pride and carnal minds there may be only so much as may not deter or drive away candidates from the sacred Function 5. Worldliness is a sin which maketh the Word of God unprofitable Mat. 13.22 John 12.43 Ezek. 33.31 prepossessing the heart and resisting that Gospel which would extirpate it 6. It hindereth Prayer by corrupting mens desires and by intruding worldly thoughts 7. It hindereth all holy Meditation by turning both the heart and thoughts another way 8. It drieth up all heavenly profitable Conference whilst the world doth fill both mind and mouth 9. It is a great profaner of the Lords Day distracting mens minds and alienating them from God 10. It is a murderous enemy of Love to one another All worldly men being so much for themselves that they are seldom hearty friends to any other 11. Yea it maketh men false and unrighteous in their dealings There being no trust to be put in a worldly man any further than you are sure you suit his interest 12. It is the great cause of discord and divisions in the world It setteth Families Neighbours and Kingdoms together by the ears and setteth the Nations of the earth in bloody wars to the calamity and destruction of each other 13. It causeth cheating stealing robbing oppressions cruelties lying false-witnessing perjury murders and many such other sins 14. It maketh men unfit to suffer for Christ because they love the world above him and consequently it maketh them as Apostates to forsake him in a time of tryal 15. It is a great devourer of precious time That short life which should be spent in preparing for eternity is almost all spent in drudging for the world 16. Lastly It greatly unfitteth men to die and maketh them loth to leave the world And no wonder when there is no entertainment for worldlings in any better place hereafter Direct 6. If you would be saved from the world and the snares of prosperity foresee death and judge of the world 〈◊〉 it will appear and use you at the last Dream not of long life He that looks to stay but a little while in the world will be the less careful of his provisions in it A little will serve for a little tâ—me The grave is a sufficient disgrace to all the vanities on earth though there must be more to raise the heart to Heaven Direct 7. Mâ—rtifie the flesh and you overcome the world Cure the thirsty disease and you will need none of the worldlings waies to satisfie it When the flesh is mastered there it no use for plenty or pleasures or honours to satisfie its lusts Your daily bread to fit you for your work will then suffice Direct 8.
his body is a little weary his mind is so too and suffereth the weariness of the body to prevail Because the flesh is King within them Nay a slothful mind doth oft begin and they are weary to look upon their work or to think of it before it hath wearyed the body at all And what they do they do unwillingly because they are in love with idleness Mal. 1.13 But the lowly and laborious are in love with diligence and work and therefore though they cannot avoid the wearyness of the body their willing minds will carry on the body as far as it can well go The diligent woman worketh willingly with her hands her candle goeth not out by night c. Prov. 31.13 c. Servants must do service with good will as to the Lord Ephes 6.7 If Ministers preach and labour willingly they have a reward 1 Cor. 9.17 But not if they are only driven on by necessity and the fear of woe 1 Pet. 5.2 What shall we do willingly if not our duties He that sineth willingly and serveth God and followeth his labour unwilingly shall be rewarded according to his will 6. The idle Sodomite doth love and chuse that kind of life which is easiest and hath least work to be done This is the chief provision by which he fulfilleth his fleshly lust An idle servant thinketh that the best place in which he shall have most ease and fulness An idle Parent will cast all the burden of his childrens teaching upon the Schoolmaster and the Pastor An idle Minister thinketh himself best where he may have no more labour than what tendeth to his publick applause and when he hath the most wealth and honour and least to do he taketh that to be the flourishing prosperity of the Church And indeed if our calling were like the souldiers to kill men and not liker the Surgeons to cure them we might think it is the best time when we have least employment But the faithful servant will be most thankful for that state of life in which he doth most good And as he taketh doing good to be the surest way of getting and receiving so he taketh the good of another as his own and anothers necessity is his necessity He knoweth that he is best who is likest unto God and that is he that is the most abundant in love and doing good Like the Sun that never resteth from moving or giving light and heat The running spring is pure when the standing water is muddy and corrupt The cessation of motion quickly mortifieth the blood He that said as to works of charity Be not weary of well doing for in due time you shall reap if you faint not Gal. 6.9 hath said so too as to our bodily labour in our common callings in the world 2 Thes 3.13 I know that a servant may be glad of a place where he is not oppressed with unreasonable labour and where he hath competent time for the learning of Gods Word And a poor man may be glad when he is freed from necessity of doing that which is to his hurt But otherwise no man but a fleshly bruit will wish or contrive for a life of idleness Object Is it not said Blessed are the dead for they rest from their labours Rev. 14.13 Ans True but mark that their works follow them And what are the works which follow you And note that it is not work or duty that they shall rest from For they rest not crying Holy Holy Holy Lord God Almighty c. But it is only their labours that is the painful sort of work and suffering proper to this sinful life The blessed indeed are freed in Heaven from this because they were not freed 〈◊〉 it on earth as the ungodly and slothful servant are 7. Lastly Idleness is seen by the work that is undone Pro. 24.30 The sluggards Vineyard is overgrown with weeds If your souls be unrenewed and your assurance of salvation and evidences yet to get and few the better for you in the world and you are yet unready for death and judgment you give too full a proof of idleness The diligent woman Prov. 31.16 c. could shew her labours in her treasures her Vineyard the cloathing and provisions of her family c. shew yours by the good which you have done in the world and by the preparation of your souls for a better world Let every man prove his own work that he may have rejoycing in himself alone and not in another Gal. 6.3 4. What case are your children in Are they taught or untaught What case is your soul in your fruit must judge you III. The mischiefs of this Sodomitical Idleness and the reasons against it are briefly these 1. It is contrary to the active nature of mans soul which in activity exceedeth the fire it self It is as natural for a soul to be active as for a stone or clod of earth to lie still And this active nature animateth the passive body to move it and use it in it's proper work And should this heavenly fire be imprisoned in the body which it should command and move Psal 104.23 Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour till the evening 2. It is contrary to the common course of nature Doth the Sun shine for you as well as for others or doth it not Doth all the frame of nature continue in its course the air the waters the summer and winter for you as well as for others or not If not then you take not your selves beholden to God for them And if you have no use for the Sun and other creatures you have no use for life for by them you live But if yea then what is it that they serve you for Did God ever frame you so glorious a retinuue to attend you only to sleep and laugh and play and to be idle what is all this for no higher an end or rather do you not by your idleness forfeit life and all these helps and maintainers of your lives 3. It is an unthankful reproach and blasphemy against the God of Nature yea and against the Lord your Redeemer to think that the wise Almighty God did make so noble a thing as a soul and place it in so curious an engine as the body where spirits and blood and heart and lungs are never idle but in constant motion and that he hath appointed us so glorious a retinue as aforesaid and all this to do nothing with or worse than nothing To sleep and rise and dress your selves and talk and eat and drink to tell men only that you are not dead lest they should mistake and bury you alive what is it but to put a scorn on your Creator and Redeemer to live as if he had created and redeemed you for no better and nobler ends than these 4. You do as it were pray for death or provoke God to take away your lives For if they be good for nothing else but idleness
endure it As if their souls and Heaven were not worth their labour and as if they would go to Hell for ease and as if the feast of joy and glory were not worth the labour of eating or receiving it 2. Make not this a pretence to oppress your servants with unmerciful labours beyond their strength or such as so weary them and take up all their time that they have not leisure so much as to pray It is Gods great mercy to servants that he hath separated the Lords day for a holy rest or else many would have little rest or means of holiness Some think that others can never labour enough for them because they pay them wages and yet that they are bound to do nothing themselves even because God hath given them more wages and wealth than he hath given to others More particular Directions are as followeth 1. Give up your selves by absolute subjection to God as his servants and then you can never rest in an idle unserviceable life 2. Take all that you have as Gods talents and from his trust and then you dare not but prepare in the use of them for your account 3. Live as those that are certain to die and still uncertain of the time and that know what an eternal weight of joy or misery dependeth upon the spending of your present time And then you dare not live in Idleness Live but as men whose souls are awake to look before them into another world and you will say as I have long been forced to do O how short are the daies how long are the nights how swift is time how slow is work how far am I behind-hand I am afraid lest my life will be finished before the work of life and lest my time will be done while much of my work remaineth undone 4. Ask your selves what you would be found doing if death now surprize you and whether work or idleness will be best in the review 5. Try a laborious life of well-doing a while and the experience will draw you on 6. Try your selves by a standing resolution and engage your selves in necessary business and that in a set and stated course that necessity and resolution may keep you from an idle life 7. Forsake the company of the idle and voluptuous and accompany the laborious and diligent 8. Study well how to do the greatest good you can that the worth of the work may draw you on For they that are of little use for want of parts or skill or opportunity are more liable to be tempted into idleness as thinking their work is to no purpose when the well-furnished person doth long to be exercising his wisdom and vertue in profitable well-doing CHAP. XVIII How by Faith to overcome unmercifulness to the needy IV. THE fourth sin of Sodom and of Prosperity mentioned Ezek. 16.49 is They did not strengthen the hand of the poor and needy Against which at the present I shall give you but these brief Directions Direct 1. Love God your Creator and Redeemer and then you will love the poorest of your Brethren for his sake And love will easily perswade you to do them good Direct 2. Labour most diligently to cure your inordinate self-love which maketh men care little for any but themselves and such as are useful to themselves And when once you love your neighbours as your selves it will be as easie to perswade you to do good to them as to your selves and more easie to disswade you from hurting them than your selves because sensuality tempteth you stronglier to hurt your selves than any thing doth to hurt them Direct 3. Overvalue not the things of the world and then you will not make a great matter of parting with them for anothers good Direct 4. Do as you would be done by And ask your selves how you would be judged of and used if you were in their condition your selves Direct 5. Set the life of Christ and his Apostles before you and remember what a delight it was to them to do good And at how much dearer rate Christ shewed mercy to you and others than he requireth you to shew mercy at to any Direct 6. Read over Christs precepts of Charity and Mercy that a thing so frequently urged on you may not be senslesly despised by you Direct 7. Remember that Mercy is a duty applauded by all the world As humane interest requireth it so humane nature approveth it in all Good and bad even all the world do love the merciful Or if the partial interest of some proud and covetous persons as the Popish Clergy for instance do call for cruelty against those that are not of their mind and for their profit yet this goeth so much against the stream of the common interest and the light of humane nature that mankind will still abhor their cruelty though they may afright a few that are neer them from uttering their detestation All men speak well of a merciful man and ill of the unmerciful Direct 8. Believe Christs promises which he hath made to the merciful so fully and frequently in Scripture As in Mat. 5.7 Luke 6.36 Prov. 11.17 Psal 37.26 c. And believe his threatnings against the unmerciful that they shall find no mercy Prov. 12.10 James 2.13 And remember how Christ hath described the last Judgment as passing upon this reckoning Matth. 25. Direct 9. Live not in fleshly sensuality your selves For else your flesh will devour all and if you have hundreds and thousands a year will leave you but little or nothing to do good with Direct 10. Engage your selves not by rash vows but by resolution and practice in a stated way of doing good and take not only such occasions as fall out unexpectedly Set a part a convenient proportion of your estates as God doth bless you and let not needless occasions divert it and defraud the poor and you of the benefit Direct 11. Remember still that nothing is absolutely your own but God who lendeth it you hath the true propriety and will certainly call you to an account And ask your selves daily How shall I wish at the day of reckoning that I had expended and used all my estate and do accordingly Direct 12. Forget not what need you stand in daily of the mercy of God and what need you will shortly be in when your health and wealth will fail you And how earnestly then you will cry to God for mercy mercy Prov. 21.13 Whoso stoppeth his ears at the cry of the poor he also shall cry himself but shall not be heard Direct 13. Hearken not to an unbelieving heart which will tell you that you may want your selves and therefore would restrain you from well doing If God be to be trusted with your souls he is to be trusted with your bodies God tryeth whether indeed you take him for your God by trying whether you can trust him If you deal with him as with a bankerupt or a deceitful man whom you will trust no
blessed way in which Christ and all the heavenly Army have passed hence unto their Crown You would say Is the servant greater than his Lord If thus the innocent Lord of life and Master of the house was injured and afflicted am I better than he Though he suffered to save me from Hell yet not to save me from the purifying tryals here on earth Doubtless you would count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Jesus Christ and count them but dung that you might win him and that you might know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings being made conformable to his death Phil. 3.8 10. Direct 8. Keep the eye of Faith still fixed on the eternal glory that you may understand what affliction is when you take it with its end Remember what eternal Joyes it leadeth to and what thoughts you will have of all your pain when you find your selves in the everlasting rest Remember where all tearâ— shall be wiped from your eyes and who dare blame that way as narrow or soul which bringeth us to such an end Psal 126.5 6. They that sâ—w in tears shall reap in joy He that goeth forth and weepeth bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoycing bringing his sheaves with him Mat. 5.4 Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted Is not eternal joy sufficient for you When you are suffering with the Church militant look up to the Church triumphant and remember that they were lately as low as sad as sorrowful as you and you shall shortly be as high as glad as joyful as they Look into Heaven and see what you suffer for and think whether that be not worthy of harder terms than any you can undergo Rom. 8.17 18. If we suffer with him that we may be also glorified together For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us 2 Cor. 4 16 17 18. For which cause we faint not but though our outward man perish yet the inward man is renewed day by day For our light afflâ—ction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory While 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 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 Heaven well believed will enable us patiently and chearfully to bear all things He will account the very reproach of Christ to be greater riches than the treasures of the world who looketh believingly to the recompence of reward Heb. 11.26 Direct 9. Learn to die and then you have learned to suffer He that can bear death by the power of faith can bear almost any thing And he that is well prepared to die is prepared for any affliction and he that is not is unprepared for prosperity Direct 10. Remember still that life being so very short the afflictions of Believers are as short We have so little a time to live that we have but a little while to suffer And if thou faint in the day of adversity when it is so little a while to night thy strength is small Prov. 24.10 Direct 11. Remember that thou bearest but the common burden of the Sons of Adam who are born to sorrow as the sparks fly upward And that thou in like to all the members of Christ who must take up their cross and suffer with him if they will reign with him And that thou art but going the common way to Heaven which that heavenly society hath trod before thee And canst thou expect to be exempted both from the lot of humane lapsed nature and from the lot of all the Saints If thou wouldest be carryed to Heaven in the Chariot of Elias and couldest expect to escape the jaws of death yet must thou endure the persecution weariness and hunger of Elias before such a change Direct 12. Think also how unreasonable it is for one that must have eternal glory to grudge at a little suffering in the way and for one that is saved from the torments of Hell to think it much to be duly chastened on earth For a Lazarus that must be comforted in Abraham's bosom to murmure that he waiteth a while in poverty at the rich mans doors Shall a wicked worldling venture into endless pains and put himself out of the hopes of Heaven and all this for a short and foolish pleasure And will you grudge to suffer so small and short a chastisement in the way to an endless rest and joy Direct 13. Think why it is that Christ hath so largely commended and blest a suffering state and chosen such a life for those that he will save And why he so often pronounceth a woe to the prosperous world It is not for want of love to his Disciples nor for want of power to secure their peace Matth. 5. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted Blessed are they that are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven Luke 6.24 25 26. Woe to you that are rich for you have received your consolation Woe to you that are full for ye shall hunger Woe unto you that laugh now for ye shall mourn and weep Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you for so did their Fathers to the false Prophets James 1.2 3. My Brethren count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations that is trying afflictions knowing that the trying of your faith worketh patience James 5.1 2. Go too now ye 〈◊〉 men weep and howl for the miseries that shall come upon you All these words are not for nothing And judge how he should think of adversity who believeth them Direct 14. Mark well whether you find not that your selves and others are usually much better in affliction than in prosperity And whether there be not something in the one to make you better and in the other to delude men and make them worse O look and tremble at the dangers and dolâ—ful miseries of most that are lifted high how they are blinded flattered captivated in sin and are the shame of nature and the calamity of the world And mark when they come to die or lie in sickness how inlightened how penitent how humble how mortified and reformed they then seem to be and how much they condemn all sin and justifie a holy life And observe your selves whether you be not wiser and better more penitent and less worldly in an afflicted state And will you think that intollerable which so much bettereth almost all the world Alas were it not for affliction
the Air and compass the Earth and tempt the wicked and work in the children of disobedience Ephes 2.1 2. Job 1. 2 Tim. 2.26 And that Satan is called the God and Prince of this world Joh. 12.31 14.30 16.11 2 Cor. 4.4 Ephes 6.12 But if it be not the place of final execution it is the place where they are kept in prison till the great Assizes and where they are reserved in chains of darkness to the Judgment of the great day and where they are tormented before the time 2 Pet. 2.4 Jude 6. Matth. 8.29 Look then from this Dungeon to the glorious incomprehensible mansions of the holy ones and judge by them and not by this prison of the goodness and infinite benignity of God And if he will give so many obstinate despisers of his grace a place with those Devils that did seduce and rule them think not God to be therefore unmerciful but behold his mercy in the innumerable vessels of honour and mercy that shall possess the higher mansions for ever CHAP. XXV How to live by Faith in the love of one another against Self-love Direct 1. LEt Faith first employ you in the knowledge of God and when you know him who is Love it self you will best learn of him to love You will see that that is best which is likest unto God and that is worst which is most unlike him And when you consider how universally though variously he loveth his creatures and how he expresseth it and how he loveth benevolently because he is good and loveth complacentially because also the thing is good which he loveth you will learn the art of love from God Rom. 9.13 Deut. 4.37 7.8 23.5 33.3 1 John 3.16 17. 4.7 9 11 12 19 20 21. Direct 2. Study Jesus Christ aright and you will also learn to love of him There you will see Self-denying Love which stooped to earth to reproach to sufferings to labours to death and spared not life or any thing to do good It is the chief Lesson which you go to School to Christ to learn And it is as proper to go to him to learn to love as it is to go to the Sun for light Rom. 5.8 John 13.34 1 Thes 4.9 John 11.36.5 13.1 15.9 Ephes 5.2 25. John 15.12 Direct 3. Know God in his Works and Image and then you will see him in his natural Image in all men as rational and in his moral Image in all his Saints and then you will see what to love and why He that cannot see God in a glass in this world cannot see him at all and cannot love him Remember that it is in his servants and creatures that he exposeth himself to be seen and known and loved 1 Joh. 2.10 3.10 14. 4.7 8 20 21. 5.1 Matth. 25.40 Direct 4. Abhor that proud malignant censoriousness which is apt to make the worst of others and to deny and extenuate and overlook Gods graces in them as the Devil did by Job and which can see no goodness in them that are not eminently good For this is but the Devils artifice to kill mens love to one another Though he pretend the honour of Godliness and the hatred of sin when he telleth you such an one is an Hypocrite and such an one hath nothing but a form and no power of Godliness I can see nothing of God in him alas they are poor carnal people all is but to destroy your Love And thus he mightily prospereth in the malignant spirit of separation by which he can make you unchurch whole Churches and unchristen whole Towns and Parishes and all because that you that are strangers to them and see not their godliness or hear of nothing eminent in them But the world of dividers will take no warning any more than the world of the prophane Satan doth deceive them all Direct 5. Abhor therefore the sin of backbiting and evil-speaking and when you hear a malignant censurer thus unchristen and unchurch men without proof behind their backs if gentler reproofs will not serve the turn frown them away and say Get thee behind me Satan the accuser of the brethren and the spirit of hatred maketh it his work in the world to destroy mens love to one another and he hath no such way to do it as by making them seem unlovely to one another And he that perswadeth me that my neighbour is not good perswadeth me that he is not lovely and so perswadeth me from loving him Prov. 25.23 Rom. 1.30 Psal 15.3 2 Cor. 12.20 Rom. 14.3 4 10 13. James 4.11 12. Matth. 7.1 2. 1 Cor. 4.5 Direct 6. Above all seek to mortifie selfishness which is the great enemy of love to God and man A selfish man can faithfully love none but himself for he loveth all others but for himself His own opinions interests and ends are the disposers of his Love Therefore he never heartily loveth his enemy no nor the best that do not honour him but seem to slight him If any should neglect him or speak hardly of him or do him any real or seeming wrong or be of another side against his party or his cause no censures are too sharp nor no love too little for such a one And yet these that can love none heartily but themselves will find that they had no greater enemies than themselves and that Hell and Earth did not so much as themselves against them Direct 7. Subject your selves truly to Gods authority and his commands will further Love For it is the summ of them all and the fulfilling of his Law both old and new Gal. 5.14 Rom. 13.8 9 10. John 13.34 15.12 17. Matth. 12.30 32 33. Direct 8. Remember that Love is the bond and life and interest of the Church and of the world Without Love the world would have neither unity peace or safety What were a family without it Were it not for Love men that were not kept fettered in Jayles or Bedlams would be as Robbers or Wolves or mad Dogs to one another Were it not for Love the Church would be crumbled into malicious Sects that would spend their time in prating and militating against each other and preach and talk down Love to one another and would call this devilish work the preaching of the Gospel or the worshipping of God while they blaspheme him by offering him a sacrifice of hatred and reviling as they do that offer him a sacrifice of mans blood Ephes 4.15 16. But speaking the truth in Love you may grow up into him in all things which is the head even Christ From whom the whole body fitly joyned together and compacted by that which every joynt supplyeth according to the effectual working in the measure of every part maketh increase of the body to the edifying of it self in Love Yea their own Sects would turn to dust and atoms if Love which is there confined did not soder them together when it is dead in
12.12 Esther 8.15 So that it still remaineth clear that loving our neighbours as our selves doth entitle us to the comforts of all mens health estates prosperity honours yea and their holiness and wisdom too and this without any such participation of their sorrows as should be any considerable ecclipse of our delights if we do it all regularly as God requireth us 6. If I love my neighbour as my self I am freed from all the trouble of cross interests in buying and selling in trespassing in Law-suits It will comfort me as much if he get by me as if I get by him If his bargain prove the better as if mine did if he have the better at Law as if it were judged to my self Yea all his successes prosperity and whatever good befalleth any that I know of in the world will all be mine 7. And I shall never be loth by death to leave the world while I have no cause to fear the missing of salvation because whatever I leave behind me will be possessed by such as I love as my self They will have life and time and health and comforts and whatever my nature is loth to leave Therefore whilest I live why should it not be as comforting to me to think that so many shall live and prosper whom I love as my self as if I were my self to live and prosper 8. Yea more than so I have by Love a part in the Joyes of Heaven before I am actually there For the Joyes of all those blessed souls and of those holy Angels are mine by participation so far as to cause me to rejoyce in their felicity as if it were my own as far as I can now apprehend it Yea the Glory of the Lord Jesus and the eternal blessedness of God himself would rejoyce us more than our own felicity if we loved him as much above our selves as we ought to do we should partake of our Masters joy And now judge whether loving God as God and our neighbours sincerely as our selves would not cure almost all the calamities of our minds and give us a kind of Heaven and be a cheap and certain way to have what we can wish in all the world and even to make all the world our own And whether it be not sin it self which is the first part of all mens hell and misery Object But my neighbours meat will not fill my belly nor his health doth not ease my pain nor his fire keep me warm Answ The flesh hath got the dominion indeed when men cannot distinguish between soul and body between the pain and pleasures of the body and of the mind I do not say that Love will change the pain or pleasure of your bodies but of your minds Your appetites will not be satisfied with your neighbours food but your minds may be comforted to see his welfare Your pain is not eased by your neighbours health but your minds may be pleased by it as much as if it were your own if you loved him as much as you do your self And therefore many in a danger have saved the life of a Prince a Captain a Parent a Child a Friend with the voluntary loss of their own Object This is all true but who is there in the world that doth it or findeth it possible to love another as himself And how can that be a duty which is to nature it self an impossibility Therefore let us first know what this duty is of loving our neighbours as our selves Answ Doubtless if it be the summ of the Law all true Christians do it in sincerity though not in perfection And as to the sense of it 1. You must distinguish between that sensitive and passionate affection which is in the soul as sensitive and is common to beasts with men and that rational appetite which doth will and chuse and is pleased according to the conduct of pure reason The first we doubt not will be still more to our selves than others and it is not the use of grace to destroy it but to rule and moderate it 2. You must distinguish between Love and outward actions which are the expressions of it When our Love is due as much to one as to another yet our outward actions may be under a particular Law which obligeth us to do that for one which we are not bound to do for others As to maintain our own children families servants and so our selves rather than others And the reason is because the difference of individuals maketh that fit for one which is not fit for another and so maketh every man the fittest chuser for himself and those that are neerest to him and nature instigateth him to the greatest care in doing it And all good must be done in a regular order or else confusion will destroy it And nature maketh this most orderly As every Parish must keep their own poor and yet must love other poor as well 3. You must know that Love is formally nothing but complacence as aforesaid but Love joyned with a will and purpose to do good to another is called Love of benevolence when yet the Love there is one thing and the doing good or purpose to do it is another and I may in obedience to God purpose and do more good to one whom I am bound to Love not more but less And now you may see what it is to love our neighbours as our selves 1. God must be loved above our neighbours and our selves and both must be loved purely as related and subordinate to him and for his sake There is a double respect which all things have to God 1. As they contain that excellency which he hath put upon them which is some likeness representation or signification of himself and is called his Glory shining in the creature that is it 's derived Goodness 2. As they conduce to his further service and may honour him and please him Thus all creatures must be loved only as a means even a means declaring God being derivatively and significantly good and useful and as a means to serve and please him 2. Therefore this being the formal reason of our Rational Love must also be the measure of it à quatenus ad quantum As it is certain that I must love that best which is best because I must love it only as good so it is certain that that is best which hath most likeness to God and most of his Glory upon it and that which is most pleasing to him and useful to his service Therefore if my neighbour be better than I am I must judge him better and love him better 3. Though natural self-appetite and self-preservation by which all creatures are for themselves only not feeling the hunger cold pain of others be not sinful but the effect of creating individuation yet Reason was perfect and the Will could perfectly follow Reason in its complacency and choice till sin corrupted it Reason could judge that best which was best and the Will
and not to our own commodity in the world 2. No man can deny this principle but by setting up natural self-love or appetite and making the rational stoop to that which would infer as well that we may love our selves better than God himself and that our sense is nobler than our reason and must rule it 3. We find our own reason tell us much more of our duty in this than our corrupted wills do follow The best way therefore to discern the truth is to treat with reason alone and leave out the will till we have dispatcht with reason And you will find that the common light of nature justifieth this Law of God 1. He that would not confess that it is better he had no being than that there were no God or no world besides him is a monster of selfishness And if a man say never so much I cannot do so yet while he confesseth that this should be his desire it sufficeth to the decision of our present case 2. He that will not confess that it is better that he himself should die than all the Church of Christ or the whole Kingdom die is unreasonably selfish in the eyes of all impartial men The gallant Romans and Athenians had learnt it as one of their plainest greatest Lessons to prefer their Country before their lives And is not that to love their Countryes better than themselves 3. For the same reason many of them saw that it was the duty of a good subject or a gallant souldier to save the life of his King or General with the loss of his own Because their lives were of more publick utility And the ground of all this was these natural verities The best should be best loved Goodness must be measured by a higher rule than personal self-interest Multitudes are better than one c. 4. All men acknowledge that a man of eminent Learning Piety Wisdom and Vsefulness to the Church or World should be loved and preserved rather than a wicked sottish worthless child of our own Yea God himself requireth that Parents procure the death of their own children by publick Justice if they be obstinately wicked Deut. 21. 5. The same Reasons plainly infer that I ought rather to desire the life of a much more worthy useful instrument for the Church and State than my own and so to love a better man better than my self if I be acquainted sufficiently with his goodness And if this be all so sure and plain hence observe 1. How much humane nature is corrupted Alas how rare is this equal Love 2. How few true Christians are and how defective and imperfect grace is in the best Alas how strange are many Christians to the extent of this duty and how far are we all from practising it in any eminent degree 3. Wherein it is that natures corruption most consisteth and what is the chief part of the nature and work of sanctifying grace and reformation 4. Whence come all the oppressions injuries persecutions frauds and cruelties on the earth For want of loving mens neighbours as themselves Otherwise how tenderly would they handle one another How easily would they pardon wrongs How patiently would they bear the dissent of honest upright Christians who cannot force their judgments to be of other mens mould and size How apt would men be to suspect their own understandings of weakness presumption or errour rather than to rave with the fury of the Dragon against all others who think them to be mistaken How safely and quietly might we live by them in the world if they loved their neighbours as themselves I do not say now How plentiful would men be in doing good to others I am but pleading a lower cause How seldom they would be in doing hurt But alas miserable Brittain It was in thee that one extraordinary Emperour Alexander Sevetus was betrayed and murdered who made that Christian precept his Motto and wrote it on his doors and books and goods Do as you would be done by In thee it is that Love hath been beheaded while nothing hath been more acknowledged and professed If Love be treacherous hurtful envious scandalous ensnaring and plotting for mens destruction If Love teach proud and vicious sots to take themselves for Deities and Oracles and all for Vermine that must be hunted unto death who bow not to their carnal erroneous conceits and do not with the readiest prostitute consciences serve their carnal interests and ends If Love be known by reviling those that are much better than our selves and stigmatizing the faithfullest servants of Christ with the most odious character that lyes can utter If it was Love that called Paul a pestilent fellow and a mover of sedition among the people and represented Christ as an enemy to Caesar and his followers as the filth and off-scouring of the earth then happy age in which we live and happy they that are possessed with the proud and factious spirit But if all be otherwise alas where be they and how few that love their neighbours or betters as themselves 5. You see here what a plague sin is to the earth and how great a punishment may I call it or rather a misery to the sinner and to the world 6. And you see how joyful and heavenly a life we should live if we did but follow Gods commands And what a felicity Love it self is to the soul 7. And you see by what measure to try mens spirits and to know who are the best among all the pretenders to goodness in the world Certainly not the most censorious contemptuous backbiters and cruel that seek to make all odious that are not for their interest But those that most abound in Love which Faith it self is given to produce Object All this is true but still we find it a thing impossible to love our neighbour equally with our selves Can you teach us how to do it Answ It is that I have been teaching you in the ten Directions before set down But it is this which I have reserved to the close that must do the work indeed and without it nothing else will do it Direct 11. Make it the work of all your lives by Faith in Christ to bring up your souls to the unfeigned Love of God and then it will be done For then you will love God above all and love God in all and love your selves and your neighbours principally for God Then Gods Image and Glory and Will will be Goodness or Amiableness in your eyes and not carnal pleasure honour or commodity And then it will be easie to you to love that most which hath most of God You will then easily see the reason of this seeming Paradox and that the contrary is most unreasonable You will then be as Timothy who had a natural Love to others as others have to themselves and who sought the things of Jesus Christ when all others even the best Ministers too much sought their own Phil. 2.20 21. You
by a Redeemer as we must do They had their too great selfishness Phil. 2.21 They had their pusillanimity and fears of men as Peter and the Apostles They had their sinful controversies as Paul and Barnabas and sinful separations in complyance with the censorious as Peter and Barnabas had Gal. 2.16 17. They had their carnal sidings factions and divisions in the Church 1 Cor. 1. 3. Many a time have they been put to groan O wretched man who shall deliver me from this body of death Rom. 7 c. 11. They had as difficult duties to go through as any of us They were put upon as many tears and troubles watchings and travels fastings and self-denyal as the most laborious and suffering Christians now 12. They had as long delayes of the accomplishment of their desires as any of us 13. And lastly they past through death it self as we must do They lay gasping on their beds of languâ—shing and death broke in upon every part and they underwent that separation of soul and body as we must do Their flesh was turned to rottenness and dust and laid out of the sight of man in darkness and remaineth to this day as common earth All this the Saints in Heaven have undergone This was their case a while ago who are now in glory And this was not only the case of some few but of thousands and millions and that in the most of these particulars even of all that are gone before us unto blessedness It is not we that are tempted first that are persecuted or afflicted first that have sinned first that must die first but all this host hath broke the Ice and are safely past through this Red Sea and are now triumphing in felicity with their Saviour Direct 3. Let Faith next look back and see by what way these Saints have come to this felicity I mean by what means they did overcome and win the Crown And briefly you will find 1. That they all came to Heaven by the Mediation the Sacrifice the meritorious Righteousness of a Redeemer Jesus Christ either as promised or as incarnate none of them were justified by the works of the Law or the Covenant of Innocency 2. That their common way was by Faith Repentance Love and Obedience Not by works of Righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us by the washing of Regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost which he shed oâ— us abundently through Christ Titus 3.5 Even by the triple Image of the Divine perfections Power Love and Wisdom 2 Tim. 1.7 They lived soberly righteously and godly in the world and were zealous of good works looking for the blessed hope which they have attained Titus 2.14 15. Knowing that Repentance towards God and Faith towards our Lord Jesus Christ are the summ of saving doctrine and duty Acts 20.21 And that to fear God and keep his Commandments is the whole duty of man Eccles 12.13 And that the end of the Commandment is Charity out of a pure heart and a good conscience and of faith unfeigned 1 Tim. 1.5 and that Love is the fulfilling of the Law 3. They studied the Word of God or such means of knowing him as God afforded them in order to the attaining and maintaining of these graces Psal 1.2 and sought the Lord with all their hearts while he might be found and called upon him while he was near Isa 55.6 10. And did not presumptuously neglect Gods helps and despise his Word while they trusted for his mercy 4. They lived in a continual conflict against the temptations of the Devil the world and the flesh and in the main did conquer as well as strive They made it their work to mortifie those fleshly lusts which others make it their interest and work to please Gal. 5.17.21 22. 6.14 5. They suffered afflictions and persecutions patiently and being reviled they did not revile They loved their enemies and blest those that curse them and prayed for those that despitefully used and persecuted them Matth. 5.44 45. 1 Cor. 4.11 12 13. 2 Cor. 1.6 7. Heb. 11. They would not accept of deliverance from imprisonment torments and death upon sinning terms 6. They endured to the end and did not fall off and forsake the Covenant of their God Rev. 2. 3. 7. Lastly They did all this by the motive of their hopes of Heaven and by a confidence in the promises of it and in a heavenly mind and conversation as knowing that they did not labour or suffer in vain 1 Cor. 15.58 2 Cor. 4.17 1 Tim. 4.10 Rom. 8.18 Matth. 5.11 2 Thes 1.6 7. Heb. 12.2 This was the way by which the Saints have gone to Heaven the only true successful way Direct 4. Consider next what helps and means God gave them for this work and compare our own with them and see whether ours be not as great 1. We have the same natural capacity as they we are intellectual free agents made for another world and capable of all that they attained There is no difference in our natural faculties 2. We have the same God to shew us mercy 1 Cor. 12.5 There are divers operations but the same God Ephes 4.4 5. There is one God one Lord c. even the Lord over all good to all that call upon him Rom. 10.12 The same mercy which called them and waited on them calleth us even a God who hath no respect of persons but in every Nation he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted of him Acts 10.37 Though he be a free benefactor he is a righteous Judge and he is good to all and the Father of every member of his Son 3. They had the same Saviour as we have the same sacrifice for their sins the same Teacher and the same example the same intercessor with the Father For though there be divers administrations there is the same Lord 1 Cor. 12.5 Ephes 4.4 For other foundation can no man lay than him who is the chief corner stone 1 Cor. 3.11 They all did eat of the same spiritual meat and drank of the same rock as we do which is Christ 1 Cor. 10.3 4. It was the reproach of Christ which Moses in Egypt esteemed better than their treasures Heb. 11.26 The same Physician of souls who hath us in cure did cure all them The same Captain who is conducting us to salvation is he that saved them The same Prince of the Covenant and Lord of life who conquered death and all their enemies hath conquered them for us and is preparing us for life with them They had no greater or better High Priest and Mediator with God than we have 4. They had the same Rule to walk by and the same way to go as all we have Gal. 1.7 8. 6.16 Phil. 3.14 15. The same Gospel and Word of God in the main though under various promulgations and administrations Those before the flood were under the Covenant of the promised seed
very brief I. For the first Case before sickness cometh Direct 1. Be sure that you settle your Belief of the life to come that your Faith may not fail Direct 2. Expect Death as seriously all your life as wise Believers are obliged to do That is as men that are alwaies sure to die as men that are never sure to live a moment longer as men that are sure that life will be short and death is not far off and as foreseeing what it is to die of what eternal consequence and what will then appear to be necessary to your safe and to your comfortable change Direct 3. All your daies habituate your souls to believing sweet enlarged thoughts of the infinite Goodness and Love of God to whom you go and with whom you hope to live for ever Direct 4. Dwell in the studies of a crucified and glorified Christ who is the way the truth and life who must be your hope in life and death Ephes 3.17 18 19. Direct 5. Keep clear your evidences of your right to Christ and all his Promises by keeping grace or the heavenly nature in life activity and increase 2 Pet. 1.10 2 Cor. 13.5 John 15 1 c. 1 John 3. Direct 6. Consider often of the possession which your nature in Christ hath already of Heaven and how highly it is advanced and how near his relation is and how dear his love is to his weakest members upon earth And that as souls in Heaven have an inclination and desire to communicate their own felicity to their bodies so hath Christ as to his body the Church John 17.24 Ephes 5.25 27 c. Direct 7. Look to the Heavenly Host and those who have lived before you or with you in the flesh to make the thoughts of Heaven the more familiar to you as in the former chapter Direct 8. Improve all Afflictions yea the plague of sin it self to make you weary of this world and willing to be gone to Christ Rom. 7. Direct 9. Be much with God in Prayer Meditation and other heart-raising duties that you may not by strangeness to him be dismayed Direct 10. Live not in the guilt of any wilful sin nor in any slothful neglect of duty lest guilt breed terrour and make you fly from God your Judge But especially study to redeem your time and to do all the good you can iâ— the world and to live as totally devoted to God as conscious that you live to no carnal interest but desire to serve him with all you have and your consciences testimony of this will abundantly take off the terrours of death whatever any erroneous ones may say to the contrary for fear of being guilty of conceits of merit A fruitful life is a great preparative for death 2 Tim. 4.8 2 Cor. 1.12 c. Direct 11. Fetch from Heaven the comforts which you live upon through all your life And when you have truly learned to live more upon the comforts of believed glory than upon any pictures or hopes below then you will be able to die in and for those comforts Matth. 6.20 21. Col. 3.1 4. Phil. 3.20 21. 1 Thes 4.18 Phil. 1.21 23. Direct 12. The Knowledge and Love of God in Christ is the beginning or foretaste of Heaven John 17.3 1 Cor. 13. c. and the foretastes are excellent preparations Therefore still remember that all that you do in the world for the getting and exercising the true Knowledge and Love of God in Christ so much you do for the foretastes and best preparations for Heaven 1 Cor. 8.3 If any man love God the same is known of him with approbation and love II. In the time of sickness and near to death Direct 1. Let your first work when God seemeth to call you away be to renew a diligent search of your hearts and lives and to see lest in either of them there should be any sin which is not truly hated and repented of Though this must be done through all your lives yet with an extraordinary care and diligence when you are like to come so speedily to your tryal For it is only to Repenting Believers that the Covenant of Grace doth pardon sin And the impenitent have no right to pardon Though for ordinary failings which are forgotten and for sins which you are willing to know and remember but cannot a general Repentance will be accepted as when you pray God to shew you the sins which you see not and to forgive those which you cannot remember or find out Yet those which you know must be particularly repented of And Repentance is a remembring duty and will hardly forget any great and heinous sins which are known to be sins indeed If your Repentance be then to begin alas it is high time to begin it And though if it be sound it will be saving that is If it be such as would settle you in a truly godly life if you should recover yet you will hardly have any assurance of salvation or such comfort in it as is desirable to dying man Because you will very hardly know whether it come from true conversion and contain a Love to God and Godliness or whether it be only the fruit of fear and would come to nothing if you were restored to health But he that hath truly repented heretofore and lived in uprightness towards God and man and hath nothing to do but to discern his sincerity and to exercise a special Repentance for some late or special sins or to do that again which he hath done unfeignedly before will much more easily get the assurance and comfort of his forgiveness and salvation Direct 2. Renew your sense of the Vanity of this world Which at such a time one would think should be very easie to do When you see that you are near an end of all your pleasures and have had all except a grave to rot in that ever this world willd o for you may you not easily then see whether the godly or the worldly be the wiser and the happier man And what it is that the life of man should be spent in seeeking after Matth. 6.33 Isa 55.1 2 3. Eccles 7.3 4 5 6. Direct 3. Remember what Flesh is and what it hath been to you that you may not be too loth to lay it down Of the dust it was made and to the dust it must return Corruption is your Father and the Worm is your Mother and your Sister Job 17.14 Drought and beat consume the Snow-waters so doth the grave those which have sinned The womb shall forget him the Worm shall feed sweetly on him Job 24.20 Flesh and blood shall not inherit the Kingdom of God but this mortal must put on immortality by being made a spiritual body 1 Cor. 15. And this flesh hath cost you so dear to carry it about so much care and labour to provide it food to repair that which daily vanisheth away and so many weary painful hours and so many fearful
thoughts of dying that methinks you should quietly resign it to the grave which hath been so long calling for it Especially considering what it hath done by the temptations of a vitiated appetite and sense against your souls into how many sins it hath drawn you and what grief and shame it hath procured you and what assurance and heavenly pleasures it hath hindered and how many repentings and purposes and promises it hath frustrated or undone Methinks we should conceive that we have long enough dwelt in such an habitation Direct 4. Foresee by Faith the resurrection of the body when it shall be raised a spiritual body unto Glory and shall be no more an enemy to the soul Direct 5. Renew your familiarity with the blessed ones above Remember that the great Army of God the souls of the just from Adam till now are all got safe through this Red Sea and are triumphing in Heaven already and that it is but a few straglers in the end of the world that are left behind And which part then should you desire to be with And remember how ready those Angels which rejoyced at your conversion are to be your Convoy unto Christ Luke 16.23 Direct 6. But especially think with greatest confidence and delight that Jesus your Head is entred into the Heavens before you and is making intercession for you and is preparing you a place and loveth your company and will not lose it You shall find him ready to receive your souls and present them spotless unto God as the fruit of his mediation He will have you be with him to behold his glory and none shall take you out of his hands Let his Love therefore draw up your desires and stablish your hearts in confidence and rest Direct 7. Remember that all that are living must come after you and how quickly their turn will come and would you wish to be exempt from death alone which the whole world below must needs submit to Direct 8. Think still of the Resurrection of Christ your Head that you may see that death is a conquered thing and what a pledge you have of a life to come Direct 9. Dwell still in the believing fore thoughts of the blessedness of the life to which you go as it is your personal perfection and the perfect Love and fruition of God with his perfect joyous praise Remember still what it is to see and know the Lord and all things else in him which are fit for us to know And labour to revive your Love to God and then you revive your desires and preparations Direct 10. Give up your selves wholly to the Will of God and think how much better it is for upright Souls to be in Gods hand than in your own The Will of God is the first and last the Original and End of all the creatures Besides the Will of Infinite Goodness there is no final Rest for humane souls But mans will is the Alpha and Omega the beginning or first efficient and the ultimate end of all obliquity and sin Be bold then and thankful in your approach to God remembring how much more safe and comfortable it is to be for life and death at Gods disposal than our own Bâ—sides these read the Directions against the fear of death in my Book of Self-denyal and what is said in my Saints Rest and other the Treatises before mentioned CHAP. XXVIII How by Faith to look aright to the Coming of Jesus Christ in Glory BEcause I have said so much of this also in my Saints Rest and in many other Treatises I will now pass it over with these brief Directions Direct 1. Delude not your souls nor corrupt your faith and hope by placing Christs Kingdom in things too low or that are utterly uncertain Think not so carnally of the second coming of Christ as the Jews did of the first who looked for an earthly Kingdom and despised the spiritual and heavenly And make not the unknown time or other circumstances of his coming to be to you as the certain and necessary things lest you do as many of those called Millenaries or Fifth-Monarchy men among us who have turned the doctrine of Christian hope into an outragious fury to bring Christ down before his time and to make themselves Rulers in the world that they might presently reign under the name of the Reign of Christ and have by seditious rebellious railing at Christs Ministers and hating those that are not of their mind done much to promote the Kingdom of Satan while they cryed up nothing but the Kingdom of Christ Direct 2. Do all that you can in this day of grace to promote Christs present Kingdom in the world and that will prove your best preparation for his glorious coming To that end labour with all your might to set up Life and Light and Love abhorring Hypocrisie Ignorance and Vncharitableness turn not Religion into a ceremony carkass or dead Imagery or Form Nor yet into Darkness Errour or a humane wandering distracting maze Nor into selfish proud censorious faction Build not Christs Kingdom as the Devil would do by hypocritical dead shews or by putting out his Lights or by schism division hatred and strife Read James 3. Direct 3. Yet leave not out of your faith and hope any certain part of Christs glorious Kingdom We know that we shall for ever be with the Lord and in the presence of the Father in heavenly glory and withall that we shall be in the New Jerusalem and that there shall be a new Heaven and a new Earth in which shall dwell righteousness and that we shall judge the Angels and the world And if we know not the circumstances of all these parts let not therefore any of them be denyed 1 Thes 4.11 2 Cor. 5.1 3 8. Rev. 20. 22. 2 Pet. 3.13 Direct 4. Think what a day of Glory it will be to Jesus Christ Matth. 25.31 O how different from his state of humiliation He will not come again to be despised spit on buffeted blasphemed and crucified Pilate and Herod must be arraigned at his bar it is the marriage-day of the Lamb a day appointed for his glory Rev. 21 22. Direct 5. Think what a day of honour it will be to God the Father how his Truth will be vindicated his Love and Justice gloriously demonstrated Matth. 25. 2 Thes 1.8 9. Direct 6. Think what a day it will be to all the children of God to see their Lord when he purposely cometh to be admired and glorified in them 2 Thes 1.11 12. To see him in whom they have believed whom they loved and longed for 2 Pet. 3.11 12 13. 1 Pet. 1.8 To see him who is their dearest Head and Lord who will justifie them before all the world and sentence them to life eternal To see the day in which they must receive the end of all their faith and hope their prayers labours and patience to the full 1 Pet. 1.8 9. Rev. 2 3.
Psal 5.4 5. 9.7 James 1.15 By this time methinks you should better know what the use and meaning of the Gospel and Grace and Ministers is and what is the design of Preaching and in what manner it should be done Would you have us silent or talk to you as in jeast while we see such a day as this before us Every true Preacher spaketh to you with Judgment and Eternity in his eye Our work is to prepare you or to help you to prepare to meet the Lord and to be ready for your final sentence O then with what seriousness should we speak and should you bear and should both we and you prepare It 's pitty to see people hear Sermons many years and not so much as know what a Sermon is or what is the use and nature of it If our business were to draw away Disciples after us and to make our selves the admired heads of factions then we would speak those perverse things contrary to the doctrine which you have been taught by which our ends might be carryed on Acts 20.30 Rom. 16.17 Or if our design were to be high and great and rich we would flatter the great ones of the world that we might rule you with violence instead of love Or if we consulted our case we should spare much of this labour and let you silently alone at cheaper rates to the flesh than now we speak to you But O who can be silent who is engaged in this sacred office when he foreseeth what will shortly be the issue of our prevailing or not prevailing with you Now as we love Christ we must feed his sheep and necessity is laid upon us and woe be unto us if we preach not the Gospel 1 Cor. 9.16 Our preaching Christ is to warn every man and teach every man that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus Col. 1.22 And to perswade men as knowing the terrours of the Lord 2 Cor. 9.10 11. Heb. 12.25 29. If it were only that we loved so to hear our selves talk or to be cryed up by many followers we deserved to pay dear indeed for such Preaching But when our Lord loved and pittied souls at the rate of his sufferings and bloody death surely our rates are not above the worth of souls O what a doleful sight is it to us to foresee by faith how loud how earnestly you would knock and cry when the door is shut and hope is gone And what you would then give for one of these daies which you now are a weary of and for a drop of that mercy which now doth beg your entertainment What then remaineth but as ever you believe that day and as ever you care what becometh of your souls and bodies for ever and as ever you would not be chargâ—d and condemned as final and obstinate refuâ—ers of mercy and salvation yea and for wronging the Ministers of Christ by making them study and preach in vain That you harden not your hearâ—s but hear Christs voice to day while it is called to day before the door of grace be shut O cry while crying and begging may do good Meet Christ now as may best prepare you to meet him then Meet him now as the Prodigal met his Father Luke 15. Saying I have sinned and am no more worthy to be called thy Son make me one of thy hired servants Meet God as Abigail met David 1 Sam. 25.32 34. with an offering of peace even Christ apprehended by an obedient faith When she heard from David Except thou hadst hasted and come to meet me all had been destroyed Meet him to enquire of his sacred Oracle what is like to become of thy soul as the King of Syria sent Hazael with a present to Elisha to meet him saying Shall I recover of this disease 2 King 8.8 Or as Paul met with Christ when he humbled and converted him saying Who art thou Lord and what wouldst thou have me do Acts 9. Meet him as the men of Israel and Juda did David their King 2 Sam. 19. striving who should first own and honour him Amos 4.12 Meet God thus nâ—w when hâ— caâ—â—eth you by his Word when he perswadeth you by his Mâ—â—â—sters when he moveth you by his Spirit when he allureth and obligeth you by his mercies while he driveth you by affliction while he waiteth on you by his patience and by all thâ—se calleth you to repent to love him and to obey to set your hearts on Heaven if ever you hope it should be your portion Meet him thus now and then you may joyfully meet him in his glory II. And O all you that are true Believers lift up your heads with hope and joy for your final deliverance draweth nigh The world hath but a little while longer to abuse you Satan hath but a little while more to molest you The blinded Sodomites shall not long be groping for your doors You shall not long walk among snares and dangers nor live with enemies nor with troublesome unsuitable friends You have not long to bear the burden of that wearisome body of that seducing flesh of those unruly passions or those disordered thoughts you have not long to groan under the misery of that troubled and doubting conscience that darkened mind those dull affections those remnants of unbelief stupidity and carnality nor to cry out with weariness from day to day O when shall I know God better and love him more Death is coming and quickly after Christ is coming One will begin and the other perfect your full deliverance and put an end to these complaints And remember that though Death hath somewhat in it which to nature is terrible God having made the love of Life to be the pondus or spring of motion to the great engine of the sensitive world yet what is there in the second coming of Christ that should seem unwelcome to you You shall not meet an enemy but a friend your surest and your greatest friend one that hath done more for you than all the world hath done and one that is ready now to do much more and shew his love and friendship to the height One that will be then your surest friend when all the world shall cast you off You go not to be condemned but to be openly justified yea honoured before all the world and sentenced to endless glory You go not to be numbered with the enemies of holiness or with the slothful and unprofitable servants but to be perfectly incorporated into the heavenly society and to see the glorified faces of Henoch Moses and Elias of Peter and John and Paul and Timothy and all the Saints that ever you knew or whose writings you have ever read or whose names you ever heard of millions more You go to be better acquainted with those Angels that rejoyced at your repentance and that ministred for your good and that bore you in their hands and were your continual guard both night and day You go
Wisdom and that parts with Heaven for a few merry hours and hath not wit to save his soul When they see the end and are arrived at eternity let them boast of their Wisdom as they find cause We will take them then for more competent Judges Let the Eternal God be the portion of my soul let Heaven be my inheritance and hope let Christ be my Head and the promise my security let Faith be my Wisdom and Love be my very heart and will and patient persevering Obedience be my life and then I can spare the wisdom of the world because I can spare the trifles that it seeks and all that they are like to get by it What abundance of complaints and calamity would foresight prevent Had the events of this one year been conditionally foreseen the actions of thousands would have bâ—en otherwise ordered and much sin and shame have been prevented What a change would it make on the judgements of the world how many words would be otherwise spoken and how many deeds would be otherwise done and how many hours would be otherwise spent if the change that will be made by Judgement and Execution were well foreseen And why is it not foreseen when it is foreshewn When the omniscient God that will certainly perform his Word hath so plainly revealed it and so frequently and loudly warns you of it Is he wise that after all these warnings will lie down in everlasting woe and say I little thought of such a day I did not believe I should ever have seen so great a change Would the servants of Christ be used as they are if the malicious world foresaw the day when Christ shall come with ten thousands of his Saints to execute Judgement on all that are ungodly Jude 14 15. When he shall come to be glorified in his Saints and admired in all them that do believe 2 Thes 1.10 When the Saâ—nts shall judge the world 1 Cor. 6.2 3. and when the ungodly seeing them on Christs right-hand must hear their sentence on this account Verily I say unto you in as mâ—ch as you did it or did it not to one of the least of these my Brethren you did it unto me Matth. 25. Yet a few daies and all this will be done before your eyes but the unbelieving world will not foresee it Would malignant Cain have slain his brother if he had foreseen the punishment which he calleth afterward intollerable Gen. 4.13 Would the world have despised the preaching of Noah if they had believed the deluge Would Sodom have been Sodom if they had foreseen that an Hell from Heaven would have consumed them Would Achan have medled with his prey if he had foreseen the stones that were his Executioners and his Tomb Would Gehezi have obeyed his covetous desire if he had foreseen the leprosie Or Judas have betrayed Christ if he had foreseen the hanging himself in his despair It is fore-seeing Faith that saves those that are saved and blind unbelief that causeth mens perdition Yea present things as well as future are unknown to foolish Unbelievers Do they know who seeth them in their sin and what many thousands are suffering for the like while they see no danger Whatever their tongues say the hearts and lives of fools deny that there is a God that seeth them and will be their Judge Psalm 14.1 You see then that you must live by Faith or perish by folly 4. Consider that things visible are so transitory and of so short continuance that they do but deserve the name of things being nothings and less than nothing and lighter than vanity it self compared to the necessary eternal Being whose name is IAM There is but a few daies difference between a Prince and no Prince a Lord and no Lord a man and no man a world and no world And if this be all let the time that is past inform you how small a difference this is Rational foresight may teach a Xerxes to weep over his numerous Army as knowing how soon they were all to be dead men Can you forget that death is ready to undress you and tell you that your sport and mirth is done and that now you have had all that the world can do for those that serve it and take it for their part How quickly can a feaver or the choice of an hundred Messengers of death beâ—eave you of all that earth afforded you and turn your sweetest pleasures into gall and turn a Lord into a lump of clay It is but as a wink an inch of time till you must quit the stage and speak and breath and see the face of man no more If you foresee this O live as men that do foresee it I never heard of any that stole his winding-sheet or fought for a Coffiâ— or went to Law for his grave And if you did but see as wise men should how near your Honours and Wealth and Pleasures do stand unto Eternity as well as your Winding sheets your Coffins and your Graves you would then value and desire and seek them regularly and moderately as you do these Oh what a fading flower is your strength How soon will all your gallantry shrink into the shell Si vestra sunt tollite â—a vobiscum Bern. Buâ— yet this is not the great part of the change The terminus ad quem doth make it greater It is great for persons of renown and honour to change their Palaces for graves and turn to noisom rottenness and dirt and their Power and Command into silent impotency unable to rebuke the poorest worm that sawcily feedeth on their hearts or faces But if you are Believers you can look further and foresee much more The largest and most capacious heart alive is unable fully to conceive what a change the stroak of death will make For the holy soul so suddenly to pass from prayer to Angelical praise from sorrow unto boundless joyes from the slanders and contempt and violence of men to the bosom of eternal Love from the clamours of a tumultuous world to the universal harmony and perfect uninterrupted Love and Peace O what a blessed change is this which believing now we shall shortly feel For an unholy unrenewed soul that yesterday was drowned in flesh and laught at threatnings and scorned reproofs to be suddenly snaâ—cht into another world and see the Heaven that he hath lost and feel the Hell which he would not believe to fall into the gulf of bottomless eternity and at once to find that Joy and Hope are both departed that horrour and grief must be his company and Desperation hath lockt up the door O what an amazing change is this If you think me troublesom for mentioning such ungrateful things what a trouble wil it be to feel them May it teach you to prevent that greater trouble you may well bear this Find but a medicine against death or any security for your continuance here or any prevention of the Change and I have