yet the true ultimate end of all things is God himself And the love of God is the highest love And Gods Justice is not without that love of himself and tendeth to that good which he is capable of receiving which is but the fulfilling or complacency of his own will which is but improperly called his Receiving 2. And we little know how many in another World or in the renewed Earth are to be profited by his Justice on the damned as Angels and Men are by his Justice on the Devils 1. LOVE is the Life of Religion and of the Soul and of the Church And what can be a just pretence for any to destroy or oppose the very Life of Religion the Life of Souls and the Life of the Church of Christ Physick Blood-letting and Dismembring may be used for Life But to take away Life except necessarily for a Good that is better than that life is Murder And what is it that is better than the Life of Religion in all matters of Religion Or than the life of the Church in all Church affairs Or than the life of mens Souls in all matters of Soul concernment 2. LOVE is the great command and summary of all the Law And what can be a just pretence for breaking the greatest command yea and the whole Law 3. LOVE is Gods Image and he that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God who is LOVE and God in him And what can be a pretence sufficient for destroying the Image of God which is called by his name 4. There is nothing in man that God himself loveth better than our love And therefore nothing that as better can be set against it And yet alas what enmity is used in the World against the Love of God and Man and many things alledged as pretences to justify it Let us consider of some few of them 1. The great Tyrants of the World such as in several ages have been the Plagues of their own and neighbour Nations care not what havock they make of Religion and of mens lives by Bloody Wars and Cruel Persecutions destroying many thousands and undoing far more thousands of the Country Families where their armies come and sacrificing the lives of the best of their subjects by butcheries or flames And what is the pretence for all this Perhaps they would be Lords of more of the World and would have larger Kingdoms Or more honour Perhaps some Prince hath spoken a hard word of them or done them some wrong Perhaps some subjects believe not as they bid them believe or forbear not to worship God in a manner which they forbid them Perhaps Daniel will not give over praying for a time or the Apostles will not give over preaching or the three Confessors will not fall down to the Golden Image and so Nebuchadnezzar or the other Rulers seem despised And their wills and honour are an Interest that with them seemeth to warrant all this But how long will it seem so I had rather any friend of mine had the Sins of a Thief or Drunkard or the most infamous Sinner among us to answer for than the Sins of a Bloody Alexander Caesar or Tamerlane 2. The Roman Clergy set up Inquisitions force men by cruelties to submit to their Church Keys whose very nature is to be used without force and they silence yea torment the faithful Ministers of Christ and have murdered thousands of his faithful people raised rebellions against Princes and Wars in Kingdoms and taught men to hate Gods Servants as Hereticks Schismaticks Rebels Factious and what not And what pretence must justify all this Why the Interest of the Pope and Clergy called in ignorance or craft by the name of the Holy Church Religion Unity and such other honourable name But must their Church live on Blood and holy Blood And be built or preserved by the destruction of Christs Church Must their doctrine be kept up by silencing faithful Ministers and their worship by destroying or undoing the true worshippers of Christ Are all these precious things which die with Love no better than to be sacrificed to the Clergies Pride and Worldly lusts 3. Among many Schismaticks and Sectaries that are not miscalled so but are such indeed their Discipline consisteth in separating from most other Christians as too bad and that is too unlovely to be of their Communion and their Preaching is much to make those seem bad that is unlovely that are not of their way and their worship is much such as relisheth of the same envy and strife to add affliction or reproaches to their Brethren or to draw the people from the Love of others unto them And their ordinary talk is back-biting others for things that they understand not and reporting any lie that is brought them and telling the hearers something of this Minister or that person or the other that is unlovely as if Satan had hired them to Preach down Love and prate and pray down Love and all this in the name of Christ And the third chapter of James is harder than Hebrew to them they do not understand it but though they tear it not out of the Bible they leave it out of the Law in their Hearts as much as the Papists leave the Second Commandment out of their Books And it is one of the marks of a good man among them to talk against other parties and make others odious to set up them And what are the Pretences for all this Why Truth and Holiness 1. Others have not the Truth which they have And 2. Others are not against the same Doctrines and Ceremonies and Bishops and Church Orders and ways of worship which they are against and therefore are ungodly antichristian or men of no Religion But Truth seldom dwelleth with the Enemies of Love and Peace They that are Strangers and Enemies to it indeed do often cry it up and cry down those as Enemies to it that possess it The wisdom that hath bitter envying and heart-strife is from beneath and is earthly sensual and devilish I admonish all that care for their Salvation that they set up nothing upon love killing terms If you are Christs disciples you are taught of God to love each other you are taught it as Christs last and great Commandment You are taught it by the wonderful example of his life and specially Joh. 13.14 By his washing hiâ— disciples feet You are taught it by the Holy Ghosts uniting the hearts of the disciples and making them by Charity to live as in Community Acts 3. and 4. You are taught it by the Effective operation of the Spirit on your own hearts The new nature that is in you inclineth you to it And will you now pretend the necessity of your own Interest Reputation your Canons and things indifferent your little Church orders of your own making yea or the positive institutions of Christ himself as to the present exercise against this Love Hath Christ commanded you any thing before it except the
on his truth and mercies But God will not lose his knowledge of me nor turn away his mercy from me The foundation of God standeth sure having this seal the Lord knoweth them that are his and let him that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity 2 Tim. 2.19 He can call me his Child when I doubt whether I may call him Father He doubteth not of his right to me nor of his graces in me when I doubt of my sincerity and part in him Known unto God are all his works Act. 15.18 What meaneth Paul thus to describe a state of grace Gal. 4.9 Now after ye have known God or rather are known of of God but to notify to us that though our knowledge of God be his grace in us and our evidence of his love and the beginning of life eternal Joh. 17.3 yet that we are loved and known of him is the first and last the foundation and the perfection of our security and felicity He knoweth his Sheep and none shall take them out of his hand When I cannot through pain or distemper remember him or not with renewed Joy or Pleasure he will remember me and delight to do me good and to be my Salvation 8. And though the belief of the unseen World be the principle by which I conquer this yet are my conceptions of it lamentably dark A Soul in flesh which acteth as the form of a body is not furnished with such images helps or light by which it can have clear conceptions of the state and operations of separated Souls But I am known of God when my knowledge of him is dark and small And he knoweth whither it is that he will take me what my state and work shall be He that is preparing a place for me with himself is well acquainted with it and me All Souls are his and therefore all are known to him He that is now the God of Abraham Isaac and Jacob as being living with him while they are dead to us will receive my departing Soul to them and to himself to be with Christ which he hath instructed me to commend into his hands and to desire him to receive He that is now making us living Stones for the new Jerusalem and his heavenly temple doth know where every one of us shall be placed And his knowledge must now be my satisfaction and my peace Let unbelievers say How doth God know Psal 73.11 But shall I doubt whether he that made the Sun be Father of lights and whether he know his dwelling and his continued works Be still O my Soul and know that he is God Psal 40.10 and when he hath guided thee by his counsel he will take thee to Glory and in his Light thou shalt have Light And though now it appear not to sight but to Faith only what we shall be yet we known that we shall see him as he is and we shall appear with him in glory And to be KNOWN of God undoubtedly includeth his PRACTICAL LOVE which secureth our Salvation and all that tendeth thereunto It is not meant of such a knowledge only as he hath of all things or of such as he hath of the ungodly And why should it be hard to thee O my Soul to be perswaded of the love of God Is it strange that he should love thee who is Essential Infinite love Any more than that the Sun should shine upon thee which shineth upon all capable recipient objects though not upon the uncapable which through interposing things cannot receive it To believe that Satan or wicked men or deadly Enemies should love me is hard But to believe that the God of love doth love me should in reason be much easier than to believe that my Father or Mother or dearest friend in the World doth love me If I do not make and continue my self uncapable of his complacence by my wilful continued refusing of his grace it is not possible that I should be deprived of it Prov. 8.17 I love them that love me Psal 146.8 The Lord loveth the righteous John 16.27 2. Why should it be hard to thee to believe that he loveth thee who doth good so universally to the World and by his love doth preserve the whole Creation and give all Creatures all the good which they possess When his mercy is over all his works and his Goodness is equal to his wisdom and his power and all the World is beautified by it shall I not easily believe that it will extend to me The Lord is good to all Psal 145.9 Luk. 18.19 None is good essentially absolutely and transcendently but he alone Psal 33.5 The Earth is full of the goodness of the Lord Psal 52.1 The goodness of God endureth continually He is good and doth good Psal 119.68 And shall I not expect good from so good a God the cause of all the good that is in the World 3. Why should I not believe that he will love me who so far loved the World yea his Enemies as to give his only begotten Son that whoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life Joh. 3.16 Having given me so precious a gift as his Son will he think any thing too good to give me Rom. 8.32 yea still he followeth his Enemies with his mercies not leaving himself without witness to them but filling their hearts with food and gladness and causing his Sun to shine on them and his Rain to fall on them and by his goodness leading them to repentance 4. Why should I not easily believe his love which he hath sealed by that certain gift of love the Spirit of Christ which he hath given The giving of the Holy Ghost is the shedding abroad of his love upon the heart Rom. 5. I had never known desired loved or served him sincerely but by that Spirit And will he deny his name his mark his seal his Pledge and Earnest of Eternal life Could I ever have truly loved Him his Word his Ways and Servants but by the reflection of his love shall I question whether he love those whom he hath caused to love him When our love is the surest gift and token of his love shall I think that I can love him more than he loveth me or be more willing to serve him than he is willing and ready to reward his Servants Heb. 11.6 1 Joh. 3.24 and 4.13 5. Shall I not easily hope for good from him who hath made such a covenant of Grace with me in Christ Who giveth me what his Son hath purchased who accepteth me in his most beloved as a member of his Son Who hath bid me ask and I shall have And hath made to Godliness the promise of this life and that to come and will with-hold no good thing from them that walk uprightly Will not such a Gospel such a Covenant such promises of love secure me that he loveth me while I consent unto his covenant terms 6. Shall I not easily believe
as bad or worse in some respects Consider 1. I am sure that it doth as much take up and pre-possess the mind which should be employed on God and take up those thoughts and affections which should be holy Tell me why one man should be accounted carnal and ungodly for delighting to see his own Houses Fields Woods Corn Rivers Cattle c. rather than another that hath as much delight to peruse a Map of pleasant Countreys setting aside the covetous desire of having much Do we not justly account it as unfit a work for the Lords day to be for pleasure perusing Maps as to be for pleasure viewing the Woods and Fields Many a poor Student is as long and perilously entangled in his thoughts and affections and kept from God and Heaven and Holiness by deep study of Languages Customs Countreys Chronology Logick Physicks Mathematicks Metaphysicks Law c. as worldlings are by over-minding the World. 2. And it wasteth their precious time as much as other Lusts do One Sensualist spendeth his hours in Gaming Feasting Wantonness idle Courtship Hunting Hawking Bowling and other Excess of Sports Another spends his precious time in hearing Comedies and another in reading Play-Books and Romances and another in reading true and useful History and other parts of useful Learning And though the matter of the latter be better than the former a man may make up the same sensuality in one as in the other in reading Mathematicks or History as in reading or beholding and hearing Comedies 3. And some turn this Learning to as powerful a perversion of the mind as others do their sensual delights Many think so highly of their Languages and Chronology and Philosophy that secretly they are drawn by it to despise the Gospel and to think a holy Life to be but an Employment for Women Persons that live more by Affection than by Judgment So perniciously doth Learning make them Mad. 4. And abundance make it the Fuel of their pride and think that they are excellent Persons because they have got some Ornaments of the mind as vain Women are proud of fine clothes instead of real comeliness and worth I will not dishonour some famous Writers by naming them here lest I seem to take down their due praise But in general I may say that it is more than one of our late famous Philological and Grammatical Criticks who openly shew so much pride of their kind of wordy knowledge as may warn humble men to fear such temptations and to see that this Learning may be made a snare 5. And the worst of all is that while such Learned men think highly of themselves for that they are kept from the knowledge and sense of their sinful corruption and misery and feel not the need of a Saviour and a Sanctifier they cry not for Grace they seek not after God and everlasting happiness they neglect a holy heavenly Life They take up some easie formalities and words to make up an Image of Religion of and then they think that in their unhumbled unsanctified state they have as good right to be esteemed godly as any other and if any question it they are accounted proud self-conceited Phanaticks who appropriate the reputation of holiness to themselves And to question a Learned Formalists sincerity as Martin and Sulpitius Severus did Ithacius his and his Fellow Bishops is to expose himself to the censure of proud Hypocrisie Yea no man is so fit for Church preferment and honour and to be the Governor of all the Religious Persons and Affairs as one of these unsanctified Learned men is in his own Eyes from whence it is that the state of the Churches is so low in the East and West the Roman I mean because those that have truly no Religion must dispose of Religion and the Churches of Christ must be instructed and ruled by his real Enemies and those that hate godliness at the heart must be the Teachers of godliness and the chief managers of the sacred work Lay all this together and think whether our inordinate desire of common Learning which is the knowledge of the Creature be not the fruit of Adams Sin. And if it prove so consider how far it was the work of Christ to cure it Sure he was sent to destroy the works of the Devil Not Learning but this Inordinate desire of it And he was to mortify it in the same way as he mortified other sinful lusts Therefore as he mortified venereous and all sensual Lusts by holy example and by condemning them and calling men off them to spiritual delights And as he mortified Worldliness in men by living himself a life of Poverty and Inferiority in the World and calling men off from the Love of the World to the Love of God and Glory Even so no wonder if he mortified in men the inordinate desire of greater knowledge by calling them up to higher things and shewing them the vanity of this alone And as he saith Love not the World nor the things that are in the World If any man love the World the love of the Father is not in him 1 Joh. 2.15 When yet the ordinate love of the World is lawful And as he saith John 6.27 Labour not for the meat that perisheth when he meaneth Labour not for it inordinately Even so no wonder if Christ omit this common Philosophy and if Paul bid them take heed that none deceive them by vain Philosophy when it is the Inordinacy only which they condemn If you ask me when this desire of common Learning is inordinate I answer 1. When it 's desired most for the phantastical sensual or intellectual Delight of Knowing or from the overvaluing of the thing known Not but a delight in knowledge as such is good and lawful but not as our Chief End. 2. When it is desired as a step to serve a proud aspiring mind that we may be magnified as Learned men or to serve any Worldly Covetous design 3. When it is not duely subordinate and subservient to the Love of God and to his Service and the Common good If God be not first Intended and all our Studies and Learning desired purely as a means to God that is as a means to know him and to love him and to please him and praise him and do him service in the World and enjoy him for ever but be desired for it self or Carnal Ends it is a Carnal lust 4. When it hath a greater measure of our Time and affection and Industry comparatively than its due and the study of higher things is put behind it or neglected by it at least in a great degree 5. When it cometh not in due order but is taken first and in the hours and place which higher things should have In a word God and our duty to him and the common good and our Salvation are the great and necessary things in comparison of which all other things are vain As Riches and Pleasure with its Appetite