less the greatest which he requires Our obedience unto Christ like Christ's obedience unto the Father must not only be paid to some but to all his Commandments without exception All that Abigail could but say Christ Jesus acted For she desir'd to wash the feet of the servants of her Lord but He de facto did wash the feet of the servants of Himself who yet was their Lord and Davids too So very low went our Saviour in the Active part of his Obedience but his passive was lower yet not only to the Death which is the wages of disobedience but to the Death of the Cross too the worst of Deaths and the most terrible whether we consider its shame or torment By such incomparable Obedience both active and passive did the love of our Saviour express it self And shall not our love to Him express it self in our being clean In the keeping of our selves unspotted from the world Shall we adventure to be the worse for his goodness to us or violate his precepts with peace and comfort because we know he dyed our Sacrifice and is our Advocate with the Father and the propitiation for all our Sins No let us strive against sin though we resist it unto Bloud And resist it so much the rather because obliged to it by Him who is a God ready to pardon If He was prodigal of his life when he could spend it to our advantage why should we niggardly keep our Lives when 't is the thrivingst course to lose them That there is a certain case wherein we may save them to our loss and that again there is a case wherein we may lose them to our advantage is the peremptorie assertion of Christ himself He that will save his life shall lose it and he that will lose his life for my sake the same shall save it Now till we come to this pitch of being able in time of trial to lose a life for Christ's sake we have not satisfied the Text in its full Importance and by consequence till we have we stand in need of being taught from another Topick I mean we ought to be persuaded by seeing the terrors of the Lord or at least to be frighted by them And considering that S. Paul hath comprehended them all at once in that short pandect of Imprecations his dreadful Anathema Maranatha as also considering that the sins by which those Curses are all incurr'd do all arise from this Fountain a most unnatural want of love to the Lord Iesus Christ I cannot think of a fitter Text whereon to continue my Meditations than that Sentence of S. Paul in his first Epistle to the Corinthians If any man love not the Lord Iesus Christ let him be Anathema Maranatha And this I mean shall be the subject of the second part of my Design THE INTRODUCTION TO The Second Part. Sect. 1. AMongst the many obliging Titles which God in reference to Man vouchsafes to take upon Himself there is not any so apt to melt us as that of Eridegroom For whilst in other Relations to us he is the object of our Fear our Adoration our Admiration and the like still in the quality of a Bridegroom all he draws from us is Love And if we weigh the chief ingredients which are prescrib'd to make up and compound a Christian every grain of pure love will go as far as many pounds of our Awe and wonder Faith and Hope are great vertues but Love is greater And that as for many other reasons so in particular also for This that God was never yet said to be Faith or Hope nor is it possible for him to be so but S. Iohn hath said plainly that God is Love And therefore Love of all Graces makes us most to resemble the God that made us 'T is true indeed that Faith and Hope must help to carry us into Heaven But holy Love besides that will keep us company when we are there Our Love indeed shall there be perfected but only perfected into Love that though it shall cease to be incomplete it shall not cease to be it self Whereas our Faith and our Hope shall be for ever don away For that shall dy into experience and so shall this into Fruition Sect. 2. To fear and honour Him that made us is a most acceptable service Mal. 1. 6. But very passionately to love him does please him far beyond both It being absolutely in vain that we do honour him as a Father or that we fear him as a Lord unless we Love him as a Bridegroom who hath betrothed us to Himself Take away Love and Fear hath Torment Or take away Love and Honour degenerates into Hypocrisy Both are servil in themselves until our Love does manumit them and make them free Our Fear and our Honour are only welcom for our Loves sake whereas our sole or single Love is welcome to him for its own Sect. 3. Nor may you think that I have nam'd the utmost privilege of Love above other Graces For Love alone is that Motion or Affection of the Soul by which we render back to God though not ex aequo yet de simili a noble kind of Retaliation If he is Angry we are to Tremble not to be angry with him again If he Commands we must obey and if he censures we must adore him But by no means presume to return the like Nay if he saves us or sets us free we cannot thank him for it in kind we cannot make him a Retribution either of safety or of deliverance But when he condescends to love us we can and must love him without the Arrogance of taking too much upon us For to this very end does he begin to us in Love that though we never can requite yet at least we may pledge him with Love for Love Sect. 4. Again of all the Emanations or Affections of the Soul the Love of God is that alone which carries with it its own Reward I mean a Pleasure and Satisfaction which cannot admit of an allay by either Repentance or Satietie Indeed to love him for somewhat else is to receive no greater Pleasure than somewhat else has the luck to affect us with But to love him for himself is to possess the very end because the object of our Love For the greatest injoyment of such a Lover is still to love what he injoyes Hence it was that S. Austin did argue thus in his Confessions Thou hast commanded me Lord to love thee and dost threaten me with Hell if I love thee not Whereas 't is Hell enough to me that I cannot love thee enough For to love thee as I ought as thou deservest and I desire would be at once the greatest Duty and highest Reward to be imagin'd It would not only be my Task but my Heaven to love thee Sect. 5. Now when Interest and Honour conspire with Pleasure and Satisfaction to make us kind may it not seem a great wonder
will receive us with an Euge well don good and faithful servants What heart has a servant to do his work when he neither loves the Master nor has pleasure in his Commands And yet what hope has a servant to earn his wages who for want of affection neglects his work It is therefore for our Interest the most that may be to love our Saviour and our Prince to whom it belongs to reward or punish and so to love him as to keep his Commandments Sect. 5. But suppose it were not useful to love this Saviour and that nothing were to be got by being loyal to this Prince yet he being so lovely as well as great that whilst he awes us with his Commands he seeks to melt us with his Intreaties methinks we should be so charm'd as still to love him only to love him And shall we niggardly put him off with such a mercenary love as with which Diana's Silver-smiths did love their Idol or as the Daughters of the Horse-leech are wont to love Blood rather because we live and thrive by the love we bear him than because he is so lovely as to make us dy for him with ease and pleasure Those words of Iob were the most suitable to a Lover although he kill me yet will I trust in him And as in those words of Iob speaking them heartily as he did consisted the Triumph of his Faith to wit that Faith which overcometh the world So for us to be able to say as heartily of Christ that we would love him though he should hate us This alone would be of force to shew the Triumph of our Affection And sure we ought to love our Saviour seeing pure love indeed hath eyes behind it rather because he hath already deserv'd our love than to the mercenary end that he may reward it Indeed 't is most for our Interest as well as honour to love him simply for what he is and not for what he brings with him by way of Dowry because in the conduct of our love the less we look on our Advantage the more advantageous our love will be Sect. 6. I confess this is more than He does rigidly exact Because he is an High Priest who has a feeling of our Infirmities and as in his Person he once did bear them so for that very reason he does the rather with them He does not look for such a perfect and disinteressed love as stands in need of no helps for its Improvement or support Carry's not water in the one hand wherewith to extinguish the Flames of Hell nor a Firebrand in the other whereby to burn up the Ioys of Heaven like the woman so met by Bishop Ivo in the streets to the end that we may love him the more sincerely without fear of the first and without hope of the second He knows that Hell is very useful for the driving us off from the love of Evil and that Heaven is as useful for the drawing up our love to the Soveraign Good And as he desires that we will love him upon any rational Terms So would he have our love cherisht by any means to be imagin'd even the hope of Reward in case we do and fear of Punishment if we do not He would have us to reflect on our own advantage and afford him some love for the love we bear unto our selves Sect. 7. 'T is true indeed if we consider that in Him is all goodness and that goodness is Beauty in its Perfection and that Beauty is not the Common but the more proper object of Love as Colours are of sight and Sounds of hearing And that Beauty in its Perfection is Loves last object and resort the very Center wherein it rests and wherein when it rests it cannot possibly go astray all extravagance of desire being quite lost into Fruition and by consequence that there is nothing more natural to a Christian than to place his whole Love upon Jesus Christ if I say we consider such things as these it may be matter of some Amazement how a true member of Christ can make a shift not to love him and not to love him for Himself too And yet we see by Christ himself 't is but indefinitely propos'd it is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 if ye love me Though Jesus Christ is the Head and we do hope we are his members and 't is natural for the members to love the head though Jesus Christ is the Vine and we conceive we are the Branches and 't is natural for the Branches to cleave in love unto the vine yet it seems a thing questionable whether we love him or love him not And since 't is impossible for a true member not to love its own Head we may know by this Token whether we are members of Christ or not S. Paul saith expresly that as many as are members of Jesus Christ are members of his Body his Flesh and Bone and that no man yet did ever hate his own Flesh. So that if it is a question whether or no we love our Saviour it must be also another question whether or no we are his members Whether members of his mystical or 〈◊〉 of his visible Church only whether genuine and natural or counterfeit Branches of the Vine And herein lyes the sadness of our condition so far forth as we fail in our love to Christ that if we suspect we are not his members we can yet be so well satisfied or unconcern'd in our unhappiness as not to take any great thought what shall happen to us hereafter and if we think we are his members that we can seek out occasions of slacking our love towards a Saviour in loving whom we must confess our endless happiness does consist Sect. 8. In the beholding of an Interlude or in the reading of a Romance men will be often so affected with the lively representation of some incomparable Lover and of his Admirable sufferings for the dear object of his Love as to let fall Tears at the Solemnity Now what other reason can be given why men should thus be real Lovers of an Imaginary vertue and unfeignedly concern'd in another man's Fiction whilst they know and consider 't is but a Fiction but that it is in the nature of man as man before he degenerates into a Brute both to love the vertuous and to compassionate the miserable To espouse the cause of the best-deserving and to side with Innocence in her Afflictions From whence it follows unavoidably that he who cannot love goodness without any reference to himself his private Interesses and ends hath deerly bought that disability which he could never have got at a lower rate than that of parting with his Humanity and plucking up by the Root those Flowers of Paradise which the God of good nature had planted in him And if these things are so Lord how strange is the Impiety and how mysterious the unhappiness to be less affected with the Beauty and
is that loves to live a sober and righteous and godly life is most affectionately a servant to the Lord Iesus Christ and does bestow his whole Time in doing the things that he Commands Let the object of our Love be what it will whether God or the World the Flesh or the Spirit still the Rule of the Apostle will be unalterably true That to whom we yield our selves servants to obey His servants we are to whom we obey whether of Sin unto Death or of Obedience unto Righteousness Love is ever so sure to beget obedience that when our Saviour would give a reason why no one man can serve two masters meaning those two call'd God and Mammon he made his reason to stand in this that no one man can love two Masters For either he will hate the one and love the other or will hold to the one and despise the other So that if we love God we shall be sure to hate Mammon and if again we hold to Mammon we shall rebel against God Whereas if it were possible to love them Both it would also be as possible to serve them Both because by the persons whom we love we cannot but love to be employ'd The love of Christ doth constrain us saith our Apostle to his Corinthians And as Christ's love of us so ours of Him doth even press upon us and urge us to keep his Commandments and to do those things which are pleasing in his sight But let us farther make it appear by a fourth way of arguing For Sect. 4. Whatsoever we love the most is either present or absent And as when it is present we most delight in it so whilst it is absent we do long the most after it But the Apostle tells us expresly that whilst at home in the Body we are absent from the Lord for we walk by Faith and not by sight So that if we love Christ we shall long after his presence and if we truly long for it we shall indeavour its attainment And if we indeavour to reach the end there will be nothing more natural than to inquire after the means And finding the means to be obedience we shall undoubtedly obey The Helkesaitae prov'd nothing but that themselves were stupid sinners in conceiving it possible to deny Christ with the Mouth and yet to love him with the Heart For the Heart in a Man like the Spring in a Watch is that that sets all on work both Tongue and Eyes and Hands and Feet too If with the heart a man believeth unto righteousness 't is very certain that with the mouth he will confess unto Salvation He will obey his dear Master in every kind both by speaking and living and dying for him If he is but once mounted on the wing of pure Love he cannot choose but be transported by the wing of desire too and will incessantly be flying in every errand upon which his Beloved shall please to send him Which may once more appear by a fifth way of arguing For Sect. 5. Carnal fear is the greatest and strongest Barr to our Obedience But there is no fear in love perfect love casteth out fear 1 Iohn 4. 18. And as it casteth out fear so it establisheth a Hope too And Hope is evermore a Spur by which we are urged to our Obedience from its expectance of our Reward It was this Love and Hope which made S. Paul follow Christ through every rough passage by sea and land He was so amorous of his Saviour and so piously ambitious of the Glory to be reveal'd that he rejoyc'd in his afflictions and was readier to dye for the name of the Lord Jesus than to fail in any point of yielding Obedience to his Commands Nor is it truer of S. Paul than of all the meanest Souldiers in the Army of Martyrs That neither distress nor persecution nor nakedness nor famin nor peril nor sword nor life nor death nor any other Creature had any power to step in betwixt their Love and their Obedience The reason of it is obvious as t is to say that they were Members of Jesus Christ not only reputed but real members And 't is natural for a member as to love its own Head so to live in Obedience to its Direction Sect. 6. Thus I seem to my self to have made it evident that Love is ever that cause of which Obedience is the most natural and most inseparable effect 'T is still as ready to obey as water is to wet or fire to Burn. Nor can it better be represented than by the nature of that active and subtle Element Knowledge we may say is a kind of light but Love is more properly a sort of Fire and with that when the Heart is once sufficiently inflam'd it cannot but send up those sparks of Zeal and devotion to its Beloved which do inkindle a special Pleasure in doing the things that he commandeth The Psalmists Heart was hot within him so hot that he tells the fire was kindled and though he long held his Peace yet his love did so burn he was not able to suppress it and so at last he spake with his Tongue We may say therefore of Love what the spowse in the Canticles doth say of Iealousie which is but one of Loves Daughters The Coals thereof are Coals of Fire which hath so vehement a Flame that many waters cannot quench it neither can the flouds drown it Love indeed is such a flame as must evaporate or expire or burn out its way through all that labours to keep it in A thing so busie and industrious as that in truth it can no longer be called Love than it is doing somewhat or other in complaisance and compliance with its Beloved Sect 7. Having now passed through the Proof proceed we briefly to the use we are to make of this Inference And first of all let us consider that if Love and Obedience are two inseparable Companions the former as the Cause and this later as the Effect It concerns us as much as our Souls are worth to take a care that our Love be rightly fixt and directed For it transforms us into the Image of whatsoever thing it is that we love the most And according as our object is good or evil It either put 's us upon the noblest or meanest offices in the world If its object is right we are the best sort of men but if it is wrong the worst of monsters It being with love as it is with fire which in proportion to the matter on which it feeds doth send up the sweetest or noysom'st vapours If it feeds on such matter as Grass and Tallow it cannot choose but have a noxious and stinking breath if on Cinnamon and storax it fills the Air with a perfume And just thus it is with the flame of Love If it fixes upon Christ it breaths forth nothing but pure obedience and so abounds with good works which are
a sweet-smelling savour such a sacrifice of Incense as with which God is well pleas'd In which respect alone it is that the Bridegroom in the Canticles is thus exprest to court his spouse How fair is thy love my sister my spouse How much better is it than wine and the smell of thy garments than all spices A garden inclos'd is my sister my spouse Thy plants are an Orchard of Pomgranates with pleasant Fruits Camphire and Spikenard Calamus and Saffron with trees of Frankincense Myrrh and Aloes Thus our Saviour is suppos'd in Solomons elegant Hypotyposis to set out the Graces of his Church and so of every Soul in it espousing Christ for her Bridegroom and his Commandments for her guide Whereas if our Love does fix and feed upon the Creature it seâ—… forth a dangerous and loathsome stench a stench so odious to God Almighty that sin for this reason only is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Scripture which does equally signify what is abominated and stinks Yet in this very mire men of swinish affections delight to wallow For whatsoever 't is we love be it as ugly as the Devil we paint it hansom in our thoughts and blot out all its deformities with our Imaginations and so we love it not as it is but rather as it is disguis'd and sancyed by us And hence it is that we are able to be so passionately in love with some Bosom sins though so much uglier than the Devil that sin alone hath been able to make him ugly For when our Spirits are so unworthy as to ask Counsel of our Flesh our flesh presents it to us as lovely And from that instant forwards we look upon it with a Fleshly that is to say with a Lovers eye And sure the Eye of a Lover sees no defect in its Beloved The blackest Crow in the world is much more doated on by a Crow than whatsoever we can commend in the whitest Turtle But this is only a similitude cannot deserve to be a Proof For we as Sinners do owe to Industry what the Crow does to Nature Being naturally unable to doat on sin as it is sin we are fain to dress it up with some Turtles Feathers And having so don we are fain to use our wits to make ourselves become stupid Speaking no better of sin than this that it has comeliness in its kind and is proportionably hansom and comparatively good too Not good in itself nor good in others but yet the Flesh represents it as good for us Avarice is good to increase our Treasure Ambition is as good to advance our Credit Luxury good to banish Melancholy and Sadness Another mans Avarice is flat Idolatry but our own is Good-husbandry because our own Another mans Knavery deserves a Gallows but when it lyes in our Bosom 't is a most necessary Prudence We hate the Proud and the Aspiring the most that may be whereas in us 't is but Bravery to be Ambitious Another man's Excess is a scandalous Sin whilst our own is but an Argument of the Right which we have to the Creature-comforts Now by what are we betray'd to all these mischiefs but by the meer misapplying of our Affections And what then have we reason to be more afraid of than of setting our Affections upon the Earth We find by evident Experience and in all manner of Cases that such as is our Love such will be our Submissions whether to that which is above or which is infinitely below us 'T is This hath made so many womanish uxorious Husbands so many childish indulgent Parents so very many servile obedient Masters 'T was this made Ahab I do not say the Husband but the Wife of Iezebel and Eli a slave unto both his Sons Herod though a King an humble servant to Herodias Darius though an Emperor meanly gaping upon Apame and Hercules though an Hero submitting tamely to the blowes of a feeble Omphale Nor will it be otherwise with ourselves who are called Christians who having the Earthiness of their Love shall not be able not to stoop to their Idols too If we love Herod as He Herodias we shall keep his Commandments as He did Hers though this be one of his Commandments that we slay our own Infants put to flight the child Iesus and joyn ourselves with a Pilate to plot his Death too But if we love the same Iesus as much as Herod did Herodias we shall obey him as exactly as He did Her For we shall turn the right cheek to him that strikes us on the left To him that takes away our cloak we shall yield our coat also When we do well and are beaten we shall not threaten but intreat We shall lay up our Treasure not in earth but in Heaven And whethersoever Christ calls us to Herod's Court or Pilate's Hall to the Garden or the Cross we shall esteem it our greatest Riches To leave all we have and to follow Him Sect. 8. Seeing therefore 't is so evident that wheresoever there is Love there cannot choose but be obedience and that our obedience cannot choose but be agreeable to our Love our first Indeavour is to be this that we beware what we love And since t is natural for us to love the individuals of our own species who do carry God's Image as well as we and betwixt whom notwithstanding there is very great difference let it be our next Indeavour that we beware whom we love Lastly because we are commanded to love our enemies and therefore more than permitted to love our Friends let it be our third Indeavour that we beware how we love We must love one another or else we cannot love Christ not at least in such sort as to keep his Commandments one of the chief of which is this that we love one another Our love is to abound more and more towards all men especially towards all the houshold of Faith But we must love them in measure not at all in perfection not in such an high pitch as to keep their Commandments without exception We are in some cases oblig'd to call no man Master upon Earth and to obey him that saith be ye not the Servants of men We are to love one another for Christ's sake only and only Christ for his own Now to prevent our being careless whether we love him or love him not or whether so as will suffice for the due keeping of his Commandments Sect. 9. Let us secondly consider the unspeakable danger of our Defect As first the perfect impossibility of ever entring into his Glory without the keeping of his Commandments next the equal impossibility of ever keeping his Commandments whilst we are cold in our Affection to Him or Them One of the chief of his Commandments which he deliver'd to us as Christians and by which we are distinguish't from Iews and Gentiles is love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you and
pray for them that despightfully use you But how incapable are we of that whilst we are wanting in our love unto Christ himself who is so far from being an enemy to any of us that 't is a kind of a Meiosis to call him Friend Again 't is another of his Commandments that we rejoyce in persecutions that we deny our own selves and that taking up his Cross we do so follow him as to hate our own lives in comparison of Him which though absolutely necessary to our being his Disciples yet how incapable are we of doing unless we love him a great deal better then both our ease and our Pleasures our Reputations and ourselves too And then how highly does it concern us to wean ourselves from this world with whose love the love of Christ is said to be utterly inconsistent Iam. 4. 4. shall we then be verier Babes than our sucking children by being fonder of the world which is a strange and a cruel Nurse than they are ever wont to be of the Mothers Breast from which they draw the very substance and means of Life shall we not wean our selves from the world from whence we suck nothing but Poison and the preparatories of Death by the same Art and Method which we use in the weaning our sucking Infants Is it not a very sad and unexcusable Absurdity that the Tall Parents should go to School to their poor Brat of a span long and yet complain of too hard a lesson That they should lay upon their Infant an heavier burthen than they are willing to bear themselves That the Babe of a year old who is not able to distinguish between a Fish and a Scorpion should be put upon the practice of self-denyal whilst themselves however aged are hardly yet ripe for the doctrin of it An absurdity very shameful but no whit strange because our customary experience that so it is does extenuate the wonder that so it should be And yet as we never can obey Christ until we love him so the true love of Christ can never enter into our Hearts untill the love of this world hath had its Exit Nor can we cease from our love of a tempting world until as children from the Breast we are weaned from it And hence it was that the Cradle became the Pulpit from whence the sucking child preach't to the Prophet David whose choisest learning was to refrain and to keep his soul like as a child that is weaned from his Mother And from this very Topick did God upbraid his people Israel who were rather of years than of discretion to be men Isa. 28. 9 10. For sooner will a Babe who is not weaned from the Breast attain to knowledge than his Parents to Religion being not weaned from the world Now to enable our selves the better for the transforming of our love from the world to Christ Sect. 10. Let us be resolute in the third place to converse with it less and more with him than we are wont For a competent familiarity ingenders love though too much of it begets contempt But Discontinuance breeds coldness and indifferency in our Affections As therefore the way to wean an Infant is to sever him from the Breast whereof the Infant grows careless when sufficiently accustomed to other meat so to wean our selves also from the embraces of the world we must abandon its company and discontinue our Acquaintance and accustom ourselves to another diet that is to say to the law of Christ. And then by being so accustomed we shall be careless if not forgetful of worldly Pleasures and Delights I do the rather crave leave to dwell on this somewhat the longer notwithstanding what I have spoken to the same end and purpose in other places because there are who do impose so great a Fallacy on themselves as to conclude against the pleasures of living strictly meerly from their own want of a due experience A thing of so very great importance that even Eudoxus and Epicurus though the great Patrons of Sensuality did recommend a life of vertue to all their Followers not from a Principle of Piety but Pleasure only Not as the nobler way of life but the more voluptuous The reason is they had try'd both courses and so were Proselytes not to vertue consider'd simply in it self but to the Pleasure and Convenience they met with in it So important a thing it is to make an essay of a method before we rashly conclude against it But how can any man pass a judgment touching Colours and Shapes which he never saw or touching the savour of a dish which he never tasted or touching the happiness of a life of which he never had the Patience to make a tryal Let Christ but have as fair quarter as the God of this world is wont to meet with let the keeping of his Commandments be try'd as much and as farr as the breaches of them and then if the greatest Apolausticks do not subscribe to the delights of a new obedience we may venture to give up our Christian Cause For though the yoke of Christ's Precepts is somewhat rough at the beginning yet there are thousands who can attest that it grows smooth by being worn and much the fitter for our necks too In every thing that can be nam d be it an Art or a Science a Faculty or a Trade we know 't is usage and practice which breeds perfection He who first learns to write or read will find it troublesom to the Flesh which yet by using much and often he will not find inconsistent with ease and pleasure And exactly thus it is in the School of Christ where the very same lesson which is most irksom in the beginning is by use and experience made most delightful We may be wedded to the best things as we are commonly to the worst by such a custom of conversing with them alone as will become an artificial acquir'd Nature For as a sinner when you reprove him for his swearing or drinking or any other vitious Habit will say he is so us'd to it as not to be able to abstain So if a man be as much us'd to the Commandments of Christ and is able to say with David all the day long is my study in them he will not be able to abstain from thrusting his neck into the yoke of his Master Christ. The yoke will keep his Neck so warm he will not dare to leave it off and that for fear of catching so great a cold that is to say so great an Absence of love to Christ as will carry him for warmth to the Fire of Hell If he is askt why he refuseth his partion of velâ—…ptuousness eates the course Bread of Honesty or wears away himself in Meditation and self-denial his answer is he is so us'd to this course of life victorious custom hath so subdned him and conscience keeps him so much in Awe that what with Fear on the
that which is True The vulgar sort of professed Christians who are the speculative Solifidians will not submit to any Tryal unless their own Fansie may sit as Iudge And being destitute of obedience to the Commandments of Christ which should be a witness from without of the love they bear to him whereby they might prove it to other men they appeal to the strength of their own perswasion call'd a witness from within of their Love to Christ and whereby they pretend to prove it inwardly to themselves But this is an Error so full of danger and indeed so void of sense that I know not if I may judge it more extravagant in itself or more pernicious in its effects For 't is apt to place presumption on the right hand of Faith and does make the sanguin'sts Hypocrites to pass in disguise for the holiest men Mistake's a callous and a sear'd for a quiet Conscience and sets up every mans heart as the great Touchstone of his Affections though itself needs a Touchstone the most of any For what saith God by the Prophet Ieremie The Heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked who can know it Touching our heads and our hands and other parts of our composition we may be easily supposed to have some knowledge But God alone is the searcher of all our hearts Ier. 17. 10. And are not they in a goodly way of being rectified in judgment both concerning themselves and their love to Christ who take their measures from the Fountain of all deceit God was never more angry in the Times of the Law than with them who were Prophets of the deceit of their own Heart Ier. 23. 25. Those Plaisterers of Satan whose custom 't was to dawb with untemperd morter and to heal the wounds of the people slightly speaking peace to their Consciences before their Consciences had Peace with God And t is as evident from the words of the wise King Solomon Prov. 24. 24. that nothing but Woes and Imprecations belong to those Temporizing and Popular Teachers who do nourish themselves with the peoples Favour by nourishing the people with their deceits For there is no higher way whereby to gratifie the Devil and make him glad than by lulling poor souls into carnal security Nor can a speedier course be taken to make them carnally secure than by making them believe that let their Sins be what they can be they may be lovers of Christ and vessels of absolute Election and can never fall totally much less finally from Grace and that for this reason because they think so because they are inwardly perswaded because 't is set upon their Hearts as they use to word it because they take it for granted and do not make the least doubt A way of reasoning I cannot tell whether more common or more irrational For to say they are assured because they stedfastly believe or that they know they shall be sav'd because they are strongly perswaded of it is to argue that they know even because they know not For Faith and Knowledge in the proper acception of the words cannot be conversant at once about the very same object And that men may take that for the voice of Conscience or else for the whisper of God within them which yet is nothing in the world but either a forgerie of the Head or a Deceitfulness of the Heart is very evident from the Scriptures both of the Old and New Testament For there we read of a Generation who are pure in their own eyes yet are not washed from their filthiness Who bless themselves in their own Hearts saying we shall have peace even whilst they persevere in adding Drunkenness to Thirst. We read of the Hypocrites having an Hope but we read too that it shall perish We read of Priests teaching for hire and Magistrates judging for reward whilst yet they lean upon the Lord and say is not the Lord among us none evil can come upon us Many will plead their great merit who yet shall be damn'd in the day of Judgment Matth. 7. 22 23. And even the children of the Devil may think that God is their only Father Ioh. 8. 11. All which being consider'd I cannot approve of their skill or kindness whereof we have an account in Print who taught an horrible Malefactor to please himself with this Syllogism after his sentence of Condemnation for wilful murder God hath said whosoever repenteth and believeth shall find mercy and be saved My Conscience telleth me and witnesseth to me that I repent and believe and am one of those whosoever therefore Christ is mine I shall find mercy and be saved Now admit that this Murderer was in a very safe state yet sure he took not the way to prove it but only the way that he had been taught For what he took to be the dictate or suggestion of his Conscience might be possibly nothing more than the delusion of his Phansie or the pleasant deceit of his Imagination And this is certain that unless by Repentance he meant Amendment which he could not well discover as he was hastening to the Gallows and unless by believing he meant an Operative Faith such as worketh by love and by such a love too as is the fulfilling of the law which he could not well be sure of as he was going into his Grave there was not so much as a possibility that he should prove himself sure of having an interest in Christ. The murderer should therefore have argued thus Whosoever believeth and repenteth and does both sincerely so as to lead a new life and to bring forth fruits meet for Repentance He hath an interest in Christ and is in a state of Salvation But I believe and repent and I hope sincerely and also hope that if I live I shall lead a new life therefore I humbly hope I have an interest in Christ and in consequence of that am in a state of Salvation In the mean time he should have pray'd and his Teachers should have helpt him both by their Prayers and their advice that God would deliver him from the danger of being deceived by his own Heart into security and presumption which would only have betray'd him into a mischievous consolation he having deserved by his Impieties to be one of their number who are delivered up unto strong delusions and wholly left to believe a lye This I say should have been don because there is nothing more agreeable to the condition of such a Penitent as had been lately by his Confession at once a Robber and a cheat a fornicator and a blasphemer and even a murderer of his brother sleeping innocently by him in the very same bed than to mingle his Faith with pious Fear and his Hope with that holy trembling wherewith we all are to work out our own Salvation Now having hitherto made an Amulet for the contagion of the Times by the negative part
of my undertaking which hath been only to discover how we must not examin our love to Christ and which is not the true Touch-stone whereby our state is to be try'd I am next in the Affirmative to recommend that authentick and only warrantable Touch-stone which is approv'd for the purpose in holy writ And first the words of my Text may serve to be their own proof Because our Saviour did not say as he was going out of the world if ye love me make it appear by being sorry for my departure for they might easily be sorry meerly in love unto themselves Nor if ye love me make it appear by your inward perswasion that ye love me for such a perswasion is often false and when it is true is not also Scientifical Nor if ye love me make it appear by your outward perswasion that ye love me for every Hypocrite is a Professor and every one that hates him can love in Tongue They who crucified their Saviour did give him very fine words too Hail King of the Iews when yet they cloathed him in the Purple of his own Heart bloud But the saying of our Master was briefly this If ye love me keep my Commandments which is as if he should have said make it appear by your Obedience Let me see the solid Issue let me feel the good effects and taste the fruits of your Affection We may know the true Test of our love to Christ by what we find to be the tryal of one mans love unto another which cannot possibly be made by an inward perswasion in the one or an outward profession in the other But he who gives us the richest presents and is readiest to do us the greatest good is most unweariedly delighted in our converse and most sensibly toucht in our Reputation joys the most in our welfare and most condoles in our affliction is not sparing of cost or care when he thinks he can spend them to our Advantage and is ambitious to indear us on all occasions although it be at the hazard of Life and Fortune He is the person of all the world whom we do reckon as our truest and solidst Friend And by the very same measures are we to judge of that love which we bear to Christ. If the beauty of his Goodness is really enter'd into our Souls and hath ingraven in our Breasts the Image of him it does not only inkindle in us the fire of Love but rouzeth it up into Desire too and apply's it to the Object which the fair Image does represent thence we are fixed with Attention in contemplation of his beauty and take such pleasure in that attention as to distaste the very things with which we were wont to be delighted and that for this reason because they offer to divert and as it were pluck us from our injoyment For we are pleas'd with his presence in every thing that represents him be it the strictest of his Praecepts the poorest of his Members the most despised of his Messengers We love to think and speak of him when we consider him as he is absent The very Remembrance of him is sweet and therefore frequently recurr's And this our Love is still improv'd by him by whom it is begun For we love him still the more the more we love him At last the soul is set on fire which burns up all the dross in us devours our love of the Creature becomes Praedominant and unquenchable the loss of our Bloud cannot extinguish or make it cooler It makes us sick of a pleasant Feavour that is of Love as the spowse in the Canticles sets forth her love unto the Bridegroom Being once sick of love we are sick of life too and therefore desire to be dissolv'd that we no longer may believe in but be with Christ. The desire of this Union makes us to go out of our selves as 't were ejaculating our Souls by fervent Prayers and Thanksgivings and all other acts of our obedience expressed here in one word by the keeping of Commandments These I say are the Fruits and therefore the tryals of our Affection and as well of its nature as its degrees This is that natural kind of Dialect in which our love of Christ speaks and makes probation of it self where there is not such obedience there cannot be possibly such a love for an affectionate Rebel is a contradiction in adjecto Let the profession of our Religion be as right as it will and our Iudgment as Orthodox as any can be yet all is nothing without obedience And this I take to be the meaning of S. Pauls words to the Corinthians Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing but the keeping of the Commandments That is something to the purpose and with our Saviour all in all For being told by the company that his Mother and his Brethren stood without to speak with him He immediately return'd who is my Mother and who are my Brethren even He that doth the Will of my Father which is in Heaven and 't is the Will of the Father that we keep the Commandments of the Son the same is my Brother my Sister and Mother Nay by the keeping of the Commandments we do not only know our love but we know our very knowledge our affinity to the Truth our being in Christ and Christ in us And last of all it is by this continued in unto the end that we make our Election and Calling sure The first of these is very evident from Iohn 14. 21 23. and 1 Iohn 2. 5. The second is as plain from 1 Iohn 2. 3 4. The third is as plain from 1 Iohn 3. 19. The fourth is so too from 1 Iohn 3. 24. Where we have two wayes of knowing whether Christ abideth in us and we in Him To wit by our keeping his Commandments and by the Spirit which he hath given us Not by this without that because it is no longer in us than we keep his Commandments The first and last is most conspicuous in the 2 Pet. 1 5 6 7 8 9 and 10 verses where the Apostle does exhort us to give all diligence to make our Calling and Election sure How then can our diligence and all our diligence be employ'd unless in the keeping of the Commandments and in the keeping of them all too For so he seems to explain himself in the very next words If ye do these things ye shall never fall And what is meant by these things but that long chain of Moral and Theological Graces in the 5 6 and 7 verses of that chapter which in effect are nothing else but several Habits of Obedience to the Commandments of Christ And by these S. Peter teacheth us how we must judge of our condition For if these things be in us and abound they make us fruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Iesus Christ. v. 8. But he that lacketh these things is blind and cannot see a farr off and hath forgotten that