because he ceaseth to be regenerate by wilful sinning Sins of Ignorance and frailty he cannot free himself from but he cannot being regenerate sin a sin unto Death Cannot indure to live habitually or indulgently in sin For whilst we continue to be regenerate or born of God the love we bear to Christs person will beget such a love of his precepts too as will make the keeping of them at once our Business and our Delight Sect. 11. And until we arrive at this we cannot go beyond Is in the School of Christ but must be held as so many Dunces to the first syllable of the Text. We may say that we love him without the keeping of his Commandments but 't is plain without that we cannot palpably demonstrate or shew our Love We cannot shew it either to Christ or to our Neighbour or so much as to our selves For S. Paul tells us expresly that the salvifick grace of God or the grace which bringeth Salvation doth teach as many as do receive it without resistance to live soberly righteously and godly in this present world But now we cannot do either unless we keep his Commandments because by these we are precisely tyed up to all three And so without the keeping of them we have no love at all For had we a real love to God we should be Godly Had we any to our Neighbour we should be Righteous And did we but truly love our selves we should be Temperate and Sober That is to say had we a solid and sincere love of Christ either consider'd in himself or consider'd in his Members we should not fail in good measure to keep his Commandments For what disparity could there be betwixt our loving and our not loving Christ if it were possible for us to love him without the keeping of his Commandments If they can truly love Christ who still are breaking his Commandments And if they can but love him who are still keeping his Commandments what great difference can there be betwixt love and hatred what difference in the causes when there is none in the effects to make it evident by a plain and familiar Instance 'T is not the least of his Commandments by which he obligeth us to submit our selves to every ordinance of man whether supreme or subordinate 1 Pet. 2. 13. And therefore they who can flatter themselves or others that when they violate this Commandment given by Christ in his Apostle they only violate it in Love to the reformation of his Religion and so Rebell against him in love to the advancement of his Glory or only fight against him in Love to the propagation of his Gospel do speak as absurd a contradiction as if they should say in plainer termes that they hate him in Love that they Persecute him in Love and that in love they cannot indure him And therefore let us resolve upon the keeping of his Commandments that so we may be sure we love him that we may love him without an If that we may not fail to love him with such a love as is undisputable Sect. 12. For this is one of the chiefest reasons why he exacteth our obedience even because our obedience is the strongest Argument of our Love Could we love him without Obedience he would not be so much offended as now he is with our Rebellions That which most of all wounds him is our unkindness and this for our sakes a great deal rather than for his own because our want of kindness to him is only mischievous to our selves It being That without which He is not able to make us Happy And this does prompt me to descend to the second Inference which I propos'd CHAP. II. That the greatest expression of Christ's love to us is his taking it as a kindness and as a kindness unto himself that we will be but so wise as to do our selves good that we will not meddle with that which hurts us but let misery alone and apply our selves wholly to do those things in which our only true happiness must needs consist Sect. 1. AS this was one of the great ends of our Saviours coming into the world to make us holy as he is holy and this in order unto the greatest our being happy as he is happy so he is still pressing upon us not to be negligent of the means whereby those ends may be accomplish't And this no doubt must be the reason why having given us his Commandments to hedge us about and to fence us in that so it may be hard for us to fail of bliss he adds to all the rest this one Commandment that for the love we bear to him we will keep his Commandments Not only for the reason which we find given by S. Iohn because his Commandments are not grievous but especially for the reason which we find given by the Psalmist because in keeping of them there is great reward and for the reason which is render'd by God himself because if a man do them he shall live in them or which is most to our purpose because the scope of the Commandments given by Christ under the Gospel is to make us such as He is so farr forth as we are capable both for Righteousness in this world and for Beatitude in the next This must therefore of necessity be the greatest expression of his love for that the reason of his Commanding us to keep his Commandments is not because it is for his interest but only because it is for ours Could we possibly be happy without the keeping of his Commandments he would not press the keeping of them with so much fervour Were there two ways to heaven one by faith and obedience another by faith without obedience the disobedience of our lives would never grieve him He would not so rigidly urge upon us the observation of his Law if Salvation were to be had upon easier Terms For I say he is so urgent to have us keep his Commandments not so simply and precisely that his Commandments may be kept as that by keeping them strictly we may be sav'd Our being saved is the end at least his being glorified in our Salvation of which our keeping the Commandments is but a necessary medium conducing to it Sect. 2. To contemplate the case in some obvious colour let us suppose that a carnal but affectionate Father being about to leave the world as our Saviour then was when he spake these words should give a farewel to his children in such expressions My sons and daughters if ye love me observe those precepts when I am gon which I have many times given whilst present with you Strive to make your selves happy take care of your health preserve your fortunes keep mony in your purses provide for the winter of Adversity hold close together for mutual help and preservation beware of â—â—â—â—â—â—ship take heed of Intemperance do nothing that â—â—y lead you into beggary or sickness into Imprisonment or Bonds
effect of discharging his duty and so 't is our duty to be happy and therefore an happiness to do our Duty The summ of our duty towards our Neighbour is to love him as our selves and the effect of this duty is full contentment and satisfaction For we are neighbours unto all for whom Christ dyed and he dyed for our enemies as well as Friends and if we love all the world for which Christ dyed with such a singleness of love as we love our selves with we cannot fail of observing that other Precept of our Saviour Matth. 7. 12. which is the doing unto others as we would that others should do to us And then by a consequence unavoidable we shall not covet another mans goods because we would not that another should covet ours And coveting nothing that is anothers we cannot choose but be satisfied and contented with our own And in contentment or satisfaction which are Synonymous it will be granted by all the world that real happiness does consist Sect. 20. Now if the loving of one another even as Christ hath loved us and as our selves do love our selves does infer our loving God with all our heart as S. Iohn does clearly intimate 1 Ioh. 4. 20. And if the Commandments of our Lord do amount all to this that we love one another with such a love as our Lord does clearly intimate in the 13 14 15 and 17. chapters of S. Iohn's Gospel then we discern the great reason of those expressions of S. Paul He that loveth another hath fulfilled the law And all the law is fulfilled in this one word thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self And if these things are so then all the moral law of Moses which is withal the law of Christ does make it our Duty to be content and by consequence to be happy and by consequence an happiness to do our Duty For he that saith in plain terms thou shalt not only not rob or defraud thy neighbour of his life his wife his goods or his good name but thou shalt also not coveâ—… any thing that is anothers doth clearly say in effect and substance thou shalt be satisfied with thine own thou shalt not be in any want of the things without but shalt have happiness within thee all thy desires shall be fulfill'd thou shalt have absolute contentment and satisfaction and the Angels of Heaven can have no more This is the precept which I command and this the Duty thou art obliged to perform Thou shalt not covet what is not thine that is to say in other words Thou shalt be as happy as I would have thee And thus at last I have proceeded unto the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or thing proposed to be prov'd Sect. 21. Another way whereby to prove it will be to argue from that Trichotomie in the 6. chapt of Micah at the 8. verse where the whole Body of the Commandments is compendiously divided into these three members to do Iustice to love Mercy and to walk humbly with our God The first of which bestows upon us a full Serenity of mind the most desirable felicity of being satisfied with our selves and so by consequence it yields us the greatest pleasure The second is not only to make our Donor to become our Debtor but to lend him our Riches upon Increase nor that for ten in the hundred but for an hundred-fold the Principal Mat. 19. 20. and by consequence it yields us the greatest gain The third is that which speaks us masters of our selves by speaking us servants to a master whose service is not only Freedom but Empire too Illi servire est regnare saith Espensaeus And giving us the advantage of that most honourable subjection which in Tacitus his judgment does place the Subjects above their Prince makes us Favorites in the Court of the King of Heaven and by consequence it yields the greatest Honour So that unless we are professedly Platonick Lovers of Disobedience all our Duties are conformable to the very unruliest of our Desires The doing of Iustice does comply with our Sensuality the loving of Mercy with our Avarice and to walk humbly with our God is very agreeable to our Ambition Sect. 22. Lest this should seem at first hearing to be but a phansiful way of arguing I shall shew it once more by a clearer light As for the first the doing of Iustice it entertains its entertainers with peace of Conscience which in the wise man's Judgment is a continual Feast It is so acceptable and pleasant to reflect in a mans Thoughts upon his having don well having wronged no man defrauded no man but dealt righteously with all that any man whose understanding hath not quite lost its Tast may make as pleasant a meal on a mess of Honesty I speak of likeness and not equality as if he had din'd that day in Paradise and taken his Supper in Heaven it self Sect. 23. The second the loving of Mercy is the giving our selves a Right to what we have by our parting with the possession For non videtur cujusquam id esse quod casu auferri potest saith Caius the Lawyer Nothing is properly our own which can possibly cease to be so by being entrusted unto a Treasurie where rust and moth can corrupt or where thieves break through and steal From whence it follows that 't is the Thrift if not the Avarice of a merciful man to make Heaven his Coffer and to Inventory his Goods by the number of the persons to whom he hath been a Benefactor For in propriety of speech we are worth no more than we have wisely given away And that the parting with our possession is no infringing of our Right appears not only by Gods but Iustinians Law For eum habere dicimus qui Rei dominus est aeque ac eum qui Rem tenet saith Ulpian And this Rule of the Civilians you may interpret out of S. Paul For when saith he we are poor by making many rich we are as having nothing and yet possessing all things Sect. 24. Lastly for the Third the walking humbly with our God it is not only the safest but noblest temper not only the most christian but the most hansome quality And thence is call'd by S. Peter not only 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that is profitable or gainful in relation to God of whom it looks for its Reward but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 too that is hansome or comly in the sight of men 1 Pet. 3. 4. Where having said wherein comliness does but negatively consist not in the plaiting of the hair or putting on of our apparel he proceeds to inform us wherein it positively consists to wit in the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible even the Ornament of a meek and a quiet spirit 'T is this that makes us like the Queens Daughter all glorious within And therefore when Celsus upbraided Origen with that degenerous modesty of the Christians for
so it was in his Accompt their withdrawing themselves from publick Business and refusing the honours of the Court or the Commonwealth Origen answers that they did it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as keeping themselves for a diviner and a more honourable employment For seeing Christ was the Master whom 't was their Pride and their Glory and their Happiness to serve they were most ambitious of that Quality which made them fittest for their obedience Sect. 25. Thus have I shew'd in some particulars how the Goodness of every Action is very sufficient for the Reward too And how obedience to the Commandments were it not itself an abundant Recompense hath enough of Heaven in it to give us happiness without one In so much that our Saviour might well have said not if ye love me but If ye love your own selves keep my Commandments even because the keeping of them can add no otherwise to His than as it makes for Our advantage And having hitherto consider'd our Saviours Precept touching the keeping of his Commandments as the greatest expression of his love to us I am next to consider the keeping of them as the greatest expression of ours to Him And so by consequence am to proceed to the third Inference I propos'd CHAP. III. That as the greatest expression of Christ's Love to us is his taking it as a kindness that we be kind unto ourselves so the greatest expression of ours to him is to do those things which he enjoyn's us Sect. 1. ANd sure the Truth of this Inference will not need much labour to make it evident For all expressions of our Love however many or great in point of number or degree are comprehensively reducible unto one of these Heads either Formal or Real In shew or in substance in word or deed And in respect of these two our Blessed Saviour does distinguish betwixt his flatterers and his Friends We have an example of the former Luke 6. 46. Why call ye me Lord Lord and do not the things that I say We have an example of the later 1 Iohn 15. 14. Ye are my Friends if ye do whatsoever I command you And an example of both together Mat. 21. 28 29 30 31. Where the servant that said he would not go but went is more justified than the other who said he would but went not Our Saviour's flatterers then are they who make Profession of their Love who give him very good words who in their Prayers and Predications breath out nothing less than kindness and Admiration but not proceeding any farther than the bare wording and professing and breathing out of their Affection they cannot challenge a better character than that they love him from the teeth outwards and this because their Expressions are meerly verbal Whereas the Friends of Christ are they who add the Proof of Love to the due Profession study to live by his Example and in obedience to his Commands espowse a Fellowship with his Death and a conformity to his Sufferings are rather for Christ though at the Barr than for a Pilate though on the Bench very much rather for the oppressed than for the persecuting side Which evinceth that their Love must needs be Real and from the Heart because they are sturdily at the cost and the pains to prove it Sect. 2. That this indeed is the difference betwixt the flatterers and Friends of Christ as betwixt a meer verbal and Real Love we have a full confirmation from the words of S. Iohn My little children saith he Let us not love in word neither in Tongue but in Deed and in Truth That is let our Love be without dissimulation let it be legible in our Actions not only audible in our Voice Let us demonstrate our love to Christ by shewing our love unto his Members Nor that by speaking them fair and paying Civility to persons But by opening the Bowels of our compassion to their needs S. Iames in his Epistle hath set it out to the life If a brother or sister saith he be naked and destitute of daily food and one of you say unto him depart in peace be ye warmed and filled but ye give him not those things which are needful to the Body what doth it profit There we have in S. Iames by way of Instance what we found in S. Iohn by way of Advice and Exhortation For he that saith go in Peace be ye Warm or full he expressly is the man that loves in word and in tongue But he that gives those things which are needful to the Body he is properly the man that loves in Deed and in Truth Sect. 3. Now that which is the greatest proof of our Love to Christs Members does carry with it the greatest Proof of our Love to Christ. Who what is don unto his Members does take as don unto Himself He that persecutes and plunders his Fellow-Christian does persecute and plunder his Master Christ. And Christ hath said what he will say to such as these in the Day of Judgment In as much as ye have don it unto one of the least of these ye have don it unto me Mat. 25. 40. So that the reason is very evident why S. Paul sets out our Love as the fulfilling of the Law And summ's up all the Commandments into this one Precept Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self Because the Proof of our obedience to the Commandments of the Law is our doing unto others in Acts of Justice and works of Mercy as we would that others should do to us In a word so very strict is the Connexion betwixt the Love we have to God and our love to one another as well as betwixt the Love of Both and the keeping of the Commandments that S. Iohn sets them down as the Marks and Tokens of one another 1 Iohn 5. 1 2 3. The Love of our Neighbour is a sign of our Love to God v. 1. Our Love to God is a sign that we love our Neighbour v. 2. And our keeping his Commandments is the clearest Diagnostick and Sign of Both. v. 3. Sect. 4. To make it yet more apparent that our Obedience is the best Argument and highest Expression of our Love let us compare the way of reckoning by our Saviour in the Text with that most general way of reckoning which we observe amongst our selves Do we not ever reckon Him the lovingst Subject to his Soveraign whom we find the most exact in keeping the Oath of his Allegiance And who in reverence to his Loyalty despiseth his Livelihood and his Life too Do we not worthily reckon Him the lovingst Son unto his Parents who obey's them in all things without Exception And conforms to their will however cross unto his own Do we not justly reckon Him the lovingst Servant to his Master who goes as soon as he is sent and comes as soon as he is call'd and does exactly as he is bid And does not our Saviour in the Text take the
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
one side and pleasure on the other he hardly knows how to be more voluptuous His Fasting and Praying Mortification and self-denyal Meditation and Solitude are grown agreeable to his Temper and Frame of mind He is gratified by his strictness and very much pleas'd with his Severitieâ—… He is delighted with the thing which carnal Cowards are afraid of and vitious persons cannot indure Has fought so long as a Souldier under the Captain of his Salvation that fighting is one of his Recreations Fighting I mean against the enemies of Christ against the world and the Flesh and the Powers of Hell T is one of the highest of all his Pleasures to be above the Pleasures of Sin and one of his innocent ambitions to tread ambition under his feet All he covets is contentment and all he lusts after is a Dominion over his Flesh. The greatest of his aims is to be victor of all he fights with and the greatest of his victories is that he gets over himself So beneficial is the duty of being habituated in vertue that as I said once before it makes the glorious Work of Grace become a kind of second Nature For as the Love we bear to Christ begets the keeping of his Commandments so does our keeping those Commandments as much improve and cherish in us our love of Christ. We shall not be able to abstain from the love of Christ when there is something in ourselves to which the Nature of Christ himself does hold conformity and agreement and our keeping his Commandments will beget such a conformity It will I say beget in us such an Harmonie with Him as must needs infer in Him an equal Harmonie with us too And wheresoever there is Harmonie there will be Love in things rational As wheresoever there is Love there will be keeping of Commandments Sect. 11. We may know therefore by this whether or no our Hearts deceive us when they make us believe that we love our Saviour And so by consequence 't is a Transition to the fifth and last Inference the Text affords us CHAP. V. That our obedience to the Precepts of Iesus Christ is the only warrantable Touchstone whereby to try and examin the love we bear unto his person And because by the force of our love to Christ there is a mutual Cohabitation 'twixt Him and Us this will also be a Rule which cannot possibly deceive us in what it most of all concerns us to labour in without Error even the making of our Calling and Election sure Sect. 1. AMongst the several sorts of men who are commonly wont to call on the name of Christ and upon whom his name is call'd there are not Two of Ten Thousand who will not challenge him for a Saviour and make Profession of as much Love as if they could prove it by their Obedience But we may say of God himself as of most great men that his admirers are very many but he hath very few Friends It is agreed upon by all that they all ought to love him but 't is agreed upon by all too that of the all who ought to love few do love him as they ought For how many are there of them who do most of all profess to be lovers of him who yet do reckon their very Rebellions amongst the Arguments of their Loyalty and special Tokens of their Affection As if our Lord had said to Them in a direct contrariety to what he said to his Disciples If ye love me break my Commandments Such as are keepers of Christs Commandments with a Belief that 't is the way whereby to enter into life and that in this they are to work out their own Salvation are not allowed a better character than that of good legal and moral men And the good works of such as These are but glittering sins in the opinion of those projectors who are such Niggards as to ingross the work of Redemption to themselves But such as break Christ's Commandments with a Belief that they cannot or need not keep them whilst they can break them so securely as not to fall into a doubt of their being sav'd yea that they ought not so to keep them as of necessity to Salvation these they peremptorily reckon amongst the Vessels of Election And are not they very sufficiently misconceipted of themselves and their love to Christ who rather than acknowledge any want of love to him will ascribe their foulest crimes to the overflowings of their Affection So very easie a thing it is for men to be flatterers of themselves and quite mistaken in their Affections that as they who flung stones at their Heathen God Hermes made no doubt but they did it in pure Devotion so there are Christians who seem to think that they can break Christ's Commandments with every whit as good a zeal as Moses brake the two stones wherein the Commandments were but written And therefore in this consideration it does concern us very neerly to bring our Love to the Touch-stone before we pass it for currant in our esteem We are to follow that advice which S. Paul gave to his Corinthians That we examin our selves whether we be in the Faith and that we try our own selves It being so ordinary a thing for Devils to be transformed into Angels of light and for the worst kind of vices to look like the greatest and fairest vertues that the most talkative Professors of Christian Purity and Knowledge are seldom able to distinguish betwixt Hypocrisy and Love betwixt Attrition and Contrition worldly sorrow and Repentance betwixt Presumption and lively Faith betwixt Security and Assurance or a downright Stupidity and Peace of Conscience which shews the use and the necessity of bringing them all unto the Test that so we may not be in danger to take them for more than they are worth nor persevere in those Habits of which we cannot too soon be stript That we may not overgreedily catch hold on a Fish which will prove in conclusion to be a Scorpion nor please ourselves with an opinion of our great Love to Christ which will be found after Death to have been but a great Dissimulation By what hath hitherto been spoken I do not doubt but 't will be easily agreed by all that men are apt to be mistaken in the nature and measure of their Affections and that by consequence it concerns them to make a Tryal whether their Affections are right or wrong All the difficulty will be how to agree upon the Touch-stone by which the Tryal is to be made And seeing the world is to be divided about the choice of this Touch-stone some liking one thing and some another I think it fit in proportion that I divide my Discourse too Speaking first of the Negative by shewing what it is not and then in the Affirmative by shewing clearly what it is A method the rather to be admitted because to refuse that which is False is in itself of great vertue to discover
all things for himself Next when he see 's that of himself he cannot be or be happy and that he depends upon his maker not more for his being than for his bliss he then begins to love God though yet 't is only for himself and his private Interest But when in time upon occasion of his several exigences and wants he is compell'd to seek God for several comsorts and supplies his conversation with the Almighty becomes so customary and natural by his frequenting God's house by his addresses to God in Prayer by getting knowledge out of God's word and by admiring him in his works that what was hitherto but easy does now grow pleasant And so at last having tasted how good and gracious his Maker is he does advance to love God for God's sake only So as nothing does now remain but that degree of perfection in loving God at his being bid to enter into the joy of his Lord when 't is for God's sake alone that he loves Himself And though 't is hard if not impossible whilst we are in this world to love ourselves for God only and not at all for ourselves yet 't is a duty indispensable to love Him especially for himself and far above the consideration that 't is our interest to love him The Reason of it does stand in This that whosoever loves God not especially for God but more especially for himself does by a necessary consequence love himself above God Because in such a case as that God is only one of the objects and himself the final cause or the end of love For if God were that end he would rather love himself for God than God for himself And that for which we love any thing must needs be lov'd by us the most of any because it is the very cause meritorious or final for which we love it For propter quod unumquodque tale illud magis is the maxim made use of by S. Austin himself upon this occasion And therefore he that loves God not so much for Gods sake as for the sake of somewhat else which either comes from or depends upon him such as the comforts of this life or the Promises of the next does indeed but use God and injoy the Creature And how much soever he may appretiate or put a value in his judgment on what he uses yet no doubt he loves most what he most injoyes Bonaventure made it a wonder how 't was possible for a man not to love that Creator with all his Heart who when he might have left him without a being or have made him either a Toad or any other sort of Animal was rather pleas'd to make him capable to understand and to love and injoy his Maker yea and when man had even forfeited all his Interest in God by an abuse of those Favors conferred upon him was farther pleas'd to reconcile and appease himself not by accelerating our miserie but by providing for our Amendment suppose saith Bonaventure thou hadst but lost one of thine Eyes which is a very small part of thy outward man couldst thou abstain from loving Him with a perfect love who should not only find it out but put it again into thine Head too and not only so but make it as useful to thee as ever How then canst thou forbear to love the Lord Iesus Christ with an equal Love who when thou hadst lost thy whole self both Soul and Body had both the kindness and the skill to find thee out and to restore thee and to make thee as much as ever a Vessel of Honour and Immortality Certainly nothing can make thee able not to love him for himself and with all thy soul unless thy want of converse and Acquaintance with him For as the Fire of thy Affection if fed with any unclean Fewel produces nothing with its ardour but smoak and stentch so if the fewel it feeds upon shall be pure and spiritual it will yield both a bright and refreshing Flame And if the love converts the Lover into the Nature of the thing that is dearly lov'd 't is plain that such as is the object such must also be the Act and the Agent too To fix thy love upon the world is ipso facto to be a worldling To fix thy love upon Christ is ipso facto to be a Christian. And to be really a Christian is to be such a one as Christ. For both he that Sanctifieth and they that are Sanctified are all of one And thence He is not ashamed to call them Brethren Heb. 2. 11. Nay he is not asham'd to own them in a more intimate Relation than that of Brethren For by vertue of that unitive and inebriating love which our mystical Theologists are wont to speak of real Christians and Christ do interchangeably inhabit the one the other They do dwell and abide not only with but in each other They in Him and He in Them as both Himself and S. Iohn that Disciple of his Bosom do oft assure us And since 't is so that our Bodies are call'd his Members 1 Cor. 6. 15. Sure our Souls cannot want much of being transfus'd into Himself For S. Paul saith expresly to shew how Christ is to the Christian just as the Bridegroom to the Bride that as the Husband and the wise are made one flesh so he that is joyned to the Lord is ipso facto one spirit 1 Cor. 6. 17. The Apostles word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he that is caemented or solder'd ferruminated or glued that is to say he that cleaveth to the Lord Iesus Christ as fast as one board of Firr cleaves to another to which 't is glued in so much that you may burn them but can never break them asunder 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He is one and the same spirit as his own Blessed spirit is pleas'd to phrase it that is he minds the same things which his beloved Lord minds desires the same things that his Lord desires Injoyes and suffers after the measure that his Lord suffers and Injoyes In a word he hath such an union as is expresst by an Identity since he that cleaveth to the Lord is not only said to have but to B E one spirit S. Bernard speaks it more than once in a very bold Paraphrase Divino ebriatus amore animus oblitus sui factusque sibi ipsi tanquam vas perditum totus pergit in Deum adhaerens Deo unus cum eo spiritus fit The mind saith he being drunk with the love of God and grown forgetful of itself yea wholly lost unto itself and all its secular concernments does so pass over into God as to become one spirit not only one in itself but one with God 'T is true the Father there speaks touching that last degree of Love whereby the Soul is so transported with the converse of its beloved as to be emptied out of itself and in a manner quite annull'd
us such a love as never was thought upon before much less deliver'd under precept to any Sect or Society of Iewes or Gentiles Had his Commandment been no more than that we love one another it had been old with a witness no doubt I may say as old as Adam But because he added a Sicut Ego that we must love one another even as he hath loved us which was with such a new Love as till he came into the world was never heard of he had reason to call it a New Commandment 'T was said by Moses to the Iewes Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self But our Saviour saith farther that we must love one another even as He hath loved us which was not only as but beyond Himself For his loving us to the Death was in the comparative sense of Scripture to hate his own life for the love he bare us And although S. Iohn saith Brethren I write no New Commandment but an old Commandment which ye had from the Beginning he means no more by that last word than the first Beginning of Christianity which was with the preaching of the Gospel by Iesus Christ. Remember we therefore what Love this is which is the Badge and Cognisance of our profession the mark of difference betwixt the Sheep and the Goats and which is not exacted from Men as Men but from Christians as they are Christians We must not love as They do who corrupt one another as S. Austin speaks with a meerly seditious or schismatical Love nor must we love as they do who only love one another for filthy Lucre much less as They do who love one another for filthy Lust Nor must we love as They do whose love consisteth only in this that they agree in the hatred of some third Party Nor must we only love as they do who love one another as they are Men only that is as they are sociable and civil Creatures But we must love one another as being Lovers of God and as being such whom God loves as being Children of the Highest and younger Brothers of our Redeemer as being all made Consorts of the very same Hope and all Co-heirs of the very same Kingdom Our Love must imitate both the manner and the Degree of Christs Love For we must venture our Lives for the good of others and even in spight of all Dangers which may happen to the Body we must own and propagate and defend the Doctrines of the Gospel which is the utmost we can do for the good of other mens Souls and that which makes us most like a Saviour The Gospel I may say is the Christian School thither it is we go to learn Christ is the Master of it in chief all Christians are School-fellows or Condisciples The Love I have hitherto describ'd is the highest lesson which there is taught Those Titular Christians who do not attain to this Love are so many Dunces and Truants fit to be turn'd out of the School It is indeed an hard Lesson for us to love one another even as Christ hath loved us a Lesson only to be found in the School of Christ. But yet how Difficult soever 't is not impossible to be learn't For God is faithful and expects not to reap but after the measure that he hath sown He will not suffer us to be tempted above what we are able If there is in us a willing mind He accepts according to what we have and not according to what we have not The Grace of Christ is sufficient for us And we can do all things through him that strengthens us And therefore let us not despair of getting the Mastery over our Lesson For we are all 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as S. Paul speaks to the Thessalonians immediatly taught it by God himself Sect. 16. Now the more largely I have discover'd both what it is not and what it is to love one another as Christ requires the fewer words will suffice to make it clear as the Sun at Noon that by this we must be known to be Christs Disciples For such a Love as This is is the fulfilling of the Law So saith the Law-giver himself Matt. 22. 40. and so his principal Apostle Rom. 13. 8 9 10. where he speaks of Love in a Christian as Demosthenes did of Pronunciation in an Orator As if it were not only the first Thing but also the second and the third and so indeed the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the All in All of a Christian. For mark the words of that Apostle whom we cannot accuse of vain or needless Repetition He that loveth another hath fulfilled the Law v. 8. All the Commandments of the Law are comprehended even in this Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self v. 9. Love worketh no evil to his Neighbour therefore Love is the fulfilling of the Law v. 10. Three times in a breath without so much as a Parenthesis love is reckon'd to be the Pandect of all things requisite to make a Saint Sect. 17. Nor let any man say within himself How can this be Since Gods word tells us that so it is And yet I think it is easie to shew you How too For the whole Body of the Law moral doth consist of ten Members which are commonly call'd the Decalogue or ten Commandments of the Law The Lord Jesus hath reduced those Ten to these Two Thou shalt love thy God with all thy Heart And thy Neighbour as thy self On these two Hinges the very Door of Salvation doth clearly turn For on these two Precepts hang all the Law and the Prophets Matt. 22. 40. But S. Paul hath reduced them all to One. For thus he speaks to the Galatians All the Law is fulfilled in one word even in this Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self The reason is because the Love of our Neighbour in the high degree I here speak of does carry along with it the Love of God Either of them saith Austin is inferr'd by either for if we really love God we shall obey him when he commands us to love our Neighbour and if we really love our Neighbour it is for the Love which we bear to God Observe the Logick by which S. Iohn argues both backwards and forwards By this we know we love the Children of God when we love God and keep his Commandments 1 Joh. 5. 2. There he argues from the first Table to the second Now observe how he argues from the second to the first and that two waies both in the Negative and the Affirmative In the Negative thus He that loveth not his Brother whom he hath seen how can he love God whom he hath not seen 1 John 4. 10. He that shutteth up his Bowels of Compassion from his brother how dwelleth the Love of God in him 1 John 3. 17. Again he argues it in the Affirmative We know that we have passed from death unto life if
we love the brethren 1 Joh. 3. 1 4. Hereby we know we are of the Truth and have Confidence towards God if we keep his Commandments And this is his Commandment that we love one another v. 19. to v. 23. Sect. 18. Hence we see it is evident There is not a clearer Demonstration of our loving God with all our hearts than the loving our Neighbour as our selves From whence it follows that every sin must needs argue some want of Love For if against the first Table it is through a want of some love to God And if against the second it must needs be for want of some love to Men. Again it follows on the contrary that where Love is perfect and entire no Commandment can be broken For loving God with all our hearts we shall keep the first Table and loving our Neighbour as our selves we shall not fail to keep the second Sect. 19. What I have shew'd in the Great I can easily shew in the Retail too to wit that Love is the fulfilling of the Law For if we love God as we ought to do we shall certainly have no God but Him Much less shall we worship a Graven Image We shall not lift up his Name in vain Nor shall we fail to keep holy his Holy Dayes And if we love our Neighbour as Christ requires we shall be sure to render to every man his Due And so by consequence we shall honour all our Parents and Superiors whether publick or private Ecclesiastical or Civil Then for the Neighbour who is equal or in any degree inferiour to us we shall be sure not to injure him in any kind From whence it follows we shall not kill for that were to injure him in his Life Nor commit Adultery for that were to injure him in his Wife Nor steal or Plunder for that were to injure him in his Goods Nor bear false Witness for that were to injure him in his good Name And as we shall not thus injure him either in Deed or in Word so if we love him as our selves or as Christ lov'd us we shall not do him any injury no not so much as in our Thoughts we shall not covet or be desirous of any thing that is our Neighbours Thus the four Precepts of the first Table and the six Precepts of the second or if there is any other Precept besides these Ten they all are briefly comprehended in this one word Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self Sect 20. And now I do not doubt but we are all of one mind as touching the Character and Badge by which we may be known to be Christ's Disciples The peculiar Note of Distinction by which we are taken from out the world as it were sever'd and set apart from all exorbitant societies and sorts of men whether their Ring-leaders and Masters are Jews or Gentiles First for the Gentiles we may know the Disciples of Zoroastres by their belief of two gods and Incestuous wedlocks We may know the Disciples of the Brachmans by their unparallel'd self-denials in food and rayment We may know the Disciples of Pythagoras by their Reverence to the numbers of four and seven The Disciples of Plato by their fanciful Idaea's in the concave of the Moon The Disciples of Zeno by their Dreams of Apathie and Fate The Disciples of Mahomet as well by the filthiness of their Paradise as by their desperate Tenet of God's decrees And then for the Iews we may know the Disciples of the Scribes by their Traditional corruptions and Expositions of the Law We may know the Disciples of the Pharisees by their Form of godliness and their appearing righteous unto men We may know the Disciples of the Sadduces by their denial of Providence and dis-belief of the Resurrection We may know the Disciples of the Esseni by their overstrict Sabbatizing The Disciples of the Nazarites by their abstinence from the flesh of all living creatures And the Disciples of the Hemerobaptists by their every day washings from Top to Toe We may know the Disciples of Iohn the Baptist by their remarkable Fastings and other Austerities of Life But by this shall all men know that we are all the Disciples of Iesus Christ If we love one another even as Christ hath loved us CHAP. II. Sect. 1. WHilst I am thinking what proper Lessons we are to draw from Christ's words the words of S. Paul which he writ to Timothy do straight occur to my remembrance All Scripture saith he is by divine Inspiration and is profitable for Doctrin for Reproof for Correction for Instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be furnished unto all good wooks 2 Tim. 3. 16 17. For were there no other Scripture than that which hath given me my present subject I should think it very profitable for each of those ends and think the workman well furnished for every good work Sect. 2. First 't is profitable for Doctrin because it teacheth such as are ignorant the true importance of Christianity which does not consist as some would have it in our being born of godly Parents believing the History of the Gospel making profession of zeal to Christ posting up and down from Sermon to Sermon making many and long prayers or whatsoever is comprehended under the Form of Godliness that is the Image the Picture the Counterfeit of Devotion as the word in the Original does very naturally import 2 Tim. 3. 5. For many profess to know God who in their works deny him And let a mans profession be what it will yet if he acts in contradiction to the Commandments of Christ that very acting is nothing better than a Denial of the Faith And so 't is call'd by the Apostle 1 Tim. 5. 8. Christianity does not consist then in such a sanguin presumption as some call Faith in such a carnal security as some call Hope in such a parcel of fair words as some call Charity in such a worldly sorrow as some call Repentance but it consist's in such a Faith as worketh by Love in such an Hope as does cleanse and purifie in such a Charity as worketh no ill to his Neighbour but is on the contrary the fulfilling of the Law and in such a Repentance as shew's it self by amendment and change of life bringing forth fruits meet for Repentance Whatever some Mockers are wont to say we find by the Tenor of the Gospel that a material part of Godliness is moral honesty The chief ingredients in a Christians life are acts of Iustice and works of Mercy than which there was nothing more conspicuous in the life of Christ. The second Table is the touchstone of our obedience unto the first Our chiefest duty towards God is our duty towards our Neighbour God will have Iustice and Mercy to be perform'd to one another before he accepts of any sacrifice which can be offer'd unto
THE Signal Diagnostick WHEREBY We are to judge of our own Affections And as well of our Present as Future State OR THE LOVE of CHRIST PLANTED Upon the very same TURF on which It once had been Supplanted by The Extreme Love of Sin BEING The substance of several Sermons deliver'd at several Times and Places and now at last met together to make up the Treatise which ensues By Tho. Pierce D. D. LONDON Printed by R. N. for R. Royston Bookseller to the Kings most Excellent Majesty 1670. A Premonition to the Reader HAVING been many times importun'd since the Fire of London both to permit a new Impression of my Sinner Impleaded and to gratifie my Stationer with some Inlargement I could not think of a fitter Subject in relation to the Method I first proposed to my self than that of which I am writing this brief Account My method was avowedly That of the Husbandman in the Parable who does not only think fit to cleanse the fallow ground of the Heart before he sowes it but sowes it throughly when it is clean too And so accordingly having indeavour'd in my first Practical Essay and in hope of God's Blessing on it to weed out of mine own and out of other mens Natures the Love of Sin I was to labour in my second and by the same Blessing of God on which alone we depend for any Proportionable success to Stock the very same ground with the Love of Christ. It being certainly not enough however absolutely needful not to sow among Thorns or meerly to break up the fallow ground but as the same Prophet words it we must sowe in Righteousness to reap in Mercy And to be Positively glorified we must not think it of force sufficient that we be negatively good 'T is vain and fruitless that we endeavour to eradicate out of our hearts the love of our Sins and Sensualities unless it be that our Love of Christ may therein take both the deeper and faster Root And because the Love of Christ does seem as rarely understood as 't is often talk't of we must be taught wherein it lyes and the several wayes of its Attainment To the Knowledge of the First and to the Practice of the Second I have directed both the First and Second Part of my Inlargement As they are now put together I know not at present what more to add besides my humble and hearty Prayers unto the Lord of the Vineyard in which we labour and whose Harvest we are in one sense as well as his Husbandry in the second and his Labourers in a third that whilst we are Plowing what we have fallow and are Planting what we have Plow'd and are Watering what we have Planted He who is said to rain Righteousness will bless our Labours with Increase A Table of Particulars in the SIGNAL DIAGNOSTICK A ANtinomianism an Epidemical disease 1 Introd Sect. 1. its Antidote Sect. 2. its danger pag. 68 69. Aemulation its use p. 113 114 110 120. Affections things indifferent in themselves p. 112 113. Assurance how to be founded p. 75 76 77 129 137. B Beauty even that of the Body does wholly depend upon the Soul p. 109 110. how to behold That above p. 111 112. C Caution to be used about the object and measure of our Love p. 58. Charity see Love Christ how natural to love him p. 7. 8 9 88 89. wherein his love consists most p. 15 16 c. and ours to him p. 41 42. how to make his yoak smooth p. 62 63. as a Bridegroom most apt to melt p. 85 89 90 126. Christians capable of Friendship with Christ p. 24 43 44. their character 41 42 63 64 72 73. their lot 95 96. their characteristic 133 c. 142 143 c. 154 c. Christianity little of it even in Christendom 156 157 c. Commandments the art of making them pleasant 11 12. the keeping of them is the strongest Argument of our Love 13 14. Christ's command to keep them the strongest Proof of his Love 15 16 c. to keep them is a reward 18 19 20 c. the best expression of our love 37 38 c. the Art of keeping them entire 80 81. Conversation of what importance 61 122 123 c. 127. Curse due to them who love not Christ 99 100. Custom how an artificial nature 10 11 61 62 122 123 c. D Danger how made to save us 101. David how he valued the Commandments 20 21 c. 80 81. Decrees the influence on practice which our opinions of them have 102 103. Devils how we may profit by their example 3 4. Disobedience the greatest expression of our hatred 41. Duty how 't is our happiness to do it 31 32. how to make it delightful to us 61 62 c. wherein the whole of it does stand 79. not impossible to be don 112 113. its ease and pleasure 124 125. E Election how to know it and make it sure 74 75 c. Enemies how they are a sort of Friends 142 143. Epicurus and Eudoxus how Proselytes to vertue 61. Excommunication threefold among the Iews 99 100 Experience of vertue apt to make her most converts 19 20 c. 61 62 63 123 124. F Faith how easily mistaken 68 69 c. 74 75. in what sense 't is all in all 79 80. little of it in the world 164. Fear how made wholsom 83. and saving to us 101. Flatterers Christ's distinction 'twixt them and his friends 37 38. how many Christ has and how few true friends 65 66. Friendship instances of its force 138 139. of its counterfeits 140. its ground Religion 145. G God in Christ more endearing than God as God 89 90. Godliness a material part of it is moral honesty 155 c. Goodness how it commands Affection 50 51 72 73. Gospel the Christian school 149. Grace sufficient in them in whom it is not effectual 45 46 104 105 112 113. Gratitude how we should work our selves to it 83. H Happiness Desired by men of all Sects 29 30. wherein it properly does consist 31. how 't is our duty to be happy 32. Heathens a shame to many Christians 158. 165. Heart its deceitfulness 65 66 67 68 c. Humility the greatest honour 34 35. I Jews how they shame Christians by mutual Love 158 165. Industry and Indeavour how conducible to Salvation 104 105 106 107. Infallibility how mistaken 75 76 c. Ingratitude ugly enough to fright us from it self 8 9 47 48. Invisible how to be convers'd with 110 111 124 125. Justice how it yields the greatest pleasure 34 35. K Knowledge how it differs from Love and how many wayes p. 49. L Liberty wherein it really consists 23. 24. Love ever jealous of its repute 2 c. why it ought to be disinteressed 5 6 7. how the fulfilling of the Law 33 149 150 c. wherein it really consists 38 39 c. we have both means and motives to it 46.
tells us that all must be sold to buy it Mat. 13. 44 Whatsoever that Treasure shall stand us in be it our Pleasures or Reputations be it our Livelyhoods or our Lives 't is plain the Master of the Treasure is still to have his own Asking and if we resolve upon the Iewel we must not stand upon the Price When our Master does vouchsafe to liken himself unto a Merchant and Eternity in a Parable is put to sale Love and Obedience are the two Talents wherewith Eternity is to be Purchac't Not that the Iewel is worth so little but the Merchant exacts no more That is to say without a parable Love and Obedience are the Conditions on which the Promises are made And obedience is the Criterion by which alone we are enabled to know our Love So that as soon as a wealthy Ruler put this Question to our Saviour What shall I do that I may inherit Eternal life our Saviour gave him this in answer If thou wilt enter into life keep the Commandments And no sooner had He made this glorious Promise to his Disciples That he would give them whatsoever they should ask in his name but straight he added the Condition which was the way to its Attainment If ye love me keep my Commandments Sect. 3. Which words though they are few are so full of matter that here is hardly any word which is not weighty and emphatical and hardly an Emphasis on a word which affords not matter of Meditation Let us put our first Emphasis upon the Particle If a conjunction conditional For 't is not Peremptorily said my Love to you hath been so great and my Favours to you so many as that ye cannot choose but love me or ye must love me of necessity but the Proposal is ex hypothesi Our Saviour does not say Because but If ye love me thereby making it a question whether we love him or love him not And this deserves to be the Subject of no small Trouble or Humiliation whilst we pretend to be the Followers and Friends of Christ that we should be of such barbarous and inhuman dispositions as to be able to be cold in our affection towards Him who is inflamed towards us in His affection A second Emphasis is to be put on the Pronoun me If ye love me keep my Commandments One would have thought he should have said If ye love your own selves if ye love your own souls if ye will escape the Payns of Hell or if ye will attain the Ioyes of Heaven and so if ye love your own Interest keep my Commandments For what is it to Him whether we keep them or keep them not He is not the better for our obedience and sure our Rebellions can much less hurt him Hath He need of our Salvation to make him happy no no more can our Injoyments improve his Bliss than can our Miseries interrupt it And yet he saith if ye love me keep my Commandments From whence ariseth this second Inference That the greatest expression of our Lords love to us is his taking it as a kindness that we be kind unto Our selves that we will love him at least so well as to do our selves good that we will not once meddle with that which hurts us but let miserie alone and apply our selves wholly to do those things wherein our only true happiness must needs Consist Let us put a third Emphasis upon the keeping of his Commandments as that relates in this place to the supposed Love we bear him And let this our third Emphasis be subdivided into three For it will easily afford us a threefold Importance of the words and thence will follow a threefold Inference First the words may be thus pronounced If ye love me if ye have any the least affection or kindness for me do so much as observe what I have appointed you to Perform And this is as if the words were spoken in the Optative mood O that ye were wise that ye knew those things which do belong unto your Peace that ye would but so love me as to keep my Commandments from which Acception of the words the Inference certainly must be this That the best Instance and Expression of our Love to Christ is to do those things which he Injoyns us Or else the words may be accented thus as if indicatively spoken and by way of Asseveration If ye love me in good earnest not in word but in Reality If ye affect me from the Heart and not from the Teeth-outwards ye will be sure to do whatsoever I Command you Your obedience then will be infallible I shall not miss of its Emanations And hence ariseth this other Inference That Love and Obedience in a Christian are two inseparable Companions every whit as inseparable as Hippoclides and Polystratus or as the Parent rather and the Child the Cause and the effect or whatsoever else they are which are Relata secundum esse whereof the one does of necessity infer the other Or the words may be read and expounded thus as being in the Imperative mood If ye love me be sure ye keep my Commandments make it evident that ye love me give me the Proof of your Affection by doing that which I require No other Love will I accept than what does prove its own Truth by the constant keeping of my Commandments From which Acception of the words the Inference cannot but be This That our obedience to the Precepts of Jesus Christ is the only warrantable Touchstone whereby to try and examin the love we bear unto his Person This will teach us what mettle our Love is made of And because by the force of our Love to Christ if it is solid and sincere there is a mutual Cohabitation betwixt Him and Us He in us as our Head and We in Him as his Members this will also become a Rule which cannot possibly deceive us as other Rules are wont to do in what it most of all imports us to labour in without Error even the making of our Calling and Election sure Having thus far proceeded in laying out the several matters in which I think is swallow'd up the whole Importance of the Text I shall begin my Contrivance with the Conjunction Conditional and try how much to our Advantage a word so commonly overlook't may be made to serve CHAP. I. A Question made of our Love to Christ. Sect. 1. INdeed if we never have been Lovers we may hear those words with unconcernment 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If ye love me But if we are any whit acquainted with what it is to be in love if we have any kind jealousies any Pantings and yernings and gaspings of soul after Him who is the Bridegroom of all our Souls we cannot choose but take it tenderly that the sincerity of our Love should once be question'd When Agabus prophesyed of the Bonds which Paul should suffer at Ierusalem and thereupon
his Friends besought him not to go to that City Paul rebuked his friends for their love to Him as seeming to derogate from his to Christ. What mean ye to weep and to break mine heart I am ready not to be bound only but to dy at Ierusalem for the name of the Lord Iesus Nothing wounded him so deeply as that what was his glory should be the cause of their grief So when our Lord put the Question unto some of his Disciples upon the Cowardize and Falsehood he saw in others will ye also go away they presently gave him such an Answer as imply'd their being wounded in the tenderest part of their Soul Lord to whom should we go thou hast the words of Eternal life Why dost thou kill us with such a Question as seems to scruple at our Loyalty and to derogate from our Love where is he in all the World whom we are able to leave thee for or what is that that we can Covet in exchange for Eternal life Can we be so besotted as to part with our Iewel in hopes of Dirt why then dost thou intimate that it is possible for us to leave thee or possible for us not to love thee or possible for us to love thy absence so again when he ask't no less than three times together Simon Peter lovest thou me Peter was grieved saith the Text because he had said to him the third time lovest thou me and therefore gave him such an Answer three times together as I cannot better express then by this short Paraphrase Lord when thou knowest that I love thee why dost thou ask if I love thee though all should forsake thee yet will not I. My love is stronger than Death it self Why dost thou grieve me with such a Question as wounds the honour of the love that I bear unto thee Sect. 2. Just so when our Saviour does say to us If ye love me keep my Commandments it ought to go somewhat neer us that we should give him any occasion of putting it to us with an If. Were we piously inamour'd with him who is fairer than the children of men did our Souls love Him who is the Lover of Souls in as passionate a manner as he deserves and were we as jealous of the honour of our Fidelity as we ought we would be ready to expostulate in such a case Blessed Lord dost thou by saying If ye love me imply it possible that we do otherwise behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed on us that we should be called the sons of God When we were Bondmen ready to perish not in Aegypt like the Poor Syrian but that other land of darkness even Hell it self it cost him himself to buy our Freedom And is it possible not to love him whilst we believe it to be true that he hath thus loved us and that he loved us first too Can we possibly be able not to love him at the Rebound Observe the force of those words in the best beloved of his Disciples We love him because he loved us first or let us love him because he loved us first For the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 does equally signifie them both It affirms and it exhorts It is at once of the Indicative and of the Subjunctive mood 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 we do love him and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 let us love him and if for no better reason at least for this because he lov'd us when we were Enemies and because he then lov'd us when we deserv'd nothing but hatred Sect. 3. But what a sad thing is this if we shall love him only for that for which the worst sort of men are wont to love one another For if we love them that love us what thank have we saith our Saviour do not even the Publicans the same nay do not the Devils do somewhat like it by being still at agreement amongst themselves never was Satan divided yet against Satan for then his kingdom had not continued It was a witless and foolish calumny rais'd by the Pharisees of our Saviour that he did cast out Devils by Beelzebub the Prince of Devils For the Devils have more wit than to invade each others Rights And is not that a kind of Love by which as by a Bond they are kept together in Peace and Unity for mutual interest and preservation And then what great matter is it if we love Christ for this that he loved us first It is no more than we are tyed to by the law of good nature to return at least a little for the great deal we have receiv'd yet He desires no more of us than that we will pledge him when he begins to us that we afford him what he has bought and deerly paid for and at least that we will love him because he loved us first Now if we have no love to give him or spare him freely we should at least have some to sell him or some to retribute and restore him love for love obedience for obedience patience for patience and blood for blood Seeing the Publicans themselves do love their lovers how much worse must we be if we are no lovers of Him who lov'd us better than his Life Solomon thought it a great expression to say that Love is as strong as Death thereby meaning nothing more than the love of the Bride But the love of the Bridegroom was very much stronger as being that that overcame the sharpness of Death And shall we so much disparage either Him or our selves as to let a Peradventure or an if be made of it whether or no we have attain'd to such a secondary love as may suffice at least to prove us one degree better than Devils Shall we think it is sufficient to serve the turn to make us Competent Christians and good enough that we approve of Christs Innocence and own his Power have no aversion to his goodness and are glad if we can serve him with ease and Pleasure to the Flesh As when we Pray in his Name and make Profession of his word and sing Hosannas to his glory and never deny him but in our works nor ever forsake him but in his sufferings Sect. 4. Nay to shame ourselves yet farther out of the coldness we labour under shall an if be made of our love to Him the love of whom does most conduce to our greatest Interest and Advantage All the Promises in the Context are no more sequels of our obedience than our obedience is the Fruit and effect of Love From whence it follows that on our Love to the Lord Jesus Christ all his great and pretious Promises must needs depend for their performance For if we love him not enough how then can we delight in him And if we cannot delight in Him how much less in his Commandments and if not so how then can we obey him and if not that how then can we hope he
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
bleeding Innocence of a Saviour than with the Tragical Chimaeras of a Dramatick Poem How great and manifold is the guilt of being niggardly and cold in our love to him whom to love is so easy so advantageous nay whom 't is hard not to love What a sin against nature not to love them that love us What a sin against Reason not to love such an object as we confess is most lovely What a sin against Grace not to love even Him who hath poured out upon us the Spirit of love and so hath offer'd us at least the Grace to love him What a sin against Gratitude not to love Him who so loves us as that he loves to forgive us the scandalous littleness of our Love What a sin to be wanting in love to Him who dyed to expiate our want of love to him What a barbarous sin is it to love him lamely and with indifference who stands knocking at our Door and importunes us to open with much Intreaty and that from morning till midnight until his Head is fill'd with Dew and his locks with the drops of the night what an amazing sin is it and almost incredible to love our Saviour any whitless than we love our sins To have a much weaker love for the Proper object of our love than we are wonted to bestow on the proper object of our Hatred Yet is there any thing more usual than for many not to love Christ who are called Christians and to demonstrate they do not love him by their not keeping his Commandments So very great reason there is to put a strong Emphasis on the Particle If that even the best of us perhaps may call our love into Question whether it is such as will serve the turn whether such as does employ us in the due keeping of the Commandments Sect. 9. And therefore for a conclusion let us thus reckon within our selves That in as much as without Faith it is impossible to please God and seeing no Faith is true but that which worketh by love and seeing no love will prove effectual but that which brings forth obedience to the Commandments of Christ in which respect 't is called fitly the fulfilling of the Law seeing also we must know that Christ is in us or among us which we can very hardly do but by the love we bear to him as well as by the love which he bears to us Shed abroad in our hearts by the holy Ghost which he hath given us And seeing by consequence that our love appears to be one of the greatest Hinges upon which the very Door of our Hope does turn it concerns us as much as Salvation comes to that we raise up our hearts to things invisible and future and that we work up our affections towards the right hand of God where Jesus sitteth and is inthron'd by all the Instruments and Engines to be imagin'd Never must we cease from our work of Faith which is obedience from our labour of love which is Industry and diligence in that obedience from our Patience of Hope which is indurance unto the end in that industrious way of obedience until the Flame of our Affection has burnt up all unclean Fires obstructing the passage 'twixt us and Christ and made its way to Immortality in contempt of all Ifs or Peradventures that it may never more be said If we love him but because we love him and because we cannot but love him we are resolv'd not to be able not to keep his Commandments Sect. 10. For by the Custom of our obedience that I may touch before hand on what will properly be handl'd in other places we shall contract unto our selves so great an easiness to obey that 't will be difficult and hard to be disobedient We shall be ready to object to any masterful temptation what Ioseph did to his tempting Mistress how can we do this great wickedness and sin against God wilful sin will become such a stranger to us we shall so lose its acquaintance by discontinuing to commit it that we shall neither have the heart nor the Face to own it I say by a long and constant practice in the keeping of the Commandments and going on a great while in the path of Righteousness we shall forget the way back to our old Rebellions and shall arrive at an averseness to those enticements with which we were wont to converse with Pleasure Ever saying when we are tempted with the spouse in the Canticles we have cast off our coat how shall we put it on We have washt our feet how shall we defile them An inveterate habit of the soul like such an habit of the Body as it is not quickly gotten so when it is it is hardly lost And as the habit of living wickedly turns our wickedness into our nature that to cease from doing wickedly all things in us must become new so the habit of doing well does so rivet and ingrain the love of Piety in our hearts that 't is well nigh as difficult to raze it out as for a Leopard to change his spots or an Aethiop his skin Is there any among us who has been so accustom'd to any sin as that it has got the dominion over him let him but have the Curiosity to make an obvious experiment for the sole want of which he understands not the pleasures of vertuous living and my life for his it will set him free Let him accustom himself as much to the keeping of the Commandments as he has don unto the Breach and Transgression of them and he will find himself as perfectly an humble servant unto Righteousness as before he was a servant and slave to sin Righteousness will get the Dominion over him 't will Rule and Reign in his mortal body it will so lift up his reason above his Passions and so bring down his Appetite to a subjection under his Will as that the law in his members will but timorously war against the law in his mind He will be passionately in love both with the Burthen and the yoke as with the Beauty and the Love of his master Christ. And like the Bondman in Exodus at the great year of Manumission will rather be bored through the ear than be free from Christ. The Apostles word is He will be a new Creature and even those which heretofore were his most formidable Duties will now at last so become his supream delights that as he will not indure to do the things which he abominates so as little will he be able to abstain from the duties he so much loves Thus at last he will be brought into that blessed disability of wilful sinning of which S. Iohn speaks in his first Epistle He that is born of God sinneth not neither can he saith the Apostle and that because he is born of God That is he cannot sin wilfully so as still to be regenerate
but study to live long in ease and safety in peace and plenty in pleasure and prosperity would we not esteem him a very fond Parent and extremely concern'd in the outward happiness of his children would we not look upon those his last words as the most eminent expressions of his Fatherly care touching the things of this perishing and fading world what then shall we think of our Blessed Saviour who having given us such Commandments as he knew had an aptness to keep us safe and not only so but to make us happy does here intreat us in the words of a dying man that if we love him we will keep his Commandments And what is this but to say in effect and substance If ye love Me be sure to love your own selves Do me this curtesie at least to be but as happy as I would have you Alas in breaking my Commandments ye break your selves and do not That if ye love me If there is any thing in the world which ye will do for my sake do not ruin yourselves forever But for the love ye bear to me keep those Commandments which unless ye duly keep ye cannot keep your own souls Ye cannot keep them I say from the Roaring Lyon who night and day goeth about seeking whom he may devour My Commandments are the Amulets which by being well kept must keep you from him Sect. 3. Now if our Saviour is so affectionate and kind to us as to take it for a kindness that we be kind unto our selves and that we keep his Commandments not at all for his good but intirely for our own why should we either so despise or so hate our own Souls as to be negligent in the keeping of those Commandments for the keeping of which we shall not only be rewarded in time to come but in the keeping of which there is great Reward great Reward even then when 't is attended with Persecutions because they very well consist with our Receiving an hundred-fold now in this present world besides the happiness in reversion which will fall to us in the next There are such secret Retributions of Peace and comfort and Ioy unspeakable conveigh'd by God into the Soul of one who truly loves Christ and duly keeps his Commandments and is under persecution for doing both that our Lord might well joyn the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the present Reward with the present sufferings For in this keeping of his Commandments that Real Godliness does consist whereof S. Paul saith to Timothy that it is profitable for all things And that for this reason because besides its own sweetness which makes it delicious unto all whose Spirits are not so incrassate as to have quite lost their Tast It yields to those that are owners of it often-recurring Praelibations of the glory to be reveal'd For this I humbly conceive to be the meaning of S. Paul when he saith It hath the Promise even of this present life as well as of that which is to come And not only so but 't is profitable besides as to our Bodily injoyments those of meat drink and cloathing so farr forth as they conduce to the solidest comforts of a mans life For t is to these our Lord referrs when he makes this solemn promise unto such as seek first the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness that all these things shall be added to them Added he means in measure though not excess Added to satisfie though not to satiate Added for health though not for surseit Added as a Blessing though not as turn'd into a Curse For 't is not the Glutton or the Drunkard But 't is the sober man and Temperate who eats and drinks with the greatest Pleasure And to whom his very meals are not only his Delights but his Duties too And that for this reason Because his palate is uncorrupted and his Appetite undebaucht Which when Gnephacthus the King of Egypt like Epicurus and Eudoxus had found to be true by some Experiments he preferred from thence forwards a Course of Abstinence and Sobriety not as the better habit only but as the greater sensuality For so 't is order'd by our Creator whose wisdom and goodness are in nothing more seen that the Innocentest pleasures upon earth are still the greatest and the most lasting Such as are the high Pleasures of being perfectly in Health which in the Judgment of learned Philo the best Philosopher of the Jews is the most natural effect and reward of Temperance And sure the Pleasures of perfect Health are very much greater than can be known until reveal'd and set off by the paynes of Sickness Now as Temperance under God is the Cause of Health so are all other vertues the Guardians of it Which being Instances or Branches of our obedience to Christs Commands do thus afford us one example of our very great Reward in the keeping of them It is a Paradox I confess to the men of this world that our Christian Service should be its own Recompence that even our work should be one kind of wages and that besides our reward for the keeping of the Commandments it should be over and above our Reward to keep them But as there is hardly any thing false which doth not seem to be true to one or other so there is hardly any thing true which to one sort or other is not seemingly false As Christ himself so the Commandments of Christ are a stumbling block to some and arrant foolishness to others For men of sensual apprehensions cannot discern those felicities which do naturally arise from the constant keeping of the Commandments partly because they do not keep them and so are ignorant of their sweetness for want of tryal partly because they are fleshly minded and so are blind to those things which must be spiritually discern'd Sect. 4. But now besides that we have it in an express text of Scripture that in the keeping of the Commandments there is great Reward Psal. 19. 11. first we can prove it by the experience of excellent persons in holy Scripture Secondly by the promise of Christ himself in the two next verses before my Text. Thirdly by the evidence of such plain Reasons as even the natural man himself will not easily contradict Sect. 5. I cannot begin to prove this from a better Topick than experience nor from a better experience than that of David who hath put it upon Record in the most notable of his Psalms I mean the 119 that of all the good things which were desirable here on earth the very keeping of his Commandments did still afford him a supply Sect. 6. First in the time of his Distress he found it his Comfort and support Unless thy law had been my delight I should have perished in mine affliction It was it seems the only thing that was able to make him outlive his sufferings And agreeably to
keep his Commandments Now the man being nam'd who hath not broken the condition it will be easy to name the man in whom the promise hath been accomplish't In the very same measure we mete to Christ it is but just he should mete to us If we will needs reject his Precepts how can he do less than neglect our prayers with what modesty can we expect that he should give us what we desire whilst we pay him not the tribute which He commands what incouragement has our Saviour to be still gratifying of us whose common practice it is to incense or grieve him nay to deal freely with our selves and but ingenuously with Christ what man is there amongst us who is not ready to confess that we have cross't his will more than he hath cross't ours had not he been more inclinable to grant our Prayers than we commonly have been to yield obedience to his commands what should we many times have don for Food and Rayment how could we sow in the spring with any expectation to reap in Autumn this may therefore be sufficient to free his promise from the objection that he performes more of it than we have don of the condition on which 't was made Nay as his promise is vastly greater than we have the goodness to deserve so his performance of it is more than we have the Impudence to require For if we love him but little he grants us much if we obey him but seldom he thanks us often And if he gives us not all we ask it is because we do not love him with all the love that he requires such as employ's our whole strength in the constant keeping of his commandments Sect. 16. The objection being thus answer'd and the promise of our Saviour thereby made clear I proceed from the second to the third Topick which I propos'd that is to such a kind of reasoning as the natural man himself will not easily contradict Sect. 17. First t will be granted by all the world as well by the Iew as by the Christian as well by the heathen as by the Iew as well by the Atheist as by the Heathen all will say with one mouth that they desire to be happy and that happiness is so lovely they cannot choose but desire it Perfect happiness is the object which alone cannot fall under the liberty of the will It is as natural to desire it as for a stone to tend downwards Indeed 't is easie to mistake but 't is impossible to refuse it I say 't is easy to mistake a false happiness for a true and to refuse the true happiness in adherence unto a false one But happiness cannot be refus'd by any man who does believe it is truly such Consummate happiness is the center towards which we all travail let our errors and vices be what they will and however we may differ about the way that leads to it yet we agree in our Intentions to hit the end For though there are that seek death and with Hell are at agreement and pull destruction upon themselves with the work of their Hands yet 't is because they mistake their Bliss not because they prefer their miserie Every man in the world does love the quenching of his thirst Desire is the thirst of every mans Soul Satisfaction is the quenching of all Desire And though a man wanders never so much in the way that he is going yet the end of his Iourney is satisfaction So that ayming as we do at being happy and setting out as we do from the pure hands of a Creator we should not be able to miss of happiness were there not many ways of erring betwixt the circumference and the center Epicurus went one way Eudoxus another Diodorus a third Herillus a fourth the Stoicks a fifth the Peripateticks a sixth as hath been elsewhere observed the Gymnosophists a seventh the Herodians an eighth the Mahomedans a ninth and we who are Christians do go a tenth but all agree in their desires of being as happy as it is possible This I therefore set down as my first postulatum and as that which will be granted by men of all sects that though happiness is mistaken by several sects and as diversly defin'd as 't is misunderstood yet to be absolutely happy in the general notion of the word is the common desire of all the world Sect. 18. It will secondly be granted by men of all sects that a mans happiness does consist in the complete satisfaction of his desires For our desires are our capacities or our emptiness of soul. How much soever we do desire so much we want and stand in need of Now because there is nothing which nature hates more than to be empty or in want there can be nothing more natural than to covet a fulness or satisfaction But the largest of Vessels can want no more than it will hold nor can it covet more than will make it full And therefore the filling of our desires vessels of infinite capacity cannot choose but be that wherein our happiness does consist Which fulfilling of our desires is nothing else but contentment or satisfaction Sect. 19. Now hence it follows unavoidably that if a mans Happiness does consist in the complete satisfaction of his desires and if that is nothing else but an absolute contentment or self-sufficience and if the Commandments of Christ do ty us up or oblige us to such contentment then his Commandments of necessity do make it our duty to be happy and by consequence an happiness to do our Duty In this there is nothing to be deny'd no not so much as by the Atheist unless it be that Christs commandments do oblige us to contentment or self-sufficience and that will easily be prov'd by the Tenor of them which himself hath sum'd up in the 12 chap. of S. Mark v. 30 31. where all the law and the Prophets are said to hang upon these two hinges Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart with all thy mind with all thy soul and with all thy strength and thy Neighbour as thy self Now he that loves God with all his heart will in him set up his Rest his whole delight will be in him his whole dependence will be on him he will not love either the world or the things of the world in whatsoever state he is he will be sure to be content he will not with Martha be sollicitous and careful of many things but espowse with Mary the one thing that is necessary He will be inwardly full of joy in the Holy Ghost his conversation will be in Heaven and the tranquillity of his Conscience will be the beginning of his Bliss Thus it must needs be with him who is perfectly amorous of his Maker and perfectly amorous of his Maker he needs must be who loves him with all his heart and soul. This is the summ of our whole Duty towards God and this is the
very same measure of our Affection Does he not send us to our obedience as the manifestation of our Love He does not say If ye love me believe the Truth of my Promises and strongly rely upon my Merits Be sure to honour me with your lipps and call your selves by my Name But If ye love me do the things that I say If ye love me perform my Will If ye love me keep my Commandments Men may talk what they please of their Love to Christ and praise themselves as they do Him as far as words and phrases come to But if they are Lovers of the World and make it their Business to get its Favour if they either defraud or persecute and seek to build their own Greatness upon the Ruins of other men if they are Servers of the Times and lick themselves for that Cause into every shape and have mens persons in admiration because of Advantage they are as far from loving Christ as from keeping his Commandments And so they are as distant from it as Sincerity is from Dissimulation Which may be farther made appear by the Rule of contraries For Sect. 5. That must needs be granted to us as the greatest Expression of our Love the contrary to which is the greatest expression of our Hatred And suppose we hated Christ as much as a Iulian or a Iew could we do him a greater Injury than that of breaking his Commandments we cannot whip him at a post or nail him again unto a cross or thrust a Launce into his Side for which we are not thankworthy because we cannot His Body being out of our reach and lifted up above our malice at the right hand of God But that which is dearest to him on earth is the whole Body of his Commandments Which whosoever breaks wilfully would be as ready to break his bones too had he but Power and Opportunity as well for the one as for the other His Commandments at the worst can be but voluntarily broken And the Devil himself can do no more And yet how many are call'd Christians who do no less Now what are all his Commandments but Exhibitions of his Will And therefore to violate the former what less can it be than to make Head against the later And sure when Christians are Antichristians by living in absolute opposition to the declared will of Christ they do not only labour to put him privately to the Blush but they paradigmatize him and cast a publick disgrace upon him or in the words of the Apostle they even tread him under their feet and put him to an open shame And this being clearly the greatest expression of their Hatred 't is plain the contrary to This is the greatest expression of their Love Sect. 6. Shall I then give you the character of one that truely Loves Christ that we may judge of our selves in relation to him The truest character I can give him is briefly this He who does not so profess and own the Godhead of Christ in words as to deny it in his works with the antient Gnosticks he who does not fall down and worship the Idols and Images of opinion which either Haeresy or Schism would have ingraven within his Head he who takes not his name in vain either by preaching for a pretence or by the Hypocrisy of his Prayers He who breaks not the Sabbath by his preferring Acts of Sacrifice to works of Mercy or by the cheap and easy way of appearing Righteous unto men He who honoureth his parents both publick and private Ecclesiastical and Civil and cannot swallow the least Rebellion though in pretence of the greatest liberty He who commits not any Murder under pretense of an Holy war but is so very far from that as not to be angry with his Neighbour without a just cause and an equal measure he who commits not an Adulterie no not so much as in his eye nor admits of any whoredom with his Inventions He who neither screws himself into another mans Right by secret Fraud nor breaks in upon it by open violence But chooses rather to be defrauded and tamely delivers up his Coat to him that takes his Cloak from him He who instead of being an anxious heaper up against hereafter contents himself with his daily bread and trusts Providence for the morrow He who does not smite his Neighbour no not so much as with the Tongue does not invade his Neighbours Goods no not so much as in his wish but does in all things to others as he would that others should do to him 't is he that truly loves Christ because 't is he that truly keepeth his Commandments Sect. 7. But here perhaps an Antinomian may thus object If the case does stand thus that none can truly love Christ who do not keep his Commandments and that his Friends are they alone who do impartially perform WHATSOEVER he does Command them to use the words of Christ himself Ioh. 15. 14. None by consequence are the Friends and the true lovers of Christ but such an irrational sort of Creatures as Wind and Water For whilst the best men on earth are a kind of Rebels either by doing what he forbids or by omitting what he requires These irrational things are doing WHATSOEVER he Commands them We know the Waters at his Command did very readily drown the world and as readily at his Command did they retreat into their Channels At his Command they stood up and made a Wall of Defence on either side of his People Israel yet at his contrary Command too they over-ran and swallow'd up the Aegyptian Host. When he said unto the Wind which threatned an Hurrican in the sea Peace be still whereupon the wind ceased and there was a great calm Mar. 4. 39. What manner of man is this said his Disciples in a Fright that even the wind and the sea obey him v. 41. Sect. 8. The Answer to this is extreamly obvious For Christ directed those words Ye are my Friends if ye do whatsoever I command you and if ye love me keep my Commandments to Creatures capable of Friendship because indued with a principle of choice and Reason Not only subjects of a natural but of a voluntary obedience an obedience sweetly streaming from the generous Fountains of Love and Gratitude But to the Wind and the Sea he could not speak in such language Because however they were punctual in whatsoever he did command them yet it was not out of choice but out of meer Necessitation And so their punctual obedience was but an Argument of their weakness 'T is true indeed that in respect of our Saviours speaking unto the sea with a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Peace be still we may by a figure at least aver he gave it a Law or a Commandment And in as much as that sea did do exactly as he had bid it we may figuratively call it the sea 's obedience But in as much as our blessed Saviour did bring to
pass what he Commanded by power perfectly irresistible and that the sea could not possibly noâ—… have don what it did it did rather not resist than obey the precept For the sea in that calm was meerly passive And by an usual Catachrésis was said to do what in propriety of speech it did only suffer Sect. 9. Yet I shall venture to draw a motive to our Obedience by way of choice from the obedience of other Creatures which is by way of Necessity because I find it the very method which God himself is pleas'd to use whilst he is preaching to a Rebellious revolting people Ier. 5. 22 23. For there he presseth them to obedience from the consideration of the sea which though unweildy and impetuous and apt to be gadding of itself is yet so bound and bridl'd up by the Command of its Creator as that it never transgresseth in any kind Now what Reason is there assignable why we are abler to rebel than the mighty Ocean 't is not sure that we are stronger much less is it that God is weaker in reference to us than he is to It. The reason therefore must be taken from the condition of our Wills and from the different operations which God exerteth upon us and Inferiour creatures On us he worketh by his Grace in such a competent kind of measure as that he leaves us a possibility either to use or to abuse it On Them he worketh by his Omnipotence in such an over-ruling and compulsatory way as to make their obedience become their Nature If God should operate upon us by the same Almightiness by which he placed the sand for the bound of the Sea and by which he is able to subdue all things unto Himself one of these two Absurdities would unavoidably follow from it Either first that 't is as impossible for men to violate God's Law as for the sea to expatiate beyond the Bounds which he hath set it or that secondly 't is as easy for the sea to break forth beyond its Bounds as for a man to be a Sinner or a Transgressor of the Law But because these two are most insufferable Absurdities it therefore follows of necessity that God works otherwise upon us than he does upon irrational and senseless Creatures On them by power irresistible on us by a moral persuasion only which may strongly incline but not inforce us Nor can any reason be given excepting only this one why men and women who are indued with so much Reason and Education should shew themselves more unruly than the Fire or the whirlwind with which 't is acted than the sea or the Tempest wherewith 't is driven Never was it once heard that God did utter any such wishes O that the sea had been obedient O that the wind had not revolted O that the fire had don exactly as I commanded For these did never disobey the Absolute will of their Creator But God is oftentimes wishing throughout the Scriptures O that there were such an heart in them that they would fear me and keep all my Commandments always O that they were wise that they understood this that they would consider their later end The reason is because we fail in our obedience to the conditional Will of God although the grace of God in us does give us Ability to obey Nor do we only find him wishing in relation to the present or future times O that they were wise that they would consider But he hath wishes also which look on what is absolutely pass't O that my people had walked in my wayes O that thou hadst hearkned to my Commandments O that thou hadst known the things that belong unto thy peace which what less can it imply than the sufficiency of Grace with the natural freedom of the Will whereby those Rebels had been inabled before they actually rebell'd to have abstained from those Rebellions For had not Israel once been able to have walk't in God's wayes before the habit which they got of walking only in their own God could never have expressed himself by wishing O that Israel had walked in my wayes For that had been in effect as if his wish had ran thus O that Israel had don what 't was impossible for them to do So as 't is evident even from hence that men do break his Commandments not for want of an ability but will to keep them We want nothing but love to make us as dutiful out of choice as the other Creatures are out of absolute Necessity And 't is our fault we want the Habit because we want not the motives or means of love For not to repeat the means and motives which I have formerly reckon'd up on the like occasion it shall suffice me to say at present that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself as well as by and through Christ reconciling himself unto the world We have the means from without for he hath given us himself to make us love him which why should we not do when he is every way lovely or rather loveliness itself We have the means from within for he hath given us his Grace whereby to love him And though by an argument ab effectu we often prove it not irresistible yet we cannot but confess it to be sufficient because he commandeth us to love him and for the love we bear to him to keep his Commandments Nor does he Command Impossibilities He expecteth not to reap but after the measure that he hath sown The highest pitch of his Commands is that we love him with all our Hearts that is to say with all our might or with the utmost of our Ability And t is certain that we are able to love him as perfectly as we are able because the negative to that would be a flat contradiction And so 't is very sound Logick to say we can love our Saviour because we ought What 't is a duty for us to do is therefore possible to be dâ—…n Sect. 10. Why then do we not love him whilst 't is so evident that we are able And if we do love him as we are able why not give him our obedience as the greatest expression of our love why should the privilege of our Reason make us more lyable to Rebellion and by consequence more unreasonable than that inferiour sort of Creatures which have no reason at all Are those Vassals of the Almighty so wholly addicted to his Commands and shall we who are his children be most averse shall we despise the Riches of his Goodness and Forbearance because he is willing that his Goodness should fairly lead us into Repentance and not that his Omnipotence should dragg us to it Shall we be evil so much the rather because He is good And offend the more boldly because his Grace hath abounded to us Shall we break his Commandments because he hath put it unto our choice and not inforâ—…'t us to keep them against our Wills
Shall we convert that noble liberty which he hath given us into looseness And take occasion to be Rebellious from His leaving us to be free Shall we so very ill requite him for his great Favour and Partiality as to become the very worst of all his Creatures under Heaven because He made us the very best Methinks it should melt us into Obedience that God is pleas'd to deal with us as noble Creatures as Creatures capable of Friendship as Creatures made of the most liberal and most ingenuous Constitutions That he is pleased to persuade where he hath power to Compel and so far forth to command us as still to leave us Free-men That he is pleas'd to speak to us as here he does not in the stile of an absolute Soveraign If ye cannot resist me nor in the stile of an Angry Iudge If ye stand in fear of me but rather in the stile of a zealous Bridegroom If ye love me keep my Commandments This is most for our Glory as well as His that we be not only punctual but cheerful also in our duties and that we give him our Obedience as the natural Issue of our Love It being a bravery of Devotion and a generous nobleness of Spirit to be afraid of Disobedience to the Lord Jesus Christ not so much because a Iudg able to terrifie and drive us from our Corruptions as because he is a Saviour who rather draws us to himself by the Bands of Love But now 't is time that I proceed to another Emphasis of the words from whence will arise another Inference That having shew'd how our Obedience is the greatest Expression of our Love I may prove it in the next place an unavoidable Effect too And that as it appears already to be the best and the most solid so it may also be found to be the most Inseparable instance of our Affection CHAP. IV. Of Love and Obedience in a Christian as two inseparable Companions every whit as inseparable as the Cause and the Effect or whatsoever else they are whereof the one doth of necessity infer the other Sect. 1. AND first because there is a Fallacy which many impose upon themselves whilst they think it as possible to love their Saviour without the keeping of his Commandments as to know or apprehend him without the keeping of his Commandments I shall begin with the great Difference betwixt the two natures of Love and Knowledge The end of Knowledge is to possess that which is True but the end of Love is to possess that which is Good Knowledge is an act of the Understanding but Love a motion of the Appetite Knowledge is seated in the Head but Love especially in the Heart Both are possessed of their objects by way of union but the union of Knowledge seems meerly passive as being made in the understanding which being possest of its object is quite at Rest. Whereas the union of Love is wholly Active as being made in the Appetite and by consequence in the Heart which being possessed of its object by an Intentional union is so very far from resting content with That that it employs every Faculty to gain the object that is belov'd not only by an intentional but real union So great and wide is the difference 'twixt Love and Knowledge that knowledge is but an idle unfruitful thing till it is quickned by the Industry and Heat of Love Our Knowledge of Christ as we are taught by sad experience is often Barren But 't is as evident by experience that the Love we bear to him is ever Fruitful and the Fruit it brings forth is ever the keeping of his Commandments For Sect. 2. Secondly This we are taught by the light of Nature That to perfect our union with what we love by our Injoyment of its possession we are to use the best means whereby to make ourselves lovely that so the person whom we love may himself be a Lover as well as we And sure the most effectual means whereby to make our selves lovely is our Conformity to the Humour and Disposition of what we love For a reciprocated love implyes a Harmony and Concord between two parties whereby each object is Agent too and each person lov'd becomes a Lover by the Conformity which he finds unto all his own humours in That which loves him Nor need we labour after this as a thing gainable by Art for nothing but flattery can stand in need of such help and flattery is no more than the Ape of Love just as Art is no more than the Ape of Nature But if indeed we do intensely and truely Love it will not be an artificial but a most natural issue of it To frame our manners and Conversations in proportion to the temper of our Beloved Now if Christ is the object we truely love we shall long after an union and earnestly labour to possess him by being first possessed by him Because till he stoops to our embraces we cannot possibly rise to His. And being convinc t he will not have us until he finds us worth the having or at least in a capacity of being Had how shall we search after the means whereby to be fitted for his Acceptance we shall incessantly cast about which way to please him and frame the course of our Lives to what we think He loves best We shall strive and contend after the knowledge of his Will with this intent only that we may do it And having found that his Commandments are the Transcriptions of his Will we shall compose our whole selves to the keeping of them And having don all we can shall never think we have don enough for that our Love being Infinite can never satisfie itself with any expressions which are not such So that if we love Christ with the whole Treasure of our Affection our obedience will know neither end nor measure but will be coveting to demonstrate itself as Infinite as is that object which doth attract it And this will farther appear by a Third way of arguing For Sect. 3. Whatsoever 'tis we love we love as Beautiful and Good Goodness is Beauty in its perfection The Soveraign beauty then of Goodness does by an absolute kind of Empire command Affection at least from as many as have eyes whereby to behold it as it is And seeing that which is so strong as to command our Love must needs predominate over all that our Love Commands Therefore to love is to be subject and as being in subjection to pay Obedience The truth of this universally may be the better understood by a few particulars For whâ—…soever loves Honour or worldly greatness does live a Feudatorie or Vassal to his Ambition Whosoever loves mony is basely a servant unto his Avarice and to that is most ready to pay obedience He who loves the hansom outside of dust and ashes lives in subjection to his Lust and does but go in those Errands on which It sends him So whosoever he
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
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
he was purged from his old Sins v. 9. Which is as much as to say that the keeping of the Commandments is all in all for if we keep them we are happy and if we break them we are undon I say we are happy in case we keep them because by keeping them we make our Election sure I do not say we make our selves infallibly sure of our Election and that by ordinary means too without immediate Revelation as an Assembly of Divines have made profession of their Belief For as Faith is a good man's so infallible assurance is God's peculiar And it implyes a contradiction to say a man may be infallible in what he does but yet believe For as infallibity implyes a knowledge in perfection so belief implyes strongly a knowledge only in part that is in some measure a want of knowledge Which infers a fallibility in him that wants it When we say we do believe we shall never fall and that we do believe we are vessels of Election our meaning is we do not doubt it not at all that we cannot or may not err When Adam stood in a state of Innocence he did believe without doubt he should so continue When Lucifer stood in a state of Glory he did not doubt in the least of his being safe But the event does shew plainly in Him and Adam the possibility of their falling before they fell So as long as we stand in a state of Grace and do so love our Saviour as to keep his Commandments we have reason to be confident of our Election but not infallibly assur'd because we are not omniscient yea do not know our own Hearts and cannot tell what a Day or what an hour may bring forth Whilst we are militant here on Earth we do Hope for Heaven but shall then only be sure when we shall take it into possession They who urge S. Peter's words for an infallible assurance 2 Epist. chap. 1. ver 10. where the word is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and notes the sureness of the Election not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 implying assurance in the Elect do prove no more from that Text than that they quite mistake its meaning Not through an Ignorance of the original but a forgetfulness to consult it It may suffice for our comfort that God himself is infallible though we may err And though we know not what we are much less what we shall be yet this we know surely That all the paths of the Lord are Mercy and Truth unto such as keep his Covenant and his Testimonies Psal. 25. 10. We are infallible in our knowledge that God is faithful so as he cannot fail possibly to make good his promise if we shall manfully persevere in our performance of the condition And sure the sum of the Condition is briefly this that we love him so farr as to keep his Comandments Again that this is the Test of our Love to Christ and the means whereby to make our Election sure may be as easily collected from Heb. 6. 10 11 12. Where the Apostle having premis'd the work and labour of their love which they had shew'd to Christ's Name in their ministring to the Saints v. 10. He does immediately desire them to shew the same diligence to the full assurance of Hope unto the end v. 11. And not to be slothful but followers of them who through Faith and Patience inherit the promises v. 12. From which words of the Apostle we are to gather four things First that he does not say infallible but full assurance of Hope Nor is it He but our Translation which saith so much For 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is but a fulness of Hope not at all a full assurance unless by full assurance is mean't a fulness and nothing else Next a diligence is requir'd for the attainment of this Hope and this must be unto the end The promise that we shall reap is on condition that we faint not We must therefore so run that we may obtain Thirdly Our diligence must be shew'd too that men may see it and be the better and glorifie God in our behalf It must be shew'd in a laborious and working Love a Love exhibited to Christ by being employ'd upon his Members The Love of Christ if it is true will be shew'd in this that instead of being idle or empty-handed it hath its work and its labour is ever diligent and industrious in the keeping of his Commands Lastly the promises are not inherited through Faith alone which S. Iames calls a dead and a worthless Faith but through Faith mixt with patience which is not a barren but a fruitful not an idle but working Faith Such as worketh by Love impartial obedience to the Commandments And such as worketh by patience with perseverance unto the end Thus we prove by our obedience the real solidity of our Love and by our Permanency in both make our Calling and Election sure It were easie for me to argue from a very great number of such like Topicks of which the old and new Testament afford much plenty But that the proof of this Doctrin may not keep us too long from the Application I shall conclude with what I find in the 8 th chapter to the Romans And thence the Point I am upon may be irrefragably evicted For they are true lovers of Christ and real vessels of Election to whom there is no condemnation There is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Iesus v. 1. They alone are in Him who walk not after the Flesh but after the Spirit And what other can they be than such as keep his Commandments That this indeed is the evidence of our being in Christ does farther appear by the three Ifs in the 10 11 and 13 verses of that chapter If Christ be in you the Body is dead because of sin but the Spirit is life because of Righteousness And if the Spirit of Him who raised up Iesus from the Dead dwell in you he also shall quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit which dwelleth in you And if ye live after the Flesh ye shall dye but if through the Spirit ye mortifie the Deeds of the Body ye shall live Now by the Deeds of the Body are meant the Breaches of the Commandments And how are they mortified but by obedience We have the same in S. Iohn but a little more plainly Hereby we know that we know him even by keeping his word 1 John 2. 5. He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also to walk even as he walked v. 6. Now we know that Christ Jesus was so subjected to the Law that that was constantly the Path wherein he walked And when 't is said by S. Paul that the end of the Commandment is charity out of a pure heart and of a good Conscience and Faith unfeigned The Heart is imply'd to be impure the Conscience evil and the Faith but hypocritical which is not
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
that such a thing should be suppos'd as that a Christian should not love the Lord Iesus Christ Let us examin if you please how very natural 't is to love him that so our wonder may be the less at the severity of the Curse which our Apostle thunders out against as many as love him not Sect. 6. First 't is natural for us as men to love the gifts of the Almighty because by them we have the pleasure of staying our hunger and our thirst the pleasure of giving Satisfaction to all our Appetites and Needs Next 't is every whit as natural to love that Love of the Almighty from whence those gifts are derived to us And then how natural is the Transition from our love of his Love unto a yet greater love of Him that loves us For such a free Lover of Souls must needs Himself be more lovely than all his Love as much as the Agent than the Act or the Cause than the Effect Sect. 7 Again be we never so debauch't we cannot possibly abstain from being kind unto ourselves And as little from being kind unto the benefits and Blessings which we injoy And being so kind unto the benefits we should as little methinks abstain from being kind to the Benevolence from which those Benefits must needs proceed How much less should we be able to abstain from being kind to the Benefactor who is the Sourse and the Fountain of that Benevolence Certainly nothing can be viler than to love the meer Gifts above the Giver nothing more contumelious to him that Gives them Sect. 8. And if 't is natural for us as men to love our God as God only or at least as the Giver of our Injoyments how much more as God in Christ Reconciling us all unto Himself He is the Maker and the Preserver and so at least the Benefactor of all things else but the Redeemer the Restorer the Reconciler only of us As God Incarnate he conversed with men on Earth and as such in special manner we still converse with him in Heaven I therefore say in special manner because to address our selves to God as he is Infinite and Invisisible a self-subsisting Existence from everlasting to everlasting is not only apt to dazzle but to distract our understandings Our Thoughts are lost in this Ocean as the drops of a Bucket And where our Thoughts are hardly fixt 't is hard to fasten our Affections But now to address ourselves to God in the man Christ Iesus as he is manifest in the Flesh and hypostatically united to human Nature to settle our Affections and Thoughts upon him both as our Sacrifice and our Priest our Elder Brother and our Advocate as one incessantly pleading for us and reconciling us to Himself This is to take him at the advantage of his descending to our Infirmities and as it were to lay hold both on his Majesty and his Mercy whilst he is thus stooping down to our low embraces And therefore if any man shall be found so void of Grace and good Nature as not to love the God of Heaven both as a Bridegroom and a Redeemer who never had bought but to espouse us and courts our kindness under the Title of The Lord Iesus Christ he cannot deserve a milder Curse than that of Anathema Maranatha Which though the frightful'st and the most dismal that any poor Caitiff can undergo is yet the mildest and the most gentle that our Apostle could in Conscience condemn Them to who should be found NOT TO LOVE the Lord Jesus Christ. Should the very Souls of men be wholly dissolv'd into Love â—…twould be no more than He deserves for the excess of whose Love to the Souls of men the Holy Ghost hath affirmed that He is Love And considering how much the Cause is more noble than the Effect as I said before 't is very evident that our Saviour should be much dearer to us than our Salvation The name of Iesus a Saviour how delicious to our mouths ought it to be when e're we speak it How melodious to our Ears when e're we hear it And what a Iubily to our Hearts whensoever we do ruminate or think upon it Having therefore such a name as is above every name the name of Iesus a Saviour nor that temporal but eternal he needs must challenge such a Love as is above every Love not only of our Sins but of our selves too And therefore well might S. Paul upon the foulest supposition that can be made of a Malefactor pronounce the formidabl'st Sentence that can be uttered by any Iudge If any man love not the Lord Iesus Christ let him be Anathema Maranatha Sect. 9. These words of the Apostle which I have thought a fit Subject for the second Part of my Design are first of all to have a general and then a more special Consideration Their Parts in the General are briefly Three First the necessary Duty which is incumbent on a Christian and that is the love of our Lord Jesus Christ. Next the Latitude or Extent of the obligingness of the Duty which does not reach only to some but to all in general And this is imply'd in the Indefinite 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If any man love him not Thirdly the dreadfulness of the Danger to whosoever shall despise or neglect the Duty And this is expressed in the sentence of esto Anathema Maranatha So that in order to the more plain and useful handling of the Text which is propos'd only to profit and not to please us we are to fasten our present Thoughts upon these three subjects of Meditation First the Nature of the Love which is here requir'd Next the Quality of the Curse which is here denounc't Thirdly the means we are to use to attain the first and in consequence of that to escape the second CHAP. I. Sect. 1. TO understand the first aright we are to view the Grace of Love by several steps of Gradation First of all we are to view it as it is fasten'd upon God and so is contradistinguish't to all other Love Such as is the love of men whether our Neighbours or our selves the love of our Bodies and of our Souls and so of all other Creatures not only such as are unlawful and under a special prohibition but also such as are commanded and of necessity to be lov'd It must be opposite to the former and hugely transcendent unto the later And then it is the Grace of Love as fastned in general upon God But we are secondly to consider it in its particular application I mean its Appropriation to the Lord Iesus Christ. And this again in a threefold respect as he is Dominus the Lord who is to rule and reign over us and as Iesus the Saviour who is like Ioshua and the Iudges at once to deliver and to conduct us and as Christ the Messias in all his Offices at once in that of Teaching and Blessing and Swaying his Scepter
over our Hearts This is properly the love of our Lord Iesus Christ. And this again must be considerâ—…d in that degree of perfection wherein 't is taken in the Text. As a love of Christ unto the Death a love which casteth out Fear and such as does not wax cold in the sharpest winter of Tribulation For the curse which here follows seems to relate unto the Gnosticks and to as many of their posterity as should at any time be infected by their opinion Such as were Prodicus and the Adamites and the Sect of the Helkesaitae who were totally for a prosperous not for a persecuted Religion zealous Followers of Christ in Times of Peace but in Times of Persecution Forsakers of him Sect. 2. The sum and upshot of all is this The Love of Christ which is requir'd for the escaping of the Curse is such a Love of his Person as is attended with a Love of his precepts too And such a love of his precepts as shews it self in an Obedience without Exception or Reserve and obedience both active and passive too Nor with respect only to some but in the words of the Psalmist unto all his Commandments Our love of Christ must be set off with a comparative detestation of all below him For if any man come to me saith Christ himself to his Disciples and hate not his Father and Mother and Wife and Children and Brother and Sister yea and his own life also he cannot be my Disciple Luke 14. 26. There we see though we are bound to love our livelihood and our Lives yet we are bound to hate Both in comparison of the Love which we owe to Christ. And that so high a degree of love is indispensably required many parallel words of Christ do put it out of all Question As He that loveth his life shall lose it and he that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal Whosoever shall deny me before men him will I also deny before my Father which is in Heaven Is any man will come after me let him deny himself and take up his Cross daily and follow me For whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words of him shall the son of man be ashamed when he shall come in his own Glory and in his Fathers and of the holy Angels And when 't is said by the Apostle If we suffer we shall reign it is imply'd we shall not if we do not suffer As therefore he who puts to sea let his design be what it will is to resolve before hand to run the risque of the foulest weather and not to go but to be carried nor so much whither the Pilot shall please to steer him as whither the wind and the waves shall be pleased to drive him so before we do resolve to ingage our selves in Christianity we ought in prudence to make a Reckoning as well of the Price that it will cost us as of the Profit and Advantage 't will bring us in If we conceive that our Reward though yet but future and invisible will yet prove at last an abundant Recompence for whatsoever we can do or suffer here for Christ's sake then resolve we with S. Paul to reckon all things but Dung for the winning of it Ever pressing towards the mark by Mortifications and Self-denials and laying aside the every weight which doth so easily beset us by a fellowship with his sufferings and a conformity to his Death for the Prize of the high Calling of God in Christ Iesus But if on the other side we esteem it too hard a bargain which Christ hath made in the New Testament And that to drink of his deadly Cup will be a bitterer potion than all his Love and his Promises will be able to sweeten then let us never so much as enter into a Covenant with Christ but rather than begin and only begin to do him service fairly leave it unto those who have the patience and the courage to go quite through it He is a mad kind of chapman who makes a contract with Christ for a participation of his Kingdom without resolving upon his Cross too Himself hath told us what 't is like Luke 14. 31. It is just like a King who going to war against another King doth not first sit down and consult whether he be able with Ten thousand to meet him that cometh against him with Twenty thousand For even so saith our Saviour at the 33. verse of that chapter whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath be it his Pleasure his Reputation his livelihood or his life he cannot be my Disciple Sect. 3. Yet let not any man here object against his hope of Salvation and ground of Comfort Infoelix ego sum infausto tempore natus sad and evil is my Condition because I live in good times I cannot possibly be a Martyr for want of a Nero or a Domitian a Dioclesian or a Cromwel whereby to evidence my Love of the Lord Jesus Christ and to exercise my Faith with a fiery Trial. For that I may take him out of the Agony which he possibly may be in whilst he considers how great a Love is indispensably requir'd for the escaping of the Curse which is here denounced any man living however prosperous may be a Confessor or Martyr by a generous Resistance of his Prosperities by being under a persecution he wisely brings upon Himself by destroying his wicked Appetites though dearer to him than his Eyes and by retrenching those darling habitual lusts which are as hardly parted with as his hands and feet Be not therefore like King Polycrates too much afflicted with thy Prosperityes nor like the Emperor Mauritius so much terrified from within for want of Troubles from without as to conclude thy self a Bastard in God's account through a defect of that chastisement which is the character of a Son For if thou usest those Talents of Grace and Reason which God hath given thee thy Ambition may be the Nero whom thou resistest unto Bloud Or thy Avarice the Domitian by whom thou art plagu'd for thy Non-compliance Or thy lust the Dioclesian from whom thou suffer'st for thy Dissents Or thy Cruelty may be the Cromwel whom thou refusest to obey at thy great Expense Wilt thou know by what martyrdom thy Love to Christ may be expressed in Times of Peace and how to suffer for God though never persecuted by men Be but contented with all Events and ever rise with an Appetite from the most warrantable Injoyments Envy no mans preferment nor ambitiously covet to make it Thine pay Obedience to thy Superiours though they may seem never so froward do whatever God bids thee though it shall seem never so hard resist the Dalliance of the Flesh though never so pleasant or Importuning and then in all these together thou art a Martyr of Patience with holy Iob of Abstinence with Daniel
of Humility with S. Paul of Obedience with Abraham and of chastity with Ioseph Nor let this pass for a meer fancyful and conceited way of reasoning For 't is confirm'd by the Judgment of old and Orthodox Divines Sanguinem si semel pro Christo ponere non potes saltem mitiori quodam sed longiori Martyrio pone If thou canst not all at once lay down thy life for the Love of Christ lay it down for him by a milder but longer Martyrdom For to forsake thine own will to send a Bill of Divorce to thy wedded pleasures to crucify thy Flesh with the Affections and Lusts and so to mortifie its members which are upon the earth is such a profitable and wholsom persecution of thy self and if it be any is such a prudent Abbreviation of thy life as does most of all tend to its Preservation 'T is better Policy saith the Father to lose thy life that thou mayest keep it than by keeping it for a time to lose it finally and for ever CHAP. II. Sect. 1. HAving already spoken enough touching the Nature and Degree of our Love to Christ 't will next be needful to consider the sad condition of the Curse to which the want of such Love is here affirm'd to make us liable And in order to the right understanding of it we are to know the three degrees of excommunicating sinners among the Iews which were accommodated of old to the use of Christians The first of these they call'd Niddui the second Cherem the third Shammatha And this last in signification is exactly the same with Maranatha in the Text. For Shem in the Chaldee imports as much as Marà n in Syriac And Athà we see is affixt to both Niddui signified an exclusion but for four paces only and from no greater privilege than that of ordinary converse Cherem signified exclusion with the addition of Imprecations out of which notwithstanding there was a hope of being freed by a sound Repentance Whereas Shammatha or Maranatha was not only a giving up but also a finally giving over the anathematiz'd person unto eternal condemnation Maran Atha is an expression under which the Lords coming and the most terrible of his Iudgments are Synecdochically contain'd And for the better clearing of it it may be explicated thus The Lord is come and hath suffer'd and he who now loves him not is for ever unworthy of his Love Or let the Lord come as Cornelius à Lapide or the Lord shall come to judge and punish him Or let such a sinner be Anathema at the coming of the Lord as Zegerus words it For though Atha is the Preterperfect tense yet 't is common amongst the Hebrews to set the Preterperfect for either the Present or the future or as here in an Optative which has also the force of an Imperative signification Sect. 2. So that the Duty and the Danger being thus explicated asunder will if we take them in conjunction admit of this Paraphrase If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ so as a Saviour does deserve with all his heart and his Soul so as to keep the very sowrest and most unpleasant of his Commandments as farr as the taking up his Cross and holding close to him in Times of Tryal if any man love him not so intirely as to hate his own life for the love he bears him let him sink under the weight of the heaviest Censures of the Church Let all the Curses light upon him which once were heard from Mount Ebal Let him not only be Anathema which answers to the Hebrew Cherem and notes a giving up to Satan for the destruction of the Flesh but Anathema Maranatha which notes an absolute cutting off an utter Excision or Extirpation from the Body of Christ. Let him not only be Anathema a severity intended to purge the sinner of his Sin but Maran Atha which is severer as being intended to rid the Church of a Sinner Let him be cast out of the Favour as well of the Bridegroom as of the Bride Let him for ever be destroy'd not only in this but the other world Sect. 3. And now by this time I suppose we all are well enough acquainted as well with the Duty we are under as with the Danger we are in as well with the nature of the Love which is here requir'd as with the quality of the Curse which is here denounc't Sect. 4. And if the danger is so great of not performing this duty of loving Christ what kind of means should we not use for the obtaining of the one and in consequence of that for the escaping of the other By fervent Prayers and Importunities and by watching thereunto with all Perseverance how should we wrestle and contend as Iacob did with the Almighty resolving never to let him go till he hath bless't us with an ability to love the Lord Iesus Christ as he requires if there are any wayes and methods if any stratagems of Reason if any Pulleys of the Will whereby to wind up our Affections to things above Lord how incessantly should we labour to put such Instruments into use How much more does it concern us than all the Riches and the Pomps of the world are worth to be as obstinate as it is possible not only in the use of the means of Grace but also in the practice of all those methods unto which we may be prompted by Art or Nature never abating of our Indeavours in using the Artifice and the Empire both of the Intellect and the Will untill we find that God's Grace hath crown'd our Indeavours with Success Or if we cannot love him so sensibly as we love many carnal and trivial things so as to spend all our Time in conversing with him or so as evermore to fasten our Thoughts upon him yet atleast let us so love him as to afford him all the offices and fruits of Love even by doing what he commands and by forbearing what he forbids and by thankfully induring what he shall suffer or appoint to be laid upon us For wheresoever these are they are the Arguments and the Proofs as well of our Faith as our Affection Sect. 5. But here perhaps some will say we cannot possibly be in love with the Lord Iesus Christ untill the Image of his Beauty shall have been character'd in our Souls because his Beauty is the Allective which is to draw up the Soul to a desire of its Fruition And we must certainly see our object e're we are able to affect it But our object being Invisible cannot possibly be seen unless it be by the Eye of Faith and Faith is intirely the work of Grace a Gale that comes from that spirit which only bloweth where it listeth Ioh. 3. 8. And seeing Love as well as Faith is the work of Grace which is not a thing at our own disposal how can we fasten our Affections on things invisible or how
create within our selves a passionate Love of the Lord Jesus by any Stratagems or Engines of Will or Reason If we do already love him in that degree that is requir'd all this Preaching might have been spar'd or at least have been spent to another purpose And if we want of such love in such a measure as is needful what can we do unto ourselves whereby to make our selves love him Or what can any man do to us for the increasing of the love which we bear unto him who is he that can add one cubit to our stature or make an hair of our heads grow white or black Nor are these the more peculiar Effects of Nature than Faith and Love are the Fruits of Grace which Grace if he denies us we cannot love him though we desire it and which Grace if he will give us we shall not be able either to quench or resist our Love Can a man preach us into Affections which we bring not with us to Church or dispute us into a Love of what we see not nor comprehend we come not hither with a Belief that we can possibly be the better for whatsoever can be spoken by any skilful Ecclesiastick but only because 't is a commanded and so a commendable performance to which by custom and duty we stand oblig'd For as touching our Affection and Love to Christ that can neither be more nor less than was decreed to be given us from all Aeternity even according as we are destin'd to Heaven or Hell Which decree of our End being unconditional infers the means conducing to it as unconditionally decreed too And therefore let us not be told of winding up our Affections to things above For we deny the Possibility of being made to love Christ by such human means There is not a Science or an Art of habits insused and divine Nor is the Grace of God acquir'd by the Dexterities or diligence of learned men Sect. 6. Thus indeed it may be easily and succesfully objected against a sort of well-meaning but erring Christians who conceiving that the Regenerate have Grace irresistible from which they say it is impossible for them to fall and that none besides them have Grace enough to do them good but only enough to make them utterly unexcusable do unawares inferr Preaching to be a thing of no use Of none at least unto the People who are but Hearers of the word preach't however temporally useful to them that preach it And in good earnest could we believe as not a few in their writings contend to have us that all things are as they must be and that they must be as they are through the eternal Necessitation of a most peremptory Decree we should conclude it wholly useless as to the future state of Souls either to give or to take advice And rather than continue to preach in vain that is to say without the hope because without the possibility of winning Souls we would betake our selves straight to some other Calling as judging nothing more sordid than to sell our Instruction for Tithes or Stipends or for any thing less precious than the Glory of God and the good of Souls But we do seriously believe the blessed Apostle was in earnest when he exhorted his Philippians both to work and work out their own Salvation Nor can we think he was impertinent in charging Timothie to stir up the Gift of God which was in him But that S. Peter spake sense when he exhorted all Christians to give all diligence for the making of their Calling and Election sure And that God to good purpose gave command unto his Rebels to turn themselves from their evil wayes And accordingly we our selves are extremely serious in our exhortations to the love of the Lord Iesus Christ. And though our labour is very often yet we believe it is not always or unavoidably in vain when we excite mens Indeavours of loving Christ in such a measure as to escape the dreadful Sentence of Anathema Maranatha For though we cannot so love him untill it is given us from above through the sanctifying Grace of the Holy Ghost yet 't is a Duty incumbent on us to use the means which God hath given us to seek his Grace when it is absent and to receive it when it is offer'd and to retain it when it is given and to improve it being retain'd and to recover it when it is lost and lastly to keep it when 't is recover'd with perseverance unto the end The ground and bottom of this Assertion 't is very obvious to observe in several passages of Scripture Repent saith S. Peter to graceless Simon the Sorcerer and pray to God And to what purpose should such a Person be so exhorted by S. Peter if 't were impossible for a Magician to seek for Grace when it is absent Let us have Grace saith the Apostle to the Hebrews And what is that but to receive it when it is offer'd Be strong in Grace saith S. Paul to Timothy And what can that be but to retain it when it is given Grow in Grace saith S. Peter And what is that but to improve it being retain'd Be reconciled unto God saith S. Paul to the Corinthians and wash ye make you clean Return ye Return ye saith God to Israel And what is that but to recover it when it is lost Now that ye are clean abide in me saith our Blessed Saviour Nay 't is said of Paul and Barnabas that speaking to the Christians who dwelt at Antioch they perswaded them to CONTINUE in the Grace of God And what else can that imply but perseverance unto the End Sect. 7. Now from all this together it seems to follow that to attain to such an Habit and Pitch of Grace as to be cordially affectionate to the Lord Jesus Christ we may not reckon it sufficient that we speak to him in our Prayers and hear him speaking in his word and feed upon him in his Sacrament unless we also make use of all other means that we have heard of and employ our best wits to discover more and begg the help of our Teachers in this Inquiry For though indeed we cannot add one cubit to our Stature or make an hair of our heads grow white or black yet we are taught by our Experience that we can add unto our Industry and put a Bridle upon our Wills and set a trig to the Cariere of our vile Affections It is we know as unavoidable that we should be both of the Stature and the Complexion that we are of as that the Fire should tend upwards or water down But 't is not sure as unavoidable to hear a Sermon or give an alms or to have any degree of love to the Lord Iesus Christ. Of which what reason can be render'd so plain and satisfactory as this that the former is proper to us as we are Natural Agents only but the later
as we are rational and in what Instance can we be rational wherein 't is possible for us to cease from being voluntary Agents It does concern us therefore as such to ask for Grace when it is wanting and to use it when it is granted and again to pray God to increase our Talent and to beware that we receive not his Grace in vain too 2 Cor. 6. 1. And therefore as such we are injoyn'd as well as intreated by S. Paul not to grieve not to resist not to quench the Spirit of God when he begins to kindle in us that love of Christ which he requires plainly intimating unto us that when the Spirit of God is ready to shed abroad in our hearts such a saving love it lyes in us to shut a Casement that is an Eye to open a Dore that is an Ear to yield up a Castle that is a Heart to draw a Curtain that is a Prejudice to put Impediments out of the way and by the assistance of the same Spirit to employ the noble Faculties which God hath given us unto the noblest of the Ends for which he gave them We are able as we are men to presentiate our Saviour within our selves and so to meditate upon Him as we ordinarily do upon other objects we can frame Idaeas of him in our Imaginations and thereby bring him into our Heads by an Intentional Union although the Grace of God alone can unite him really to our Hearts by servent love and Faith unseigned Seeing therefore the Scripture saith in justification of the praemisses That we are Labourers and Workers together with God and again that we are Stewards of the manifold Grace of God and are diligently to look least any man fail of the Grace of God and again that every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour Let us never cease to labour in the great work of our Salvation till by the help of God's Grace which never fails to work with any who do not fail to work with it we have wrought our selves up to a Love of Christ. Being comparatively neglectful of all other duties until we have throughly attain'd to this We must remember that as our Faith is pre-required to our Love so is our Love to our obedience and our obedience unto our Bliss And we must perfect our Foundation before we build For debile Fundamentum fallit opus the weakness of a Foundation must needs betray the whole strength of a superstructure In vain shall we labour to raise the Fabrick of obedience unless we have a firm love whereupon to build it And therefore first let us be sure of loving Christ in Sincerity before we take upon our selves the effectual keeping of his Commandments And let us use the best engines whereby to screw our Love up to the Pitch requir'd For what we do not much Love we cannot much long for nor can we very much care to espowse the means of its Attainment And therefore in spight of the objection which has an aptness in its Nature to breed a carelesness of our Actions an unconcernment in our end and a contempt of those Assistances which onr Authorized Teachers are wont to yield us let us not cast away the care we ought to have of our Immortality nor be so blinded with the Opinion that all the actions of our Lives were pre-determin'd from Aeternity as thereupon to despair of being the better for our Indeavours and by consequence to resolve never to do our selves any Good But let us labour on the contrary after the Duty of loving Christ for the escaping of the Danger I mean the Curse and the Damnation denounced here to all Persons that love him not And to press this forwards with at least some Hope as well as Ambition of good Success will deserve to be the work of another Chapter CHAP. III. Sect. 1. WHen we are setting about the means which do most of all conduce to our greatest Ends we must be sure of right method as well as of Diligence in our Indeavours And because we are to cease from being Enemies to our Saviour before we can be in a possibility of being denominated his Friends First let us summon-in our Affections which are scatter'd abroad upon the world the love of which S. Iames saith is perfect Enmity with Christ. They that mind earthly things must needs be Enemies to his Cross and being Enemies to his Cross they cannot be Friends unto his Person For the Apostle tells us of such that their end is Destruction The reason of this is very evident For whilst we have Friendship with the world which is Christ's Rival and Competitor our Souls are Adulteresses and Harlots to use the language of S. Iames in the place before cited as being false and disloyal to him who betrothed us to himself and is verbally acknowledg'd to be our Bridegroom Love is evermore so sure to be the Mother of Obedience to whatsoever object it is which is much belov'd that as when we love Christ we will keep His Commandments so when we also love the world we will keep the Commandments of the world to wit the statutes of Omri and all the works of the House of Ahab So that our first labour must be for 't is indeed a great labour to disentangle our Affections to take them off from the things of this tempting world and as it were twisting them all together like the Rayes of the Sun in an Optick Pyramid strive to concenter them so united in the Soveraign Beauty of a Saviour Now one of the proper Engines for this I mean the rescuing of our love from what is worldly and to be seen is to chew and to ruminate long enough in our Thoughts upon this great Truth that even our love of the Body does wholly depend upon the Soul And the titular Beauty of the Flesh must be confessed by the most sensual to lye intirely in the spirit For if we except the sole case of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Herodotus which yet was not love but another thing and that perhaps but a Fable too who ever heard of any Lover fixing his love upon the Body so much as one short minute after the vanishing of the Soul Did the Corinthians court their Lais when nothing was left them but her Body Did Demosthenes take a Iourney in kindness to her when she was dead no there was nothing then desirable besides Forgetfulness and a Grave Nothing then but the Worms was able to covet her Embraces Methinks that this one observable were it as patiently consider'd as it is easily understood should conduce extremely much to the spiritualizing of our Affections For if we love nothing that we can see of our dearest Friends but for the love of somwhat else which cannot possibly be seen what better reason can we give of it than that the Part which is material is arrant Rottenness and Corruption nor only not
lovely but loathsom too when abstracted from the part which is immaterial and for this reason it is that the zealousest Lover of what is worldly and who hath nothing in him of Christ whereby to qualifie and inable him for Spiritual love He I say would not be able to love the Body above the Soul if the Beauty of the Soul did not shine through the Body And if we do not only hear this but lay it up in our Hearts too nor only assent to it as True but consider it also as useful it will be sure of great moment first for the raising of our Thoughts and after that of our Affections from the things that are seen which are temporal to the things that are not seen which are eternal And then believing with S. Paul for without such Belief no such love can be imagin'd That our Life is hid with Christ in God we shall be still making thither to find it out Our Love of Christ will not leave him for being but gon out of our sight but will rather soar up in pursuit of him as far as Heaven and find him out pleading for us at the right hand of God And there beholding him as he is full of Grace and Truth and unimaginable Glory such as eye hath not seen nor Ear heard nor hath ever enter'd into the heart of man to conceive 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What Loves 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 What Longings 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Plotinus what Exiliencyes of Soul will then transport us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with what weightiness of Bliss shall we then be smitten whilst we love him as he is Good we shall desire him as he is lovely and never cease from desiring till we enjoy him as he is Blessed I mean as the Fountain of Bliss and Glory If any man shall here ask by what means he may behold the unspeakable Beauty which is above that so beholding he may be ravish't with the sweet violence of its Attractions the answer to it may be had from the same Plotinus No man saith he can see true Beauty but by casting the sight of his eyes behind him And again saith that learned and pious Heathen we are to fly from those Pleasures which are but common to us with Brutes as once Ulysses from the charms of Circe and Calypso which if he had not wisely don he had never gone back to his native Countrey And we must do exactly like him if we are bound for that Countrey from whence we came and would fain see the place of our first extraction Now what but Heaven is our Countrey there dwels our Father from thence we came and what we commonly call our life is indeed our Pilgrimage For in the words of the Psalmist we are but strangers upon Earth So as the way to go thither from whence we came in a kind of Exile is to leave both our Horses and Feet behind us saith the Platonist And swiftly mounting up ourselves on the wings of Love and Desire guide we our course with those Eyes which are not without us but within us and with which if any of us are not accustomed to see it is not because we want such Eyes but only because we will not use them Unless we are got into their Classis in whom the God of this world hath blinded the minds in which case only our eyes are darkned that we not only will not but cannot use them But this is so wilful a Disability that whatsoever are the occasions we ourselves are the Causes of it For when a people are abandon'd to vile affections and severely given over to a reprobate mind it is because of their refusing the fear of the Lord and because of their not liking to retain God in their Knowledge Rom. 1. 26 28. where S. Paul's expression is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 They did not think good to have God in their acknowledgment But till then the Apostle tells us the invisible things of God are clearly seen v. 20. not indeed with those eyes we carry outwardly in our Heads but with those other more Angelical which we have inwardly in our Hearts To sum up all in a word Our affections in themselves are indifferent things apt to be cleaving to any object whether evil or good as they shall happen to be directed by carnal Appetite or Reason And if it were not in our power to set our love upon the world in despight of God's Grace or to take it from off the world by making use of its assistance the Apostle would never have exhorted us with so much earnestness as he does To love neither the world nor the things in the world To set our Affections on things above and not to set them on things below To mortifie in our selves our earthly members To cast off the old man to put on the new To cloath our selves with Love as with the bond of Perfection To let the Peace of God reign in our Hearts To afford the word of God an Habitation and Dwelling within our selves From all which together 't is very natural to inferr that if we have not yet wasted the Talent of Grace which God hath given us which undoubtedly of itself is sufficient for us and does competently arm us with Ghostly strength we can see and we can love and can delight in the Lord Jesus and by consequence if we will we can escape the sad effects of being Anathema Maranatha But now 't is time that after the first we put in practice a second instrument whereby to raise up our Love to the Lord Iesus Christ. That is as much as in us lyes we must provoke our selves to jealousie and a religious Aemulation by considering how others have lov'd our Saviour to whom he could not be a Saviour with more obligingness than he is ours We find S. Paul was so inflam'd with the love of Christ who yet a little while before had been a virulent Blasphemer and Hater of him and did so long after a time of being admitted into his presence that in comparison of Christ he counted all things but loss and all things Gain on the contrary which might any way help him in his approach That though there is nothing in the world which Nature hates more than the terrible Face of a Dissolution yet there was nothing which that Apostle did so much long for Not at all for the love of a Dissolution which he detested in one sense whilst he desir'd it in another but for the love of that Christ from whom he was absent in the Body and could not so well be present with as by the favourable Help of a Dissolution That indeed was his Cordolium There it was his shoo pinch't him 'T was his most passionate aspiring to be with Christ which made him groan so very earnestly under the Burden of
higher than by reflecting much and often on him who lov'd us in such a measure I might have said so out of measure as to have hated even Himself in a comparative signification For neither was his life so dear nor was his Bloud so pretious to him but that he was prodigal of them both when both might fall to our Advancement Methinks there is nothing more expressive of God's obliging us to love him than that word of S. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He SPARED not his own Son but delivered him up for us all We know his Son was Himself as to the unity of the Godhead yet 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 He did not spare him Should we not think that Father cruel and void of natural Affection who would not spare his own Son no not his Beloved and only Son no not when 't was in his choice and his power to spare him yet when Abraham being commanded was ready to Sacrifice his Isaac 't was not his Cruelty but his obedience and that was the fruit of such a Faith as did work by love I mean a love of his God and not at all of his Isaac whom in that case he was to prosecute with a comparative Detestation And in like manner when the Father of our Lord Iesus Christ could not so wisely shew his Mercy for all aeternity upon us as for a time by shewing none upon the Lord Iesus Christ it was the highest and best expression not of his Cruelty but of his Love For he could never have spared us his adopted Sons if he had spared that Son who was his only-Begotten Nor could it be Cruelty even to Him not to be spared by his Father because volenti non fit injuria he was willing yea and desirous not to be spared for a Time rather than millions of men and women should certainly fail of being spared to all aeternity What then shall we return him for so astonishing a Love as is now describ'd Shall we spare any thing that is ours when 't is well-pleasing unto Him that we should not spare it Suppose he would not be pleas'd unless we gave our first-born for our Transgressions the fruit of our Body for the sin of our Soul Should we spare our own child in so great a Case How then comes it to pass we are so sparing to our lusts and do so grumble to be parted from our Destroyers Are those enemies of our Souls so extreamly dear to us as that we cannot find in our hearts either to send them out of our Bosomes or to deliver them up to a Crucifixion no not in love to that God who sent his Son out of his Bosom and delivered him to be crucified in love to us Sure if our Souls were all Flint yet being smitten with such a love they should yield some Fire Or if our Hearts were all Iron yet one would think that such a load-stone should draw them up Or however if it will not yet let us try a Fourth Engine for the winding up of our Affections Let us shame our selves out of our Coldness and Indifferency to Christ by duly reflecting upon our warmth to Inferiour things Not inferiour only to Him but to the Dignity of our Nature A Nature common to us with Him being consider'd in his Humanity and by so much the worthier both of our Care and our Respect too What Love do we bestow upon the vanity of the Creature to please a Palate an Eye an Ear a Fancy And shall we have so much love to fasten upon the Surface and outside of Dust and Ashes whilst so little for a Saviour as to permit it to be a Doubt if we have any for him or not All the noble men of Greece would ly like dogs at the door of the Corinthian Harlot and pay obedience to Her Commands notwithstanding they did lead in the paths of Death And shall a Question be made of our love to Christ whose very deformities make him fairer than the children of men I mean his wounds and his Bruises which should to us be more lovely than all the Roses of Sharon and the Lillies of the Valley as having been wholly suffer'd by him on our Account Or shall a Question be ever made of our obedience to his Commands which if a man do he shall live in them yet how many Trifles do we love and with what vehemence of Affection of which the best consequent is this that we shall heartily repent our having lov'd them and what a madness what a shame what a disparagement and a discredit must it needs be unto our Reason to lay out the Treasures of our Love upon those Allectives which we cannot but hope we shall be heartily sorry for because we cannot but fear that if we are not both truly and timely sorry we shall be hopelesly sorry when 't is too late but how much a greater madness is it to be so negligent and illiberal in our Affection towards Him whom the longer we shall love we shall love so much the more and shall have nothing to repent of but that we ever lov'd him less and that withal it was so late before we lov'd him shall we be able to say less of our Love to Christ than the Apostle S. Paul could say of his to his Corinthians observe him speaking to that unkind and ingratefull People Most gladly will I spend and be spent for you though the more abundantly I love you the less I be lov'd 'T was strange on their parts that they should love so much the less the more abundantly they were lov'd But somewhat more strange on His that he should spend and be spent and both most gladly notwithstanding the discouragements of their Return which was of nothing but of Hatred for the excesses of his Goodwill Lord how happy were it for us had we but half so much love for the Lord Iesus Christ as that expression of S. Paul does amount unto it is impossible for our Saviour to love us the less the more we love him So very far he is from that that he did spend and was spent and both most gladly for the love he bare to us when we had none And therefore the least that we can do is both to spend and to be spent to part with all that we have and with all we are too for the love we bear him who so dearly loves us It is an hard heart indeed which is so far from bestowing that it will not repay or return Affection We will spend and be spent for our darling sins although they love us the less the more abundantly we love them for the more we still love them the more degrees of Damnation they threaten to us Let us therefore even for shame have as much kindness for our Preserver as we have had for these Authors of our Destruction If in a very free manner we have been
That God in Christ may be All in All which how can he be saith the holy Father if any thing of man be left in man If the Souls of the just are not drown'd and drunk up in the fathomless Sea of Aeternal light If humane affections do not dissolve and melt away from themselves and become so transfus'd into the sole will of God as to be like a drop of water in a great quantity of wine wherein departing from it self it wholly puts on the colour and taste of wine or as an Iron red-hot does make a defection from itself by putting on the whole Nature and Form of fire if I say it is not thus after the general Resurrection in what sense can it be said and said it is by S. Paul that God in that day shall be All in All But in the place before cited from 1 Cor. 6. 17. S. Paul does not speak however S. Bernard apply's his words touching the union we shall injoy after the general Resurrection through the perfection of our love to the Lord Iesus Christ. For when he saith he that cleaveth to the Lord is one spirit he seems to mean no other cleaving than was commanded even by Moses Deut. 10. 20. where to * fear and * serve God is to cleave unto him And so we are properly said to cleave unto the Lord Iesus Christ when the Caement of our union is an indissoluble Affection and such an obstinate Resolution not to depart from his Commandments that Death it self cannot seperate 'twixt us and them This alone is the Love which Saints are capable of on Earth and here is exacted under the penalty of Anathema Maranatha The other is competent to none but Saints Beatified in Heaven Sic affici Deificari est in the bold Dialect of S. Bernard This Love is our Duty whereof that other is our Reward And therefore this is commanded but that is promised For this we are prays'd for that admir'd This is difficultly had in a state of Grace whilst that we cannot but have in a state of Glory For as this does not expire but rather is perfected into that so by the Tenor of the New Covenant it does entitle us to its Fruition And therefore stoutly let us resolve so to cleave in our Affection to the Lord Iesus Christ and so to express our cleaving to him by keeping close to his Commandments as that before we have possession we may not fail to have a Right to the Tree of Life That in the day when the Lord Iesus shall be revealed from Heaven with his mighty Angels in flaming fire when the Elements shall melt with fervent heat and the Heavens be shrunk up like a scrowl of Parchment when every Valley shall be filled up and every Mountain brought low we may be able to appear before the Judge with great boldness and whilst they that would not love the Lord Iesus in sincerity shall send forth weepings and wailings and gnashings of Teeth all alluded to in the sentence of Anathema Maranatha we may be called to bear a part in the quire of Angels and with the ten thousand times ten thousand which are round about the Throne of the Lord Iesus Christ who hath redeemed us to God unto whom he hath made us both Kings and Priests we may never rest from singing with unimaginable delight Blessing Honour Glory and Power to Him that liveth forevermore THE INTRODUCTION TO The Third Part. WHAT hath hitherto been praemis'd touching Christ's Love to us and ours to Him cannot better be succeeded in point of pertinence or use than by that which now follows touching our Love to one another A subject which is the rather to have its place in this Volume because our Love to one another is recommended to us in Scripture as much as God's love to us and ours to God And as that which does make us most like our Maker 'T was recommended to us by Christ in his last Will and Testament and that as one of the richest Legacyes that he was able to bequeath us The ever-blessed Testator as the Author to the Hebrews does fitly call him being to take his last leave in a farewel Sermon to his Disciples and having prepar'd them with an assurance that the time of his leaving them was at hand to make them ponder what he was speaking and lay it up as the speech of a Dying man And being resolv'd not to leave them without some Legacy some special Token of his Solicitude both for their present Consolation and future Bliss Peace saith he I leave with you my peace I give unto you not as the world a few good words in Civility or at the most a kind wish and therefore let not your heart be troubled at the sudden departure of my Person for as a supplement of That I leave you my cordial and solid Peace But knowing well that His peaee could never quietly rest with them in case of War and Division amongst themselves and being not able to indear them with a greater Testimony of His love than by obliging them strictly to the constant loving of one another He therefore bequeathed this Royal Precept as a previous part of their Patrimony whereby to fit them for all the rest That their reciprocal kindness should be like His that they should all be so affected as they had Him for an Example that just as He had been to All they should be All to one another for so runs the Instrument whereby he convey'd his good Pleasure to them a new Commandment I give unto you that ye love one another even as I have loved you But then to gain their Acceptance of his Bequest and their religious Execution of what he commanded them to observe He shew'd them the value of such a Legacy as did accordingly tye them to such a Love 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. By this all men shall know ye are my Disciples if ye love one another In which words of our Saviour there are two things suppos'd and a third is Taught First of all it is suppos'd that All to whom the words are spoken either are or ought to be Christs Disciples And that not only in profession but in singleness of heart not only verbally and by name but very really such This is easily collected from three words in the Text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ye are my Disciples It is secondly suppos'd that such as are really Christs Disciples not in hypocrisy but in deed ought to endeavour to make it known to all THE WORLD that they are such Their light must shine before men by their Procope and Growth in the SCHOOL of Christ. This is apparent from two words more 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All men shall know it And were it not so in good earnest the Master would never have directed them as here he does to the infallible means of it's attainment For We
are thirdly to observe the important Lesson which here is Taught and which is now of all Lessons the most worth learning especially if we reflect on the Times we live in by what certain 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or way of proof we may make men to know we are Christs Disciples This is deliver'd in the first and last words of the Text 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they shall know it even by this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If ye bear love to one another From these three parts there are as many Propositions into which the whole Text is very naturally resolv'd That all who are Auditors of Christ or all to whom he is reveal'd do stand oblig'd by that means to be really his Disciples That their Discipleship if it be real will be eminent also and exemplary so far forth as to be known and taken notice of by All. That the surest Testimony and Proof of sincere Discipleship under Christ and the principal Instance or effect wherein its eminence doth consist and that which by Christ is here pronounced as an unerrable mark or Criterion of it is this Divine Qualification of mutual Love And this alone must be the Subject upon which I am to fasten the following part of my Design because it seems to comprehend I say not only the prime but whole Importance of the Text as we may judge by comparing the proposition with the fourfold Emphasis which may be put upon the words For first our Saviour does not say Men shall guess or conjecture that ye are mine but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they shall know it Nor secondly does he say Your Discipleship shall be known as a special Secret to very few but as the Sun in his Meridian 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 All men shall know it Nor thirdly does he say All men shall know ye seem to be by a Disguise but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that ye are my Disciples without a fiction Last of all he does not say Your Discipleship shall be known by such deceivable Tokens as your Assembling your selves in the House of Prayer your crying Lord Lord your doing wonders in my name your being Orthodox in Judgment and jumping together in Opinions but by This it shall be known as by a Token which never fails 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 If ye have Love for one another CHAP. I. Sect. 1. THE Proposition to be consider'd though last in order is first in dignity And being as the Heart of the whole Body of Christianity deserves to be like the Heart in the body of man 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The first thing that lives and the last that dyes in our consideration For can there be any thing in the world of greater consequence than This which gives us a Token whereby to know we have an Interest in Christ and such a sure token too as cannot possibly deceive us yet even such is that Love of which I am now about to treat and which if we take into our hearts as well as into our memories It will I doubt not carry with it that peace of Conscience which is to all that feed on it an endless Feast Sect. 2. But since there is hardly any word that is more equivocal than this I must Anticipate an Objection by shewing what Love it is which our Saviour meant when he appointed it for the measure by which his Scholars are to be scann'd Sect. 3. And to shew the better what it is I must first shew what it is not For all sorts of men pretend to Love not only Christians but the professed Enemies of Christ and the nominal as well as real Christians Nay in one kind or other they all have Love in their possession and many times the worst in the greatest measure For greater Love than this our Saviour tells us there is none that a man lay down his life for his friend And plentiful store of this Love we commonly find in our reading amongst the Heathen Their great Philosophers did prescribe it and not a few of their people obeyâ—…d the Precept Sect. 4. To save a Friend ready to perish we find Episthenes in Xenophon ready to lay down his life And such was the love of Artapates to Cyrus Iunior that he perfectly hated his own life as soon as Cyrus had quitted His. Nor would Lucius Petâ—…onius out-live his friend Pomponius Laetorius dyed a couple of Martyrs for Caius Graâ—…chus And Titus Volumnius followed Lucullus into his grave Terentius preferrâ—…d the life of Brutus by many degrees before his own And Valerius tells us of divers servants who for the saving of their Masters destroyed themselves What transcendent lovers of one another were Menedemus and Hipsides Cleonymus and Archidâ—…mus Agasias and Xenophon Bagooâ—… and Mentâ—…k Hippoclides and Polystratus Asclâ—…piodotus and Soranus 'T were easie to name as many more as would make a man weary to heart them nam'd Nor do I speak only of Couples but of Societies and Sects whose astonishing Love to one another hath rais'd them Monuments in story will last as long as the Sun and Moon Such as the Cimbri and Celtiberians in Valerius Maximus the friends of Cyrus in Xenophon the Athonians in Thucydides the Megalopolitans in Polybius the men of Saguntum and Petellia the many Societies reckon'd up by Alexander ab Alexandro who had all things in common of every kind and as well their Sufferings as their Injoyments Insomuch that if one did lose a limb by any accident all the rest were to cut off theirs that in every Circumstance of Adversity they might all be equall and alike Sect. 25. Thus there were multitudes of men who lov'd each other unto the Death and some beyond it as far as Hell Yet very far were those Pagans from being known by such love to have been either the Disciples of Christ or Moses 'T was little better than the love of King Porus his Elephant and other generous beasts which have expos'd their own lives to save their Rider's There is a natural kindness and Generosity which is common to men with the meanest Creatures and so hath nothing of affinity with what is intended in the Text. Sect. 6. Nay if we reflect upon our selves upon whom the name of Christ is call'd we must not imagin we have attain'd unto that excellent Love which is here requir'd because we find upon inquiry that we are loving to our friends or because we have often our solemn meetings or stand fast to one another as drivers-on of a design For as there are many sorts of love which are not rational and pure as not proceeding from a right principle so there are many things too which are but the Counterfeits of love and yet are call'd by that Name because they look extremely like it The Devils themselves have their combination are still
at agreement among themselves but from a principle of Policy and not of Love Even Rebells and Schismaticks the greatest enemies of Church and state are wont to hold together and keep themselves close but from a principle of Faction and not of Love We read of Pilate and Herod that they were solemnly made friends but from a principle of Hatred to an innocent Christ not of love to one another The world is full of such Merchants as keep a good correspondence and are punctual Dealers with one another but from a principle of Traffick and not of true love The friends of Ceres and Bacchus have their times of Feasting and good-fellowship their times of injoying the Creature-Comforts but from a principle of loosness and not of Love Many love the merry meeting but not the men whom they meet Or if they are Lovers of the men 't is from a principle of Nature and not of Grace It being a meer Self-love which makes them so to love Others Nay farther yet a man may do the very things which are the principal offices and works of Love for which not his Love but only his vanity is to be thank't He may bestow his whole substance to feed the poor and yet may perish for want of Love May dare to dye a pretended Martyr by giving his body to be burnt and yet may be frozen for want of Love So I collect from the Apostle 1 Cor. 13. 3. Sect. 7. It concerns us therefore to know what love this is having seen what it is not by which a man may be known to be Christs Disciple And the shortest way to know this is to reflect a little while on the Love of Christ. For such as was his Love to us such must ours be to Him and to one another We have his word for it in several places If ye keep my Commandments ye shall abide in my love And this is my Commandment that ye love one another even as I have loved you Now we know the Love of Christ was both Extensively and Intensively great and proposed in both respects not more to our Wonder than Imitation First it was so Extensively Great as as that it reached to all in general 1 Tim. 4. 10. to every man in particular Heb. 2. 9. not to a world of men only as that may signifie a part but to all the whole world without exception 1 Ioh. 2. 2. without exception of the ungodly Rom. 5. 6. without exception of enemies Rom. 5. 10. without exception of them that perish 2 Pet. 2. 1. And so Intensively great was the Love of Christ that it made him empty himself of glory and become of no reputation it made him a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief indeed an Intimate Acquaintance of the most heart-breaking grief that ever was suffered on this side Hell It put him upon the vassalage of washing and wiping his servants feet It made him obedient unto the Death and to seek the lives of his Enemies whilst his enemies sought his He in order to their safety as they in order to his Ruin It made him once our Priest after the order of Aaron and our Priest for ever after the order of Melchisedeck For us he descended into Hell for us he ascended into Heaven for us he maketh intercession at the right hand of God Rom. 8. 34. Sect. 8. Thus Christ as our Master hath set us a Copy of His Love to the end that we as his Disciples might do our utmost to take it out Our Love must be so extensive that it must reach even to All. It must reach unto our Enemies and of them to all sorts too not only to those without the pale of the Church who do us little or no hurt even Iews Turks Infidels and Hereticks for whom we pray once a year in our English Liturgy but to our Crueller sort of Enemies within the Church our particular Persecutors and Slanderers for whom we pray in our Liturgy three times a week Sect. 9. Indeed the Hypocrites of the Synagogue did constrain the word Neighbor to signifie nothing but a Friend esteeming it Godliness and Zeal to hate an Enemy And some there are even in Christendom who feigning God from all Eternity to have hated more than he lov'd think they acquit themselves fairly and look upon it in themselves as a God-like property if they are much less inclinable to Love than Hatred They know they need not love more than the Saviour of the world was pleas'd to dye for and easily taking it for granted that he dyed only for some they think they need not exhibit their love to all Sect. 10. Such men must be minded that even our Enemies are to be treated as one sort of friends and that the Scripture-word Neighbor extends to both 'T was so extended even by Moses and so by Solomon if by Moses and Solomon much more by Christ who having first commanded us to love our Enemies to bless them that curse us to oblige them that hate us and to pray for them that are spiteful to us gives us his reason in these words because God also is kind to the unthankful and to the evil Which is as much as to say that in the Extension of our kindness we must be Imitators of God For so he tells us in the very next words be ye merciful as your Father in Heaven is merciful And when a Jew askt the Question Who is my Neighbor Our Saviour answer'd him by the Parable of a Iew and a Samaritan not of a Iew and a Iew. Whereby we are given to understand that all are our Neighbors who stand in Need. Let that need be what it will a need of our Pardon or of our Purse we must not only forgive them in case they reduce us to want of Bread but we must give them our Bread too in case they want it We must pray for them and pity them and labour to melt them to reconcilement must do them all the good offices within our power excepting such as are apt to hurt them we must shew them such favours as may help to raise them out of the Pit not such as may sink them the faster in we must not be so rudely civil so discourteously complaisant as to suffer their sins to be upon them without disturbance but must rather oblige them with our rebukes lest for want of such favours they go down quietly to destruction For so runs the precept Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart on the contrary thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy brother and shalt not suffer Sin upon him Although a man be so scandalous as to be shut out of our company by the direction of the Apostle yet the same Apostle tells us we must not count him as an Enemy but admonish him as a Brother 2 Thes. 3. 15. Sect. 11. And from hence we
are to argue à minori ad majus For if our Love must extend thus to Enemies how much more to such as are friends friends to our Persons and to our God too The love of Christ had degrees and so must ours As the Apostle tells us of Christ he is the Saviour of all but especially of them that believe so the very same Apostle does also tell us of our selves we must do good unto all men but especially to them who are of the houshold of faith And even of those that are faithful a primary care is to be taken for them that are of our own Countrey It was not only for Gods sake that David was kind unto Ierusalem but for his Brethren and Companions sake he prayed to God for her and did his utmost to do her good Psal. 122. 8. Our Saviour being himself an Israelite did ‖ prefer the lost sheep of the House of Israel How kind was Moses to His Countreymen when he became for their sakes extremely cruel unto Himself Lord saith he if thou wilt forgive their Sin and if not blot me I pray thee out of the book which thou hast written Exod. 32. 32. As if salvation it self could hardly please him unless his Countreymen might have it as well as He. Nor was the passion of S. Paul inferiour to it who for the love he bare unto His Countreymen whom he calls his brethren and kinsmen according to the flesh was ready to wish himself accursed and utterly c̄ut off from the body of Christ. Rom. 9. 2. As if he car'd not what became of him so that his Countreymen might be sav'd Sect. 12. But many times our neerest Countreymen may become our worst Neighbors and in respect of their Religion dwell farthest off too To a man born in Iudaea a good Samaritan ought to be dearer than an hard-hearted Iew. S. Paul and the Christians of Thessalonica were never us'd with more rigour than by the men of their own Countrey And our Saviours words are very remarkable that except it be in his own Countrey a Prophet is never without honour Matt. 13. 57. But let him be in his own Countrey and he hath no honour at all John 4. 44. Christ himself had least there and there he did the fewest Miracles but that he did not more there than in other places the only Cause was their unkindness Sect. 13. This is therefore the firmest Bond whereby to hold us together in peace and love not that we are of one Countrey but that we are of one Christ And can say of our selves with better reason than it was anciently said of the Lomnini that in all our bodies there is no more than one soul or to express it with S. Paul that we have all but one Faith one Baptism one Spirit one Lord one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in us all Eph. 4. 4 5 6. If we will manifest to the world and prove convincingly to our selves that we are really the Followers and Friends of Christ. It must be by a burning and shining Love A love of men and not of God only And a Love of men it must be in which the true Love of God is not excluded but presuppos'd Not a love of our selves only condemn'd so much by the Apostle but a Love of others as our selves if not as much yet as well if not in that measure yet in the very same manner in which we are obliged to love our selves And it must be Dilectio Amoebaea a mutual Love a giving and taking of affections Indeed rather than fail we must pledge them in Love who do begin to us in hatred But to make up such a Love as is especially here requir'd such as with which the blessed Apostles did once adorn both the Doctrin and the Discipleship of Christ It must be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Love interchanged with one another For in how many things soever there may be a seemingness of Religion S. Iames assures us that it's Purity does consist in these two the relief of the needy in their Afflictions and the keeping our selves unspotted from the world Nor can we be told a better course either for brevity or clearness whereby to be possessed of both together than that of measuring and dealing our love to others by such a natural proportion as we have commonly for ourselves For this is perfectly the scope of that Law to which as Christians we must be subject I say we must so much the rather because what soever a man soweth that shall he reap And with what measure we mete it shall be measur'd to us again As 't is the mercy of good men which is said to triumph over Gods Iudgment so there is Iudgment without mercy for them that shew little or none Sect. 14. The chiefest requisites of our Love must be Sincerity and Fervour As S. Paul speaks to the Romans we must be kindly affectioned one towards another so as our love may be brotherly and without dissimulation Rom. 12. 9 10. we must not be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 double-sould men Jam. 1. 8. but carry our meaning in our foreheads and hold our hearts in our hands Not love in word neither in Tongue but in deed and in Truth We must not look every man at his own things only but every man at the things of others Phil. 2. 4. If we are owners of such a love as is a Testimony and proof of our real Discipleship under Christ The same mind will be in us which was in Christ Iesus Phil. 2. 5. And if so we shall be ready to stoop as he did to the meanest offices of love even to wash and to wipe the very feet of our Inferiors we shall willingly bear one anothers burdens Gal. 6. 2. by love serving one another Gal. 5. 13. And in honour preferring one another Rom. 12. 10. Nay if the same mind be in us which was in Christ Jesus as S. Paul tells us it ought to be our love will be so Intensive as to make us lay down our lives for the Brethren And so S. Iohn tells us we ought to do 1 Iohn 3. 16. Sect. 15. If no diviner love of one another were meant by our Saviour under the Gospel then what was so frequently exacted under the paedagogie of Moses our Saviour certainly would have said An Old Commandment I give unto you it having been said to them of old Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self Levit. 19. 18. But here he calls it a New Commandment which we cannot imagin he would have don had there been nothing in its subject but what was old No he might very well call it a New Commandment not only for that reason which I find given by S. Austin because it prescribes us such a love as by which we cast off the old man and put on the new but because it prescribes
himself For what saith our Saviour If thou bring thy gift to the Altar and there remembrest that thy Brother hath ought against thee leave there thy gift before the Altar and go thy way first be reconciled to thy Brother and then come and offer thy gift As if he should have said Get thee gon and be Honest before thâ—…u talk'st of being Godly Now together with this compare S. Iohn's way of reckoning In this the children of God are manifest and the children of the Devil whosoever doth not righteousness is not of God neither he that loveth not his Brother And we know that we have passed from Death unto Life because we love the Brethren Nor does our Saviour say thus by this shall all men know ye are my Disciples if they see ye love God but by this they shall know it is ye love one another Because our love of one another does presuppose we love God which 't is impossible that we do in case we love not one another For he that hateth his Brother is a Murderer and abideth in Death 1 John 3. 14 15. Thus we see how this Scripture is profitable for Doctrin Sect. 3. And as for Doctrin so also for Reproof Because it serves to convince us of the small proportion of Christianity which is to be found amongst men who are commonly call'd Christians How much there is of the word and how little of the thing When the son of man cometh shall he find Faith on the Earth Yes store of that Faith which will ever be common to men with Devils But when the Son of man cometh shall he find Iustice shall he find Mercy shall he find Love upon the Earth shall he find that Faith which worketh by Love and which worketh by such a Love as is the mother of Obedience and the mother of such obedience as is impartially due to the Law of Christ Alas how frequent a thing is it for Christians to persecute their fellow-Christians and then to reckon it as the character of their Discipleship under Christ As if they read the Text backwards or understood it by an Antiphrasis supposing Christ had meant thus By this shall all men know ye are my Disciples if ye Hate one another It is a Crime the more enormous to hate and persecute a Neighbour under colour of Devotion and zeal to God because it breaks the Commandments against each other For if the same God who saith Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart does also say in the same instant Thou shalt love thy Neighbour as thy self It cannot but follow that to persecute or hate a Neighbor in pretense of affection and zeal to God is to take up the Second Table in anger and to dash it in pieces against the first And what is that in effect but to make the Law it s own Transgressor The character of a Christian recommended here to us by Christ himself is not certainly such a praedatorie and ravenous love of one another as was that of the Scribes and Pharisees wherewith they lov'd widdows Houses so far forth as to devour them and eat them up Nor such a cruel kind of love as that of the Canibals in Herodotus who glutted themselves with the flesh of men because they lov'd it as well as Ven'son For when Professors are transported with such an unnatural kind of love as gives them an appetite to bite and devour each other as the Apostle speaks to the Ephesians or to eat up God's people as if they would eat Bread as the Psalmist thought fit to phrase it it hath a tendency to nothing but mutual Ruin No the note of distinction whereby to know a sincere and a solid Christian is such a divine kind of love as tends to Unity and Peace and so by a consequence unavoidable to mutual safety and preservation If we are rooted and grounded in such a love to one another as that of Christ unto us all we shall be known by the fruit we bear to have been grafted into him who is indeed the true vine We shall not only do to no man what we would that no man should do to us which was the Motto an Heathen Prince would needs have carved in all his Plate But what we wish that all men would do to us we shall earnestly endeavour to do to all men we shall love them for God's sake whom for their own sakes we cannot love If we are mearly weak brethren we shall manifest by our weakness we are not wilful And if strong we shall bear the Infirmities of the weak We shall walk in wisdom towards them that are without I mean the Enemies of Christ both Iewes and Gentiles that we may neither be in danger of being corrupted by their secular and sensual baits nor heighten their prejudice to the Gospel by any matter of scandal in our converse Will it not be a very sad and a shameful thing if Iewes and Gentiles shall rise in judgment against a great part of Christendom whilst Christendom shall justifie both Iewes and Gentiles First for the Jews they are so much at unity amongst themselves that however covetous in their particulars and however cruel to us Christians yet they are kind to one another and full of good works too They suffer not the needy to go without his relief nor the Captive without his ransom Nay the Esseni amongst the Jewes had all things in common and living Virgins themselves bestow'd their cost and their care in breeding other solks children This was one of the Jewish Maximes as the most elegant of their Writers hath set it down that Godliness and Honesty or the love of God and the love of men are a kind of Twin-sisters which every Creature is to espowse who is not so wedded to the world as to admit of a Divorce from the caelestial Bride-groom 'T was never allow'd unto the Jewes to abhor an Edomite or an Egyptian or to count any man as an Enemy although he were scaling the City-walls till he had absolutely refus'd their solemn offers of Reconcilement Then secondly for the Gentiles Homer describes the love of Enemies The Pythagoreans gave it in precept and Antius Restio's brave servant reduc't the doctrin into practice Whilst some of the Heathens do love their Enemies were it not well if some Christians would love their Friends What a scandal is it at this day to the Disciples of Mahomet that grand Impostor that the Spirit of Division should seem to reign more amongst Christians than amongst them Nay are there not diverse great Potentates who profess to be the followers and friends of Christ and yet are ready at any rate to buy peace of the Turk to the end they may break it with one another Or not to go so far from home how little is there of Christianity except the syllables and the sound even in
spending upon our sins both to nourish and to adorn them with Food and Rayment Let us spend upon our Saviour in a more liberal proportion and that in such manner as he directs us Let us spend out of our Treasures to feed and cloath him in his members Let us spend to pay him Homage in as many of his members as under Him are our Heads And let us be spent for him as freely like Epaphroditus and S. Paul both by watching and fasting by meditating and praying by suffering paines and persecutions whensoever he shall call or expose us to them not by the leaving of our lives for the paying unto Nature her common Debt but by the laying of them down for the paying to our Saviour our Debt of Grace And as we may help to shame our selves into a love of the Lord Iesus by reflecting on our love to inferiour things so our love to the Lord Iesus just as our love to other things is very apt both to be bred and to be very much nourish't by conversation For Ignoti nulla Cupido We cannot possibly desire him whilst we are ignorant of his beauty And of that we must be ignorant whilst we are strangers to his converse So that the reason why most Professors are wont to love Christ so little doth seem especially to be This their having so little of his Acquaintance Enough of that will so charm us as to beget in us a loathing of all that makes a separation 'twixt Him and us Unto how many things and persons are many men passionately addicted if not absolutely enslav'd for which they can give us no better reason than that of their having been wonted to them let us but wont our selves as much unto an heavenly conversation and we shall find it just as harsh to be weaned from it Hence it follows that we must read and not only read but strictly search into the Scripture not only resting in its literal but also diving into its moral and soaring up too into its mystical significations whereby to acquaint ourselves throughly with the Lord Jesus Christ and more and more to comprehend the great variety of his Perfections And then to the end that his Perfections may so affect us as they deserve nor only float in our Brains but deeply sink into our Bowels we must imprint them within our selves by mental Prayer and Meditation To each of which we must be resolute to be so wonted and inur'd as not to be able without regret to admit of any long Avocation from them Nor can we pardonably excuse our gross neglects of conversing with Jesus Christ by alledging our Inability of taking delight in his converse For conversation must be made easie ere it can possibly be delightful And the easiness of any thing must come by use First 't is the diligence of our converse by which we come to love Christ and then 't will be natural for our Love to make us delight in his converse It argues a shallowness of Reason and a great want of perspicacity to think there are not any Pleasures upon the Mount of Contemplation as Gerson calls it because we cannot yet perceive them at the Foot of the Hill or in the Act of contending to climb up thither 'T is as great weakness as to conclude against the Pleasure of reaping a goodly Harvest from the labour of Cultivation and charge of seed Or to inferr there is no contentment in inhabiting a pleasant and well-built house from the cost of the Materials and Care of putting them together Nemo Montis Cacumen uno faltu conscendit The Hill of Sion is a fair place and Mount Tabor is a delicious one But we must not think to reach the Top of either at a Leap For as the lower and more earthy our pleasures are they must needs be attain'd with the greater ease so we must use the greatest patience and we must take the greatest paines to overcome the steep ascent of the highest pleasures All the Duties of a Christian I mean the Acts and not the Habits are so many steps and degrees to the Hill I speak of Which Acts of Duty whilst they are yet but Acts only will cost the natural man Pain and make him see he hath need of patience But after a competent tract of Time as soon as the Acts have been so numerous as to produce their respective Habits the Acts arising from those Habits will requite the said Patience with ease and pleasure Shall I exemplifie what I say by any one important duty which at first gives us Trouble and after rewards us with Delight I cannot instance in a fitter than that of Prayer because 't is one of the chiefest means whereby to enter and to continue and to complete our conversation with him that bought us How many are there in the world who turn their backs on this Duty upon no better Ground than their erroneous Imagination that 't is of no use to pray till they can do it with Devotion A way of reasoning as irregular as if a man who is very cold should conclude it wholly useless to make a Fire till he is warm Want we Devotion in our Prayers we are to pray for Devotion and Devotion is apt to grow from our customary Praying for other things From when in spite of our Indifferency and perhaps our Averseness to such a Duty we use the Empire of our Wills in the work of Prayer and casting our selves upon our Knees are very resolutely bent to perform the Duty how much soever against the stream of our Inclinations God will reward our Resolution by turning our Labour into delight and so will make it as great a Pleasure in time to come as it has been in time pass't a self-denial If any man shall here ask how we can possibly converse with things invisible or have a Languor after him whom we never saw let them answer saith S. Ierom who have read the answer to it in the Book of Experience and have not been able to forbear crying out with David Wo is me that I am constrained to dwell in Mesech O that I had wings to fly away and be at rest my soul is athirst for the living God And even panteth after Him as the Hart panteth after the water-Brooks O when shall I appear before the Presence of God! Devout S. Bernard himself confess 't that in the beginning of his Conversion he was frequently of an hard and frigid Heart who yet being accustomed to converse with Christ by Grace could not but thirst with great impatience to injoy him also in his Glory Yea that love which of necessity does begin in the Flesh may saith he by Degrees be well consummated in the Spirit For not to mention the seven degrees which are assign'd by Ubertinus as being too nice to be truly useful First 't is natural for a man as he is carnal and depraved to love himself above all things and above