sad a thing is it that we should thus add to our own Afflictions and the heavier we judge the burden the more we lay on As if God had not done enough or would not sufficiently afflict us We may more comfortably bear that which God layeth on us then that which we immediately lay upon our selves Crosses are not great or small according to the bulk of the matter but according chiefly to the minde of the sufferer Or else how could holy men rejoyce in Tribulation and be exceeding glad that they are accounted worthy to suffer for Christ Reproaches wrongs losses are all without you unless you open them the door wilfully your self they cannot come in to the heart God hath not put the Joy or Grief of your Heart in any other mans power but in your own It is you therefore that do your selves the greatest mischief God afflicts your body or men wrong you in your state of name a small hurt if it go on further and therefore you will afflict your soul But a sadder thing yet is it to consider of that men fearing God should so highly value the things of the world They who in their Convenants with Christ are engaged to renounce the world the flesh and the devil They that have taken God in Christ for their Portion for their All and have resigned themselves and all that they have to Christs dispose whose very business in this world and their Christian life consisteth so much in resisting the devil mortifying the flesh and overcoming the world and it is Gods business in his inward works of Grace and his outward teachings and sharp afflictions and examples of others to convince them of the vanity and vexation of the world and throughly to wean them from it And yet that it should be so high in their estimation and sit so close to their hearts that they cannot bear the loss of it without such discontent disquiet and distraction of minde Yea though when all is gone they have their God left them they have their Christ still whom they took for their Treasure they have opportunities for their souls they have the sure promise of Glory yea and a promise that all things shall work together for their good yea and for that one thing that is taken from them they have yet a hundred outward Mercies remaining that yet even Believers should have so much unbelief and have their Faith to seek when they should use it and live by it and that God should seem so small in their eyes as not to satisfie or quit them unless they have the world with him and that the world should still seem so Amiable when God hath done so much to bring it into contempt Truly this and more shews that the work of Mortification is very imperfect in professors and that we bend not the force of our daily strivings and endeavours that way If Christians did bestow but as much time and pains in Mortifying the flesh and getting down the Interest of it in the soul that Christs Interest may be advanced as they do about Controversies external duties formalities tasks of devotion and self tormenting fears O what excellent Christians should we then be and how happily would most of our disquiet be removed Alas if we are so unfit to part with one outward comfort now upon the disposal of our fathers providence how should we forsake all for Christ or what shall we do at death when all must be parted with As ever therefore you would live in true Christian Peace set more by Christ and less by the world and all things in it and hold all that you possess so loosely that it may not be grievous to you when you must leave them So much for the Troubles that arise from your Body and outward state All the rest shall be directed for the Curing of those Troubles that arise immediatly from more Spiritual Causes DIRECTION III. 3. Be sure that you first lay sound apprehensions of Gods nature in your understanding and lay them deeply THis is the first Article of your Creed and the first part of Life Eternal to know God! His substance is quite past humane understanding therefore never make any attempt to reach the knowledge of it or to have any positive conceivings of it for they will be all but Idols or false conceptions but his Attributes are manifested to our understandings Well consider that even under the terrible Law when God proclaims to Moses his own Name and therein his Nature Exod. 34.6 7. the first and greatest part is The Lord God Mercifull and Gracious long suffering and abundant in Goodness and Truth keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity transgression and sin And he hath sworn that he hath no pleasure in the death of a sinner but rather that he return and live Think not therefore of Gods Mercifulness with diminishing extenuating thoughts nor limit it by the bounds of our frail understandings for the heavens are not so far above the earth as his thoughts and wayes are above ours Still remember that you must have no low thoughts of Gods Goodness but apprehend it as bearing proportion with his Power As it is blasphemy to limit his Power so it is to limit his Goodness The advantages that your soul will get by this right knowledge and estimation of Gods Goodness will be these 1. This will make God appear more Amiable in your eyes and then you will Love him more readily and abundantly And Love 1. Is effectually consolatory in the very working so much Love usually so much Comfort I mean this Love of Complacency for a Love of Desire there may be without comfort 2. It will breed perswasions of Gods Love to you again and so Comfort 3. It will be an unquestionable evidence of true Grace and so Comfort The Affections follow the Understandings conceptions If you think of God as one that is glad of all advantages against you and delighteth in his Creatures misery it is impossible you should Love him The Love of our selves is so deeply rooted in nature that we cannot lay it by nor Love any thing that is Absolutely and directly against us We conceive of the devil as an Absolute Enemy to God and man and one that seeks our destruction and therefore we cannot Love him And the great Cause why troubled souls do Love God no more is because they represent him to themselves in an ugly odious shape To think of God as one that seeks and delighteth in mans ruine is to make him as the devil and then what wonder if in stead of Loving him and Delighting in him you tremble at the thoughts of him and fly from him As I have observed Children when they have seen the devil painted on a wall in an ugly shape they have partly feared and partly hated it If you do so by God in your fancy it is not putting the Name of God on him when you have done that will reconcile your Affections
no great Likelyhood or hopes yet that they are sincere If you do as I think many Christians easily may that yet receive not a proportionable comfort remember that this is no small Mercy but matter of great consolation But suppose the worst that you see no Grace in your self yet you cannot be sure you have none For it may be there and you not see it Yea suppose the worst that you were sure that you had no true Grace at all yet remember that you have still abundant cause of Comfort in Gods General Grace Do you think you must needs Despair or give up all Hope and Comfort or conclude your self irrecoverably lost because you are Graceless why be it known to you there is that ground of Consolation in general Grace that may make the hearts of the very wicked to leap for joy Do I need to prove that to you You know that the Gospel is called Glad tidings of salvation and the Preachers of it are to tell those to whom they preach it Behold we bring you tidings of great Joy and glad tidings to all People And you know before the Gospel comes to men they are miserable If then it be glad tidings and tidings of great joy to all the unconverted where it comes why should it not be so to you and where is your great joy If you be Graceless is it nothing to know that God is exceeding merciful slow to anger ready to forgive pardoning iniquity transgression and sin loving mankinde Is it nothing to know that the Lord hath brought Infinite Mercy and Goodness down into humane flesh and hath taken on him the most blessed office of Reconciling and is become the Lamb of God Is it nothing to you that all your sins have a sufficient Sacrifice paid for them so that you are certain not to perish for want of a Ransom Is it nothing to you that God hath made such an universal Grant of Pardon and Salvation to all that will Believe and that you are not on the terms of the meer Law of Works to be judged for not obeying in perfection Suppose you are never so certainly Graceless is it not a Ground of unspeakable Comfort that you may be certain that nothing can condemn you but a flat refusal or unwillingness to have Christ and his Salvation This is a certain truth which may comfort a man as yet unsanctified that sin meerly as sin shall not Condemn him nor any thing in the World but the final obstinate Refusal of the Remedy which thereby leaveth all other sin unpardoned Now I would ask you this Question in your greatest fears that you are out of Christ Are you Willing to have Christ to pardon sanctifie guide and save you or not If you are then you are a true Believer and did not know it If you are not if you will but wait on Gods Word in Hearing and Reading and Consider frequently and seriously of the necessity and excellency of Christ and Glory and the evil of sin the vanity of the world and wil but beg earnestly of God to make you Willing you shall finde that God hath not appointed you this means in vain that this way will be more profitable then all your complainings See therefore when you are at the very lowest that you forsake not the Comforts of General Grace And indeed those that deny any General Grace or Redemption Do leave poor Christians in a very lamentable Condition For alas Assurance of Special Grace yea or a high probability is not so common a thing as meer Disputers against Doubting have imagined And when a poor Christian is beaten from his Assurance which few have he hath nothing but Probabilities and when he hath no confident probable perswasion of special Grace where is he then and what hath he left to support his soul I will not so far now meddle with that Controversie as to open further how this opinion tends to leave most Christians in desperation for all the pretences it hath found and I had done more but that General Redemption or Satisfaction is commonly taught in the maintaining of the General Sufficiency of it though men understand not how they contradict themselves But perhaps you will say This is cold comfort for I may as well argue thus Christ will damn sinners I am a sinner therefore he will damn me as to argue thus Christ will save sinners I am a Sinner therefore he will save me I answer There is no shew of soundness in either of these Arguments It is not a certainty that Christ will save you that can be gathered from General Grace alone that must be had from assurance of of special Grace superadded to the General But a conditional certainty you may have from General Grace onely and thus you may soundly and infallibly argue God hath made a Grant to every sinful man of Pardon and salvation through Christs Sacrifice if they will but Repent and Believe in Christ but I am a sinful man therefore God hath made this Grant of Pardon and Salvation to me DIRECTION XXXI If God do bless you with an able faithful prudent judicious Pastor take him for your Guide under Christ in the way to Salvation and open to him your Case and desire his advice in all your extraordinary pressing necessities where you have found the advice of other godly friends to be insufficient And this not once or twice only but as often as such pressing necessities shall return Or if your own Pastor be more defective for such a work make use of some other Minister of Christ who is more meet HEre I have these several things to open to you 1. That it is your Duty to seek this Direction from the Guides of the Church 2. When and in what cases you should do this 3. To what end and how far 4. What Ministers they be that you should choose thereto 5. In what manner you must open your Case that you may receive satisfaction 1. The first hath two parts 1. That you must open your Case 2. And that to your Pastor 1. The Devil hath great advantage while you keep his Counsel Two are better then one for if one of them fall he hath another to help him It is dangerous Resisting such an enemy alone An uniting of forces oft procureth victory God giveth others knowledge prudence and other gifts for our good that so every member of the body may have need of another and each be useful to the other An Independency of Christian upon Christian is most unchristian much more of people on their Guides It ceaseth to be a Member which is separated from the body and to make no use of the body or fellow members is next to separation from them Sometime bashfulness is the cause sometimes self-confidence a far worse cause but whatever is the cause of Christians smothering their Doubts the effects are oft sad The disease is oft gone so far that the Cure is very difficult
have any strong Christians among them yet we have had the knowledge of such at home 2. Besides the Difficulty of the Subject is a clear Argument that a strong Christian may be uncertain of it God hath made all those points plain in Scripture which must be Believed as of Necessity to Salvation But the Certainty of all Believers Perseverance is not a Point of flat Necessity to Salvation to be Believed Otherwise it would be a hard matter to prove that any considerable number were ever saved till of late or are yet saved but in a very few Countries It is a Point that the Churches never did put into their Creed where they summed up those Points that they held necessary to Salvation There are a great number of Texts of Scripture which seeming to intimate the contrary do make the Point of great Difficulty to many of the wisest And those Texts that are for it are not so express as fully to satisfie them Besides that the examples of these ten years last past have done more to stagger many sober wise Christians in this Point then all the Arguments that ever were used by Papists Arminians or any other To see what kinde of men in some places have fallen and how far as I am unwilling further to mention If you ask me what I think of this my self and consequently what Assurance I have of my own Salvation I will freely tell you both how far I am arrived in Assurance of Sincerity of Grace and Justification and how farre in the matter of Perseverance and so of Salvation I lay seven years under great Doubtings of the truth of my Sanctification especially for want of those Lively Affectionate Heart-melting effects which I desired to have found and for want of Deeper apprehensions of God Christ Glory Sin Misery Mercy Duty c. which made me still fear that all I had was but the meer effects of Education Reading and Speculative Knowledge and so that I had only a Notional Religion that touched my Phantasie and swom in my Brain but workt not throughly on my Heart for want of more Deep and Serious Believing of those holy Truths which should be operative Yet all this while Probabilities of Grace affording me that which we commonly call Hope did bear me up Now through the great unspeakable Mercy of my God I have attained to so strong a Probability of my Sincerity and Sanctification as in a large sense may be called Assurance or Certainty but not in the strictest sense much less is it a perfect Assurance I have so strong a perswasion of the truth of my Faith and so of the pardon of my sinnes as overcometh most doubtings and trouble of minde and keepeth me in quietness and peace of minde and some Joy in the holy Ghost and Delightfull thoughts of my everlasting Rest and gives me a Confidence in God and Access with boldness to the Throne of his Grace But yet I finde that carnal security hath a great hand in the alaying of my troubles though not in the raising of my Joyes And it is no unusual thing for a good Cause and a bad Faith Assurance and Carnal security to joyn together in one effect even in expelling trouble from the heart Yet dare I scarce say in the usual sense of the word that I am certain of my Sincerity and so of my Justification especially when Temptations have prevailed and the strength of the fleshes interest and the weakness of Christs interest in my Estimation and Will and Affections have appeared more then ordinary And when I have thought how much stronger Trials I may yet be put to which others daily undergo especially the Temptations of Prosperity do oftner make me fear then those of persecution and adversity I am sometimes afraid lest it be but the weakness of my Body and the distance of Objects and smalness of Temptations that makes them no more prevailing with me And that if I had as strong a body as others and were in that Dignity Wealth and Abundance of all things as some are whether Honors Carâ—al Pleasures Sports Delightfull Meats Drinks Beauty and such vanities might not carry me away as I see they do others that made as great a shew of Holiness Yet do not these doubts much affright or disquiet me because I finde God at present possessing me with those Resolutions to cast away all for Christ which I doubt not are the work of his own Grace and because I have experience of abundance of preventing and sustaining Grace and because I finde at the present that God enableth me to account all things loss and dross and dung for him and easily without much reluctancy to empty my purse for him and his poor and to lay out my time and strength for him and his Church and with some good success to resist Temptations and that I have no Desire in any activity or prevalency to be any higher in the world then I am but think God hath chosen out for me the best condition and station that I could have desired in all the world And then for Perseverance and Salvation this is my Case It is my strong opinion that no man who hath attained to a Rootedness in the Faith and so is throughly sanctified doth ever totally and finally fall away which Christ seemeth to intimate in saying that the Cause why men fall away in Tribulation and Persecution is because the seed had not deep Rooting Mat. 13. And I am yet more confident that none of the Elect shall ever fall away and perswaded that all the Rooted through-Christians are Elect. But yet I dare not say that I am Certain of this that all are elect to salvation and shall never fall away totally and finally who sincerely Believe and are Justified It is my opinion but I dare not put it into my Creed among either the Points of absolute Necessity or undoubted Verity I know how many Texts of Scripture seem to speak otherwise and I know how generally the Primitive Fathers thought otherwise if a man can know their mindes by their Writings I know that Austin himself the Mall of the Pelagians seems to be either unresolv'd or more against this Perseverance then for it I know how many Learned Godly men do differ from me and deny the Certainty of Perseverance I know how sad and shaking examples this age hath afforded And therefore I am not Certain properly strictly Certain of my Perseverance and so not fully strictly Certain of my Salvation Nor so near to a Certainty of my Salvation as I am to a Certainty of my Faith Justification Adoption and Sanctification Yet am I so strongly confident of it that I shall hold out and be saved that it doth not only calm and quiet my minde and overcome my troubles and fears but also enable me to Rejoyce in Hope of the Glory to come and to Desire Christs coming to Judgement and to think of Death with much more contentedness and
mistakes of many sad Christians hereabouts The cure lieth in breaking off sinne to the utmost of your power This is the Achan that disquieteth all It is Gods great mercy that he disquieteth you in sinning and gives you not over to so deep a slumber and peace in sinne as might hinder your repentance and reformation The dangerous mistakes here are these two 1. Some do as the Lapwing cry loudest when they are furthest from the nest and complain of an aking tooth when the disease is in the head or heart They cry out O I have such wandring thoughts in prayer and such a bad memory and so hard a heart that I cannot weep for sinne or such doubts and fears and so little sense of the Love of God that I doubt I have no true Grace When they should rather say I have so proud a heart that God is fain by these sad means to humble me I am so high in my own eyes so wise in my own conceit and so tender of my own esteem and credit that God is fain to make me base in my own eyes and to abhorre my self I am so worldly and in love with earth that it draws away my thoughts from God duls my love and spoils all my duties I am so sensual that I venture sooner to displease my God then my flesh I have so little compassion on the infirmities of neighbours and servants and other brethren and deal so censoriously churlishly and unmercifully with them that God is fain to hide his mercy from me and speak to me as in anger and vex me as in sore displeasure I am so froward peevish quarrelsome unpeaceable and hard to be pleased that it is no wonder if I have no peace with God or in my own conscience and if I have so little quietness who love and seek it no more Many have more reason I say to turn their complaints into this tune 2. Another most common unhappy miscarriage of sad Christians lieth here that They will rather continue complaining and self-tormenting then give over sinning so farre as they might give it over if they would I beseech you in the Name of God to know and consider what it is that God requireth of you He doth not desire your vexation but your reformation No further doth he desire the trouble of your minde then as it tendeth to the avoiding of that sinne which is the cause of it God would have you less in your fears and troubles and more in your obedience Obey more and disquiet your minde less Will you take this counsel presently and see whether it will not do you more good then all the complaints and doubtings of your whole life have done Set your self with all your might against your pride worldliness and sensuality your unpeaceableness and want of love and tenderness to your brethren and whatever other sin your conscience is acquainted with I pray you tell me If you had gravell in your shoe in your travel would it not be more wisdom to sit down and take off your shoe and cast it out then to stand still or go complaining and tell every one you meet of your soreness If you have a thorn in your foot will you go on halting and lamenting or will you pull it out Truly sinne is the thorn in your conscience and those that would not have such troubled consciences told of their sinnes for fear of increasing their distress are unskilfull comforters and will continue the trouble while the thorn is in As ever you would have peace then resolve against sinne to the utmost of your power Never excuse it or cherish it or favour it more Confess it freely Thank those that reprove you for it Desire those about you to watch over you and to tell you of it yea to tell you of all suspitious signes that they see of it though it be not evident And if you do not see so much Pride Worldliness Unpeaceableness or other sinnes in your self as your friends think they see in you yet let their judgement make you jealous of your heart seeing self-love doth oft so blinde us that we cannot see that evil in our selves which others see in us nay which all the Town may take notice of And be sure to engage your friends that they shall not smooth over your faults or mince them and tell you of them in extenuating language which may hinder Conviction and Repentance much less silence them for fear of displeasing you but that they will deal freely and faithfully with you And see that you distast them not and discountenance not their plain dealing lest you discourage them and deprive your soul of so great a benefit Think best of those as your greatest friends who are least friends to your sinne and do most for your recovery very from it If you say Alas I am not able to mortifie my sinnes It is not in my power I answer 1. I speak not of a perfect conquest nor of a freedom from every passion or infirmity 2. Take heed of pretending disability when it is unwillingness If you were heartily willing you would be able to do much and God would strengthen you Cannot you resist Pride Worldliness and Sensuality if you be willing Cannot you forbear most of the actual sinnes you commit and perform the duties that you omit if you be Willing though not so well as you would perform them Yea let me say this much lest I endanger you by sparing you Many a miserable hypocrite doth live in trouble of minde and complaining and after all perish for their wilfull disobedience Did not the rich young man go farre before he would break off with Christ and when he did leave him he went away sorrowfull And what was the cause of his sorrow Why the matter was that he could not be saved without selling all and giving it to the poor when he had great Possessions It was not that he could not be rid of his sinne but that he could not have Christ and Heaven without forsaking the world This is the case of unsanctified persons that are enlightened to see the need of Christ but are not weaned from worldly profits honours and pleasures they are perhaps troubled in minde and I cannot blame them but it is not that they cannot leave sinning but that they cannot have Heaven without leaving their delights and contentments on earth Sin as sin they would willingly leave For no man can love evil as evil But their fleshly profits honours and pleasures they will not leave and there is the stop and this is the cause of their sorrows and fears For their own judgement cries out against them He that loveth the world the love of the Father is not in him If ye live after the flesh ye shall die God resisteth the proud This is the voice of their informed understandings And conscience seconds it and saith Thou art the man But the flesh cries louder then both these Wilt thou leave
found true Souls Conflict pag. 41 42. Though the main pillar of our Comfort be the free forgiveness of our sins yet if there be a neglect â—f growing in Holiness the soul will never be soundly quiet because it will be proâ—e to question the truth of Justification and it is as proper for sin to raise doubts and fears in the Conscience as for rotten flesh and wood to breed worms Where there is not a pure Conscience there is not a pacified Conscience c. Read the rest This much I have been fain to premise lest my words for Consolation should occasion security and desolation But now let me desire you to peruse the Direction and practice it If when God hath given you Assurance or strong probabilities of your sincerity you will make use of it but onely for that present time you will never then have a setled Peace in your soul Besides the great wrong you do to God by necessitating him to be so often renewing such discoveries and repeating the same words to you so often over If your Child offend you would you have him when he is pardoned no longer to believe it then you are telling it him Should he be still asking you over and over every day Father am I forgiven or no Should not one answer serve his turn Will you not believe that your money is in your purse or chest any longer then you are looking on it Or that your corn is growing on your land or your cattel in your grounds any longer then you are looking on them By this Course a Rich man should have no more content then a beggar longer then he is looking on his money or goods or lands and when he is looking on one he should again lose the Comfort of all the rest What hath God given you a Memory for but to lay up former apprehensions and discoveries and experiences and make use of them on all meet occasions afterwards Let me therefore perswade you to this great and necessary work When God hath once Resolved your Doubts and shewed you the truth of your Faith Love or Obedience Write it down if you can in your book as I have advised you in my Treatise of Rest Such a day upon serious perusal of my heart I found it thus and thus with my self Or at least Write it deep in your Memory And do not suffer any fancies or fears or light surmises to cause you to question this again as long as you fall not from the Obedience or Faith which you then discovered Alas mans Apprehension is a most mutable thing If you leave your soul open to every new apprehension you will never be setled You may think two contrary things of your self in an hour You have not always the same opportunity for right discerning nor the same clearness of Apprehension nor the same outward means to help you nor the same inward Assistance of the Holy Ghost When you have these therefore make use of them and fix your wavering soul and take your Question and Doubt as Resolved and do not tempt God by calling him to new Answers again and again as if he had given you no answer before You will never want some occasion of Jealousie and fears as long as you have Corruption in your heart and sin in your life and a Tempter to be troubling you But if you will suffer any such wind to shake your Peace and Comforts you will be always shaking and fluctuating as a wave of the Sea And you must labour to apprehend not onely the Uncomfortableness but the Sinfulness also of this course For though the questioning your own sincerity on every small occasion be not near so great a sin as the questioning of Gods Merciful Nature or the truth of his Promise or his Readiness to shew Mercy to the Penitent soul or the Freeness and Fulness of the Covenant of Grace yet even this is no contemptible sin For 1. You are doing Satans work in denying Gods Graces and Accusing your self falsly and so pleasing the Devil in Disquieting your self 2. You slander Gods Spirit as well as your own soul in saying He hath not Renewed and Sanctified you when he hath 3. This will necessitate you to further Unthankfulness for who can be Thankful for a Mercy that thinks he never received it 4. This will shut your mouth against all those Praises of God and that Heavenly joyful Commemoration of his great unspeakable Love to your soul which should be the blessed work of your life 5 This will much abate your Love to God and your sense of the Love of Christ in dying for you and all the rest of your Graces while you are still questioning your Interest in Gods Love 6. It will lay such a discouragement on your soul as will both destroy the sweetness of all Duties to you which is a great evil and thereby make you backward to them and heartless in them You will have no mind of Praying Meditation or other duties because all will seem dark to you and you will think that every thing makes against you 7. You rob all about you of that chearful encourageing example perswasion which they should have from you and by which you might win many souls to God And contrarily you are a discouragement and hindrance to them I could mention many more sinful aggravations of your denying Gods Graces in you on every small insufficient occasion which methinks should make you be very tender of it if not to avoyd unnecessary Trouble to your self yet at least to avoyd sin against God And what I have said of Evidences and Assurance I would have you understand also of your Experiences You must not make Use onely at the present of your Experiences but lay them up for the time to come Nor must you tempt God so far as to expect new Experiences upon every new scruple or doubt of yours as the Israelites expected New Miracles in the Wilderness still forgetting the Old If a Scholar should in his Studies forget all that he hath Read and Learned and all the Resolutions of his Doubts which in study he hath attained and leave his Understanding still as an unwritten Paper as Receptive of every Mutation and New Apprehension and contrary Conceit as if he had never studied the Point before he will make but a poor proficiency and have but a fluctuating unsetled brain A Scholar should make all the studies of his Life to compose one entire Image of Truth in his soul as a Painter makes every line he draws to compose one entire picture of a man and as a Weaver makes every thred to compose one Web so should you make all former Examinations Discoveries Evidences and Experiences Compose one full Discovery of your Condition that so you may have a setled Peace of soul And see that you tye both Ends together and neither look on your present troubled state without your former lest you be unthankful and unjustly discouraged nor on
expressions Because if a man be of able natural parts and have a tongue to express his own mind the promoting of holy Desires will help men to expressions For a full soul is hardly hindred from venting it self And experience teacheth us that the spirits enflaming the heart with holy Affections doth very much furnish both the Invention and Expression But this is but accidental and uncertain For those that are either men of unready tongues or that are so ill bred among the rude vulgar that they want fit expressions of their own minds or that are of over-bashful dispositions or especially that are of small knowledge and of little and short acquaintance with those that should teach them to pray by their examples or that have been but of short standing in the School of Christ such a man may have the spirit of Prayer many a year and never be able in full expressions of his own to make known his wants to God no nor in good and tolerable sense and language before others to speak to God from his own Invention A man may know all those Articles of the Faith that are of flat necessity to Salvation and yet not be able to find matter or words for the opening of his heart to God at length I would advise such to frequent the Company of those that can teach and help them in Prayer and neglect not to use the smallest parts they have especially in secret between God and their own souls where they need not so much as in publick to be regardful of expressions and in the mean time to learn a Prayer from some Book that may fitliest express their necessities or to use the Book it self in Prayer If they distrust their memories not resolâ—ing to stick heâ—â— and make it a means of indâ—lâ—iâ—â—â—â—eir laâ—iâ—ess and negligence much less to reproach and deride those that express their desires to God from the present sense of their own wants as some wickedly do deride such but to use this lawful help till they are able to do better without it then with it and then to lay it by and not before The Holy Ghost is said Rom. 8.16 to help our Infirmities in Prayer but how 1. By teaching us what to pray for not always what matter or words to enlarge our selves by but what necessary Graces to pray for 2. By giving us Sighs and Groans unexpressible which is far from giving Copious expressions For Groans and Sighs be not words and if they be Groans that we cannot express it would rather seem to intimate a want of expression then a constant abounding therein where the spirit doth assist Though indeed the meaning is that the Groans are so deep that they are past the expression of our words All our speech cannot express that deep sense that is in our hearts For the Understanding hath the advantage of the Affections herein All the thoughts of the mind may be expressed to others but the Feelings and fervent Passions of the soul can be but very defectively expressed Lastly All have not the spirit of Prayer in like measure nor all that have it in a great measure at one time can find it so at pleasure Desires rise and fall and these earnest Groans be not in every Prayer where the Holy Ghost doth assist I believe there is never a Prayer that ever a Believer did put up to God for things lawful and useful but it was put up by the help of the spirit For the weakest Prayer hath some degree of good Desire in it and addresses to God with an endeavour to express them and these can come from none but onely from the spirit Meer words without desires are no more Prayer then a suit of apparel hang'd on a stake is a man You may have the spirit of Prayer and yet have it in a very weak degree Yet still I would encourage you to bewail your defect herein as your sin and seek earnestly the supply of your wants But what 's that to the questioning or denying your sincerity or right to salvation DOUBT X. I Have no Gifts to make me useful to my self or others When I should profit by the Word I cannot Remember it When I should Reprove a Sinner or Instruct the Ignorant I have not words If I were called to give an account of my Faith I have not words to express that which as in my mind And what Grace can here be then ANSWER THis needs no long Answer Lament and amend those sins by which you have been disabled But know that these Gifts depend more on Nature Art Industry and Common Grace then upon special saving Grace Many a bad man is excellent in all these and many a one that is truly godly is defective Where hath God laid our salvation upon the strength of our Memories the Readiness of our Tongues or measure of the like Gifts That were almost as if he should have made a Law that all shall be saved that have found Complexions and healthful and youthful bodies and all be damned that are sickly aged weak children and most women DOUBT XI O But I have been a grievous sinner before I came home and have fallen foully since and I am utterly unworthy of Mercy Will the Lord ever save such an unworthy wretch as I Will he ever give his Mercy and the blood of his Son to one that hath so abused it ANSWER 1. THe Question is not with God what you have been but what you are God takes men as they then are and not as they were 2. It is a dangerous thing to object the greatness of your Guilt against Gods mercy and Christs Merits Do you think Christs satisfaction is not sufficient or that he dyed for small sins and not for great Do you not know that he hath made satisfaction for all and will pardon all and hath given out the pardon of all in his Covenant and that to all men on Condition they will Accept Christ to pardon and heal them in his own way Hath God made it his great design in the work of mans Redemption to make his Love and Mercy as Honorable and wonderful as he did his Power in the work of Creation and wil you after all this oppose the greatness of your sins against the greatness of this Mercy and Satisfaction why you may as wel think your self to be such a one that God could not or did not Make you as to think your sins so great that Christ could not or did not satisfie for them or will not pardon them if you Repent and Believe in him 3. And for Worthiness I pray you observe There is a twofold Worthiness Righteousness There is a Legal Worthiness and Righteousness which consisteth in a perfect obedience which is the performance of the Conditions of the Law of Pure Nature and Works This no man hath but Christ and if you look after this Righteousness or Worthiness in your self then do you depart from Christ and make
you would you stand asking first How shall I know that it is mine or rather Take and Eat it when you are sure it may be yours if you will Let me intreat you therefore when the devil clamours in your ears Christ and Salvation is none of thine suppose that this voice of God in the Gospel were still in your ears yea let it be still in your memory O Take Christ and Life in him that thou maist be saved still think that you hear Paul following you with these words We are Embassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us we pray you in Christs stead be Reconciled to God Will you but remember this when you are on your knees in sorrow and when you would fain have Christ and Life and you are afraid that God will not give them to you I say Remember then God stands by Beseeching you to Accept the same thing which you are Beseeching him to give God is the first suitor and solicitor God Prayes you to Take Christ and you Pray him to give you Christ what have you now to do but to Take him And here understand that this Taking is no Impossible business it is no more but your hearty Consenting as I shall tell you more anon If you did but well understand and consider that Beleeving is the great Duty that God calls you to perform and promiseth to save you if you do truly perform it and that this Beleeving is to Take or Consent to have the same Mercy which you pray for and are troubled for fear least you shall misse of it even Christ and life in him this would presently draw forth your Consent and that in so open and express a way as you could not but discover it and have the comfort of it Remember this then That your first work is to Beleeve or Accept an offered Saviour 2. You must learn as I told you to Receive the Comforts of Universal or General Grace before you search after the Comforts of Special Grace I here suppose you so far sound in the doctrine of the Gospel as neither with some on one hand to look so much at Special Grace as to deny that General Grace which is the Ground of it or presupposed to it nor with others so far to look at universal Mercy as to deny Special Satan will tell you that all your Duties have been done in hypocrisie and you are unsound at the heart and have not a drop of saving Grace You are apt to entertain this and conclude that all this is true If I had any Grace I should have more Life and Love and Delight in God more tenderness of heart more growth in Grace I should not carry about such a Rock in my breast such a stupid dull insensible soul c. At the present let us suppose that all this be true yet see what a world of Comfort you may gather from Universal or General Mercy I have before opened to you four parts of it in the Cause of your Happiness and three in the Effect which may each of them afford much relief to your troubled soul 1. Suppose you are yet Graceless is it nothing to you that it is a God of Infinite Mercy that you have to do with whose Compassions are ten thousand times greater then your dearest friends or your own husbands Object O but yet he will not save the Graceless Answ True but he is the more ready to give Grace that you may be saved If any of you mark any of you do lack wisdome let him ask it of God who giveth to all men liberally without desert and upbraideth not with our unworthiness or former faults and it shall be given him Jam. 1.4 If you that are evil can give good gifts to your children how much more shall your heavenly Father give his holy Spirit to them that ask it Luk. 11.13 Suppose your life were in the hands of your own husband or your childrens life in your hands would it not exceedingly comfort you or them to consider whose hands they are in though yet you had no further Assurance how you should be used It may be you will say But God is no Father to the Graceless I answer He is not their Father in so neer and strict a sense as he is the Father of Beleevers but yet a Father he is even to the wicked and to convince men of his Fatherly Mercy to them he often so stileth himself He saith by Moses Deut. 32.6 to a wicked generation whose spot was not the spot of his children Do ye thus requite the Lord O foolish people and unwise Is not he thy Father that bought thee hath he not made thee and established thee And the Prodigall could call him Father for his encouragement before he returned to him Luk. 15.16 17 18. For my own part I must needs profess that my soul hath more frequent support from the consideration of Gods Gracious and Merciful nature then from the Promise it self 2. Furthermore Suppose you were Graceless at the present yet is it not an exceeding Comfort that there is one of such Infinite Compassions as the Lord Christ who hath assumed our Nature and is come down to seek and save that which was lost and is more tender hearted to poor sinners then we can possibly conceive yea who hath made it his Office to Heal and Relieve and Restore and Reconcile Yea that hath himself endured such temptations as many of ours For we have not an high-Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities but was in all points tempted like as we are without sin Let us therefore saith the holy Ghost come boldly unto the throne of Grace that we may obtain Mercy and finde Grace to help in time of need Heb. 4.15 16. Forasmuch as the children were partakers of flesh and bloud he also himself likewise took part with them that he might destroy through death him that had the power of death that is the devil and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage For verily he took not on him the nature of Angels but he took on him the seed of Abraham Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his Brethren that he might be a Merciful and faithful high-Priest in things pertaining to God to make Reconciliation for the sins of the people For in that he himself hath suffered being tempted he is able to succour them that are tempted Heb. 2.14 15 16 17 18. Have you discountenance from men Christ had much more Doth God seem to forsake you so he did by Christ Are you fain to lye on your knees crying for Mercy why Christ in the days of his flesh was fain to offer up strong cryes and tears to him that was able to save him and was heard in that he feared It seems that Christ had distressing fears as well as you though not sinful fears Have you horrid
temptations why Christ was tempted to cast himself headlong and to worship the Devil for worldly preferment Yea the devil had power to carry his body up and down to the pinacle of the Temple and the top of a mountain If he had such power of you would you not think your self certainly his slave I conclude therefore as it is an exceeding ground of comfort to all the sick people in a City to know that there is a most merciful and skilful Physitian that is easily able to cure them and hath undertaken to do it freely for all that will take him for their Physitian so is it a ground of exceeding comfort to the worst of sinners to all sinners that are yet alive and have not blasphemed the holy Ghost to know what a Merciful and sufficient Saviour hath undertaken the work of mans Redemption 3. Also Suppose yet that you are Graceless Is it nothing that a sufficient Sacrifice and Ransome is given for you This is the very foundation of all solid Peace I think this is a great comfort to know that God looks now for no satisfaction at your hand and that the Number or Greatness of your sins as such cannot now be your ruine For certainly no man shall perish for want of the payment of his Ransome or of an expiatory Sacrifice for sin but only for want of a willing heart to Accept him that hath freely Ransomed them 4. Also Suppose you are Graceless Is it nothing that God hath under his hand and seal made a full and free Deed of Guift to you and all sinners of Christ and with him of pardon and salvation and all this on Condition of your Acceptance or Consent I know the Despisers of Christ shall be miserable for all this But for you that would fain have Christ is it no comfort to know that you shall have him if you will and to finde this to be the summe of the Gospel I know you have oft read those free offers Rev. 22.17 Whosoever will let him take of the water of life freely Hoe every one that thirsteth come and drink c. Almost all that I have hitherto said to you is comprised in that one text Joh. 3.16 God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting Life And as I have shewed it you in the Causes what Comfort even General Mercie may afford so let me a little shew it you in the Effects I mean not only in that God is now satisfied but as to your self and every sinner these three things are produced hereby 1. There is now a Possibility of Salvation to you And certainly even that should be a very great Comfort I know you will meet with some Divines who will tell you that this is no effect of Christs death and that else Christ should die for God if he procured him a Power to save which he had not before But this is no better then a Reproaching of our Redeemer Suppose that a Traytor have so abused a King that it will neither stand with his own Honour nor Justice nor Laws to pardon him If his Compassion were so great that his own Son shall suffer for him that so the King might be capable of pardoning him without any diminution of his Honour or Justice were it not a vile reproach if this Traytor should tell the Prince that suffered for him It was for your Father that you suffered to procure him a Power of pardoning it was not for me It s true the King could not pardon him without satisfaction to his Honour and Justice But this was not through any Impotency but because the thing was not fit to be done and so was Morally Impossible For in Law we say Dishonest things are Impossible And it had been no losse to the King if the Traytor had not been pardoned So is it in our Case And therefore Christs sufferings could not be more eminently for us then by enabling the offended Majesty to forgive us and so taking the greatest impediment out of the way for when impediments are once removed Gods Nature is so Gracious and prone to Mercy that he would soon pardon us when once it is fit to be done and so Morally possible in the fullest sense only mens own Unwillingness now stands in the way and makes it to be not fully fit to be yet done It s true in a Remote sense the Pardon of sin was alway Possible but in the neerest sense it was Impossible till Christ made it Possible by his Satisfaction 2. Nay though you were yet Graceless you have now this Comfort that your Salvation is Probable as well as Possible You are very fair for it The termes be not hard in themselves on which it is tendered For Christs yoak is easie and his burden light and his Commands are not grievous The word is nigh you even the offer of Grace you need not say who shall ascend to Heaven or go down to hell Rom. 10. But this will appear in the next 3. Yea this exceeding Comfort there is even for them that are Graceless that their Salvation is Conditionally Certain and the Condition is but their own willingness They may all have Christ and Life if they will Now I desire you in all your Doubts that you will well consider and improve this one Truth and Ground of Comfort Would you in the midst of your groans and complaints and fears take it for a small mercy to be certain that you shall have Christ if you will when you are praying for Christ in fear and anguish of spirit if an Angel or voice from Heaven should say to you It shall be unto thee according to thy will If thou wilt have Christ and Life in him thou shalt would this be no Comfort to you would it not revive you and overcome your fears By this time I hope you see what abundance of Comfort General Mercy or Grace may afford the soul before it perceive yea or receive any special Grace though few of those that receive not Special Grace can make much use of General yet it is propounded to them as well as others 1. All the terrifying Temptations which are grounded on misrepresentations of God as if he were a cruel destroyer to be fled from are dispelled by the due consideration of his Goodness and the deep setled apprehensions of his Gracious Merciful Lovely Nature which indeed is the first work of true Religion and the very master Radical Act of true Grace and the chief maintainer of Spiritual Life and Motion 2. All these Temptations are yet more effectually dispelled by considering this Merciful Divine Nature dwelling in flesh becoming man by condescending to the Assumption of our humane Nature and so come neer us and assuming the Office of being the Mediator the Redeemer the Saviour of the world 3. All your doubts and fears that proceed from your former sins whether of youth or
of age of ignorance or of knowledge and those which proceed from your Legal unworthiness have all a present Remedy in the fullness and sufficiency of Christs satisfaction even for all the world so that no sin except the excepted sin is so great but it is fully satisfied for and though you are unworthy yet Christ is worthy and he came into the world to save only the unworthy in the strict and Legal sense 4. All your doubts and fears that arise from an apprehension of Gods unwillingness to shew you Mercy and to give you Christ and Life in him arise from the misapprehension of Christs unwillingness to be yours or at least from the uncertainty of his willingness these have all a sufficient Remedy in the general extent and tenour of the New Covenant Can you doubt whether God be willing to give you Christ and Life when he hath given them already even by a Deed of Guift under his hand and by a Law of Grace 1 Joh. 5.10 11 12. Object But yet all are not Pardoned nor possessed of Christ and so saved Answ I told you that is because they will not so that I pray you mark it well God hath in these four Means before mentioned given even to the Graceless so much Ground of Comfort that nothing but their unwillingness to have Christ is left to be their terror For though sin be not Actually Remitted to them yet is it Conditionally Remitted viz. if they will but accept of Christ offered them Will you remember this when your doubts are greatest and you conclude that certainly Christs is not yours because you have no true Grace Suppose it be true Yet still know that Christ may be yours if you will and when you will This Comfort you may have when you can finde no Evidences of true Grace in your self So much for that Direction DIRECTION VIII 8. The next thing that you have to do for building up a stable Comfort and setling your Conscience in a solid Peace is this Be sure to get and keep a right Understanding of the Nature of Saving Faith AS you must have right thoughts of the Covenant of Grace of which before the want whereof doth puzzle and confound very many Christians so you must be sure to have right thoughts of the Condition of the Covenant For indeed that Grace which causeth you to perform this Condition is your first special saving Grace which you may take as a certain evidence of your Justification And this Condition is the very link which conjoyneth all the General foregoing Grace to all the rest of the following special Grace The Scripture is so full and plain in Assuring pardon and salvation to all true Believers that if you can but be sure that you are a Believer you need not make any doubt of your interest in Christ and your salvation Seeing therefore that all the question will be Whether you have true Faith Whether you do perform the Condition of the new Covenant For all other doubts God hath given you sufficient ground to resolve as is said how much then doth it concern you to have a right understanding of the Nature of this Faith Which that you may have let me tell you briefly what it is Mans soul hath two faculties Understanding and Will Accordingly the Objects of mans soul all Beings which it is to Receive have two Modifications Truth and Goodness as those to be Avoided are Evil. Accordingly God 's Word or Gospel hath two parts the Revelation of Truth and the Offer and Promise of some Good This offered Good is principally and immediatly Christ himself to be joyned to us by Covenant as our head and husband The secondary consequential Good is Pardon Justification Reconciliation Adoption further Sanctification and Glorification which are all offered with Christ By this you may see what saving Faith is It is first a Believing that the Gospel is True and then an Accepting of Christ therein offered to us with his benefits or a consenting that he be ours and we be his which is nothing but a true willingness to have an offered Christ Remember this well that you may make use of it when you are in doubt of the truth of your Faith Thousands of poor souls have been in the dark and unable to see themselves to be Believers meerly for want of knowing what saving Faith is And it is a truth that cannot be hid that Divines who should have taught them better have been the great cause of their errour not well and cleerly understanding this themselves It is a shamefull confession but the world knoweth it already The Papists place almost all in the meer Assent of the Understanding Our great Reformers made it to be either an Assurance of the pardon of our own sins or a strong perswasion of their pardon excluding doubting or the moderatest a perswasion of our particular pardon though mixt with some doubting The Antinomians strike in with them and say the same Hence even the greatest of our Divines Chamier Polanus Twisse c. conclude that Justification and Remission go before faith a desperate errour because the Act doth alway suppose its object For they thought that Remission already past was the object of Justifying Faith supposing faith to be nothing else but a Belief that we are pardoned Yea ordinarily it hath been taught in the writings of our greatest refuters of the Papists That this Belief is properly a Divine faith or the Belief of a Divine Testimony as is the Believing of any Proposition written in the Scriture a foul error which I have confuted in my book of Rest Part. 3. Chap. 7. Most of late have come neerer the truth and affirmed Justifying Faith to consist in Affiance or Recumbency or Resting on Christ for salvation No doubt this is one Act of Justifying faith but not that which a poor troubled soul should first search after and try it self by except by Affiance any should mean as Amesius doth Election of Christ and then it is the same act which I am asserting but very unfitly exprest For 1. Affiance is not the Principal act nor that wherein the very life of Justifying faith doth consist but only an imperate following act and an effect of the vital act which is Consent or Willing or Accepting Christ offered for it lyeth mainly in that which we call the sensitive part or the Passions of the soul 2. It is therefore lesse constant and so unfitter to try by For many a poor soul that knowes it self unfeignedly willing to have Christ yet feeleth not a Resting on him or Trusting in him and therefore crys out O I cannot believe and think they have no Faith For Recumbency Affiance or Resting on Christ implieth that easing of themselves or casting off their fears or doubts or cares which true believers do not alwayes finde Many a poor soul complains O I cannot rest on Christ I cannot trust him who yet would have him to be their Lord and
the fourth point is undeniable That It is but very few Christians that reach to Assurance of Salvation If any think as intemperate hot spirited men are like enough to charge me that in all this I countenance the Popish doctrine of Doubting and Uncertainty and contradict the common doctrine of the Reformed Divines that Write against them I answer 1. I do contradict both the Papists that deny Assurance and many forreign Writers who make it farre more Easie Common and Necessary then it is much more both them and the Antinomists who place Justifying faith in it But I stand in the midst between both extreams and I think I have the company of most English Divines 2. I come not to be of this minde meerly by reading Books but mainly by reading my own heart and consulting my own experience and the experience of a very great number of Godly people of all sorts who have opened their hearts to me for almost twenty years time 3. I would intreat the gainsayers to study their own hearts better for some considerable time and to be more in hearing the case and complaints of Godly people and by that time they may happily come to be of my minde 4. See whether all those Divines that have been very practical and successfull in the work of God and much acquainted with the way of the Recovery of lost souls be not all of the same Judgement as I in this point such as T. Hooker Jo. Rogers Preston Sibs Bolton Dod Culverwell c. And whither the confidentest men for the contrary be not those that study Books more then hearts and spend their daies in Disputing and not in winning souls to God from the world Lastly Let me add to what is said these two Proofs of this fourth Point here asserted 1. The constant experience of the greatest part of Believers tels us that Certainty of salvation is very rare Even of those that live comfortably and in peace of Conscience yet very few of them do attain to a Certainty For my part it is known that God in undeserved Mercy hath given me long the society of a great number of Godly people and great interest in them and privacy with them and opportunity to know their mindes and this in many places my station by providence having been oft removed and I must needs profess that of all these I have met with few yea very few indeed that if I seriously and privately asked them Are you Certain that you are a true Believer and so are Justified and shall be Saved durst say to me I am Certain of it But some in great doubts and fears most too secure and neglective of their states without Assurance and some in so good hopes to speak in their own language as calmeth their spirits that they can comfortably cast themselves on God in Christ And those few that have gone so far beyond all the rest as to say They were Certain of their sincerity and salvation were the Professors whose state I suspected more then any of the rest as being the most proud self-conceited censorious passionate unpeaceable sort of Professors and some of them living scandalously and some fallen since to more scandalous waies then ever And the most of their humble godly acquaintance or neighbours suspected them as well as I. Or else some very few of them that said they were Certain were honest godly people most women of smal Judgement and strong Affections who depended most on that which is commonly called The sense or feeling of Gods Love and were the lowest at some times as they were the highest at other times and they that were one moneth certain to be saved perhaps the next moneth were almost ready to say they should certainly be damned So that taking out all these sorts of persons the sober solid judicious Believers that could groundedly and ordinarily say I am Certain that I shall be Saved have been so few that it is sad to me to consider it If any other mens experiences be contrary I am glad of it so be it they be Sober Judicious men able to gather experiences and so they live not among meer Antinomians and take not the discovery of their meer opinion for a discovery of experience For I have seen in divers professors of my long acquaintance the strange power of Opinion and Phantasie in this thing I have known those that have lived many years in doubting of their Salvation and all that while walked uprightly and in the late Warres falling into the company of some Anabaptists they were by them perswaded that there was no right way to their comfort but by being Re-baptized and associating themselves with the Re-baptized Church and abstaining from the hearing of the Unbaptized Parish Priests as they called them No sooner was this done but all their former doubtings and troubles were over and they were as comfortable as any others as themselves affirmed which no doubt proceeded from partly the strength of Phantasie conceiting it should so be and partly from the Novelty of their way which delighted them and partly from the strong Opinion they had that this was the way of Salvation and that the want of this did keep them in the dark so long and partly from Satans policy who troubleth people least when they are in a way that pleaseth him But when these people had lived a year or two in this comfortable condition they fell at last into the society of some Libertines or Familists who believe that the Scriptures are all but a dream fiction or Allegory These presently perswaded them that they were fools to regard Baptism or such Ordinances and that they might come to hear again in our Congregations seeing all things were lawfull and there was no Heaven or Hell but within men and therefore they should look to their safety and credit in the world and take their pleasure This lesson was quickly learned and then they cried down the Anabaptists and confessed they were deluded and so being grown loose while they were Anabaptists to mend the matter they grew Epicures when they had been instructed by the Libertines and this was the end of their new gotten comfort Others I have known that have wanted Assurance and falling among the Antinomians were told by them that they undid themselves by looking after Signs and Marks of Grace and so laying their comforts upon something in themselves whereas they should look only to Christ for Comfort and not at any thing in themselves at all and for Assurance it is only the Witness of the Spirit without any Marks that must give it them and to fetch Comfort from their own Graces and Obedience was to make it themselves in stead of Christ and the holy Ghost and was a Legal way No sooner was this Doctrine received but the Receivers had Comfort at will and all was sealed up to them presently by the Witness of the Spirit in their own Conceits Whence this came judge you I told
or treasures of the earth If you had as you have an offer of God Christ Grace and Glory on one side and worldly prosperity in sin on the other side you would choose God and let go the other You dare not you would not give over Praying Hearing Reading and Christian company and give up your self to worldly fleshly pleasures yet you are not Assured of salvation because you finde not that Delight and Life in Duty and that Witness of the Spirit and that communion with God nor that tenderness of heart as you desire It is well that you desire them But though you be not Certain of Salvation do not you see a great likelihood a Probability in all this Is not your heart raised to a Hope that yet God is mercifull to you and means you good Doubtless this you might easily discern The second thing that I am to shew you is that there may much spiritual Comfort and Peace of Conscience be enjoyed without any Certainty of Salvation given upon these forementioned Probabilities Which I prove thus 1. No doubt but Adam in innocency had Peace of Conscience and Comfort and Communion with God and yet he had no Assurance of Salvation I mean either of continuing in Paradise or being translated to Glory For if he had either he was sure to persevere in Innocency and so to be glorified But that was not true or else he must foreknow both that he should fall and be raised again and saved by Christ But this he knew not at all 2. Experience tels us that the greatest part of Christians on earth do enjoy that Peace and Comfort which they have without any Certainty of their Salvation 3. The Nature of the thing telleth us that a likelihood of so great a mercy as everlasting Glory must needs be a ground of great Comfort If a poor condemned prisoner do but hear that there is Hopes of a pardon specially if very probable it will glad his heart Indeed if an Angel from Heaven were brought into this state it would be sad to him But if a devil or a condemned sinner have such Hope it must needs be glad news to them The devils have it not but we have 3. Let me next therefore intreat you to take the Comfort of your Probabilities of Grace and Salvation Your horse or dog knoweth not how you will use them Certainly yet will they lovingly follow you and put their heads to your hand and trust you with their lives without fear and love to be in your company because they have found you kinde to them and have tried that you do them no hurt but good yea though you do strike them sometimes yet they finde that they have their food from you and your favour doth sustain them Yea your little children have no Certainty how you will use them and yet finding that you have alwaies used them kindly and expressed Love to them though you whip them sometimes yet are glad of your company and desire to be in your lap and can trust themselves in your hands without tormenting themselves with such doubts as these I am uncertain how my mother will use me whether she will wound me or kill me or turn me out of doors and let me perish Nature perswades us not to be too distrustfull of those that have alwaies befriended us and especially whose Nature is Mercifull and Compassionate Nor to be too suspitious of evil from them that have alwaies done us good Every man knows that the Good will do good and the Evil will do evil and accordingly we expect that they should do to us Naturally we all fear a Toad a Serpent an Adder a mad Dog a wicked Man a mad Man a cruel blood thirsty Tyrant and the Devil But no one fears a Dove a Lamb a good Man a mercifull compassionate Governour except only the Rebels or notorious offenders that know he is bound in justice to destroy or punish them And none should fear distrustfully the wrath of a gracious God but they who Will not submit to his Mercy and Will not have Christ to reign over them and therefore may know that he is bound in Justice if they come not in to destroy them But for you that would be Obedient and Reformed and are troubled that you are no better and beg of God to make you better and have no sin but what you would be glad to be rid of may not you at least see a strong Probability that it shall go well with you O make use therefore of this Probability and if you have but Hopes that God will do you good rejoice in those Hopes till you can come to rejoyce in Assurance And here let me tell you that Probabilities are of divers Degrees according to their divers Grounds Where men have but a little Probability of their Sincerity and a greater Probability that they are not Sincere in the faith these men may be somewhat born up but it behoves them presently to search in fear and to amend that which is the cause of their fear Those that have more Probability of the Sincerity of their hearts then of the contrary may well have more peace then trouble of minde Those that have yet a higher Degree of Probability may live in more Joy and so according to the Degree of Probability may their Comforts still arise And observe also that it is but the highest Degree of this Probability here which we call a Certainty For it is a Moral Certainty and not that which is called a Certainty of Divine faith nor that which is called a Certainty of evidence in the strictest sense though yet evidence there is for it But it is the same evidences materially which are the ground of Probability and of Certainty Only sometime they differ Gradually one having more Grace and another less and sometime not so neither for he that hath more Grace may discern but a Probability in it through some other defect no more then he that hath less But when one man discerns his Graces and Sincerity but darkly he hath but a Probability of Salvation manifested by them and when another discerneth them more clearly he hath a stronger Probability and he that discerneth them most clearly if other necessaries concurre hath that which we call a Certainty Now I am perswaded that you frequently see a strong Probability of your Sincerity and may not that be a very great stay and comfort to your soul Nay may it not draw out your heart in Love Delight and Thankfulness Suppose that your name were written in a piece of paper and put among a hundred or fifty or but twenty other like papers into a Lottery and you were certain that you should be the owner of this whole Land except your name were drawn the first time and if it were drawn you should die Would your Joy or your Sorrow for this be the greater Nay if it were but ten to one or but two to one odds on
you would draw a block through the water but as men that must hold fast and be commanded and threatned to that end and therefore when they lose their hold it is the fear of drowning which they felt themselves near which shall cause them to hold faster the next time and this must needs be the fear of a possible danger And for those that perish they have none to blame but themselves They perish not for want of a Saviour but because they would not lay hold on him and follow him through the tempests and waves of trial Nor can they quarrel with him because he did more for others and did not as much for them as long as he offered them so sufficient help that only their own wilfull refusal was their ruine and their perdition was of themselves I conclude therefore That seeing our Salvation is laid by God upon our faithfull obedient holding fast to Christ through all trials and difficulties and our holy fear is the means of that holding fast Christ being still the principal cause of our safety therefore never look for such a Certainty of Salvation as shall put you above such fears and moderated apprehensions of danger For then it s ten to one you will lose your hold You read in Scripture very many warnings to take heed least we fall and threatnings to those that do fall away and draw back What are all these for but to excite in us those moderate fears and cares and holy diligence which may prevent our falling away And remember this that there can be no such holy fears and cares and diligence where there is no danger or possibility of falling away for there can be no Act without its proper Object And the Object of fear is A possible hurt at least in the apprehension of him that feareth it No man can fear that evil which he knoweth to be Impossible DIRECTION XXI 21. The next advice which I must give you is this Be thankfull if you can but reach to a setled Peace and composure of your minde and lay not too much on the high raptures and feelings of comfort which some do possess And if ever you enjoy such feeling Joyes expect not that they should be either long or often IT is the cause of miserable languishing to many a poor soul to have such importunate expectations of such passionate Joyes that they think without these they have no true comfort at all no witness of the Spirit no Spirit of Adoption no joy in the holy Ghost Some think that others have much of this though they have not and therefore 〈…〉 themselves because it is no◠〈…〉 as with others when alas they little 〈◊〉 how it goes with others Some 〈…〉 raptures sometimes themselves and therefore when they are gone they think they are forsaken and that all grace or peace at least is gone with them Take heed of these expectations And to satisfie you let me tell you these two or three things 1. A setled calm and peace of soul is a great Mercy and not to be undervalued and looked at as Nothing 2. The highest raptures and passionate feeling joyes are usually of most doubtfull sincerity Not that I would have any suspect the sincerity of them without cause but such passions are not so certain signes of Grace as the setled frame of the understanding and will nor can we so easily know that they are of the Spirit and they are liable to more questioning and have in them a greater Possibility of deceit Doubtless it is very much that Phantasie and Melancholy and specially a natural weakness and moveable temper will do in such cases Mark whether it be not mostly these three sorts of people that have or pretend to have such extraordinary raptures and feelings of joy 1. Women and others that are most passionate 2. Melancholy People 3. Men that by erroneous opinions have lost almost all their understandings in their phantasies and live like men in a continual dream Yet I doubt not but solid men have oft high joyes and more we might all have if we did our duty And I would have no Christian content himself with a dull quietness of spirit but by all means possible to be much in labouring to rejoyce in God and raising their souls to heavenly delights O what lives do we lose which we might enjoy But my meaning is this Look at these joyes and delights as Duties and as Mercies but look not at them as Marks of trial so as to place more necessity in them then God hath done or to think them to be ordinary things If you do but feel such an high estimation of Christ and Heaven that you would not leave him for all the world take this for your surest Signe And if you have but so much Probability or Hope of your interest in him that you can think of God as one that loveth you and can be thankfull to Christ for Redeeming you and are gladder in these hopes of your interest in Christ and Glory then if you were owner of all the world take this for a happy Mercy and a high Consolation Yet I mean not that your joy in Christ will be alwaies so sensible as for worldly things but it will be more rational solid and deeper at the Heart And that you may know by this You would not for all the Pleasures Honours or Profits in the world be in the same case as once you were supposing that you were converted since you had the use of Reason and Memory or at least as you see the ungodly world still lye in 3. And let me adde this Commonly those that have the highest passionate joyes have the saddest lives for they have with all the most passionate fears and sorrows Mark it whether you finde not this prove true And it is partly from Gods will in his dispensations partly from their own necessities who after their exaltations do usually need a prick in the flesh and a messenger of Satan to buffet them lest they be exalted above measure and partly and most commonly it is from the temperature of their bodies Weak pastionate women of moveable spirits and strong affections when they Love they Love violently and when they Rejoyce especially in such cases they have most sensible joyes and when any fears arise they have most terrible sorrows I know it is not so with all of that sex but mark the same people usually that have the highest Joyes and see whether at other times they have not the greatest troubles This week they are as at the gates of Heaven and the next as at the doors of hell I am sure with many it is so Yet it need not be so if Christians would but look at these high joyes as Duties to be endeavoured and Mercies to be valued But when they will needs Judge of their state by them and think that God is gone from them or forsaken them when they have not such joyes then it leaves
Flesh-pleasing The three great sinnes therefore that do most directly fight against God himself in his Sovereignty are 1. Pride or Ambition 2. Worldlines or Love of Riches 3. Sensuality Voluptuousness or inordinate Love of Pleasures There are in the Vnderstanding indeed other sinnes as directly against God as these and more radicall as 1. Atheism denying a God 2. Polutheism denying our God to be the Alone God and joyning others with him 3. Idolatry owning false Gods 4. Infidelity denying Jesus Christ our Lord-Redeemer 5. Owning false Saviours and Prophets in his stead or before him as do the Mahometans 6. Joyning other Redeemers and Saviours with him as if he were not the alone Christ 7. Denying the holy Ghost and denying Credit to his Holy and Miraculous Testimony to the Christian faith and blasphemously ascribing all to the devil which is the sinne against the Holy Ghost 8. Owning and believing in devils or Lying spirits in stead of the Holy Ghost as the Montanists Mahometans Ranters Familists do 9. Owning and adjoyning devils or Lying spirits in coordination or equality with the Holy Ghost and believing equally his doctrine and theirs as if he were not sole and sufficient in his Work All these are sinnes directly against God himself and if prevalent most certainly damning three against the Father three against the Sonne and three against the Holy Ghost But these be not they that I need now to warn you of These are prevalent only in Pagans Infidels and Blasphemers Your troubles and complaints shew that these are not predominant in you It is therefore the three forementioned sinnes of the Heart or Will that I would have you carefully to look after in your troubles to see whether none of them get ground and strength in you 1. Enquire carefully into your humility It is not for nothing that Christ hath said so much of the excellency and necessity of this Grace When he bids us learn of him to be meek and lowly when he blesseth the meek and poor in spirit when he setteth a little child in the midst of them and telleth them Except they become as that child they could not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven when he stoopeth to wash and wipe his Disciples feet requiring them to do so by one another How oft doth the Holy Ghost press this upon us Commanding us to submit our selves to one another and not to minde high things but to condescend to men of low estate Rom. 12.16 and not to be wise in our own esteem but in honour preferre others before our selves Rom. 12.10 How oft hath God professed to resist and take down the Proud and to give Grace to the humble and dwell with them Search carefully therefore lest this sinne get ground upon you For though it may not be so predominant and reigning as to damn you yet may it cause God to afflict you and hide his face from you and humble you by the sense of his displeasure and the concealment of his Love And though one would think that doubting troubled souls should be alwaies the most humble and freest from pride yet sad experience hath certified me that much pride may dwell with great doubtings and distress of minde Even some of the same souls that cry out of their own unworthiness and fear lest they shall be firebrands of Hell yet cannot endure a close reproof especially for any disgracefull sin nor cannot bear a disparaging word nor love those nor speak well of them who do not value them nor endure to be crost or contradicted in word or deed but must have all go their way and follow their judgement and say as they say and dance after their pipe and their hearts rise aginst those that will not do it much more against those that speak or do any thing to the diminishing of their Reputation They cannot endure to be low and past by and overlooked when others are preferred before them or to be slighted and disrespected or their words or parts or works or judgements to be contemned or disparaged Nay some are scarce able to live in the same House or Church or Town in love and peace with any but those that will humour and please them and speak them fair and give them smooth and stroaking language and forbear crossing reproving and disparaging them Every one of these singly is an evident mark and fruit of pride how much more all joyntly I seriously profess it amazeth me to consider how hainously most professors are guilty of this sin even when they know it to be the devils own sin and the great abomination hated of God and read and hear so much against it as they do and confess it so oft in their praiers to God and yet not only inwardly cherish it but in words actions gestures apparel express it and passionately defend these discoveries of it The confusions and distractions in Church and State are nothing else but the proper fruits of it so are the contentions among Christians and the unpeaceableness in families For only from pride cometh contention saith Solomon Prov. 13.10 For my part when I consider the great measure of pride self-conceitedness self-esteem that is in the greatest part of Christians that ever I was acquainted with we of the Ministry not excepted I wonder that God doth not afflict us more and bring us down by foul means that will not be brought down by fair For my own part I have had as great means to help me against this sin as most men living have had first in many years trouble of minde and then in near twenty years languishing and bodily pains having been almost twenty times at the graves mouth and living near it continually and lastly and above all I have had as full a sight of it in others even in the generality of Professors and in the dolefull state of the Church and State and haynous detestable abominations of this ageâ— which one would think should have fully cured it And yet if I hear but either an applauding word from any of fame on one side or a disparaging word on the other side I am fain to watch my heart as narrowly as I would do the thatch of my house when fire is put to it and presently to throw on it the water of Detestation Resolution and Recourse to God And though the acts through Gods great mercy be thus restrained yet the constancy of these inclinations assures me that there is still a strong and deep root I beseech you therefore if you would ever have setled Peace and Comfort be watchfull against this sinne of Pride and be sure to keep it down and get it mortified at the very heart 2. The next sin that I would have you be specially jealous of is coveteousness or love of the profits or riches of the world This is not the sin of the rich only but also of the poor and more hainous is it in them to love the world inordinatly that have so
strongly and sensibly that its usual for later motions which are more deeply affecting to make us overlook all the former or take them for nothing 10. God dealeth very variously with his Chosen in their Conversion as to the accidentals and circumstances of the work Some he calleth not home till they have run a long race in the way of Rebellion in open drunkenness swearing worldliness and derision of holiness These he usually humbleth more deeply and they can better observe the several steps of the Spirit in the work and yet not always neither Others he so restraineth in their youth that though they have not saving Grace yet they are not guilty of any Gross sins but have a liking to the people and ways of God and yet he doth not savingly convert them till long after It is much harder for these to discern the time or manner of their Conversion yet usually some conjectures they may make And usually their humiliation is not so deep Others as is said have the saving workings of the Spirit in their very Childhood and these can least of all discern the certain time or order The ordinary way of Gods dealing with those that are Children of Godly Parents and have good Education is by giving them some liking of Godly persons and ways some Conscience of sin some Repentance and recourse by prayer to God in Christ for mercy yet youthful lusts and folly and ill company do usually much stifle it till at last by some Affliction or Sermon or Book or good Company God setteth home the work and maketh them more Resolute and victorious Christians These persons now can remember that they had convictions and stirrings of Conscience when they were young and the other fore-mentioned works perhaps they can remember some more notable rowsings and awakenings long after and perhaps they have had many such fits and steps and the work hath stood at this pass for a long time even many years together But at which of all these Changes it was that the Soul began to be savingly sincere I think is next to an impossibility to discern According to that experience which I have had of the state of Christians I am forced to Judge that most of the Children of the Godly that ever are Renewed are Renewed in their Childhood or much towards it then done and that among forty Christians there is not one that can certainly name the month in which his soul first began to be sincere and among a thousand Christians I think not one can name the hour The Sermon which awakened them they may name but not the hour when they first arrived at a saving sincerity My advice therefore to all Christians is this Find Christ by his Spirit dwelling in your hearts and then never trouble your selves though you know not the time or manner of his entrance Do you value Christ above the world and Resolve to choose him before the world and perform these Resolutions Then need you not doubt but the Spirit of Jesus is victorious in you DOUBT II. BVT I have oft read and heard thâ—t a man cannot come to Christ till he feel the heavy burthen of sin It is the weary and heavy-laden that Christ calleth to him He bindeth up onely the broken-hearted he is a Physician onely to those that feel themselves sick he brings men to Heaven by the gates 〈◊〉 Hell They must be able to say I am in a loâ—â— Condition and in a state of damnation and â—f I should dye this hour I must perish for ever before Christ will deliver them God wiâ—l not throw away the blood of his Son on those that feel not their absolute necessity of it and that they are undone without it But it was never thus with me to this day ANSWER YOU must distinguish carefully between Repentance as it is in the Mind and Will and as it shews it self in the Passion of Sorrow All that have saving interest in Christ have their Judgements and Wils so far changed that they know they are great sinners and that there is no way to the obtaining of pardon and salvation but by Christ and the free mercy of God in him and thereupon they are convinced that if they remain without the Grace of Christ they are undone for ever Whereupon they understanding that Christ and Mercy is offered to them in the Gospel do heartily and thankfully accept the offer and would not be without Christ or change their Hopes of his Grace for all the world and do resolve to wait upon him for the further discovery of his Mercy and the workings of his Spirit in a Constant and Conscionable use of his Meaâ—s and to be Ruled by him to their power Is it not thus with you If it be here is the Life and Substance of Repentance which consisteth in this change of the mind and heart and you have no Cause to Doubt of the truth of it for want of more deep and passionate humiliation 2. I have told you before how uncertain and unconstant the Passionate effects of Grace are and how unfit to Judge by and given you several Reasons of it Yet I doubt not but some work upon the Affections there is as well as on the Will and Understanding but with so great diversity of manner and degrees that it is not safe judging by it onely or chiefly Is there no degree of Sorrow or Trouble that hath touched your heart for your sin or Misery If your Affections were no whâ—â— stir'd you would hardly be moved to Actâ—on to use means or avoyd iniquity much less would you so oft complain as you do 3. If God prevented those hainous sins in the time of your unregeneracy which those usually are guilty of who are called to so deep a degree of sorrow you should rather be thankful that your wound was not deeper then troubled that the Cure cost you not dearer Look well whether the Cure be wrought in the change of your heart and life from the world to God by Christ and then you need not be troubled that it was wrought so easily 4. Were you not acquainted with the evil of sin and danger and misery of sinners in your very Childhood and also of the necessity of a Saviour and that Christ dyed to save all sinners that will believe and Repent and hath not this fastned on your heart and been working in you by Degrees ever since If it be so then you cannot expect that you should have such deep terrours as those that never hear of sin and Christ till the news come upon them suddenly in the ripeness of their sin There is a great deal of difference betwixt the Conversion of a Jew or any other Infidel who is brought on the sudden to know the doctrine of Sin Misery and Salvation by Christ and the Convertion of a Professour of the Christian Religiâ—â— who hath known this doctrine in some sort from his Childhood and who hath a sound Religion though
study for you Make him know by experience that the tenth part of a Ministers labor is not in the Pulpit If your sins are strong and you have wounded Conscience deep go for his advice for a safe cure Many a mans sore festers to damnation for want of this And poor ignorant and scandalous sinners have far more need to do this then troubled Consciences I am confident if the people of my Congregation did but do their duty for the good of their own souls in private seeking advice of their Ministers and opening their cases to them they would finde work for ten Ministers at least And yet those two that they have have more work then they are able to do already Especially Ministers in small Countrey Congregations might do abundance of Good this way And their people are much too blame that they come not oftner to them for advice This were the way to make Christians indeed The Devil knows this and therefore so envies it that he never did more against a design in the world he hath got the Maintenance alienated that should have maintained them that so they may have but one Minister in a Congregation and then among the greater Congregations this work is impossible for want of Instruments yea he is about getting down the very Churches and settled Ministery if God will suffer him He setteth his Instruments to rail at Priests and Discipline and to call Christs yoke Tyranny because while the Garden is hedged in he is fain with envy to look over the hedge What if a man like those of our times should come to a Town that have an Epidemical Pleurifie or Feaver and say Do not run lâ—ke fools to these Physicians they do but cheat you and rob your purses and seek themselves and seek to be Lords of your lives It s possible some do so But if by these perswasions the silly people should lose their lives how well had their new preacher befriended them such friends will those prove at last to your souls that disswade you from obeying the Guidance and Discipline of your Overseers and dare call the Ordinances of the Lord of Glory Tyrannical and reproach those that Christ hath set over them England will not have Christ by his officers Rule over them nor the several Congregations will not obey him But he will make them know before many years are past that they refused their own mercy and knew not the things that belong to their Peace and that he will be master at last in spight of Malice and the proudest of his foes If they get by this bargain of Refusing Christs Government and Despising his Ministers and making the Peace Unity and Prosperity of his Church and the souls of men a Prey to their Proud misguided Phansies and Passions then let them boast of the bargain when they have tryed it Only I would intreat one thing of them Not to judge too confidently till they have seen the end And for all you tender Conscienc'd Christians whom by the Ministry the Lord hath begotten or confirmed to himself as ever you will shew your selves thankful for so great a mercy as ever you will hold that you have got or grow to more perfection and attain that blessed Life to which Christ hath given you his Ministers to conduct you see that you stick close to a judicious godly faithful Ministry And make use of them while you have them Have you strong lusts or deep wounds in conscience or a heavy burthen of doubtings or distress seek their advice God will have his own ordinance and officers have the chief instrumental hand in your cure The same means oft times in another hand shall not do it Yet I would have you make use of all able private Christians help also I will tell you the reason why our Ministers have not urged this so much upon you nor so plainly acquainted their Congregations with the necessity of opening your case to your Minister and seeking his advice 1. Some in opposition to Popery have gone too far on the other extream perhaps sinning as deeply in neglect as the Papists do in formal excess It is a good sign that an opinion is true when it is near to errour For truth is the very next step to error The small thred of Truth runs between the close adjoyning extreams of errour 2. Some Ministers knowing the exceeding greatnes of the burthen are loth to put themselves upon it This one Work of giving advice to all that ought to come and open their case to us if our people did but what they ought do for their own safety would it self in great Congregations be more then preaching every day in the week What then is all the rest of the work And how can one man yea or five do this to five thousand souls And then when it lieth undone the malicious Reproachers rail at the Ministers and accuse the people of unfitness to be Church-members which howsoever there may be some cause of yet not so much as they suggest and that unfitness would best be cured by the diligence of more Labourers which they think to cure by removing the few that do remain 3. Also some Ministers seeing that they have more work then they can do already think themselves uncapable of more and therefore that its vain to put their people on it to seek more 4. Some Ministers are over-modest and and think it to be unfit to desire people to open their secrets to them in confessing their sins and corrupt inclinations and opening their wants And indeed any ingenuous man will be backward to pry into the secrets of others But when God hath made it our office under Christ to be Physicians to the souls of our People it is but bloody cruelty to connive at their Pride and Carnal Bashfulness or Hypocritical Covering of their sins and to let them dye of their disease rather then we will urge them to disclose it 5. Some Ministers are loth to tell People of their duty in this lest it should confirm the world in their malicious conceit that we would be Masters of Mens Consciences and would lord it over them This is as much folly and cruelty as if the Master and Pilot of the Ship should let the Mariners govern the Ship by the Major Vote and run all on shelves and drown themselves and him and all for fear of being thought Lordly and Tyrannical in taking the Government of the Ship upon himself and telling the Mariners that it is their duty to obey him 6. Most godly Ministers do tell People in General of the Necessity of such a Dependance on their Teachers as Learners in the School of Christ should have on them that are Ushers under him the chief Master and they do gladly give advice to those that do seek to them But they do not so particularly and plainly acquaint People with their duty in opening to them the particular sores of their souls It is also the
still You cannot Delight in God I say again Do but acknowledge it the great work that God requireth of you and make it your daily aim and care and business and then you will more easily and certainly attain it But while you know not your work or so far mistake it as to think it consisteth more in sorrows and fears and never endeavour in your Duties or Meditations to raise your soul to a Delight in God but rather to cast down your self with still poaring on your miseries no wonder then if you be a stranger to this life of holy Delight By this time I find my self come up to the subject of my Book of the Saints Rest wherein having said so much to Direct and Excite you for the attainment of these Spiritual and Heavenly Delights I will referr you to it for your help in that work and adde no more here but to Desire you through the course of your life to remember That the true Love of God in Christ and Delight in him and Thankful Chearful Obedience to him is the great work of a Christian which God is best pleased with and which the blessed Angels and Saints shall be exercised in for ever And O thou the Blessed God of Love the Father of Mercy the Prince of Peace the Spirit of Consolation compose the Disquieted spirits of thy People and the tumultuous disjoynted state of thy Churches and pardon our Rashness Contentions and Blood-guiltiness and give us not up to the state of the wicked who are like the raging Sea and to whom there is no Peace Lay thy command on our winds and waves before thy shipwrackt vessel perish And Rebuke that evil spirit whose name is Legion which hath possessed so great a part of thine Inheritance Send forth the spirit of Judgement and Meekness into thy Churches and save us from our Pride and Ignorance with their effects And bring our feet into the way of Peace which hitherto we have not known O close all thy People speedily in loving consultations and earnest enquiries after Peace Let them Return from their Corruptions Contentions and Divisions and joyntly seek thee asking the way to Zion with their faces thitherward saying Come let us joyn our selves to the Lord in a perpetual Covenant that shall not be forgotten Blast all opposing Policies and Powers Say to these Dead and Dry bones Live And out of these Ruines do thou yet erect a City of Righteousness where thy People may dwell together in Peaceable habitations and in the midst thereof A Temple to thy Holiness Let the materials of it be Verity and Purity Let the Redeemer be its Foundation Let Love and Peace cement it into Vnity Let thy Laver and Covenant be the Dores and Holiness to the Lord be engraved thereon that buyers and sellers may be cast out and the common and unclean may know their Place and let no desolating Abomination be there set up But let thy People all in one name in one faith with one mind and one soul attend to thine Instructions and wait for thy Laws and submit unto thine Order and Rejoyce in thy Salvation that the troubled spirits may be there exhilerated the dark enlightned and all may offer thee the sacrifice of Praise without dis-affections discords or divisions that so thy People may be thy Delight and thou mayst be the chiefest Delight of thy People â—â—d they may Please thee through him that hath perfectly pleased thee Or if our expectations of this Happiness on earth be too high yet give us so much as may enlighten our eyes and heal those corruptions which estrange us from thee and may propagate thy Truth increase thy Church and honour thy Holiness and may quicken our desires and strengthen us in our way and be a fore-tast to us of the Everlasting Rest Luk. 2.14 Glory to God in the Highest on earth Peace Good will towards men Ecles 12.12 13 14. Of making many Books there is no end and much study is a weariness to the flesh Let us hear the Conclusion of the whole matter Fear God and keep his Commandments for this is the whole Duty of man c. FINIS