their over eager desires to embrace this present World have let Heaven go have lost that for ever 2. Take heed of following mens examples further than you see them to follow the Rule of God's Word the world is ever ful of bad examples if we would walk safely we must walk by Rule If we think it enough only to do as the most there is little hopes of our working out our salvation Matt. 7.13 The word of Christ must judge you hereafter O let it guide you here As many as walk according to this Rule peace shall be upon them and mercy In matters of Religion of Salvation believe none follow none further than there is ground for their opinions and practices in God's written Word Were we to follow mens examples or mens traditions in matters of Religion besides the Scriptures then will not this follow viz. That the Scriptures are not a perfect Rule as the Papists teach that it must be eeked out with unscriptural traditions and the commandments or documents of men And do but once admit this and we shall have no certain Rule at all 3. Take heed of consultiâ—â— here with flesh and blood In the matters of our Salvation not the Flesh who is ever at that Master spare thy self but Conscience informed out of God's Word must be our Counsellor Our souls interest and our carnal interest are many times cross to one another Hence it is our Saviour so much insists on the duties of self-denial and taking up the Cross Yea he further tells us He that findeth his life shall lose it and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it You know great works are seldom perfected at a small charge A rich Mine it will cost a man something before he comes to it but when he has found it it soon recompenseth him for all his former pains and expences both Heaven and Salvation is such a Treasure though we should lose all our earthly comforts this would certainly repair all our losses and make and enrich our souls for ever 4. Take heed of delaying to set to this work Oh! have we not delayed too long Have we not lost time and lost special opportunities lost such advantages for carrying on this work as for any thing we know we may never enjoy again It is high time now to awake out of sleep to shake off Spiritual sloath to apply our selves to the work in good earnest who knows but the day of our visitation the time of our life and of God's patience may be very near an end It may be the eleventh hour However the longer it is ere we set to our work the more difficulty we shall find in it I now come to the Directions 1. See that you understand your work Be ye not unwise but understanding what the will of the Lord is Yea study to be filled with the knowledge of his Will Rest not in good meanings My People are destroyed for lack of knowledge Hos 4.6 â—ee here though bare knowledge cannot save one yet many a one is destroyed for lack of knowledge Beloved though we may not be permitted to preach publickly yet I know not that it would be any crime for us to instruct such in private as repair to us for assistance and advice O that poor souls were as ready to make use of us as we are willing to afford them the best help we can 2. Be sure your Ground-work be good Build on the Rock Christ so indeed you need not fear but your Work will stand Other Foundation can no man lay If ye build besides this Rock or build partly on Christ and partly on your selves the work will come to nought We are quite lost and ruined in our selves that we must be taken off from our own bottoms brought out of our selves to Jesus Christ or we cannot be saved 3. Do all in Christ's strength Phil. 3.13 This way the Apostle Paul went to work Then the work of our Salvation is like to go forward when we have Christ the Saviour putting to his helping hand and joyning with us O as ever you would have your work to prosper be sure you take Christ along with you 4. As Noah being moved with fear fell to work and prepared an Ark to the saving of himself and of his house so let us work out our Salvation with fear We should have a reverent fear towards God to quicken us to duty and to awe and make us exceeding serious in duty Again we should have a jealous fear of Satan and our own sinful deceitful hearts to look narrowly to them who like Sanballat and Tobiah will do but what they can to hinder and take us off our work 5. Labour much with God in prayer Thus there were hopes the work would be going forward Observe what immediately follows the Text It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure When it could â—â—â—aid of Paul Behold he prayeth then was Ananias â—â—nt to confirm him that he might receive his sight and be filled with the holy Ghost Acts 9.11 17. The Work is great to work out your Salvation and it is possible you may want some helps you have had yea and meet with greater hindrances new difficulties in it O pray in strength to carry you thorow It may be you shall not have liberty to hear so much to quicken you the more to prayer You may have fewer hearing-opportunities that you shall have more time to pray 6. Up and be doing when you can find the Spirit at work in your hearts Attend to the motions of God's Spirit This is a special season not to be let slip when we have an offer of his co-operating Grace 7. Do all as in the sight of God Set the Lord ever before you Eye-service is a fault in our servants condemned Eph. 6.6 but a vertue in God's servants Indeed could we but ply our work while God's eye is on us we should never be idle or ill-employed 8. Let out the strength of your spirits in the weighty matters of God's Law and not about trivial unnecessary things Such things as God no where requires of which he sayes In vain do they worship me after the traditions of men If we make our selves busie in building hay and stubble on the Foundation our work shall be burnt and we shall suffer loss 9. Improve the day time God hath alotted to you wherein to work The day of Grace O that we had known our day we have had a large space and a fair season of working granted to us and yet I am afraid that as to the most of us little of our work is done The consideration of our former loss of time should cause us henceforward to double out diligence Now let not a day pass over your heads wherein you do not some way further thâ—â—â—â—â—rk of your salvation Especially improve the Lorâ—â— Day Sabbath-dayes are dayes of resting from outward labours from
of inward troubles Thus Conscience is gauled Halting in the body you know is very troublesom and painful Great peace have they that love God's Law and walk on evenly with upright hearts in that plain path they shall find his wayes wayes of pleasantness and his paths peace Whereas they that leave the paths of uprightness walk in wayes of darkness Prov. 2.13 where they shall meet with little quiet or comfort Light is sown for the Righteous and gladness for the Upright in heart yea unto the Upright there arises Light in the darkness In midst of outward troubles he hath still much inward joy and peace This is our rejoycing the Testimony of our Conscience that in simplicity and godly sincerity not with fleshly wisdom but by the Grace of God we have had our conversation in the world This was a comfort to holy Job Job 23.10 11 12. To the Faithful Psal 44.17 18. But halting in ones course uses to bring great inward troubles Daved's fall wounded his conscience and a good while after that he bled inwardly and complained Psa 51. that he went with broken bones What followed Peter's halting in the High-Priest's hall He went out and wept bitterly Others that have forsaken the Truth to avoid Sufferings have thereupon been arrested with those terrors of conscience and haunted with those inward horrors in comparison of which the greatest sufferings from men were light and easie to be born as it was with Francis Spira 3. Halting in Religion exposes and enclines one to fall further and more fouly if not to fall quite away See what followed upon David's halting in the matters of Vriah Alas he was not set sound he went not upright again for many months after It was a great while ere he was fully recovered and cured of it Peter giving a little way to sin and consulting more his outward safety than his inward peace soon halted down and fell into a shameful denial of his Master even with cursing and swearing as if he would that way seem to have been rather trained up in the Devil's School than in the School of Christ O Sirs how sad it is to be halting in Religion to be winding and turning here alas such know not what they may turn to at last As when a man begins to fall down a steep hill he knows not where he shall stop he may fall to the bottom and for any thing he knows be crushed in pieces with his fall Thus some who carried fair sometimes after they began to halt and decline in Religion have proceeded from evil to worse Some have fallen from one Errour to another till at last they have come to be meer Scepticks and Seekers to be any thing and just nothing Others have fallen from a plausible profession first to immoderation in the use of lawful things to a pampering of the flesh and an over-eager pursuit of their outward pleasures and vain recreations and from thence to down-right prophaness visible ungodliness and so at last into plain Atheism Ah Beloved what need to look well to our feet here Halting in Religion is next step to Apostacy falling off from Religion If this halting be not cured it will end in Apostacy will turn 〈◊〉 quite out of the way Heb. 12.13 Now lay all these things together and sure it will appear very evil to halt in Religion 1. If we look at the thing it self it is directly contrary to God 1. To his Nature and Attributes 2. to his Mind and Will 2. If we look to the causes of it 1. It argues great corruption of the judgment 2. A corrupt heart An evil heart of unbelief hypocrisy c. 3. If we look at the effects and consequences both in respect of God of the Godly of sinners and of our selves Use 1. For Instruction Seeing it is so exceeding evil for men to halt in Religion 1. It should teach us to be very cautious how we censure others to halt here without ground We should fear to lay such an heavy charge as this upon those that are innocent How ill the Lord took it from Job's Friends that they were so rash in their censures of him Gal. 2.14 When I saw that they walked not uprightly I said unto Peter before them all c. When Psaw So the matter must be evident And when it is so then let men tax then reprove and spare not The case was plain here before Elijah that the People were drawn off from God and running after Baal This I thought good to note here to prevent the mis-application of the Doctrine To hold Communion in publick Worship which is the Worship of God for substance though there are corruptions in the manner of administration when Christians are careful not to communicate in those corruptions but mourn at groan under them breath after pray for purity in God's Worship I say to joyn in publick worship that hath corruptions in it with these qualifications is unjustly censured as halting betwixt God and Baal While all necessary Fundamental Truth is publickly professed and maintained in a Church is taught and held forth in publick Assemblies and the corruptions there though great yet not such as make the Worship cease to be God's Worship nor of necessity to be swallowed down if one would communicate in publick Worship while any Christian that is watchful over his heart and carriage as all ought ever to be may partake in the one without being active in or approving of the other there God is yet present there He may be spiritually worshipped served acceptably and really enjoyed The Sacrifice of a faithful Israelite an Elkanah was pleasing to God even when Hophni and Phineas were Priests And no doubt it was written for our instruction our Lord Christ who is and ought to be a Christians pattern who could never be charged with the least halt in his course who never trode one step awry who was as zealous for purity in God's Worship as much against corrupt mixtures of mens inventions there as any can pretend to be Nevel was there any in the world of whom that was true The Zeal of thine House hath eaten me up Yet we find He used to attend on the publick Worship in his time notwithstanding the many corruptions brought into it and notwithstanding such formalists and superstitious ones as the Scribes and Pharisees who were ready to magnifie their traditions above the Word of God though such as these did officiate in it Luke 4.16 That He went into their Assemblies not to joyn in any worship they had amongst them but only to bear witness against their corruptions is no where written but rather the contrary i◠held forth in Scripture where he acknowledgeth himself a member of the Church of the Jews and approves of and justifies their Worship as right for the substance that Salvation might be attained therein which he denies to be attainable in any other way of Worship then used among the Gentiles John 4.22 Ye
reason and manner of things except they may see things plainly they will not believe Yet there is no sound Christian but he believes all Divine Truth implicitely that is he believes the Scriptures to be most certainly true and all things therein contained though there are many things to be found there which he hath no distinct knowledge of I pray mistake me not I am not for a Popish implicite Faith a believing as the Church believes but for our giving an assent universally to all that God hath said As there is a general repentance and humiliation for unknown sins so a general implicite belief of unknown Truths And further the true Christian hath an explicite belief of all Fundamental necessary Truth He must first stedfastly believe ere he can sincerely make a profession of the Truth or chearfully suffer for it Again some are unresolved concerning the present Truth As the times vary so doth mens opposition against the Truth Sometimes one Truth mainly opposed and sometimes another Now it is of very great consequence to be setled in the Truth of the Season As the Apostle Peter sayes of those to whom he writes 2 Pet. 1.12 that they were established in the present Truth 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i.e. in the Truth of the Gospel Non tantum promissa sed reipsa exhibita as Beza Christ was the Truth and substance of those Types and Shadows under the Law but he was further off from them then he is from Beleivers under the Gospel Therefore those legal Types and Shadows give place the Body and Truth being come This is one sense given of that passage But there is another interpretation given of it which is to my present purpose established in the present Truth i. e. in that Truth which at this present time is most under debate As that was the great question of those dayes Whether the way of the Gospel the Christian Religion or Judaism was the true way And thus several ages have raised controversies about Religion In every age there is some special Truth which is as a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Shiboleth a mark of distinction betwixt sound Professours and such as are spurious As v. g. this Truth That Jesus is the Christ was the tryal of men at first when the world stormed at him and at all that confest his Name Afterwards when Arrianism sprung up and prevailed in the world the Deity of Christ His being one in essence with the Father was the touch-stone whereby Professors were tried Where Arminianism is rife the point of special Free Grace becomes a main note of discovery Sometimes that false and absurd Opinion of Christ's real corporal presence in the Sacrament hath been cried up by men of corrupt minds as their great Diana and persecution set on foot and raised up against those who would not come over to that grosse conceit then those that were sound in the Faith would be at more then ordinary pains to be clear in the Doctrine of the Sacraments Where Popery prevails and mens traditions and inventions are set up in the room of and as of equal credit or profit with the Ordinances and Institutions of our Lord Christ the Authority and absolute perfection of the Sacred Scriptures together with the Glorious Offices of Jesus Christ are plainly struck at desperately undermined Which points if men be not clear and stedfast in when the temptation comes they will easily be carried away with the error of the Wicked It is nothing to condemn old errors that are laid in their graves long since while one is not established in the present Truth Either not to hold this or to hold it loosely is of very dangerous consequence Only I grant in controversies about lesser matters men of sober and pious spirits may be either at a stand in the dark or of different apprehensions Yet it is to be noted that where such are in the dark and doubtful they would gladly be informed heartily pray for satisfaction and would be as thankful for it if once obtained so what opinion such embrace or receive it is not because such an opinion would some way accord with their worldly interest but because in their apprehension it looks likest to Truth A sound Christian receives the Truth in the love of it and you need do no more to work him to the entertaining of any truth in Religion then only satisfy his judgment that it is a truth He receives not Divine Truths for self-ends or by-respects neither dare he out of respect to carnal self reject any Truth But for any to cherish doubts in their minds upon design that they might have something to say for their parting with the Truth when it is dangerous to hold on in the profession of it to adventue no farther to Sea then if a storm should come they might soon get to shore again to engage no further in the profession of the Truth then they might face about and make a fair retreat when this meets with opposition though the men of this world will judge it a point of Policy yet indeed it is an argument of base hypocrisie and treachery And such studied Scepticks in Religion are next neighbors to downright Atheists But a thin mud-wall betwixt them that is soon broken down But so much of halting in principle Again there is halting in practice Unevenness in conversation when that is not ordered aright Now it must be acknowledged the best men on earth walk not so evenly with God as they ought But here take a distinction or two There is an halting in some particular steps or acts and in ones ordinary in a continued course I say 1. There is an halting in some particular steps or acts This is incident to the Saints themselves Such as walk uprightly in the main yet at one time or other have their sinful slips Faithful Abraham halted before Abimelech Yea that Grace which seemed strongest even his Faith was sinew-shrunk sometimes As Job's patience was otherwhiles sinking under his burdens So David the man after God's own heart turned aside once shamefully in the matters of Vriah Peter halted with the Jews Gal. 2. He is there charged amongst others that he did not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 foot it aright Thus the best of God's Saints have sometimes trod awry 2. But then there is halting in a continued course This is worse than the former The Faithful too oft meet with rubs in their way that for the present stop them but they recover themselves again and proceed on in a right course Whereas all natural men are quite upon a wrong byass Their heart is bent to backsliding from God As there is a phrase Isa 44.20 A deceived heart hath turned him aside Hypocrites have a corrupt byass within that is still drawing them aside into crooked paths And the double-minded man is unstable even in all his wayes Again there is an halting through infirmity from the remainders of corruption and a resolved deliberate