in order to it And since the great God is pleased to be so very particular with us in proposing the model and contents of his Covenant the promises and precepts which make his part and ours in it how attentive should we be to his proposals and how express in our consent Especially when we consider his admirable condescention in it that he is pleased and disdains not to capitulate with the work of his hands to article with dust and ashes Is it reasonable we should be slight and superficial in a Treaty with that great Lord of heaven and earth or scarce ever purposely apply and set our selves to mind him in it at all Moreover it is your own concernment and therefore ought to be transacted by your self So far as there is any equity in that rule Quod tangit omnes debet ab omnibus tractari What concerns all should be transacted by all it resolves into this and supposes it Quod tangit meipsum debet tractari à meipso That which concerns my self should be transacted by my self Again your being devoted by parents no more excuses from solemn personal self-devoting than their doing other acts of Religion for you excuses you from doing them for your selves They have prayed for you are you therefore never to pray for your selves They have lamented your sin are you never therefore to lament your own Further Scripture warns us not to lay too much stress upon parental privilege or place too much confidence in it which it supposes men over apt to doe Matt. 3.7 8 9. Abraham's Seed may be a generation of Vipers Joh. 8.37.44 I know you are Abraham's Seed yet he finds them another father Consider moreover the renewing work of God's grace and spirit upon Soul 's consists in sanctifying their natural faculties their Understandings Consciences Wills Affections And what are these sanctify'd for but to be used and exercised and to what more noble purpose If there be that holy impress upon the Soul that inclines all the powers of it God-ward What serves it for but to prompt and lead it on to the correspondent acts to apprehend and eye God to admit a conviction of duty and particularly how I owe my self to him to choose love fear and serve him and what doth all this import less than an entire self-resignation to him so that the genuine tendency of the holy new nature is in nothing so directly answered and satisfy'd as in this And it ought to be considered that the faculties of our reasonable souls have a natural improvement and perfection as well as a gracious And for their highest and noblest acts 't is fit they should be used in their highest perfection 'T is possible that in the chilren of religious parents there may be some pious inclinations betimes and the sooner they thereupon choose the God of their fathers the better i. e. if you compare doing it and not doing it 't is better done than not done But because this is a thing that cannot be too often done nor too well The more mature your Understanding is the better it will be done the grace of God concurring Our Lord himself increas'd in wisedom c. Moreover let it be seriously thought on what 't is dreadfull to think the occasion you should give if you decline this surrendring your selves to have your neglect taken for a refusal 'T is impossible when you once understand the case you can be in an indifferency about it You must either take or leave Nor can it be deny'd but personal self-devoting one way or other more or less solemn is most necesssary to the continuing serious Christianity in the world Without it our Religion were but res unius aetatis The business of one age For how unlikely were it and absurd to suppose that a man should seriously devote his child to God that never devoted himself And if that were done never so seriously must one be a Christian alwaies onely by the Christianity of another not his own Some way or other then a man must devote himself to God in Christ or be at length no Christian. And since he must the nature of the thing speaks that the more solemn and express it is the better and more suitable to a transaction with so great a Majesty And hath not common Reason taught the world to fix a transitus and settle some time or other wherein persons should be reckon'd to have past out of their state of infancy or minority into the state of manhood or an adult-state wherein though before they could not legally transact affairs for themselves yet afterwards they could This time by the constitutions of several Nations and for several purposes hath been diversly fix't But they were not to be look't upon as children alwaies Some time they come to write man Is it reasonable one should be a child and a minor in the things of God and Religion all his daies alwaies in nonage Sometime they must be men in understanding 1 Cor. 14.20 and have their senses exercised to discern between good and evil Heb. 5.14 Yea and there is far greater reason we should personally and solemnly transact this great affair with God than any concern we have with men For among men we may have a right by natural descent or by valuable considerations to what we enjoy which may be clear and little liable to question From God we have no right but by his favour and vouchsafement You are his children if ever you come to be so but by adoption And humane adoption has been wont to be compleated by a solemnity The person to adopt being publickly askt in that sort of adoption which was also called arrogation utrum eum quem adoptaturus esset justum sibi filium esse vellet Whether he would have this person to be as his own very son And again ille qui adoptabatur utrum id fieri pateretur he that was to be adopted whether he was contented it should be so Nor again is there that disinclination towards men as towards God or that proneness to revolt from settled agreements with the one as with the other Whereas Love summs up all the duty of both the Tables or which we owe both to God and Man it is evident that in our present lapsed state our love to God is more impaired than to Man Indeed this latter seems onely diminisht the other is destroyed and hath by nature no place in us grace onely restores it Where it is in some measure restored we find it more difficult to exercise love towards God than Man Which the Apostle's reasoning implies He that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen how can he love God whom he hath not seen Who sees not that sensuality hath buried the rational world Unregenerate man is said to be in the flesh not as being onely lodg'd in it as all are alike but govern'd by it under its power As the holy Apostle is said to have been in the spirit on the Lord's day
not dread to be the only One in an Assembly that shall refuse God! or refuse himself to him For let such a One think what particular reason can I have to exclude my self from such a consenting Chorus Why should I spoil the harmony and give a disagreeing vote Why should any man be more willing to be dutifull and happy than I to be just to God or have him good to me Why should any One be more willing to be saved than I and to make One hereafter in the glorious innumerable joyfull assembly of Devoted angels and Saints that pay an eternal gladsom homage to the throne of the Celestial King But if any find their hearts inclining let what is now begun be more fully compleated in the closet and let those walls as Joshua's stone hear and bear witness Lest any should not consent and that all may consent more freely and more largely I shall in a few words shew what should induce to it and what it should induce 1. What should induce to it You have divers sorts of inducements Such as may be taken from necessity For what else can you doe with your self You cannot be happy without it For who should make you so but God And how shall he while you hold off your selves from him You cannot but be miserable not only as not having engaged him to you but as having engaged him against you Such as may be taken from equity You are his right He hath a natural right in you as he is your Maker the Authour of your being And an acquired right as you were bought by his Son Who hath redeemed us to God And who dyed rose again and revived that he might be Lord of the living and the dead here to rule hereafter to judge us Both which he can doe whether we will or no. But 't is not to be thought he will save us against our wills His method is whom he saves first to overcome i. e. to make them willing in the day of his power And dare we who live move and have our being in him refuse to be live and move to him or deny the Lord who bought us And again Such as may be taken from ingenuity or that should work upon it viz. what we are besought by in the Text the mercies of God How manifold are they But they are the mercies of the Gospel especially mentioned in the foregoing Chapter which are thus refer'd unto in the beginning of this the transferring what the Jews forfeited and lost by their unbelief unto us Gentiles That Mystery as this Apostle elsewhere calls it Ephes. 3.4 5 6. which in other ages was not made known unto the sons of men as it is now revealed unto his holy Apostles and Prophets by the spirit That the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs and of the same body and partakers of his promise in Christ by the Gospel In reference whereto he so admiringly cries out a little above the Text chap. 11.33 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 O the depth both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! how unsearchable are his judgments and his waies past finding out The Mercies of which it is said Isai. 55.1 2 3. Ho every one that thirsteth come to the waters and he that hath no money Come ye buy and eat yea come buy wine and milk without money and without price Wherefore do ye spend your money for that which is not bread and your labour for that which satisfieth not hearken diligently unto me and eat ye that which is good and let your soul delight it self in fatness Encline your ear and come unto me hear and your soul shall live and I will make an everlasting Covenant with you even the sure mercies of David Which free and sure Mercies are heightned as to us by the same both endearing and awfull circumstance that these mercies are offered to us viz. in conjunction with the setting before our eyes the monitory tremendous example of a forsaken Nation that rejected them intimated vers 5. Behold thou shalt call a nation that thou knowest not and nations that know not thee shall run unto thee A case whereof our Apostle says in the foregoing Chapter Esaias was very bold when speaking of it in another place he uses these words I am sought of them that asked not for me I am found of them that sought me not I said Behold me Behold me unto a nation that was not called by my name He was bold in it indeed to mention such a thing to a people unto whom a jealous gloriation in the peculiarity of their privileg'd state their being without partners or rivals for so long a time in their relation and nearness to God was grown so natural And who took it so impatiently when our Saviour did but intimate the same thing to them by parables as that they sought immediately to lay hands on him for that very reason So unaccountable a perversness of humour reigned with them that they envied to others what they despised themselves But on the other hand nothing ought more highly to recommend those mercies to us or more engage us to accept them with gratitude and improve them with a cautious fear of committing a like forfeiture than to have them brought to our hands redeemed from the contempt of the former despisers of them and that so terribly vindicated upon them at the same time as it also still continues to be That the natural branches of the Olive should be torn off and we inserted That there should be such an instance given us of the severity and goodness of God To them that fell severity but to us goodness if we continue in his goodness to warn us that otherwise we may expect to be cut off too And that we might apprehend if he spared not the natural branches he was as little likely to spare us That when he came to his own and they received him not he should make so free an offer to us that if we would yet receive him which if we do we are as hath been said to yield up and dedicate our selves to him at the same time we should have the privilege to be owned for the sons of God! What should so oblige us to compliance with him and make us with an ingenuous trembling fall before him and crying to him my Lord and my God resign our selves wholly to his power and pleasure And even his Mercies more abstractly considered ought to have that power upon us Were we not lost Are we not rescued from a necessity of perishing and being lost for ever in the most costly way Costly to our Redeemer but to us without cost Is it a small thing that he offers himself to us as he doth when he demands us and requires that we offer our selves to him That he in whom is all the fulness of God having first offered himself for us doth now offer himself also to us That he hath treated us hitherto with
Self-dedication DISCOURSED In the Anniversary THANKSGIVING Of a Person of Honour For a Great DELIVERANCE By J. H. LONDON Printed for Brabazon Aylmer at the three Pigeons in Cornhill over against the Royal Exchange 1682. TO THE Right Honourable JOHN Earl of Kildare Baron of Ophalia First of his Order in the Kingdom of Ireland MY LORD I Little thought when in so private a way I lately offered much of the following Discourse to your Lordship's ear I should receive the command which I am not now so far as it proves to me a possible one to disobey or further to dispute of exposing it thus to the view of the world or so much as to present it to your Lordship 's own eye It was indeed impossible to me to give an exact account of what was then discoursed from a memory that was so treacherous as to let slip many things that were prepared and intended to have been said that day and that could much less being assisted but by very imperfect memorials recollect every thing that was said several daies after Yet I account upon the whole it is much more varied by enlargement than by diminution Whereby I hope it will be nothing less capable of serving the end of this enjoyned publication of it And I cannot doubt but the injunction proceeded from the same pious gratitude to the God of your life which hath prompted for several years past to the observation of that domestick Annual Solemnity in memory of your great preservation from so near a death That the remembrance of so great a mercy might be the more deeply imprest with your self and improved also so far as this means could signify for that purpose to the instruction of many others Your Lordship was pleased to allow an hour to the hearing of that Discourse What was proposed to you in it is to be the business of your life And what is to be done continually is once to be throughly done The impression ought to be very inward and strong which must be so lasting as to govern a man's life And were it as fully done as mortality can admit it needs be more solemnly renewed at set times for that purpose And indeed that such a day should not pass you without a fall nor that fall be without an hurt and that hurt proceed unto a wound and that wound not be mortal but even next to it looks like an artifice and contrivance of Providence to shew you how near it could go without cutting thorough that slender thred of life that it might indear to you its accurate superintendency over your life that there might here be a remarkable juncture in that thred and that whensoever such a day should revolve in the circle of your year it might come again and again with a note upon it under your eye and appear ever to you as another Birth-day or as an earlier day of resurrection Whereupon my honoured Lord the further design of that Providence is to be thoroughly studied and pondered deeply For it shews it self to be at once both mercifull and wise and as upon the one account it belong'd to it to design kindly to you so upon the other to form its design aptly and so as that its means and method might fitly both serve and signify its end If therefore your Lordship shall be induc't to reckon the counsel acceptable which hath been given you upon this occasion and to think the offering your self to God a living Sacrifice under the endearing obligation of so great a mercy is indeed a reasonable service Your life by that dedication acquires a sacredness becomes an holy divine life And so by one and the same means is not onely renewed and prolonged in the same kind of natural life but is also heightned and improved to a nobler and far more excellent kind And thus out of that umbrage onely and shadow of death which sat upon one day of your time springs a double birth and resurrection to you Whereby as our Apostle speaks in another place of this Epistle you come to yield your self to God as one alive from the dead So your New year which shortly after begins will alwaies be to you a fresh setting forth in that new and holy course of life which shall at length and God grant it to be after the revolution of many fruitfull years wherein you may continue a publick blessing in this wretched world end and be perfected in a state of life not measured by time wherein you are to be ever with the Lord. Which will answer the design of that mercifull providence towards you and of this performance how mean soever of Your Honours most obedient humble Servant John Howe Self-dedication Rom. 12.1 I beseech you therefore brethren by the mercies of God that you present your bodies a living Sacrifice holy acceptable unto God which is your reasonable service TWO things are more especially considerable in these words The matter of the Exhortation that we would present our bodies a living Sacrifice holy acceptable to God our reasonable service And the pathetick form of obtestation that is used to enforce it I beseech you by the mercies of God The former I intend for the principal subject of the following Discourse And shall onely make use of the other for the purpose unto which the holy Apostle doth here apply it Our business therefore must be to shew the import of this Exhortation In the doing whereof we shall 1. Explain the terms wherein the Text delivers it 2. Declare more distinctly the nature of the thing expressed by them 1. For the terms By bodies we are to understand our whole selves exprest here synecdochically by the name of bodies for distinction sake It having been wonted heretofore to offer in Sacrifice the bodies of beasts The Apostle lets them know they are now to offer up their own Meaning yet their whole man as some of the following words do intimate and agreeably to the plain meaning of the Exhortation 1 Cor. 6.20 Glorify God in your bodies and spirits which are his Sacrifice is not to be understood in this place in a more restrained sense than as it may signify whatsoever is by God's own appointment dedicated to himself According to the stricter notion of a Sacrifice it s more noted general distinction though the Jewish be very variously distributed is into propitiatory and gratulatory or Eucharistical Christianity in that strict sense admits but One and that of the former sort By which One that of himself our Lord hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified We our selves or any service of ours are onely capable of being Sacrifices by way of analogy and that chiefly to the other sort And so all sincere Christians are as lively stones built up a spiritual house an holy priesthood to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by Jesus Christ. 1 Pet. 2.5 being both Temple Priests and Sacrifices all at once As our Lord himself in
of worship And it is required to be a rational act Your reasonable service Religion cannot move blindfold And though Knowledge and Reason are not throughout words of the same signification and latitude yet the former is partly presupposed unto the latter and partly improved by it nor can therefore be sever'd from it In the present case it is especially necessary we distinctly know and apprehend the state of things between God and us That we understand our selves to have been with the rest of men in an apostacy and revolt from God that we are recalled unto him that a Mediatour is appointed on purpose thorough whom we are to approach him and render our selves back unto him That so this may be our sense in our return Lord I have here brought thee back a stray a wandring creature mine own self I have heard what the Redeemer of thy own constituting hath done and suffered for the reconciling and reducing of such and against thy known design I can no longer withhold my self 2. With serious consideration It must be a deliberate act How many understand matters of greatest importance which they never consider and perish by not considering what they know Consideration is nothing else but the revolving of what we knew before The actuating the habitual knowledge we had of things A more distinct reveiwing of our former notices belonging to any case a recollecting and gathering them up a comparing them together And for such as appear more momentous a repeating and inculcating them upon our selves that we may be urg'd on to suitable action And this though of it self without the power and influence of the divine Spirit is not sufficient yet being the means he works by is most necessary to our becoming Christians i. e. if we speak of becoming so not by fate or by chance as too many onely are but by our own choice and design Which is the same thing with dedicating our selves to God thorough Christ whereof we are discoursing For upon our having thus considered and comprehended the whole compass of the case in our thoughts either the temper of our hearts would be such that we would hereupon dedicate our selves or we would not If we would it is because we should judge the arguments for it more weighty than the objections which without such pondering of both we are not likely to apprehend and so for want of this consideration are never likely to become Christians at all Or if we would not it is because to the more carnal temper of our hearts the objections would outweigh And then if we do seem to consent it is because what is to be objected came not in view And so we should be Christians to no purpose Our contract with the Redeemer were void in the making we should onely seem pleased with the terms of Christianity because we have not digested them in our thoughts So our act undoes it self in the very doing It carries an implicit virtual repentance in it of what is done We enter our selves Christians upon surprize or mistake And if we had considered what we are consequently to doe what to forbear what to forego what to endure would not have done it And therefore when we do come distinctly to apprehend all this are like actually to repent and revolt As they Joh. 6. who while they understood not what it was to be a Christian seem'd very forward followers of Christ. But when they did more fully understand it upon his telling them plainly went back and walked no more with him And he lets them go q. d. mend your selves if you can see where you can get you a better Master 3. With a determinate judgment at length that this ought to be done There are two extremes in this matter Some will not consider at all and so not doe this thing and some will consider always and so never doe it Stand shall I shall I halt between two Opinions These are both of them very vicious and faulty extremes in reference to the management even of secular affairs both of them contrary to that prudence which should govern our actions i. e. when men will never consider what is necessary to be done and so neglect their most important concernments or when they will never have done considering which is the same thing as if they had never taken up any thought of the matter at all Indeed in the present case 't is a reproach to the blessed God to consider longer than till we have well digested the state of the case As if it were a difficulty to determine the matter between him and the Devil which were the better or more rightfull Lord We must at last be at a point and come to a judicious determination of the question As those sincerely resolved Christians had done John 6.68 69. who also express the reasons that had before that time no doubt determined them Lord whither shall we go thou hast the words of eternal life And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ the son of the living God 4. With liberty of spirit having thrown off all former bonds and quite disingaged our selves from other Masters As they speak Isai. 26.13 Other Lords besides thee have had dominion over us but by thee onely will we make mention of thy name For our Saviour expresly tells us No man can serve two masters Matth. 6.24 When those Dedititii the people of Collatia were about the business of capitulating in order to the surrender of themselves the question put on the Romans part was Estne populus Collatinus in sua potestate Are the Collatine people in their own power wherein satisfaction being given the matter is concluded In the present case of yeilding our selves to God the question cannot be concerning any previous tye in point of right or that could urge Conscience There cannot be so much as a plausible pretender against him But there must be a liberty in opposition to preingaged inclinations and affections And this must be the sense of the sincere Soul in treating the matter of its self-surrender and dedication with the great God to be able to say to the question Art thou under no former contrary bonds Lord I am under none I know that ought to bind me or that justly can against thy former sovereign right I had indeed suffered other bonds to take place in my heart and the affections of my Soul but they were bonds of iniquity which I scruple not to break and repent that ever I made I took my self indeed to be my own and have liv'd to my self onely pleas'd and serv'd and sought my self as if I were created and born for no other purpose and if the sense of my heart had been put into words there was insolence enough to have conceiv'd such as these not my tongue onely but my whole man body and soul all my parts and powers my estate and name and strength and time are all my own who is Lord over