sleep is taken away unless they cause some to fall So intent are Men's Thoughts so closely do they fasten upon these earthly sensual and many times Devilish concernments whilst they are presently weary and frisk off from any thing that is sacred and sober and serious NOW this wandring in Prayer and other holy duties is resolvable into several causes As I. INTO our complex'd constitution of Soul and Body Whilst our Souls are lodg'd in these pitiful tenements of Clay they cannot help being affected with the inconveniences of their Habitation They are confined to the use of Bodily Spirits in their most abstracted operations and every considerable disorder in the blood and Spirits does therefore of necessity produce a proportionable disorder in the Soul in thinking and being surrounded with such variety of objects and business whilst we live in this material World which through the intervention of our senses leave their Ideas in the Head behind them the eye of the mind can no more help looking upon them when they are jogg'd and thrown in its way than the eyes of our bodies can help seeing when they are open or our ears hearing the sounds that strike them All this is natural and necessary as the unavoidable result of the dependance of the Soul in its most spiritual operations upon the frame and contexture of our Bodies during their conjunction and we may as well think of ceasing to be what we are and of casting the Man in a new mould as of a total prevention of this infirmity of our Constitution And this being so we must expect to meet with it in our Prayers as well as in other business of our Lives t is in Heaven alone where the faculties of both Soul and Body shall be inlarged and refined and we shall have but one Object of our Thoughts God who shall be all in all that our Souls shall cleave inseparably to him without the least avocation All which may serve to qualify by the by the seruples and vexations incident to some tender minds who are apt perhaps to entertain too hard thoughts of themselves because they cannot so manage their Thoughts that they shall regularly attend upon Gods Service without breaks and chasms in them without falling off now and then and straying from their present business For 't is impossible in the very nature of things our Composition totally to prevent the first beginnings or sallies of the Mind towards wandring for the Spirits by whose intervention we perform these mental Operations will not bear so rigid a fixation all we can do in the case and that we must do is to keep a strict eye upon our Thoughts to drive away the Fowls that light upon our Sacrifice to endeavour continually to check and controul and stop them in their career to other objects and when at any time they have given us the slip to call them upon the first discovery home again to their business and regret our weakness and if we thus both bewail and labour to remedy those exursions of our Thoughts which we cannot totally hinder they are not our sin but infirmity which will never affect our main state II. DISTRACTING Thoughts in Prayer are very much owing to that natural aversion we observ'd in us to things spiritual and Divine for such imployment of our Thoughts being therefore a sort of preternatural force upon them the spring that bends them Heaven-ward will be apt to relax and give way to the contrary tendency of our minds downwards so that leaving those unwelcome objects they presently fall back again into the company of the old familiars of their thoughts III. OUR distractions proceed in a great measure from an over-active and ungovern'd imagination 't is the quick-silver part in our mettal that runs glibly up and down and shoots as it were in our minds like Meteors in the Air traversing our devotions with ten thousand frivolous and foolish conceits presenting us with those fine Schemes and Images of things riches honour or the like till the distracted wandring Man instead of his Maker worships all the while perhaps the Idol of his own and the Devils making But we have discours'd the extravagancies of this Faculty before IV. DISTRACTIONS in Prayer proceed frequently from an intemperate love of the World and the cares that attend its enjoyments which so often ingross our hearts that we no sooner set about holy duties than they justle the one thing needful out of our minds and make Mary's good part stand by and Luk. 10. 42 give way to Martha's concern for the World and the family 'T is certainly one of the most ridiculous and yet most general frailties incident to our corrupt nature to use this World as if neither we nor the fashion of it were to pass away which is just as if a Traveller with business of infinite importance on his Hand should loyter and take up with his Inn on the Road without ever farther pursuing the end of his journey And possibly most of the sins that are committed in the World are fairly resolvable into a too passionate fondness for it Ye cannot serve God and Mammon is a saying that carries a greater force of truth in it than possibly most Men are aware of For their principles of action are opposite their interests are opposite and they require a quite different frame of mind in their respective Votaries and we know who has told us no less truly than roundly that if any Man love the World the love of God is not in him for it ties down our apprehensions to things mean and trivial and base and stifles and chokes our desires of such as are spiritual and Divine it extinguishes all holy fervour of Spirit estranges from God and puts out that sacred flame of love for him which is the very life and Soul of our devotions to him it crowds into the Church and Closet with us and like the Sons of Zerviah is too hard for David so that many times with Demas we forsake the Lord in our Thoughts even whilst we pretend to do him homage having lov'd this present World whose thorns i. e. its cares and riches choak the seeds in our Saviours Luk. 8. 7. 14. estimate of all the good that is sown amongst them and therefore it is that when God required the male Children of the Jews thrice a year to attend upon his service at Jerusalem he promised that no Man should desire their Land when they Ex. 34. 24. should go up to appear before the Lord their God thrice in the year for the fears and jealousies that might otherwise have seiz'd them would have divided their hearts betwixt God and their families at home and so have blasted the fruits of so laborious and universal a journey and upon the same account it is that the Apostle advises single persons that were able to receive it to continue rather in that state in times of difficulty and distress that they might
Voluntiers in the service and as our Thoughts are thus above the reach of fear so of favour too above the love of friends or the reverence of great men or the expectation of rewards for who can pay a man for that which no man knows but the Spirit of a man which is in him how shall outward hopes influence the inward transactions of ones own breast only external acts of sin indeed may have somthing to say for themselves because they may chance to carry their wages such as it is along with them but he who plays the knave the adulterer the murderer c. in his own heart he has nothing in exchange for his Soul but sins for pure sinnings sake as it were without any prospect of ever being consider'd for his pains without any other wages than the old standing one of death VII AND Lastly those Sins which have a more immediate relation to the mind and spirit as pride envy ambition malice unfaithfulness uncharitableness c. which are transacted mostly in the inner man as they are more incorrigible so consequently more criminal than others For as to those Vices which in a high measure depend upon the tempers and constitutions of our Bodies want of fuel will in time dead their flame when the spirits flag the blood chills and the pulse beats low and the evil days come on wherein we have no pleasure in them the decays of nature set the Soul then at some tolerable sort of liberty to reflect upon her own condition but as to the other age generally only serves to confirm and establish us in them For how rarely do we see a covetous wretch let go his hold of the earth tho' he is dropping into it how seldom are envy and malice exchang'd for contentment and good nature and when see we the proud ambitious man reduced to the same level of mind with his humble neighbours Sins of this kind have too much of the Aethiopian's skin and the Leopard's spots easily to admit the laver of regeneration Accordingly we find the Angels who kept not their first station reserv'd in everlasting chains under darkness to the Judgment of the great day for sins of this incorrigible kind For suppose their sin pride and ambition malice or envy or what you will 't was certainly transacted in the mind without the intervention of corporal efficiency and deriv'd it's peculiar venom from the spirituality of its nature Mental sins then were the first and are still considered in themselves the most crying provocations SECT 4. Other Reasons why we should govern our Thoughts BESIDES what has been hitherto alledg'd on this behalf the consideration of God's all-seeing eye ought also to influence the conduct of our Thoughts they lie not indeed within the walk of humane justice are without the ken of humane inspection no eye can pry into the recesses of the heart but God sees and knows and reads their subtilest motions and darkest intrigues with greater perspicacity then we do men's outward words and actions For lo there is not a thought not the motion of the least fibre in our hearts but he knoweth it altogether knoweth it afar off at the distance of Eternity it self e'er we or our thoughts had any other being than in the Divine Idea For no thought can Job 42. 2. be witholden from him Hell and Prov. 15. 11. destruction are before him how much more then the hearts of the Children of Men And then how strongly are we obliged to keep good order there since they are under the eye of so intimate and accurate an Observer of their internal motions and subject to the inspection of so true a Judge of good discipline and so severe an Avenger of bad But I shall urge this consideration farther in it's proper place as a means to assist us in the ordering of our thoughts aright And therefore II. IN order to this end it would be â—onsidered that God bears a special regard to the obedience of our hearts and affections For tho bright and shining Examples of Vertue diffuse a lustre round about them promote the divine honour and induce men to glorifie the great Father of such burning Lights which is in Heaven yet nothing is so unexceptionable a demonstration of the power of Grace and the sincerity of our hearts as a conscientious care and management of those Thoughts that fly up and down in them for where such an obedience is yeilded to the divine commands as no eye can pry into but that which is ten thousand times brighter than the Sun in its Zenith it cannot possibly admit of the least intermixture or suspition of by-respect but must be tender'd God purely for his own Sake from a true spiritual principle of life and in a spiritual manner and then what sacrifice can possibly be more acceptable to our Maker than the immediate issues and emanations of our Souls when there is no Stander by no Witness of what passes betwixt God and our Souls in private no secular consideration that can possibly ingage us nor temporal rewards to induce nor temporal punishments to force us to the discharge of so spiritual and hidden a duty III. 'T IS a main point of Wisdom and Argument of good understanding to be able to order our Thoughts aright and the acquisition of that noble Character should spur us on to this discipline of our minds All the reasonable World will allow him to be a penson of a vast compass of understanding who by foreseeing and providing against the exigences of State by knowing how to compound temper and qualifie the different interests passions and perswasions of Men c. prudently administers a Government and if so no less will he deserve the Character who governs his Thoughts well for they are a Great people for number and as mutinous and disorderly as the most tumultuous rabble so that they who rule well in this sense too are worthy of double Honour IV. AND Lastly let the consideration of the noble and dignified Nature of our Thoughts induce us to an orderly management of them for they are beams of that Light which is inaccessible the immediate fruits and eldest Sons of that immortal Parent in us which is nearly allied to the Divinity it self and how then can we possibly be so insensible of our own high Character who were framed after the Image of the Immortal God and are designed to be made more ample partakers of his Nature as to lay out our time and our pains so busily as we do in the management of a Family acquireing an Estate and supporting and adorning a mouldring Carcase and yet totally disregard the menage of our thoughts which are the pride and glory of our Nature For wherein else but in this thinking reasoning Power do we differ from the inhabitants of our stable or our kennel And as this in general diserminates our Nature from theirs so I had almost said do's one Man as much differ from
more They understood little or nothing beyond the political Covenant the terms whereof chiefly influenc'd their obedience and so took up with such a political righteousness as consisted in the obedience of the civil Laws of the Jewish Common-weal hence it is that Trypho the Jew disputing with Justin Martyr says that the Gospel Precepts meaning those that command the obedience of the heart and affections seem'd to him incapable of observance and that Josephus reprehends Polybius the Historian for ascribing the death of Antiochus to sacriledge intended tho' not committed by him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 For as long saith he as he did not actually execute his intentions he deserv'd no punishment and that this was the old received notion of obedience appears plainly enough from our Saviours correcting this misprision in the 5th of St. Mat. ye have heard saith he ver 21. that it was said by them of old time thou shalt not kill if a man did not actually murder another he was thought to have kept within the bounds of the eight Commandment as indeed he did as to the temporal penalty annex'd to the violation of it which was then principally regarded but our Lord tells them plainly Verse 22. that the guilt in this particular lies as deep as the very beginnings the first efforts and sallies of an angry mind towards a foolish quarrel that may end in blood in which sense St. John affirms that whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer is already so tho his sword be still unsheath'd and he has stab'd him only in effigie again says he to the same purpose at the 27th ver ye have heard that it was said by them of old time thou shalt not commit adultery if a man did but refrain from the actual embraces of a forbidden bed how keenly soever he debauch'd by the strength of an impure imagination yet he was for all that in their notion of obedience a chast and modest man still but our Saviour tells them a rape may be committed in the fancy and adultery by a wanton glance And that this Jewish notion of obedience is not yet altogether antiquated under Christianity seems but too evident from that trite proverbial saying amongst us that thoughts are free as if when men durst not let loose their hands or their tongues to work wickedness yet they might give their desires and imaginations their full swing and muse and wish and contrive and please themselves with the Invention and Images of those things which they think it not safe to put in execution whereas on the contrary the Laws of our Lord prescribe to our affections set bounds to our fancies regulate our desires direct our intentions govern our wishes strike at sin in embrio and check the first voluntary motions and tendencies of the mind to evil Voluntary I say because 't is hard to imagine that those motus primò primi as the Schools speak those first stirrings of Concupiscence which come not within the verge and compass of the Will should fall under the lash and censure of the Law a Souldier is not punished for having an enemy to encounter but for not doing his duty to repel his assaults if instead of watching and repressing his motions he rather entertains him then but not till then let the Law go upon him God will certainly punish no man for an imperfection that is not in his power to prevent and which he did not himself voluntarily contract will not call us to an account for being proper Subjects of the Operations of his Grace but for misusing it and will not require it at any mans hands that he has the Seeds of evil scatter'd in his composition but for suffering them to fructifie in the soil However it must still be own'd that as to all the irregular motions of the inner man that fall under the disposal of our Wills God hath concluded them all under sin that by the wicked man's forsaking his thoughts the numberless vain thoughts that fly up and down his mind he might the more abundantly pardon Is 55. v. 7. accordingly the same Prophet tells us of those that err Is 29. 24. in spirit Solomon of those that err in imagining evil Prov. 14. 22. and Micah denounces woe to the devisers 21. of iniquity Hence the same wise King of Israel tells us in one place that the thought of foolishness is sin Prov. 24. 9. Prov. 14. 22. Prov. 15. 26. in another place that they err who devise evil in a third that the thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord as his Father David had before observ'd of some that their inward parts were very wickedness Psal 5. 9. Psal 58. 2. and tells us of others that in their heart work wickedness hence again it is that St. Peter requires Simon Magus to repent of the thoughts of his Acts 8. 22. heart for what is the subject of our Repentance but our Sins that St. Paul requires us to bring into 2 Cor. 10. 4. captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ which supposes that of themselves they are naturally rebellious that our Saviour reprehends the Pharisees for thinking Matt. 9. 4. Matt. 15. 18 19. Matt. 5. evil and affirms of evil thoughts that they defile the man as well as when they shoot forth into the exterior actions of murder adultery c. The very intention and desire whereof he elsewhere equals with overt transgressions of the kind The reason of all is that God being the Father of the Spirits of all flesh and the Kingdom of his Son a spiritual Kingdom too 't is congruous both to the divine Nature and ours which is a stricture of his that his Laws bear sway in our spiritual part in our hearts and souls our wills and affections for would we have an infinitely glorious Spirit serv'd by dull flesh and blood only and not rather like himself in spirit and in truth with those prime productions those first born Sons of the immortal Nature in us Has God made us men and would we pay him but the spiritless homage of the animal part of us Has he implanted a noble and immortal principle of life and motion in us and shall it not share in our obedience to him and consequently in the guilt of the transgression of his Laws He is the natural Lord of both Soul and Body has bought them with a Price and therefore all the Reason in the World the Obedience we pay him should be commensurate to the extent of his Purchase so that if we have any just abhorrence of Sin in the true Latitude of the Divine construction of it we must govern our Thoughts as well as observe measures in our words and actions SECT 3. BUT I shall farther evince the obligations that lie upon us to order our Thoughts aright from such considerations as seem to enhance the guilt of mental sins above those of the outward Man For I. THO' it
and excel another by how much he is the better Master of his thoughts and can lay them out to more generous purposes if therefore we have any just sense of the dignity of our humane Nature and would advance and improve that part of us which is properly the Man we must manage those thoughts by which we manage all things else CHAP. II. SECT 1. HAVING thus endeavour'd to lay before Men the Obligations they are under to order their thoughts aright I shall in the next place point out several of those Infirmities Irregularities and Defects that are incident thereto whereby it will more particularly appear how Vain and Frivolous and Sinful they are The Multiplicity of Objects and the great Variety of those motions whereby the mind entertains her self with them renders it next to impossible to take in this argument in such a Latitude as to be able to descend to minute particulars I shall therefore content my self to instance in some more general defects and weaknesses of the thinking Power in us leaving it to every Man who expects a more exact draught of them to attend to the motions of his own mind and to follow the jant of his thoughts after those Objects that keep them most company I. ALL Thoughts of our hearts are undoubtedly vain that are employed about criminal objects as the gratification of any of our lusts c. For the sinfulness of the object imparts its guilt to the act of the mind that is conversant about it no man can think of accomplishing a revenge a fraud a murder c. And be innocent Namque scelus in se tacitum qui cogitat ullim Facti crimen habet is the voice of both Pagan and Christian Theology St. Paul Rom. 13. requires us not to make provision as we render it for the slesh to fullfil the lusts thereof 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Says the original i. e. not to contrive or project before hand how to accomplish our wicked intentions for our thoughts always lay the plot before it thickens into the last scene of actual execution but this head is so plain that I need not longer insist upon it II. THOSE Thoughts must needs be very vain and foolish whose subject matter is vain and trifling 't is not every ones portion to have their minds fraught with solid and substantial lading some carry nothing but ballast dull heavy conceptions others carry too great a sail are over light and aery others trade only in toys in news fancies fashions Apes and Peacock feathers neither nature nor education has furnished all men with proper materials for their thoughts to work upon and therefore since the common activity of their minds will not suffer them to be wholly idle what wonder if they take up with unmanly arguments and converse in their Thoughts with their dogs or their horses with the passages of the Theatre the imaginary exploits of some Hero in a Romance or the like thinking to no purpose rather than not think at all III. As such Thoughts as these are materially vain because their Objects are nothing worth so other Thoughts may be said to be formally so i. e. When tho' the matter of them is good yet the manner and turn of the heart in thinking of them is not as it should be Thus the same numerical Prayer may be a sweet smelling savour from one man's mouth and an abomination from anothers where tho the matter of the service is one and the same yet the different turn of heart and mind makes it formally considered a quite different performance So again a wicked man may think of the same God with a good one where tho' the matter of his Thoughts be equally good with the others yet his thoughts are vain because without Spiritual Life and Vigour in them whilst by reason of such Qualifications the others are accepted and 't is very possible for a wicked Man to have a Thousand materially good thoughts and yet go to Hell in the midst of them He may think of God and yet he never have the more service of him he may think of Repentance and yet continue the same impenitent Man he was he may think of Death and Judgment and yet his life be never the better 'T is hard if in such a vast Lottery of Thoughts as is played at in our minds a very wicked Man have not now and then a good chance and yet if he is not renewed in the Spirit of his mind and both the Principle and Course of his Actions better'd by them they are none of his own Thoughts but Injections properly with which his Soul is haunted and such thinking of good things will be so far from abating a Man's Guilt that they will inhaunce his Punishment In fine as every thought of sin is not sinful for a Man may think of it with Abhorrence so neither do's every Thought of Piety and Religion come under the Character it pretends to For where the heart is carnal and vain it desecrates every good motion thrown into it from without and like a vitiated Stomach instead of affording solid nutriment to the Soul turns all it meets with into the morbifie matter of Sin IV. 'T IS a great vanity of our thinking Power to leave the plain beaten Road of profitable and substantial Knowledge for the narrow crooked Paths of Vice and useless Speculations The Word and Works of the Almighty together with the Operations of our own minds the wonders of the greater and lesser World afford more solid stuff for our Thoughts to work upon than the widest capacity was ever able to go through with and yet such is the natural activity of our minds and the fruitless Curiosity of some Men's that they choose to refine upon them commonly beyond usefulness often beyond Sense affect Sciences falsly so call'd and spin cobweb Notions out of their own Brains fit only to catch flies with Thus has the insipid Nicety of the Schools mangled and even crucified the Word of God putting on it a crown of Thorns too the barbarous Spinosities of their own Inventions and made the plain intelligible Doctrine of believing in God and living well a torture and rack to the Brains of the learned and Consciences of the Ignorant They have thinn'd the doctrine of Jesus into the fineness and air of the metaphysicks of Aristotle and made their Schools as great an Asylum for the Disputers of this World as their Churches are for the murderer or other malefactor And how should men gather grapes of such thorns and figs of such thistles as these Such brambles of dispute may tear and rent one's mind in passing through them but can never edify it V. 'T IS another vain thought to imagine we can bring about our projects without having God in our thoughts or by contrary means to what he has appointed thus the Jews as God complains by Jeremie in the beginning of his Prophesie had forgotten him daies without Number and were
again but range every Field and and pursue every game that comes in the interim in their way or like some restless birds they no sooner light upon one object than they presently take wing and fly off to another by which means there happens many times so quick a Succession or rather indeed such a tumultuary Jumble of Ideas in our heads that we lose our selves as in a Maze get into a Labyrinth of our own making and can hardly remember the goal from which our thoughts first started so that if we look'd them over again and could but trace them in their rambles and excursions from one Object to another we should find them many times no more coherent than our Dreams or the rovings and extravagant apprehensions of Mad-men and perhaps the main difference betwixt the Mad-man in Bedlam and the other musing in his Study lies in this that the one is so foolish as to utter his Conceptions as they throng into his head and the other so wise as to conceal them NOW there may be several causes of this Imperfection if we will trace it up to its spring head we must go as far back as the Fall of Adam for it when the mind leaving the pursuit of the chief and supream Good about which it regularly moved as about its proper Center and proposing to it self the acquest of infinite other false and fictitious Goods in its stead it became like a wandring Star planetary and erratic in its Motions AGAIN we may find another cause of this in our own Composition we are all fearfully and wonderfully made up of two very difficult parts Soul and Body and yet so that the Operations of the Soul do in a great measure depend upon the temperament of the Body now the great Instruments in our rational as well as animal Operations are those subtle parts of the bloud call'd Spirits which in the very constitution of some Persons those especially of a sanguine Complexion being of a fine and light Contexture do necessarily cause a like Levity of the mind in thinking for we cannot possibly help apprehending after their Motions and Impressions AND as this volatility of mind is natural to some Constitutions so may several accidents produce it in others a blow upon the Head a distemper in the Brain or intemperance may put the bloud into such a preternatural fermentation and so agitate and confuse the Spirits that there will necessarily ensue a like Levity and Confusedness of the mind in thinking BUT that which carries the most general and principal stroke in this affair is certainly the wantonness of our imaginations which is often presenting our understandings with fine Pictures and Images of things which inveigle our minds to run a gadding after them set the Spirits agog divert the main stream of our Thoughts from their primary channel and let them run out like water spilt upon the ground upon foreign and improper objects So that even the most thoughtful men many times are not able to direct one line of Thoughts streight on but lose sight of the subject they at first began with For imagination is a busie restless sort of power that 's seldom or never idle but most of all exerts its activity when the Understanding is lazy and out of imployment No sooner does the tempting object from without honour or pleasure or profit make its way through the doors of our senses to our understanding but this faculty like a Master of the Ceremonies ushers it in harangues upon its Excellencies and desires it may have audience if a Man hankers after honour and his temper is ambitious the imagination presently lifts him up to one of the highest Pinacles of the Court shews him all the Kingdoms of greatness together with Followers Dependants Attendants Retinue and the other glories of them so that the Man's Thoughts are always mounting making ladders as it were to himself and contriving how to climb higher So again if an object of profit has possess'd the mind the fancy presently begins to survey the land to set off the value and conveniency of Goods laid up for many years and falls a telling over the money as it were before yours eyes to ingage you in its pursuit and makes your Thoughts in the Prophets language go after your covetousness So again if the Idea of a pleasurable object has stoln in at your eyes the same faculty presents you with more charms than any one else can see in it summons all the senses to bear witness to the several gratifications it affords them and recommends the object so long till your deluded Thoughs play the adulterer and commit folly with it and in all these cases like a flattering Painter draws the Picture of the object far more beautiful and exact than ever the original could pretend to and by these means breaks off the connexion of our Thoughts cuts them short of the object they should pursue and renders them light and desultory NOW this defect as far as 't is purely casual or as far as 't is natural owing to our complex'd constitution of Soul and Body cannot be criminal but then comes certainly under that denomination and is sin to us where the natural infirmity is countenanc'd and indulg'd especially in divine worship or the defect is voluntarily acquired by intemperance or the like AND now that we are upon this Head it may not be improper here to subjoyn other vanities of our Thoughts that are principally owing to the same cause of a wanton and ludicrous imagination for indeed this power carries a mighty stroke with us influencing in a great measure their determination of the judgment the choice of the will the pursuit of the affections and in consequence of all these the execution of our bodily powers SECT 2. AND here I shall first take notice of that error of Thought it occasions in us when we apply our selves to the consideration of spiritual and immaterial substances For being used to think by the intervention of Ideas from our senses which are conversant only about material objects the imagination which receives these impressions from our senses is apt to draw the same gross Images of immaterial beings as of Spirits Angels and of God himself and we being used to view the objects we think of as they are represented in the looking glass of fancy are apt foolishly to conclude that the originals resemble those Pictures of them and so make no distinction in our conceptions betwixt material and immaterial objects hence it is that we conceive Angels to be like young Boys and the great God like a grave old Man that very vanity of imagination as the Apostle terms it of which the Gentil World stood guilty in changing the glory of the incorruptible God Rom. 1. 21 23. into an Image made like corruptible Man c. II. WE shall consider that vanity which Fancy imparts to our Thoughts in relation to sensual and voluptuous objects for hereby Men
Composition where tho the Spirit may be willing yet the flesh is weak will necessarily make our minds nod take them off their guard now and then and consequently give the Tempter an anavoidable advantage over us yet if these wandrings of our Spirits are grievous to our Minds upon recollection if we hence learn what unprofitable Servants we are even in our best Performances and humble our selves hereupon in the sight of God begging him to whip those Thieves that steal away our Thoughts out of the Temples of our Souls we shall not stand chargeable with the Robberies they commit upon us but as the motions of the good Spirit when rejected do so much the more inhaunce Men's guilt so will the injections of the evil One when guarded against as far as may be and resisted be sanctified through the divine Mercy to our greater advantage In fine this wandring of the mind in holy Duties tho in its best Construction 't is a great Unhappiness yet will be only so far imputed for Sin to us as it is voluntary in its Cause and in our own power to remedy and is in its Progress whence soever it derives indulged and complyed with SECT 5. WE proceed now to another more terrible sort of Thoughts wherewith the Minds of Men are many times unhappily infested For it is not unusual for some tempers especially to be assaulted with abundance of odd extravagant and horrid Thoughts breaking in upon them in spite of all Guard and Opposition Thus you shall have some those particularly of musing heads and melancholly Dispositions press'd upon now and then with Atheistical and Blasphemous Câ—gitations tempted either with David to deny God Ps 73. 2. from a consideration of the unequal Dispensation of his Providence in the World or some other such illogical Topick or else through the pressure of their Afflictions or the like to think hardly of him to deny him in his Attributes to charge him foolishly and to curse him and die Others you shall have possess'd with dismal 〈◊〉 of thâ—â—r having sinned the â—in againâ—â— the holy Ghost of their being Reprobates cast off of God without the verge of his Mercy and seal'd up for destruction Others Lastly there are hurried on in their minds to the commission of some great and crying Sins even against the bent of their own Propensions and that sometimes as far as self Murder it self c. NOW these Thoughts being all of 'em a kin and of the self same Family I shall not go about to treat of them severally and apart but together and in the following Method I. I shall endeavour to shew that there is some difficulty in stateing their proper Rise and Origine But that II. 'T IS of great use to know it and therefore III. IN order thereunto I shall assign some Marks and Characteristies whereby it may be known when they are of their Father the Devil IV. I shall shew that howsoever troublesom and afflicting they are they do not affect nor endanger our main State V. and Lastly I shall endeavour to prescribe the regulation of them I. IT must be owned there is some difficulty in the enquiry into the rise and origine of these horrid Thoughts and 't is hard to know many times whether they are the genuine Issue of our own corrupt Nature or spurious Brats falsly father'd on us by the Devil For he can inject as much and more than our Corruptions can suggest and yet possihly on the other hand they are able of themselves to carry us on to those excesses that look diabolical and when they joyn hand in hand 't is hard to know whether of the two first made the Motions or proves the abler Solicitor of their common cause of Sin Out of the Heart says our Saviour proceed evil Thoughts Murders Adulteries c. there they are conceived whosoever begets them And St. Paul in his Epistle to the Romans resolves Rom. 1. 24. some of those black Crimes for which he brands the heathen World into the Lusts of their own Hearts and yet at the same time 〈…〉 to understand that the Pâ—ince of the power of the Air wrought in all such Children of Disobedience And indeed as the Doctrine Eph. 2. 2. of divine and humane Concurrence in the progress of true Piety is very plain and legible in the Scriptures so as that we are said for instance to be washed and sanctified by the Spirit of God and 1 Cor. 6. 11. yet are required to cleanse our selves from all filthiness of the Flesh and Spirit So are the same sins in 2 Cor. 7. 1. different places charged upon the Devil and our own Hearts too As David's numbring the people 1 Chron. 21. 1. v. 8. is ascribed to Satan and yet the King takes it to himself Just as it is said of Ananias lying to the holy Ghost that Satan put him on it and yet that he conceived it in his Acts. 5. 3 4. Heart NOW tho it be somwhat difficult as we have seen to know the true Parent of these hideous Thoughts we speak of yet II. IT is of no small use and concernment to meet with some satisfaction in the Matter for the sad Experience I believe of many especially hypocondraick Persons tells us the darkness of whose humor is best fitted to receive such black Impressions how apt the grand Enemy of our peace is to throw these fiery Darts into our Hearts and then to accuse us of their burning within us to commit a rape upon our Spirits and then lay the Child at our Doors whereby he many times creates such infinite Disquiet of Thought Horror of Conscience and Astonishment of all the Powers and Faculties of tendor Minds that they are apt to look upon themselves as rejected of God deliver'd up to Satan and in such a desperate and forlorn Condition that the violent hand perhaps is sometimes thought of to put a Period to the comfortless and wretched Life and therefore I say it may be of excellent Use on this Argument for the Support and Encouragement of these unhappy Persons to point out such criterious and characteristies whereby the buffetings of Satan as we render it 2 Cor. 12 7. may be in some measure distinguished from the genuine productions of our own Minds and those generally assign'd by Divines are such as follow I. THEY are the Devil's Thoughts not ours when the matter of them surpasses the suggestions of our natural Corruption for Nature her self unless turn'd perfectly Diabolical shrinks and gives back at those outragiously wicked Motions that pass now and then in some Men's Minds and there to be sure they are the assaults of the Devil upon them to Vex Disquiet and Confuse their Spirits tho he chance to prove unable to prevail with them An evil Heart 't is true may through its own inherent Wickedness conjure up those frightful Spectres of Thoughts that would scare and amaze other Persons but that
or any other Prayers by the bare telling over as the manner of some is and stringing up their Petitions We durst not thus mock our Prince to his Face we would hardly do it to our Equals and whence then is it but through want of preparing our Hearts with due Conceptions of his Awful and Majestick Presence in his own House that we make thus bold with our Maker 3. IT might be a proper preparatory reflection to consider the Fruits and Consequences of approaching God in so careless and so incogitant a Manner I shall not go about to shew at large how severe God has formerly been upon all disorders and irregularities committed about holy Things and Duties as in the Case of Aarons Sons of Vzzah of Lev. 10. 2. 2 Sam. 6. 6. the Bethshemites and of the Church 1 Sam. 6. 19. 1 Câ—r 11. 30. of Corinth nor how he threatn'd that for this very thing because his People drew near to him with their Lips but had removed their Heart far from him he would therefore Isa 29. 13 14. proceed to do a marvellous Work among them even a marvellous Work and a Wonder Which was no less than to confound the wisdom of the wise and the understanding of the prudent Men amongst them I shall not I say insist on these Considerations now because it has seem'd good to the infinite Wisdom to alter the nature of his Inflictions and for neglects of this kind especially to change them from temporal into spiritual which tho they do not so immediately affect the Body as the others did yet endanger the Soul and take away the spiritual Life of a Christian For tho he do's not now smite Men with Death for their unsanctified Approaches to him yet he smites them with Deadness with Coldness and Indifferency in the cause of Religion suffers them to grow listless reasty and awkard at their Devotions and ten to one to lapse at long run into open Atheism and Prophaneness For we certainly lose ground by every spiritless Prayer we advance grow from bad to worse from worse to stark nought and past feeling For every such formal performance grieves the Spirit cloggs the Conscience hardens the Heart and gives the Devil an occasion to draw us off from our Neutrality and to make us at last declare for his Party whence it is not improbable that when we have once contracted such a vitious habit and crasis of Soul in Devotion he himself many times sends us to our Prayers adding that he may add to our Disease and turn the best Antidote we have against him into so much stronger Poison to our selves And therefore we would do well to season and prepare our Hearts beforehand with these and the like Considerations that by a just Reslection upon the Importance of the Duty the Supream Majesty to whom we pay it and the fatal Consequences of a perfunctory Performance of it we may attend upon the Lord without Distraction III. ANOTHER proper means to fix our Thoughts in the Service of God is to Love him with all our Hearts with all the Powers and Capacities of our Souls did we Delight to have our Conversation with Him our Hearts would keep our Minds close to their Work and not suffer them to loiter or to ramble for our Affections have an immediate Influence upon our Thoughts and our Hearts generally sets our Mind the Theme of its Contemplations Love particularly is a commanding and imperial Passion that bids us go and and we go come and we come do this and we do it a passion that ingrosses all our Powers binds us fast to and runs our Thoughts so deep into its Object that we have neither Leisure nor Patience hardly Power to attend to any others O how I love thy Law says holy David and then it follows both in him and in the nature of the things it is my Meditation all the Ps 119. 97. Day and the first part of his Character of a good Man is that his Delight is in the Law of the Lord and the second is the natural Result of the first that in his Law doth he meditate Day and Night Ps 1. 2. For a Man cannot but pore and muse on the thing he delights in and therefore were our Hearts ravished with the Love of God from just and retired Reflections upon the benefits of Creation Preservation Redemption and the Glory that hereafter shall be Revealed did we but kindle this holy Flame in us by frequent Considerations of his patience forgiveness forbearance the Abyss of his Love and the great depths of his infinite beneficence things that must needs render the Deity amiable and lovely to us in our Conceptions of him all our motions would tend Heaven wards when once invigorated with impressions from that celestial Fire we should not be at leisure to admit any Rival of God in our Thoughts and to attend to those little idle Toys and Fancies that have the impudence to step into our Closets and distract us IV. MEDITATION is another proper Remedy of the wandring of our Thoughts in Prayer The Hill of Meditation is indeed of difficult but yet of noble Ascent that lifts us up so far above our natural Level that we look down upon the World and all its Enjoyments which so frequently interrupt our Devotions as a very little Thing 'T is an heroic and abstracted Operation of the Soul that lets us into the very secrets of the Objects we Contemplate that makes every day fresh Discoveries and gives us both deep and diffused Prospects of things otherwise invisible the Telescope of the Mind whereby we descry new Worlds a new Heaven and a new Earth the Terra incognita of Nature and Grace and see things at an immense distance from us It opens to us the Scene of Paradise it self makes a sort of indistance betwixt God and our own Souls takes us out or at least makes us forget that we are Flesh fills our head with those elevated Conceptions and warms our Heart with those Ravishments of Joy that we can feel indeed but cannot utter or express them And he who has never yet been experimentally sensible of this Truth never yet rightly enjoyed either God or himself has the most exquisite Pleasure of this Life yet to come and wants the preparatory Foretaste of the enjoyments of the other Meditation in a word I mean where God is the Object both quickens and fixes our Devotion which embraces not its Object but in proportion as Meditation gives it Entrance V. AND Lastly Solitude gives a mighty fixation of Thought in private and Religious Assemblies in publick Devotion for a Retreat naturally tends to Recollection of the Spirit and Communion with God it helps to center all the Emanations of our Souls upon him and gives us more pure and perfect Prospects and therefore when thou prayest says he who taught us to pray enter into thy Closet not only to avoid that vain Pomp and
few Men are of that strong and athletick temper of Soul as to be able to bear the shocks of adversity but that it generally ruffles and discomposes their Thoughts and like the desperate pushes of an enemy breaks their ranks and puts them in disorder it would be therefore of excellent and common use for the management of our Thoughts in those exigences to be verst in the Theory of the Divine dispensations to bring our selves to a recumbency upon God and commit our cares to him who careth for us that we may thereby maintain an evenness of temper amidst the roughest emergencies and enjoy a calm of mind within amidst the loudest storms without XVI AGAIN since notwithstanding the immaterial and spiritual nature of the Soul it is capable of being wrought upon and affected by the body during their union for when once link'd and wedded together there ariseth a mutual sympathy betwixt the unequal couple and that thence doubtless proceed many foolish wandering and impure cogitations it would be advisable to tame the one by the macerations of the other to mortifie the flesh to keep our bodies under and not cram and indulge them till the Beast rides the Man till they grow too hard for our reason throw off its government and draw even it in too to second the motions and solicitations of the flesh For the flames of lust quench the spirit as the scorching Sun beams put out the gentler heat of the fire Foul weather in the lower Region sends up nought but filthy Streams and vapours The pure in Heart only shall see God here as well as hereafter and thence be furnished with just and elevated conceptions for he will not accept polluted Bread upon his Altar Nor will Mal. 1. 7. admit an unclean sacrifice If therefore we would be Masters of our own Thoughts we must first be Masters of our Appetites and not pamper and indulge our Carkasses but wisely avoiding all excesses of this kind must endeavour by a Substraction of unnecessary fuel from the Body to let the fire thereby kindled in our Thoughts go out XVII LASTLY it will highly conduce to the ordering of our Thoughts aright to live as much as possibly we can under this Apprehension that Almighty God is present with them see 's knows reads and scans their subtlest Motions and darkest Intrigues better than the Eyes and Ears of Men hear or see them in their fruits of Words and Actions For lo there is not a Thought in our Heart but he knoweth it altogether and afar off for I know their Imagination says God concerning his People which they go about Deut. 31. 21. even now before I have brought them into the land which I swear For He even He only knows all the Hearts of 1 Kings 8. 39. the Children of Men and as Job says Job 4â— 2. no Thought can be witholden from him Hell and Destruction are before him Prov. 15. 11. how much more then the Hearts of the Children of Men For shall not the Almighty Artificer who made the Heart know all the wheels the springs â—nd movements that are in it Go then and ascend up into Heaven in the Psalmist's Rethorick on this occasion make thy bed in Hell take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the Sea go whither do what thou wilt there 's an Ear to over-hear thee an Eye to over-look thee and an invisible hand to transcribe and register the closest transactions of thy Mind We find the Royal David had such a continual lively Sense of this matter on Ps 139. him that he tells us when he awaked God was ever present with him occur'd immediately to his Mind as those objects generally do at our wakening which most of all engross our Thoughts And could we but learn to live under the same quick Apprehension would we walk less by Sense and more by Faith and look through at those things that lie within the Vail it would be a mighty use to us in the management of this hidden and unseen part of us For since our Sins in embrio at their first conception in the Soul are as loathsom in Gods Eyes as they are in their Birth and Production shameful in the eyes of Men Since the remarks of those who are of like Infirmities with our selves are powerful enough to perswade us to the regulation of our outward Behaviour and we should really be in confusion to have any grave sober Friend whose esteem we value and whose judgment we revere privy to all the foolish and unhallowed Thoughts of our Souls how much rather should the consideration of Gods all-seeing Eye lay a restraint upon our internal Follies For what absurdity is this to be ashamed of what passes in our Thoughts could Men pry into those recesses and yet to let God look on without the least Emotion What inadvertancy or Atheism rather is it to be ashamed or afraid of an overt act of wickedness least Men should find us out and yet at the same time riot in our Hearts and debauch in our Thoughts when God all the while stands by a Spectator and if he pleas'd himself a just Avenger of all such impious Transactions Since then God certainly knows all that passes in our Hearts sees and observes who comes in and who goes out is intimate to every unclean or otherwise sinful Thought to every unlawful Desire to every malicious and revengeful Wish to whatsoever in a word is transacted in that Cabinet Councel let us endeavour after such an habituated Thought of God as may mix him not in our actions onely but in all the movements of our Minds Let the consideration of his Presence ingage us to keep strict Discipline there to Order and Govern and Manage our Thoughts aright as what are all open and naked in his Sight for surely the Lord is with them tho perhaps we are not aware of it I shall shut up the whole with the excellent Collect of our Church relating to this Purpose ALMIGHTY GOD unto whom all Hearts be open all Desires known and from whom no Secrets are hid cleanse the Thoughts of our Hearts by the Inspiration of thy Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love thee and worthily magnifie thy Holy Name through Christ our Lord. Amen FINIS