or treasures of the earth If you had as you have an offer of God Christ Grace and Glory on one side and worldly prosperity in sin on the other side you would choose God and let go the other You dare not you would not give over Praying Hearing Reading and Christian company and give up your self to worldly fleshly pleasures yet you are not Assured of salvation because you finde not that Delight and Life in Duty and that Witness of the Spirit and that communion with God nor that tenderness of heart as you desire It is well that you desire them But though you be not Certain of Salvation do not you see a great likelihood a Probability in all this Is not your heart raised to a Hope that yet God is mercifull to you and means you good Doubtless this you might easily discern The second thing that I am to shew you is that there may much spiritual Comfort and Peace of Conscience be enjoyed without any Certainty of Salvation given upon these forementioned Probabilities Which I prove thus 1. No doubt but Adam in innocency had Peace of Conscience and Comfort and Communion with God and yet he had no Assurance of Salvation I mean either of continuing in Paradise or being translated to Glory For if he had either he was sure to persevere in Innocency and so to be glorified But that was not true or else he must foreknow both that he should fall and be raised again and saved by Christ But this he knew not at all 2. Experience tels us that the greatest part of Christians on earth do enjoy that Peace and Comfort which they have without any Certainty of their Salvation 3. The Nature of the thing telleth us that a likelihood of so great a mercy as everlasting Glory must needs be a ground of great Comfort If a poor condemned prisoner do but hear that there is Hopes of a pardon specially if very probable it will glad his heart Indeed if an Angel from Heaven were brought into this state it would be sad to him But if a devil or a condemned sinner have such Hope it must needs be glad news to them The devils have it not but we have 3. Let me next therefore intreat you to take the Comfort of your Probabilities of Grace and Salvation Your horse or dog knoweth not how you will use them Certainly yet will they lovingly follow you and put their heads to your hand and trust you with their lives without fear and love to be in your company because they have found you kinde to them and have tried that you do them no hurt but good yea though you do strike them sometimes yet they finde that they have their food from you and your favour doth sustain them Yea your little children have no Certainty how you will use them and yet finding that you have alwaies used them kindly and expressed Love to them though you whip them sometimes yet are glad of your company and desire to be in your lap and can trust themselves in your hands without tormenting themselves with such doubts as these I am uncertain how my mother will use me whether she will wound me or kill me or turn me out of doors and let me perish Nature perswades us not to be too distrustfull of those that have alwaies befriended us and especially whose Nature is Mercifull and Compassionate Nor to be too suspitious of evil from them that have alwaies done us good Every man knows that the Good will do good and the Evil will do evil and accordingly we expect that they should do to us Naturally we all fear a Toad a Serpent an Adder a mad Dog a wicked Man a mad Man a cruel blood thirsty Tyrant and the Devil But no one fears a Dove a Lamb a good Man a mercifull compassionate Governour except only the Rebels or notorious offenders that know he is bound in justice to destroy or punish them And none should fear distrustfully the wrath of a gracious God but they who Will not submit to his Mercy and Will not have Christ to reign over them and therefore may know that he is bound in Justice if they come not in to destroy them But for you that would be Obedient and Reformed and are troubled that you are no better and beg of God to make you better and have no sin but what you would be glad to be rid of may not you at least see a strong Probability that it shall go well with you O make use therefore of this Probability and if you have but Hopes that God will do you good rejoice in those Hopes till you can come to rejoyce in Assurance And here let me tell you that Probabilities are of divers Degrees according to their divers Grounds Where men have but a little Probability of their Sincerity and a greater Probability that they are not Sincere in the faith these men may be somewhat born up but it behoves them presently to search in fear and to amend that which is the cause of their fear Those that have more Probability of the Sincerity of their hearts then of the contrary may well have more peace then trouble of minde Those that have yet a higher Degree of Probability may live in more Joy and so according to the Degree of Probability may their Comforts still arise And observe also that it is but the highest Degree of this Probability here which we call a Certainty For it is a Moral Certainty and not that which is called a Certainty of Divine faith nor that which is called a Certainty of evidence in the strictest sense though yet evidence there is for it But it is the same evidences materially which are the ground of Probability and of Certainty Only sometime they differ Gradually one having more Grace and another less and sometime not so neither for he that hath more Grace may discern but a Probability in it through some other defect no more then he that hath less But when one man discerns his Graces and Sincerity but darkly he hath but a Probability of Salvation manifested by them and when another discerneth them more clearly he hath a stronger Probability and he that discerneth them most clearly if other necessaries concurre hath that which we call a Certainty Now I am perswaded that you frequently see a strong Probability of your Sincerity and may not that be a very great stay and comfort to your soul Nay may it not draw out your heart in Love Delight and Thankfulness Suppose that your name were written in a piece of paper and put among a hundred or fifty or but twenty other like papers into a Lottery and you were certain that you should be the owner of this whole Land except your name were drawn the first time and if it were drawn you should die Would your Joy or your Sorrow for this be the greater Nay if it were but ten to one or but two to one odds on
disposeth helps or hinders the minde Let us hear one man reason the Case and we think he makes all as clear as the Light Let us hear another solve all his Arguments and dispute for the contrary and then we see that our Apprehensions were abused Let us hear him Reply and confute all again and confirm his Cause and then we think him in the right again Nothing more changeable then the conceivings and minde of man till he be throughly Resolved and Habituated Now in this Case how shall those that have but little Grace be able to discern it It will not keep the minde from fluctuating If they seem Resolved for obedience to Christ to day to morrow they are so shaken by some enticing object and force of the same temptation that their Resolution is undiscernable nay actually they prefer sin at that time before obedience It is impossible then but the soul should stagger and be at a loss for it will judge of it self as it findes it self and it cannot discern the Habitual Prevalency of Christs Interest when they feel the Actual Prevalency of the fleshes Interest For the Act is the only discoverer of the Habit And if Peter himself should then have fallen to the examination of his heart Whether he Preferred Christ before his Life at the same time when he was denying and forswearing Christ to save his Life do you think he could have discerned it and yet even then Christs Interest was greatest in him Habitually If David should have gone to search whether he preferred obedience to God before his fleshly pleasure when he was committing Adultery or before his credit when he was plotting the death of Vriah what discovery do you think he would have made 7. Add to all these that as these severall distempers were they but in the same measure in a weak Christian as they are in the best or in most would yet make the smallest measure of Grace undiscernable if we might suppose the smallest Grace to be consistent with such a frame so it is certain that whoever he be that hath the least measure of Grace to discover in himself he hath proportionably the least measure of abilities and helps to discover it and the greatest measure of all the forementioned hinderances He that hath but a very little Repentance Faith Love and Obedience sincere when he goeth to finde it out he hath in the same measure a Darker Understanding to discern it then others have and a greater strangeness and disacquaintance with himself and more deceitfulness in his heart and a greater confusion and hurlyburly in his thoughts and Affections and all more out of order and to seek Also he hath a greater backwardness to the work of self-examination and can hardly get his heart to it and more hardly to do it throughly and search to the quick and most hardly to hold on against all withdrawing temptations till he have made a clearer discovery And lastly his soul is more mutable then stronger Christians are and therefore when cross Actings are so frequent he cannot discern the smallest prevailing Habit. If when you are weighing Gold the scales be turned but with one grain every little jogge or winde or unsteadfast holding will actually lift up the heavier end and its preponderation is with great wavering and mobility 8. Yet further Consider those that have least Grace have most sin habitual and actual and they are so frequent in transgressing that their failings are still in their eye and thereby the prevalency of Christs interest is made more doubtfull and obscure For when he asketh his own conscience Do I will or love most the world and my fleshly delights or Christ and his wayes presently conscience remembreth him at such a time and such a time thou didst choose thy fleshly pleasures profits or credit and refuse obedience and it is so oft and so foully that the soul is utterly at a loss and cannot discern the Habitual prevalent bent and Resolution of the Will 9. Besides Conscience is a Judge in mans soul and will be Accusing and condemning men so far as they are guilty now they that make work for the most frequent and terrible Accusations of Conscience that will stand with true Grace are unlikely to have Assurance For Assurance quiets the soul and easeth it and a galled Conscience works the contrary way They that keep open the wound and daily fret off the skin more and are still grating on the galled part are unlikely to have Assurance 10. Again These weakest Christians being least in Duty and most in sinning of any in whom sin reigneth not they are consequently most in provoking and displeasing God And they that do so shall finde that God will shew them his displeasure and will displease them again They must not look to enjoy Assurance or see the Pleased face of God till they are more carefull to please him and are more sparing and seldom in offending him As Gods universal Justice in Governing the world will make as great a difference between the sincerely Obedient and Disobedient as there is between Heaven and Hell so Godâ— Paternal Justice in Governing his family will make as wide a difference between the more Obedient children and the less Obedient as is between his dreadfull frowns and his joyous reviving smiles or between his smarting Rod or his encouraging Rewards 11. If God should give Assurance and Peace to the sinning and least obedient believers he should not fit his providential disposals to their good It is not that which their state requires nor would it tend to their Cure any more then a healing Plaister to a sore that is rotten in the bottom or a Cordial to the removall of a cacochymy or the purging out of corrupt redundant humours They are so inclined to the Lethargy of security that they have need of continual pinching striking or loud calling-on to keep them waking still remember that by this weak Christian I mean not every doubting distressed soul that is weak in their own apprehension and little in their own eyes and poor in spirit but I mean those that have the least measure of sincere Love to Christ and desire after him and tenderness of conscience and care to please God and the greatest measure of security worldliness pride flesh-pleasing and boldness in sinning which is consistent with sincerity in the faith I believe there is no father or mother that hath children to govern but they know by experience that â—here is a necessity of frowns and rods for the more disobedient and that rewards and smiles are no cure for stubbornness or contempt 12. Lastly Do but well consider what a solaâ—cisme in Government it would be and what desperate inconveniences it would have brought into the world if God should but have set such a punctual land-mark between his Kingdom and the Kingdom of Satan as we are ready to dream of If God should have said in his Word just so oft a man may
you would draw a block through the water but as men that must hold fast and be commanded and threatned to that end and therefore when they lose their hold it is the fear of drowning which they felt themselves near which shall cause them to hold faster the next time and this must needs be the fear of a possible danger And for those that perish they have none to blame but themselves They perish not for want of a Saviour but because they would not lay hold on him and follow him through the tempests and waves of trial Nor can they quarrel with him because he did more for others and did not as much for them as long as he offered them so sufficient help that only their own wilfull refusal was their ruine and their perdition was of themselves I conclude therefore That seeing our Salvation is laid by God upon our faithfull obedient holding fast to Christ through all trials and difficulties and our holy fear is the means of that holding fast Christ being still the principal cause of our safety therefore never look for such a Certainty of Salvation as shall put you above such fears and moderated apprehensions of danger For then it s ten to one you will lose your hold You read in Scripture very many warnings to take heed least we fall and threatnings to those that do fall away and draw back What are all these for but to excite in us those moderate fears and cares and holy diligence which may prevent our falling away And remember this that there can be no such holy fears and cares and diligence where there is no danger or possibility of falling away for there can be no Act without its proper Object And the Object of fear is A possible hurt at least in the apprehension of him that feareth it No man can fear that evil which he knoweth to be Impossible DIRECTION XXI 21. The next advice which I must give you is this Be thankfull if you can but reach to a setled Peace and composure of your minde and lay not too much on the high raptures and feelings of comfort which some do possess And if ever you enjoy such feeling Joyes expect not that they should be either long or often IT is the cause of miserable languishing to many a poor soul to have such importunate expectations of such passionate Joyes that they think without these they have no true comfort at all no witness of the Spirit no Spirit of Adoption no joy in the holy Ghost Some think that others have much of this though they have not and therefore 〈…〉 themselves because it is no◠〈…〉 as with others when alas they little 〈◊〉 how it goes with others Some 〈…〉 raptures sometimes themselves and therefore when they are gone they think they are forsaken and that all grace or peace at least is gone with them Take heed of these expectations And to satisfie you let me tell you these two or three things 1. A setled calm and peace of soul is a great Mercy and not to be undervalued and looked at as Nothing 2. The highest raptures and passionate feeling joyes are usually of most doubtfull sincerity Not that I would have any suspect the sincerity of them without cause but such passions are not so certain signes of Grace as the setled frame of the understanding and will nor can we so easily know that they are of the Spirit and they are liable to more questioning and have in them a greater Possibility of deceit Doubtless it is very much that Phantasie and Melancholy and specially a natural weakness and moveable temper will do in such cases Mark whether it be not mostly these three sorts of people that have or pretend to have such extraordinary raptures and feelings of joy 1. Women and others that are most passionate 2. Melancholy People 3. Men that by erroneous opinions have lost almost all their understandings in their phantasies and live like men in a continual dream Yet I doubt not but solid men have oft high joyes and more we might all have if we did our duty And I would have no Christian content himself with a dull quietness of spirit but by all means possible to be much in labouring to rejoyce in God and raising their souls to heavenly delights O what lives do we lose which we might enjoy But my meaning is this Look at these joyes and delights as Duties and as Mercies but look not at them as Marks of trial so as to place more necessity in them then God hath done or to think them to be ordinary things If you do but feel such an high estimation of Christ and Heaven that you would not leave him for all the world take this for your surest Signe And if you have but so much Probability or Hope of your interest in him that you can think of God as one that loveth you and can be thankfull to Christ for Redeeming you and are gladder in these hopes of your interest in Christ and Glory then if you were owner of all the world take this for a happy Mercy and a high Consolation Yet I mean not that your joy in Christ will be alwaies so sensible as for worldly things but it will be more rational solid and deeper at the Heart And that you may know by this You would not for all the Pleasures Honours or Profits in the world be in the same case as once you were supposing that you were converted since you had the use of Reason and Memory or at least as you see the ungodly world still lye in 3. And let me adde this Commonly those that have the highest passionate joyes have the saddest lives for they have with all the most passionate fears and sorrows Mark it whether you finde not this prove true And it is partly from Gods will in his dispensations partly from their own necessities who after their exaltations do usually need a prick in the flesh and a messenger of Satan to buffet them lest they be exalted above measure and partly and most commonly it is from the temperature of their bodies Weak pastionate women of moveable spirits and strong affections when they Love they Love violently and when they Rejoyce especially in such cases they have most sensible joyes and when any fears arise they have most terrible sorrows I know it is not so with all of that sex but mark the same people usually that have the highest Joyes and see whether at other times they have not the greatest troubles This week they are as at the gates of Heaven and the next as at the doors of hell I am sure with many it is so Yet it need not be so if Christians would but look at these high joyes as Duties to be endeavoured and Mercies to be valued But when they will needs Judge of their state by them and think that God is gone from them or forsaken them when they have not such joyes then it leaves
men willing that so they may be saved Answ God having created the world and all things in it at first did make them in a certain nature and order and so stablish them as by a fixed Law and he thereupon is their Governour to govern every thing according to its nature Now mans Nature was to be Principled with an Inclination to his own Happiness and to be lead to it by objects in a Morall way and in the choice of means to be a free agent and the Guider of himself under God As Governour of the Rational creature God doth continue that same course of Ruling them by Laws and drawing them by ends and objects as their natures do require And in this way he is not wanting to them His Laws are now Laws of Grace and universal in the tenour of the free Gift and Promise for he hath there given life in Christ to all that will have it and the objects propounded are sufficient in their kinde to work even the most wonderfull effects on mens souls for they are God himself and Christ and glory Besides God giveth men natural faculties that they may have the use of reason and there is nothing more unreasonable then to refuse this offered Mercy He giveth inducing Arguments in the written Word and Sermons and addeth such Mercies and Afflictions that one would think should bow the hardest heart Besides the strivings and motions of his Spirit within which are more then we can give an account of Now is not this as much as belongs to God as Governour of the Creature according to its Nature And for the Giving of a New nature and Creating New hearts in men after all their rebellious rejecting of Grace this is a certain Miracle of Mercy and belongs to God in another Relation even as the free chooser of his Elect and not directly as the Governour of the universe This is from his special Providence and the former from his General Now special Providences are not to be as common as the General nor to subvert Gods ordinary established Course of Government If God please to stop Jordan and dry up the Red Sea for the passage of the Israelites and to cause the Sun to stand still for Joshua must he do so still for every man in the world or else be accounted unmercifull The sense of this Objection is plainly this God is not so rich in Mercy except he will New make all the World or Govern it above its Nature Suppose a King know his subjects to be so wicked that they have every one a full design to famish or kill themselves or poison themselves with something which is enticing by its sweetness The King not only makes a Law strictly charging them all to forbear to touch that poison but he sendeth special Messengers to entreat them to it and tell them the danger If these men will not hear him but wilfully poison themselves is he therefore unmercifull But suppose that he hath three or four of his sons that are infected with the same wickedness and he will not only command and intreat them but he will also lock them up or keep the poison from them or will feed them by violence with bitter food is he unmercifull unless he will do so by all the rest of his Kingdom Lastly If all this will not satisfie you Consider 1. That it is most certain that God is Love and infinite in Mercy and hath no pleasure in the death of sinners 2. But it is utterly uncertain to us how God worketh on mans will inwardly by his Spirit 3. Or yet what intollerable inconvenience there may be if God should work in other wayes therefore we must not upon such uncertainties deny certainties nor from some unreasonable scruples about the manner of Gods working Grace deny the blessed Nature of God which himself hath most evidently proclaimed to the world I have said the more of this because I finde Satan harp so much on this string with many troubled souls especially on the advantage of some common doctrines For false doctrine still tends to the overthrow of solid Peace and Comfort Remember therefore before all other thoughts for the obtaining of Peace to get high thoughts of the Gracious and Lovely Nature of God DIRECTION IV. 4. Next this Be sure that you deeply apprehend the Gracious Nature Disposition and Office of the Mediator JESUS CHRIST THough there can no more be said of the Gracious Nature of the Son then of the Father's even that his Goodness is Infinite yet these two advantages this Consideration will add unto the former 1. You will see here Goodness and Mercy in its condescension and neerer to you then in the Divine Nature alone it was Our thoughts of God are necessarily more strange because of our Infinite distance from the Godhead and therefore our apprehensions of Gods Goodness will be the lesse working because lesse familiar But in Christ God is come down into our Nature and so Infinite Goodness and Mercy is incarnate The man Christ Jesus is able now to save to the utmost all that come to God by him We have a Mercifull High Priest that is acquainted with our Infirmities 2. Herein we see the Will of God putting forth it self for our help in the most astonishing way that could be imagined Here is more then meerly a Gracious inclination It s an Office of saving and shewing Mercy also that Christ hath undertaken even to seek and to save that which was lost to bring home straying souls to God to be the great Peace-maker between God and man to Reconcile God to man and man to God and so to be the Head and Husband of his people Certainly the Devil strangely wrongeth poor troubled souls in this point that he can bring them to have such hard suspicious thoughts of Christ and so much to overlook the Glory of Mercy which so shineth in the face of the Son of Mercy it self How can we more contradict the Nature of Christ and the Gospel-description of him then to think him a destroying hater of his creatures and one that watcheth for our halting and hath more mind to hurt us then to help us How could he have manifested more willingness to save and more tender compassion to the souls of men then he hath fully manifested That the Godhead should condescend to assume our Nature is a thing so wonderfull even to astonishment that it puts faith to it to apprehend it For it is ten thousand times more condescension then for the greatest King to become a Fly or a Toad to save such creatures And shall we ever have low and suspicious thoughts of the Gracious and Mercifull Nature of Christ after so strange and full a discovery of it If twenty were ready to drown in the sea and if one that were able to swim and fetch them all out should cast himself into the water and offer them his help were it not foolish ingratitude for any to say
temptations why Christ was tempted to cast himself headlong and to worship the Devil for worldly preferment Yea the devil had power to carry his body up and down to the pinacle of the Temple and the top of a mountain If he had such power of you would you not think your self certainly his slave I conclude therefore as it is an exceeding ground of comfort to all the sick people in a City to know that there is a most merciful and skilful Physitian that is easily able to cure them and hath undertaken to do it freely for all that will take him for their Physitian so is it a ground of exceeding comfort to the worst of sinners to all sinners that are yet alive and have not blasphemed the holy Ghost to know what a Merciful and sufficient Saviour hath undertaken the work of mans Redemption 3. Also Suppose yet that you are Graceless Is it nothing that a sufficient Sacrifice and Ransome is given for you This is the very foundation of all solid Peace I think this is a great comfort to know that God looks now for no satisfaction at your hand and that the Number or Greatness of your sins as such cannot now be your ruine For certainly no man shall perish for want of the payment of his Ransome or of an expiatory Sacrifice for sin but only for want of a willing heart to Accept him that hath freely Ransomed them 4. Also Suppose you are Graceless Is it nothing that God hath under his hand and seal made a full and free Deed of Guift to you and all sinners of Christ and with him of pardon and salvation and all this on Condition of your Acceptance or Consent I know the Despisers of Christ shall be miserable for all this But for you that would fain have Christ is it no comfort to know that you shall have him if you will and to finde this to be the summe of the Gospel I know you have oft read those free offers Rev. 22.17 Whosoever will let him take of the water of life freely Hoe every one that thirsteth come and drink c. Almost all that I have hitherto said to you is comprised in that one text Joh. 3.16 God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting Life And as I have shewed it you in the Causes what Comfort even General Mercie may afford so let me a little shew it you in the Effects I mean not only in that God is now satisfied but as to your self and every sinner these three things are produced hereby 1. There is now a Possibility of Salvation to you And certainly even that should be a very great Comfort I know you will meet with some Divines who will tell you that this is no effect of Christs death and that else Christ should die for God if he procured him a Power to save which he had not before But this is no better then a Reproaching of our Redeemer Suppose that a Traytor have so abused a King that it will neither stand with his own Honour nor Justice nor Laws to pardon him If his Compassion were so great that his own Son shall suffer for him that so the King might be capable of pardoning him without any diminution of his Honour or Justice were it not a vile reproach if this Traytor should tell the Prince that suffered for him It was for your Father that you suffered to procure him a Power of pardoning it was not for me It s true the King could not pardon him without satisfaction to his Honour and Justice But this was not through any Impotency but because the thing was not fit to be done and so was Morally Impossible For in Law we say Dishonest things are Impossible And it had been no losse to the King if the Traytor had not been pardoned So is it in our Case And therefore Christs sufferings could not be more eminently for us then by enabling the offended Majesty to forgive us and so taking the greatest impediment out of the way for when impediments are once removed Gods Nature is so Gracious and prone to Mercy that he would soon pardon us when once it is fit to be done and so Morally possible in the fullest sense only mens own Unwillingness now stands in the way and makes it to be not fully fit to be yet done It s true in a Remote sense the Pardon of sin was alway Possible but in the neerest sense it was Impossible till Christ made it Possible by his Satisfaction 2. Nay though you were yet Graceless you have now this Comfort that your Salvation is Probable as well as Possible You are very fair for it The termes be not hard in themselves on which it is tendered For Christs yoak is easie and his burden light and his Commands are not grievous The word is nigh you even the offer of Grace you need not say who shall ascend to Heaven or go down to hell Rom. 10. But this will appear in the next 3. Yea this exceeding Comfort there is even for them that are Graceless that their Salvation is Conditionally Certain and the Condition is but their own willingness They may all have Christ and Life if they will Now I desire you in all your Doubts that you will well consider and improve this one Truth and Ground of Comfort Would you in the midst of your groans and complaints and fears take it for a small mercy to be certain that you shall have Christ if you will when you are praying for Christ in fear and anguish of spirit if an Angel or voice from Heaven should say to you It shall be unto thee according to thy will If thou wilt have Christ and Life in him thou shalt would this be no Comfort to you would it not revive you and overcome your fears By this time I hope you see what abundance of Comfort General Mercy or Grace may afford the soul before it perceive yea or receive any special Grace though few of those that receive not Special Grace can make much use of General yet it is propounded to them as well as others 1. All the terrifying Temptations which are grounded on misrepresentations of God as if he were a cruel destroyer to be fled from are dispelled by the due consideration of his Goodness and the deep setled apprehensions of his Gracious Merciful Lovely Nature which indeed is the first work of true Religion and the very master Radical Act of true Grace and the chief maintainer of Spiritual Life and Motion 2. All these Temptations are yet more effectually dispelled by considering this Merciful Divine Nature dwelling in flesh becoming man by condescending to the Assumption of our humane Nature and so come neer us and assuming the Office of being the Mediator the Redeemer the Saviour of the world 3. All your doubts and fears that proceed from your former sins whether of youth or
this Rule in any of your self-examinings It is the heart that God requireth My son give me thy heart Prov. 23.26 If he hath the Will he hath the heart He may have much of our Knowledge and not our heart but when we Know him so throughly as to Will him unfeignedly then he hath our heart Affectionate workings of soul to God in Christ are sweet things and high and noble Duties and such as all Christians should strive for But they are not the safest Marks to try our states by 1. Because there may be a solid sincere intention and choice in and of the Will when there is little stirring perceived in the Affections 2. Because the Will is the Master Commanding Faculty of the Rational soul and so if it be right that man is upright and safe 3. Because the Passions and Affections are so mutable and uncertain The Will can command them but imperfectly it cannot perfectly Restrain them from vanities much less can it perfectly raise them to that height as is suitable to the excellency of our heavenly objects But the object it self with its sensible manner of apprehension moves them more then all the Command of the Will And so we finde by experience that a godly man when with his utmost private endeavour he cannot command one stirring pang of divine Love or Joy in his soul yet upon the hearing of some moving Sermon or the sudden receiving of some extraordinary Mercy or the reading of some quickning book he shall feel perhaps some stirring of that Affection So when we cannot weep in private one tear for sin yet at a stirring Sermon or when we give vent to our sorrows and ease our troubled hearts into the bosome of some faithfull friend then we can finde tears 4. Because Passions and Affections depend so much on the temperature of the Body To one they are easie familiar and at command to another as honest they are difficult and scarce stirred at all With most women and persons of weaker tempers they are easier then with men Some cannot weep at the death of a friend though never so deer no nor perhaps feel very sensible inward grief and yet perhaps would have redeemed his life at a far deerer rate had it been possible then those that can grieve and weep more abundantly 5. Because Worldly things have so great an advantage on our Passions and Affections 1. They are sensible and neer us and our knowledge of them is clear But God is not to be seen heard or felt by our senses he is far from us though locally present with us we are capable of knowing but little very little of him 2. Earthly things are alway before our eyes their advantage is continuall 3. Earthly things being still the objects of our senses do force our Passions whether we will or not though they cannot force our Wills 6. Because Affections and Passions rise and fall and neither are nor can be in any even and constant frame and therefore are unfit to be the constant or certain evidence of our state But the Wills Resolution and Choice may be more constant So that I advise you rather to try your self by your Will then by your Passionate stirrings of Love or longing of Joy or sorrow Object But doth not Scripture lay as much on Love as on any Grace and doth not Christ say that except we Love him above all we cannot be his Disciples Answ It s all very true But consider Love hath two parts the one in the Will which is commonly called a faculty of the soul as Rational and this is the same thing that I call Willing Accepting Choosing or Consenting this Complacency is true Love to Christ and this is the sure standing Mark. The other is the Passionate part commonly said to be in the soul as sensitive and this though most commonly called Love yet is less certain and constant and so unfitter to try your state by though a great duty so far as we can reach it 2. You must understand and well remember that it is not every willingness that will prove your sincerity For wicked men may have slight apprehensions of spiritual things which may produce some slight desires and wishes which yet are so feeble and heartless that every lust and carnal desire overcomes them And it will not so much as enable them to deny the grossest sin But it must be the Prevalent part of your Will that God must have I mean a greater share a deeper and larger room then any thing in the world That is you must have a higher estimation of God and everlasting happiness and Christ and a holy life then of any thing in the world and also your Will must be so disposed hereby and inclined to God that if God and Glory to be obtained through Christ by a holy self-denying life were set before you on the one hand and the Pleasure Profits and Honours of the world to be enjoyed in a way of sin on the other hand you would resolvedly take the former and refuse the later Indeed they are thus set before you and upon your choice dependeth your salvation or damnation though that Choice must come from the Grace of God 3. Yet must you well remember that this Willingness and Choice is still imperfect and therefore when I mention a hearty willingness I mean not a perfect willingness There may be and is in the most gracious souls on earth much undisposedness backwardness and withdrawing of heart which is too great a measure of unwillingness to duty Especially to those duties which the flesh is most averse from and which require most of God and his Spirit to the right performance of them Among all Duties I think the soul is naturally most backward to these following 1. To secret Prayer because it is spiritual and requires great reverence and hath nothing of external pomp or form to take us up with and consisteth not much in the exercise of common gifts but in the exercise of special Grace and the breathings of the Spirit and searchings pantings and strivings of a gracious soul towards God I do not speak of the heartless repeating of bare words learned by rote and either not understood or not uttered from the feeling of the soul 2. To serious Meditation also is the soul very backward that is either to meditate on God and the promised Glory or any spiritual subject to this end that the heart may be thereby quickned and raised and graces exercised though to meditate on the same subject only to know or dispute on it the heart is nothing neer so backward Or else to meditate on the state of our own hearts by way of self-examination or self-judging or self-reprehension or self-exciting 3. Also to the Duty of faithfull dealing with each others souls in secret reproof and exhortation plainly though lovingly to tell each other of our sins and danger to this the heart is usually very backward partly through a
certain to perform Answ 1. I suppose you have read the many Scriptures and Arguments which our Divines ordinarily use to prove that the true Believers shall not fall quite away And I know not how the opposers can answer that text which themselves use to alledge for the contrary Mat. 13.6 21. Those that believe for a time and in the time of persecution fall away it is because the seed had not depth of earth the word never took rooting in their hearts Whence it seems that it may be well inferred that those shall not fall away in time of temptation in whom the word of God hath taken deep rooting And that is in them in whose hearts or wills Christ hath a stronger interest then the creature or those that have a well-grounded unreserved habituated or setled Resolution to be for Christ 2. However your present Resolution and your Covenanting with Christ is no more but this to say I do Consent or this I am Resolved to do by the help of Gods Grace 3. Else no man should be Baptized or become a Christian because he is uncertain to keep his Covenants For all that are Baptized do Covenant and vow to forsake the world flesh and Devil and fight under Christs banner to their lives end Understand me therefore that you are not to promise to do this by your own strength but by the strength of Christ as knowing that he hath promised his Spirit and Grace for the aid of every true Believer 14. If your Resolution at present be hearty you ought not to vex and disquiet your minde with doubtfull tormenting fears what you should do if you be put to it to forsake all and suffer death for Christ For he hath promised to lay no more on us then we can bear but with the temptation will make us a way to come forth 1 Cor. 10 13. either he will not bring us into trials beyond our strength or else he will increase our strength according to our trials He hath bid us pray Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil and he hath promised that whatsoever we ask in the name of Christ according to his will he will give us So that if once you can but truly say that it is your full Resolution to forsake all for Christ if he call you to it and that on the forementioned grounds you ought not then to vex your soul with fears of the issue for that is but to distrust God your father and your strength Only you must be carefull to do your duty to the keeping up of your present Resolutions and to wait obediently on God for the help of his Spirit and to beg it earnestly at his hands 15. Much less is it lawfull for men to feign and suppose such calamities to themselves as God doth never try men by and then to ask themselves Can I bear these for Christ and so to try themselves on false and dangerous grounds Some use to be troubled lest if they were put to long and exquisite torments for Christ they should renounce him One saith I cannot endure the torments of Hell for Christ Another saith Could I endure to be roasted or torn in pieces so many weeks or daies together or could I endure to die so many times over These are foolish sinfull questions which Christ never desired you to put to your selves He never tries mens faith on this manner Tormentors cannot go beyond his Will Nay it is but very few that he tries by death and fewer by an extream tormenting death All this therefore proceeds from errour 16. Observe from the fifth Mark That the present Prevalency of your Resolutions now against those Temptations which you encounter with may well encourage you to expect that they should prevail hereafter if God bring you into greater trials Can you now follow Christ in a holy life though your flesh repine and would have its liberties and pleasures and though the world deride or threaten you or great ones turn against you and threaten your undoing Can you part with your money to the poor or to the promoting of any work of Christ according to the measure of estate that God hath allotted you notwithstanding all temptations to the contrary Some trials you have now if you can go well through these you have no cause to disquiet your minde with fears of falling in greater trials But he that cannot now deny his greedy Appetite in meats and drinks so far as to forbear excess nor can deny his credit with men nor bear the scorns or frowns of the world but be on the stronger side and decline his duty to avoid danger whatever become of conscience or Gods favour this man is not like to forsake and lay down his life for Christ and his cause Object But though I break through lesser trials I am not sure to overcome in greater for the same measure of Grace will not enable a man to forsake All which will enable him to forsake a little Many have gone through smaller trials and after forsaken Christ in greater And Christ makes it the property of temporaries that are not rooted in the faith that they fall when tribulation and persecution for the Gospel ariseth and therefore it seems they may stand till then and if trial never come they may never fall and yet be unsound in the mean time Answ 1. If your trial now be considerable the truth of Grace may be manifested in it though it be none of the greatest and though in striving against sin you have not yet resisted unto bloud 2. If you carefully observe your own heart you may discern whether the spirit and your resolutions be prevalent by their daily subduing and mortifying the flesh and its lusts Nay let me tell you the Victory of Gods Spirit over the flattering enticing world in prosperity is as great and glorious if not more then that over the frowning persecuting world in adversity And therefore finde the one and you need not fear the other Though I confess that hypocrites do not fall so visibly and shamefully alwayes in prosperity as in adversity for they have more pretences advantages and carnal shifts to hide the shame of their falls And for that in the Parable in Mat. 13. I pray you mark one thing Christ seems to speak of every several sort of Hearers by a Gradation speaking last of those that go farthest The first sort are the common ignorant negligent Hearers in whom the word takes no root at all The second sort are those that give it a slight and shallow rooting but no deep rooting at all these are they that fall away in tribulation By falling away is meant the plain deserting Christ or the substance of his Cause These men till this falling away though they professed Christ and heard the word with joy yet no doubt did not crucifie the flesh the world whereby they might have discovered their unsoundness if they would before tribulation came
forsake all and lay down thy life for Christ Is it not better venture thy self in the same way as thou hast gone in as well as others do and as so many of thy forefathers have done before thee Under such sinfull Deliberations as these we usually continue long before we fully Resolve And many demurres and delayes we make before we conclude to take Christ on the terms that he is offered to us Now I make no doubt but most or many Christians can remember how and when God stirred their Consciences and wakened them from their security and made them look about them and roused them out of their natural Lethargy Some can tell what Sermon first did it Others can remember by what degrees and steps God was doing it long The ordinary way appointed by God for the doing of it first is the instruction of Parents And as I have fullier manifested in my Book of Infant Baptism if Parents would do their duties they would find that The Word publikely preached was not appointed to be the first ordinary means of Conversion and Sanctification but commonly Grace would be received in childhood I speak not of Baptismal Relative Grace consisting in the pardon of Original sin nor yet any infusion of Habits before they have the use of reason because I suppose it is hid from us what God doth in that But I speak of actual Conversion and I prove that this should be the first ordinary way and time of Conversion to the children of true Christians because it is the first means that God hath appointed to be used with them Deut. 6.6 7 8. Eph. 6.4 Parents are commanded to teach their children the Law of God urgently at home and as they walk abroad lying down and rising up and to bring them up in the admonition and nurture of the Lord and to train up a child in the way he should go and then when they are old they will not depart from it Prov. 22.6 And children are commanded to Remember their Creator in the dayes of their youth Eccles 12.1 And if this be Gods first great means then doubtless he will ordinarily bless his own means here as well as in the Preaching of the Word From all this I would have you learn this lesson That you ought not to trouble your self with fears and doubts lest you are not truly Regenerate because you know not the Sermon or the very time and manner of your Conversion but finde that you have grace and then though you know not just the time or manner of your receiving of it yet you may nevertheless be Assured of Salvation by it Search therefore what you are and how your will is disposed and resolved and how your Life is ordered rather then to know how you became such I know the workings of the Spirit on the soul may be discerned because they stir up discernable Actings in our own spirits The souls Convictions Consideration Resolutions and Affections are no insensible things But yet the work of Grace usually begins in common Grace and so proceeds by degrees till it come to special saving Grace even as the work of nature doth first producing the matter and then introducing the form first producing the embryo before it introduce a Rational soul And as no child knows the time or manner of his own Formation Vivification or Reception of that soul so I think few true Believers can say Just such a day or at such a Sermon I became a true Justified sanctified man That was the hour of your true Conversion and Justification When you first preferred God and Christ and Grace before all things in this world and deliberately and seriously Resolved to take Christ for your Saviour and Governour and give up your self to him to be saved taught and governed and to obey him faithfully to the death against all Temptations whatsoever you should lose or suffer by it Now I would but ask those very Christians that think they do know the very Sermon that converted them Did that Sermon bring you to this Resolution Or was it not only some troubling rowsing preparation hereto I think some desperate sickness or the like Affliction is a very usual means to bring Resolutions to be downright and fixed with many souls that long delayed and fluctuated in unresolvedness and lay under meer uneffectual Convictions Obj. But this runs on your own grounds that saving Grace and common Grace do differ but in degrees Answ I think most will confess that as to the Acts of Grace and that is it that we are now enquiring after and that is all the means that we have of discerning the Habits Yet remember that I still tell you That there is a specifical Moral difference though grounded but in a gradual Natural difference Yea and that one grain of the Spirits working which turns the Will in a prevalent measure for Christ together with the illumination necessary thereto deserves all those elogies and high titles that are given it in the Word so great a change doth it make in the soul Well may it be called The New Creature Born of the Spirit The Workmanship of God The new Life yea The Image of God and The Divine Nature if that Text be not meant of the Divine Nature in Christ which we are Relatively made partakers of in our Union with him When you are weighing things in the balance you may add grain after grain and it makes no turning or motion at all till you come to the very last grain and then suddenly that end which was downward is turned upward When you stand at a loss between two highwayes not knowing which way to go as long as you are deliberate you stand still All the Reasons that come into your minde do not stir you But the last Reason which Resolves you setteth you in motion So is it in the change of a sinners heart and life He is not changed but preparing towards it while he is but Deliberating Whether he should choose Christ or the world But the last Reason that comes in and Determineth his Will to Christ and makes him resolve and enter a firm Covenant with Christ and say I will have Christ for Better or Worse this maketh the greatest change that ever is made by any work in this world For how can there be greater then the turning of a soul from the creature to the Creator so distant are the Terms of this change After this one Turning act Christ hath that Heart and the main bent and endeavours of the life which the world had before The man hath a new End a new Rule and Guide and a new Master Before the Flesh and the Devil were his Masters and now Christ is his Master So that you must not think so meanly of the Turning Determining Resolving act of Grace because it lieth but in a gradual difference naturally from common Grace If a Prince should offer a condemned beggar to marry her and pardon her and make her
the fourth point is undeniable That It is but very few Christians that reach to Assurance of Salvation If any think as intemperate hot spirited men are like enough to charge me that in all this I countenance the Popish doctrine of Doubting and Uncertainty and contradict the common doctrine of the Reformed Divines that Write against them I answer 1. I do contradict both the Papists that deny Assurance and many forreign Writers who make it farre more Easie Common and Necessary then it is much more both them and the Antinomists who place Justifying faith in it But I stand in the midst between both extreams and I think I have the company of most English Divines 2. I come not to be of this minde meerly by reading Books but mainly by reading my own heart and consulting my own experience and the experience of a very great number of Godly people of all sorts who have opened their hearts to me for almost twenty years time 3. I would intreat the gainsayers to study their own hearts better for some considerable time and to be more in hearing the case and complaints of Godly people and by that time they may happily come to be of my minde 4. See whether all those Divines that have been very practical and successfull in the work of God and much acquainted with the way of the Recovery of lost souls be not all of the same Judgement as I in this point such as T. Hooker Jo. Rogers Preston Sibs Bolton Dod Culverwell c. And whither the confidentest men for the contrary be not those that study Books more then hearts and spend their daies in Disputing and not in winning souls to God from the world Lastly Let me add to what is said these two Proofs of this fourth Point here asserted 1. The constant experience of the greatest part of Believers tels us that Certainty of salvation is very rare Even of those that live comfortably and in peace of Conscience yet very few of them do attain to a Certainty For my part it is known that God in undeserved Mercy hath given me long the society of a great number of Godly people and great interest in them and privacy with them and opportunity to know their mindes and this in many places my station by providence having been oft removed and I must needs profess that of all these I have met with few yea very few indeed that if I seriously and privately asked them Are you Certain that you are a true Believer and so are Justified and shall be Saved durst say to me I am Certain of it But some in great doubts and fears most too secure and neglective of their states without Assurance and some in so good hopes to speak in their own language as calmeth their spirits that they can comfortably cast themselves on God in Christ And those few that have gone so far beyond all the rest as to say They were Certain of their sincerity and salvation were the Professors whose state I suspected more then any of the rest as being the most proud self-conceited censorious passionate unpeaceable sort of Professors and some of them living scandalously and some fallen since to more scandalous waies then ever And the most of their humble godly acquaintance or neighbours suspected them as well as I. Or else some very few of them that said they were Certain were honest godly people most women of smal Judgement and strong Affections who depended most on that which is commonly called The sense or feeling of Gods Love and were the lowest at some times as they were the highest at other times and they that were one moneth certain to be saved perhaps the next moneth were almost ready to say they should certainly be damned So that taking out all these sorts of persons the sober solid judicious Believers that could groundedly and ordinarily say I am Certain that I shall be Saved have been so few that it is sad to me to consider it If any other mens experiences be contrary I am glad of it so be it they be Sober Judicious men able to gather experiences and so they live not among meer Antinomians and take not the discovery of their meer opinion for a discovery of experience For I have seen in divers professors of my long acquaintance the strange power of Opinion and Phantasie in this thing I have known those that have lived many years in doubting of their Salvation and all that while walked uprightly and in the late Warres falling into the company of some Anabaptists they were by them perswaded that there was no right way to their comfort but by being Re-baptized and associating themselves with the Re-baptized Church and abstaining from the hearing of the Unbaptized Parish Priests as they called them No sooner was this done but all their former doubtings and troubles were over and they were as comfortable as any others as themselves affirmed which no doubt proceeded from partly the strength of Phantasie conceiting it should so be and partly from the Novelty of their way which delighted them and partly from the strong Opinion they had that this was the way of Salvation and that the want of this did keep them in the dark so long and partly from Satans policy who troubleth people least when they are in a way that pleaseth him But when these people had lived a year or two in this comfortable condition they fell at last into the society of some Libertines or Familists who believe that the Scriptures are all but a dream fiction or Allegory These presently perswaded them that they were fools to regard Baptism or such Ordinances and that they might come to hear again in our Congregations seeing all things were lawfull and there was no Heaven or Hell but within men and therefore they should look to their safety and credit in the world and take their pleasure This lesson was quickly learned and then they cried down the Anabaptists and confessed they were deluded and so being grown loose while they were Anabaptists to mend the matter they grew Epicures when they had been instructed by the Libertines and this was the end of their new gotten comfort Others I have known that have wanted Assurance and falling among the Antinomians were told by them that they undid themselves by looking after Signs and Marks of Grace and so laying their comforts upon something in themselves whereas they should look only to Christ for Comfort and not at any thing in themselves at all and for Assurance it is only the Witness of the Spirit without any Marks that must give it them and to fetch Comfort from their own Graces and Obedience was to make it themselves in stead of Christ and the holy Ghost and was a Legal way No sooner was this Doctrine received but the Receivers had Comfort at will and all was sealed up to them presently by the Witness of the Spirit in their own Conceits Whence this came judge you I told
remaineth still Possible 2. Because the perfect certain knowledge of our Election and that we shall not fall away is proper to God only We have our selves but a Defective interrupted Assurance of it 3. The Covenant gives us salvation but on condition of our perseverance and perseverance on condition that we quench not the Spirit which we shall do if we lose the apprehension of our danger 4. Accordingly there is a connexion in our Assurance between all the several causes of our Salvation and necessaries thereto whereof the apprehension of danger is one We are sure we shall be saved if we be sure to Persevere else not We are sure to Persevere if we be sure faithfully to resist Temptations We can be no surer of faithfull resisting of Temptations then we are sure to be kept in an apprehension of our danger I still say therefore that the Doctrine of Antinomians is the most ready way to Apostacy and perdition and no wonder if it lead to the Licentiousness and Scandals which our eyes have seen to be its genuine fruits They cry down the weakness unbelief and folly of poor Christians that will apprehend themselves in danger of falling away and so live in fear after they are once Justified and that if they fall into sin as whoredom drunkenness murder Perjury destroying the Ministry and expelling the Gospel c. will presently question or fear their estates and their Justification Such like passages I lately read in some printed Sermons of one of my ancient acquaintance who would never have come to that pass that he is at now if his Judgement and Humility had been as great as his Zeal I intreat you therefore never to expect such an Assurance as shall extinguish all your apprehensions of danger He that sees not the danger is neerest it and likely to fall into it Only he that seeth and apprehendeth it is likely to avoid it He that seeth no danger of falling away is in greatest danger of it I doubt not but that 's the cause of the Seditions Scandals Heresies Bloodguiltiness Destroying of the Churches of Christ and most Horrid Apostacies Hypocrisie and wickedness which these late times have been guilty of that they apprehended not the danger of ever coming into such a state or ever doing such things but would have said Am I a Dog to him that should have foretold them what is come to pass Wonderfull that men should be so blinded by false doctrine as not to know that the apprehension of danger is made in the very fabrication of the nature of man to be the very engine to move his soul in all waies of self-preservation and salvation Yea it is that very supposed principle upon which all the Government of the world and the Laws and order of every Nation are grounded We could not keep the very Bruits from tearing us in pieces but for their own safety because they apprehend themselves to be in danger by it The fear of man is it that restraineth them But for this no mans life would be in any safety For every malicious man would be a murderer He that feareth not the loss of his own life is master of another mans Do these men think that the apprehension of bodily dangers may carry them on through all undertakings and be the potent spring of most of their actions and warrant all those courses that else would be unwarrantable so that they dare plead Necessity to warrant those fearfull things which by extenuating language like Sauls are called Irregularities And yet that it is unlawfull or unmeet for a Christian yea the weakest Christian to live in any apprehensions of danger to their souls either danger of sinning or falling away or perishing for ever No wonder if such do sin and fall away and perish Would these men have fought well by Sea or Land if they had apprehended no danger Would the earth have been so covered with carkasses and with blood yea even of Saints and the world filled with the dolefull calamities that accompanied and have followed if there had been no apprehensions of danger Would they take Physick when they are sick Would they avoid fire or water or thieves but through an apprehension of danger Let them talk what they please if ever they escape hell without a deep apprehension of the danger of it it must be in a way not known by Scripture or by Nature Sure I am Paul did tame his body and bring it in subjection through an apprehension of this danger lest when he had Preached to others himself should be a cast-away or reprobate 2 Cor. 9.27 And Christ himself when he biddeth us Fear not them that can kill the body whom yet these men think it lawfull to fear and fight against yet chargeth us with a double charge so Fear him that is able to destroy both body and soul in hell yea I say unto you saith Christ fear him Luk. 12.5 What can be plainer and that to his Disciples My detestation of these destructive Antinomian Principles makes me to run out further against them then I intended Though it were easie more abundantly to manifest their hatefulness But my reasons are these 1. Because these Mountebanks are still thrusting in themselves and impudently proclaiming their own skill and the excellency of their remedies for the cure of wounded consciences and the setling of peace when indeed their receipts are rank poison guilded with the pretious name of Christ and free-Grace 2. Because I would not have your doubtings cured by the Devil for he will but cure one disease with another and a lesser with a far greater If he can so cure your fears and doubtings as to bring you into carnal security and presumption he will lose nothing by the cure and you will get nothing If he can turn a poor doubting troubled Christian to be a secure Antinomian he hath cured the smart of a cut finger by casting them into a Lethargy or stupefaction by his opium To go to Antinomian receipts to cure a troubled soul is as going to a Witch to cure the body 3. I would have you sensible of Gods goodness to you in these very troubles that you have so long lain under Your blessed Physician knew your disease and the temperature of your soul Perhaps he saw that you were in some danger of being carried away with the Honours Profits or Pleasures of this world and would have been entangled in either covetousness pride voluptuousness or some such desperate sinne And now by these constant and extraordinary apprehensions of your danger these sinnes have been much kept under temptations weakned and your danger prevented If you have found no such inclinations in your self yet God might find them Had it not been farre worse for you to have lain so many years in pride sensuality and forgetfulness of God and utter neglect of the 〈◊〉 of your soul then to have lain so long as you have done in apprehensions of your danger O
them in terror and amazement Like men after a flash of lightning that are left more sensible of the darkness For no wise man can expect that such Joyes should be a Christians ordinary state or God should so diet us with a continual feast It would neither suit with our health nor the condition of this Pilgrimage Live therefore on your Peace of conscience as your ordinary diet when this is wanting know that God appointeth you a fast for your health and when you have a feast of high Joyes feed on it and be thankfull but when they are taken from you gape not after them as the Disciples did after Christ at his Ascension but return thankfully to your ordinary diet of Peace and remember that these Joyes which are now taken from you may so return again however there is a place preparing for you where your Joyes shall be full DIRECTION XXII 22. My next Direction is this Spend more of your time and care about your Duty then about your Comforts and for the exercise and increase of your Graces then for the discovery of them And when you have done all that you can for Assurance and Comfort you shall finde that it will very much depend on your Actual Obedience THis Direction is of as great importance as any that I have yet given you but I shall say but little of it because I have spoke of it so fully already in my Book of Rest Part 3. Ch. 8 9 10 11. My Reasons for what I here assert are these 1. Duty goeth in order of nature and time before comfort as the Precept is before the Promise Comfort is part of the Reward and therefore necessarily supposeth Duty 2. Grace makes men both so ingenuous and Divine as to consider Gods due as well as their own and what they should Do as well as what they shall Have still remembring that our works cannot Merit at Gods hands 3. As we must have Grace before we can Know we have it so ordinarily we must have a good measure of Grace before we can so clearly discern it as to be certain of it Small things I have told you are next to none and hardly discernable by weak eyes When all waies in the world are tried it will be found that there is no way so sure for a doubting soul to be made certain of the truth of his Graces as to keep them in Action and get them increased And it will be found that there is no one cause of Christians doubting of the truth of their Faith Love Hope Repentance Humility c. so great or so common as the small degree of these Graces Doth not the very language of complaining Christians shew this One saith I have no faith I cannot believe I have no love to God I have no delight in Duty Another saith I cannot mourn for sin my heart was never broken I cannot patiently bear an injury I have no courage in opposing sin c. If all these were not in a low and weak degree men could not so ordinarily think they had none A lively strong working Faith Love Zeal Courage c. would shew themselves as do the highest Towers the greatest mountains the strongest windes the greatest flames which will force an observance by their greatness and effects 4. Consider also that it is more pleasing to God to see his people study him and his will directly then to spend the first and chiefest of their studies about the attaining of comforts to themselves 5. And it is the nature of Grace to tend first and chiefly toward God and but secondarily to be the evidence of our own happiness We have faith given us principally that we might believe and live by it in daily applications of Christ We have repentance that it might break us off from sin and bring us back to God We have Love that we might Love God and our Redeemer his Saints and Laws and waies We have Zeal that we might be quickened in all our holy duties and we have obedience to keep us in the way of our duty The first thing we have to do with these Graces is to use them for those holy ends which their nature doth express And then the discerning of them that we may have Assurance followeth after this both in time and dignity 6. And it is a matter of farre greater concernment to our selves to seek after the obtaining of Christ and Grace then after the certain knowledge that we have them You may be saved though you never get Assurance here but you cannot be saved without Christ and Grace God hath not made Assurance the Condition of your salvation It tends indeed exceedingly to your comfort and a pretious mercy it is but your safety lieth not on it It is better go sorrowfull and doubting to Heaven then comfortably to hell First therefore ask what is the Condition of salvation and the way to it and then look that you do your best to perform it and to go that way and then try your performance in its season 7. Besides as it is a work of farre greater moment so also of quicker dispatch to Believe and Love Christ truly then to get Assurance that you do truly Believe and Love him You may believe immediatly by the help of Gods Grace but getting Assurance of it may be the work of a great part of your life Let me therefore intreat this one thing of you that when you feel the want of any Grace you would not presently bend all your thoughts upon the enquiry Whether it be true or no but rather say to your self I see trying is a great and difficult a long and tedious work I may be this many years about it and possibly be unresolved still If I should conclude that I have no Grace I may be mistaken and so I may if I think that I have it I may inquire of friends and Ministers long and yet be left in doubt It is therefore my surest way to seek presently to obtain it if I have it not and to increase it if I have it and I am certain none of that labour will be lost to get more is the way to know I have it But perhaps you will say How should I get more Grace that 's a business of greater difficulty then so I answer Understand what I told you before that as the beginning of Grace is in your Understanding so the heart and life of it is in your Will and the Affections and passionate part are but the fruits and branches If therefore your Grace be weak it is chiefly in an unwillingness to yield to Christ and his Word and Spirit Now how should an unwilling soul be made willing Why thus 1. Pray constantly as you are able for a willing minde and yielding inclinable heart to Christ 2. Hear constantly those Preachers that bend their doctrine to inform your understanding of the great necessity and excellency of Christ and Grace and Glory and to perswade
suffering or hazards must I cast my self upon it without a Call or must I be therefore without Comfort Answ No you shall not need to cast your self upon suffering nor yet to be without Comfort for want of it I know no man but may serve God at dearer rates to the flesh then most of us do without stepping out of the way of his duty Nay he must do it except he will avoyd his duty Never had the Church yet such times of prosperity but that faithful duty would hazard men and cause their trouble in the flesh Can you not nay ought you not to put your self to greater labour for mens souls If you should but go day after day among the poor ignorant people where you live and instruct them in the knowledge of God and bear with all their weakness and rudeness and continue thus with Patience this might cost you some labour and perhaps contempt from many of the unthankful and yet you should not do more then your duty if you have opportunity for it as most have or may have if they will If you should further hire them to learn Catechisms if you should extend your liberality to the utmost for relief of the poor this would cost you somewhat If you carry on every Just Cause with Resolution though never so many great friends would draw you to betray it this may cost you the loss of those friends If you will but deal plainly with the ungodly and against all sin as far as you have opportunity especially if it be the sins of Rulers and Gentlemen of name and power in the world it may cost you somewhat Nay though you were Embassadors of Christ whose office is to deal plainly and not to please men in evil upon pain of Christs displeasure you may perhaps turn your great friends to be your great enemies Go to such a Lord or such a Knight or such a Gentleman and tell him freely that God looketh for another manner of spending his time then in hunting and hawking and sporting and feasting and that this precious time must be dearly reckoned for Tell him that God looks he should be the most eminent in Holiness and in a Heavenly life and give an example thereof to all that are below him as God hath made him more eminent in worldly dignity and possessions Tell him that where much is given much is required and that a low profession and dull approbation of that which is good will serve no man much less such a man Tell him that his Riches must be expended to feed and cloath the poor and promote good uses and not meerly for himself and family or else he will make but a sad account and that he must freely engage his reputation estate and life and all for Christ and his Gospel when he cals him to it yea and forsake all for him if Christ put him to it or else he can be no Disciple of Christs and then what good will his Honours and Riches do him when his Soul shall be called for Try this course with Great men yea with Great men that seem religious and that no further then faithfulness and compassion to mens souls doth bind you and do it with all the wisdom you can that is not carnal and then tell me what it doth cost you Let those Ministers that are near them plainly and roundly tell both the Parliament-men and Commanders of the Army of their unquestionable transgressions and that according to their nature and wo to them if they do not and then let them tell me what it doth cost them Alas Sirs how great a number of Professors are base daubing self-seeking Hypocrites that cull out the safe the cheap the easy part of duty and leave all the rest And so ordinarily is this done that we have made us a new Christianity by it and the Religion of Christs own making the self-denying course prescribed by our Master is almost unknown and he that should practice it would be taken for a madman or some self-conceited Cynick or some saucy if not seditious fellow It is not therefore because Christ hath not prescribed us a more self-denying hazardous laborious way that men so commonly take up in the Cheapest Religion but it is through our false-heartedness to Christ and the strength of sensual carnal Interests in us which make us put false Interpretations on the plainest precepts of Christ which charge any unpleasing duty on us and Familistically turn them into Allegories or at least we will not yield to obey him And truly I think that our shifting off Christ in this unworthy manner and even altering that very frame and nature of Christian Religion by turning that into a flesh-pleasing Religion which is more against the flesh then all the Religions else in the world and dealing so reservedly superficially and unfaithfully in all his work is a great cause why Christ doth now appear no more openly for men and pour out no larger a measure of his Spirit in Gifts and Consolations When men appeared ordinarily in the most open manner for Christ in greatest dangers and sufferings then Christ appeared more openly and eminently for them yet is none more for meekness humility and love and against unmerciful or dividing zeal then Christ 2. And as you see that a cheap Religiousness doth not to discover sincerity so secondly it is not accompanied with that special blessing of God As God hath engaged himself in his Word that they shall not lose their Reward that give but a cup of water in his name so he hath more fully engaged himself to those that are most deeply engaged for him even that they that forsake all for him shall have manifold recompence in this life and in the world to come eternal life Let the experience of all the world of Christians be produced and all will attest the same truth That it is Gods usual course to give men larger Comforts in dearer duties then in cheap Nay seldom doth he give large Comforts in cheap duties and seldom doth he deny them in dearer sobeit they are not made dear by our own sin and foolish indiscretion but by his command and our faithfulness in obeying him Who knows not that the Consolation of Martyrs is usually above other mens who hath read of their sufferings and strange sustentations Christian do but try this by thy own experiences and tell me when thou hast most resolutely followed Christ in a good Cause when thou hast stood against the faces of the greatest for God when thou hast cast thy life thy family and estate upon Christ and run thy self into the most apparent hazards for his sake hast not thou come off with more inward peace and comfort then the cheaper part of thy Religion hath afforded thee When thou hast stood to the Truth and Gospel and hast done Good through the greatest opposition and lost thy greatest and dearest friends because thou wouldst not forsake Christ and his
complains that ordinary heads were not able to reach it He had got them with a Religious zealous Cruelty to their own and others souls to lay all their Salvation and the Peace of the Church upon some unsearchable mysteries about the Trinity which God either never revealed or never clearly revealed or never laid so great a stress upon Yet he perswades them that there was Scripture-pâ—oof enough for these Onely the Scripture spâ—â—e it but in the premises or in darker terms and they must but gather into their Creed the Consequences and put it into plainer expressions which Hereticks might not so easily corrupt pervert or evade Was not this Reverend Zeal and was not the Devil seemingly now a Christian of the most judicious and forward sort But what got he at this one game 1. He necessitated Implicit Faith even in Fundamentals when he had got points beyond a vulgar reach among Fundamentals 2. He necessitated some living Judge for the Determining of Fundamentals quoad nos though not in se the Soul of Popish wickedness that is what it is in sense that the People must take for Fundamentals 3. He got a standing Verdict against the perfection and sufficiency of Scripture and consequently against Christ his Spirit his Apostles and the Christian Faith That it will not afford us so much as a Creed or Systeme of Fundamentals or Points absolutely Necessary to Salvation and Brotherly Communion in fit or tolerable phrases but we must mend the language at least 4. He opened a gap for humane Additions at which he might afterwards bring in more at his pleasure 5. He framed an Engine for an Infallible Division and to tear in Pieces the Church Casting out all as Hereticks that could not subscribe to his Additions and necessitating separation by all dissenters to the Worlds End till the Devils engine be overthrown 6. And hereby he lays a ground upon the Divisions of Christians to bring men into doubt of all Religion as not knowing which is the right 7. And he lays the ground of certain heart-burnings and mutual Hatred Contentions Revilings and Enmity Is not here enough got at one Cast Doth there need any more to the establishing of the Romish and Hellish darkness Did not this one act found the Seat of Rome Did not the Devil get more in his Gown in a day then he could get by his Sword in three hundred years And yet the Holy Ghost gave them full warning of this before-hand 2 Cor. 11.2 3. For I am Jealous over you with a godly Jealousy for I have espoused you to one Husband that I may present you as a chast Virgin to Christ But I fear lest by any means as the Serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty so your minds should be corrupted from the simplitity that is in Christ Rom. 14.1 Him that is weak in the Faith receive ye but not to Doubtful Disputations Psal 19. The Law of the Lord is perfect 2 Tim. 3.16 17. All Scripture is given by Inspiration from God and is profitable for Doctrine for Reproof for Correction for Instruction in Righteousness that the Man of God may be perfect throughly furnished unto all Good Works Isa 8.20 To the Law and to the Testimony if they speak not according to these it is because there is no truth in them With many the like This plot the Serpent hath found so successful that he hath followed it on to this day He hath made it the great Engine to get Rome on his side and to make them the great Dividers of Christs Church He made the Pope and the Councel of Trent believe that when they had owned the antient Creed of the Church they must put in as many and more additional Articles of their own and Anathematize all gainsayers and these Additions must be the peculiar Mark of their Church as Romish and then all that are not of that Church that is that own not those super-added Points are not of the true Church of Christ if they must be Judges Yea among our selves hath the Devil used successfully this plot What Confession of the purest Church hath not some more then is in Scripture The most modest must mend the phrase and speak plainer and somewhat of their own in it not excepting our own most reformed Confession Yea and where Modesty restrains men from putting all such inventions and explications in their Creed the Devil perswades men that they being the Judgements of Godly Reverend Divines no doubt to be Reverenced valued and heard it is almost as much as if it were in the Creed and therefore whoever dissenteth must be noted with a black coal and you must disgrace him and avoyd Communion with him as an Heretick Hence lately is your Union Communion and the Churches Peace laid upon certain unsearchable Mysteries about Predestination the order and objects of Gods Decrees the manner of the Spirits secretest operations on the soul the Nature of the Wils essential Liberty and its power of self-determining the Divine concourse determination or predestination of mans and all other Creatures actions c. that he is scarcely to be accounted a fit member for our fraternal Communion that differs from us herein Had it not been for this one Plot the Christian Faith had been kept pure Religion had been one the Church had been one and the hearts of Christians had been more one then they are Had not the Devil turn'd Orthodox he had not made so many true Christians Hereticks as Epiphamus and Austin have enrolled in the black List Had not the Enemy of Truth and Peace got into the Chair and made so pathetique an Oration as to inflame the minds of the Lovers of Truth to be over-zealous for it to do too much we might have had Truth and Peace to this day Yea still if he see any man of Experience and Moderation stand up to reduce men to the antient simplicity he presently seems the most zealous for Christ and tels the unexperienced Leaders of the flocks that it is in favour of some Heresy that such a man speaks he is plotting a Carnal Syncretism and attempting the reconcilement of Christ and Belial he is tainted with Popery or Socinianism or Arminianism or Calvinism or whatsoever may make him odious with those he speaks to O what the Devil hath got by Over-doing And as this is true in Doctrines so is it in Worship and Discipline and Pastoral Authority and Government When the Serpent could not get the World to despise the poor Fishermen that published the Gospel the Devil being Judged and the World Convinced by the Power of the Holy Ghost the Agent Advocate and Vicar of Christ on earth he will then be the forwardest to honour and promote them And if he cannot make Constantine a Persecutor of them he will perswade him to raise them in worldly glory to the Stars and make them Lords of Rome and possess them with Princely Dignities and Revenues And he hath got as
I would have all such remember 1. That God is a Spirit and will be worshipped in Spirit and in Truth and such Worshippers doth he seek 2. That God will have mercy and not sacrifice and that the Vitals of Religion are in a Consumption when the heat of Zeal is drawn too much to the out-side And that placing most in externals is the great character of Hypocrisie and is that Pharisaical Religion to which the doctrine and practice of the Lord Jesus was most opposite as any that will read the Gospel may soon see 3. That God hath made our bodies to be his Servants and Instruments of Righteousness Rom. 6. 13. and helpful and serviceable to our souls in Well-doing And therefore it is Disobedience it is Injustice it is Cruelty to disable them and causlesly to vex and torment them much more to destroy them You may see by sick men by Melancholy men by Mad men and Children how unfit that soul is to know or Love or serve God that hath not a fit body to work in by The Serpent knows this well enough If he can but get you by excessive fastings watchings labours studies or other austerities especially sadness and perplexities of mind to have a sick body a crazed brain or a short life you will be able to do him but little hurt and God but little service besides the pleasure that he takes in your own Vexation Nay he will hope to make a further advantage of your weakness and to keep many a soul in the snares of sensuality by telling them of your miseries and saying to them Dost thou not see in such a man or woman what it is to be so holy and precise They will all run mad at last If once thou grow so strict and deny thy self thy Pleasures and take this precise course thou wilt but make thy life a misery and never have a merry day again Such examples as yours the Devil will make use of that he may terrifie poor souls from Godliness and represent the word and ways of Christ to them in an odious and unpleasing and discouraging shape Doubtless that God who himself is so Merciful to your Body as well as to your Soul would have you to be so too He that provideth so plentifully for its refreshment would not have you refuse his provision He that saith the Righteous man is merciful to his beast no doubt would not have him to be unmerciful to his own body You are commanded to Love your Neighbour but as your self And therefore by cruelty and unmerciful dealing with your Own body you will go about to Justifie the like dealing with others You durst not deny to feed to cloath to comfort and refresh the poor lest Christ should say You did it not to me And how should you dare to deny the same to your self How will you answer God for the neglect of all that service which you should have done him and might if you had not disabled your bodies and minds He requireth that you Delight your self in him And how can you do that when you habituate both mind and body to a sad dejected mournful garb The service that God requires is To serve him with chearfulness in the abundance that we possess Deut. 28.47 If you think that I here contradict what I said in the former Directions for pinching the flesh and denying its desires you are mistaken I onely shew you the danger of the contrary extreme Gods way lieth between both The truth is if you would be resolved how far you may please or displease the flesh The flesh being ordained to be our servant and Gods servant must be used as a servant You will give your servant food and raiment and wholsom lodging and good usage or else you are unjust and he will be unfit to do your work But so far as he would Master you or disobey you you will correct him or keep him under You will feed your horse or else he will not carry you But if he grow unruly you must tame him It is a delusory formality of Papists to tye all the Countries to one time and measure of fasting as Lent Fridays c. when mens states are so various that many though not quite sick have more need of a restoring diet and those that need fasting need it not all at once nor in one measure but at the time and in the measure as the taming of their flesh requireth it As 〈◊〉 Physician should proclaim that all his Patients should take Physick such 40 days every year whether their disease be plethorick or consuming from fulness or from abstinence and whether the disease take him at that time of the year or another And remember that you must not under pretences of saving the body disable it to serve God You will not lay any such correction on your Child or Servant as shall disable them from their work but such as shall excite them to it And understand that all your Afflicting your body must be but either Preventive as keeping the fire from the thatch or Medicinal and Corrective and not strictly Vindictive for that belongs to your Judge Though in a subordination to the other ends the smart or suffering for its fault is one end and so it is truly Penal or Vindictive as all Chastisement is And so Paul saith Behold what Revenge c. 2 Cor. 7.11 But not as meer Judicial Revenge is Remember therefore though you must so far tame your Body as to bring it into subjection that you perish not by pampering it yet not so far as to bring it to weakness and sickness and unfitness for its duty Nor yet must you dare to conceit that you please God or satisfie him for your sin by such a wronging and hurting your own body Such Popish Religiousness shews that men have very low and carnal conceits of God Was it not a base wickedness in them that offered their Children in sacrifice to think that God would be pleased with such cruelty Yea were it not to have directed us to Christ he would not have accepted of the blood of buls and goats It is not sacrifice that he desires He never was blood-thirsty nor took any pleasure in the Creatures suffering How can you think then that he will take pleasure in your consuming and destroying your own bodies It is as unreasonable as to imagine that he delights to have men cut their own throats or hang themselves for pining and consuming ones self is self-murther as well as that Yet I know no man should draw back from a painful or hazardous work when God cals him to it for fear of destroying the flesh But do not make work or suffering for your selves God will lay as much Affliction on you as you need and be thankful if he will enable you to bear that but you have no need to adde more If your selves make the suffering how can you with any encouragement beg strength of God to
come not among them or pitty them not as you should and do not your duty for the saving of their souls but think it belongs not to you but to others Do you use to deal with servants and neighbors about you and tell them of sin and misery and the remedy and seek to draw their hearts to Christ and bring them to duty I doubt you do little in this and that is sad unmercifulness for if you did truly you could not choose but finde such miserable ignorance such senselesness and blockishness such hating reproof and unwillingness to be reformed such love of this world and slavery to the flesh and so little savour of Christ Grace Heaven and the things of the Spirit and especially such an unteachableness intractableness as thorns and bryars and so great a difficulty of moving them an inch from what they are that you would have been willing ever after to have Ministers preach more rousingly then they do and you would be glad for their sakes when you heard that which might awake them and prick them to the heart Yea if you had tried how hard a work it is to bring worldly formal Hypocrites to see their Hypocrisie or to come over to Christ from the creature and to be in good earnest in the business of their salvation you would be glad to have Preachers search them to the quick and ransack their hearts and help them against their affected and obstinate self-delusions Besides you should consider that theâ— Case is far different from yours Your disease is pain and trouble they are stark dead You have Gods favour and doubt of it they are his enemies and never suspect it You want comfort and they want pardon and life if your disease should never here be cured it is but going more sadly to heaven But if they be not recovered by Regeneration they must lie for ever in Hell And should we not then pitty them more then you and study more for them and preach more for them and rather forget you in a Sermon then them should you not wish us so to do should we more regard the comforting of one then the saving of an hundred Nay more we should not onely neglect them but dangerously hurt them if we should preach too much to the case of troubled souls For you are not so apt to misapply passages of terror and to take their portion as they are apt to apply to themselves such passages for comfort and take your portion to themselves I know some will say that it is preaching Christ and setting forth Gods Love that will win them best and terrors do but make unwilling Hypocrital Professors This makes me remember how I have heard some Preachers of the times blame their Brethren for not preaching Christ to their People when they Preached the danger of rejecting Christ disobeying him and resisting his Spirit Do these men think that it is no preaching Christ when we have first many years told men the fulness of his satisfaction the freeness and general extent of his Covenant or Promise and the riches of his Grace and the incomprehensibleness of his Glory and the Truth of all to tell them afterwards the danger of refusing neglecting and disobeying him and of living after the flesh and preferring the world before him and serving Mammon and falling off in persecution and avoiding the cross and yielding in Temptation and quenching the Spirit and declining from their first Love and not improving their Talents and not forgiving and loving their brethren yea and enemies c. Is none of this Gospel nor preaching Christ yea is not Repentance it self except despairing Repentance proper to the Gospel seeing the Law excludeth it and all manner of hope Blame me not Reader if I be zealous against these men that not only know no better what preaching Christ is but in their ignorance reproach their Brethren for not preaching Christ and withal condemn Christ himself and all his Apostles Do they think that Christ himself knew not what it was to preach Christ or that he set us a patern too low for our imitation I desire them soberly to read Mat. 5.6 7 10 25. Rom. 8. from the first verse to the 14. Rom. 2. Heb. 2. 4. 5. 10 and then tell me whether we preach as Christ and his Apostles did But to the Objection I Answer first we do set forth Gods love and the fulness of Christ and the sufficiency of his death and satisfaction for all and the freeness and extent of his offer and promise of mercy and his readiness to welcome returning sinners this we do first mixing with this the discovery of their natural misery by sin which must be first known and next we shew them the danger of Rejecting Christ and his offer 2. When we finde men settled under the preaching of free Grace in a base contempt or sleepy neglect of it preferring the world and their carnal pleasures and ease before all the Glory of heaven and Riches of Christ and Grace is it not time for us to say How shall ye escape if ye neglect so great salvation Heb. 2.3 and of how much soarer punishment shall he be thought worthy that treads under foot the blood of the Covenant Heb. 10.26 when men grow careless and unbelieving must we not say Take heed lest a promise being lest of entring into his Rest any of you should seem to come short of it Heb. 4.1 3. Hath not Christ led us commanded us and taught us this way Except ye Repent ye shall all perish was his Doctrine Luke 13.3 5. Go into the world and preach the Gospel to every creature what 's that Gospel He that believeth shall be saved and he that believeth not shall be damned Mark 16.16 Those mine Enemies that would not I should raign over them bring hither and stay them before me Luke 19.27 Doth any of the Apostles speak more of hell-fire and the worm that never dyeth and the fire that never is quenched their Christ himself doth And do not his Apostles go the same way even Paul the greatest preacher of faith 2 Thess 1 7 8 9. and 2.12 c. What more common Alas what work should we make if we should stroak and smooth all men with Antinomian language It were the way to please all the sensual prophane multitude but it is none of Christs way to save their souls I am ready to think that these men would have Christ preached as the Papists would have him pray'd to to say Jesu Jesu Jesu nine times together and this oft over is their praying to him and to have Christs name oft in the Preachers mouth some men think is the right preaching Christ Let me now desire you hereafter to be glad to hear Ministers awaken the prophane and dead-hearted hearers and search all to the quick and misapply nothing to your self but if you think any passage doth neerly concern you open your mind to the Minister privately
tender Affections and heart-meltings are our sins For my part I see exceeding Cause to bewail it greatly in my self that my soul is not raised to a higher pitch of tender sensibility of all spiritual things then it is and I doubt not but it should be the matter of our daily confession and complaint to God that our hearts are so dull and little affected with his sacred Truths and our own sins But this is the scope of all my Speech Why do not you distinguish between Matter of Sorrow and Matter of Doubting No question but you should lament your dulness and stupidity and use all Gods means for the quickening of your Affections and to get the most lively frame of soul but must it cause you to doubt of your sincerity when you cannot obtain this Then will you never have a setled Peace or Assurance for many days together for ought I know I would ask you but this Whether you are willing or unwilling of all that hardness insensibleness and dulness which you complain of If you are willing of it what makes you complain of it If you are unwilling it seems your will is so far sound and it is the Will that is the seat of the Life of Grace which we must try by And was not Pauls Case the same with yours Rom. 7.19 when he saith The Good which I Would do I do not and When I Would do Good Evil is present with me I know Paul speaks not of gross sins but ordinary Infirmities and I have told you before that the Liveliness and Sensibility of the Passions or Affections is a thing that the Will though sanctified cannot fully command or excite at its pleasure A sanctified man cannot Grieve or Weep for sin when he will or so much as he will he cannot Love Joy be Zealous c. when he will He may be truly Willing and not Able And is not this your Case And doth not Paul make it the Case of all Christians Gal. 5.17 The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh and these are contrary one to the other so that we cannot do the things that we would Take my Counsel therefore in this if you love not self-deceiving and disquietness Search whether you can say unfeignedly I would with all my heart have Christ and his quickening and santifying Spirit and his softning Grace to bring my hard heart to Tenderness and my dull and blockish soul to a lively frame O that I could attain it And if you can truly say thus Bless God that hath given you saving sincerity And then let all the rest of your Dulness and Deadness and Hard-heartedness be matter of daily sorrow to you and spare not so it be in Moderation but let it be no matter of Doubting Confess it complain of it pray against it and strive against it but do not deny Gods Graces in you for it And here let me mind you of one thing That it is a very ill distemper of spirit when a man can mourn for nothing but what Causeth him to Doubt of his salvation It is a great Corruption if when your Doubts are Resolved and you are perswaded of your salvation if then you cease all your humiliation and sorrow for your sin For you must sorrow that you have in you such a body of Death and that which is so displeasing to God and are able to please and enjoy him no more though you were never so Certain of the pardon of sin and of salvation 7. Lastly let me ask you one Question more What is the reason that you are so troubled for want of Tears for your sin Take heed lest there lie some Corruption in this trouble that you do not discern If it be onely because your deadness and dulness is your sin and you would fain have your soul in that frame in which it may be fittest to please God and enjoy him then I commend and encourage you in your trouble But take heed lest you should have any conceit of a Meritoriousness in your Tears for that would be a more dangerous sin then your want of Tears And if it be for want of a sign of Grace and because a dry eye is a sign of an unregenerate soul I have told you It is not so except where it onely seconds an impenitent heart and comes from or accompanieth and unrenewed Will and a prevailing unwillingness to turn to God by Christ Shew me if you can where the Scripture saith He that cannot Weep for sin shall not be Saved or hath no true Grace Is not your complaint in this the very same that the eminentest Christians have used in all times That most Blessed holy man Mr. Bradford who sacrificed his life in the flames against Romish abominations was wont to subscribe his Spiritual Letters endited by the breath of the Spirit of God thus The most miserable Hard-hearted sinner John Bradford DOUBT V. O But I am not willing to Good and therefore I fear that even my will it self is yet unchanged I have such a backwardness and undisposedness to Duty especially secret Prayer Meditation and self-examination and reproving and exhorting sinners that I am fain to force my self to it against my will It is no Delight the find in these Duties that brings me to them but onely I use violence with my self and am fain to pull my self down on my knees because I know it is a Duty and I cannot be saved without it but I am no sooner on my knees but I have a motion to rise or be short and am weary of it and find no great miss of duty when I do omit it ANSWER 1. THis shews that your soul is sick when your meat goes so much against your stomack that you are fain to force it down And sickness may well cause you to complain to God and man But what 's this to Deadness The Dead cannot force down their meat nor digest it at all It seems by this that you are sanctified but in a low Degree and your Corruption remains in some strength and let that be your sorrow and the overcoming of it be your greatest care and business But should you therefore say that you are unsanctified It seems that you have still the flesh lusting against the spirit that you cannot do the Good you would when you would pray with Delight and unweariedness the flesh draws back and the Devil is hindering you And is it not so in too great a measure with the best on earth Remember what Christ said to his own Apostles when they should have done him one of their last Services as to the attendance of his body on earth and should have comforted him in his Agony they are all asleep Again and again he comes to them and findeth them asleep Christ is Praying and sweating blood and they are still sleeping though he warned them to watch and Pray that they enter not into Temptation But what doth God say to
expressions Because if a man be of able natural parts and have a tongue to express his own mind the promoting of holy Desires will help men to expressions For a full soul is hardly hindred from venting it self And experience teacheth us that the spirits enflaming the heart with holy Affections doth very much furnish both the Invention and Expression But this is but accidental and uncertain For those that are either men of unready tongues or that are so ill bred among the rude vulgar that they want fit expressions of their own minds or that are of over-bashful dispositions or especially that are of small knowledge and of little and short acquaintance with those that should teach them to pray by their examples or that have been but of short standing in the School of Christ such a man may have the spirit of Prayer many a year and never be able in full expressions of his own to make known his wants to God no nor in good and tolerable sense and language before others to speak to God from his own Invention A man may know all those Articles of the Faith that are of flat necessity to Salvation and yet not be able to find matter or words for the opening of his heart to God at length I would advise such to frequent the Company of those that can teach and help them in Prayer and neglect not to use the smallest parts they have especially in secret between God and their own souls where they need not so much as in publick to be regardful of expressions and in the mean time to learn a Prayer from some Book that may fitliest express their necessities or to use the Book it self in Prayer If they distrust their memories not resolâ—ing to stick heâ—â— and make it a means of indâ—lâ—iâ—â—â—â—eir laâ—iâ—ess and negligence much less to reproach and deride those that express their desires to God from the present sense of their own wants as some wickedly do deride such but to use this lawful help till they are able to do better without it then with it and then to lay it by and not before The Holy Ghost is said Rom. 8.16 to help our Infirmities in Prayer but how 1. By teaching us what to pray for not always what matter or words to enlarge our selves by but what necessary Graces to pray for 2. By giving us Sighs and Groans unexpressible which is far from giving Copious expressions For Groans and Sighs be not words and if they be Groans that we cannot express it would rather seem to intimate a want of expression then a constant abounding therein where the spirit doth assist Though indeed the meaning is that the Groans are so deep that they are past the expression of our words All our speech cannot express that deep sense that is in our hearts For the Understanding hath the advantage of the Affections herein All the thoughts of the mind may be expressed to others but the Feelings and fervent Passions of the soul can be but very defectively expressed Lastly All have not the spirit of Prayer in like measure nor all that have it in a great measure at one time can find it so at pleasure Desires rise and fall and these earnest Groans be not in every Prayer where the Holy Ghost doth assist I believe there is never a Prayer that ever a Believer did put up to God for things lawful and useful but it was put up by the help of the spirit For the weakest Prayer hath some degree of good Desire in it and addresses to God with an endeavour to express them and these can come from none but onely from the spirit Meer words without desires are no more Prayer then a suit of apparel hang'd on a stake is a man You may have the spirit of Prayer and yet have it in a very weak degree Yet still I would encourage you to bewail your defect herein as your sin and seek earnestly the supply of your wants But what 's that to the questioning or denying your sincerity or right to salvation DOUBT X. I Have no Gifts to make me useful to my self or others When I should profit by the Word I cannot Remember it When I should Reprove a Sinner or Instruct the Ignorant I have not words If I were called to give an account of my Faith I have not words to express that which as in my mind And what Grace can here be then ANSWER THis needs no long Answer Lament and amend those sins by which you have been disabled But know that these Gifts depend more on Nature Art Industry and Common Grace then upon special saving Grace Many a bad man is excellent in all these and many a one that is truly godly is defective Where hath God laid our salvation upon the strength of our Memories the Readiness of our Tongues or measure of the like Gifts That were almost as if he should have made a Law that all shall be saved that have found Complexions and healthful and youthful bodies and all be damned that are sickly aged weak children and most women DOUBT XI O But I have been a grievous sinner before I came home and have fallen foully since and I am utterly unworthy of Mercy Will the Lord ever save such an unworthy wretch as I Will he ever give his Mercy and the blood of his Son to one that hath so abused it ANSWER 1. THe Question is not with God what you have been but what you are God takes men as they then are and not as they were 2. It is a dangerous thing to object the greatness of your Guilt against Gods mercy and Christs Merits Do you think Christs satisfaction is not sufficient or that he dyed for small sins and not for great Do you not know that he hath made satisfaction for all and will pardon all and hath given out the pardon of all in his Covenant and that to all men on Condition they will Accept Christ to pardon and heal them in his own way Hath God made it his great design in the work of mans Redemption to make his Love and Mercy as Honorable and wonderful as he did his Power in the work of Creation and wil you after all this oppose the greatness of your sins against the greatness of this Mercy and Satisfaction why you may as wel think your self to be such a one that God could not or did not Make you as to think your sins so great that Christ could not or did not satisfie for them or will not pardon them if you Repent and Believe in him 3. And for Worthiness I pray you observe There is a twofold Worthiness Righteousness There is a Legal Worthiness and Righteousness which consisteth in a perfect obedience which is the performance of the Conditions of the Law of Pure Nature and Works This no man hath but Christ and if you look after this Righteousness or Worthiness in your self then do you depart from Christ and make
Loving kindeness and our dishonouring the Glorious Gospel of his Son and our seconding Satan in his contradicting of that Design which hath contrived Gods Glory in so sweet a way And now Christian Reader let me intreat thee in the name and fear of God hereafter better to understand and practise thy Duty Thy heart is better a thousand times in Godly sorrow then in Carnal mirth and by such sorrows it is often made better Eccles. 7.2 3 4. But never take it to be Right till it be Delighting it self in God When you kneel down in prayer labour so to conceive of God and bespeak him that he may be your Delight so do in Hearing and Reading so do in all your Meditations of God So do in your feasting on the flesh and blood of Christ at his Supper Especially improve the happy opportunity of the Lords Day wherein you may wholly devote your selves to this work And I advise Ministers and all Christs Redeemed ones that they spend more of those days in Praise and Thanksgiving especially in Commemoration of the whole work of Redemption and not of Christs Resurrection alone or else they will not answer the Institution of the Lord And that they keep it as the most solemn day of Thanksgiving and be briefer on that day in their Confessions and Lamentations and larger at other times O that the Congregations of Christ through the world were so well informed and animated that the main business of their solemn Assemblies on that day might be to sound forth the high Praises of their Redeemer and to begin here the Praises of God and the Lamb which they must perfect in Heaven for ever How sweet a foretaste of Heaven would be then in these solemnities And truly let me tell you my Brethren of the Ministry you should by private Teaching and week-day Sermons so further the knowledge of your People that you might not need to spend so much of the Lords Day in Sermons as the most godly use to do but might bestow a greater part of it in Psalms and solemn Praises to our Redeemer And I could wish that the Ministers of England to that end would unanimously agree on some one Translation of the English Psalms in meeter better then that in common use and if it may be better then any yet extant not neglecting the poëtical sweetness under pretence of exact translating or at least to agree on the best now extant the London Ministers may do well to lead the way lest that blessed part of Gods solemn worship should be blemished for want either of Reformation or Uniformity And in my weak judgement if Hymns and Psalms of Praise were new invented as fit for the state of the Gospel-Church and Worship to Laud the Redeemer come in the flesh as expresly as the work of Grace is now express as Davids Psalms were fitted to the former state and infancy of the Church and more obscure revelations of the Mediator and his Grace it would be no sinful humane Invention or addition nor any more want warrant then our Inventing the form and words of every Sermon that we preach and every prayer that we make or any Catechism or Confession of faith Nay it may seem of so great usefulness as to be next to a Necessity Still provided that we force not any to the use of them that through ignorance may scruple it And if there be any Convenient parcels of the Ancient Church that are fitted to this use they should deservedly be preferred I do not think I digress all this while from the scope of my Discourse For doubtless if Gods usual solemn worship on the Lords Days were more fitted and directed to a Pleasant Delightful Praising way it would do very much to frame the spirits of Christians to Joyfulness and Thankfulness and Delight in God then which there is no greater cure for their Doubtful Pensive self-tormenting frame O try this Christians at the request of one that is moved by God to importune you to it God doth pitty you in your sorrows but he Delighteth in you when you Delight in him See Isa 58.14 compared with Zeph. 3.17 And if sin interpose and hinder your Delights believe it a Chearful Amendment and Obedience is that which will please God better then your self-tormenting fears Do not you like that servant better that will go chearfully about your work and do it as well as he can accounting it a Recreation and will endeavour to mend where he hath done amiss then him that will at every step fall a crying O I am so weak I can do nothing as I should An humble sense of failings you will like but not that your servant should sit still and complain when he should be working nor that all your service should be performed with weeping disquietness and lamentations You had rather have your servant humbly and modestly chearfull and not alway dejected for fear of displeasing you O how many poor souls are overseen in this You might easily perceive it even by the Devils opposition and temptations He will further you in your self-vexations when he cannot keep you in security and presumption but in amending he will hinder you with all his might How oft have I known poor passionate Creatures that would vex and rage in anger and break out in unseemly language to the disquieting of all about them and others that would drop into other the like sins and when they have done lament it and condemn themselves and yet would not set upon a resolute and chearful Reformation Nay if you do but reprove them for any sin they will sooner say If I be so bad God will condemn me for an Hypocrite and so lye down in disquietness and distress then they will say I see my sin and I resolve to resist it and I pray you warn me of it and help me to watch against it So that they would bring us to this pass that either we must let them alone with their sins for fear of Tormenting them or else we must cause them to lye down in terrours Alas poor mistaken souls It is neither of these that God cals for Will you do any thing save what you should do Must you needs be esteemed either Innocent or Hypocrites or such as shall be damned The thing that God would have is this That you would be glad that you see your fault and thank him that sheweth it you and resolvedly do your best to amend it and this in faith and chearful confidence in Christ flying to his Spirit for help and victory Will you please the Devil so far and so far contradict the gracious way of Christ as that you will needs either sin still or Despair Is there not a middle between these two to wit Chearful Amendment Remember that it is not your Vexation or Despair but your Obedience and Peace that God desireth That life is most Pleasing to him which is most safe and sweet to you If you say
still You cannot Delight in God I say again Do but acknowledge it the great work that God requireth of you and make it your daily aim and care and business and then you will more easily and certainly attain it But while you know not your work or so far mistake it as to think it consisteth more in sorrows and fears and never endeavour in your Duties or Meditations to raise your soul to a Delight in God but rather to cast down your self with still poaring on your miseries no wonder then if you be a stranger to this life of holy Delight By this time I find my self come up to the subject of my Book of the Saints Rest wherein having said so much to Direct and Excite you for the attainment of these Spiritual and Heavenly Delights I will referr you to it for your help in that work and adde no more here but to Desire you through the course of your life to remember That the true Love of God in Christ and Delight in him and Thankful Chearful Obedience to him is the great work of a Christian which God is best pleased with and which the blessed Angels and Saints shall be exercised in for ever And O thou the Blessed God of Love the Father of Mercy the Prince of Peace the Spirit of Consolation compose the Disquieted spirits of thy People and the tumultuous disjoynted state of thy Churches and pardon our Rashness Contentions and Blood-guiltiness and give us not up to the state of the wicked who are like the raging Sea and to whom there is no Peace Lay thy command on our winds and waves before thy shipwrackt vessel perish And Rebuke that evil spirit whose name is Legion which hath possessed so great a part of thine Inheritance Send forth the spirit of Judgement and Meekness into thy Churches and save us from our Pride and Ignorance with their effects And bring our feet into the way of Peace which hitherto we have not known O close all thy People speedily in loving consultations and earnest enquiries after Peace Let them Return from their Corruptions Contentions and Divisions and joyntly seek thee asking the way to Zion with their faces thitherward saying Come let us joyn our selves to the Lord in a perpetual Covenant that shall not be forgotten Blast all opposing Policies and Powers Say to these Dead and Dry bones Live And out of these Ruines do thou yet erect a City of Righteousness where thy People may dwell together in Peaceable habitations and in the midst thereof A Temple to thy Holiness Let the materials of it be Verity and Purity Let the Redeemer be its Foundation Let Love and Peace cement it into Vnity Let thy Laver and Covenant be the Dores and Holiness to the Lord be engraved thereon that buyers and sellers may be cast out and the common and unclean may know their Place and let no desolating Abomination be there set up But let thy People all in one name in one faith with one mind and one soul attend to thine Instructions and wait for thy Laws and submit unto thine Order and Rejoyce in thy Salvation that the troubled spirits may be there exhilerated the dark enlightned and all may offer thee the sacrifice of Praise without dis-affections discords or divisions that so thy People may be thy Delight and thou mayst be the chiefest Delight of thy People â—â—d they may Please thee through him that hath perfectly pleased thee Or if our expectations of this Happiness on earth be too high yet give us so much as may enlighten our eyes and heal those corruptions which estrange us from thee and may propagate thy Truth increase thy Church and honour thy Holiness and may quicken our desires and strengthen us in our way and be a fore-tast to us of the Everlasting Rest Luk. 2.14 Glory to God in the Highest on earth Peace Good will towards men Ecles 12.12 13 14. Of making many Books there is no end and much study is a weariness to the flesh Let us hear the Conclusion of the whole matter Fear God and keep his Commandments for this is the whole Duty of man c. FINIS