sinful Condition and some motions and strivings at your heart to get out of it Certainly though you should be one that hath yet no Grace to salvation yet these continued offers of Grace and strivings of the Spirit of Christ with your heart do shew that God hath not quite forsaken you and that your day of Grace and Visitation is not past DOUBT XV. BVt I have sinned since my Profession and that even against my Knowledge and Conscience I have had Temptations to sin and I have considered of the Evil and Danger and yet in the very soberest deliberations I have Resolved to sin And how can such a one have any true Grace or be saved ANSWER 1. IF you had not true Grace God is still offering it and ready to work it 2. Where do you finde in Scripture that none who have true Grace do sin knowingly or Deliberately Perhaps you will say in Heb. 10.24 If we sin willfully after the knowledge of the Truth there Remaineth no more sacrifice for sin but a fearful looking for of Judgement and fire which shall devour the adversaries Ans But you must know that it is not every wilful sin which is there mentioned but as even now I told you Vnbelief is peculiarly called Sin in the New Testament And the true meaning of the Text is If we utterly renounce Christ by Infidelity as not being the true Messiah after we have known his Truth then c. Indeed none sin more against knowledge then the Godly when they do sin For they know more for the most part then others do And Passion and Sensuality the remnant of it which yet remaineth will be working strongly in your very Deliberations against sin and either perverting the Judgement to doubt whether it be a sin or whether there be any such danger in it or whether it be not a very little sin Or else blinding it that it cannot see the Arguments against the sin in their full vigor Or at least prepossessing the Heart and Delight and so hindring our Reasons against sin from going down to the Heart and working on the Will and so from Commanding the Actions of the Body This may befal a godly man And moreover God may withdraw his Grace as he did from Peter and David in their sin and then our Considerations will work but faintly and sensuality and sinful Passion will work effectually It is scarce Possible I think that such a man as David could be so long about so horrid a sin and after contrive the murther of Vriah and all this without deliberation or any reasonings in himself to the contrary 3. The truth is though this be to good cause for any Repenting sinner to doubt of Salvation yet it is a very grievous aggravation of sin to commit it against Knowledge and Conscience and upon consideration And therefore I advise all that Love their Peace or Salvation to take heed of it For as they will finde that no sin doth deepâ—ier wound the Conscience and plunge the sinner into fearful perplexities which oft times hang on him very long so the oftner such Zeal and Passion But let me tell you that you may grow in these and not grow in the body of your Graces Doubtless Satan himself may do much to kindle your Zeal if he do but see it voyd of sound Knowledge as he did in Iames and Iohn when they would have called for Fire from Heaven but knew not what spirit they were of For the doleful Case of Christs Churches in this age hath put quite beyond dispute that none do the Devils work more effectually nor oppose the Kingdom of Christ more desperately then they that have the hottest Zeal with the weakest Judgements And as Fire is most excellent and necessary in the Chimney but in the thatch it is worse then the vilest dung so is Zeal most excellent when guided by sound Judgement but more destructive then prophane sensuality when it is let loose and misguided On the other side you may decay much in feeling and fervour of Affections and yet Grow in Grace if you do but grow in the Understanding and the Will And indeed this is the Common Growth which Christians have in their Age Examine therefore whether you have this or no. Do you not understand the things of the Spirit better then you formerly did Do you not value God Christ Glory and Grace at higher rates then formerly Are you not more fully Resolved to stick to Christ to the death then formerly you have been I do not think but it would be a harder work for Satan to draw you from Christ to the flesh then heretofore When the tree hath done growing in visible greatness it groweth in rootedness The fruit grows first in bulk and quantity and then in mellow sweetness Are not you less Censorious and more Peaceable then heretofore I tell you that is a more noble growth then a great deal of austere and bitter youthful censorious dividing Zeal of many will prove Mark most aged experienced Christians that walk uprightly and you will find that they quite outstrip the younger 1. In experience knowledge prudence and foundness of Judgement 2. In well-setled Resolutions for Christ his Truth and Cause 3. In a Love of Peace especially in the Church and a hatred of dissentions perverse contendings and divisions If you can shew this growth say not that you do not grow 3. But suppose you do not grow should you therefore deny the sincerity of your Grace I would not perswade any soul that they grow when they do not But if you do not be humbled for it and endeavour it for the future Make it your desire and daily business and spare not Lye not still complaining but rouse up your soul and see what 's amiss and set upon neglected duties and remove those Corruptions that hinder your Growth Converse with Growing Christians and under quickening means Endeavour the Good of other mens souls as well as your own and then you 'l find that growth which will silence this Doubt and do much more for you then that DOUBT XVII I Am troubled with such Blaspemous thoughts and Temptations to Vnbelief even against God and Christ and Scripture and the Life to come that I doubt I have no faith ANSWER TO be Tempted is no sign of Gracelesness but to yield to the Temptation nor every yielding neither but to be overcome of the Temptation Most Melancholy people especially that have any knowledge in Religion are frequently haunted with Blasphemous Temptations I have oft wondred that the Devil should have such a power and advantage in the predominancy of that distemper Scarce one person of ten who ever was with me in deep Melancholy either for the Cure of body or mind but hath been haunted with these Blasphemous thoughts and that so impetuously and violently set on and followed that it might appear to be from the Devil yea even many that never seemed Godly or to mind any such
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
found true Souls Conflict pag. 41 42. Though the main pillar of our Comfort be the free forgiveness of our sins yet if there be a neglect â—f growing in Holiness the soul will never be soundly quiet because it will be proâ—e to question the truth of Justification and it is as proper for sin to raise doubts and fears in the Conscience as for rotten flesh and wood to breed worms Where there is not a pure Conscience there is not a pacified Conscience c. Read the rest This much I have been fain to premise lest my words for Consolation should occasion security and desolation But now let me desire you to peruse the Direction and practice it If when God hath given you Assurance or strong probabilities of your sincerity you will make use of it but onely for that present time you will never then have a setled Peace in your soul Besides the great wrong you do to God by necessitating him to be so often renewing such discoveries and repeating the same words to you so often over If your Child offend you would you have him when he is pardoned no longer to believe it then you are telling it him Should he be still asking you over and over every day Father am I forgiven or no Should not one answer serve his turn Will you not believe that your money is in your purse or chest any longer then you are looking on it Or that your corn is growing on your land or your cattel in your grounds any longer then you are looking on them By this Course a Rich man should have no more content then a beggar longer then he is looking on his money or goods or lands and when he is looking on one he should again lose the Comfort of all the rest What hath God given you a Memory for but to lay up former apprehensions and discoveries and experiences and make use of them on all meet occasions afterwards Let me therefore perswade you to this great and necessary work When God hath once Resolved your Doubts and shewed you the truth of your Faith Love or Obedience Write it down if you can in your book as I have advised you in my Treatise of Rest Such a day upon serious perusal of my heart I found it thus and thus with my self Or at least Write it deep in your Memory And do not suffer any fancies or fears or light surmises to cause you to question this again as long as you fall not from the Obedience or Faith which you then discovered Alas mans Apprehension is a most mutable thing If you leave your soul open to every new apprehension you will never be setled You may think two contrary things of your self in an hour You have not always the same opportunity for right discerning nor the same clearness of Apprehension nor the same outward means to help you nor the same inward Assistance of the Holy Ghost When you have these therefore make use of them and fix your wavering soul and take your Question and Doubt as Resolved and do not tempt God by calling him to new Answers again and again as if he had given you no answer before You will never want some occasion of Jealousie and fears as long as you have Corruption in your heart and sin in your life and a Tempter to be troubling you But if you will suffer any such wind to shake your Peace and Comforts you will be always shaking and fluctuating as a wave of the Sea And you must labour to apprehend not onely the Uncomfortableness but the Sinfulness also of this course For though the questioning your own sincerity on every small occasion be not near so great a sin as the questioning of Gods Merciful Nature or the truth of his Promise or his Readiness to shew Mercy to the Penitent soul or the Freeness and Fulness of the Covenant of Grace yet even this is no contemptible sin For 1. You are doing Satans work in denying Gods Graces and Accusing your self falsly and so pleasing the Devil in Disquieting your self 2. You slander Gods Spirit as well as your own soul in saying He hath not Renewed and Sanctified you when he hath 3. This will necessitate you to further Unthankfulness for who can be Thankful for a Mercy that thinks he never received it 4. This will shut your mouth against all those Praises of God and that Heavenly joyful Commemoration of his great unspeakable Love to your soul which should be the blessed work of your life 5 This will much abate your Love to God and your sense of the Love of Christ in dying for you and all the rest of your Graces while you are still questioning your Interest in Gods Love 6. It will lay such a discouragement on your soul as will both destroy the sweetness of all Duties to you which is a great evil and thereby make you backward to them and heartless in them You will have no mind of Praying Meditation or other duties because all will seem dark to you and you will think that every thing makes against you 7. You rob all about you of that chearful encourageing example perswasion which they should have from you and by which you might win many souls to God And contrarily you are a discouragement and hindrance to them I could mention many more sinful aggravations of your denying Gods Graces in you on every small insufficient occasion which methinks should make you be very tender of it if not to avoyd unnecessary Trouble to your self yet at least to avoyd sin against God And what I have said of Evidences and Assurance I would have you understand also of your Experiences You must not make Use onely at the present of your Experiences but lay them up for the time to come Nor must you tempt God so far as to expect new Experiences upon every new scruple or doubt of yours as the Israelites expected New Miracles in the Wilderness still forgetting the Old If a Scholar should in his Studies forget all that he hath Read and Learned and all the Resolutions of his Doubts which in study he hath attained and leave his Understanding still as an unwritten Paper as Receptive of every Mutation and New Apprehension and contrary Conceit as if he had never studied the Point before he will make but a poor proficiency and have but a fluctuating unsetled brain A Scholar should make all the studies of his Life to compose one entire Image of Truth in his soul as a Painter makes every line he draws to compose one entire picture of a man and as a Weaver makes every thred to compose one Web so should you make all former Examinations Discoveries Evidences and Experiences Compose one full Discovery of your Condition that so you may have a setled Peace of soul And see that you tye both Ends together and neither look on your present troubled state without your former lest you be unthankful and unjustly discouraged nor on
he be not sound in his Religion and so needs not a Conversion to a sound faith but onely to a soundness in the faith The suddenness of the News must needs make those Violent Commotions and Changes in the one which cannot ordinarily be expected in the other who is acquainted so early with the truth and by such degrees 5. But suppose you heard nothing of Sin and Misery and a Redeemer in your Childhood or at least understood it not which yet is unlikely yet let me ask you this Did not that Preacher or that Book or whatever other Means God used for your Conversion reveal to you Misery and Mercy both together Did not you hear and believe that Christ dyed for sin as soon as you understood your Sin and Misery Sure I am that the Scripture reveals both together and so doth every sound Preacher and every sound Writer notwithstanding that the slanderous Antinomians do shamelesly proclaim that we preach not Christ but the Law This being so you may easily apprehend that it must needs abate very much of the Terrour which would else have been unavoydable If you had read or heard that you were a sinner and the Child of Hell and of Gods 〈◊〉 and that there was no Remedy which is 〈◊〉 a Preaching of the Law as we must not use to any in the world nor any since the first promise to Adam must receive Yea or if you had heard Nothing of a Saviour for a year or a day or an hour after you had heard that you were an Heir of Hell and so the Remedy had been but Concealed from you though not denied which ordinarily must not be done then you might in all likelyhood have found some more terrours of soul that hour But when you heard that your sin was pardonable as soon as you heard that you were a sinner and heard that your Misery had a sufficient Remedy provided if you would accept it or at least that it was not Remediless and this as soon as you heard of that misery what wonder is it if this exceedingly abate your fears and troubles Suppose two men go to visit two several Neighbours that have the Plague and One of them saith It is the Plague that is on you you are but a Dead man The other saith to the other sick person It is the Plague that you have but here is our Physician at the next door that hath a Receipt that will cure it as Infallibly and as easily as if it were but the prick of a pin he hath cured thousands and never fail'd one that took his Receipt but if you will not send to him and trust him and take his Reâ—eâ—â—t there is no hopes of you Tell me now whether the first of these sick persons be not like to be more troubled then the other and whether it will not remove almost all the fears and troubles of the latter to hear of a Certain Remedy as soon as he heareth of the disease though some trouble he must needs have to think that he hath a disease in it self so desperate or loathsome Nay let me tell you so the Cure be but well done the less Terrours and despairing fears you were put upon the more Credit is it to your Physician and his Apothecary Christ and the Preacher or Instrument that did the work and therefore you should rather praise your Physician then question the Cure DOUBT III. BVT it is common with all the world to consent to the Religion that they are bred up in and somewhat affected with it and to make Conscience of obeying the precepts of it so do the Jews in theirs the Mahometans in theirs And I fear it is no other work on my soul but the meer force of Education that maketh me Religious and that I had never that great Renewing work of the Spirit upon my soul and so that all my Religion is but meer Opinion or Notions in my Brain ANSWER 1. ALL the Religions in the world besides the Christian Religion have either much errour and wickedness mixt with some Truth of God or they contain some lesser parcel of that Truth alone as the Jews Onely the Christian Religion hath that whole Truth which is saving Now so much of Gods Truth as there is in any of these Religions so much it may work Good effects upon their souls as the knowledge of the Godhead and that God is Holy Good Just Merciful and that he sheweth them much undeserved Mercy in his daily providences c. But mark these two things 1. That all persons of false Religions do more easily and greedily embrace the false part of their Religion then the true and those they are zealous for and practice with all their might because their natural corruption doth befriend it and is as combustible fewel for the fire of Hell to catch in but that Truth of God which is mixt with their Error if it be practical they fight against it and abhor it while they hold it because it crosseth their lusts insomuch that it is usually but some few of the more convinced and civil that God in providence maketh the main Instruments of continuing those Truths of his in that part of the wicked world For we finde that even among Pagans the Prophaner and more sensual sort did deride the better sort as our prophane Christians do the godly whom they called Puritans 2. Note that the Truth of God which in these false Religions is still acknowledged is so small a part and so oppressed by Errors that it is not sufficient to their salvation that is to give them any sound Hope nor is it sufficient to make such clear and deep and powerful Impressions in their mindes as may make them Holy or truly Heavenly or may overcome in them the Interest of the world and the flesh This being so you may see great reason why a Turk or a Heathen may be zealous for his Religion without Gods Spirit or any true Sanctification when yet you cannot be so truly zealous for yours without it Indeed the speculative part of our Religion separated from the Practical or from the hard and self denying part of the Practical many a wicked man may be zealous for as to maintain the Godhead or that God is merciful c. or to maintain against the Jews that Jesus is the Christ or against the Turks that he is the only Redeemer and Teacher of the Church or against the Papists that all the Christians in the world are Christs Church as well as the Romans and against the Socinians and Arrians that Christ is God c. But this is but a smal part of our Religion nor doth this or any heathenish Zeal sanctifie the heart or truly mortifie the flesh or overcome the world They may contemn Life and cast it away for their Pride and Vain-glory but not for the hopes of a holy and blessed Life with God This is but the prevalency of one corruption against another or