of age of ignorance or of knowledge and those which proceed from your Legal unworthiness have all a present Remedy in the fullness and sufficiency of Christs satisfaction even for all the world so that no sin except the excepted sin is so great but it is fully satisfied for and though you are unworthy yet Christ is worthy and he came into the world to save only the unworthy in the strict and Legal sense 4. All your doubts and fears that arise from an apprehension of Gods unwillingness to shew you Mercy and to give you Christ and Life in him arise from the misapprehension of Christs unwillingness to be yours or at least from the uncertainty of his willingness these have all a sufficient Remedy in the general extent and tenour of the New Covenant Can you doubt whether God be willing to give you Christ and Life when he hath given them already even by a Deed of Guift under his hand and by a Law of Grace 1 Joh. 5.10 11 12. Object But yet all are not Pardoned nor possessed of Christ and so saved Answ I told you that is because they will not so that I pray you mark it well God hath in these four Means before mentioned given even to the Graceless so much Ground of Comfort that nothing but their unwillingness to have Christ is left to be their terror For though sin be not Actually Remitted to them yet is it Conditionally Remitted viz. if they will but accept of Christ offered them Will you remember this when your doubts are greatest and you conclude that certainly Christs is not yours because you have no true Grace Suppose it be true Yet still know that Christ may be yours if you will and when you will This Comfort you may have when you can finde no Evidences of true Grace in your self So much for that Direction DIRECTION VIII 8. The next thing that you have to do for building up a stable Comfort and setling your Conscience in a solid Peace is this Be sure to get and keep a right Understanding of the Nature of Saving Faith AS you must have right thoughts of the Covenant of Grace of which before the want whereof doth puzzle and confound very many Christians so you must be sure to have right thoughts of the Condition of the Covenant For indeed that Grace which causeth you to perform this Condition is your first special saving Grace which you may take as a certain evidence of your Justification And this Condition is the very link which conjoyneth all the General foregoing Grace to all the rest of the following special Grace The Scripture is so full and plain in Assuring pardon and salvation to all true Believers that if you can but be sure that you are a Believer you need not make any doubt of your interest in Christ and your salvation Seeing therefore that all the question will be Whether you have true Faith Whether you do perform the Condition of the new Covenant For all other doubts God hath given you sufficient ground to resolve as is said how much then doth it concern you to have a right understanding of the Nature of this Faith Which that you may have let me tell you briefly what it is Mans soul hath two faculties Understanding and Will Accordingly the Objects of mans soul all Beings which it is to Receive have two Modifications Truth and Goodness as those to be Avoided are Evil. Accordingly God 's Word or Gospel hath two parts the Revelation of Truth and the Offer and Promise of some Good This offered Good is principally and immediatly Christ himself to be joyned to us by Covenant as our head and husband The secondary consequential Good is Pardon Justification Reconciliation Adoption further Sanctification and Glorification which are all offered with Christ By this you may see what saving Faith is It is first a Believing that the Gospel is True and then an Accepting of Christ therein offered to us with his benefits or a consenting that he be ours and we be his which is nothing but a true willingness to have an offered Christ Remember this well that you may make use of it when you are in doubt of the truth of your Faith Thousands of poor souls have been in the dark and unable to see themselves to be Believers meerly for want of knowing what saving Faith is And it is a truth that cannot be hid that Divines who should have taught them better have been the great cause of their errour not well and cleerly understanding this themselves It is a shamefull confession but the world knoweth it already The Papists place almost all in the meer Assent of the Understanding Our great Reformers made it to be either an Assurance of the pardon of our own sins or a strong perswasion of their pardon excluding doubting or the moderatest a perswasion of our particular pardon though mixt with some doubting The Antinomians strike in with them and say the same Hence even the greatest of our Divines Chamier Polanus Twisse c. conclude that Justification and Remission go before faith a desperate errour because the Act doth alway suppose its object For they thought that Remission already past was the object of Justifying Faith supposing faith to be nothing else but a Belief that we are pardoned Yea ordinarily it hath been taught in the writings of our greatest refuters of the Papists That this Belief is properly a Divine faith or the Belief of a Divine Testimony as is the Believing of any Proposition written in the Scriture a foul error which I have confuted in my book of Rest Part. 3. Chap. 7. Most of late have come neerer the truth and affirmed Justifying Faith to consist in Affiance or Recumbency or Resting on Christ for salvation No doubt this is one Act of Justifying faith but not that which a poor troubled soul should first search after and try it self by except by Affiance any should mean as Amesius doth Election of Christ and then it is the same act which I am asserting but very unfitly exprest For 1. Affiance is not the Principal act nor that wherein the very life of Justifying faith doth consist but only an imperate following act and an effect of the vital act which is Consent or Willing or Accepting Christ offered for it lyeth mainly in that which we call the sensitive part or the Passions of the soul 2. It is therefore lesse constant and so unfitter to try by For many a poor soul that knowes it self unfeignedly willing to have Christ yet feeleth not a Resting on him or Trusting in him and therefore crys out O I cannot believe and think they have no Faith For Recumbency Affiance or Resting on Christ implieth that easing of themselves or casting off their fears or doubts or cares which true believers do not alwayes finde Many a poor soul complains O I cannot rest on Christ I cannot trust him who yet would have him to be their Lord and
us Doubt we should do nothing but doubt I know you may easily tell a long and a sad story of your sins how you are troubled with this and that and many a distemper and weak and wanting in every Grace and Duty and have committed many sins But doth it follow that therefore you have no true Grace Learn therefore to be Humbled for every sin but not to Doubt of your sincerity and salvation for every sin DIRECTION XXX 30. Whatsoever New Doubtings do arise in your soul see that you carefully discern whether they are such as must be resolved from the Consideration of General Grace or of Special Grace And especially be sure of this that when you want or lose your Certainty of sincerity and salvation you have presently recourse to the Probability of it and lose not the Comforts of that Or if you should lose the sight of a Probability of Special Grace yet see that you have recourse at the utmost to General Grace and never let go the Comforts of that at the worst THis Rule is of unspeakable Necessity and use for your Peace and Comfort Here are three several Degrees of the Grounds of Comfort It is exceeding weakness for a man that is beaten from one of these holds therefore to let go the other too and because he cannot have the highest Degree therefore to conclude that he hath none at all I beseech you in all your Doubtings and Complainings still Remember the two Rules here laid down 1. All Doubts arise not from the same Cause and therefore must not have the same Cure Let the first thing which you do upon every doubt be this To consider Whether it come from the Vnbelieving or low Apprehensions of the General Grounds of Comfort or from the want of evidence of special Grace For that which is a fit Remedy for one of these will do little for the cure of the other 2. If your Doubting be onely Whether you be sincere in Beliâ—ving Loving Hoping Repenting and Obeying then it will not answer this Doubt though you discern never so much of Gods Merciful Nature or Christs Gracious Office or the Universal sufficiency of his Death and Satisfaction or the freeness and extent of the Promise of Pardon For I profess considerately that I do not know in all the Body of Popery concerning Merits Justification Humane Satisfactions Assurance or any other point about Grace for which we unchurch them that they erre half so dangerously as Saltmarsh and such Antinomians do in this one point when they say That Christ hath Repented and Believed for us meaning it of that Faith and Repentance which he hath made the Conditions of our salvation and that We must no more question our own faith then we must question Christ the Object of it It will be no saving Plea at the day of Judgement to say Though I Repented not and Believed not yet Christ dyed for me or God is merciful or Christ Repented and Believed for me or God made me a free Promise and Gift of salvation if I would Repent and Believe What Comfort would such an Answer give them And therefore doubtless it will not serve now to quiet any knowing Christian against those Doubts that arise from the want of particular evidence of special Grace though in their own place the General Grounds of Comfort are of Absolute Necessity thereto 2. On the other side if your Doubts arise from any Defect in your Apprehensions of General Grace it is not your looking after Marks in your self that is the way to Resolve them I told you in the beginning that the General Grounds of Comfort lie in four particulars that square Foundation which will bear up all the Faith of the Saints First Gods merciful and unconceivably Good and Gracious Nature and his Love to mankind Secondly the Gracious Nature of the Mediatour God and Man with his most Gracious undertaken Office of Saving and Reconciling Thirdly the sufficiency of Christs Death and satisfaction for all the world to save them if they will Accept him and his Grace I put it in terms beyond dispute because I would not build up Believers Comforts on points which godly Divines do contradict as little as may be Yet I am past all Doubt my self that Christ did actually make satisfaction to Gods Justice for All and that no man perisheth for want of an Expiatory sacrifice but for want of faith to believe and apply it or for want of Repentance and yielding to Recovering Grace The fourth is The Universal Grant of pardon and Right to salvation on Condition of Faith and Repentance If your Doubt arise from the Ignorance or overlooking of any of these to these must you have recourse for your Cure Where Note that all those Doubts which come from the greatness of your sin as such that you think will not therefore be forgiven or that come from the sense of Unworthiness in a Legal sense or want of Merit in your self and all your Doubts whether God be willing to accept and forgive you though you should Repent and believe or whether any sacrifice was offered by Christ for your sins I say all these come from your Ignorance or Unbelief of some or all of the four General Grounds here mentioned and from them must be cured Note also in a special manner That there is a great difference between these four General Grounds and your particular Evidences in point of Certainty For these four Corner-stones are fast founded beyond all possibility of Removal so that they are always of as undoubted Certainty as that the Heaven is over your head and they are immutable still the same These you are commanded strictly to Believe with a Divine Faith as being the clearly revealed Truths of God and if you should not Believe them yet they remain firm and true and your unbelief should not make voyd the Universal promise and Grace of God But your own Evidences of special Grace are not so Certain so Clear or so Immutable nor are you bound to Believe them but to search after them that you may know them You are not bound by any Word of God strictly to Believe that you do Believe or Repent but to try and discern it This then is the first part of this Direction That you always discover whether your troubles arise from low unbelieving or ignorant thoughts of Gods Mercifulness Christs Gracious nature and office General Satisfaction or the universal Promise or whether they arise from want of evidence of sincerity in your self and accordingly in your thoughts apply the Remedy The second part of the Direction is that you hold fast Probabilities of Special Grace when you lose your Certainty and that you hold fast your General Grounds when you lose both the former Never forget this in any of your Doubts You say your faith and obedience have such breaches and sad defects in them that you cannot be Certain that they are sincere Suppose it be so Do you see
Saviour and can easily be convinced of their willingness 3. Besides Affiance is not the Adequate act of faith suited to the object in that fullness as it must be Received but Willingness or Acceptance is Christ is Rested on only for our selves as our Deliverer but he is Accepted also for Himself as our Lord and Master The full proof of these I have performed in other Writings and oft in your hearing in publike and therefore omit them now Be sure then to fix this truth deep in your minde That Justifying faith is not an Assurance of our Justification no nor a perswasion or belief that we are Justified or pardoned or that Christ died more for us then for others nor yet is Affiance or Resting on Christ the vital principal certain constant full act but it is the Understandings belief of the truth of the Gospel and the Will 's Acceptance of Christ and Life offered to us therein which Acceptance is but the hearty Consent or Willingness that he be yours and you his This is the Faith which must Justifie and save you Object But 1. May not wicked men be Willing to have Christ 2. And do not you oft tell us that Justifying faith comprehendeth Love to Christ and Thankfulness and that it receiveth him as a Lord to be obeyed as well as a Deliverer and that Repentance and sincere Obedience are parts of the Condition of the new Covenant Answ I will give as brief a touch now on these as may be because I have handled them in sitter places 1. Wicked men are willing to have Remission Justification and freedom from hell for no man can be willing to be unpardoned or to be damned But they are not willing to have Christ himself in that nature and office which he must be Accepted that is As a holy Head and Husband to save them both from the Guilt and Power and all defilement and abode of sin and to Rule them by his Law and Guide them by his Spirit and to make them happy by bringing them to God that being without sin they may be perfectly Pleasing and Amiable in his sight and enjoy him forever Thus is Christ offered and thus to be accepted of all that will be saved and thus no wicked man will accept him but when he ceaseth to be wicked 2. To cut all the rest short in a word I say That in this fore-described Willingness or Acceptance Repentance Love Thankfulness Resolution to obey are all contained or neerly implyed as I have elsewhere manifested so that the Heart of saving faith is this Acceptance of Christ or Willingness to have him to Justifie Sanctifie Guide and Govern you Finde but this Willingness and you finde all the rest whether you expresly see them or not So much for that Direction DIRECTION IX 9. Having thus far proceeded in discovering and improving the General Grounds of Comfort and then in discovering the Nature of Faith which gives you Right to the special Mercies of the Covenant following it Your next work must be To perform this Condition by actual Believing YOur soul stands in extreme need of a Saviour God offereth you a Saviour in the Gospel what then have you next to do but Accept him Believe that this offer is general and therefore to you and that Christ is not set to sale nor doth God require you to bring a Price in your hand but only heartily and thankfully to Accept of what he freely giveth you This must be done before you fall on trying your Graces to get Assurance for you must have Grace before you can discover it and this is the first proper special saving Grace as it comprizeth that knowledge and Assent which necessarily go before it This is not only the method for those that yet never believed but also for them that have lost the sense of their faith and so the sight of their evidence Believe again that you may know you do believe or at least may possesse an Accepted Saviour When God in the Gospel bids you Take Jesus Christ and beseecheth you to be reconciled to him what will you say to him If your heart answer Lord I am willing I will Accept of Christ and be thankfull why then the match is made between Christ and you and the marriage Covenant is truly entered which none can dissolve If Christ were not first willing he would not be the suitor and make the motion and if he be willing and you be willing what can break the match If you will say I cannot believe if you understand what you say either you mean that you cannot believe the Gospel is true or else that you cannot be willing that Christ should be yours If it be the former and you speak truly then you are a flat Infidel yet many temptations to doubt of the truth of Scripture a true believer may have yea and actual doubtings but his faith prevaileth and is victorious over them But if you really doubt whether the Gospel be true use Gods means for the discovery of its truth Read what I have written in the second part of my book of Rest I will undertake now more confidently then ever I did to prove the truth of Scripture by plain full undeniable force of Reason But I suppose this is none of your case If therefore when you say that you cannot believe you mean that you cannot Accept an offered Christ or be willing to have him then I demand 1. What is your reason the Will is lead by the Reason of the Understanding If you be not willing there is something that perswades you to be unwilling This Reason must be from something reall or else upon a mistake upon supposal of something that is not in being If it be upon mistake either it is that you be not convinced of Christs willingness to be yours and if you thought he did consent you would consent willingly If this be it you do truly believe while you think you do not for you do consent and that 's all on your part to make the match and Christ doth certainly consent though you do not understand it In this case it concerneth you to understand better the extent of the new Covenant and then you will be past doubt of the willingness of Christ and see that wherever the match breaks it is only for want of consent in men for Christ is the first suitor and hath long ago in the Covenant proclaimed his consent to be the Head and Husband of every sinner on condition they will but consent to be his If your mistake be from any false apprehension of the Nature of Christ as if he were not a sufficient Saviour or were such an enemy to your comfort that he would do you more hurt then good if these mistakes are prevalent then you do not know Christ and therefore must presently better study him in the Gospel till you have prevailed over such ignorant and blasphemous conceits but none of this I suppose is
have any strong Christians among them yet we have had the knowledge of such at home 2. Besides the Difficulty of the Subject is a clear Argument that a strong Christian may be uncertain of it God hath made all those points plain in Scripture which must be Believed as of Necessity to Salvation But the Certainty of all Believers Perseverance is not a Point of flat Necessity to Salvation to be Believed Otherwise it would be a hard matter to prove that any considerable number were ever saved till of late or are yet saved but in a very few Countries It is a Point that the Churches never did put into their Creed where they summed up those Points that they held necessary to Salvation There are a great number of Texts of Scripture which seeming to intimate the contrary do make the Point of great Difficulty to many of the wisest And those Texts that are for it are not so express as fully to satisfie them Besides that the examples of these ten years last past have done more to stagger many sober wise Christians in this Point then all the Arguments that ever were used by Papists Arminians or any other To see what kinde of men in some places have fallen and how far as I am unwilling further to mention If you ask me what I think of this my self and consequently what Assurance I have of my own Salvation I will freely tell you both how far I am arrived in Assurance of Sincerity of Grace and Justification and how farre in the matter of Perseverance and so of Salvation I lay seven years under great Doubtings of the truth of my Sanctification especially for want of those Lively Affectionate Heart-melting effects which I desired to have found and for want of Deeper apprehensions of God Christ Glory Sin Misery Mercy Duty c. which made me still fear that all I had was but the meer effects of Education Reading and Speculative Knowledge and so that I had only a Notional Religion that touched my Phantasie and swom in my Brain but workt not throughly on my Heart for want of more Deep and Serious Believing of those holy Truths which should be operative Yet all this while Probabilities of Grace affording me that which we commonly call Hope did bear me up Now through the great unspeakable Mercy of my God I have attained to so strong a Probability of my Sincerity and Sanctification as in a large sense may be called Assurance or Certainty but not in the strictest sense much less is it a perfect Assurance I have so strong a perswasion of the truth of my Faith and so of the pardon of my sinnes as overcometh most doubtings and trouble of minde and keepeth me in quietness and peace of minde and some Joy in the holy Ghost and Delightfull thoughts of my everlasting Rest and gives me a Confidence in God and Access with boldness to the Throne of his Grace But yet I finde that carnal security hath a great hand in the alaying of my troubles though not in the raising of my Joyes And it is no unusual thing for a good Cause and a bad Faith Assurance and Carnal security to joyn together in one effect even in expelling trouble from the heart Yet dare I scarce say in the usual sense of the word that I am certain of my Sincerity and so of my Justification especially when Temptations have prevailed and the strength of the fleshes interest and the weakness of Christs interest in my Estimation and Will and Affections have appeared more then ordinary And when I have thought how much stronger Trials I may yet be put to which others daily undergo especially the Temptations of Prosperity do oftner make me fear then those of persecution and adversity I am sometimes afraid lest it be but the weakness of my Body and the distance of Objects and smalness of Temptations that makes them no more prevailing with me And that if I had as strong a body as others and were in that Dignity Wealth and Abundance of all things as some are whether Honors Carâ—al Pleasures Sports Delightfull Meats Drinks Beauty and such vanities might not carry me away as I see they do others that made as great a shew of Holiness Yet do not these doubts much affright or disquiet me because I finde God at present possessing me with those Resolutions to cast away all for Christ which I doubt not are the work of his own Grace and because I have experience of abundance of preventing and sustaining Grace and because I finde at the present that God enableth me to account all things loss and dross and dung for him and easily without much reluctancy to empty my purse for him and his poor and to lay out my time and strength for him and his Church and with some good success to resist Temptations and that I have no Desire in any activity or prevalency to be any higher in the world then I am but think God hath chosen out for me the best condition and station that I could have desired in all the world And then for Perseverance and Salvation this is my Case It is my strong opinion that no man who hath attained to a Rootedness in the Faith and so is throughly sanctified doth ever totally and finally fall away which Christ seemeth to intimate in saying that the Cause why men fall away in Tribulation and Persecution is because the seed had not deep Rooting Mat. 13. And I am yet more confident that none of the Elect shall ever fall away and perswaded that all the Rooted through-Christians are Elect. But yet I dare not say that I am Certain of this that all are elect to salvation and shall never fall away totally and finally who sincerely Believe and are Justified It is my opinion but I dare not put it into my Creed among either the Points of absolute Necessity or undoubted Verity I know how many Texts of Scripture seem to speak otherwise and I know how generally the Primitive Fathers thought otherwise if a man can know their mindes by their Writings I know that Austin himself the Mall of the Pelagians seems to be either unresolv'd or more against this Perseverance then for it I know how many Learned Godly men do differ from me and deny the Certainty of Perseverance I know how sad and shaking examples this age hath afforded And therefore I am not Certain properly strictly Certain of my Perseverance and so not fully strictly Certain of my Salvation Nor so near to a Certainty of my Salvation as I am to a Certainty of my Faith Justification Adoption and Sanctification Yet am I so strongly confident of it that I shall hold out and be saved that it doth not only calm and quiet my minde and overcome my troubles and fears but also enable me to Rejoyce in Hope of the Glory to come and to Desire Christs coming to Judgement and to think of Death with much more contentedness and
Passions by sanctifying Grace and by putting both Promises and dreadful Threatnings into his word I say if God by all these means hath given you several motives to obedience take heed of separating them Do not once ask your heart such a question Whether it would obey if there were no Threatning and s no â—ear Nor on the otherside do not let Fear do all without Love Doubtless the more Love constraineth to duty the better it is and you should endeavour with all your might that you might feel more of the force of Love in your duties But do you not mark how you cherish that Corruption that you complain of Your Doubts and Tormenting Fears are the things that Love should cast out Why then do you entertain them If you say I cannot help it why then do you cherish them and own them and plead and dispute for them and say you do well to Doubt and you have Cause Will this ever cast out Tormenting Fears Do you not know that the way to cast them out is not to maintain them by distrustful thoughts or words but to see their sinfulness and abhor them and to get more high thoughts of the Lovingkindness of God and the tender mercies of the Redeemer and the unspeakable Love that he hath manifested in his sufferings for you that so the Love of God may be more advanced and powerful in your soul and may be able to cast out your Tormenting Fears Why do you not do this instead of Doubting If Tormenting Fears and Doubtings be a sin why do you not make Conscience of them and bewail it that you have been so guilty of them Will you therefore Doubt because you have slavish fears Why that is to Doubt because you Doubt and to Fear because you Fear and so to sin still because you have sinned Consider well of the folly of this course DOUBT VII BVT I am not able to Believe and without Faith there is no pleasing God nor hope of salvation I fear Vnbelief will be my ruine ANSWER 1. I Have answered this Doubt fully before It is grounded on a Mistake of the Nature of true Faith You think that Faith is the Believing that you are in Gods favour and that you are Justified but properly this is no Faith at all but onely Assurance which is sometimes a fruit of Faith and sometimes never in this life obtained by a Believer Faith consisteth of two parts 1. Assent to the Truth of the Word 2. Acceptance of Christ as he is offered Which immediatly produceth a Trusting on Christ for salvation and a Consent to be Governed by him and Resolution to obey him which in the fullest sense are also acts of Faith Now do not you Believe the truth of the Gospel And do you not Accept of Christ as he is offered therein If you are truly willing to have Christ as he is offered I dare say you are a true Believer If you be not willing for shame never complain Men use rather to speak against those that they are unwilling of then complain of their absence and that they cannot enjoy them 2. However seeing you complain of unbelief in the Name of God do not cherish it and plead for it and by your own cogitations fetch in daily matter to feed it but do more in detestation of it as well as complain DOUBT VIII BVt I am a stranger to the witness of the spirit and the Joy of the Holy Ghost and Communion with God and therefore how can I be a true Believer ANSWER 1. FEeding your Doubts and Perplexities and arguing for them is not a means to get the Testimony and Joy of the Spirit but rather studying with all Saints to know the Love of Christ which passeth knowledge to comprehend the height and bredth and length and depth of his Love and seeking to understand the things that are given you of God Acknowledge Gods general Love to Mankind both in his Gracious Nature and Common Providences and Redemption by Christ and deny not his Special Mercies to your self but dwell in the study of the Riches of Grace and that 's the way to come to the Joy of the Holy Ghost 2. I have told you before what the witness of the Spirit is and what is the ordinary mistake herein If you have the Graces and holy operations of the Spirit you have the witness of the Spirit whether you know it or not 3. If by your own doubtings you have deprived your self of the Joy of the Holy Ghost bewail it and do so no more but do not therefore say you have not the Holy Ghost For the Holy Ghost often works Regeneration and Holiness before he works any sensible Joys 4. You have some hope of salvation by Christ left in you You be not yet in utter despair And is it no Comfort to you to think that you have yet any Hope and are not quite past all Remedy It may be your sorrows may so cloud it that you take no notice of it but I know you cannot have the least Hope without some answerable Comfort And may not that Comfort â—e truly the Joy of the Holy Ghost 5. And for Communion with God let me ask you Have you no recourse to him by Prayer in your straits Do you not wait at his mouth for the Law and direction of your life Have you received no holy desires or other Graces from him Nay are you sure that you are not a member of Christ who is one with him How can you then say that you have no Communion with him Can there be Communication of Prayer and Obedience from you yea your own self delivered up to Christ and a Communication of any life of Grace from God by Christ and the Spirit and all this without Communion It cannot be Many a soul hath most near Communion with Christ that knows it not DOUBT IX I Have not the spirit of prayer When I should pour out my soul to God I have neither bold access nor matter of Prayer nor Words ANSWER DO you know what the spirit of Prayer is It containeth 1. Desires of the soul after the things we want especially Christ and his Graces 2. An addressing our selves to God with these Desires that we may have help and relief from him Have not you both these Do you not Desire Christ and Grace Justification and Sanctification Do you not look to God as him who alone is able to supply your wants and bids you ask that you may receive Do you utterly despair of help and to seek to none Or do you make your addresses by Prayer to any but God But perhaps you look at words and matter to dilate upon that you may be able to hold out in a long speech to God and you think that is the effect of the spirit of Prayer But where do you find that in Gods Word I confess that in many and most the spirit which helpeth to Desires doth also help to some kind of
it sufficient to raise you from the dust and banish those terrours and troubles from your hearts and help you to live like the Sons of God He commandeth me to tell you that he takes notice of your sorrows he stands by when you see him not and say He hath forsaken you he minds you with greatest tenderness when you say He hath forgotten you He numbreth your sighs he bottles up your tears the groans of your hearts do reach his own He takes it unkindly that you are so suspicious of him and that all that he hath done for you in the work of Redemption and all the gracious workings of his Spirit on your souls and all your own peculiar experiences of his Goodness can raise you to no higher apprehensions of his Love Shall not Love be acknowledged to be Love when it s grown to a Miracle when it surpasseth Comprehension Must the Lord set up Love and Mercy in the work of Redemption to be equally admired with his Omnipotency manifested in the Creation and call forth the World to this sweet imployment that in Secret and in Publick it might be the business of our lives and yet shall it be so overlookt or questioned as if you lived without Love and Mercy in the World Providence doth its part by heaping up Mountains of daily Mercies and these it sets before your eyes The Gospel hath eminently done its part by clear describing them and fully assuring them and this is proclaimed frequently in your ears And yet is there so little in your hearts and mouths Do you see and hear and feel and taste Mercy and Love do you Live wholly on it and yet do you still doubt of it and think so meanly of it and so hardly acknowledge it God takes not this well but yet he considereth your frailty and takes you not at the worst He knows that flesh will play its part and the Remnants of Corruption will not be idle and the Serpent will be suggesting false thoughts of God and will be still striving most to obscure that part of his Glory which is dearest to him and especially which is most conjoyned with the Happiness of Man He knows also that sin will breed sorrows and fears and that mans Understanding is shallow and all his Conceivings of God are exceeding low and that we are so far from God as Creatures and so much further as sinners and especially as Conscious of the abuse of his Grace that there must needs follow such a strangeness as will damp and dull our apprehensions of his Love and such an abatement of our Confidence as will make us draw back and look at God afar off Seeing therefore that at this distance no full apprehensions of Love can be expected It is the Pleasure of our Redeemer shortly to Return with ten thousands of his Saints with the noble Army of his Martyrs and the attendance of his Angels and to give you such a Convincing Demonstration of his Love as shall leave no room for one more Doubt Your Comforts are now but a Tast they shall be then a Feast They are now but Intermittent they shall be then Continual How soon now do your Conquered fears return and what an unconstancy and unevenness is there in our Peace But then our Peace must needs be Perfect and Permanent when we shall please God and Enjoy him in Perfection to Perpetuity Certainly Christians your Comforts should be now more abundant but that they are not ripe It is that and not this that is your harvest I have told you in another Book the mistake and danger of expecting too much here and the Necessity of Looking and Longing for that Rest if we will have Peace indeed But alas how hard is this lesson learned Unbelievers would have Happiness but how fain would they have it in the Creature rather then in God! Believers would rather have their Happiness in God then in the Creature But how fain would they have it without Dying And no wonder for when Sin brought in Death even Grace it self cannot Love it though it may submit to it But though Churlish Death do stand in our way why look we not at the Souls admittance into Rest and the Bodies Resurrection that must shortly follow Doubtless that Faith by which we are Justified and Saved as it sits down on the word of Truth as the present ground of its confident repose so doth it thence look with one eye backward on the Cross and with the other forward on the Crown And if we well observe the Scripture Descriptions of that Faith we shall find them as frequently magnifying it and describing it from the latter as from the former As it is the duty and glory of faith to look back with Thankful Acknowledgement to a Crucified Christ and his payment of our Ransome so is it the Duty and Glory of that same Justifying Saving Faith to Look forward with Desire and Hope to the Return of King Jesus and the Glorious Celebration of the Marriage of the Lamb and the Sentencial Justification and the Glorification of his Saints To Believe these things unfeignedly which we never saw nor ever spoke with man that did see and to Hope for them so Really as to let go all present forbidden pleasures and all worldly hopes and seeming happiness rather then to hazard the loss of them this is an eminent part of that Faith by which the Just do live and which the Scripture doth own as Justifying and Saving For it never distinguisheth between Justifying Faith and Saving Faith as to their nature It is therefore a great mistake of some to look onely at that one eye of Justifying Faith which looks back upon the Cross and a great mistake of them on the other hand that look onely at that eye of it which beholds the Crown Both Christ Crucified and Christ Interceding and Christ Returning to Justifie and Glorifie are the objects even of Justifying Saving Faith most strictly so called The Scripture oft expresseth the one onely but then it still implyeth the other The Socinians erroniously therefore from Heb. 11. where the Examples and Elogies of Faith are set forth do exclude Christ Crucified or the respect to his Satisfaction from Justifying Faith and place it in a meer Expectation of Glory and others do as ungroundedly affirm that it is not the Justifying Act of Faith which Heb. 11. describeth because they find not the Cross of Christ there mentioned For as Believing in Christs Blood Comprehendeth the End even the Expectation of Remission and Glory merited by that blood so the Believing of that Glory doth always imply that we Believe and Expect it as the fruit of Christs Ransome It is for health and life that we Accept and Trust upon our Physician And it is for Justification and Salvation that we Accept and Trust on Christ The Salvation of our Souls is the End of our Faith They that question whether we may Believe and Obey for our own
from Principles that are known by the meer Light and help of Nature and from the Knowledge of Conclusions which by Reasoning we gather from those Principles Though yet one and the same thing may be Known as Revealed in Nature and Believed as Revealed Immediatly of Supernaturally And so we both Know and Believe that there is one onely God who made and preserveth All things 4. But our Assurance is an Act of Knowledge participating of Faith and internal sense or Knowledge reflect For Divine Faith saith He that Believeth is Justified and shall be Saved Internal sense and knowledge of our selves saith But I Believe Reason or Discursive Knowledge saith Therefore I am Justified and shall be saved Only I must advise you that you be not troubled when you meet with that which is contrary to this in any great Divines For it is only our former Divines whose Judgements were partly hurt by hot Disputations with the Papists herein and partly not come to that maturity as others since them have had opportunity to do And therefore in their expositions of the Creed and such like passages in the Text they eagerly insist on it that when we say We Believe the Forgiveness of sin and Life everlasting every man is to profess that he Believeth that his own sinnes are forgiven and he shall have Life everlasting himself But our later Divines and specially the English and most especially these that deal most in Practicals do see the mistake and lay down the same doctrine which I teach you here God bids us not Believe as from him more then he hath revealed But only one of the Propositions is revealed by Gods Testimony He that Believeth shall be Saved But it is no where written that You do Believe nor that You shall be Saved nor any thing equivalent And therefore you are not commanded to Believe either of these How the Spirit revealeth these I have fully told you already In our Creed therefore we do profess to Believe Remission of sinnes to be Purchased by Christs death and in his Power to give and Given in the Gospel to All on Condition of Believing in Christ himself for Remission But not to Believe that our own sinnes are Actually and Fully Pardoned My end in telling you this again which I have told you elsewhere is this That you may not think as I finde abundance of poor troubled souls to do that Faith much less justifying Faith is a Believing that you have true Grace and shall be saved And so fall a condemning your self unjustly every time that you doubt of your own Sincerity and think that so much as you doubt of this so much unbelief you have and so many poor souls complain that they have no faith or but little and that they cannot Believe because they Believe not their own Faith to be Sincere and when they wholly judge themselves unsanctified then they call that Desperation which they think to be a sinne inconsistent with true Grace These are dangerous Errours all arising from that one Errour which the heat of contention did carry some good men to that Faith is a Belief that our sinnes are forgiven by Christ Indeed all men are bound to apply Christ and the Promise to themselves But that application consisteth in a Belief that this Promise is true as belonging to all and so to me and then in Acceptance of Christ and his benefits as an offered gift and after this in Trusting on him for the full performance of his Promise Hence therefore you may best see what Unbelief and Desperation are and how farre men may charge themselves with them When you doubt whether the Promise be True or when you refuse to Accept Christ and his Benefits offered in it and consequently to Trust him as one that is Able and Willing to save you if you do Assent to his Truth and Accept him this is Unbelief But if you do Believe the Truth of the Gospel and are heartily Willing to Accept Christ as offered in it and only Doubt whether your Belief and Acceptance of him be sincere and so whether you shall be saved this is not Unbelief but ignorance of your own Sincerity and its consequents Nay and though that Affiance be wanting which is a part of Faith yet it is but a hindering of the exercise of it for want of a necessary concomitant condition for the Grace of Affiance in the Habit and Virtually is there so that it is not formally Distrust or Unbelief any more then your not Trusting God in your sleep is Distrust If a friend do Promise to give you a hundred pound on condition that you thankfully Accept it If you now do Believe him and do thankfully Accept it but yet through some vain scruple shall think My thankefulness is so small that it is not sincere and therefore I doubt I do not perform his condition and so shall never have the gift In this case now you do Believe your friend and you do not Distrust him properly but you Distrust your self that you perform not the condition and this hindreth the exercise of that Confidence or Affiance in your friend which is habitually and virtually in you Just so is it in our present case The same may be said of Desperation which is a Privation of Hope When we have Believed the Truth of the Gospel and Accepted Christ offered we are then bound to Hope that God will give us the Benefits promised So hope is nothing but A Desirous expectation of the good so promised and believed Now if you begin to Distrust whether God will make good this promise or no either thinking that it is not True or he is not able or hath changed his minde since the making of it and on these grounds you let go your Hopes this is Despair If because that Christ seems to Delay his coming we should say I have waited in Hope till now but now I am out of Hope that ever Christ will come to Judge the world and Glorifie Believers I will expect it no longer this is Despair And it hath its several Degrees more or less as unbelief hath Indeed the Schoolmen say that Affiance is nothing but strengthened Hope Affiance in the properest sense is the same in substance with Hope only it more expresseth a Respect to the Promise and Promiser and indeed is Faith and Hope exprest both together in one word So that what I said before of Distrust is true of Despair If you do continue to Believe the Truth of the Gospel and particularly of Christs coming and glorifying his Saints and yet you think he will not glorifie you because you think that you are not a true Believer or Saint This is not Desperation in the proper sense For Desperation is the privation of Hope where the formal cause the heart and life of it is wanting But you have here Hope in the Habit and Virtually do Hope in Christ but the Act of it as to your own
particular salvation is hindered upon an accidentall mistake In the forementioned example If your friend Promise to give you a hundred pound on condition of your thankfull Acceptance and promiseth to come at such an hour and bring it you If now you stay till the hour be almost come and then say I â—m out of Hope of his coming now he hath broke his word this is properly a Despair in your friend But if you only think that you have overstaid the time and that it is past and therefore you shall not have the gift this may be called a Despair of the event and a Despair of your self but not properly a Despair in your friend only the Act of Hoping in God is hindered as is said So it is in our present case Men may be said to Despair of their Salvation and to Despair in themselves but not to Despair in God except the formal cause of such Despair were there present and except they are drawn to it by not believing his Truth and Faithfulness The true nature of Despair is exprest in that of the Apostles Luke 24.21 We trusted that this was he that should Redeem Israel Only it was but imperfect Despair else it had been damnable Their hopes were shaken And for my part I am perswaded that it is only this proper Despair in God which is the damnable Desperation which is threatned in the Scripture and not the former And that if a poor soul should go out of this world without any Actual Hope of his own Salvation meerly because he thinks that he is no true Believer that this Soul may be saved and prove a true Believer for all this Alas the great sin that God threatneth is our Distrust of his Faithfulness and not the doubting of our own sincerity and Distrust of our selves We have great reason to be very jealous of our own hearts as knowing them to be Deceitfull above all things and desperately wicked who can know them But we have no reason at all to be Jealous of God Where finde you in Scripture that any is condemned for hard thoughts of themselves or for not knowing themselves to have true Grace and for thinking they had none It is true unbelief in Gods Promise that men are condemned for even that sinne which is an Aversion of the Soul from God But perhaps you will ask Is doubting of our own sincerity and Salvation no sin I answer Doubting is either taken in opposition to Believing or in opposition to knowing or to conjecturing 1. Doubting as it signifieth only A not-believing that our sins are pardoned and we shall be saved is no sinne still remember that I take Believing in the strict proper sense for The Crediting of a Divine Testimony or Assertion For God hath no where commanded us ordinarily to Believe either of these I say Ordinarily as I did in the Proposition before because when Christ was on earth he told a man personally Thy sinnes are forgiven thee whether he meant only as to the present disease inflicted for them or also all punishment Temporal and Eternal I will not now discuss so Nathan from God told David His sinne was forgiven But these were Priviledges only to these persons and not common to all God hath no where said either that All mens sinnes are actually forgiven or that yours or mine by name are forgiven But only that All that Believe are forgiven which supposeth them to Believe before they are forgiven and that they may be forgiven and therefore it is not true that they are forgiven before they Believe and therefore this faith is not a Believing that they are forgiven but a Believing on Christ for forgivenesse Else men must Believe an Untruth to make it become True by their Believing it 2. But now Doubting as it is opposed to the Knowledge of our Remission and Justification in those that are Justified is a sinne For it can be no sinne for an unjustified person to know that he is unjustified But then I pray you mark how farre it is a sinne in the Godly and what manner of sin it is 1. It is a sinne as it is part of our natural ignorance and original Depravedness of our Understandings or a fruit hereof and of our strangeness to our own hearts and of their deep Deceitfulness Confusion Mutability or Negligence 2. And further as all these are increased by long custom in sinning and so the discerning of our states is become more difficult it is yet a greater sinne 3. It is a sinne as it is the fruit of any particular sinne by which we have obscured our own graces and provoked God to hide his face from us And so all ignorance of any Truth which we ought to know is a sinne so the ignorance of our own Regeneration and sincerity is a sinne because we ought to know it But this is so farre from being the great condemning sinne of unbelief which Christ threatneth in his New Law that it is none of the greatest or most hainous sort of sinnes but the infirmity in some measure of every Christian And let me further acquaint you with this difference between these Doubtings and your Fears and Sorrows that follow thereupon Though the Doubting it self be your sin yet I suppose that the Fears and Sorrows and Cares that follow it may be your Duty Yet Respectively and by remote participation even these also must be acknowledged sinfull even as our prayers for that pardon which we have received and knew it not may by remote participation be called sinfull because if we had not sinned we should not have been ignorant of our own hearts and if we had not been ignorant we should not have Doubted of the least true Grace we have and if we had not so Doubted we should not have Feared or Sorrowed or Prayed for that Remission in that sense But yet though these may be called sinfull as they come from sin yet more neerly and in themselves considered on supposition of our present estate they are all Duties and great Duties necessary to our Salvation You may say to a Thief that begs for pardon If thou hadst not stoln thou hadst not need to have beg'd pardon Yet supposing that he hath stoln it may be his Duty to beg pardon And so you may say to a poor fearing soul that fears Damnation and Gods wrath Thou needest not fear if thou hadst not sinned But when he hath once by sin obscured his evidences and necessitated Doubting then is fear and sorrow and praying for Justification and pardon his Duty And indeed not fitly to be called sin but rather a fruit of sin in one respect and so hath some participation in it but a fruit of the Spirit and of Christs command in another respect and so a necessary Duty For else we should say that it is a sin to Repent and Believe in Christ and to love him as Redeemer For you may say to any sinner Thou needest not to have
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
but use these three Distinctions 1. Between the Acts of the meer Rational faculties Understanding and Will called Elicite Acts and the Acts of the Inferiour faculties of soul and body called Imperate Acts. 2. Between the Acts that are About the End immediatly and those that are About the Means 3. Between the Intension of an Act and the Objective-Extension and Comparison of Object with Object And so I say 1. The End that is God and Salvation cannot be too fully Known or too much Loved with a pure Rational Love of Complacency nor too much sought by the Acts of the soul as purely Rational For the End being loved and sought for it self and being of Infinite Goodness must be loved and sought without Measure or Limitation it being Impossible here to exceed Prop. 2. The Means while they are not mis-apprehended but taken as Means and Materially well understood cannot be too clearly discerned nor too Rightly chosen nor too Resolutely prosecuted Prop. 3. It is too possible to mis-apprehend the Means and to place them instead of the End and so to Over-love them Prop. 4. The Nature of all the Means consisteth in a Middle or Mean betwixt two Extreams materially both which Extreams are sin so that it is possible to over-do about all the Means as to the Matter of them and the Extent of our acts Though we cannot Love God too much yet it is possible to Preach Hear Pray Read Meditate Confer of Good too much For one Duty may shut out another and a greater may be neglected by our over-doing in a lesser which was the Pharisees sin in Sabbath-Resting 5. If we be never so right in the extension of our Acts yet we may go too far in the Intension of the Imperate Acts or Passions of the soul and that both on the Means and End Though the pure Acts of Knowing or Willing cannot be too great towards God and Salvation yet the Passions and Acts commonly called Sensitive may A man may Think on God not onely too much as to exclude other necessary thoughts but too Intensly and Love and Desire too Passionately For there is a Degree of Thinking or Meditating and of Passionate Love and Desire which the brain cannot bear but it will cause Madness and quite overthrow the use of Reason by overstretching the organs or by the extreme turbulency of the agitated spirits Yet I never knew the man nor ever shall do I think that was ever guilty of one of these excesses that is of Loving or Desiring God so Passionately as to distract him But I have often known weak-headed people that be not able to order their thoughts and many Melancholy People Guilty of the other that is of thinking too much and too seriously and intensly on Good and Holy things whereby they have overthrown their Reason and been distracted And here I would give all such weak-headed Melancholy persons this warning That whereas in my Book of Rest I so much press a constant course of Heavenly Meditation I do intend it onely for sound heads and not for the Melancholy that have weak heads and are unable to bear it That may be their sin which to others is a very great duty While they think to do that which they cannot do they will but disable themselves for that which they can do I would therefore advise those Melancholy persons whose minds are so troubled and heads weakned that they are in danger of overthrowing their Understandings which usually begins in multitudes of scruples and restlesness of mind and continual fears and blasphemous temptations where it begins with these distraction is at hand if not prevented that they forbear Meditation as being no duty to them though it be to others and instead of it be the more in those duties which they are fit for especially Conference with Judicious Christians and Chearful and Thankful acknowledgement of Gods Mercies And thus have I shewed you how far we may possibly exceed in Gods service Let me now a little apply it It hath ever been the Devils Policy to begin in perswading men to Worldlyness Flesh-pleasing Security and Presumption and utter Neglect of God and their souls or at least preferring their bodies and worldly things and by this means he destroyeth the world But where this will not take but God awaketh men effectually and casteth out the sleepy Devil usually he fils mens heads with needless scruples and next setteth them on a Religion not commanded and would make poor souls believe they do Nothing if they do not more then God hath commanded them When the Devil hath no other way left to destroy Religion and Godliness he will pretend to be Religious and Godly himself and then he is always over-religious and over-godly in his Materials All over-doing in Gods work is undoing And who ever you meet with that would Over-do suspect him to be either a subtil destroying enemy or one deluded by the destroyer O what a Tragedy could I here shew you of the Devils acting and what a Mysterie in the Hellish Art of Deceiving could I open to you And shall I keep the Devils counsel No. O that God would open the eyes of his poor desolate Churches at lâ—st to see it The Lord Jesus in Wisdom and tender Mercy establisheth a Law of Grace and Rule of Life Pure and Perfect but simple and plain laying the Condition of mans salvation more in the Honesty of the Believing Heart then in the strength of Wit and subtilty of a Knowing Head He comprized the Truths which were of Necessity to salvation in a Narrow room So that the Christian Faith was a matter of great plainness and simplicity As long as Christians were such and held to this the Gospel rode in Triumph through the world and an Omnipotency of the Spirit accompanied it bearing down all before it Princes and Scepters stoopt subtil Philosophy was non-plust and all useful Sciences came down and acknowledged themselves Servants and took their places and were well contented to attend the pleasure of Christ As Mr. Herbert saith in his Church Militant Religion thence fled into Greece where Arts Gave her the highest place in all mens hearts Learning was pos'd Philosophy was set Sophisters taken in a Fishers Net Plato and Aristotle were at a loss And wheel'd about again to spell Christs Cross Prayers chas't Syllogisms into their den And Ergo was transform'd into Amen The Serpent envying this Happiness of the Church hath no way to undo us but by drawing us from our Christian simplicity By the occasion of Hereticks quarrels and errours the Serpent steps in and will needs be a spirit of Zeal in the Church and he will so Over-do against Hereticks that he perswades them they must enlarge their Creed and adde this Clause against one and that against another and all was but for the perfecting and preserving of the Christian Faith And so he brings it to be a Matter of so much Wit to be a Christian as Erasmus
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
thing before I confess it hath been a strengthening to my own faith to see the Devil such an Enemy to the Christian faith yea to the Godhead it self But perhaps you will say It is not meer Temptation from Satan that I complain of but it takes too much with my sinful heart I am ready to doubt oft-times whether there be a God or whether his Providence determine of the things here below or whether Scripture be true or the Soul immortal c. Answ This is a very great sin and you ought to bewail and abhorr it and in the Name of God make not light of it but look to it betime But yet let me tell you that some degree of this Blasphemy and Infidelity may remain with the truest saving Faith The best may say Lord I believe help thou mine unbelief But I will tell you my Judgement When your unbelief is such as to be a sign of a Graceless soul in the state of damnation If your Doubtings of the Truth of Scripture and the Life to come be so great that you will not let go the pleasures and profits of sin and part with all if God call you to it in Hope of that Glory promised and to escape the Judgement threatned because you look upon the things of the life to come but as uncertain things then is your Belief no saving Belief but your unbelief is prevalent But if for all your staggerings you see so much probabilâ—ty of the Truth of Scripture and the Life to come that you are resolved to venture and part with if called to it all worldly Hopes and Happiness for the Hope of that promised Glory and to make it the chiefest business of your life to attain it and do deny your self the pleasures of sin for that end this is a true saving Faith as is evident by its Victory notwithstanding all the Infidelity Atheism and Blasphemy that is mixt with it But again let me advise you to take heed of this hainous sin and bewail and detest the very least degree of it It is dangerous when the Devil strikes at the very root and heart foundation of all your religion There is more sinfulness and danger in this then in many other sins And therefore let it never be motioned to your soul without abhorrence Two ways the Devil hath to move it The one is by his immediate inward suggestions these are bad enough The other is by his Accursed Instruments and this is a far more dangerous way whether it be by books or by the words of men And yet if it be by notorious wicked men or fools the Temptation is the less but when it is by men of cunning wit and smooth tongues and hypocritical lives for far be that wickedness from me as to call them Godly or wise or honest then it is the greatest snare that the Devil hath to lay O just and Dreadful God! did I think one day that those that I was then praying with and rejoycing with and that went up with me to the house of God in familiarity would this day be blasphemers of thy sacred Name and deny the Lord that bought them and deride thy holy word as a fable and give up themselves to the present pleasures of sin because they Believe not thy promised Glory Righteous and Merciful God! that hast preserved the humble from this Condemnation and hast permitted only the Proud and Sensual Professors to fall into it and hast given them over to Hellish Conversations according to the nature of their Hellish opinions that they might be rather a terror to others then a snare I call their Doctrine and Practice Hellish from its Original because it comes from the Father of Lyes but not that there is any such opinion or practice in Hell He that tempts others to Deny the Godhead the Christian faith the Scripture the Life to come doth no whit doubt of any one of them himself but believes and Trembles O fearful blindness of the professors of Religion that wil hear if not receive these Blasphemies from the mouth of an Apostate Professor which they would abhor if it came immediately from the Devil himself With what sad complaints and trembling do poor sinners cry out and not without Cause O I am haunted with such Blaspemous temptations that I am afraid lest God should suddenly destroy me that ever such thoughts should come into my heart But if an Instrument of the Devil come and plead against the Scripture or the Life to come or Christ himself they will hear him with less detestation The Devil knows that familiarity will cause us to take that from a man which we would abhor from the Devil himself immediately I intend not to give you now a particular preservative against each of these Temptations Only let me tell you that this is the direct way to Infidelity Apostacy and the sin against the Holy Ghost and if by any Seducers the Devil do overcome you herein you are lost for ever and there will be no more sacrifice for your sin but a fearful expectation of judgment and that fire which shal devour the adversaries of Christ DOUBT XVIII I Have so great fears of Death and unwillingness to be with God that I am afraid I have no Grace for if I had Pauls spirit I should be able to say with him I desire to depart and to be with Christ Whereas now no news would be to me more unwelcome ANSWER THere is a loathness to Dye that comes from a Desire to do God more service and another that comes from an Apprehension of unreadiness when we would fain have more Assurance of Salvation first or would be fitter to meet our Lord. Blame not a man to be somewhat backward that knows it must go with him for ever in Heaven or Hell according as he is found at death But these two be not so much a loathness to Dye as a loathness to Dye now at this time 3. There is also in all men living Good and bad a natural abhorrence and fear of death God hath put this into mans nature even in Iâ—nocency to be his great means of Governing the World No man would live in ordâ—â— or be kept in obedience but for this He that cares not for his own Life is Master of anothers Grace doth not root out this abhorrency of Death no more then it unmanneth us Onely it restrains it from excess and so far overcometh the violence of the Passion by the apprehensions of a better life beyond death that a Believer may the more quietly and willingly submit to it Paul himself desireth not Death but the Life which followeth it He desireth to depart and to be with Christ that is He had rather be in Heaven then on earth and therefore he is contented to submit to the penal sharp passage God doth not command you to Desire death it self nor forbid you fearing it as an evil to nature and a punishment of sin Only he
Policy of the Devil to make People Believe that their Ministers are too stout and will not stoop to a compassionate hearing of their case especially if Ministers carry themselves strangely at too great a distance from their People I would earnestly intreat all Ministers therefore to be as familiar and as much with their People as they can Papists and other Seducers will insinuate themselves into their familiarity if we be strange If you teach them not in their Houses these will Creep into their Houses and lead them Captive I perswade others of my Brethren to that which my self am disabled from performing being by constant weakness besides unavoydable business confined to my Chamber But those that can perform it will find this a most necessary and profitable work And let not poor People believe the Devil who tels them that Ministers are so proud onely to discourage them from seeking their advice Go try them once before you believe it Lastly Remember this that it is not enough that you once opened your case to your Pastour but do it as often as Necessity urgeth you to call for his advice though not on every light occasion Live in such a Dependance on the advice and guidance of your Pastour under Christ for your soul as you do on the advice of the Physician for your body Read Mal. 2.7 and let Ministers read 6 8 9. DIRECTION XXXII 32. As ever you would live in Peace and Comfort and well-pleasing unto God be sure that you understand and deeply consider wherein the height of a Christian life and the greatest part of our Duty doth consist To wit In a loving Delight in God and a Thankful and Chearful Obedience to his Will And then make this your Constant aim and be still aspiring after it and let all other affections and endeavours be subservient unto this THis one Rule well practised would do wonders on the souls of poor Christians in dispelling all their fears and troubles and helping not onely to a setled Peace but to live in the most comfortable state that can be expected upon earth Write therefore these two or three words deep in your understandings and Memory that the life which God is best pleased with and we should be always endeavouring is A Loving Delight in God through Christ and a thankful and chearful obedience to him I do not say that godly sorrows and fears and jealousies are no Duties but these are the great Duties to which the rest should all subserve Misapprehending the state of Duty and the very Nature of a Christian life must needs make sad distempers in mens hearts and conversations Many Christians look upon Broken-heartedness and much grieving and weeping for sin as if it were the great thing that God Delighteth in and requireth of them and therefore they bend all their endeavours this way and are still striving with their hearts to break them more and wringing their Consciences to squeez out some tears and they think no Sermon no Prayer no Meditation speeds so well with them as that which can help them to grieve or weep I am far from perswading men against Humiliation Godly sorrow and tenderness of heart But yet I must tell you that this is a sore errour that you lay so much upon it and so much overlook that great and noble work and state to which it tendeth Do you think that God hath any Pleasure in your sorrows as such Doth it do him Good to see you dejected afflicted and tormented Alas it is onely as your sorrows do kill your sins and mortifie your fleshly lusts and prepare for your Peace and Joys that God regards them Because God doth speak comfortably to troubled drooping spirits and tels them that he delighteth in the contrite and loveth the humble and bindeth up the broken-hearted therefore men mis-understanding him do think they should do nothing but be still breaking their own hearts Whereas God speaks it but partly to shew his hatred to the proud and partly to shew his tender compassions to the humbled that they might not be overwhelmed or despair But O Christians understand and consider that all your sorrows are but preparatives to your joys and that it is a higher and sweeter work that God cals you to and would have you spend your time and strength in 1. The first part of it is Love A work that is wages to it self He that knows what it is to live in the Love of God doth know that Christianity is no tormenting and discontented life 2. The next part is Delight in God and in the Hopes and fore-thoughts of everlasting Glory Psal 37.4 Delight thy self in the Lord and he shall give thee the Desires of thy heart This is it that you should be bending your studies and endeavours for that your soul might be able to Delight it self in God 3. The third part is Thankfulness and Praise Though I say not as some that we should be moved by no fears or desires of the Reward that is of God but act only from Thankfulness as though we had all that we expect already yet let me desire you to take speciall notice of this Truth that Thankfulness must be the main principle of all Gospel-Obedience And this is not onely true of the Regenerate after faith but even the wicked themselves who are called to Repent and Believe are called to do it in a glad and Thankful sense of the mercy offered them in Christ All the world being fallen under Gods wrath and deserved condemnation and the Lord Jesus having become a Sacrifice and Ransom for all and so brought all from that Legal Necessity of perishing which they were under the Gospel which brings them the News of this is glad tidings of great Joy to them and the very justifying Act which they are called to is Thankfully to Accept Christ as one that hath already satisfied for their sins and will save them if they Accept him and will follow his saving Counsel and use his saving means and the saving work which they must proceed in is Thankfulness to obey that Redeemer whom they Believe in So that as General Redemption is the very Foundation of the new world and its Government so Thankfulness for this Redemption is the very life of Justifying faith and Gospel obedience And therefore the denyal of this universal Redemption as to the Price and Satisfaction doth both disable wicked men if they receive it from coming to Christ by true Justifying Faith which is The Thankful Acceptance of Christ as he is offered with his benefits and this Thankfulness must be for what he hath done in Dying for us as well as for what he will do in pardoning and saving us and it doth disable all true Believers from Gospel Grateful Obedience when ever they lose the sight of their Evidences of special Grace which alas how ordinary is it with them For when they cannot have special Grace in their eye to be Thankful for according to