Every sentence is good for somthing All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine for reproof for correction for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect throughly furnished unto all good works 2 Tim. 3.16 17. Not a word is without its usefulness 5. Moreover you must grow not only in knowing the usefulness of truths but also in knowing how to use them that you may have the benefit of that worth that is in them Many a man knows what use a workmans tools are for that yet knows not how himself to use them And many a one knows the use and vertue of herbs and drugs that knows not how to make a medicine of them and compound and apply them There is much skill to be used in knowing the seasons of application and the measure and what is fit for one and what for another that we may make that necessary variation which diversity of conditions do require As it is a work of skill in the Pastors of the Church to divide the word of God aright and speak a word in season to the weary and give the children their meat in due season 2 Tim. 2.15 Isa. 50.4 Mat. 24.45 So is it also a work of skill to do this for your selves to know what Scripture it is that doth concern you and when and in what measure to apply it and in what order and with what advantages or correctives to use it as may be most for your own good You may grow in this skill as long as you live even in understanding how to use the same truths which you have long known O what excellent Christians should we be if we had but this holy skill and hearts to use it We have the whole armour of God to put on and use but all the matter is how to use it The same sword of the spirit in the hand of a strong and skilful Christian may do very much which in the hand of a young unskilful Christian will do very little and next to nothing A young raw Physician may know the same medicines as an able experienced Physician doth but the great difference lieth in the skil to use them This is it that must make you rich in grace when you increase in the skilful use of truths 6. Moreover your understandings may be much advanced by knowing the same truths more experimentally than you did before I mean such truths as are capable of experimental knowledge Experience giveth us a far more satisfactory manner of knowledge than others have that have no such experience To know by hearsay is like the knowing of a Countrey in a Map and to know by experience is like the knowing of the same Countrey by sight An experienced Navigator or Soldier or Physician or Governour hath another manner of knowledge than the most learned can have without experience even a knowledge that confirmeth a man and makes him confident Thus may you daily increase in knowledge about the same points that you knew long ago When you have tasted and seen that the Lord is gracious Psal. 34.8 1 Pet. 2.3 you will know him more experimentally than you did before when you have tasted the sweetness of the promise and of pardon of sin and peace with God and the hopes of glory you will have a more experimental knowledge of the riches of grace than you had before And when you have lived a while in communion with Christ and the Saints and walked a while with God in a heavenly conversation and maintained your integrity and kept your selves unspotted of the world you will then know the nature and worth of holiness by a knowledge more experimental and satisfactory than before And this is confirmation and growth in knowledge 7. Moreover you must labor to grow in a higher estimation of the same truths which you knew before And this will be a consequent of the forementioned acts A child that findeth a jewel may set by it for the shining beauty when yet he may value it many thousand pounds below its worth You see so much wisdom and goodness in God the first hour of your new life as causeth you to prefer him before the world and you see so much necessity of a Saviour so much love and mercy in Jesus Christ as draweth up your hearts to him and you see so much certainty and glorious excellency of the life to come that makes you value it even more than your lives But yet there is in all these such an unsearchable treasure that you can never value them neer their worth for all that thou hast seen of God and Christ and Glory there is a thousand times more excellency in them yet to be discerned For all the beauty thou hast seen in holiness it is a thousand fold more beautiful than ever thou didst apprehend it for all the evil thou hast seen in sin it is a thousand fold worse than ever thou didst perceive it to be So that if you should live a thousand years you might still be growing in your estimation of those things which you knew the first day of your true conversion For the deeper you dig into this precious Mine the greater riches will still appear to you There is an Ocean of excellency in one Article of your belief and you will never find the banks or bottom till you come to heaven and then you will find that it had neither banks nor bottom And thus I have shewed you what confirmation growth is needful for your understandings even about the very same truths which at first you knew And now I shall add 8. You must also labour to understand more truths for number than at the first you understood and to reach to as much of the revealed will of God as you can and not to stop in the meer essentials For all divine revelations are precious and of great use and none must be neglected And the knowledge of many other truths is of some necessity to our clear understanding of the essentials and also to our holding them fast and practising them Secret things belong to God but things revealed to us and to our children Deut. 29.29 But here I must give you this further advice 1. That you proceed in due order from the fundamental points to those that lye next them do not overpass the points of next necessity and weight and go to higher and less needful matters before you are ready for them 2. And also see that you receive all following truths that are taught you as flowing from the foundation and conjoyned with it Disorderly proceedings have unspeakably wrong'd the souls of many thousands when they are presently upon controversies and smaller matters before they understand abundance of more necessary things that must be first understood This course doth make them lose their labour and worse it deceiveth the understanding instead of informing it and thereupon it perverts the will it self and turns
believe that God the Father is the First in the holy Trinity of persons that the whole Godhead is perfect and infinite in Being and Power and Wisdom and Goodness in which all his Attributes are comprehended but yet a distinct understanding of them all is not of absolute necessity to Salvation That this God is the Creator Preserver and Disposer of all things and the Owner and Ruler of Mankind most just and merciful that as he is the Beginning of all so he is the Ultimate end and the Chief Good of man which before all things else must be loved and sought This is to be believed concerning the Godhead and the Father in person Concerning the Son we must moreover believe that he is the same God with the Father the second person in Trinity in carnate and so become man by a personal union of the Godhead and Manhood That he was without Original or actual sin having a sinless nature and a sinless life that he fulfilled all Righteousness and was put to death as a Sacrifice for our sins and gave himself a Ransome for us and being buried he rose again from the dead and afterward ascended into Heaven where he is Lord of all and intercedeth for Believers that he will come again and raise the dead and judg the World the Righteous to everlasting Life and the Wicked to everlasting punishment that this is the only Redeemer the Way the Truth and the Life neither is their access to the Father but by him nor Salvation in any other Concerning the Holy Ghost we must believe that he is the same One God the third person in Trinity sent by the Father and the Son to inspire the Prophets and Apostles and that the Doctrine inspired and miraculously attested by him is true that he is the sanctifier of those that shall be saved renewing them after the Image of God in Holiness and Righteousness giving them true Repentance Faith Hope Love and sincere Obedience causing them to overcome the Flesh the World and the Devil thus gathering a Holy Church on earth to Christ who have by his Bloud the pardon of all their sins and shall have everlasting blessedness with God This is the Essence of the Christian Faith as to the Matter of it As to the Manner of Receiving it by the understanding 1. It must be received as Certain truth of Gods Revelation upon the credit of his Word by a lively effectual belief pierceing so deep as is necessary for its prevalency with the Will 2. And it must be Entirely received and not only a part of it Though all men have not so exactly formed distinct apprehensions of every member of this belief as some have yet all true Christians have a true apprehension of them We feel by daily experience that with the wisest some matters are truly understood by us which yet are not so distinctly and clearly understood as to be ready for an expression I have oft in matters that I am but studying a light that gives me a general imperfect but true conception which I cannot yet express but when another hath helped me to form my conception I can quickly and truly say that was it that I had an unformed apprehension of before and it that I meant but could not utter not so much for want of words as for want of a full and distinct conception 2. The Matter of our Christianity to be Received by the Will is as followeth As we must consent to all the forementioned truths by the Belief of the understanding so the pure Godhead must be Received as the Fountain and our End the Father as our Owner Ruler and Benefactor on the title of Creation and Redemption and as our everlasting happiness The Son as our only Saviour by Redemption bringing us pardon reconciliation holiness and glory and delivering us from sin and Satan and the wrath and Curse of God and from Hell The Holy Ghost as our Guide and Sanctifier All which containeth our Renouncing the Flesh the World and the Devil and carnal Self that is the point of their Unity and heart of the old Man This is the Good that must be embraced or accepted by the will And secondly as to the Manner of Receiving it it must be done Vnfeignedly Resolvedly unreservedly or absolutely and habitually by an inward Covenanting of the heart as I have formerly explained it And this is the Essence of Christianity This is true Believing in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost This is the Foundation and this is the right laying of it And now the thing that I am perswading you to is to see that this Foundation be surely laid in Head and Heart And 1. That it may be surely laid in the Head you must labour 1. To understand these Articles And 2. to see the Evidence of their verity that you may firmly believe them And 3. To Consider of the worth and necessity of the matter revealed in them that your Judgments may most highly esteem it This is the sure laying the Foundation in the Head To these ends you should first learn some Catechism and be well acquainted with the Principles of Religion and also be much in reading or hearing the holy Scripture and enquiring of your Teachers and others that can help you and see that you take your work before you and step not higher till this be done And then all other following truths and Duties and promised benefits must all be so learnt as to be built upon this foundation and joyned to it as receiving their life and strength from hence and never lookt upon as separated from this nor as more excellent and necessary For want of learning well and believing soundly these Principles Essentials or Fundamentals of Christianity some of our people can go no further but stand all their dayes in their ignorance at a non-plus Some of them go on in a blind Profession deceiving themselves by building upon the Sand and hold true Doctrine by a false unsound belief of it And when the Flouds and storms do beat upon their building it falls and great is the fall thereof With some of them it falls upon the first assault of any Seducer that hath interest in them or advantage on them and abundance swallow up Errors because they never well understood or Firmly believ'd Fundamental Truths With others of them the building falls not until death because they lived not under any shaking temptations But it being but a perseverance in an unfound Profession will nevertheless be ineffectual to their Salvation 2. When you have thus laid the Foundation in your understanding be sure above all that it be firmly laid in your Heart or Will Take heed lest you should prove false and unstedfast in the holy Covenant and lest you should take in the Word but into the furnace of the Soul and not give it depth of earth and rooting and lest you should come to Christ but as a servant upon tryall and make an absolute
consider of this weighty truth it is not the knowledge of the Truth that will serve your turns without a true and solid knowledge of that truth nor is it the hearing or understanding of the best grounds and reasons or proofs in the world that will serve the turn unless you have a deep and solid apprehension of those proofs and reasons A man that hath the best arguments may forsake the truth because he hath not a good understanding of those arguments As a man that hath the best weapons in the world may be kill'd for want of strength skill to use them I tell you if you knew every truth in the Bible you may grow much in knowledge of the very same truths which you know 3. Moreover a young ungrounded Christian when he seeth all the fundamental Truths and seeth good evidence and reasons of them perhaps may be yet ignorant of the right order and place of every truth It 's a rare thing to have young Professors to understand the necessary truths methodically And this is a very great defect For a great part of the usefulness and excellency of particular truths consisteth in the respect they have to one another This therefore will be a considerable part of your confirmation growth in your understandings to see the body of Christian doctrine as it were at one view as the several parts of it are united in one perfect frame and to know what aspect one point hath upon another and which is their due places There is a great difference between the sight of the several parts of a clock or watch as they are disjoynted and scattered about and the seeing of them conjoyned and in use and motion To see here a pin and there a wheel and not know how to set them all together nor ever see them in their due places will give but little satisfaction It is the frame and design of holy Doctrine that must be known and every part should be discerned as it hath its particular use to that design and as it is connected with the other parts By this means only can the true nature of Theology together with the harmony and perfection of truth be clearly understood And every single truth also will be much better perceived by him that seeth its place and order than by any other For one truth exceedingly illustrates and leads in another into our understanding Nay more than so your own hearts and lives will not be well ordered if the method or order of the truths received should be mistaken For the truths of God are the very instruments of your sanctification which is nothing but their effects upon your understandings and wills as they are set home by the holy Ghost Truths are the seal and your souls are the wax and holiness is the impression made If you receive but some truths you will have but some part of the due impression Nay indeed they are so coherent and make up the sence by their necessary conjunction that you cannot receive any one of them sincerely without receiving every one that is of the essence of the Christian belief And if you receive them disorderly the image of them on your souls will be as disorderly as if your bodily members were monstrously misplaced Study therefore to grow in the more methodical knowledge of the same truths which you have received And though you are not yet ripe enough to discern the whole body of Theology in due method yet see so much as you have attained to know in the right order and placing of every part As in Anatomy its hard for the wisest Physician to discern the course of every branch of veins and arteries but yet they may easily discern the place and order of the principal parts and greater vessels So it is in Divinity where no man hath a perfect view of the whole till he come to the state of perfection with God but every true Christian hath the knowledge of all the essentials and may know the order and places of them all 4. Another part of your confirmation growth in understanding is In discerning the same truths more practically than you did before and perceiving the usefulness of every truth for the doing of its work on your hearts and lives It was never the will of God that bare speculation should be the end of his Revelations or of our belief Divinity is an Affective practical Science therefore must truths be known and believed that the good may be received and a holy change may be made by them on the heart and life Even the Doctrine of the Trinity it self is practical and the fountain of that which is more easily discerned to be practical There is not one Article of our faith but hath a special work to do upon our hearts and lives and therefore a special fitness for that work Now the understandings of young Christians do discern many truths when they see but little of the work to be done by them and the special usefulness of those truths to those works This therefore must be your daily enquiry and in this you must grow As if you come into a workmans shop and see a hundred tools about you it is a small matter to discern the shape and fashion of them and what mettle they are made of But you will further ask What is this tool to do and what is that to do If ever you will learn the trade you must know the use of every tool So must you if you will be skilful Christians be acquainted with the use of the truths which you have received and know that this truth is to do this work and that truth to do that work upon the soul and life A Husbandman may know as many herbs and flowers and fruits as a Physician and be able to tell them all by name and say this is such an herb and that is such a one and to perceive the shape and beauty of them But he knows little or nothing that they are good for unless to feed his cattle Whereas the Physician can tell you that this herb is good against this disease and that herb against another disease and can make use of those same herbs to save mens lives which other men tread under foot as useless A Countrey man may see the names that are written on the Apothecaries boxes but it is the Physician that knows the medicinal use of the drugs So many men that are unsanctified may know the outside of holy doctrine that little know what use is to be made of it And the weak Christian knows less of this than the grown confirmed Christian doth Learn therefore every day more and more to know what every truth is good for that this is for the exercise and strengthening of such a grace and this is good against such or such a disease of the soul. Every leaf in the Bible hath a healing vertue in it They are the leaves of the Tree of Life
men to an heretical proud or perverse frame of spirit and then it must needs mislead their practises and cause them like deluded men to be zealous in doing mischief while they think they are doing good In common matters you can see that you must learn and do things in their due order or else you will but make fools of your selves Will you go to the top of the stairs or ladder without beginning at the lower steps Will you sow your ground before you manure or plow it or can you reap before you sow it Will you ride your colt before you break him Will your rear an house before you frame it Or will you teach your children Hebrew and Greek and Latine before they learn English or to read the hardest books before they learn the easiest or can they read before they learn to spell or know their letters No more can you learn the difficult controversies in divinity as about the exposition of obscure Prophesies or doctrinal doubts till you have taken up before you those many great and necessary truths that lye between It would make a wise man pity them and be ashamed to hear them when young raw self-conceited Professors will fall into confident expositions of Daniel the Revelations or the Canticles or such like or into disputes about free-will or predestination or about the many controversies of the times when alas they are ignorant of a hundred truths about the Covenants Justification and the like which must be known before they can reach the rest By this much that I have said already you may understand that though we should reach as far as we can in knowing all necessary revealed truths yet the principal part of your growth in knowledge when once you are converted consisteth not in knowing more than you knew before as to the number of truths but in knowing better the very same fundamental truths which you knew at first This is the principal thing that I would here teach you Abundance are deluded by not understanding this you see here you have seven several things in which you must daily grow in knowledge about the same truths which you first received 1. You must see better and sounder reasons and evidences for the fundamental truths than you saw at first or more such evidences than you did then perceive 2. You must grow to a clearer sight or apprehension of those same evidences 3. You must see truths more methodically all as it were at one view and all in their due proportion and place as the members of a well composed body and how they grow together and what strength one truth affords to another 4. You must see every truth more practically than before and know what use it is of for your hearts and lives and what you must do with it 5. You must learn more skill in the using of these truths when you know what they are good for and must be better able to manage them on your selves and others 6. You must know more experimentally than you did at first 7. You must grow into a higher esteem of truths All this you have to do besides your growing in the number of truths And I must tell you that as it was these Essentials of Christianity that were the instrumental causes of your first Conversion and were more needful and useful to you then than ten thousand others So it is the very same points that you must alwayes live upon and the Confirmation and growth of your Souls in these will be more useful to you than the adding of ten thousand more truths which yet you know not And therefore take this advice as you love your peace and growth Neglect not to know more but bestow many and many hours in labouring to know Better the great truths which you have received for one hour that you bestow in seeking to know more Truths which you know not Believe it this is the safe and thriving way You know already that God is All-sufficient and infinitely wise and good and powerful And you know not perhaps the nature of free Will or of Gods Decrees of Election and Reprobation or a hundred the like points True knowledg of any of the revealed things of God is very desirable But yet I must tell you that you are fourty times more defective here in your knowledg of that of God which you do know than of the other which you know not that is the want of more Degrees of this necessary knowledg is more dangerous to your Souls than the total want of the less necessary knowledg And the addition of more Degrees to the more needful parts of knowledg will strengthen and enrich you more than the knowing of less necessary things which you knew not before at all You know Christ Crucified already but perhaps you know not certain Controversies about Church-Government or the definitions and distinctions of many matters in Divinity It will be a greater growth now to your knowledg to know a little more of Christ Crucified whom you know already than to know these lesser matters which you know not yet at all If you had already a hundred pound in Gold and not a penny of Silver it will more enrich you to have another purse full of Gold than a purse full of Silver Trading in the richest Commodities is liker to raise men to great estates than trading for matters of a smaller rate They that go to the Indies for Gold and Pearl may be rich if they get but little in quantity When he may be poor that brings home Ships laded with the greatest store of poor Commodity That man that hath a double measure of the knowledg of God in Christ and the clearest and deepest and most effectual apprehensions of the Riches of Grace and the Glory to come and yet never heard of most of the Questions in Scotus or Ockam or Aquinas's sums is far richer in knowledg and a much wiser man than he that hath those Controversies at his fingers ends and yet hath but half his clearness and solidity of the knowledg of God and Christ of Grace and Glory There is enough in some One of the Articles of your Faith in One of Gods Attributes in One of Christs benefits in One of the Spirits Graces to hold you study all your lives and afford you still an increase of knowledg To know God the Father Son and Spirit and their relations to you and operations for you and your Duties to them and the way of Communion with them is that knowledg in which you must still be growing till it be perfected by the celestial beatifical Vision Those be not the wisest men that can answer most questions but those that have the fullest intellectual reception of the infinite Wisdom You will confess that he is a wiser man that hath Wisdom to get and Rule a Kingdom than he that hath wit enough to talk of a hundred trivial matters which the other is ignorant of That 's
Christians though their Worship hath errors and faults repugnant to the right order and manner of Worship so be it you joyn not in that Worship which is substantially evil and such as God doth utterly disown Or that you commit no actual sin your selves or that you approve not of the errors and faults of the Worshippers and justifie not their smallest evil Or that you prefer not defective faulty Worship before that which is more pure and agreeable to the Will of God For while all the Worshippers are faulty and imperfect all their Worship will be so too And if your actual sin when you Pray or Preach defectively your selves doth not signify that you approve your faultiness much less will your presence prove that you allow of the faultiness of others The business that you come upon is to joyn with a Christian Congregation in the use of those Ordinances which God hath appointed supposing that the Ministers and Worshippers will all be sinfully defective in method order words or circumstances And to bear with that which God doth bear with and not to refuse that which is Gods for the adherent faults of men no more than you will refuse every dish of meat which is unhansomly Cooked as long as there is no poyson in it and you prefer it not before better 1 Cor. 1.10 and 3.1 2 3. with 11.17 18 21. Rom. 15.1 2. DIRECT XIV Keep up a constant Government over your Thoughts and Tongues especially against those particular sins which you are stronglyest tempted to and which you see other Christians most overtaken with KEep your Thoughts imployed upon somthing that is good and profitable either about some useful Truths or about some duty to God or man of your general or particular Calling yea about all these in their several seasons Learn how to watch your thoughts and stop them at their first excursions and how to quicken them and make them serviceable to every grace and every duty You can never improve your solitary hours if you have not the Government of your Thoughts And as the Thoughts must be governed because they are the first and intimate actings of good or evil so the Tongue must be Governed as the first expresser of the mind and the first instrument of good or hurt to others Especially take heed of these sins which the faultiness of most Professors of Religion doth warn you to avoid 1. An ordinary course of vain jesting and unprofitable talk 2. Provoking passionate inconsiderate words that tend to kindle wrath in others 3. Backbiting censuring and speaking evil of others without any just call when it is either upon uncertain reports or uncharitable suspition or tendeth more to hurt than good 4. A forward venting of our own conceits and a confident pleading for our uncertain unproved Opinions in Religion and a contentious wrangling for them as if the Kingdom of God lay in them And a forwardness in all company to be the Speakers rather than the Hearers and to talk in a Magisterial Teaching way as if we took our selves to be the wisest and others to have need to learn of us But especially take heed of speaking evil of those that have wronged you or of those that differ from you in some tollerable Opinions in Religion And hate that devilish uncharitable vice which maketh many ready to believe any thing or say any thing be it never so false of those that are against their Sect yea of whole parties of men that differ from them when there is not one of a thousand of all the party that ever they were acquainted with or ever could prove the thing by of which they are accused By the means of these bold uncharitable reports the Devil hath unspeakably gained against Christ and the Kingdom of malice hath won upon the Kingdom of Love and most Christians are easier known to be factious by hating or slandering one another than they can be known to be Christs Disciples by loving one another And while every Sect without remorse doth speak reproachfully and hatefully of the rest they learn hereby to hate one another and harden the Infidel and ungodly world in hating and speaking evil of them all So that a Turk or Heathen need no other witness of the odiousness of all Christians than the venemous words which they speak against each other And as foul words in quarrels prepare for blows so these malicious invectives upon differences in Religion prepare for the cruellest persecutions From my own observation which with a grieved soul I have made in this Generation I hereby give warning to this and all succeeding Ages that if they have any regard to Truth or Charity they take heed how they believe any factious partial Historian or Divine in any evil that he saith of the party which he is against For though there be good and credible persons of most parties yet you shall find that passion and partiality prevaileth against Conscience Truth and Charity in most that are sick of this Disease And that the envious zeal which is described Jam. 3. doth make them think they do God service first in believing false reports and then in verting them against those that their zeal or laction doth call the enemies of truth so that there is little credit to be given to their reproaches farther than some better evidence is brought to prove the thing Nay it would astonish a man to read the impudent lies which I have often read obtruded upon the World with such confidence that the Reader will be tempted to think Surely all this cannot be false Yea about publick words or actions where you would think that the multitude of Witnesses would deter them from speaking it if it were not true and yet all as false as tongue can speak Therefore believe not Pride or Faction or Malice in any evil that it saith unless you have better evidence of the truth Most Christian is that advice of Dr. H. More that all Parties of Christians would mark all the Good which is in other Parties and be more forward to speak of that than of the Evil And this would promote the work of Charity in the Church and the interest of Christianity in the World whereas the overlooking of all that 's good and aggravating all the evil and falsly seigning more than is true is the work of greatest service to the Devil and of greatest enmity to Christianity and Love that I know commonly practised in the World Keep your tongues from all such hellish work as this DIRECT XV. Let every state of life and Relation that you are in be sanctifyed unto God and conscionably used And to that end understand the advantages and duties of every condition and Relation and the sins and hinderances and dangers which you are most lyable to THe duties of our Relations are a great part of the work of a Christians life As Magistrates and Subjects Pastors and Flocks Parents and Children Husband and Wife Masters and
I meddle not now with the Lapsed Christian as such nor with those Giants in holiness of extraordinary strength nor with the perfect blessed Souls in Heaven But it is the Christian who hath attained that confirmation in grace and composed quiet fruitfull state which we might ordinarily expect if we were industrious whose Image or Character I shall now present you with I call him oft-times A Christian indeed in allusion to Christs description of Nathaniel Joh. 1.47 and as we commonly use that word for one that answereth his own profession without any notable dishonour or defect As we say such a man is a Scholar indeed and not as signifying his meer sincerity I mean one whose heart and life is so conform to the Principles the Rule and the Hopes of Christianity that to the Honour of Christ the true Nature of our Religion is discernible in his conversation Mat. 5.16 In whom an impartial Infidel might perceive the true nature of the Christian Faith and Godliness If the World were fuller of such living Images of Christ who like true Regenerate Children represent their Heavenly Father Christianity would not have met with so much prejudice nor had so many enemies in the World nor would so many millions have been kept in the darkness of Heathenism and Infidelity by flying from Christians as a sort of people that are common and unclean Among Christians there are Babes that must be fed with milk and not with strong meat that are unskilfull in the word of righteousness 1 Joh. 2.2.12 13 14. Heb. 5.12 13 14. and Novices who are unsetled and in danger of an overthrow 1 Tim. 3.6 Joh. 15.3 5 c. In these the nature and excellency of Christianity is little more apparent than Reason in a little childe And there are strong confirmed Christians who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil Heb. 5.13 14. and who shew forth the glory of him that hath called them out of darkness into his marvellous light of whom God himself may say to Satan and their malicious enemies as once of Job Hast thou not seen my servant Job c. This Christian indeed I shall now describe to you both to confute the Infidels slanders of Christianity and to unteach men those false descriptions which have caused the presumption of the profane and the irregularities of erroneous Sectaries and to tell you what manner of persons they be that God is honoured by and what you must be if you will well understand your own Religion Be Christians indeed and you will have the Comforts indeed of Christianity and will finde that its Fruits and Joyes are not dreams and shadows and imaginations if you content not your selves with an imagination dream and shaddow of Christianity or with some clouded spark or buryed seed The Characters I. A CHRISTIAN INDEED by which I still mean a sound confirmed Christian is one that contenteth not himself to have a seed or Habit of Faith but he Liveth by Faith as the Sensualist liveth by sight or sense Not putting out the eye of sense nor living as if he had no Body nor lived not in a world of sensible Objects But as he is a Reasonable creature which exalteth him above the sensitive Nature so Faith is the true information of his Reason about those high and excellent things which must take him up above things sensible He hath so firm a Belief of the Life to come as procured by Christ and promised in the Gospel as that it serveth him for the Government of his Soul as his bodily sight doth for the conduct of his Body I say not that he is assaulted with no temptations nor that his Faith is perfect in degree nor that believing moveth him as passionately as sight or sense would do But it doth effectually move him through the course and tenour of his life to do those things for the life to come which he would do if he saw the Glory of Heaven and to shun those things for the avoiding of damnation which he would shun if he saw the flames of Hell Whether he do these things so fervently or not his Belief is powerfull effectual and victorious Let sight and sense invite him to their Objects and entice him to sin and forsake his God the objects of Faith shall prevail against them in the bent of an even a constant and resolved life It is things unseen which he taketh for his treasure and which have his heart and hope and chiefest labours All things else which he hath to do are but subservient to his Faith and Heavenly interest as his sensitive faculties are ruled by his Reason His Faith is not only his Opinion which teacheth him to choose what Church or Party he will be of but it is his Intellectual Light by which he liveth and in the confidence and comfort of which he dyeth 2 Cor. 5.7 8 9. For we walk by faith not by sight We groan to be cloathed upon with our heavenly house Wherefore we labour that whether present or absent we may be accepted of him Heb. 10.3 Now the just shall live by faith Heb. 11.1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for the evidence of things not seen Most of the examples in Heb. 11. do shew you this truth that true Christians live and govern their actions by the firm Belief of the promise of God and of another Life when this is ended v. 7. By faith Noah being warned of God of things not seen as yet moved with fear prepared an Ark to the saving of his house by which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith V. 10. Abraham looked for a City which had foundations whose builder and maker is God Moses feared not the wrath of the King for he indured as seeing him who is invisible v. 27. So the three witnesses Dan. 3. and Daniel himself ch 6. And all Believers have lived this life as Abraham the Father of the faithfull did who as it is said of him Rom. 4.20 Staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief but was strong in faith giving glory to God The Faith of a Christian is truly Divine and he knoweth that Gods truth is as certain as sight it self can be however sight be apter to move the passions Therefore if you can judge but what a Rational man would be if he saw Heaven and Hell and all that God had appointed us to Believe then you may conjecture what a confirmed Christian is though sense do cause more sensible apprehensions 2. The weak Christian also hath a faith that is Divine as caused by God and resting on his word and truth And he so far liveth by this Faith as that it commandeth and guideth the scope and drift of his heart and life But he believeth with a great deal of staggering and unbelief And therefore his Hopes are interrupted by his troublesom doubts and fears and the dimness