wills therefore it is they call it hard and impossible whereas it is not the impossibility of the thing but their own disaffections that have heightned the difficulty to a seeming impossibility And thus I have done with the first Part of the Text the Duty it self with its manner of performance We must strive to enter into the narrow Gate of Life and Blisful Immortality II. And that leads to the second Part or the first Argument to engage our endeavours and earnest strivings because the passage is hard and difficult and not to be acquirâ—d by men that love their ease but by those that with Christian fortitude encounter all difficulties and oppositions Porta est angusta the Gate is narrow therefore strive And 1. I consider that Virtues and Vices many of them are so very like that it is very often extreamly difficult to distinguish them exactly and pursue the Virtue curiously Virtue lies between two Vices not as a mediocrity but as a thing assaulted by two enemies for one Vertue two Vices and each of the extreams hath something of the Virtue in it A Prodigal hath the open-handedness of a liberal person and a covetous person is as wary as he that spends nothing in vain and both these would think themselves uncivilly dealt withal if the freeness of the one or the restraint of the other should be called vicious And there are some Precepts which some will think they have Reason to say they have strictly observed when they have been most notorious Prevaricators of it For may not a vain-glorious person that gives Alms out of the promptness of his Spirit think he hath done his Alms well although he hath done them publickly it being a Divine Precept That our Light so shine before Men that other Men seeing our good Works might glorifie our heavenly Father And if this be a Precept possibly also some who transgress this Precept may think themselves safe on the surer side of Humility And truly that we may see how dangerous our condition is and yet how safe our imaginations are I think no Man will doubt but all God's Commandments have been broken and this of Luceat lux vestra Let your Light shine amongst the rest and yet I never read or heard any man in the greatest and largest of his Confessions ever acknowledge that Crime that he had not done his good deeds publickly But between the Duty of publication of good Deeds and the Duty of Humility the way is so narrow that it is hard to hit it right and when and how and in what manner and in what circumstances to do either is the work of great understanding and much observation I consider yet further many times a Virtue and a Vice differ but in one degree For there is a Rule of Justice to which if any Man adds but one degree of severity more it degenerates into cruelty and a little more than mercy is remisness and want of Discipline introduces licentiousness and becomes unmerciful as to the publick and unjust as to the particular Now this Consideration is heightned if we observe that Vertue and Vice consist not in indivisibili but there is a latitude for either which is not to be judg'd of by any certain Rules drawn from the nature of the thing but to be estimated in proportion to the persons and other accidental circumstances Vertue and Vice dwell too near together unless they were better friends All the Learning of the Sanhedrim could not distinguish between the Humiliation of Ahab and Manasses nor between the Zeal of Jehu and Josiah nor between Joshuah's and David's numbring the people and yet Aâ—ab was but an imperfect penitent Jehu was a furious Zealot and David sinned grievously whereas Manasses was truly contrite and Josiah was a zealous Reformer and Joshuah in the same action was a wise and provident Captain Abraham was called the friend of God for offering Isaac at God's command Now God commanded men to perform their Vows and yet Jepthah for offering up his Daughter hath left to Posterity the reputation of a temerarious and inconsiderate person There is a right hand and a left in the paths of our life and if we decline to either we are undone And therefore pious and holy persons are called upright men and the Precept in Scripture is frequently ingeminated to walk in all God's Commandments with an upright heart For on the right hand of Man is ruine and on the left is destruction and in all the infinite variety of sins there is no other variety of conditions but either to perish or to be undone For every one Vice kills the Soul but every Vertue does not make alive Adultery condemns a Man to the lowest misery but Chastity alone does not keep our Souls from death Because we are forbidden to commit any sin Every crime lies under a prohibition and the same Laws of God command us to pursue all Vertues and enjoyn the integrity of a holy life Now as he that commits one sin or entertains a single Vice breaks the Commandment which enjoyns him to forsake all sin so he observes not the Precept of God concerning Vertues that does not acquire and entertain all universally all A Man is spotted although he have but one stain but he is not clean unless he be all clean A Cup is broken if only the top be broken but is not entire unless every part of it be inviolate One Disease can make a whole man sick but the taking away one Disease will not make all men well and there are a hundred wayes to wander in but one only way to Life and Immortality So that I shall not need to urge the variety of Temptations the subtilty of Sin the watchfulness and malice of the Devil the infirmities of our Spirits the Ignorance of our Understandings the obliquity of our Will the mutiny and disorder of our Affections the inconstancy of our good Purposes the unstableness of our Resolutions the pleasingness of sensual Objects the variety of evil Occasions the perpetual readiness of Opportunities for evil our unwillingness to Good so great that we are loth to beg Blessings and Benefits of God Almighty These and thousands more are but the particular Instances of this first Argument to engage our striving For the Gate that is strait enough in its own abstract consideration is made ten thousand times straiter by the supervening enmities of the Devil the allurements of the World the solicitations and impudent temptations of the Flesh and the imperfections and great weaknesses of Mortality III. I now come to the last Notandum of the Text or the second Argument to enforce our striving the Caution and Example of such persons who have fallen short of entring for want of due striving For many I say unto you will seek to enter in and shall not be able Many shall seek The five foolish Virgins sought and they who shall tell Christ that they did Miracles in his Name they sought and
if they stand upon their guard they seldom need to strike a stroke But Vice is like storming of a Fort full of Noise Trouble Labour Danger and Disease How easie a thing it is to restore the pledge but if a Man means to defeat him that trusted him what a world of Arts must he use to make pretences to delay first then to excuse then to object then to intricate the business next to quarrel then to forsware it and all the way to palliate his Crime and represent himself honest And if an oppressing and greedy person have a design to cozen a young Heir or to get his neighbours Land the cares of every day and the interruptions of every nights sleep are more than the purchase is worth since he might buy Virtue at half that watching and the less painful care of a fewer number of dayes A plain story is soonest told and best confutes an intricate Lye And when a Person is examined in Judgment one false Answer asks more Wit for its support and maintenance than a History of Truth And such persons are put to so many shameful retreats false colour fucus's and dawbings with untempered mortar to avoid contradiction or discovery that the labour of a false story seems in the order of things to be design'd the beginning of its punishment And if we consider how great a part of our Religion consists in Prayer and how easie a thing God requires of us when he commands us to pray for blessings the duty of a Christian cannot seem very troublesome And indeed I can hardly instance in any Vice but there is visibly more pain in the order of acting and observing it than in the acquist or promotion of Vertue I have seen drunken persons in their seas of Drink and Talk dread every Cup as a blow and have used devices and private arts to escape the punishment of a full draught and the poor wretch being condemned by the laws of drinking to his measure was forced and haled to execution and he suffered it and thought himself engaged to that person who with much kindness and importunity invited him to a Fever but certainly there was more pain in it than in the strictness of holy and severe Temperance And he that shall compare the troubles and dangers of an Ambitious War with the gentleness and easiness of Peace will soon perceive that every Tyrant and usurping Prince that snatches at his Neighbours Rights hath two Armies one of Men the other of Cares Peace sheds no Blood but that of the pruned Vine and hath no business but modest and quiet entertainments of the time opportune for Piety and circled with reward But God often punishes Ambition and Pride with Lust and he sent a Thorn in the flesh as a corrective to the Elevations of St. Paul growing up from the multitude of his Revelations and it is not likely the Punishment should have less trouble than the Crime whose Pleasures and Obliquity this was design'd to punish And indeed every Experience can verifie that an Adulterer hath in him the impatience of Desires the burnings of Lust the fear of Shame the apprehensions of a jealous abus'd and enraged Husband Heendures affronts mistimings tedious waitings the dulness of delay the regret of inâ—erruption the confusion and amazements of discovery the scorns of a reproached Vice the debasings of contempt upon it unless the Man grows impudent and then he is more miserable upon another stock But David was so put to it to attempt to obtain to enjoy Bathsheba and to prevent the shame of it that the difficulty was greater than all his Wit and Power and it drove him into base and unworthy Arts which discovered him the more and multiplied his Crime But while he enjoyed the innocent pleasures of his lawful Bed he had no more trouble in it than there was in inclining his Head upon his Pillow Vertue hath not half so much trouble in it it sleeps quietly without startings and affrighting fancies it looks cheerfully smiles with much serenity and though it laughs not often yet it is ever delightful in the apprehentions of some faculty It fears no Man nor nothing nor is it discomposed and hath no concernments in the great alterations of the World and entertains Death like a Friend and reckons the issues of it as the greatest of his hopes But Ambition is full of distraction it teems with stratagems as Rebecca with struggling Twins and is swell'd with expectation as a Tympany and sleeps sometimes as the Wind in a Storm still and quiet for a minute that it may burst out in an impetuous blast till the chordage of his Heart-strings crack Fears when none is nigh prevents things which never had intention and falls under the inevitability of such accidents which either could not be foreseen or not prevented The wayes of Sin are crooked desert rocky and uneven they are broad indeed and there is variety of ruins and allurements to entice Fools and a large Theater to act the bloody Tragedy of Souls upon but they are nothing smooth or safe or delicate The wayes of Vertue are strait but not crooked narrow but not unpleasant There are two Vices for one Vertue and therefore the way to Hell must needs be of greater extent latitude and dissemination But because Vertue is but one way therefore it is easie regular and apt to walk in without errour or diversions Narrow is the Gate and strait is the way It is true considering our evil customs and depraved Natures by which we have made it so to us But God hath made it more passable by his Grace and present Aids and St. John Baptist receiving his commission to Preach Repentance it was expressed in these words make plain the paths of the Lord. Indeed Repentance is a rough and a sharp Vertue and like a Mattock and Spade breaks away all the roughness of the passage and hindrances of sin but when we enter into the dispositions which Christ hath design'd to us the way is more plain and easie than the wayes of Death and Hell Labour it hath in it just as all things that are excellent but no confusions no distractions of thoughts no amazements no labyrinths and intricacy of counsels But it is like the Labours of Agriculture full of health and simplicity plain and profitable requiring diligence but such in which crafts and painful stratagems are useless and impertinent But Vice hath oftentimes so troublesome a retinue and so many objections in the event of things is so intangled in difficult and contradictory circumstances hath in it parts so opposit to each other and so inconsistent with the present condition of the Man or some secret design of his that those little pleasures which are its fucus and pretence are less perceiv'd and least enjoyed while they begin in phantastick Semblances and rise up in smoak vain and hurtful and end in dissatisfaction But it is considerable that God and the Sinner and the Devil
all joyn in increasing the difficulty and trouble of Sin upon contrary design 's indeed but all cooperate to the verification of this Discourse For God by his restraining Grace the checks of a tender Conscience the bands of publick Honesty the sense of Honour and Reputation the customs of Nations and the severities of Laws makes that in most Men the choice of Vice is imperfect dubious and troublesome the pleasures abated the apprehensions various and in differing degrees and Men act their Crimes while they are disputing against them and the Ballance is cast by a few Grains and scruples vex and disquiet the possession and the difference is perceived to be so little that inconsideration and inadvertency is the greatest means to determine many Men to the entertainment of a Sin And this God does with a design to lessen our choice and disabuse our perswasions from Arguments and weak pretences of Vice and to invite us to the trials of Vertue when we see its enemy giving us so ill conditions And yet the sinner himself makes the business of Sin greater for its Nature is so loathsome its pleasure so little and its promises so unperformed that when it lies open and easie and apt to be discern'd there is no argument in it ready to invite us and Men hate a Vice which is every day offered and prostituted and when they seek for pleasure unless difficulty present it as there is nothing in it really to perswade a choice so there is nothing strong or witty enough to abuse a Man And to this purpose among some others which are malicious and crafty the Devil gives assistance knowing that Men despise what is cheap and common and suspect a latent excellency to be in difficult and forbidden objects and therefore the Devil sometimes crosses an opportunity of Sin knowing that the desire is the iniquity and does his work sufficiently and yet the crossing the desire by impeding the act heightens the appetite and makes it more violent and impatient But by all these means Sin is made more troublesome than the pleasures of the Temptation can account for and it will be a strange imprudence to leave Vertue upon pretence of its difficulty when for that very reason we the rather entertain the instances of Sin despising a cheap Sin and a costly Vertue choosing to walk through the Brambles of a desert rather than to climb the Fruit-Trees of Paradise III. Vertue conduces infinitly to the content of our lives to Secular felicities and Political satisfactions and Vice doth the quite contrary For the blessings of this Life are these that make it happy Peace and Quietness Content and Satisfaction of desires Riches love of Friends and Neighbours Honour and Reputation abroad a healthful Body and a long Life Thâ—s last is a distinct Consideration but the other are proper to this Title For the first it is certain Peace was so design'd by the Holy Jesus that he fram'd all his Laws in complyance with that design He that returns good for evil a soft answer to the asperity of his Enemy kindness to injuries lessens the contention alwayes and sometimes gets a Friend and when he does not he shames his Enemy Every little accident in a family to peevish and angry persons is the matter of a quarrel discomposes the Peace of the House and sets it on Fire and no Man can tell how far that may burn it may be to a dissolution of the whole Fabrick But whosoever obeys the Laws of Jesus bears with the infirmities of his Relatives and Society seeks with sweetness to remedy what is ill and to prevent what it may produce and throws water upon a spark and lives sweetly with his Wife affectionately with his Children providently and discreetly with his Servants and they all love the Major domo and look upon him as their Parent their Guardian their Friend their Patron their Proveditor But look upon a person angry peaceless and disturbed when he enters upon his threshold it gives an alarm to his house and puts them to flight or upon their defence and the Wife reckons the joy of her day is done when he returns and the Children enquire into their Father's Age and think his Life tedious and the Servants curse privately and do their service as Slaves do only vvhen they dare not do otherwise and they serve him as they serve a Lyon they obey his Strength and fear his Cruelty and despise his Manners and hate his Person No Man injoyes content in his Family but he that is peaceful and charitable just and loving forbearing and forgiving careful and provident He that is not so his House may be his Castle but it is mann'd by his Enemies his House is built not upon the Sand but upon the Waves and upon a Tempest the Foundation is uncertain but his Ruine is not so And if we extend the relations of the Man beyond his own Walls he that does his duty to his Neighbour that is all offices of kindness gentleness and humanity nothing of injury and affront is certain never to meet with a wrong so great as is the inconvenience of a Law-Suit or the contention of Neighbours and all the consequent dangers and troubles Kindness will create and invite kindness an injury provokes an injury And since the love of Neighbours is one of those beauties which Solomon did admire and that this beauty is within the combination of precious things which adorn and reward a pâ—aceable charitable disposition he that is in love wiâ—h Spiritual excâ—llencies with intellectual rectitudes with Peace and with blessings of Society knows they grow among the Role-bushes of Vertues and holy Obedience to the Laws of JESUS And for a good Man some will evâ—n dare to dye and a sweet and charitable disposition is received with fondness and all the endearments of the Neighbourhood He that observes how many Families are ruin'd by contention and how many Spirits are broken by Care and Contumely Fear and Spight which are entertain'd as Advocates to promote a Suit of Law will soon confess that a great loss and peaceable quitting of a considerable Interest is a purchase and a gain in respect of a long Suit and a vexatious Quarrel And still if the Proportion rises higher the Reason swels and grows more necessary and determinate For if we would live according to the Discipline of Christian Religion one of the great Plagues which vex the World would be no more That there should be no Wars was one of the designs of Christianity and the living according to that Institution which is able to prevent all Wars and to establish an universal and eternal Peace when it is obeyed is the using an infallible instrument toward that part of our political happiness which consists in Peace This World would be an image of Heaven if all Men were Charitable Peaceable Just and Loving To this excellency all those Precepts of Christ which consist in Forbearance and Forgiveness do
cooperate But the next instance of the reward of Holy Obedience and conformity to Christ's Laws is it self a duty and needs no more but a meer repetition of it We must be content in every State and because Christianity teaches us this lesson it teaches us to be Happy for nothing from without can make us miserable unless we joyn our own consents to it and apprehend it such and entertain it in our sad and melancholy retirements A Prison is but a retirement and opportunity of serious thoughts to a person whose Spirit is confin'd and apt to sit still and desires no enlargement beyond the cancels of the Body till the state of separation calls it forth into a fair liberty But every Retirement is a Prison to a loose and wandring fancy for whose wildness no precepts are restraint no band of duty is confinement who when he hath broken the hedge of duty can never after endure any enclosure so much as in Symbol But this Precept is so necessary that it is no more a Duty than a rule of Prudence and in many accidents of our Lives it is the only cure of sadness for 't is certain that no Providence less than Divine can prevent evil and cross accidents but that is an excellent Remedy to the evils that receives the accident within its power and takes out the sting paring the Nails and drawing the Teeth of the Wild-beast that it may be tame or harmless and Medicinal For all content consists in the in the proportion of the Object to the appetite And because external accidents are not in our power and it were nothing excellent that things happened to us according to our first desires God hath by his Grace put it into our own power to make the happiness by making our desires descend to the event and comply with the chance and combine with all the issues of Divine Providence And then we are noble persons when we borrow not our content from things below us but make our satisfactions from within And it may be considered that every little Care may disquiet us and may encrease it self by reflexion upon its own Acts and every discontent may discompose our Spirits and put an edge and make afflictions poynant but cannot take off one from us but makes every one to be two But content removes not the accident but complyes with it it takes away the sharpness and displeasure of it and by stooping down makes the heights equal proportionate and commensurate Impatience makes an Ague to be a Fever and every Fever to be a Calenture and that Calenture may expire in madness But a quiet Spirit is a great disposition to Health and for the present does alleviate the Sickness And this also is notorious in the instance of Covetousness The love of money is the root of all evil which while some have coveted after they have pierced themselves with many Sorrows Vice makes poor and does ill endure it For he that in the school of Christ hath learnt to determine his desires when his needs are served and to judg of his needs by the proportions of Nature hath nothing wanting towards Riches Vertue makes Poverty to become rich and no riches can satisfie a covetous mind or rescue him from the affliction of the worst kind of Poverty He only wants that is not satisfied And there is great infelicity in a Family where Poverty dwells with discontent there the Husband and Wife quarrel for want of a full Table and a rich Wardrobe and their Love that was built upon false Riches sinks when such temporary supporters are removed They are like two Milstones which set the Mill on fire when they want Corn. And then their combinations and society were unions of Lust when not supported with Sacramental and Religious Love But we may easily suppose St. Joseph and the Holy Virgin Mother in Egypt poor as hunger forsaken as banishment disconsolate as strangers and yet their present lot gave them no affliction because the Angel fed them with a necessary Hospitality and their desires were no larger than their Tables their Eyes look'd only upwards and they were carless of the future and careful of their duty and so made their life pleasant by the measures and discourses of Divine Philosophy When Elisha stretch'd himself upon the body of the Child and laid hands to hands and applied mouth to mouth and so shrunk himself into the posture of commensuration with the Child he brought life into the dead Trunk and so may we by applying our Spirits to the proportion of a narrow fortune bring life and vivacity into our dead and lost condition and make it live till it grows bigger or else returns to health and salutary uses And besides this Philosophical extraction of Gold from Stones and Riches from the dungeon of Poverty a holy life does most probably procure such a proportion of Riches which can be useful to us or consistent with our felicity For besides that the Holy Jesus hath promised all things which our Heavenly Father knows we need provided we do our duty and that we find great securities and rest from care when we have once cast our cares upon our God and plac'd our hopes in his bosome besides all this the Temperance Sobriety and Prudence of a Christian is a great income and by not despising it a small revenue combines its parts till it grows to a heap big enough for the emissions of Charity and all the offices of Justice and the supplies of all necessities Whilest Vice is unwary prodigal indiscreet throwing away great revenues as tributes to intemperance and vanity and suffering dissolution and forfeiture of estates as a punishment and curse Some Sins are direct improvidence and ill-husbandry I reckon in this number Intemperance Lust Litigiousness Ambition Bribery Prodigality Gaming Pride Sacriledge which is the greatest spender of them all and makes a fair estate evaporate like Camphire turning it into nothing no Man knows which way But what a Roman gave as an estimate of a Rich Man saying He that can maintain an Army is Rich was but a short account for he that can maintain an Army may be begger'd by one Vice and it is a vast revenue that will pay the Debt-Books of Intemperance or Lust. To these if we add that Vertue is honourable and a great advantage to a fair reputation that it is praised by them that love it not that it is honour'd by the followers and Family of Vice that it forces Glory out of shame Honour from contempt that it reconciles Men to the fountain of Honour the Almighty God who will honour them that honour him There are but a few more Excellencies in the World to make up the Rosary of temporal felicity And it is so certain that Religion serves even our temporal ends that no great end of State can well be served without it not ambition not desires of wealth not any great designs but Religion must be made its usher
Woman taken in Adltery or have been discontented at the Doctors of the Law for being strict and severe exactors of the Law of God at the people's hands or check'd them for observing the innocent customs of their Nation and Tradition of their fore-Fathers Since all these acts were Pious or Just or Charitable or Religious or Prosecutions of some part or other of their Duty The several reasons of these reprehensions our Blessed Saviour subjoyns at the end of every of them respectively They wanted a circumstance or a good manner their actions were better than their intentions and sometimes their malice was greatest in their very acts of Charity And when they gave God thanks they did despite to their Brother something or other did envenom the face of these acts of Piety Their heart was not upright or their Religion was imperfect their Piety wanted some integral part or had an evil Eye A word a thought a secret purpose a less holy intention any indirect circumstance or obliquity in an accident makes our Piety become impious and deprives us of our reward Here therefore we had need to Watch to Strive to Pray to Contend and to do all diligence that can be express'd by all the Synonyma's of care and industry 2. We had need to Strive because though Vertues be nice and curious yet vitia sunt in facili et propinquo Sin lies at the door and is thrust upon us by the violence of Adversaries or by the subtilty and insinuation of its own nature which we are to understand to the following sence For when we are born of Christian Parents we are born in puris naturalibus we have at first no more promptness to commit some sort of Sins than to commit some good acts We are as apt to learn to love God as to love our Parents if we be taught it For though Original Sin hath lost to us all those supernaural assistances which were at first put into our Nature per modum gratiae yet it is but by accident that we are more prone to Sin than we are to Virtue For after this it happened that God giving us Laws made his restraints and prohibitions in materia voluptatis sensualis he by his Laws hath enjoyn'd us to deny our natural Appetites in many things Now this being become the matter of Divine Laws that we should in many parts and degrees abstain from what pleases our sense by this supervening accident it happens that we are very hardly wean'd from Sin but most easily tempted to a Vice our Nature is not contrary to Virtue but the instances of some Vertues are made to come cross our Nature But in things intellectual and immaterial we are indeed indifferent to Virtue and Vice I say where neither one nor the other satisfies the sensual part In the Old Law when it was a duty to Swear by the God of Israel in common Causes Men were indifferent to that and to swear by the Queen of Heaven they had no more natural inclination to the one than to the other except where something sensual became the argument to determine them And in sensual things if God had commanded Polygamy or promiscuous concubinate and indifferent unlimited Lust Men had been more apt to obey that Commandment than to disobey it But then the restraint lying upon our natural appetites and we being by ill Education determin'd upon and almost engag'd to Vitious Actions we suffer under the inconveniences of idle Education and in the mean time rail upon Adam and Original Sin It is indifferent to us to love our Fathers and to love strangers And if from our Infancy we be told concerning a stranger that he is our Father we frame our affections to Nature and our Nature to Custom and Education and are as apt to love him who is not and yet is said to be as him who is said not to be and yet indeed is our natural Father The purpose of this Discourse is this that we may consider how Sin creeps upon us in our Education so tacitely and undiscernably that we mistake the cause of it and yet so effectually and prevalently that we guess it to be our very Nature and charge it upon Adam when every one of us is the Adam the Man of Sin and the Parent of our own Iniquities We are taught to be revengeful even in our Cradles and taught to strike our neighbours as a means to still our frowardness and satisfie our wranglings Our Nurses teach us to know the greatness of our birth or the riches of our inheritance or they learn us to be proud or to be impatient before we learn to know God or to say our Prayers After we are grown up to more years we have Tutors of impiety that are stronger to perswade and more diligent to insinuate and we are more receptive of every vicious impression And not to reckon all the inconveniencies of evil company indulgence of Parents publick and authoriz'd customs of Sin and all the mischiefs and dangers of publick Society and private retirements when we have learn'd to discern good from evil and when we are prompted to do a good or engaged to it by some happy circumstance or occasion our good is so seldom and so little and there are so many ways of spoyling it that there are not more ways to make an Army miscarry in a Battle than there are to make us perish even in our good actions Every Enemy that is without every weakness and imperfection we have within every temptation every vitious circumstance every action of our life mingled with interest and design is as a particular argument to engage our earnestness and zeal in this Duty ut contendamus acriter that we strive and make it our business to enter into the Strait Gate For since the Writers of Moral Institutions and Cases of Conscience have made no such abbreviatures of the Duty of a Christian but that I think there are amongst them all without hyperbole five thousand Cases of Conscience besides the ordinary plain Duty of a Christian and there may be five thousand times five thousand and the wit of Man can no more comprize all Cases which are or may be within their Books than they can at once describe an infinity or set down the biggest number that can be it will follow that it is a nice thing to be a Christian and all the striving we can use will be little enough towards the doing of our duty And now if you enquire what is meant by striving in this place and what is the full intention of this Precept I Answer it is an infinite or indefinite term and signifies no determinate degree of labour and endeavour but even as much as we can supposing our weaknesses our hindrances and avocations that is to make it the business of our Lives the care of our Thoughts our study and the greatest imployment of the whole Man to serve God Holy Scripture gives us general notions and
to follow St. Paul as he followed Christ. But then on the other side how apt are Men when they humble themselves to do it with greater pride Est qui nequiter humiliat se there is that humbleth himself wickedly I cannot insist upon the particulars but actions Spiritual are of so nice and immaterial consideration that both not to be deceiv'd and to discover it when we are deceived are matters of no small difficulty You may see in little that a Man may go a great way in Piety and yet not enter into Heaven What then shall we think of such persons whose Piety hath no more age than a Fly no more labour in it than walking in a shadow no more expence than in the farthing-alms of the street or high-way no more Devotion than going to Church on Sundays no more Justice than in preserving the rules of Civil Society and obeying the compulsion of Laws no more Mortification than fasting upon a Friday without denying one Lust and the importunity of sinful Desires These certainly are far from entring into the Gate because they are far from striving to enter And yet there want not some Men will not do a quarter of this and yet would spit in your face if you should put them in doubt or question their Salvation Some Men are so fond as to think Heaven is intail'd upon a Sect or an Opinion and then nothing is wanting to them when they once have entred their name into that perswasion Some are confident they shall be saved because of their good meaning and they think they mean well because they understand nothing and in the mean time refuse not any opportunity to an evil Alas they cannot help it Flesh and Blood is frail for who can forgive him that hath undone me and my Family 'T is true indeed I should if you speak like a Divine but we have Flesh and Blood about us Alas I hate Drunkenness and I am never intemperate for love of the Drink but when a Man is in company he cannot do as he would do And yet these Men will think to go to Heaven and yet will not do so much for it as either decline the company and opportunity of it or the inconveniences of it Flesh and Blood is the excuse and yet we remember not that Flesh and Blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God but we by mâ—king it to be our excuse hope to enter the rather for it Remember those great words and terrible spoken by an Oracle by the Blessed St. Peter If the Righteous scarcely be saved where shall the wicked and Sinner appear If after much striving many fall short and the Best is to work out his Salvation with fear and trembling What confidence can they have that are indifferent in their Religion that have no engagement to it but custom no monitors but Sermons and the checks of a drowsy Conscience no fruits of it but not to be accounted a Man without a Religion But as for a holy life they are as far from it as from doing Miracles and he that is so and remains so no Miracle will save him These are the Men that when the Eternal scrutiny shall come then they shall seek for they never seek till then to enter and then it is as fruitless as it is late as ineffectual as unreasonable Christ is the Way and the Truth and the Light and he that openeth only the way for us to go in there whither himself is entred before if we strive according to his holy Injunctions we shall certainly enter according to his holy Promises but else upon no Condition FINIS A TABLE OF THE CONTENTS CHrist's Yoke though easie quits us not of Duty Page 2 Christian Duties carry along with them a Reward so great as to wake the Considerate willing to do violence to all their passions Page 4 Vertue hath more pleasure in it than Sin Page 5 Every degree of love makes Duty delectable Page 8 There is even in our very nature a principle as strong to restrain from Vice as disposition to invite thereto Page 9 10 Our Vertues are difficult because we at first get ill habits Page 13 In the strict observance of the Law of Christianity there is less trouble than in the habitual courses of Sin Page 14 The ways of Vertue are much upon the defensive part Page 15 There is more pain in Sin than in the strictness of holy and severe Temperance Page 18 19 The ways of Vertue are strait but not crooked narrow but not unpleasant Page 21 Peaceless spirits give an Alarm to all about them Page 28 If we would live according to the discipline of Christian Religion one of the great plagues that vex the world would be no more Page 31 A Prison is but a retirement to a person of a peaceable spirit Page 32 All Content consists in the proportion of the object to the appetite Page 34 Impatience makes an Ague become a Fever and a Fever a Calenture Page 35 He only wants that is not satisfied Page 36 Humility the ready way to Honour Page 42 The Gate to Heaven a strait Gate and cvlls for a continual striving Page 45 Good Ends are the Crown of good Actions Page 48 49 We are apt to learn to love God as to learn to love our Parents if we be taught it Page 52 54 All striving in Christianity is little enough towards doing our Duty Page 57 58. A man may cease from the act of Sin and yet retain the Affection Page 59 60 A bad sign when returns of Sin is frequent and of Religion seldom and unpleasant Page 62 Faith works Miracles but Charity works more Page 64 God requires no more than he gives us Nature and Grace to perform Page 65 Many Vertues and Vices are so alike that it 's often difficult to distinguish them exactly Page 67 68 Sometimes Vertue and Vice differ but in one degree Page 69 There is a right hand and a left in the paths of our Life and if we decline to either we are undon Page 71 There 's an hundred ways to wander in but one only way to Life and Immortality Page 73 God's Counsels are secret but they are ever just Page 78 A thought a minute may destroy all our hopes of a blissful lmmortality which twenty or forty years have been with great labour in erecting Page 79 Spiritual Vices are most dangerous and yet most apt to insinuate themselves in the actions of greatest perfections Page 82 A Man may go a great way in Piety and not enter into Heaven Page 83 If after much striving many fall short and the best is to work out his Salvation with fear and trembling what confidence can they have that are indifferent in their Religion Page 86 FINIS
the Grace of God we pretend the Sin of Adam to countenance our actual sins natural infirmity to excuse our malice either laying Adam in fault for deriving the disability upon us or God for puting us into the necessity But the evils that we feel in this are from the rebellion of the inferior appetite against Reason or against any Religion that puts restraint upon our first desires And therefore in carnal and sensual instances accidentally we find the more natural aversness because God's Laws have put our irrascible and concupiscible faculties in fetters and restraints yet in matters of Duty which are of immaterial and spiritual concernment all our natural reason is a perfect enemy and contradiction to and a Law against Vice It is natural for us to love our Parents and they that do not are unnatural they do violence to those dispositions which God gave us to the constitution of our Nature and for the designs of Vertue and all those tendernesses of affection those bowels and relenting dispositions which are the endearments of Parents and Children are also the bands of Duty Every degree of love makes Duty delectable and therefore either by Nature we are inclined to hate our Parents which is against all Reason and Experience or else we are enclined to do them all that which is the effect of love to such superiors and principles of being and dependency and every prevarication from the Rule Effects and Expresses of Love is a contradiction to Nature and a mortification to which we cannot be invited by any thing from within but by something from without thatâ—s violent and preternatural There are also many other Virtues even in the matter of sensual appetite which none can lose but by altering in some degree the natural disposition and I instance in the matter of carnality and uncleanness to which possibly some natures may think themselves apt and dispos'd but yet God hath put into our mouths a bridle to curb the licentiousness of our speedy appetite putting into our very natures a principle as strong to restrain it as there is in us a disposition apt to invite us and this is also in those who are most apt to the Vice Women and young Persons to whom God hath given a modesty and shame of nature that the entertainment of Lust may become contradictory to our retreating and backward modesty more than they are satisfactory to our too forward appetites It is as great a mortification and violence to Nature to blush as to lose a desire and we find it true when persons are invited to confess their sins or to ask forgiveness publickly a secret smart is not so violent as a publick shame And therefore to do an action which brings shame all along opens the sanctuaries of Nature and makes all her retirements publick and dismantles her inclosure as Lust does and the shame of carnality hath in it more asperity and abuse to Nature than the short minutes of pleasure to which we are invited can repay There are unnatural Lusts Lusts which are such in their very condition and constitution that a Man must turn a Woman and a Woman become a Beast in acting them and all Lusts that are not unnatural in their own complexion are unnatural by a consequent and accidental violence And if Lust hath in it dissonancies to Nature there are but few Apologies left to excuse our Sins upon Natures stock and all that system of principles and reasonable inducements to Virtue which we call the Law of Nature is nothing else but that firm ligature and incorporation of Virtue to our natural principles and dispositions which whoso prevaricates does more against Nature than he that restrains his appetite And besides these particulars there is not in our natural discourses any inclination directly or by intention of it self contrary to the love of God because by God we understand that fountain of being which is infinitely perfect in it self and of great good to us and whatsoever is so apprehended it is as natural for us to love as to love any thing in the world for we can love nothing but what we believe to be good in it self or good to us And beyond this there are in Nature many Principles and Reasons to make an aptness to acknowledge and confess God and by the consent of Nations which they also have learned from the Dictates of their Nature all Men in some manner or other worship God And therefore when this our Nature is determined in its own indefinite principle to the manner of Worship all acts against the Love the Obedience and Worship of God are also against Nature and offer it some rudeness and violence And I shall observe this and refer it to every Man's Reason and Experience that the great difficulties commonly apprehended commence not so much upon the stock of Nature as of Education and evil habits Our Virtues are difficult because we at first get ill habits and these habits must be unrooted before we do well and that 's our trouble But if by the strictness of Discipline and wholsome Education we begin at first in our Duty and practice of vertuous Principles we shall find Vertue made as natural to us while it is customary and habitual as we pretend infirmity to be and propensity to vitious practices And this we are taught by that excellent Hebrew who said Wisdom is easily seen of them that love her and found of such as seek her she preventeth them that desire her in making her self first known unto them Whoso seeketh her early shall have no great travel for he shall find her sitting at his doors Wisd. 6.12 13 14. II. In the strict observance of the Law of Christianity there is less trouble than in the habitual courses of Sin For if we consider the general design of Christianity it propounds to us in this world nothing that is of difficult purchase nothing beyond what God alloâ—s us by the ordinary and common providence such things which wâ— are to receive without care and solicitous vexations So that the ends are nothing and the way is easie and this walkâ—d over with much simplicity and sweetness and those obtained without difficulty He that propounds to live low pious humble and retir'd his main imployment is nothing but sitting quiet and undisturb'd with variety of impertinent affairs But he that loves the World its acquisitions entertains a thousand businesses and every business hath a world of imployment and every imployment is multiplied and made intricate by circumstances and every circumstance is to be disputed and he that disputes ever hath two sides in enmity and opposition and by this time there is a genealogie a long descent and cognation of troubles branch'd into so many particulars that it is troublesome to understand them and much more to run through them The wayes of Virtue are much upon the defensive and the works one uniform and little they are like War within a strong Castle