be the worse for Gods being good to us Though this sun-light be so pleasant to behold yet it doth mine eyes no good to gaze upon it If the lustre of a created light be so dazeling how unapproacheable must that divine light be wherein the great Creator dwelleth the resplendency whereof is the light of light Content thy self O my Soul with that prospect thou hast had of God's goodness so far as he hath been pleased to reveal himself unto thee but do not presume to speculate into his glory least thou be oppressed with it It is impossible to see this light but by its own light who ever beheld the sun but by the light of the sun as impossible is it to see the Father of lights but by the radiancy of the Son who is the brightness of his glory or to discern the things of the Spirit of God otherwise then by the revelation of his spirit The commandements of the Lord is pure inlightening the eyes we see it and see by it But what is become of all those heavenly tapers those spangles of light that did so lately adorne the skie How hath the lustre of this predominant light obscured and darkened them It is in one sence a sad exchange between the light of the Sun and the light of the Moon and Starrs that the Sun though it do open and reveal the sight of earthly things yet it closeth and shutteth up the prospect of the celestial Globe so that we cannot discerne the beauty and variety of those heavenly bodies above us as we may do in the night It is the misery of prosperity that as by reason of the brightness of that light wherewith it is environed it giveth us a clear view of the glory of this world and of all the vanities in it so withal it darkeneth and concealeth divine things and thereby indisposeth us to raise our affections unto them And on the other side it is the felicity of adversity that although the aire about it be very obscure yet therein we best discern God and spiritual things so Job in his afflicton could say Now mine eye seeth thee of whom before he had only heard by the hearing of the ear Lord thou knowest what condition is fittest for me and I presume not to appoint thy wisdome but so far as a poor beggar may be a chooser I beseech thee rather to keep me in the dark if thorough that vaile I may be admitted to see the light of thy countenance then to suffer me to be dazeled with the lustre of this vain world wherein there is nothing to be seen but that which is nothing and less then nothing O let me rather enjoy light in darkness then live in darkness when I am in the light In the beginning for the first three dayes of the Creation week there was no sun at all but yet there was light and that light was universally diffused thorough all parts untill it pleased God to contract it into one body O Lord thou alone doest great wonders how great are thy works how great this work wherein thou didst as I may say create the effect before the cause Thou art not limited to the methods of our weak reason but canst do every thing according to the council of thine own will not only by but without and contrary to meanes There is no glorying no trusting but in thee alone unto whom all means and more are alike subservient As in the Creation during those first three dayes God made and continued the light and then upon the fourth day made that light a sun so in his order of proceeding with his Children he giveth them a three dayes light the first of nature when he quickeneth them in their Mothers womb with a reasonable soul the second of Grace when he regenerateth them in the womb of his Church by his Sanctifying spirit the third of beatitude in a state of bliss when he receiveth their departed Souls into his rest and then upon the fourth day that is at the general resurrection when he reuniteth their Souls and bodies in glory he gathereth this light into a Sun from which time they shall to all eternity shine forth as the Sun in the Kingdome of their Father What a World will that be when we shall have no Sun again when we shall need none nay when instead of one Sun there shall be more Suns than there are Stars in the Firmament when every Saint shall be a Sun and yet all those Saints as if they were but so many stars shall receive their light from another Sun of infinite glory from the glory of God the Fountain of all light that light is sown here for the Righteous O when will the harvest time come Awake awake O my Soul and contemplate that happy time whensoever it shall come It is some anticipation of it to think upon it before it comes Watch for that morning more than they that watch for the morning But Lord it is not of him that watcheth no more than of him that willeth but of thee who shewest mercy O do thou by the irradiation of thy grace make such a clear day in my Soul as that I may not only see thy light here and receive in it and walk by it but be it so shall I be light in thee and according to that expression in thine own word thou shalt then walk in me my path shall then be as the shining light and I shall shine out more and more unto that full clear and everlastingly perfect day of thy Glory MEDITAT III. Vpon my rising out of Bed and putting on my Cloaths SLuggish Soul how long wilt thou lie lazing what yet a little slumber yet a little folding of the hands Awake they that sleep sleep in the night do not fancy thy self to be among the Antipodes as if it were night with thee when it is day with us If thou wilt but open thy window thou mayest with shame behold the Sun already mounted above our horizon and in his silent language seeming to reproach thee that he hath travelled round about the world but Yesterday and yet is up before thee this morning let no sleep like an unjust Publican exact more of thy time then is his due and make thy dayes shorter then God hath made them There is so much life gained as is saved out of sleep Be not too secure in this condition whilst thou art drouzing the devil is hunting and he hath a way to hunt Souls with Pillowes and night-caps Remember he is no sluggard but will surely roste what he takes in hunting How strangely do those people live that begin their morning at noone and their noone at night that turn day into night and live backward But it is no wonder to see Owls fly abroad at late hours O my Soul God never created thee to live in a feather-bed life consists in action idleness is but a living death And what doth the Lord require of
thee not to lie still but to arise and be doing to walke whilst thou hast light humbly with thy God and honestly with thy neighbour as a child of the day Up then my Soul and cast off the workes of darkness night clothes are not a fit weare for the day He whom thou lovest calleth thee do not say I have put off my coat how shall I put it on but without delay eccho that call with a lo I come to do thy will But where are my clothes O my God what a beggerly creature am I that have nothing to put on but what I am faine to borrow if it were not for the supply which I receive from a poor worme from a silly sheep I could neither be fine nor warme By right the borrower should be servant to the lender but Lord thou hast given me dominion over these serviceable creditors How should I at once be humbled under the sense of mine own indigence and thankfully exalted in the apprehension of thy goodness to me But what is man nay which is worse what am I surely I am more brutish then any man more sottish then those brute creatures unto whom I am so much indebted They are not proud of those habiliments which they impart to me I live upon their collections and yet am apt to pride my self in this beggery O my soul this glorying is not good what is it but a glorying in shame nakedness was the original bravery of our first parents in Paradise and shall be our last bravery in heaven when we shall be in the Angels mode Lord correct this depraved nature in me by thy grace that I may no longer fashion my self according to my former lusts and vanities but be conformed to that inward dress which in thy sight is of greatest price so though mine outside may be plain and bare I shall be sure to be all Glorious within But yet O my God thou knowest I have need of raiment as well as of food and other outward accommodations and thou art pleased to allow me a providential though not a sollicitous care for what I shall put on I beseech thee so to order my thoughts that in the pursuit of these things I may follow thy prescribed method of husbandry first to seek thy Kingdom and thy righteousness and then in the use of good means to trust thee for the rest But in what a new case am I when I am apparelled how warmed and comforted blessed be God that I have not that curse upon me mentioned in the Prophecy of Haggai to be cloathed and not warm those cloaths cannot but do me good that are lined with thy blessing It is the common opinion that our cloaths warm us but the truth is we warm our cloaths and they do but keep us warm with our own heat As it is in this so it is in all earthly comforts which have nothing of satisfaction in themselves but that placency which we take to be in them is but a resultance from our own minds a warmth which we give them Lord sanctifie these outward things unto me that in the fruition of them I may so use them as not to abuse them by looking for that in them which is only to be found in thee Thou art the blessing of all blessings from thee I have all in thee I enjoy all and without thee all is nothing O my God it is the desire of my Soul to be dressed and fitted to wait upon thee in the way wherein thou wouldest have me to go but I dare not think of coming into thy presence in an unseemly Garment in the nasty rags of the old man and I have no other sute of mine own but that O do thou give that happy word of command to have that filthy Garment taken away from me and say unto my Soul behold I have caused thine iniquity to pass away and I will cloath thee with change of rayment I beseech thee furnish thy poor Creature out of thy divine wardrobe with those graces that may most adorn my profession above all vouchsafe to cloath me with the Garment of mine elder Brother that is the best Robe and under that covert grant me thy blessing so what ever may befal me here I shall be sure to rise in a happy hour at the last day when being clothed with his righteousness I shall be clothed upon with his Glory MEDITATION IV. Vpon my retirement into my Closet HOw little doth the world know the happiness of a Closet But it is no wonder for this happiness is not of the world and therefore by those that can discern nothing spiritually it is esteemed as no other then a delight in a sedentary sluggish life or as no better then a melancholy discontented humour But my Soul thou art above these misapprehensions Go in shall I say into this room or rather into this other world into thy world for when thou art abroad thou art abroad thou art in a common world wherein every person hath an inter-right with thee but here within the inclosure of these Walls thou art in a particular world of thine own and all is thine own In this little Monarchy methinks I may say without offence Soul take thine ease and with quiet senses enjoy thine own company it is something for a man to be his own inmate to dwell with himself and no small happiness in that cohabitation to live quietly and without a dropping house There is a physical vertue in quietness some diseases in the body and most distempers in the mind are cured by it I may add further that there is a heavenliness in it those Regions that are highest are quietest and God himself who is higher then the highest is in the fruition of himself the most quiescent O my God whilst others affect the wings of an Eagle to fly high let it be my prayer to have the wings of a Dove to fly away and be at rest that being sequestred from the vexatious vanities of the world I may enjoy a free conversation with thee in heaven so shall my quietness be my strength and this rest a prelibution of my eternal rest But yet my Soul take heed unto thy self in this solitude it is possible for thee to be in ill company when thou art alone Be not rash but think what thou wouldst think do not affect a free will in thinking evil thoughts have an evil communication in them and may corrupt good manners slight not vain thoughts the thought of foolishness is sin and every foolish thought as well as every idle word must be accounted for bar them out as much as thou canst and though they may clamour at it and challeng a prescription for a thorough fare in thee and thou art not able altogether to hinder their way but that they will break thorough yet never let it be with thy consent and sufferance and so long the trespass will be on their side Above all be sure to
being here O my Soul let the Men of the World please themselves with their portion in this life and joyn house to house and lay field to field till there be no place for a neighbourhood about them but do thou rejoyce that this is not thy continuing place thou knowest where to be far better then here even in that heavenly Mansion prepared for thee whose builder and maker is God Never look to be in a settled condition till thou comest thither How are our vanities heightened and a what vast excess are we grown from that primitive simplicity when instead of contenting our selves with what nature affordeth in order to our preservation from the injuries of the air and weather we exhaust and weare out the materials of nature and rack the inventions of art to please the lust of our eyes which may quickly have too much but can never have enough to satisfy their seeing We build Houses like Townes and Townes like Countries for their capacity and extent when God knowes contentment may be lodged in a little roome But what was the reason of that plainness and homeliness of those good people of old was it because they were ignorant and poor and had not the wit nor ability to be such magnificent fools as we are certainly no those holy Patriarks were not so plainly bred but that they understood Kings and Courts well enough sometimes scorning to be beholding to them and at other times being courted by them They were not indigent persons but according to the way of those times rich in Flocks and and Herds they had great families and wanted not for Gold and Silver nor for any other accommodation but the truth is they looked for a heavenly country and for a habitation of Gods making looking upon no house as worth the consideration but that which is not made with hands But yet there is no hurt in these injoyments they are things not in themselves simply evil for then the righteous would have no portion at all of them Abraham would have been as poor as Lazarus neither are they positively good for then the wicked would not have so large a share in them Dives would not have fared so deliciously every day but they are indifferencies either good or bad according as they are well or ill used It is free for any man to take comfort in a good house and to delight himself as Solomon did in his workes and buildings and plantations but then it must be upon Solomons tearms too so as his Wisdom also do remain with him The fault is not in the having but in the abusing of these things by trusting in them and bottoming our selves upon them Let our houses be never so strongly and massily built if according to Bildads expression we lean upon them they shall not stand but we shall like Samson bring them down about our own ears and our trust shall be a Spiders web Nebuchadnazzar might have enjoyed his great Babilon the house of his Kingdom long enough if he had not prided himself in it but when he came to boast of the might of his Power and of the Honour of his Majesty it was just with God to Seal an ejectment against him and to turn his Majesty to grass to have his dwelling and intercommoning with the beasts of the field The only way to use the world as we should use it is so to use it as if we did not use it It was a curse among some people to wish that a man might affect building and it is no better then a malediction to those who so doat upon it that as Apollonius told the young man that was fond of his new house they seem not so much to possess their houses as their houses seem to possess them and who are so taken up with this vanity that they bestow more time upon it then they can afford to the service of God Solomon seems to ly under some note for this in that he was Seven years in building the house of the Lord but he was thirteen years in building his own house but that is not without reflection God doth not take well from his people when they are more careful to accommodate themselves in their cieled houses then to repair his house This is a fair building but who is within the Master should dignifie the house and not the house the Master It is pitty that any such places should be Owles nests If there be no body of worth within to give it reputation the Masons and Carpenters that built the House may challenge more Honor then the Master of the house It is not the beautiful front nor the rich furniture but the noble heart and the rich mind of the owner that recommends the house What a miserable thing is it to consider that for the most part in this corrupt age wherein we live great houses are in effect but mear Theators of debauchery and viciousness The Devil keeps the house and he that is called the Master is but the Signe of the Tavern or the Owle in the Ivy bush It was the honour of Abraham that he kept a religious family and commanded and taught his houshold to keep the way of the Lord but that is fanaticism now Our great ones can tell how to live without God in the world allowing themselves such a latitude in their way as if the way of God were too narrow for their quality to walke in They are so far from improving those that are about them in the knowledge and practice of religion that like people that have the plague they delight to infect others with their vices and to make them as ill as themselves as if it were a point of honour to go to hell with a great traine They have a strange perversness in them they covet to have good houses good stuff good fare and to have every thing good to their very horses and dogs but themselves and their Houshold Justly may those houses Spue out their Masters and families that live only to drink and spue in them This is a sore evil which I have seen under the Sun namely riches and these outward conveniences kept for the possessors thereof to their hurt I have read a Rabbinical story of Melchisedec that being warned by God to build a house for himself for that he had yet five hundred years to live he answered that for so short a time it was not worth the labour Let the Author be answerable for the credit of the story All the use that I shall make of it is but to observe the folly of these times wherein we that cannot calculate our lives by hundreds of years but by the day by the Span by the inch are yet as sollicitous as if we were to live to the last day of the world We go according to that expression in Syracedes two wayes at once we build as if we were to live for ever and we eat and drink as if we were
thee ready for him That person is in a sad condition that looks for death and cannot find it but he is in a sadder whom death finds before he looks for it The way to sleep well at night is to exercise well in the day the sleep of a labouring man is sweet saith the Preacher Death is but a long sleep and if we would hereafter rest with happiness from our labours we must so labour here that our works may follow us hereafter if we so sleep we shall do well We are not troubled when we lie down to take our natural rest upon the confidence we have in Gods ordinary providence that he will raise us up again why should Christians that do or should know the Scriptures and the power of God be more anxious and doubtful of their eternal then of their natural rest this is nothing but our infidelity for upon a true account there is more uncertainty of our waking out of our beds then there is of our rising out of our graves None can tell when he lies down whether he shall see any to morrow in this World or rise no more till the Heavens be no more but as to our Resurrection we are already so far raised as Christ our head is risen who is our resurrection and our life Lord increase our faith But what is it troubles us is it the thought that we shall live no longer We may as well lament that we were born no sooner it is but a measuring cast between the time when we were not and the time when we shall â—ot be one is as inconsiderable as the other if it be a matter of sorrow to think that we are mortal it may be a just cause of rejoycing to consider that we are so near being immortal it was as some hold the mercy of God after our first Parents had eaten of the forbidden fruit and thereby made themselves and their posterity miserable to prevent them that they should not eat of the tree of life for then both they and we had been everlastingly miserable Mortality is a mercy But possibly it is not death but dying that which the Philosopher calls the pomp of death that is so much apprehended the pangs and convulsions of death have a horrid Aspect certainly in those things we do many times but fright our selves with our own fancies for when we think those agonies insupportable nature is spent and often sensless But admitting the worst as our desire to sleep makes us bear with some tossings and tumblings and disquietings before we can well settle to rest so should our desire to depart and to sleep in Jesus prevail with us to endure those sufferings which are but for a moment but are followed with a quiet happy rest in the bosome of our Saviour to all eternity But it is a dismal thing to flesh and bloud to think that after death we must lie rotting and corrupting in a dark silent grave and that when we are reduced to dust as we were grass when we lived in regard of our frailty so we may come to be grass again after we are dead in a litteral sense and so pass away into several other substances this I confess might justifie some melancholy thoughts if we had no hope But when we are taught of God that after this Life ended our spirit shall return unto God who gave it and that after this World ended our dust shall be raised again and recompacted into a glorious body cloathed with immortality and honour and reunited to our Soul both to be for ever with the Lord we may bid defiance both to death and the grave O death where is thy sting O grave where is thy victory But what needs all this perswasion is it in our choice whether to die or not if we must die as die we must it is a perfect folly to be unwilling to do that which of necessity we must do whether we will or not take courage then O my Soul and act thy last part handsomely it is a degree toward dying well to be willing to die But I am dead what do I talk of dying or the fear of dying my whole life is but a continued death I have more reason to be apprehensive of my living then of my dying for I can never hope to live till I die that which we call death being in truth but the dying day of our death and the birth day of our everlasting life Nay I am not only dead but in a great part buried how much of my self is already laid in the dust death hath taken three of my ribs from me and so many of my limbs as I have lost children by his stroke My dearest relations are gon to bed before me to what purpose serves this fragment this remainder of me here Lord take all to thee let me not lie half in the bed and half out thy bed is not too little nor thy coverlet too narrow but thou hast room enough for me receive me I humbly beseech thee as thine I am thine O save me Lord now lettest thou thy Servant depart in peace In thy name I lay me down to rest FINIS A DAILY DIRECTORY EVery day is a life in little in the account whereof we may reckon our growth from the womb of the morning our growth from thence to noon when we are as the Sun in his strength after which like a shaddow that declineth we hasten to the evening of our age and so to our Sun set when we come to close our eyes in sleep the Image and representative of death Our whole life is but this tale of a day told over and over I would therefore so spend every day as if it were all the dayes I had to live and in pursuance of this resolution I would by the assistance of divine grace indeavour to observe this following daily practise 1. I Would awake with God as early as I could David hath a high expression for this In the morning shall my Prayer prevent thee as if he meant to be up first But to speak in a stile that may be fit such a worme as I am whensoever I awake I would willingly have my mouth prevent mine eyes and open first to shew forth his praise that so God may awake for me and make the habitation of my righteousness prosperous To this end I would be careful to ly down the night before in the peace of God who hath promised that his commandement shall keep me when I sleep and talk with me when I awake otherwise I may justly fear that those corruptions that bid me last good night may be ready to bid me first good morrow 2. I would arise as early as I could that course being most profitable both for Soul body and estate In Summer time I would be up by five in Psal 88. 13. winter by six or soon after as my health would permit and if nothing intervene of necessity to hinder me