moved with fear prepared an Ark to the saving of his house by the which be condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith Note here how much the belief of Gods threatnings doth to the constitution of that faith which is justifying and saving Direct 2. Judge not of Gods threatnings by the evil which is threatned but by the obedience to which the threatnings should drive us and the evil from which they would preserve us and the order of the world which they preserve and the wisdom and holiness and justice of God which they demonstrate When men think how dreadful a misery Hell is they are ready to think hardly of God both for his threatning and execution as if it were long of him and not of themselves that they are miserable And as it is a very hard thing to think of the punishment it self with approbation so is it also to think of the threatning or Law which binds men over to it or of the Judgement which will pass the sentence on them But think of the true nature use and benefits of these threats or penaâ— Laws and true reason and faith will not only be reconciled to them but see that they are to be loved and honoured as well as feared 1. They are of great use to drive us to obedience And it is easier to see the amiableness of Gods commands than of his threats And obedience to these commands is the holy rectitude health and beauty of the soul And therefore that which is a suitable and needful means to promote obedience is amiable and beneficial to us Though Love must be the principle or chief spring of our obedience yet he that knoweth not that Fear must drive as Love must draw and is necessary in its place to joyn with Love or to do that which the weaknesses of Love leave undone doth neither know what a man is nor what Gods Word is nor what his Government is nor what either Magistracy or any civil or domestical Government is and therefore should spend many years at School before he turneth a disputer 2. They are of use to keep up order in the world which could not be expected if it were not for Gods threatnings If the world be so full of wickedness rapine and oppressions notwithstanding all the threatnings of Hell what could we expect it should be if there were none such but even as the suburbs of Hell it self When Princes and Lords and Rich men and all those thieves and rebels that can but get strength enough to defend themselves and all that can but hide their faults would be under no restraints considerable but would do all the evil that they have a mind to do Men would be worse to one another than Bears and Tygers 3. Gods threatnings in their primary intention or use are made to keep us from the punishment threatned Punishment is naturally due to evil doers And God declareth it to give us warning that we may take heed avoid it and escape 4. That which doth so clearly demonstrate the Holiness of God in his righteous Government his Wisdom and his Justice is certainly good and amiable in it self But we must not expect that the same thing should be good and amiable to the wicked who run themselves into it which is good to the world or to the just about them or to the honour of God Assizes Prisons and Gallows are good to the Country and to all the innocent to preserve their peace and to the honour of the King and his Government but not to murderers thieves or rebels Isa 26.7 8 9. Psal 48.11 9.16 89.14 97.2 149.9 146.7 37.6 28. Jude 6. 15. Rev. 4.7 15.4 16.7 19.2 Eccles 12.14 Direct 3. Judge of the severity of Gods threatnings partly by the greatness of himself whom we offend and partly by the necessity of them for the Government of the world 1. Remember that sinning wilfully against the infinite Majesty of Heaven and refusing his healing mercy to the last deserveth worse than any thing against a man can do 1 Sam. 2.25 2. And remember that even the threatning of Hell doth not serve turn with most of the world to keep them from sinning and despising God and therefore you cannot say that they are too great For that plaister draweth not too strongly which will not draw out the thorn If Hell be not terrible enough to perswade you from sin it is not too terrible to be threatned and executed He that should say Why will God make so terrible a Law and withall should say As terrible as it is I will venture on it rather than leave my pleasures and rather than live a holy life doth contradict himself and telleth us that the Law is not terrible enough to attain its chief and primary end with such as he that will not be moved by it from the most sordid base or bruitish pleasure Direct 4. Remember how Christ himself even when he came to deliver us from Gods Law did yet come to verifie his threatning in the matter of it and to be a sacrifice for sin and publick demonstration of Gods Justice For this end was Christ manifested to destroy the works of the Devil 1 John 3.5 8. And the first and great work of the Devil was to represent God as a lyar and to perswade Eve not to believe his threatnings and to tell her that though she sinned she should not die And though God so far dispensed with it as to forgive man the greatest part of the penalty it was by laying it on his Redeemer and making him a sacrifice to his Justice that his Cross might openly confute the Tempter and assure the world that God is just and that the wages of sin is death Rom. 6.23 though eternal life be the gift of God through Jesus Christ And he that well considereth this that the Son of God would rather stoop to sufferings and death than the Dâ—vils reproach of Gods threatnings should be made true and than the Justice of God against sin should not be manifested will sure never think that this Justice is any dishonour to the Almighty Direct 5. Let this be your use of the threatnings of God to drive you from sin to more careful obedience and to help you against the defects of love and to set them against every temptation when you are assaulted by it When a tempting bait is set before you set Hell against it as well as Heaven and say Can I take this cup this whore this preferment this gain of Judas with Hell for my part instead of Heaven If men threaten death imprisonment or any other penalty or if losses or reproaches be like by men to be made your reward remember that God threatneth Hell and ask whether this be not the most intollerable suffering And if any Antinomian revile you for thus doing and say You should set only Free Grace before you to keep you
Nos quoque floruimus sed flos fuit ille caducus Flammaque de stipula nostra brevisque fuit Ov. VERA EFFIGIES RICHARDI BAXTERI MIN IES CH IN OP ET PATA FIDEI SPEI ET CHARITATIS An. 1670. AETAT SUAE 55º Farewell vaine World as thou hast been to me Dust and a Shadow those I leave with thee The vnseen Vitall Substance I committ The Leaves Fruit are dropt for soyle and Seed Heaven's heirs to generate to heale and feed Them also thou wilt flatter and molest But shalt not keep from Everlasting Rest THE LIFE OF FAITH THE Life of Faith In Three PARTS The First is a Sermon on Heb. 11.1 formerly preached before His Majesty and published by his Command with another added for the fuller Application The Second is Instructions for confirming Believers in the Christian Faith The Third is Directions how to live by Faith or how to exercise it upon all occasions By RICHARD BAXTER 2 Cor. 5.7 For we walk by faith not by sight 2 Cor. 4.16 17 18. For which cause we faint not but though our outward man parish yet the inward man is renewed day by day For our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory While we look not at the things which are seen but at the things which are not seen For the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal Heb. 12.27 By faith he forsook Egypt not fearing the wrath of the King for he endured as seeing him that is invisible LONDON Printed by R. W. for Nevill Simmons at the three Crowns over against Holbern Conduit 1670. To the Worshipfull my much honoured Friend Richard Hampden of Hampden Esquire and the Lady Laetitia his Wife Grace and Peace be multiplied SIR YOur Names stand here in the front of this Treatise on a double account First that the custom of Writers having given me such an advantage I may tell the present and future Ages how much I love and honour your Piety Sobriety Integrity and Moderation in an Age when such Vertues grow into contempt or into lifeless Images and Names And how much I am my self your debter for the manifold expressions of your love and that in an Age when 〈…〉 the superioâ—â—â—â—culties is ouâ— of fâ—shion and towards such as I is grown â— crime Sincerity and 〈◊〉 are things that shall be honourable when Hypocrisie and Malice have done their worst But they are most conspicuous and refulgent in times of â—â—rity and when the shame of their contraries seâ— them off Secondly To signifie my Love and Gratitude by the best 〈◊〉 which I can make which is by tendering to you and to your family the surest Directions for the most noble manly life on earth in order to a blessed life in Heaven Though you have proceeded well you 〈…〉 need of help so great a 〈…〉 for skilfull counsel and 〈…〉 and industrious and unweaâ—â—◠〈…〉 And your hopeful children may 〈…〉 to learn this excellenâ— Life from these Directions for the love of your prefixed Names And how happy will they bâ— if they converse with God 〈…〉 are wallowing in the 〈◊〉 of 〈…〉 When the dead heaâ—ted sinner thinketh not of 〈…〉 be dragg'd out of 〈◊〉 paâ—pered corruptible flesh to divinie 〈◊〉 and â—â—â—with the beginnings of endless 〈◊〉 to the world where they might have found everlasting rest what joy will then be the portion of mortified and patient Believers whosâ— Treasâ—â—â—s and Hearts and Conversatiâ—â— in Heâ—ven are now the foretaste of their possession as the Spirit of Christ which causeth this iâ— the seâ—â— of God and the pledge and earnest of their inheritance If a 〈◊〉 pleasing life in a dark distracted 〈◊〉 world were better than a life with God and Angels methinks yet they that know they cannot have what they 〈◊〉 should make sue of what they may haâ—â— And they that cannot keep what they 〈◊〉 should learn to 〈◊〉 what 〈◊〉 may keep Wonderfull stupidity â—hâ—t they 〈…〉 dead bodies 〈…〉 grave is as common a work 〈…〉 children into the world and that this life is but the road to another and that all men are posting on to their 〈…〉 should think no more considerately whither so many thousand souls do go that daily shoot the gulf of death and return no more to the world which one they called their home That men will have no house or home but the ship which carryeth them so swiftly to eternity and spend their time in furnishing a dwelling on such a tempestuous Sea where winds and tide are hasting them to the shore and even to the end are contriving to live where they are daily dying and care for no â—â—bitation but on horse-back That almost all men die much wiser than they lived and yet the certain foreknowledge of death will not serve to make them more seasonably and more safely wiâ—e Wonderful that it should be possible for a man awake to believe that he must shortly be gone from earth and enter into an unchangeable endless life and yet not bend the thoughts of his soul and the labours of his life to secure his true and 〈…〉 Adam hath given sin the 〈…〉 grace and madness the priority to wisdom and our wisdom health and safety must now come after by the way of recovery and cure The first born of lapsed man was a malignant persecuting Cain The first born of believing Abraham was a persecutor of him that was born after the Spirit 1 John 3.12 Gal. 4.29 And the first born of this Isaac himself was a profane Esau that for one morsel sold his birth-right Heb. 12.16 And naturally we are all the off-spring of this profaneness and have not acquaintance enough with God and with healthful holiness and with the everlasting heavenly Glory to make us cordially preferr it before a forbidden cup or morsel or a game at foolery or a filthy lust or before the wind of a gilded fools acclamation and applause or the cap and counterfeit subjection of the multitude But the fortunae non tua turba ut Ov. quos sportula fecit amici ut Juv. who will serve mens lusts and be their servants and humble attendants to damnation are regarded more than the God the Saviour the Sanctifier to whom these perfidious rebels were once devoted That you and yours may live that more wise and delightful life which consisteth in the daily sight of Heaven by a Living Faith which worketh by Love in constant Obedience is the principal end of this publick appellation That what is here written for the use of all may be first and specially useful to you and yours whom I am so much bound to love and honour even to your safe and comfortable life and death and to your future joy and glory which is the great desire of Your obliged Servant RICH. BAXTER Feb. 4. 1669. THE PREFACE Reader 1. IF it offend thee that the Parts of
worldly judgement He seeth by faith a greater ugliness in sin than in any the most deformed monster When the unbeliever saith what harm is it to please my flesh in ease or pride or meat and drink or lustful wantonness the believer takes it as the question of a fool that should ask what harm is it to take a dram of Mercury or Arsenick He seeth the vicious evil and foreseeth the consequent penal evil by the eye of faith And therefore it is that he pittieth the ungodly when they pitty not themselves and speaks to them oft with a tender heart in compassion of their misery and perhaps weeps over them as Paul Phil. 3.18 19. when he cannot prevail when they weep not for themselves but hate his love and scorn his pitty and bid him keep his lamentations for himself because they see not what he sees He seetâ— also the inward beauty of the Saints as it shineth forth in the holiness of their lives and through all their sordid poverty and contempt beholdeth the image of God upon them For he judgeth not of sin or holiness as they now appear to the dâ—stracted world but as they will be judged of at the day which he foreseeth when sin will be the shame and holiness the honoured and dâ—sired state He can see Christ in his poor despised members and love God in those that are made as the scorn and off-scouâ—ing of all things by the malignant unbelieving world He admireth the excellency and happiness of those that are made the laughing-stock of the ungodly and accounteth the Saints the most excellent on earth Psal 16.2 and had rather be one of their communion in raggs than sit with Princes that are naked within and void of the true and durable glory He judgeth of men as he perceiveth them to have more or less of Christ The worth of a man is not obvious to the sense You see his stature complexion and his cloths but as you see not his learning or skill in any Art whatsoever so you see not his grace and heavenly mind As the soul it self so the sinful deformity and the holy beauty of it are to us invisible and perceived only by their fruits and by the eye of faith which seeth things as God reveals them And therefore in the eyes of a true Believer a vile person is contemned but he honoureth those that fear the Lord Psal 15.4 4. A true Believer doth seek a happiness which he never saw and that with greater estimation and resolution than he seeks the most excellent things that he hath seen In all his prayers his labours and his sufferings it is an unseen Glory that he seeks he seeth not the Glory of God nor the glorified Redeemer nor the world of Angels and perfected spirits of the just but he knoweth by faith that such a God such a Glory such a world as this there is as certain as if his eyes had seen it And therefore he provides he lives he hopes he waits for this unseen state of spiritual bliss contemning all the wealth and glory that sight can reach in comparison thereof He believeth what he shall see and therefore strives that he may see it It 's something above the Sun and all that mortal eyes can see which is the end the hope the portion of a believer without which all is nothing to him and for which he trades and travels here as worldlings do for worldly things Matth. 6.20 21. Col. 3.1 Phil. 3.20 5. A true Believer doth all his life prepare for a day that is yet to come and for an account of all the passages of his life though he hath noâ—hing but the Word of God to assure him of it And therefore he lives as one that is hasting to the presence of his Judge and he contriveth his affairs and disposeth of his worldly riches as one that looks to hear of it again and as one that remembreth the Judge is at the door James 5.9 He rather asketh what life what words what actions what way of using my estate and interest will be sweetest to me in the review and will be best at last when I must accordingly receive my doom than what is most pleasant to my flesh and what will ingratiate me most with men and what will accommodate me best at present and set me highest in the world And therefore it is that he pittieth the ungodly even in the height of their prosperity and is so earnest though it offend them to procure their recovery as knowing that how secure soever they are now they must give an account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead 1 Pet. 4.5 and that then the case will be altered with the presumptuous world 6. Lastly A true believer is careful to prevent a threatned misery which he never felt and is awakened by holy fear to flye from the wrath to come and is industrious to escape that place of torment which he never saw as if he had seen it with his eyes When he heareth but the sound of the trumpet he takes warning that he may save his soul Ezek. 33.4 The evils that are here felt and seen are not so dreadful to him as those that he never saw or felt He is not so careful and resolute to avoid the ruine of his estate or name or to avoid the plague or sword or famine or the scorching flames or death or torments as he is to avoid the endless torments which are threatned by the righteous God It is a greater misery in his esteem to be really undone for ever than seemingly only for a time and to be cast off by God than by all the world and to lie in Hell than to suffer any temporal calamity And therefore he fears it more and doth more to avoid it and is more cast down by the fears of Gods displeasure than by the feelings of these present sufferings As Noah did for his preservation from the threatned deluge so doth the true Believer for his preservation from everlasting wrath Heb. 11.7 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 the which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith God first giveth warning of the flood Noah believeth it not with a lifeless but a working faith that first moved in him a self-preserving fear This fear moveth Noah to obey the Lord in the use of means and to prepare the Ark and all this was to save himself and his house from a flood that was as yet unseen and of which in nature there was no appearance Thus doth God warn the sinful world of the day of judgement and the fire that is unquenchable and true believers take his warning and believing that which they cannot see by fear they are moved to flye to Christ and use his means to scape the threatned calamity By this
them for God but use them for themselves yet wonder not if he fear not much the face of man and be no admirer of worldly greatness when he seeth what they will be as well as what they are Would not usurpers have been less feared if all could have foreseen their fall Even common reason can foresee that shortly you will all be dust Methinks I foresee your ghastly paleness your loathsome blackness and your habitation in the dark And who can much envy or desire the advancements that have such an end One sight of God would blast all the glory of the world that 's now the bâ—â—t for mans perdition Quest 6. Would temptations be as powerful as now they are if you did but see the things you bear of Could all the beauty or pleasures in the world entice you to filthiness or sensuality if you saw God over you and judgement before you and saw what damned souls now suffer and what believers now enjoy Could you be perswaded by any company or recreation to waste your precious time in vain with such things in your eye I am confident you would abhor the motion and entertertain temptations to the most honoured gainful pleasant sin as now you would do a motion to cut your own throats or leap into a coal-pit or thrust your head into a burning-oven Why then doth not faith thus shame temptations if indeed you do believe these things Will you say It is your weakness you cannot â—husâ— or that it is your nature to be lustful revengeful sensual and you cannot overcome it But if you had a sight of Heaven and Hell you could then resist you cannot now bâ—cause you will not But did you see that which would make you willing your power would appear The sight of a Judge or Gallows can restrain mâ—n The sight of a person whom you reverence can restrain the exercise of your disgraceful sins much more would the sight of Heaven and Hell If you were but dying you would shake the head at him that would then tempt you to the committing of your former sins And is not a lively foreseeing faith as effectual Quest 7. Had you seen what you say you do believe you would not so much stick aâ— sufferings nor make so great a matter of it to be reproached slandered imprisoned or condemned by man when God and your salvation command your patience A sight of Hell would make you think it worse than madness to run thither to escape the wrath of man or any sufferings on earth Rom. 8.18 Quest 8. And O how such a sight would advance the Redeemer and his Grace and Promises and Word and Ordinances in your esteem It would quicken your desires and make you fly to Christ for life as a drowning man to that which may support him How sweetly then would you relish the name the word the waies of Christ which now seem dry and common things Qâ—est 9. Could you live as merrily and sleep as quietly in a negligent uncertainty of your salvation if you had seen these things as now you do Could you live at hearts ease while you know not where you shall be to morrow or must live for ever Oh no Were Heaven and Hell but seen before you your Consciences would be more busie in putting such questions Am I regenerate sanctified reconciled justified or not Then any the most zealous Minister is now Quest 10. I will put to you but one Quâ—stion more If we saw God and Heaven and Hell before us do you think it would not effectually reconcile our differences and heal our unbrotherly exasperâ—tions and divisions would it not hold the hands that itch to be using violence against those that are not in all things of their minds what abundance of vain controversies would it reconcile As the coming in of the Master doth part the fray among the School-boyes so the sight of God would frâ—ghten us from contentions or uncharitable violence This would teach us how to preach and pray better than a storm at Sea can do which yet doth it better than some in prosperity wâ—ll learn Did we see what we preach of it would drive us out of our man pleasing self-seeking sleepy strain as the cudgel drives the beggar from his canting and the breaking loose of the Bear did teach the affected cripple to find his legs and câ—st away his câ—utchâ—s I would desire no better outward help to end our controversies about indifferent modes of worship than a sight of the things of which we speak This would excite such a serious â—rame of soul as would not suffer Religion to evaporate into formality nor dwindle into affectation complement and ceremony nor should we dare to beat our fellow-servants and thrust them out of the vineyard and say you shall not preach or pray or live but upon these or those unnecessary terms But the sense of our own frailty and fear of a severe disquisition of our failings would make us compassionate to others and content that necessaries be the matter of our unity unnecessaries of our liberty and both of charity If sight in all these ten particulars would do so much should not faith do much if you verily believe the things you see not Alas corrupted reason is asleep with men that seem wise in other things till it be awakt by faith or sight And sleeping reason is as unserviceable as folly Iâ— doth no work it avoids no danger A Doctor that 's asleep can defend the truth no better than a waking child But reason will be reason and conscience will be conscience when the dust is blown out of mens eyes and sight and feeling have awakened and so recovered their understandings or Faith more seasonably and happily awaked them AND O that now we might all consent to addict ourâ—selves to the Life of Faith And 1. That we live not too much on visibles 2. That we live on the things invisible 1. One would think that worldliness is a disease that carryeth with it a cure for it self and that the rational nature should be loth to love at so dear a rate and to labour for so poor a recompence It is pitty that Gehezi's leprosie and Judas's death should no more prevent a succession of Gehezi's and Judas's in all generations Our Lord went before us most eminently in a contempt of earth His Kingdom was not of this world No men are more unlike him than the worldlings I know necessity is the pretence But it is the dropsie of Covetousness that causeth the thirst which they call Nâ—câ—ssity And therefore the cure is non addere opiâ—us sed imminuere cupiditatem The disease must not be fed but healed Saâ—s est divitiarum non amplius velle It hath lately been a controversie whether this be not the golden age that it is aetas ferrea we have felt our demonstrations are undeniable that it is aetas aurata we have sufficient proof and while gold is the god that rules
the most we will not deny it to be aetas aurea in the Poets sense Aurea nunc vere sunt secula plurimus auro Vaenit honos auro conciliatur amor This prevalency of things seen against thing unseen is the Idolatry of the world the subversion of nature the perversion of our faculties and actions making the soul a drudge to flesh and God to be used as a servant to the world It destroyeth Piety Justice and Charity It turneth JVS by perversion into VIS or by reversion into SVI No wonder then if it be the ruine of societies when Gens sine justitiâ sine remige navis in undâ It can possess even Demosthenes with a Squinancy if there be but an Harpalus to bring him the infection It can make a Judicature to be as Plutarch called that of Rome 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 impiorum regionem contrary to Cicero's description of Sulpitius who was magis justitiae quam juris consultus ad facilitatem aequitatemque omnia contulit nec maluit litium actiones constituere quam controversias tollere In a word if you live by sense and not by Faith on things present and not on things unseen you go backward you stand on your heads and turn your heels against Heaven you cause the beast to ride the man and by turning all things upside down will turn your selves into confusion 2. Consider that it is the unseen things that are only Great and Necessary that are worthy of a man and answer the excellency of our nature and the ends of our lives and all our mercies All other things are inconsiderable toyes except as they are dignified by their relation to these Whether a man step into eternity from a Palace or a Prison a Lordship or a Lazarus state is little to be regarded All men in the world whose designs and business take up with any thing short of Heaven are in the main of one condition and are but in several degrees and forms in the School of folly If the intendment of your lives fall short of God it matters not much what it is you seek as to any great difference If lesser children play for pins and bigger boyes for points and pence and aged children for lands and money for titles of honour and command What difference is there between these in point of wisdom and felicity but that the little ones have more innocent delights and at a cheaper rate than the aged have without the vexatious cares and dangers that attend more grave and serious dotage As Holiness to the Lord is written upon all that is faithfully referred to his Will and Glory so Vanity and Sin is written upon all that is but made provision for the flesh and hath no higher end than Self To go to Hell with greater stir and attendance and repute with greater pomp and pleasure than the poor is a poor consolation a pitiful felicity 3. Faith is the wisdom of the soul and unbelief and sensuality are its blindness folly and brutishness How short is the knowledge of the wisest unbelievers They know not much of what is past and less they would know if Historians were not of more credit with them than the Word of God But alas how little do they know of what is to come sense tells them where they are and what they are now doing but it tells them not where they shall be to morrow But Faith can tell a true Believer what will be when this world is ended and where he shall live to all eternity and what he shall be dâ—ing what thoughts he shall be thinking what affections shall be the temper and employment of his soul what he shall see and feel and enjoy and with what company he shall converse for ever If the pretenders to Astrological prediction could but foretel the changes of mens lives and the time and manner of their deaths what resort would be to them and how wise would they be esteemed but what is all this to the infallible predictions of the All-knowing God that hath given us a prospect into another world and shewed us what will be for ever more certainly than you know what a day may bring forth So necessary is fore-knowledge in the common affairs of men that without it the actions of the world would be but mad tumultuary confusion What would you think of that mans understanding or how would you value the imployments of his life that lookt no further in all his actions than the present hour and saw no more than the things in hand What would you call him that so spends the day as one that knoweth not there will be any night and so past the night as one that looked not for that day that knew not in the Spring there would be an Harvest or in the Summer that there would be any Winter or in Youth that there would be Age or Death The silly brutes that have no fore-knowledge are furnished with an instinct that supplieth the want of it and also have the help of mans fore-knowledge or else their kind would be soon extinct The Bees labour in Summer as if they foresaw the Winters need And can that man be wise that foreseeth not his everlasting state Indeed he that knoweth not what is to come hath no true knowledge of what is present For the worth and use of present things is only in their respect to things eternal And there is no means where there is no end What wisdom then remains in Unbelievers when all their lives 〈◊〉 mis-imployed because they know not the end of life and when all their actions are utterly debased by the baseness of 〈◊〉 brutish ends to which they serve and are referred 〈◊〉 is truly wise or honourable that is done for small and 〈◊〉 things To draw a curious picture of a shadow or elegantly write the history of a dream may be an ingenuous kind of foolery but the end will not allow it the name of Wisdom And such are all the actions of the world though called Heroick Valiant and Honourable that aim at transitory trifles and tend not to the everlasting end A bird can neatly build her nest but is not therefore counted Wise How contrary is the judgement of the world to Christs When the same description that he giveth of a fool is it that worldlings give of a wise and happy man Luke 12.20 21. One that layeth up riches for himself and is not rich towards God Will you perswade us that the man is wise that can climb a little higher than his neighbours that he may have the greater fall That is attended in his way to Hell with greater pomp and state than others That can sin more Syllogistically and Rhetorically than the vulgar and more prudently and gravely run into damnation and can learnedly defend his madness and prove that he is safe at the brink of Hell Would you perswade us that he is wise that contradicts the God and Rule of
Wisdom and that parts with Heaven for a few merry hours and hath not wit to save his soul When they see the end and are arrived at eternity let them boast of their Wisdom as they find cause We will take them then for more competent Judges Let the Eternal God be the portion of my soul let Heaven be my inheritance and hope let Christ be my Head and the promise my security let Faith be my Wisdom and Love be my very heart and will and patient persevering Obedience be my life and then I can spare the wisdom of the world because I can spare the trifles that it seeks and all that they are like to get by it What abundance of complaints and calamity would foresight prevent Had the events of this one year been conditionally foreseen the actions of thousands would have bâ—en otherwise ordered and much sin and shame have been prevented What a change would it make on the judgements of the world how many words would be otherwise spoken and how many deeds would be otherwise done and how many hours would be otherwise spent if the change that will be made by Judgement and Execution were well foreseen And why is it not foreseen when it is foreshewn When the omniscient God that will certainly perform his Word hath so plainly revealed it and so frequently and loudly warns you of it Is he wise that after all these warnings will lie down in everlasting woe and say I little thought of such a day I did not believe I should ever have seen so great a change Would the servants of Christ be used as they are if the malicious world foresaw the day when Christ shall come with ten thousands of his Saints to execute Judgement on all that are ungodly Jude 14 15. When he shall come to be glorified in his Saints and admired in all them that do believe 2 Thes 1.10 When the Saâ—nts shall judge the world 1 Cor. 6.2 3. and when the ungodly seeing them on Christs right-hand must hear their sentence on this account Verily I say unto you in as mâ—ch as you did it or did it not to one of the least of these my Brethren you did it unto me Matth. 25. Yet a few daies and all this will be done before your eyes but the unbelieving world will not foresee it Would malignant Cain have slain his brother if he had foreseen the punishment which he calleth afterward intollerable Gen. 4.13 Would the world have despised the preaching of Noah if they had believed the deluge Would Sodom have been Sodom if they had foreseen that an Hell from Heaven would have consumed them Would Achan have medled with his prey if he had foreseen the stones that were his Executioners and his Tomb Would Gehezi have obeyed his covetous desire if he had foreseen the leprosie Or Judas have betrayed Christ if he had foreseen the hanging himself in his despair It is fore-seeing Faith that saves those that are saved and blind unbelief that causeth mens perdition Yea present things as well as future are unknown to foolish Unbelievers Do they know who seeth them in their sin and what many thousands are suffering for the like while they see no danger Whatever their tongues say the hearts and lives of fools deny that there is a God that seeth them and will be their Judge Psalm 14.1 You see then that you must live by Faith or perish by folly 4. Consider that things visible are so transitory and of so short continuance that they do but deserve the name of things being nothings and less than nothing and lighter than vanity it self compared to the necessary eternal Being whose name is IAM There is but a few daies difference between a Prince and no Prince a Lord and no Lord a man and no man a world and no world And if this be all let the time that is past inform you how small a difference this is Rational foresight may teach a Xerxes to weep over his numerous Army as knowing how soon they were all to be dead men Can you forget that death is ready to undress you and tell you that your sport and mirth is done and that now you have had all that the world can do for those that serve it and take it for their part How quickly can a feaver or the choice of an hundred Messengers of death beâ—eave you of all that earth afforded you and turn your sweetest pleasures into gall and turn a Lord into a lump of clay It is but as a wink an inch of time till you must quit the stage and speak and breath and see the face of man no more If you foresee this O live as men that do foresee it I never heard of any that stole his winding-sheet or fought for a Coffiâ— or went to Law for his grave And if you did but see as wise men should how near your Honours and Wealth and Pleasures do stand unto Eternity as well as your Winding sheets your Coffins and your Graves you would then value and desire and seek them regularly and moderately as you do these Oh what a fading flower is your strength How soon will all your gallantry shrink into the shell Si vestra sunt tollite â—a vobiscum Bern. Buâ— yet this is not the great part of the change The terminus ad quem doth make it greater It is great for persons of renown and honour to change their Palaces for graves and turn to noisom rottenness and dirt and their Power and Command into silent impotency unable to rebuke the poorest worm that sawcily feedeth on their hearts or faces But if you are Believers you can look further and foresee much more The largest and most capacious heart alive is unable fully to conceive what a change the stroak of death will make For the holy soul so suddenly to pass from prayer to Angelical praise from sorrow unto boundless joyes from the slanders and contempt and violence of men to the bosom of eternal Love from the clamours of a tumultuous world to the universal harmony and perfect uninterrupted Love and Peace O what a blessed change is this which believing now we shall shortly feel For an unholy unrenewed soul that yesterday was drowned in flesh and laught at threatnings and scorned reproofs to be suddenly snaâ—cht into another world and see the Heaven that he hath lost and feel the Hell which he would not believe to fall into the gulf of bottomless eternity and at once to find that Joy and Hope are both departed that horrour and grief must be his company and Desperation hath lockt up the door O what an amazing change is this If you think me troublesom for mentioning such ungrateful things what a trouble wil it be to feel them May it teach you to prevent that greater trouble you may well bear this Find but a medicine against death or any security for your continuance here or any prevention of the Change and I have
done But that which unavoidably must be seen should be foreseen But the unseen world is not thus mutable Eternal life is begun in the Believer The Church is built on Christ the Reck and the gates of Hell shall not prevail against it Fix here and you shall never be removed 4. Hence followeth another difference The mutable creature doth impart a disgraceful mutability to the soul that chuseth it It disappointeth and deceiveth And therefore the ungodly are of one mind to day and another to morrow In health they are all for pleasure and commodity and honour and at death they cry out on it as deceitful Vanity In health they cannot abide this strictness this meditating and seeking and preparing for the life to come but at death or judgement they will all be of another mind Then O that they had been so wise as to know their time and O that they hâ—d lived as holily as the best They are now the bold opposers and reproachers of an holy life But then they would be glad it had been their own They would eat their words and will be down in the mouth and stand to never a word they say when sight and sense and judgement shall convince them But things unchangeable do fix the soul Pâ—eâ—y is no matter for Repentance Doth the Believer speak against sin and sinners and for an holy sober righteous life He will do so to the last Death and Judgement shall not change his mind in this but much confirm it And therefore he perseveres through sufferings to death Rom. 8.35 36 37. For this cause we faint not but though our outward man perish yet the inward man is renewed day by day For our light affliction which is but for a moment worketh for us a far more exceeding eternal weight of glory While we look not at the things that are seen but at the things which are not seen For the things which are seen are temporal but the things which are not seen are eternal 2 Cor. 4.16 17. 6. Lastly let this move you to live by a foreseeing Faith that it is of necessity to your salvation Believing Heaven must prepare you for it before you can enjoy it Believing Hell is necessâ—ry to prevent it Mark 16.16 John 3.18 36. The just shall live by Faith but if any man draw back or be lifted up the Lord will have no pleasure in him Heb. 10.38 Hâ—b 2.4 Take heed that there be not in any of you an evil heart of unbelief to depart from the living God Heb. 3.12 And be not of them that draw back to perdition but of them that believe to the saving of the soul Heb. 10.39 It is God that saith They shall all be damned that believed not the truth but had pleasure in unrighteousness 2 Thes 2.10 11 12. May I now in the conclusion more particularly exhort you 1. That you will live upon things foreseen 2. That you will promote this life of faith in others according to your several capacities Princes and Nobles live not alwaies You are not the Rulers of the unmoveable Kingdom but of a boat that is in an hasty stream or a ship under sail that will speed both Pilot and Passengers to the shore Dixi estis Dii at moriemini ut homines It was not the least or worst of Kings that said I am a stranger vpon earth Psal 119.19 Vermis sum non homo I am a worm and no man Psal 32.6 You are the greater worms and we the little ones but we must all say with Job ch 17.13 14. The grave is our house and we must make our beds in darkness Corruption is our Father and the Worm our Mother and our Sister The inexorable Leveller is ready at your backs to convince you by unresistible argument that dust you are and to dust you shall return Heaven should be as desirable and Hell as terrible to you as to others No man will fear you after death much less will Christ be afraid to judge you Luke 19.27 As the Kingdoms and glory of the world were contemned by him in the hour of his temptation so are they inconsiderable to procure his approbation Trust not therefore to uncertain riches Value them but as they will prove at last As you stand on higher ground than others it is meet that you should see further The greater are your advantages the wiser and better you should be and therefore should better perceive the difference between things temporal and eternal It is alwaies dark where these glow-worms shine and a rotten post doth seem a fire Your difficulties also should excite you You must go as through a Needles eye to Heaven To live as in Heaven in a crowd of business and stream of temptations from the confluence of all worldly things is so hard that few such come to Heaven Withdraw your selves therefore to the frequent serious fore-thoughts of eternity and live by faith Had time allowed it I should have come down to some particular instances As 1. Let the things unseen be still at hand to answer every temptation and shame and repel each motion to sin 2. Let them be still at hand to quicken us to duty when backwardness and coldness doth surprize us What shall we do any thing coldly for eternity 3. Let it resolve you what company to delight in and what society to be of even those with whom you must dwell for ever What side soever is uppermost on earth you may foresee which side shall reign for ever 4. Let the things invisible be your daily solace and the satisfaction of your souls Are you slandered by men Faith tells you it is enough that Christ will justifie you O happy day when he will bring forth our righteousness as the light and set all strait which all the false histories or slanderous tongues or pens in all the world made crooked Are you frowned on or contemned by men Is it not enough that you shall everlastingly be honoured by the Lord Are you wronged oppressed or trodden on by pride or malice Is not Heaven enough to make you reparation and eternity long enough for your joyes O pray for your malicious enemies lest they suffer more than you can wish them 2. Lastly I should have become on the behalf of Christ a petitioner to you for protection and encouragement to the heirs of the invisible world For them that preach and them that live this life of faith not for the honours and riches of the world but for leave and countenance to work in the Vineyard and peaceably travel through the world as strangers and live in the Communion of Saints as they believe But though it be for the beloved of the Lord the apple of his eye the people that are sure to prevail and raign with Christ for ever whose prayers can do more for the greatest Princes than you can do for them whose joy is hastened by that which is intended for their sorrow I shall now lay
have leave to be awake and to be in our wiâ—s to be Christians to be men to be creatures that have life and sense forgive us that we believe the living God that we cannot laugh at Heaven and Hell nor jest at the threatned wrath of the Almighty If these things must make us the object of the worlds reproach and malice let me rather be a reproached man than an honoured beast and a hated Christian than a beloved Infidel and rather let me live in the midst of malice and contempt than pass through honour unto shame through mirth to misery and a sensless to a feeling death Hate us when we are in Heaven and see who will be the sufferer by it If ever we should begin to nod and relapse towards your hypocritical formality and sensless indifferency our lively sight of the world invisible by a serious faith would presently awake us and force us confidently to conclude AVT SANCTVS AVT BRVTVS There is practically and predominantly no Mean He 'l prove a BRVIT that is not a SAINT CHAP. III. HAving done with this general conviction and exhortation to unbelieving Hypocrites I proceed to acquaint Believers with their Duty in several particulars 1. Worship God as Believers serve him with reverence and godly fear for our God is a consuming fire Heb. 12.28 29. A seeing faith if well excited would kindle love desire fear and all praying graces No man prayes well that doth not well know what he prayes for When it comes to seeing all men can cry loud and pray when praying will do no good They will not then speak sleepily or by rote Fides intuendo amorem recipit amorem susâ—â—tat Cor flagrans amore desideria gemitus orationes spirat Faith is the burning-glass which beholding God receiveth the beams of his communicated love and inflameth the heart with love to him again which mounteth up by groans and prayers till it reach its original and love for ever rest in love 2. Desire and use the creature as Believers Interpret all things as they receive their meaning from the things unseen understand them in no other sense It 's only God and the life to come that can tell you what 's good or bad for you in the world And therefore the ungodly that cannot go to Heaven for counsel are carryed about by meer deceits Take heed what you love and take heed of that you love God is very jealous of our love He sheds abroad his own love in our hearts that our hearts may be fruitful in love to him which is his chief delight By love he commandeth love that we may suitably move toward him and center in him He communicateth so much for the procuring of a little that we should endeavour to give him all that little and shed none of it inordinately upon the creature by the way Nothing is great or greatly to be admired while the great God is in sight And it is unsuitable for little things to have great affections and for low matters to have a high esteem It is the corruption and folly of the mind and the delusion of the affections to exalt a Shrub above a Cedar and magnifie a Mole-hill above a Mountain to embrace a shadow or spectrum of felicity which vanisheth into Nothing when you bring in the light The creature is nihil nullipotens Nothing should have no interest in us and be able to do Nothing with us as to the motions that are under the dominion of the will God is All and Almighty And he that is All should have All and command All And the Omnipotent should do All things with us by his Interest in Morals as he will do by his force in Naturals I deny not but we may love a friend One soul in two bodies will have one mind and will and love But as it is not the body of my friend that I love or converse with principally but the soul and therefore should have no mind of the case the corps the empty nest if the bird were flown so is it not the person but Christ in him or that of God which appeareth on him that must be the principal object of our love The man is mutable and must be loved as Plato did commend his friend to Dionysius Haec tibi scribo de homine viz. animante naturâ mutabili and therefore must be loved with a reserve But God is unchangeable and must be absolutely and unchangeably loved That life is best that 's likest Heaven There God will be All and yet even there it will be no dishonour or displeasure to the Deity that the glorified humanity of Christ and the New Jerusalem and our holy society are loved more dearly than we can love any creature here on earth So here God taketh not that affection as stoln from him that 's given to his servants for his sake but accepts it as sent to him by them Let the creature have it so God have it finally in and by the creature and then it is not so properly the creature that hath it as God If you chuse and love your friends for God you will use them for God not flattering them or desiring to be flattered by them but to kindle in each other the holy flame which will aspire and mount and know no bounds till it reach the boundless element of love You will not value them as friends qui omnia dicta facta vestra laudant sed qui errata delicta amice reprehendunt Not them that call you good but them that would make you better And you will let them know as Phocian did Antipater that they can never use you amiciâ— adulatoribus as friends and flatterers that differ as a wife and a harlot It 's hard to love the imperfect creature without mistakes and inordinacy in our love And therefore usually where we love most we sin most and our sin finds us out and then we suffer most and too much affection is the forerunner of much affliction which will be much prevented if Faith might be the guide of Love and Humane Love might be made Divine and all to be referred to the things unseen and animated by them Love where you can never love too much where you are sure to have no disappointments where there is no unkindness to ecclipse or interrupt where the only errour is that God hath not all and the only grief that we love no more Especially in the midst of your entising pleasures or entising employments and profits in the world foresee the end do all in Faith which telleth you The time is short it remaineth therefore that both they that have wives be as though they had none and they that weep as though they wept not and they that rejoyce as though they rejoyced not and they that buy as though they possessed not and they that use this world as through they used it not or not abusing it for the fashion of this
world passeth away 1 Cor. 7.29 30. 3. Imploy your time as becomes Believers Faith only can acquaint you what an unconceivable weight doth lye upon this inch of hasty time As you behave your selves for a few daies it must go with you in joy or misery for ever You have your appointed time for your appointed work God hath turned the glass upon you much of it is run out already No price can call back one hour that you have lost No power or policy can retard its course Sic fugiunt fraeno non remorante dies When it comes to the last sand and time is gone you 'l know the worth of it You 'l then confess it should have seemed more precious in your eyes than to have been cast away upon things of nought O precious time more worth than all the riches of the world How highly is it valued by all at last And how basely is it esteemed new by the most Now it is no more worth with them than to be sold for unnecessary sports and ease and wasted in idleness and vain delights But then when it 's gone and all 's too late how loud would they cry if cryes could call back Time again O then what a mercy would it seem if God would try them once again and trust them but with another life or with Hezekiah's fifteen years or but with fifteen daies or hours upon such terms of grace as they held that life which they abused It amazeth me to observe the lamentable stupidity of the world how hard they beg for time when they think it is near an end and how carelesly they let it slide away when they have strength and faculties to improve it They are grievously afraid lest death deprive them of it and yet they are not afraid to deprive themselves of the use and fruit of it and to cast it away as contemptuously as if it were an useless thing I seldom come near a dying man but I hear him complain of the loss of Time and wish it were to spend again that it might be better valued and used And yet the living will not be warned O value Time as wise men while you have it and not as miserable fools when it is gone If our Lord said I must do the work of him that sent me while it is day for the night cometh when no man can work Joh. 9.4 What need then have such as we to be doing and make much of time O let not company mirth or business make you forget the work of Time Can you play or loiter away your hours with Eternity in your eye Get the Sun to stand still and Time to make a truce with you and to waste no more of the oyl of life before you lose another hour O what heads what hearts have all those men that standing against the verge of an endless world can think they have any time to spare Hath God given you too much If not why do you lose it If he hath why are you loth that he should shorten it You would not throw away your gold as contemptuously as you do your time when an hours time is more valuable than gold Frown on that company that would rob you of half an hours time Tell them you have something else to do than to feast or play or talk away your time unnecessarily O tell them you were not made for nothing You are in a race and must not stand still You are in a fight and must not cease Your work is great much of it is undone Your enemies are not idle Death will not stop the Judge is coming and still beholds you and Heaven or Hell are ready to receive our ending life and tell us how we spent our time And can you find time to spare You are not made as Weather-cocks to stand up on high for men to look at and by turning about with every wind to shew them which way it standeth Turn not your lives into that curse Levit. 26.20 You shall spend your strength in vain Believe it Time must be reviewed The day is near when every man of you had rather find it in your accounts so many hours spent in self-examination and holy meditation so many in reading the Word of God so many spent in fervent prayer and so many in doing good to others than so many spent in needless sports and pleasures so many in idleness and vain discourses and so many in the less necessary matters of the world Ask those that tempt you to mis-spend your time whether at death and Judgement they had rather themselves have a life of holy diligence to review or a life consumed in vanity and transitory delights You will not suffer impertinencies to interrupt your counsels and serious business in the world You 'l tell intruders that you are busie and cannot have while to attend them And are you going into Heaven or Hell and have but a few daies time of preparation God knows 〈…〉 and yet can you have while to pass this precious 〈…〉 vain O what would you not give ere long for one of the hours that you now mis-spend When the oath is performed Rev. 10.6 That Time shall be no longer Wonderful that men can find Time for any thing save that for which they had their time Non tam bene vivant sed quamdiu confiderant inquit Seneca cum omnibus pâ—ssit contingere ut bene vivant ut diu nulli To live well is both possible and necessary and yet is disregarded To live long is neither possible nor necessary and yet is sought by almost all Incipiunt vivere cum definendum est immo quidam ante desierunt vivere quam inciperent Sen. It 's unseasonable we should begin to live when we should make an end but it 's most unhappy to have made an end before they do begin Pulchrum est inquit idem consummare vitam ante mortem expectare secure reliquam temporis partem Do the great work and then you may comfortably spend the rest in waiting for the conclusion Yet you have time and leave and helps you may read and meditate and pray if you will but shortly Time will be no more O let not Satan insult over your carkasses and tormented souls and say Now it is too late Now murmure and repent as long as you will Now pray and cry and spare noâ— O use that Faith which beholdeth the invisible world and maketh future things as present and then delay and loiter if you can Then waste your hours in idleness or vanity if you dare either light or fire shall awake you 4. Suffer as Believers Fear not the wrath of man but indure as seeing him that is invisible Heb. 11.27 shew plainly that you seek a better Country vers 14 16. Read often Heb. 11 and 12 chapters Behold the Kingdom prepared and secured for you by Christ and then you will be indifferent which way the wind of humane favour or applause
sinful world and flesh linger not now as unwilling to depart repent not of thy choice when all that the world can do for thee is past repent not of thy warfare when thou hast got the victory nor of thy voyage when thou art past the storms and waves and ready to land at the haven of felicity Thus Faith may sing our Nunc dimittis when the flesh is lothest to be dissolved But we must live by faith if we would thus die by faith Such a death doth not use to be the period of a fleshly worldly life nor of a careless dull and negligent life Nature which brought us into the world without our forecast or care will turn us out of the world without it But it will not give us a joyful passage nor bring us to a better world without it It costeth worldlings no small care to die in an honourable or plentiful estate that they may fall from an higher place than others and may have something to make death more grievous and unwelcome to them and may have a greater account to make at Judgement and that their passage to Heaven may be as a Camels through a Needle And may a believing joyful death be expected without the preparations of exercise and experience in a believing life Nature is so much afraid of dying and an incorporated soul is so incarcerated in sense and so hardly riseth to serious and satisfying apprehensions of the unseen world that even true Believers do find it a work of no small difficulty to desire to depart and be with Christ and to die in the joyful hopes of faith A little abatement of the terrours of death a little supporting hope and peace is all that the greater part of them attain instead of the fervent desires and triumphant joyes which the lively belief of endless glory should produce O therefore make it the work of your lives of all your lives your greatest work your constant work to live by faith that the faith which hath first conquered all the rest of your enemies may be able also to overcome the last and may do your last work well when it hath done the rest CHAP. I. Directions how to live by Faith And first how to strengthen Faith And secondly the natural Truths presupposed to be considered THe Directions which I shall give you as helps to live by Faith are of two ranks 1. Such as tend to the strengthening of your Faith 2. Such as tell you how to use it The first is the greatest part of our task for no man can use that faith which he hath not nor can use more of it than he hath And the commonest reason why we use but little is because we have but little to use But on this subject supposing it most weighty I have written many Treatises already The second part of the Saints Rest The Unreasonableness of Infidelity And last of all The Reasons of the Christian Religion Besides others which handle it on the by And somewhat is said in the beginning of this discourse But yet because in so great a matter I am more afraid of doing too little than too much I will here give you an Index of some of the chief Helps to be close together before you for your memories to be the constant fuel of your Faith In the work of Faith it is first needful that you get all the prerequisite Helps of Natural Light and be well acquainted with their Order and Evidence and their Vsefulness to befriend the supernatural revelations For it is supposed that we are men before we are Christians We were created before we were redeemed And we must know that there is a God before we can know that we have offended him or that we need a Saviour to reconcile us to him And we must know that we have reasonable souls before we can know that sin hath corrupted them or that grace must sanctifie them And we must know that whatsoâ—ver God saith is true before we can believe that the Scripture is true as being his revelation Faith is an act of Reason and Believing is a kind of knowing even a knowing by the testimâ—ny of him whom we believe because we have sufficient reason to believe him 2. And next we must be well acquainted with the evidence of supernatural Truth which presupposeth the foresaid Natural Verities I shall set both bâ—fore you briefly in their order 1. Think well â—f the nature of your souls of their faculties or pâ—wers their excellency and their proper use And then you will find that you are not meer brutes who know not their Creatâ—ur nor live noâ— by a Law nor think not of another world nor â—â—ar any â—â—fferings after death But that you have reasâ—n free-will and executive power to knâ—w your Maker and to live by â—ule aâ—d to hope for a Reward in another life and to fear a pâ—nâ—shmeâ—t hereafter And that as no wise Artificer maketh any thing in vain so God is mâ—ch less to be thought to havâ— given you such souls and faculties in vain 2. Coâ—sidâ—r next how all the world declareth to you that there is a Gâ—d whâ— is infiniteâ—y pâ—werful wise and good And thaâ— it is not possible that all things which we see should have no cause or that the derived Power and Wisdom and Goodnesâ— of the creature should not proceed from that which is more excellent in the first and total cause Or that God should give more than he had to give 3. Consider nexâ— in whâ—t Relation such a creature must needs stand to such a Creatour If he made us of Nâ—â—hing 〈◊〉 is not pâ—ssible but that he must be 〈◊〉 Owner and wâ— aâ—d all things absolutely his Own And if he be our Maker and Owner and be infinitely powerful wise and good and we be Reasonable-free-agents made to be guided by Laws or Moral Means unto our end it is not possible but that we should stand related to him as subjects to their rightful Governour And if he be our Creatour Owner and Ruler and also infinitely Good and the grand Benefactor of the world and if the nature of our souls be to Love Good as Good it cannot be possible that he should not be our End who is our Creatour and that we should not be related to him as to the Chiefest Good both originally as our Benefactor and finally as our End 4. And then it is easie for you next to see what duty you owe to that God to whom you are thus related That if you are absolutely his Own you should willingly be at his absolute dispose And iâ— he bâ— your Soveraign Ruler you should labour most diligently to know his Laws and absolutely to obey them And if he be infinitely Good and your Benefactor and your End you are absolutely bound to Love him most devotedly and to place your own felicity in his Love All this is so evidently the duty of man to God by nature that nothing but madness can deny
conclusions which may be tryed and made bow to the interest of other points but as the greatest clearest surest truths next to the knowledge of our own Being and Intellection And that which all other at least not the proper objects of sense must be tryed and reduced to When there is no right method or order of knowledge there is no true and solid knowledge It is distraction and not knowing to begin at the top and to lay the foundation last and reduce things certain to things uncertain And it is no wiselier done of Atheists who argue from their apprehensions of other things against the Beings or Perfections of God As when they say There is much evil in the world permitted by God and there is death and many tormenting pains befall even the innocent bruits and there are wars and confusions and ignorance and wickedness have dominion in the earth Therefore God is not perfectly good nor perfectly wise and just and powerful in his government of the world The errour in the method of arguing here helpeth to continue their blindness That God is perfectly good is prius cognitum Nothing is more certain than that he who is the cause of all the derived goodness in the whole Universe must have as much or more than all himself Seeing therefore that Heaven and Earth and all things bear so evident a witness to this truth this is the foundation and first to be laid and never more questioned nor any argument brought against it For all that possibly can be said against it must be à minus notis from that which is more obscure Seeing then that it is most certain by sense that calamities and evils are in the world and no less certain that there is a God who is most perfectly good it must needs follow that these two are perfectly consistent and that some other cause of evil must be found out than any imperfection in the chief good But as to the Being of things and Order in the world it followeth not that They must be as gâ—od and perfect as their Maker and Governour is himself nor one part as good and perfect in it self as any other Because it was not the Creatours purpose when he made the world to make another God that should be equal with himself for two Infinite Beings and Perfections is a contradiction But it was his will to imprint such measures of his own likeness and excellencies upon the creatures and with such variety as his wisdom saw fittest the reasons of which are beyond our search The Divine Agency as it is in him the Agent is perfect But the effect hath those measures of goodness which he was freely pleased to communicate And as I have given you this instance to shew the folly of trying the certain foundation by the less certain notions or accidents in the world so you must abhor the same errour in all other instances Some wit may consist with the questioning of many plain conclusions But he is a fool indeed who saith There is no God or doubteth of his essential properties Psal 14.1 2. Rom. 1.19 20 21. Direct 3. Remember that all our knowledge of God while we are in the body here is but enigmatical and as in a glass and that all words which man can speak of God at least except Being and Substance are but terms belâ—w him borrowed from his Image on the Creatures and not sâ—gnifying the same thing formalâ—y in God which they signifie in us If you think otherwise you will make an Idol in your conception instead of God And you will debase him and bring him down to the condition of the creature And yet it doth not follow that we know nothing of him or that all such expressions of God are vain or false or must be difused For then we must not think or talk of God at all But we must speak of him according to the highest notions which we can borrow from the noblâ—st parts of his Image confessing still that they are but borrowed And these must be used till we come nearer and see as face to face and when that which is perfect is come then that which is imperfect shall be done away 1 Cor. 13.10 11 12. And yet it is in comparison of darker revelations as with open face that we behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord and it is a sight that can change us into the same Image as from glory to glory as by the Spirit of the Lord 2 Cor. 3.18 Dâ—rect 4. Abhor the furious ignorance which brandeth every one with the names of heresie or blasphemy who differ from them in the use of some unnecessary metaphor of God when their different phrases tend not indeed to his dishonour and perhaps may have the same signification with their own When we are all forced to confess that all our tearms of God are improper or metaphorical and yet mâ—n will run those metaphors into numerous branches and carry them unto greater impropriety and then rail at all as blasphemers that question them this practice is though too common a heinous sin in them as it hath direful effects upon the Church Should I recite the sad histories of this iniquity and shew what it hath done between the Greek and Latine Churches and between those called Orthodox and Catholick and many through the world that have been numbered with Hereticks it would be too large a subject for our sorrow and complaints Direct 5. Abhor presumptuâ—us curiosities in enquiring into the secret things of God much more in pretending to know them and most of all in reviling and contending against others upon those pretences It is sad to observe abundance of seemingly learned men who are posed in the smallest creature which they study yet talking as confidently of the unsearchable things of God yea and raving as furiously and voluminously against all that contradict them as if they had dwelt in the inaccessible light and knew all the order of the acts of God much better than they know themselves and the motions of their own minds or better than they can anatomize a worm or a beast They that will not presume to say that they know the secrets of their Prince or the heart of any of their neighbours yea they that perceive the difficulty of knowing the state of a mans own soul because our hearts are a maze and labyrinth and oâ—r thoughts so various and confused can yet give you so exact a Scheme of all Gods conceptions that it shall be no less than heresie to question the order of any part of it They can tell you what Idea's are in the mind of God and in what order they lye and how those Idea's are the same unchanged about things that are changed about things past and present and to come and what futurition was from Eternity as in the Idea of Gods mind they can tell me in what order he knoweth things and by what means and whether future
saved 24. Promises to believers in sickness and at death 1 Cor. 11.32 But when we are judged we are chastened of the Lord that we should not be condemned with the world Heb. 12.6 7 8 11. For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth and scourgeth every Son whom he receiveth If ye endure chastening God dealeth with you as with Sons Shall we not be in subjection to the Father of spirits and live But he for our profit that we might be partakers of his holiness No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous but grievous nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them which are exercised thereby James 5.14 Is any sick let them send for the Elders of the Church The prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up and if he have committed sins they shall be forgiven him John 11.3 He whom thou lovest is sick Psal 41.1 2 3. Blessed is the man that considereth the poor the Lord shall deliver him in time of trouble The Lord shall preserve him and keep him alive The Lord will strengthen him upon the bâ—d of languishing Thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness 2 Cor. 5.1 c. For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of God an house not made with hands eternal in the Heavens For in this we groan earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from Heaven For we that are in us tabernacle do groan being burdened not for that we would be unclothed but clothed upon that mortality may be swallowed up of life Now he that hath wrought this for the self same thing is God who also hath given to us the earnest of the Spirit Therefore we are alwaies confident knowing that whilst we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord. For we walk by faith not by sight we are confident I say and willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord. Phil. 1.20 21 23 Now also Christ shall be magnified in my body whether it be by life or by death For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain I am in a strait betwixt two having a desire to depart and to be with Christ which is far better Luke 23.43 To day shalt thou be with me in Paradise Rev. 14.13 I heard a voice from Heaven saying to me write Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth yea saith the Spirit that they may rest from their labours and their works do follow them Heb. 2.14 Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood he also himself likewise took part of the same that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death that is the Devil and deliver them who through fear of death were all their life time subject to bondage Psal 68.20 He that is our God is the God of salvation and to God the Lord belong the issues from death 2 Tim. 1.10 Who hath abolished death and hath brought life and immortality to light by the Gospel 1 Cor. 15.54 O death where is thy sting O grave where is thy victory The sting of death is sin and the strength of sin is the Law but thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ 25. Promises to persevering Believers of the Resurrection unto life and of Justification in Judgement and of Glorification 1 Cor. 15. throughout John 5.22 24 28 29. He that heareth my Word and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation but is passed from death to life The hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice and shall come forth they that have done good to the resurrection of life and they that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation John 14.19 Because I live ye shall live also Col. 3.1 3 4. If ye be risen with Christ seek those things which are above where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God Set your affections on things above not on things on the earth For ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God When Christ who is our life shall appear then shall ye also appear with him in glory 2 Thes 1.10 He shall come to be glorified in his Saints and admired in all them that believe Matth. 25 34 46. Come ye blessed c. The righteous into life eternal John 12.26 If any man serve me let him follow me and where I am there shall also my servant be If my man serve me him will my Father honour John 14.1 2 3. Let not your heart be troubled In my Fathers house are many mansions I go to prepare a place for you And if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you to my self that where I am there ye may be also John· 17.24 Father I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am that they may behold the glory which thou hast given me John 2.17 GO TO MY BRETHREN and SAY VNTO THEM I ASCEND TO MY FATHER and YOVR FATHER TO MY GOD and TO YOVR GOD. 1 Cor. 6.2 3. Know ye not that the Saints shall judge the world Know ye not that we shall judge Angels Acts 3.19 Repent and be converted that your sins may be blotted out when the time of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord and he shall send Jesus Christ Luke 14.14 Thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just Let the Reader here take notice of that most important observation of Dr. Hammond that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Resurrection doth often signifie in general our living in the next world or our next state of life in the Scriptures and not the last Resurrection only unless it be called The Resurrection of the flesh or of the body for distinction or the context have before explained it otherwise By which 1 Cor. 15. and Christs answer to the Sadducees may be the better understood 26. Promises to the godly for their children supposing them to be faithful in dedicating them to God and educating them in his holy waies Exod. 20. Commandment 2d Shewing mercy to thousands in them that love me and keep my Commandments Acts 2.39 For the promise is made to you and to your children and to all that are afar off c. Psal 37.26 His seed is blessed 1 Cor. 7.14 Else were your children unclean but now are they holy Matth. 23.37 O Jerusalem Jerusalem how oft would I have gathered thy children together even as a Hen gathereth hee chickens under her wings and ye would not Rom. 11.11 Through their fall salvation is come to the Gentiles 16 17 18 c. shew that they were broken off by unbelief and we are graffed in and are holy as they were Matth.
and the everlasting miseries of the damned in Hell being the due effects or punishment of sin are the second cause of our necessity of pardon And therefore these also must be thought on seriously by him that will seriously believe in Christ 4. The Law of God which we have broken maketh this punishment our due Rom. 3. 5. 7. And the Justice of God is engaged to secure his own honour in the honour of his Law and Government Direct 2. Vnderstand well what Christ is and doth for the Justification of a sinner and how not one only but all the parts of his office are exercised hereunto In the dignity of his person and perfect original holiness of his natures divine and humane he is fitly qualified for his work of our Justification and Salvation His undertaking which is but the Divine Decree did from eternity lay the foundation of all but did not actually justifie any His Promise Gen. 3.15 and his new Relation to mâ—â— thereupon did that to the Fathers in some degree which his after-incarnation and performance and his Relation thereupon doth now to us His perfect Obedience to the Law yea to that Law of Mediation also peculiar to himself which he performed neither as Priest or Prophet or King but as a subject was the meritorious cause of that Covenant and Grace which justifieth us and so of our Justification And that which is the meritorious cause here is also usually called the material as it is that matter or thing which meriteth our Justification and so is called Our Righteousness it self As he was a sacrifice for sin he answered the ends of the Law which we violated and which condemned us as well as if we had been all punished according to the sense of the Law And therefore did thereby satisfie the Law-giver and thereby also merited our pardon and Justification so that his Obedience as such and his Sacrifice or whole humiliation as satisfactory by answering the ends of the Law are conjunctly the meritorious cause of our Justification His New Covenant which in Baptism is made mutual by our expressed consent is a general gift or act of oblivion or pardon given freely to all mankind on condition they will believe and consent to it or accept it so that it is Gods pardoning and adopting instrument And all are pardoned by it conditionally and every penitent Believer actually and really And this Covenant or Gift is the effect of the foresaid merit of Christ both founded and sealed by his blood As he merited this as a mediating subject and sacrifice so as our High Priest he offered this sacrifice of himself to God And as our King he being the Law-giver to the Church did make this Covenant as his Law of grace describing the terms of life and death And being the Judge of the world doth by his sentence justifie and condemn men as believers or unbelievers according to this Covenant And also executeth his sentence accordingly partly in this life but fully in the life to come As our Teacher and the Prophet or Angel of the Covenant he doth declare it as the Fathers will and promulgate and proclaim this Covenant and conditional Pardon and Justification to the world and send out his Embassadours with it to beseech men in his Name to be reconciled to God and to declare yea and by sacramental investiture to seal and deliver a Pardon and actual Justification to Believers when they consent And as our Mediating High Priest now in the Heavens he presenteth our necessity and his own righteousnesses and sacrifice as his meritâ— for the continual communication of all this grace by himself as the Head of the Church and Administrator of the Covenant So that Christ doth justifie us both as a subject meriting as a sacrifice meriting as a Priest offering that sacrifice as a King actually making the Justifying Law or enacting a general Pardon as a King sententially and executively justifying as a Prophet or Angel of the Covenant promulgating it as King and Prophet and Priest delivering a sealed Pardon by his Messengers And as the Priest Head and Administrator communicating this with the rest of his benefits By which you may see in what respects Christ must be believed in to Justification if Justifying Faith were as it is not only the receiving him as our Justifier It would not be the receiving him as in one part of his office only Direct 3. Vnderstand rightly how far it is that the righteousness of Christ himself is made ours or imputed to us and how far not There are most vehement controversies to this day about the Imputation of Christs Righteousness in which I know not well which of the extreams are in the greater errour those that plead for it in the mistaken sense or those that plead against it in the sober and right sense But I make no doubt but they are both of them damnable as plainly subverting the foundation of our faith And yet I do not think that they will prove actually damning to the Authors because I believe that they misunderstand their adversaries and do not well understand themselves and that they digest not and practise not what they plead for but digest and practise that truth which they doctrinally subvert not knowing the contrariety which if they knew they would renounce the errour and not the truth And I think that many a one that thus contradicteth fundamentals may be saved Some there be besides the Antinomians that hold that Christ did perfectly obey and satisfie not in the natural but in the civil or legal person of each sinner that is elect representing and bearing as many distinct persons as are elect so fully as that God doth repute every Elect person or say others every Believer to be one that in Law sense did perfectly obey and satisfie Justice himself and so imputeth Christs Righteousness and satisfaction to us as that which was reputatively or legally of our own performance and so is ours not only in its effects but in it self Others seeing the pernicious consequences of this opinion deny all imputed Righteousness of Christ to us and write many reproachful volumes against it as you may see in Thorndikes last works and Dr. Gell and Parker against the Assembly and abundance more The truth is Christ merited and satisfied for us in the person of a Mediator But this Mediator was the Head and Root of all Believers and the second Adam the fountain of spiritual life and the Surety of the New Covenant Heb. 7.22 1 Cor. 15.22 45. and did all this in the nature of man and for the sake and benefit of man suffering that we might not suffer damnation but not obeying that we might not obey but suffering and obeying that our sinful imperfection of obedience might not be our ruine and our perfect obedience might not be necessary to our own Justification or Salvation but that God might for the sake and merit of this his perfect obedience and
us just in title by Covenant-pardon and therefore he sentenceth us as just that he may take off all penalty and give us the felicity due to the righteous and may use us as those that are made just There is much truth in most of the foresaid opinions inclusively and much falshood in their several exclusions of all the rest unless their quarrel be only de nomine which of all these is fitliest called Justification For 1. There is no doubt but our pardon or constituted Justification in Covenant-title is a virtual sentential Justification 2. And there is no doubt but God doth esteem them just that are first made just and no other bâ—cause he erreth not And that this estimation is sententia concepta as distinct from sententia prolata 3. And it is certain that those Angels that must execute his sentence must first know it And it is probable that the Joy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the presence of the Angels of God doth intimate that God useth ordinarily to notifie the converâ—iod of a sinner to Angels whether the joy here be meant as Dr. Hammond and others think Gods Joy signified to Angels or rather the Angels Joy by their presence being in Choro Angelorum or among them that is in them or both 4. And it is granted that God doth usually give some notice of his pardon at one time or other more or less to a sinners conscience though that is too late too uncertain too low and too unequal and too unconstant to be the great and famous Justification by Faith 5. And it is clear that till death or Judgment there is no such solemn plenary judicial sentence or declaration as there will be then 6. And it is certain that at death and judgment Christ as Man a creature can speak or express himself as the blessed creatures do to one another 7 And its certain that God hath a way of expressing himself to creatures which is beyond our present understandings But we may conceive of it by the similitude of Light which in the same instant revealeth millions of things to millions of persons respectively Though that is nothing to his present Justification of us by Faith unless as he revealeth it to Angels 8. And it is certain that at the day of death and judgment God will thus by an irresistible light lay open every man to himself and to the world which may be called his sentence differing from the execution and that Christ in our nature will be our Judge and may express that sentence as aforesaid 9. And it is certain that Gods actual taking off punishment and giving the blessing which sin had deprived us of is a declaration of his mind which may be called an executive sentence and might serve the turn if there were no more And that in Scripture the terms of God 's judging the world doth usually signifie Gods executive Government rewarding and punishing And that God doth begin such execution in this life and that his giving the Spirit is thus his principal pardoning and justifying act and yet that this is but part and not the whole of our present executive pardon and that glorification in this sense is the highest and noblest Justification or Pardon when God giveth us all that sin had forfeited But yet we deny not that Glorification is somewhat more than an executive pardon so far as any more is then given us than we did forfeit by our sins I must desire the Reader not to forget all this explication of the nature of Justification because it will be supposed to the understanding of all before and after Errour 10. That the justified or regenerate never incur any guilt or obligation to any punishment but only temporal corrections and therefore need no pardon at all of any sin at least since regeneration as to the everlasting punishment because Christ dyed to prevent that guilt and consequently the necessity of any such pardon Contr. This is before explained Christ died to procure us that pardoning Covenant which on its own terms will pardon every sin of the Justified when they are committed but not to prevent the need of pardon Otherwise Christ should not satisfie for any sins after regeneration nor bear them in his sufferings at all For his satisfaction is a bearing of a punishment which in its dignity and usefulness is equivalent to our deserved or to be deserved punishment Now if we never do deserve it Christ cannot bear that in our stead which we never deserve As the preventing of the sin or reatus culpae proveth that Christ never suffered for that sin prevented because it is terminus diminuens and is no sin so is it in preventing the desert of punishment And as for Correction Christ doth inflict so much as is good for us and therefore did not die to prevent it But of this Controversie I have said more at large elsewhere Errour 11. That Justification by Faith is perfect at the first instant though Sanctification be imperfect Contr. Against this Errour read Mr. George Hopkins book of salvation from sin shewing how Justification and Sanctification are equally carryed on It is granted that at our first true faith we are pardoned all the sins that ever we committed before as to the eternal punishment And so we are converted from them all But as our Sanctification is imperfect so our Pardon is yet imperfect in many respects For 1. We are still liable to death which is the wages of sin though it be so far conquered as not to hinder our salvation Henoch and Elias went to Heaven without it Rom. 5 12 14 17 21. Gen. 3.16 17 19. 1 Cor. 15.21 26. 2. We are still liable to many penal chastisements in this life which though they do us good by accident are yet the fruits of sin no father chastising a faultless child but doing him good in another way 3. There are many sins yet left uncured which though as sins they are our own only yet as an evil not cured are also penal I am sure that the not-giving of more of his Spirit and Grace is penal Therefore till our grace be perfect we are not perfectly delivered from the penal fruits of sin and therefore not perfectly justified and pardoned 4. That Pardon and Justification is not perfect which hath so many conditions and of such a nature for its continuation as ours now hath As to say you shall lose your justified state unless you fight and overcome in mortification sufferings perseverance c. He that hath a title to an estate which is held by such a tenure and would be lost if he should fail in such conditions hath not so perfect a title as he that is past all such conditions 5. That pardon which is only of sins past while there are thousands more hereafter to be pardoned or else we should yet perish is not so perfect as that Pardon and Justification in the conclusion of our lives when all sin
they are the sins of those faculties over which the will hath not a despotical power As a man may be truly willing to have no sluggishness heaviness sleepiness at prayer no forgetfulness no wandering thoughts no inordinate appetite or lust at all stirring in him no sudden passions of anger grief or fear he may be willing to love God perfectly to fear him and obey him perfectly but cannot These latter are the ordinary infirmities of the godly The former sort are if at all his extraordinary falls Rom. 7.14 to the end 6. Lastly The true Christian riseth by unfeigned Repentance when his conscience hath but leisure and helps to deliberate and to bethink him what he hath done And his Repentance much better resolveth and strengtheneth him against his sin for the time to come To summ up all 1. Sin more loved than hated 2. Sin wilfully lived in which might be avoided by the sincerely willing 3. Sin made light of and not truly repented of when it is committed 4. And any sin inconsistent with habitual Love to God in predominancy is mortal or a sign of spiritual death and none of the sins of sanctified Believers CHAP. XIV How to live by Faith in Prosperity THE work of Faith in respect of Prosperity is twofold 1. To save us from the danger of it 2. To help us to a sanctified improvement of it 1. And for the first that which Faith doth is especially 1. To see deeper and further into the nature of all things in the world than sense can do 2 Cor. 4.17 18. 1 Cor. 7.29 30 31. To see that they were never intended for our Rest or portion but to be our wilderness provision in our way To foresee just how the world will use us and leave us at the last and to have the very same thoughts of it now as we foresee that we shall have when the end is come and when we have had all that ever the world will do for us It is the work of Faith to cause a man to judge of the world and all its glory as we shall do when death and judgment come and have taken off the mask of splendid names and shews and flatteries that we may use the world as if we used it not and possess it as if we possest it not because its fashion doth pass away It is the work of Faith to crucifie the world to us and us to the world by the Cross of Christ Gal. 6.14 that we may look on it as disdainfully as the world looked upon Christ when he hanged as forsaken on the Cross That when it is dead it may have no power on us and when we are dead to it we may have no inordinate love or care or thoughts or fears or grief or labour to lay out upon it It is the work of Faithâ—o â—o make all worldly pomp and glory to be to us but loss and dross and dung in comparison of Christ and the righteousness of Faith Phil. 3.7 8 9. And then no man will part with Heaven for dung nor set his God below his dung nor further from his heart nor will he feel any great power in temptations to honour wealth or pleasure if really he count them all but dung nor will he wound his conscience or betray his peace or cast away his innocency for them 2. Faith sheweth the soul those sure and great and glorious things which are infinitely more worthy of our love and labour And this is its highest and most proper work Heb. 11. it conquereth Earth by opening Heaven and shewing it us as sure and clear and near And no man will dote on this deceitful world till he have turned away his eyes from God and till Heaven be out of his sight and heart Faith saith I must shortly be with Christ and what then are these dying things to me I have better things which God that cannot lye hath promised me with Christ Titus 1.2 Heb. 6.18 I look every day when I am called in The Judge standeth before the door James 5.9 The Lord is at hand Phil. 4.5 And the end of all these things is at hand 1 Pet. 4.7 And shall I set my heart on that which is not Therefore when the world doth smile and flatter faith setteth Heaven against all that it can say or offer And what is the world when Heaven stands by Faith seeth what the blessed souls above possess at the same time while the world is alluring us to forsake it Luke 16. Heb. 11. 12.1 2. c. Faith setteth the heart upon the things above as our concernment oâ—r only hope and happiness It kindleth that Love of God in the soul and that delight in higher things which powerfully quencheth worldly love and mortifieth all our carnal pleasures Matth. 6.20.21 Col. 3.1 2 3 4. Rom. 8.5 6 7. Phil. 30.20 21. 3. Faith sheweth the soul those wants and miseries in it self which nothing in the world is able to supply and cure Nay such as the world is apter to increase It is not gold that will quench his thirst who longs for pardon grace and glory A guilâ—y conscience a sinful and condemned soul will never be cured by riches or high places by pride or flâ—shly sports and pleasures James 5.1 2 3. This humbling work is not in vain 4. Faith looketh to Christ who hath overcome the world and carefully treadeth in his stâ—ps John 16.33 Heb. 12.2 3 4 5. It looketh to his person his birth his life his cross his grave and his resurrection to all that strange example of contempt of worldly things which he gave us from his manger to his shameful kind of death And he that studieth the Life of Christ will either despise the world or him He will either vilifie the world in imitation of his Lord or vilifie Christ for the pleasures of the world Faith hath in this warfare the surest and most onourable guide the ablest Captain and the most powerful example in all the world And it hath with Christian unerring Rule which furnisheth him with armour for every use Yea it hath through him a promise of Victory before it be aâ—tained so that in the beginning of the fight it knows the end Rom. 16.20 John 16.33 It goeth to Christ for that Spirit which is our strengâ—h Ephes 6.10 Câ—l 2.7 And by that it mortifieth the desires of the flesh and when â—he flesh is mortified the world is conquered for it is loved only as it is the provision of the flâ—sh 5. Moreover Faith doth observe Gods particular Providence who distributeth his talents to every man as he pleaseth and disposeth of their estates and comforts so that the Race is not to the swift nor the Victory to the strong nor Riches to men of understanding Eccles 9.11 Therefore it convinceth us that our lives and all being in his hand it is our wisdom to make it our chiefest care to use all so as is most pleasing unto him 2 Cor. 5.8
2. It setteth you at enmity with God and holiness because God controlleth and condemneth your beloved lusts and because it is contrary to the carnal things which have your hearts 2. By this means it maketh men malignant enemies of the godly and persecutors of them because they are of contrary minds and waies As then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit even so it is now Gal. 4.29 The world cannot love us because we are not of the world John 15.19 20. Pride covetousness and sensuality are the matter which the burning Feaver lodgeth in which hath consumed so much of the Church of Christ 4. It is the sin that hath corrupted the sacred Office of the Ministry throughout most of the Christian Churches in the world And thereby caused both the Schisms and Cruelties and the decay of serious godliness among them which is their present deplorable case Ignorant persons are like sick men in a Feaver They lay the blame on this and that and commonly on that which went next before the paroxism and know not the true cause of the disease We are all troubled or should be to see the many minds the many waies the confused state of the Christian Churches and to hear them cry out against each other And one layeth the blame on this party or opinion and another on that But when we come to our selves we shall find that it is The worldly mind that causeth our calamity Many well meaning friends of the Church do think how dishonourable it is to the Ministry to be poor and low and consequently despicable and what an advantage is it to their work to be able to relieve the poor and rather to oblige the people than to depend upoâ— them and to be above them rather than below them And supposing the Pastors to be mortified holy heavenly men all this is true and the zeal of these thoughts is worthy of commendation But that which good men intend for good hath become the Churches bane So certain is the common saying that Constantines zeal did poison the Church by lifting up the Pastors of it too high and occasioning those contentions for grandure and precedency which to this day separate the East and West When well-meaning Piety hath adorned the office with wealth and honour it is as true as that the Sun shineth that the most proud ambitious worldly men will be the most studious seekers of that office and will make it their plot and trade and business how by friends and observances and wills to attain their ends And usually he that seeks shall find when in the mean time the godly mortified humble man will not do so but will serve God in the state to which he is clearly called And consequently except it be under the Government of an admirably wise and holy Ruler a worthy Pastor in such a wealthy station will be a singular thing and a rarity of the age whilst worldly men whose hearts are habited with that which is utterly contrary to holiness and contrary to the very ends and work of their own office will be the men that must sit in Moses Chair that must have the doing and ruling of the work which their hearts are set against And how it will go with the Church of Christ when the Gospel is to be preached and Preachers chosen and Godliness promoted by the secret enemies of it and when ambitiâ—us fleshly worldly men are they that must cure the peoples souls under Christ of the love of the flesh and the world it were easie to prognosticate from the causes if the Christian world could not tell by the effects so that except by the wonderful Piety of Princes there is no visible way in the eye of reason to recover the miserable Churches but to retrive the Pastoral Office into such a state as that it may be no bait to a worldly mind but may be desired and chosen purely upon heavenly accounts And then the richer the Pastors are the better when they are the Sons of Nobles whose Piety bringeth with them their honour and their wealth to serve God and his Church with and they do not find it there to be their end or inducement to the work But instead of invitations or encouragements to pride and carnal minds there may be only so much as may not deter or drive away candidates from the sacred Function 5. Worldliness is a sin which maketh the Word of God unprofitable Mat. 13.22 John 12.43 Ezek. 33.31 prepossessing the heart and resisting that Gospel which would extirpate it 6. It hindereth Prayer by corrupting mens desires and by intruding worldly thoughts 7. It hindereth all holy Meditation by turning both the heart and thoughts another way 8. It drieth up all heavenly profitable Conference whilst the world doth fill both mind and mouth 9. It is a great profaner of the Lords Day distracting mens minds and alienating them from God 10. It is a murderous enemy of Love to one another All worldly men being so much for themselves that they are seldom hearty friends to any other 11. Yea it maketh men false and unrighteous in their dealings There being no trust to be put in a worldly man any further than you are sure you suit his interest 12. It is the great cause of discord and divisions in the world It setteth Families Neighbours and Kingdoms together by the ears and setteth the Nations of the earth in bloody wars to the calamity and destruction of each other 13. It causeth cheating stealing robbing oppressions cruelties lying false-witnessing perjury murders and many such other sins 14. It maketh men unfit to suffer for Christ because they love the world above him and consequently it maketh them as Apostates to forsake him in a time of tryal 15. It is a great devourer of precious time That short life which should be spent in preparing for eternity is almost all spent in drudging for the world 16. Lastly It greatly unfitteth men to die and maketh them loth to leave the world And no wonder when there is no entertainment for worldlings in any better place hereafter Direct 6. If you would be saved from the world and the snares of prosperity foresee death and judge of the world 〈◊〉 it will appear and use you at the last Dream not of long life He that looks to stay but a little while in the world will be the less careful of his provisions in it A little will serve for a little tâ—me The grave is a sufficient disgrace to all the vanities on earth though there must be more to raise the heart to Heaven Direct 7. Mâ—rtifie the flesh and you overcome the world Cure the thirsty disease and you will need none of the worldlings waies to satisfie it When the flesh is mastered there it no use for plenty or pleasures or honours to satisfie its lusts Your daily bread to fit you for your work will then suffice Direct 8.
his body is a little weary his mind is so too and suffereth the weariness of the body to prevail Because the flesh is King within them Nay a slothful mind doth oft begin and they are weary to look upon their work or to think of it before it hath wearyed the body at all And what they do they do unwillingly because they are in love with idleness Mal. 1.13 But the lowly and laborious are in love with diligence and work and therefore though they cannot avoid the wearyness of the body their willing minds will carry on the body as far as it can well go The diligent woman worketh willingly with her hands her candle goeth not out by night c. Prov. 31.13 c. Servants must do service with good will as to the Lord Ephes 6.7 If Ministers preach and labour willingly they have a reward 1 Cor. 9.17 But not if they are only driven on by necessity and the fear of woe 1 Pet. 5.2 What shall we do willingly if not our duties He that sineth willingly and serveth God and followeth his labour unwilingly shall be rewarded according to his will 6. The idle Sodomite doth love and chuse that kind of life which is easiest and hath least work to be done This is the chief provision by which he fulfilleth his fleshly lust An idle servant thinketh that the best place in which he shall have most ease and fulness An idle Parent will cast all the burden of his childrens teaching upon the Schoolmaster and the Pastor An idle Minister thinketh himself best where he may have no more labour than what tendeth to his publick applause and when he hath the most wealth and honour and least to do he taketh that to be the flourishing prosperity of the Church And indeed if our calling were like the souldiers to kill men and not liker the Surgeons to cure them we might think it is the best time when we have least employment But the faithful servant will be most thankful for that state of life in which he doth most good And as he taketh doing good to be the surest way of getting and receiving so he taketh the good of another as his own and anothers necessity is his necessity He knoweth that he is best who is likest unto God and that is he that is the most abundant in love and doing good Like the Sun that never resteth from moving or giving light and heat The running spring is pure when the standing water is muddy and corrupt The cessation of motion quickly mortifieth the blood He that said as to works of charity Be not weary of well doing for in due time you shall reap if you faint not Gal. 6.9 hath said so too as to our bodily labour in our common callings in the world 2 Thes 3.13 I know that a servant may be glad of a place where he is not oppressed with unreasonable labour and where he hath competent time for the learning of Gods Word And a poor man may be glad when he is freed from necessity of doing that which is to his hurt But otherwise no man but a fleshly bruit will wish or contrive for a life of idleness Object Is it not said Blessed are the dead for they rest from their labours Rev. 14.13 Ans True but mark that their works follow them And what are the works which follow you And note that it is not work or duty that they shall rest from For they rest not crying Holy Holy Holy Lord God Almighty c. But it is only their labours that is the painful sort of work and suffering proper to this sinful life The blessed indeed are freed in Heaven from this because they were not freed 〈◊〉 it on earth as the ungodly and slothful servant are 7. Lastly Idleness is seen by the work that is undone Pro. 24.30 The sluggards Vineyard is overgrown with weeds If your souls be unrenewed and your assurance of salvation and evidences yet to get and few the better for you in the world and you are yet unready for death and judgment you give too full a proof of idleness The diligent woman Prov. 31.16 c. could shew her labours in her treasures her Vineyard the cloathing and provisions of her family c. shew yours by the good which you have done in the world and by the preparation of your souls for a better world Let every man prove his own work that he may have rejoycing in himself alone and not in another Gal. 6.3 4. What case are your children in Are they taught or untaught What case is your soul in your fruit must judge you III. The mischiefs of this Sodomitical Idleness and the reasons against it are briefly these 1. It is contrary to the active nature of mans soul which in activity exceedeth the fire it self It is as natural for a soul to be active as for a stone or clod of earth to lie still And this active nature animateth the passive body to move it and use it in it's proper work And should this heavenly fire be imprisoned in the body which it should command and move Psal 104.23 Man goeth forth to his work and to his labour till the evening 2. It is contrary to the common course of nature Doth the Sun shine for you as well as for others or doth it not Doth all the frame of nature continue in its course the air the waters the summer and winter for you as well as for others or not If not then you take not your selves beholden to God for them And if you have no use for the Sun and other creatures you have no use for life for by them you live But if yea then what is it that they serve you for Did God ever frame you so glorious a retinuue to attend you only to sleep and laugh and play and to be idle what is all this for no higher an end or rather do you not by your idleness forfeit life and all these helps and maintainers of your lives 3. It is an unthankful reproach and blasphemy against the God of Nature yea and against the Lord your Redeemer to think that the wise Almighty God did make so noble a thing as a soul and place it in so curious an engine as the body where spirits and blood and heart and lungs are never idle but in constant motion and that he hath appointed us so glorious a retinue as aforesaid and all this to do nothing with or worse than nothing To sleep and rise and dress your selves and talk and eat and drink to tell men only that you are not dead lest they should mistake and bury you alive what is it but to put a scorn on your Creator and Redeemer to live as if he had created and redeemed you for no better and nobler ends than these 4. You do as it were pray for death or provoke God to take away your lives For if they be good for nothing else but idleness
a word or two or none at all in the daily prayers of most Professors And it is rare to hear any to pray with any importunity for their conversion Is this mens love to mankind Is this their love to the Kingdom of Christ or to God and Godliness Is God of as narrow a mind as you Are you and your party all the world or all the Church or all that is to be regarded and prayed for Direct 2. Do not only pray for them but study what is within the reach of your power to do for their conversion For though private men can do little in comparison of what Christian Princes might do who must not be told their duty by such as I. Yet somewhat might be done by Merchants and their Chaplains if skill and zeal were well united and somewhat might be done by writing and translating such books as are fittest for this use And greater matters might be done by training up some Scholars in the Persian Indostan Tartarian and such other languages who are for mind and body fitted for that work and willing with due encouragement to give up themselves thereto Were such a Colledge erected natives might be got to teach the languages and no doubt but God would put into the hearts of many young men to devote themselves to so excellent a service and of many rich men to settle Lands sufficient to maintain them and many Merchants would help them in their expedition But whether those that God will so much honour be yet born I know not Direct 3. Pray and labour for the Reformation and Concord of all the Christian Churches as the most probable means to win to Christ the world of Heathens and Vnbelievers If the Protestant Churches were more pure and peaceable more holy and more unanimous and charitable to each other it would do much to win the Papists that are near them And if the Papists and Greeks and Armenians and Abassines were more reformed wise and holy it would do much to win the Heathens and Mahometanes round about them They would be the salt of the earth and the lights of the world and the leaven which must leaven the whole lump The neighbouring Mahometanes and Heathens would see their good works and glorifie God Matth. 5.16 A holy harmless loving conversation is a Sermon which men of all languages can understand Thus as Apostles we might preach to men of several tongues though we have but one O that the sanctifying Spirit would teach Christians this art and reform and unite the Churches of Christ that they might be no longer a scandal to hinder the saving of the world about them It is the sense of Christs prayer before his death John 17.21 22 23 25. that they all may be one as thou Father art in me and I in thee that the world may believe that thou hast sent me I in them and thou in me that they may be made perfect in One and that the world may know that thou hast sent me and hast loved them as thou hast loved me Direct 4. Be sure at least that your holy loving and blameless loves be an example to these that are about you If you cannot convert Kingdoms nor get other men to do their duty towards it be sure that you do your part within your reach And believe that your lives must be the best part of your labours and that good works and love and good example must be the first part of your doctrine Direct 5. When you see that the world lyeth still in wickedness and there seemeth to be no possibility of a cure yet search the Scripture and so far as you can find any Prophecy or Promise of their conversion believe that God in his time will make it good Direct 6. But take heed that on this pretence you plunge not your selves into any inordinate studies or conceited expositions of the Revelations and other Scripture Prophecies as many have done to the great wrong of themselves and the Church of God By inordinate studies I mean 1. When you begin there where you should end and before you have digested the necessary greater truths in Theology you go to those that should come after them 2. When an undue proportion of your zeal and time and study and talk is bestowed upon these Prophecies in comparison of other things 3. When you are proudly and causlesly conceited of your singular expositions That when of ten of the learnedest and hardest studied Expositors of the Revelation perhaps in many things scarce two are of a mind yet when you differ from them all or all save one you can be as peremptory and confident in your opinion as if you were far wiser or more infallible than they 4. When you place a greater necessity in it than there is as if salvation or Church-communion lay upon your conceits Whereas God hath made the points that are of necessity to salvation to be few and plain Direct 7. When you look on the sin and misery of the world and see small hope of its recovery look up by Faith to that better world where all is Light and Love and Peace And pray for that coming of Christ when all this sin shall be brought to Judgment and wisdom and godliness be fully justified before all the world Let the badness of this world drive up your hearts to that above where all is better than you can wish Direct 8. When you are ready to stumble at the consideration of Gods desertion of so great a part of the world quiet your minds in the implicite submission to his infinite wisdom and goodness Dare you think that you are more gracious and merciful than God Or that it is meet you should know all the secrets of his providence who must not know the mysteries oâ— Government in the State or Kingdom where you live He that cannot rest in the wisdom will and mercies of infinite Goodness it self but must have all his own expectations satisfied shall have no rest And think withall how little a spot of Gods Creation this earthly world is and how incomprehensibly vast the superiour Regions are in comparison of it And if all the upper parts of the world be possessed with none but holy Spirits and even this lower earth have also many millions of Saints prepared here for the things above we have no more reason to judge God to be unmerciful because this lower world is so bad than we have to judge the King unmerciful when we look into the common Jayle nor to judge of his government by the Rogues in a Jayle but by his Court and all the subjects of his Kingdom If God should forsake no place but Hell of all his Creation you could not grudge at him as unmerciful And it is a very hard question whether this earth and the air about it be not the place of Hell when you consider that the Devils are cast down from Heaven and yet that they dwell and rule in
12.12 Esther 8.15 So that it still remaineth clear that loving our neighbours as our selves doth entitle us to the comforts of all mens health estates prosperity honours yea and their holiness and wisdom too and this without any such participation of their sorrows as should be any considerable ecclipse of our delights if we do it all regularly as God requireth us 6. If I love my neighbour as my self I am freed from all the trouble of cross interests in buying and selling in trespassing in Law-suits It will comfort me as much if he get by me as if I get by him If his bargain prove the better as if mine did if he have the better at Law as if it were judged to my self Yea all his successes prosperity and whatever good befalleth any that I know of in the world will all be mine 7. And I shall never be loth by death to leave the world while I have no cause to fear the missing of salvation because whatever I leave behind me will be possessed by such as I love as my self They will have life and time and health and comforts and whatever my nature is loth to leave Therefore whilest I live why should it not be as comforting to me to think that so many shall live and prosper whom I love as my self as if I were my self to live and prosper 8. Yea more than so I have by Love a part in the Joyes of Heaven before I am actually there For the Joyes of all those blessed souls and of those holy Angels are mine by participation so far as to cause me to rejoyce in their felicity as if it were my own as far as I can now apprehend it Yea the Glory of the Lord Jesus and the eternal blessedness of God himself would rejoyce us more than our own felicity if we loved him as much above our selves as we ought to do we should partake of our Masters joy And now judge whether loving God as God and our neighbours sincerely as our selves would not cure almost all the calamities of our minds and give us a kind of Heaven and be a cheap and certain way to have what we can wish in all the world and even to make all the world our own And whether it be not sin it self which is the first part of all mens hell and misery Object But my neighbours meat will not fill my belly nor his health doth not ease my pain nor his fire keep me warm Answ The flesh hath got the dominion indeed when men cannot distinguish between soul and body between the pain and pleasures of the body and of the mind I do not say that Love will change the pain or pleasure of your bodies but of your minds Your appetites will not be satisfied with your neighbours food but your minds may be comforted to see his welfare Your pain is not eased by your neighbours health but your minds may be pleased by it as much as if it were your own if you loved him as much as you do your self And therefore many in a danger have saved the life of a Prince a Captain a Parent a Child a Friend with the voluntary loss of their own Object This is all true but who is there in the world that doth it or findeth it possible to love another as himself And how can that be a duty which is to nature it self an impossibility Therefore let us first know what this duty is of loving our neighbours as our selves Answ Doubtless if it be the summ of the Law all true Christians do it in sincerity though not in perfection And as to the sense of it 1. You must distinguish between that sensitive and passionate affection which is in the soul as sensitive and is common to beasts with men and that rational appetite which doth will and chuse and is pleased according to the conduct of pure reason The first we doubt not will be still more to our selves than others and it is not the use of grace to destroy it but to rule and moderate it 2. You must distinguish between Love and outward actions which are the expressions of it When our Love is due as much to one as to another yet our outward actions may be under a particular Law which obligeth us to do that for one which we are not bound to do for others As to maintain our own children families servants and so our selves rather than others And the reason is because the difference of individuals maketh that fit for one which is not fit for another and so maketh every man the fittest chuser for himself and those that are neerest to him and nature instigateth him to the greatest care in doing it And all good must be done in a regular order or else confusion will destroy it And nature maketh this most orderly As every Parish must keep their own poor and yet must love other poor as well 3. You must know that Love is formally nothing but complacence as aforesaid but Love joyned with a will and purpose to do good to another is called Love of benevolence when yet the Love there is one thing and the doing good or purpose to do it is another and I may in obedience to God purpose and do more good to one whom I am bound to Love not more but less And now you may see what it is to love our neighbours as our selves 1. God must be loved above our neighbours and our selves and both must be loved purely as related and subordinate to him and for his sake There is a double respect which all things have to God 1. As they contain that excellency which he hath put upon them which is some likeness representation or signification of himself and is called his Glory shining in the creature that is it 's derived Goodness 2. As they conduce to his further service and may honour him and please him Thus all creatures must be loved only as a means even a means declaring God being derivatively and significantly good and useful and as a means to serve and please him 2. Therefore this being the formal reason of our Rational Love must also be the measure of it à quatenus ad quantum As it is certain that I must love that best which is best because I must love it only as good so it is certain that that is best which hath most likeness to God and most of his Glory upon it and that which is most pleasing to him and useful to his service Therefore if my neighbour be better than I am I must judge him better and love him better 3. Though natural self-appetite and self-preservation by which all creatures are for themselves only not feeling the hunger cold pain of others be not sinful but the effect of creating individuation yet Reason was perfect and the Will could perfectly follow Reason in its complacency and choice till sin corrupted it Reason could judge that best which was best and the Will
fully shew so also shall the Saints And it is not likely that this is wholly deferred till the resurrection but as they have a Glory before that with Christ and his Angels so they have now their part in this Superintendency before though both will be greater at the Resurrection If any say what use will there be of our superiority after the world is destroyed I answer 1. The Apostle Peter plainly telleth us though some would force his words into the dark that we according to his promise expect a new Heaven and a new Earth in which dwelleth righteousness And the Creation groaneth to be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the Sons of God Rom. 8.21 And the Heavens must contain Christ till the times of Restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy Prophets since the world began Acts 3.21 2. And he that said the Saints shall judge the Angels seemeth so intimate that the Devils with the wicked will be in a state of subjection or servitude to them hereafter Certain it is that Michael and his Angels shall be the conquerours of the Dragon and his Angels Rev. 12.7 9. And that the Serpents head shall be bruised by all the womans seed though chiefly by the Captain of our salvation But this shall now suffice concerning their employment 3. Behold also by Faith what the departed Saints are now enjoying And what is said of their place and work will tell you that They enjoy the fight of their glorified Head Joh. 17.24 They are with him in Paradise and therefore also enjoy the sight of the Glory of God Being absent from the body they are present with the Lord 2 Cor. 5.8 They see not as in a glass as here they did but with open face They enjoy the pleasures of a more perfect knowledge of God and all his wondrous works than this world affords They are happy in their works in the perfect Love and Praises of God and they are filled with the pleasures of his Love to them This is their fruition 4. Let Faith also behold what evils they are delivered from 1. From a heavy drossy body which since the fall hath been an enemy a prison and fetters to the soul and therefore they here groaned to be better cloathed 2 Cor. 5.4 5. Rom. 8.21 2. From the worlds temptations 3. From wicked mens malice and persecutions 4. From sickness pain necessities labours weariness and all the troublesome effects of sin 5. From all troublesome passions desires anger discontent disappointments griefs and cares and fears of evil 6. Specially from the fears of Hell and the doubts of their own sincerity and salvation and from the desertions of God and the terrible sense of his displeasure 7. From the troubles and errours of ignorance and all our natural imperfection 8. From the fears of death which now is more painful than death it self 9. From the suggestions of Satan and his malicious vexing disquieting temptations and from his flattering allurements which are much worse 10. From the company and the tempting or grieving examples of ungodly men 11. From all sin it self and all our moral imperfections and defects 12. And finally from all danger and fear of ever losing the felicity they possess These are the immunities of the blessed 2. When Faith hath seen the Saints in Glory look back and think next what they were lately here on earth that it may help you to compare your state and theirs And here you will see 1. That they were lately in flesh as we now are They had bodies as drossie as vile as frail as burdensome as ours are It cost them as dear not as it doth the sensual but as it doth the temperate person now to keep them up a while for the service to which they were appointed 2. They had pains and sicknesses as we have The souls in Heaven have escaped thither from bodies which have lain as long tormented with the Stone with Stranguries Collicks Gripes Convulsions Consumptions Feavers and other the most tedious painful and lothsome diseases as sober men on earth now feel 3. Satan was as malicious to them as he is to us and to many of them as troublesome he haunted them with as ugly temptations to the greatest sins to unbelief and pride and despair and self-murder and horrid blasphemy as he doth any of us Yea he did so by Christ himself Matth. 4. 4. They met with as many allurements to worldliness sensuality pride and lust in the worlds deceiving baits and flatteries as now we do and were fain to proceed every step towards Heaven by conflict and conquest as we must do 5. They were in as many wants and straits in as poor and low and despised a state as we are now They were tempted to cares and murmurings and discontents through their wants and crosses as well as we 6. They have been in dangers and in fears and many a time at the brink of death before it came and put to cry to God for deliverance in the terrours and anguish of their hearts Their flesh and heart and friends have failed them and all the creatures cast them off 7. They have gone through far greater persecutions for the sake of Christ and righteousness than ever we did So persecuted they the Prophets before you Mat. 5.11 12. Which of the Prophets did not your Fathers kill and persecute even of them for whom their posterity erected Monuments Matth. 23.36 37 38. We have not resisted unto blood as many of them did Heb. 11. The same and greater afflictions which we have undergone were accomplished on our brethren in this world 1 Pet. 5.9 We go through the same conflict as they did Phil. 1.30 We are no more falsly nor odiously slandered in any of our sufferings than they were Mat. 5.11 12. 8. They were men of like passions as we are for so James saith even of Elias that was carryed to Heaven without our kind of death They had their ignorances uncertainties doubts mistakes their dark thoughts of God and that world where they now are Many of them knew as little of it till they saw it as we do now Many a fearful trembling hour many a thought that God had forsaken them and that the day of grace was past have many of them had as well as we 9. Yea they were imperfect in all their graces they had an imperfect faith an imperfect hope an imperfect Love to God and man and many an hour in such groans as ours now are O when shall we be saved from our darkness and unbelief when shall we better love the Lord 10. They had their actual sins also Though none that were regnant after conversion their obedience was imperfect as ours now is Many of their faults and falls are left on record for our warning There is not one humane soul in Heaven besides our Saviours that was not once a sinner They all came thither
the interest of the Gospel and Kingdom of Christ and to promote the Gospel by silencing or prohibiting the most able zealous faithful Preachers of it and to go with a drawn sword among the people and say Love us or we will kill you Love Christ and us or the inquisition and wrack shall reach you love To see them take the terrifying of men by corporal penalties to be their chiefest work and the way of Love to be but such popularity as destroyeth the Church Will not now and then a walk in Heaven be a great refreshing to the mind that hath been long haunted with such hideous and ugly specters as all these Will not some converse with the most wises and holy and peaceable Society whose Life is Love be a great recreation to your minds when such sights as these have made them sad Moreover you have many burdens of your own to bear your own ignorance your own temptations your passions your wants and worst of all the relicks of your sin which you cannot bear with that hope and support which is needful to you without oft looking to the happiness of those that have overcome all these and are now at rest And you have many excellent duties to perform which will not be so well done without looking oft on such a Copy Yea you have the fears of death to overcome which will not be so easily done as by looking to all the world of souls that have already gone that way before you Yea in your converse with God himself though you have one only sufficient Mediator you will cast your selves upon great disadvantages if your thoughts leave out the blessed society of Saints and Angels who are nearest to him You cast away your stepping-stones or stairs of ascent and you will but tempt your selves to look at God as through the great interposing gulf and hinder the needful familiarity of your thoughts above Neglect not then a help so needful to you in your present state 12. Lastly The remembrance and observation of the heavenly inhabitants is the way that is commended and commanded to all Believers and that as part of their ordinary duty in their prayers to God He hath not only minded us that Abraham Isaac and Jacob are still living to prove the resurrection Matth. 12.27 but hath also comforted the expectants of Heaven by describing the joy of Lazarus as in Abrahams bosome Luke 16.22 23. and introduced Abraham as pleading Lazarus's cause v. 25 26. And hath made it a part of the comfortable description of his Kingdom that we shall sit down with Abraham Isaac and Jacob in it Matth. 8.11 And when he would appear transfigured in a glimpse of his glory to Peter James and John he would not do it alone but with Moses and Elias talking with him Matth. 17. And the comfort which Paul giveth to the suffering Thessalonians is Rest with us 2 Thes 1.6 not only Rest with Christ but with his servants And when he describeth the glory of Christs appearing it is that He shall come to be glorified in his Saints and admired in all them that do believe vers 11 12. As himself describeth his appearing as with his glorious Angels Mat. 25.31 All the holy Angels with him Whether it be all the blessed Spirits of the higher worlds or only all those of them who were deputed to the service of the Church on earth Matth. 18.10 and so were made Angels to man I pass over And Henoch the seventh from Adam prophesied saying Behold the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his Saints c Jude v. 14. Many other Scriptures tell us that we must not leave out the Saints and Angels when we look towards Heaven by faith and when we converse and walk above But this is but as on the by That which I intend for your special observation is the third Petition of the Lords Prayer where the annexed clause which seemeth to referr to all the three first Petitions doth set the heavenly Church before us as the Pattern of that obedience to the will of God which both we and all the world must imitate and pray to God that we may imitate Thy Will be done on Earth as it is done in Heaven Here Christ requireth all Christians in Prayer to look up to the Heavenly Society and to consider how they do the Will of God and to make it their Pattern and in their daily Prayers as men that long for their celestial perfection to pray that they may become their imitators even as the Scholars in the lowest form in the school must look at those in the highest form and desire and endeavour to attain to their degree You see them that this is a commanded ordinary duty Direct 7. Consider next wherein it is that your converse with Angels and the perfected spirits of the just consisteth that you may neither by your mistake neglect it nor carry it too far I. Negatively 1. It is not a Deifying them as the Heathen did their Hero's and their Divi They are still but Gods Ministers and must have nothing ascribed to them of the Divine Prerogative 2. Nor doth it consist in building Temples and Altars to their honour which savoureth at least of a compliance with Idolatry 3. Nor doth it at all consist in praying to them 1. Because as we know that they are not omnipresent or omniscient so 2. We know not at all when they are present and when they do hear us and when not 3. Nor do we know which of them it is that is at any time present with us 4. Nor have we any precept president promise or other encouragement to such prayers in Gods Word but rather much to keep us from it 4. Nor yet is it in desiring them to pray for us For that which is their duty they better know than we and it is little that we know of their capacities or opportunities And we have no Word of God neither to encourage us to this 5. Nor doth it consist in chusing any one of them above the rest for our guardian and protector and so committing our selves to their care For we have no reason to be so presumptuous as to think that we have the choice of our own Protector or that it is a matter at all referred to us or that they will undertake it ever the more for our choice 6. Nor yet may we pretend to know what particular Saint or Angel is deputed of God to our protection For there is not the least discovery of it in Nature or in the Word of God And he that pretendeth extraordinary revelation of it must be sure to prove it 7. Nor may we pray for them as if they were in purgatory or in any misery or danger which did need our prayers for them For we have neither reason to believe the thing nor any precept or encouragement to the work And as all these seven are unlawful things so these also that follow must be medled
thoughts of dying that methinks you should quietly resign it to the grave which hath been so long calling for it Especially considering what it hath done by the temptations of a vitiated appetite and sense against your souls into how many sins it hath drawn you and what grief and shame it hath procured you and what assurance and heavenly pleasures it hath hindered and how many repentings and purposes and promises it hath frustrated or undone Methinks we should conceive that we have long enough dwelt in such an habitation Direct 4. Foresee by Faith the resurrection of the body when it shall be raised a spiritual body unto Glory and shall be no more an enemy to the soul Direct 5. Renew your familiarity with the blessed ones above Remember that the great Army of God the souls of the just from Adam till now are all got safe through this Red Sea and are triumphing in Heaven already and that it is but a few straglers in the end of the world that are left behind And which part then should you desire to be with And remember how ready those Angels which rejoyced at your conversion are to be your Convoy unto Christ Luke 16.23 Direct 6. But especially think with greatest confidence and delight that Jesus your Head is entred into the Heavens before you and is making intercession for you and is preparing you a place and loveth your company and will not lose it You shall find him ready to receive your souls and present them spotless unto God as the fruit of his mediation He will have you be with him to behold his glory and none shall take you out of his hands Let his Love therefore draw up your desires and stablish your hearts in confidence and rest Direct 7. Remember that all that are living must come after you and how quickly their turn will come and would you wish to be exempt from death alone which the whole world below must needs submit to Direct 8. Think still of the Resurrection of Christ your Head that you may see that death is a conquered thing and what a pledge you have of a life to come Direct 9. Dwell still in the believing fore thoughts of the blessedness of the life to which you go as it is your personal perfection and the perfect Love and fruition of God with his perfect joyous praise Remember still what it is to see and know the Lord and all things else in him which are fit for us to know And labour to revive your Love to God and then you revive your desires and preparations Direct 10. Give up your selves wholly to the Will of God and think how much better it is for upright Souls to be in Gods hand than in your own The Will of God is the first and last the Original and End of all the creatures Besides the Will of Infinite Goodness there is no final Rest for humane souls But mans will is the Alpha and Omega the beginning or first efficient and the ultimate end of all obliquity and sin Be bold then and thankful in your approach to God remembring how much more safe and comfortable it is to be for life and death at Gods disposal than our own Bâ—sides these read the Directions against the fear of death in my Book of Self-denyal and what is said in my Saints Rest and other the Treatises before mentioned CHAP. XXVIII How by Faith to look aright to the Coming of Jesus Christ in Glory BEcause I have said so much of this also in my Saints Rest and in many other Treatises I will now pass it over with these brief Directions Direct 1. Delude not your souls nor corrupt your faith and hope by placing Christs Kingdom in things too low or that are utterly uncertain Think not so carnally of the second coming of Christ as the Jews did of the first who looked for an earthly Kingdom and despised the spiritual and heavenly And make not the unknown time or other circumstances of his coming to be to you as the certain and necessary things lest you do as many of those called Millenaries or Fifth-Monarchy men among us who have turned the doctrine of Christian hope into an outragious fury to bring Christ down before his time and to make themselves Rulers in the world that they might presently reign under the name of the Reign of Christ and have by seditious rebellious railing at Christs Ministers and hating those that are not of their mind done much to promote the Kingdom of Satan while they cryed up nothing but the Kingdom of Christ Direct 2. Do all that you can in this day of grace to promote Christs present Kingdom in the world and that will prove your best preparation for his glorious coming To that end labour with all your might to set up Life and Light and Love abhorring Hypocrisie Ignorance and Vncharitableness turn not Religion into a ceremony carkass or dead Imagery or Form Nor yet into Darkness Errour or a humane wandering distracting maze Nor into selfish proud censorious faction Build not Christs Kingdom as the Devil would do by hypocritical dead shews or by putting out his Lights or by schism division hatred and strife Read James 3. Direct 3. Yet leave not out of your faith and hope any certain part of Christs glorious Kingdom We know that we shall for ever be with the Lord and in the presence of the Father in heavenly glory and withall that we shall be in the New Jerusalem and that there shall be a new Heaven and a new Earth in which shall dwell righteousness and that we shall judge the Angels and the world And if we know not the circumstances of all these parts let not therefore any of them be denyed 1 Thes 4.11 2 Cor. 5.1 3 8. Rev. 20. 22. 2 Pet. 3.13 Direct 4. Think what a day of Glory it will be to Jesus Christ Matth. 25.31 O how different from his state of humiliation He will not come again to be despised spit on buffeted blasphemed and crucified Pilate and Herod must be arraigned at his bar it is the marriage-day of the Lamb a day appointed for his glory Rev. 21 22. Direct 5. Think what a day of honour it will be to God the Father how his Truth will be vindicated his Love and Justice gloriously demonstrated Matth. 25. 2 Thes 1.8 9. Direct 6. Think what a day it will be to all the children of God to see their Lord when he purposely cometh to be admired and glorified in them 2 Thes 1.11 12. To see him in whom they have believed whom they loved and longed for 2 Pet. 3.11 12 13. 1 Pet. 1.8 To see him who is their dearest Head and Lord who will justifie them before all the world and sentence them to life eternal To see the day in which they must receive the end of all their faith and hope their prayers labours and patience to the full 1 Pet. 1.8 9. Rev. 2 3.
Psal 5.4 5. 9.7 James 1.15 By this time methinks you should better know what the use and meaning of the Gospel and Grace and Ministers is and what is the design of Preaching and in what manner it should be done Would you have us silent or talk to you as in jeast while we see such a day as this before us Every true Preacher spaketh to you with Judgment and Eternity in his eye Our work is to prepare you or to help you to prepare to meet the Lord and to be ready for your final sentence O then with what seriousness should we speak and should you bear and should both we and you prepare It 's pitty to see people hear Sermons many years and not so much as know what a Sermon is or what is the use and nature of it If our business were to draw away Disciples after us and to make our selves the admired heads of factions then we would speak those perverse things contrary to the doctrine which you have been taught by which our ends might be carryed on Acts 20.30 Rom. 16.17 Or if our design were to be high and great and rich we would flatter the great ones of the world that we might rule you with violence instead of love Or if we consulted our case we should spare much of this labour and let you silently alone at cheaper rates to the flesh than now we speak to you But O who can be silent who is engaged in this sacred office when he foreseeth what will shortly be the issue of our prevailing or not prevailing with you Now as we love Christ we must feed his sheep and necessity is laid upon us and woe be unto us if we preach not the Gospel 1 Cor. 9.16 Our preaching Christ is to warn every man and teach every man that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus Col. 1.22 And to perswade men as knowing the terrours of the Lord 2 Cor. 9.10 11. Heb. 12.25 29. If it were only that we loved so to hear our selves talk or to be cryed up by many followers we deserved to pay dear indeed for such Preaching But when our Lord loved and pittied souls at the rate of his sufferings and bloody death surely our rates are not above the worth of souls O what a doleful sight is it to us to foresee by faith how loud how earnestly you would knock and cry when the door is shut and hope is gone And what you would then give for one of these daies which you now are a weary of and for a drop of that mercy which now doth beg your entertainment What then remaineth but as ever you believe that day and as ever you care what becometh of your souls and bodies for ever and as ever you would not be chargâ—d and condemned as final and obstinate refuâ—ers of mercy and salvation yea and for wronging the Ministers of Christ by making them study and preach in vain That you harden not your hearâ—s but hear Christs voice to day while it is called to day before the door of grace be shut O cry while crying and begging may do good Meet Christ now as may best prepare you to meet him then Meet him now as the Prodigal met his Father Luke 15. Saying I have sinned and am no more worthy to be called thy Son make me one of thy hired servants Meet God as Abigail met David 1 Sam. 25.32 34. with an offering of peace even Christ apprehended by an obedient faith When she heard from David Except thou hadst hasted and come to meet me all had been destroyed Meet him to enquire of his sacred Oracle what is like to become of thy soul as the King of Syria sent Hazael with a present to Elisha to meet him saying Shall I recover of this disease 2 King 8.8 Or as Paul met with Christ when he humbled and converted him saying Who art thou Lord and what wouldst thou have me do Acts 9. Meet him as the men of Israel and Juda did David their King 2 Sam. 19. striving who should first own and honour him Amos 4.12 Meet God thus nâ—w when hâ— caâ—â—eth you by his Word when he perswadeth you by his Mâ—â—â—sters when he moveth you by his Spirit when he allureth and obligeth you by his mercies while he driveth you by affliction while he waiteth on you by his patience and by all thâ—se calleth you to repent to love him and to obey to set your hearts on Heaven if ever you hope it should be your portion Meet him thus now and then you may joyfully meet him in his glory II. And O all you that are true Believers lift up your heads with hope and joy for your final deliverance draweth nigh The world hath but a little while longer to abuse you Satan hath but a little while more to molest you The blinded Sodomites shall not long be groping for your doors You shall not long walk among snares and dangers nor live with enemies nor with troublesome unsuitable friends You have not long to bear the burden of that wearisome body of that seducing flesh of those unruly passions or those disordered thoughts you have not long to groan under the misery of that troubled and doubting conscience that darkened mind those dull affections those remnants of unbelief stupidity and carnality nor to cry out with weariness from day to day O when shall I know God better and love him more Death is coming and quickly after Christ is coming One will begin and the other perfect your full deliverance and put an end to these complaints And remember that though Death hath somewhat in it which to nature is terrible God having made the love of Life to be the pondus or spring of motion to the great engine of the sensitive world yet what is there in the second coming of Christ that should seem unwelcome to you You shall not meet an enemy but a friend your surest and your greatest friend one that hath done more for you than all the world hath done and one that is ready now to do much more and shew his love and friendship to the height One that will be then your surest friend when all the world shall cast you off You go not to be condemned but to be openly justified yea honoured before all the world and sentenced to endless glory You go not to be numbered with the enemies of holiness or with the slothful and unprofitable servants but to be perfectly incorporated into the heavenly society and to see the glorified faces of Henoch Moses and Elias of Peter and John and Paul and Timothy and all the Saints that ever you knew or whose writings you have ever read or whose names you ever heard of millions more You go to be better acquainted with those Angels that rejoyced at your repentance and that ministred for your good and that bore you in their hands and were your continual guard both night and day You go