and Instruments of Building I. ONE sort of Means necessary to the obtaining of Heaven and that which more directly and immediately respects it is the Practice of those Virtues in the Perfection whereof the Heavenly Life consists For we find by experience that all Heavenly Virtues are to be acquired and perfected only by Practice That as all bad Dispositions are acquired and improved into Habits by bad Practices and Customs so are all the contrary virtuous ones by the contrary Practices For Religion proceeds in the methods of Nature and carries us on from the Acts to the Dispositions and from the Dispositions to the Habits of Virtue And by the same method the Divine Grace which accompanies Religion does ordinarily work its Effects upon the spirits of men not by an instantaneous Infusion of virtuous Habits into the Will but by persuading them to the Practice of those Virtues that are contrary to their vicious Habits and to persist in the practice of them till they have mortified those Habits and throughly habituated and inured them selves to these So that the Grace of God is like a Graff which though it is put into a Stock which is quite of another kind doth yet make use of the Faculties and Juices of the Stock and so by cooperating with them converts it by degrees into its own Nature And this is exactly agreeable to the common experience of men who in the beginning of their Reformation are so far from acting vertuously from Habit and Inclination that it goes against the very Grain of their Nature and they would much rather return to their vicious courses if they were not chased and pursued by the Terrours of an awakened Conscience and when afterwards they come to act upon a more ingenuous Principle yet still they find in themselves a great Averseness and Reluctancy to it and 't is a great while usually ere they arrive to a Habit or Facility of acting virtuously But then by perseverance in the practice of Virtue they are more and more inclined and disposed to it and so by degrees it becomes easie and natural to them If therefore we would ever arrive to that Perfection of Virtue which the Heavenly State implies it must be by the Practice of Virtue by a continual training and exercising our selves in all the parts of the Heavenly Life which by degrees will wear off the Difficulty of it and adapt and familiarize our Nature to it 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Those things which they that learn ought to do they learn by doing them Thus we learn Devotion by Prayer Submission to God by Denying our selves Charity by giving Alms and Meekness by Forgiving Injuries And we may as reasonably expect to commence learned without study as virtuous without the Practice of Virtue Since therefore the Formal Happiness of our reasonable Natures consists in the Perfection of all the Heavenly virtues and 't is by these alone that we can rellish and enjoy the blissful Objects of Heaven it hence follows that the Practice of those virtues is the most direct and immediate Means to obtain the Blessed End of our Religion But then II. ANOTHER sort of Means necessary to our obtaining of Heaven consists of certain Instrumental Duties by which we are to acquire improve and perfect these Heavenly Virtues What these Means are will be hereafter largely shown All that I shall say of them at present is That they are such as are no farther good and useful than as they are the Means of Heavenly Virtue and do tend towards the acquiring improving and perfecting it For the whole Duty of Man may be distributed into these Two Generals viz. The Religion of the End and Religion of the Means The Religion of the End contains all that Heavenly Virtue wherein the Perfection and Happiness of Humane Nature consists and this the Apostle distributes into three particulars viz. Sobriety Righteousness and Godliness The Religion of the Means comprehends all that Duty which does either naturally or by Institution respect and drive at this Religion of the End and that all other Duty that is not it self a Natural Branch and Part of it doth respect and drive at it the Apostle assures us when he tells us that the Gospel or Grace of God was revealed from Heaven for this very purpose to teach us to deny all ungodliness and worldly lusts and to live soberly and righteously and godly in this present world And if we do not use the Religion of the Means to this purpose it is altogether useless and insignificant For the purpose of all Religious Duties is either 1. To reconcile men to God and God to them or 2. To perfect the Humane Nature or 3. To intitle men to Heaven or 4. To qualifie and dispose them for the Heavenly Life To neither of which the Religion of the Means is any farther useful than as it produces and promotes in us those Heavenly Virtues which are implied in the Religion of the End For I. IT is no further useful towards the reconciling Us to God and God to Us. For there can be no hearty Reconciliation between adverse Parties without there be a mutual Likeness and Agreement of Natures Now the Carnal Mind which includes all that is repugnant to the Heavenly Virtues the Apostle tells us is Enmity against God Rom. vii 17 that is hath a natural Antipathy to the Purity and Goodness of the Divine Nature And this Antipathy the same Apostle tells us is founded in our wicked works Coloss. i. 21 So that though we should practise never so diligently all that is contained in the Religion of the Means though we should pray and hear and receive Sacraments c. with never so much Zeal and Constancy yet all this will be insignificant as to the reconciling our Natures to God unless it destroy in us that Carnal Mind and those wicked Works which render us so averse to his Goodness And though God bears a hearty good Will to all that are capable of Good and embraces his whole Creation with the out-stretched Arms of his Benevolence yet he cannot be supposed to be pleased with or delighted in any but such as resemble Him in those amiable Graces of Purity and Goodness for which he loves Himself For he loves not Himself meerly because he is Himself which would be a blind Instinct rather than a Reasonable Love but because He is Good and he loves Himself above all other things because he knows Himself to be the Highest and most Perfect Good and consequently He loves all other things proportionably as they approach and resemble Him in Goodness And indeed if He loved Vs for any other Reason besides that for which he loves Himself he would not have infinite Reason to love Himself because he would not have that Reason to love Himself for which he loves and takes delight in Vs. Since therefore there is nothing but our Resemblance of God can reconcile Him to Us and since our Resemblance of Him
when ever he surveys himself in the glorious mirrour of his own Mind he discerns nothing in himself but what is infinitely lovely nothing but what exactly corresponds with the fairest Ideas of his own infinite Reason Whereas if upon an impossible Supposal it were otherwise there would arise a Civil War within his own Bosom against which Omnipotence it self could not protect or defend him For in despight of himself he would be continually exposed to the just reproaches of his own Mind and his own All-seeing Eye would every moment detect and libel and upbraid him and render him a most inglorious Spectacle to himself So that he would be so far from being infinitely pleased and satisfied with himself that his own infallible Reason would be an everlasting vexation to him AND so will ours be to us unless we take care to imitate God in those his divine Perfections from whence his infinite self-satisfaction arises For so long as we are conscious to our selves that we wilfully swerve and deviate from the great Exemplar of our rational Natures we cannot but be ashamed of and condemn our selves and be highly dissatisfied with our own Actions Our Conscience must necessarily reproach our Will and our Reason upbraid our base Inclinations Now what an intolerable plague is it for a man to be forced to make Invectives against himself and continually to carry his own Satyrs in his bosom In this life indeed what by disguising our Faults with specious Names or colouring them over with plausible Pretences what by bribing our Consciences with false Presumptions or diverting our selves from listning to their reproaches by hurrying into Vice or Business we may happily make a shift to deal well enough with our selves But alas what shall we do when we come into the other world where all fair Colour and Pretence shall be wiped off our Vices and We shall appear to our selves in our own naked and undisguised Ugliness where all our false Presumption shall be baffled by a woful Experience and all the din of worldly Pleasure and Business in which we were wont to drown the clamours of our Conscience shall be for ever silenced so that we shall be exposed without Fence or Guard to the furious Reflections of our own mind and lie stark naked under the lash of an enraged Conscience for ever O good God! what Tongue can express the intolerable Anguish of such a State wherein our own Deformities shall be continually objected to our Eyes and we shall have nothing to palliate or excuse them but be always forced to condemn and hate and curse our selves for them and yet not be able to correct and reform them wherein we shall still be hurried on to such Actions by our own furious Inclinations as when we have done them will startle and amaze us set on our Reason and Conscience to worry us with their reproachful Reflections yet in despight of all their Reproaches we shall still reiterate and repeat them Like a desperate Murderer who having killed an innocent Person reflects with Horrour upon his own Act tears his Hair beats his Breast curses and calls himself a thousand Villains but being hereby chased into a greater Fury instead of reforming he grows more mischievous and so murthers another and then rages afresh at his own Act but still the more he rages the more he murthers And this will necessarily be our State in the other world if through our neglect of imitating God we go away thither under an habitual Contrariety of nature to him Besides that we shall be wholly indisposed to those beatifical Acts of divine Love Worship and Contemplation in which as I have shewed a great part of the pleasure Heaven consists For since all Love is founded in Likeness and Likeness is the effect of Imitation how is it possible we should love God unless we imitate him and if we do not love him what Pleasure can we take in contemplating and adoring him WHEREFORE in prosecution of its great Design which is to make us happy the Gospel strictly requires us to be always imitating so far as they are imitable the Perfections and Actions of our heavenly Father to endeavour to form our Natures to his to rectifie the Features and Lineaments of our Souls by his most amiable Idea to be continually framing our tempers by the noble pattern of his Mercy and Goodness his Justice Purity and Wisdom that so being new cast as it were in the perfect mould of his Nature we may be transformed into living Images of him So Ephes. v. 1 be ye therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 imitators or followers of God as dear Children i. e. that so you may resemble him in the Qualities of your Minds as children do their Parents in the Lineaments of their Bodies And this is the sense of all those Evangelical Injunctions which require us to be pure as God is pure merciful as he is merciful and perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect that is to take example by God in the whole course of our lives and trace and follow him in all his imitable Perfections by putting on that new that god-like man that divine temper and disposition which after God that is according to the pattern of his Nature is created in righteousness and true holiness Ephes. iv 24 This therefore is an essential part of our Christian Life to set God always before our Eyes as the great Pattern of our Lives and Actions and to endeavour constantly to write after him and transcribe his Graces into our Natures that so when we go away into the other World we may carry with us at least a rude and imperfect draught of his blessed Image upon our Minds such as when we are removed from the manifold impediments of flesh and blood and the perpetual diversions of this sensitive World and admitted to a near view of God may be a prevailing byass upon our Wills and incline us to imitate him for ever For if for the main we are here transformed by imitating God into a godlike Temper and Disposition all those involuntary contrarieties to him which by reason of our Ignorance of his Nature of our bodily Temper and the manifold Temptations we are here exposed to are still remaining in our Natures will be immediately extinguished upon our arrival into the other World where being freed from all our misconceptions of God from all the repugnancies of our bodily Temper to him and from all those Temptations that were wont to avert us from him we shall have no involuntary Disposition or Inclination in us and then our Wills being already predominantly inclined to follow God and take example by him and having no contrary Inclination to contend with we shall presently attend to and imitate his Perfections with the greatest Vigour Freedom and Alacrity of Soul So that now we shall be so intensely fixed to chuse and act like God who is the Example and Pattern of our Natures that we shall everlastingly
never returning to them more whatsoever Temptations may invite or Difficulties encounter and oppose us Which Resolution is in Scripture called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we translate Repentance but in strictness signifies a Change of Mind or of Purpose and Resolution a renouncing our sinful Purposes and solemnly ingaging our selves in a contrary Resolution of living soberly and righteously and godly in this present World So that wheresoever the Precept of Repentance is expressed by this word the meaning of it is to oblige us to change the wicked Purposes of our Hearts into a firm and serious Resolution of forsaking all ungodliness and worldly lusts and intirely resigning up our selves to the Will and Disposal of God And hence it is that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 i. e. to change our minds and convert or turn are in Scripture so often put together the one denoting the inward Change of our Resolution the other the outward Change of our Practice pursuant to it So Acts iii. 19 repent and be converted and Acts xxvi 20 that they should repent and turn to God and do works meet for repentance that is that they should resolve to forsake their Sins and submit to their Duty and put their Resolution into Practice And so that other word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which we also render Repentance strictly signifies an after-care that is pursuant unto this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or Change of Resolution NOW this Repentance or Change of Resolution is the Initial Act of the Religion of Sinners whereby they resume their inward man from the Service of sin and submit and resign their Wills to God whereby in Heart and Will they forsake the Devils Colours and list themselves Volunteers under the Banner of Christ. And being so it ought to be performed with so much the more Care and Preparation For the Beginning of all great Enterprizes is the Ground and Foundation of them which if it be not firmly laid will be apt to sink under the Superstructures and to endanger their Ruin and Downfal Now all the foregoing Duties being necessary Preparations to a good Resolution we ought before we resolve to spend a considerable portion of time in the diligent Practice of them and not to resolve hand over head till we are duly and throughly prepared for it till by exercising our Faith and Consideration c. we have broken and tamed our perverse and obstinate Wills and throughly persuaded them to part with every Sin and to approve of and consent to every Duty that is comprehended in a through Resolution of Amendment And if when we are about to resolve we find upon a strict Examination any secret Reserve or Exception in our Wills if there be any Lust which they are not throughly persuaded to part with or any Duty to which they are not fully reconciled we ought for that time to forbear resolving and to go on in the Exercise of the preparatory Duties till we find our reluctant Wills throughly conquered and persuaded by them For if there be any leak left open in our Resolution for any Sin to creep in at that will be sure to insinuate in the next Storm of temptation and if it should not let in other Sins after it as 't is a thousand to one but it will 't will by its own single Weight sink us into eternal Perdition Wherefore before ever we enter into the Resolution of Amendment we ought to be very careful that our Wills be throughly prepared for it that they be reduced to a fair Compliance with the matter we are resolving upon and effectually dissuaded out of all Resolution to the contrary and when this is done we may chearfully proceed to the forming of our good Resolution WHICH ought to be performed by us between God and our selves with the greatest Seriousness and Solemnity For now our Hearts being ready we are to betake our selves to our Knees and in these or such like words to devote our selves to God O thou blessed Author of my Being I am now fully convinced that I ow my self to thee by a thousand Ties and Obligations and am infinitely sorry and ashamed that I have so long sequestred and withdrawn my self from thee to serve my own base Lusts and Affections Wherefore now in thy dread Presence and in that of thy holy Angels I here intirely resign up my self unto thee and do resolve without any Reserve or Exception that whatsoever Temptations I may meet with for the future I will never wilfully withdraw or alienate my self from thee more From henceforth I heartily renounce all my Sins and particularly those that have been most dear and pleasant to me and do faithfully promise to continue thy true and loyal Subject as long as I breath and that whatsoever Invitations I may have to the contrary I will never revoke the Resolution I now make or any part of it So help me O my God AND having thus solemnly resolved it will be highly necessary that for the farther Ratification of it we should yet more solemnly repeat it in the holy Sacrament wherein according to the Custom of Feasts upon Sacrifices God and every faithful Communicant do mutually re-oblige themselves to one another and upon the sacred Symbols of the Body and Blood of Jesus do ratifie to each other each others Part of that everlasting Covenant which by the Federal Rite of his meritorious Death and Sacrifice was inviolably sealed and confirmed So that when we take those holy Elements into our hands which the Priest in Gods stead presents and offers to us we do in effect make this solemn Dedication of our selves to God Here we offer and present unto thee O Lord our selves our souls and bodies to be a reasonable holy and lively Sacrifice unto thee and here we call to witness this sacred Blood that redeemed us and those vocal Wounds which do now intercede for us that from henceforth we oblige our selves never to start from thy service what Difficulties soever we may encounter in it or what temptations soever we may have to forsake it And having thus resolved and confirmed our Resolution by the Body and Blood of our Saviour and taken the Sacrament upon it not to depart from what we have resolved we have actually listed and ingaged our selves in a Warfare against Sin the World and the Devil upon the final Success whereof our everlasting Fate depends And thus you see what Duty is implied in the Beginning or Entrance of this warfaring Part of the Life of a Christian. SECT II. Wherein some Motives are urged to persuade men to the Practice of those Duties that are proper to the Beginning of the Christian Warfare HAVING in the former Section given a brief Account of those Duties which are necessary to the well Beginning of our Christian Warfare I shall now for a close of that Argument endeavour to press and persuade those who have not as yet begun to enter immediately
of Grace that we should every Morning commit our selves to Gods Grace and Protection and never presume to venture among the Snares of the World without him that we should count it as unsafe for us to go out of our Chambers without being armed with Gods Aid as 't is to rush naked into a Battle amongst Swords and Spears in a word that we should every Morning and Evening at least recommend our selves to God and beseech him to defend us against all those Terrors and Allurements which either the Devil or our own Lusts shall propose to withdraw us from our good Resolution And if upon all these preparatory Exercises of our Faith Consideration c. it was at first necessary for us to enter into a solemn Resolution it will be no less necessary that with the same continued Preparations we should frequently iterate and renew it especally at first till the Strength of our bad Inclinations is in some measure broken and abated Now we should take care to go every day out of our Chambers fresh armed as men that expect an Enemy at the Threshold and not to trust our weak Souls among the Temptations of the World till we have first chained up our Inclinations with new Vows of fidelity So that you see the Duties of our Entrance into the Christian Warfare are not so peculiar to to that State but that they are also to be practised in the Course and Progress of it BUT then besides these there are sundry others that are necessary to our successful Progress therein All which I shall reduce to these following Heads 1. That we take care to arm our selves with Patience and Courage to undergo and encounter the Trouble and Difficulty of it 2. That we propose to our selves the most excellent Examples 3. That we apply our selves to our Spiritual Guides for Direction 4. That we be very curious of our Aims and Intentions 5. That we should possess our minds with a lively Sense and awful Apprehension of Gods Presence with and Inspection over us 6. That we frequently examine and review our own Actions 7. That we be very watchful and circumspect in the Conduct and Management of our selves 8. That we should betake our selves to some honest Calling and behave our selves diligently and industriously therein 9. That we should endeavour after a chearful Frame of Spirit 10. That we should maintain in our minds a constant Sense and Expectation of Heaven 11. That we should live in the constant use of the external Ordinances and Institutions of our Religion I. TO the Course and Progress of our Christian Warfare it is necessary that we arm our selves with Patience and Courage to undergo and encounter the Troubles and Difficulties of it For so we are commanded to be strong in the Lord Ephes. vi 10 and to be strong in the grace which is in Christ Jesus 2 Tim. ii 1 that is to fortifie our selves with the Grace of God and the Motives of Religion against all those Hardships and Oppositions which may rise up against us in our March to Heaven for we are assured before-hand that we have need of patience that after we have done the will of God we may receive the promise Heb. x. 36 and therefore we are bid to strengthen our selves with all patience and long suffering with joyfulness Coll. i. 11 and to run with patience the race that is set before us Heb. xii 1 FOR though it is certain that when we have well and wisely resolved the greatest Difficulty of our spiritual Warfare is over yet it cannot be dissembled that even when this is performed and we proceed from hence to Execution there will at first especially arise such Difficulties and Oppositions in our way as will sufficiently try our Courage and Patience And though if when we were forming our Resolution we considered the whole matter we could not but foresee great Difficulties in the Execution of it and be very sensible what strong Inclinations from within and Temptations from without we were to struggle and contend with yet alas the Difficulties of all Undertakings are usually much less in our Foresight than in our Sense and Experience of them For while they are in our Foresight we have only the Notions and Ideas of them to encounter and these being not so stubborn as the things themselves are much more easily conquered by us So that when instead of our own easie and compliant Notions we come to contend with the Difficulties themselves we very often find the Face of things quite changed and those Difficulties which did so easily submit to our Apprehensions do many times make an obstinate Resistance to our Endeavours And thus many times it is in the matter in hand So that when we are fore-casting the Difficulties of Religion in our Minds we must always allow for the Distance of them which usually lessens their Appearance and conclude with our selves that when we are actually ingaged with them we shall find them much more stiff and incompliant to our Endeavours than they are now to our Thoughts and accordingly prepare and arm our selves against them For when from considering we proceed to encounter them we must expect to find that to discourse and execute are things of a widely different nature and that those Difficulties which we so easily vanquished in our Thoughts and Discourses will when we are actually contending with them put us to a much harder Trial of our Valour and Constancy than we were aware of FOR if we should have nothing but our own bad Inclinations and the ordinary Temptations of the World to struggle with yet even these we shall find sufficient to exercise our utmost Patience and Constancy For we must not expect that our bad Inclinations especially after they have been pampered and improved by a long and frequent Repetition of forbidden Enjoyments will be presently subdued and mortified when there are so many Temptations all around us cotinually exciting and provoking them No you may be assured they will struggle for their lives before they give up the Ghost and if they are deeply radicated will not be torn from their Roots without a great deal of Time and Labour So that unless you have a great stock of Patience and Courage to endure and out-stand their tedious Resistances to your pious Endeavours and to deny them those vicious satisfactions which they feed and live upon till you have starved them out you will quickly be weary of contending with them and rather chuse to yield them their Desires than be plagued with their restless Importunities BUT then besides these ordinary Difficulties of denying your sinful Desires and Inclinations it may be your Lot to take up the Cross too and to follow your Saviour through a dark Lane of Sufferings and Persecutions and then you will need a world of Patience and Courage to undergo all that Shame and Reproach Loss and Pain Fear and Suffering through which you must fight your way to Heaven if ever
or an unreflecting one to Self-examination to raise up an earthly Mind to heavenly Thoughts and Expectations and confine a listless and regardless one to strict Watchfulness and Circumspection to confine a carnal mind to frequent Sacraments or an indevout and careless one to its daily and weekly periods of Devotion will at the first no doubt be very painful and tedious but after we have persisted in and for a while accustomed our selves to it we shall find it will quickly grow more natural and easie to us and from being grievous it will become tolerable from being tolerable easie and from being easie delightful For when once we come to feel the good Effects of those Duties in our Natures how fast our Lusts do decline our Dispositions mend and all our Graces improve in the Use of them the Sense of this will mightily indear and ingratiate them to us Just as it is with a Scholar when he first enters upon the Methods of Learning they are very tedious and irksome to him the Pains of reading observing and recollecting the Confinement to a Study and the racking his Brains with severe Reasoning and Discourse are things that he cannot easily away with till he hath been inured and accustomed to them a while and then they grow more natural and easie to him but when he comes to be sensible of the great Advantages he reaps by his Labour how it raises and improves his Understanding inlarges its prospect and furnishes its Conception with brave and useful Notions then do his Labours which were formerly so grievous become not only easie but delectable to him And even so it is with these spiritual Exercises of Religion which to unexperienced persons that are yet but newly enter'd upon them will be very painful and troublesome but if they have but Patience and Courage to hold on Custom will quickly render them more tolerable and when they have practised them so long as to find and perceive the blessed Effects of them how much they have contributed to the reforming their Tempers reducing their Inclinations filing and polishing their rough and mishapen Natures with what amiable Graces divine and godlike Dispositions they have adorned and beautified them their Sense and Feeling of this will convert them all into delightful Recreations Thus as the Custom of them will render them easie so the blessed Fruits of them will make them delectable the former will render them facil as Nature the later eligible as Reward And if so why should we be discouraged faint-hearted Creatures that we are at those little present Difficulties which our Diligence will soon wear off and convert into Ease and Pleasure VII CONSIDER that with the Difficulty of them there is a world of present Peace and Satisfaction intermingled If you fall back again to your old Lusts instead of these present Difficulties you start at you must expect to have the Trouble of a guilty Soul to contend with which if you have any sense of God and of Good and Evil will be much more grievous to you than they But if you go on you will carry with you a quiet and a satisfied Mind a Conscience that will entertain you all along with such sweet and calm Reflections as will abundantly compensate you for all the Hardships and Difficulties you encounter on the way that with innumerable Iterations will be always resounding to your honest Endeavours those best and sweetest Ecchoes Well done good and profitable servant how bravely hast thou acquitted thy self how manfully hast thou stood to thy Duty against all Oppositions and with what a Gallant Resolution hast thou repulsed those Temptations that bore up against thee Now for a man to have his own Mind continually applauding him and crowning his Actions with the Approbations of his Conscience is Encouragement enough to ballance a thousand Difficulties and the Sense that he hath done his Duty and that the God above and the Vice-god within him are both satisfied and pleased with him will give him such a grateful Relish of each Action of his Warfare that the Difficulty will only serve to inhance the Pleasure of it AND as he will have great Peace and Satisfaction whilst he is contending with these Difficulties so when he hath so far conquered them as that they are no longer able to curb and with-hold him from the free and vigorous Exercise of the heavenly Vertues but in despight of them he can easily moderate his Passions and Appetites by the Laws of his Reason and freely love adore and imitate submit to and confide in the ever blessed God and chearfully exert an unforced Plainess and Simplicity Good-will and Charity Submission and Condescension Peace and Concord towards all men when I say he hath so far surmounted the Difficulties of his Warfare as that with any Measure of Freedom and Vigor he can put forth all these heavenly Vertues he will find himself not only in a quiet but in a heavenly Condition For these heavenly Graces are the Palat by which the immortal Mind tasts and relishes its Heaven the blessed Organs and Sensories by which it feels and perceives the Joys of the World to come and without which it can no more relish and injoy them than the senseless Hive can the sweetness of the Honey that is in it And consequently the more quick and vivacious these heavenly Organs of the Mind are and the more they are disburthened of those carnal and devilish Lusts that blunt their Sense and Perception the more accurately they will taste the Joys and Pleasures of Heaven So that when by the constant Practice of the warfaring Duties of Religion we have conquered those bad Inclinations of our Natures which render the heavenly Vertues so difficult to us and do so clog and incumber us in the Exercise of them we shall find our selves in a Heaven upon Earth and each Act of Vertue will be Presention and Foretast of the Joys of a celestial Life And being arrived at this blessed State in which all heavenly Vertue is so connaturalized to us the sweet Experience we shall have of the unspeakable Joys and Pleasures it abounds with will cause us to look back with wondrous Content and Satisfaction upon all those Difficulties we contended with in our Way to it and bless those Prayers and Tears and Strivings with our selves those tedious Watchings and Self-exáminations c. by which we have now at last conquered and subdued them WHEREFORE since the Practice of these our warfaring Duties hath so much present Peace going along with it and since by its natural Drift and Tendency it's leading us forward to a State of so much Pleasure and Satisfaction what a Madness is it for a man to be beaten off from it by those present little Difficulties that attend it What man that consults his own Interest would ever desist from the prosecuting such a gainful Warfare in which to make him amends for the present Pains it puts him to he is not only
those Virtues which through our vicious Aversations to them seemed at first impossible will grow on by degrees from possible to easie and from easie to necessary and then the Sins will be more impossible to us than the Virtues NOW what a mighty Encouragement is this to make a good Beginning of the Christian Warfare that in so doing we are sure to conquer the main Difficulty of it that when we have broke through all those Oppositions that lie in the way to a wise and good Resolution we are past the Frontiers of Religion and having gotten over those steep Alps at its Entrance shall be sure to find the Region round about a plain and an easie Champain in which the further we go the smoother 't will be and so smoother and smoother till at last 't will be all sweet and delightful like the flowry Walks of Paradise Let us therefore be persuaded without any farther Delay to enter immediately upon this our holy Warfare and by Faith and Consideration c. to lay the Foundations of a religious Resolution that so when we are actually ingaged against our spiritual Enemies we may be able to stand our ground against all Temptations and that having finally conquered and subdued them we may receive that Immortal Crown which God the righteous Judge hath laid up for the victorious AND so I have done with the First Part of our Christian Warfare viz. our Entrance into it SECT III. Concerning the Second Part of the Christian Warfare with a particular Account of the Duties thereunto appertaining I SHALL now proceed to the Second Part of our Christian Warfare viz. the Course and Progress of it which consists in holy living For when once we have reduced our Wills to a firm and well-grounded Resolution of entring into this militant State that which is next incumbent upon us is to pursue our Resolution in the future Course of our Lives and Actions that is to abstain from all Sin and endeavour to mortifie our Inclination to it and to practise all the contrary Graces and Virtues and endeavour to improve them to farther and farther degrees of perfection or as the Scripture expresses it to cease to do evil and to learn to do well to strive against sin and to die to it and to grow in grace and perfect holiness in the fear of God In this consists the Course and Progress of our Christian Warfare In order whereunto it 's indispensably necessary that we should still repeat the Practice of those Duties by which we were first prepared to enter into it all those means by which our good Resolution was produced being naturally conducive to maintain and support it And therefore we find that Faith and Consideration c. are not enjoined as temporary Duties that are only to be practised in the Beginning of our Warfare but as means that will be always necessary for us throughout our whole Progress to Heaven For so we are commanded not only to acquire a sincere Faith or Belief of the Gospel but to continue and be stablished in it Col. i. 2 3. compared with Cap. ii 7 And so again we are injoined not only to admit the proposals of Religion into our Consideration but to keep them there Luk. viii 15 and suffer them to dwell richly in us Coll. iii. 16 And so for all those other preparatory Duties For that from a hearty Conviction of our need of Christ we should beg all Mercies of God in his Name and for his sake is a standing Precept of Christian Devotion John xvi 24 and so is also Confession of our sins to God 1 John i. 9 and Prayer for his Grace and Assistance Coll. iv 2 Nor is it only required that we should once repent or change our bad Resolution for a good one but that we should also repeat and confirm our good Resolution that we should stablish our hearts that is keep our Wills fixed and determined to all good Intentions and Purposes James v. 8 and stand fast in the Lord that is adhere to the Profession and Practice of Christianity with a firm and constant Resolution Phil. iv 1 For to proceed in our Christian Warfare is constantly to live up to our good Resolution which will require a continued Application of those means by which we were first prepared and disposed to enter into it Thus Faith is no less necessary to inable us to perform than it was to prepare us to make our good Resolution and still the more we believe our Religion the more we shall think our selves concerned in its proposals and consequently the more firmly we shall be resolved to close with and embrace them and so still as our Faith improves in degrees of Certainty our Resolution will proportionably grow stronger and stronger Again if it were necessary to the Birth of our Resolution that we should first duly weigh and consider the Motives and the Difficulties of the Duties we were resolving on then it will be no less necessary to the Growth and Emprovement of it that we should frequently consider over these Motives and Difficulties again and ballance them one against another And at first especially while our good Resolution is yet in its Infancy it will be very necessary that we should every day before we go abroad into the World spend some portion of Time in fore-thinking of the many Temptations that do lie in wait for us whether in our Business or Company or necessary Refreshments and Diversions and fore-arming our selves against them with the Motives and Arguments of our Religion that so we may have our Weapons ready when ever they shall assault us and be always provided to resist them Again if it were necessary to the forming our Resolution that we should be convinced of the Necessity and Reality of our Saviours Mediation then it will be no less necessary to the performance of it that our Hope and Fear which are the Springs of our Action should still be excited by the glorious Assurance of Mercy and horrid Prospect of Sin which this Conviction implies Once more was it necessary to the well making of our Resolution that we should affect our selves before-hand with a hearty Shame and Sorrow for our past Transgressions then will it be no less necessary for the strengthening and confirming it that we should ever and anon revive this our Shame and Grief by reflecting on the Filthiness of our past State and the Weakness and Imperfection of our present and by an ingenuous Confession of both to the high and holy God that so our Shame and Sorrow for our Sins being digested into Anger and Displeasure may sharpen our Resolution and animate it more and more against them In short if it be necessary to the founding of our Resolution that we should first earnestly implore the divine Grace and Assistance then it will be no less necessary for the continuance of it that for the same purpose we should continually apply our selves to the Throne