win the world and lose his soul. His eye and heart are where his God and treasure is above and worldly wealth and greatness are below him even under his feet He thinketh not things temporal worth the looking at in comparison of things eternal 2 Cor. 4.18 He thinketh that their money and riches do deservedly perish with them who think all the mony in the world to be a thing comparable with grace Act. 8.20 2. And the weak Christian is of the same judgement and resolution in the main But yet the world retaineth a greater interest in his heart It grieveth him more to lose it It is a stronger temptation to him To deny all the preferments and honours and riches of it seemeth a greater matter to him and he doth it with more striving and less ease and sometimes the respect of worldly things prevaileth with him in lesser matters to wound his conscience and maketh work for repentance and such are so entangled in worldly cares and prosperity tasteth so sweet with them that grace even languisheth and falleth into a consumption and almost into a swoun So much do some such let out their hearts to the world which they renounced and scrape for it with so much care and eagerness and contend with others about their commodities and rights that they seem to the standers by to be as worldly as worldlings themselves are and become a shame to their profession and make ungodly persons say Your godly professors are as coveteous as any 2 Tim. 4.10 3. But seeming Christians are the servants of the world when they have learnt to speak hardliest of it it hath their hearts Heaven as I said before is valued but as a reserve when they know they can keep the world no longer They have more sweet and pleasing thoughts and speeches of the world than they have of God and the world to come It hath most of their hearts when God is most preferred by their tongues there it is that they are daily laying up their treasure and there they must leave it at the parting hour when they go naked out as they came naked in the love of deceitful riches choaketh the word of God and it withereth in them and becometh unfruitful Mat. 13.22 They go away sorrowful because of their beloved riches when they should part with all for the hopes of heaven Luk. 18.23 yea though they are beggars that never have a dayes prosperity in the world for all that they love it better than heaven and desire that which they cannot get because they have not an eye of faith to see that better world which they neglect and therefore take it for an uncertain thing nor are their carnal natures suitable to it and therefore they mind it not Rom. 8.7 When an Hypocrite is at the best he is but a Religious worldling The world is neerer to his heart than God is but pure Religion keepeth a man unspotted of the world Jam. 1.27 XIX 1. A confirmed Christian is one that still seeth the end in all that he doth and that is before him in his way and looketh not at things as at the present they seem or relish to the flesh or to short sighted men but as they will appear and be judged of at last The first letter maketh not the word nor the first word the sentence without the last Present time is quickly past and therefore he less regardeth what things seem at present than what they will prove to all eternity When temptations offer him a bate to sin with the present profit or pleasure or honour he seeth at once the final shame he seeth all worldly things as they are seen by a dying man and as after the general conflagration they will be He seeth the godly in his adversity and patience as entring into his masters joys he seeth the derided vilified saint as ready to stand justified by Christ at his right hand and the lyes of the malicious world as ready to cover themselves with shame he seeth the wicked in the height of their prosperity as ready to be cut down and withered and their pampered flesh to turn to dirt and their filthy and malicious souls to stand condemned by Christ at his left hand and to hear Go ye cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Devil and his Angels Mat. 25. 1 Pet. 1.24 Jam. 1.10 11. Psal. 73. 37. Therefore it is that he valueth grace because he knoweth what it will be and therefore it is that he flieth from sin because he knoweth the terrors of the Lord and what it will prove to the sinner in the end and how sinners themselves will curse the day that ever they did commit it and wish when it is too late that they had chosen the holiness and patience of the saints and therefore it is that he pitieth rather than envieth the prosperous enemies of the Church because he foreseeth what the end will be of them that obey not the Gospel of Christ and if the righteous be scarcely saved where shall the ungodly and sinner appear 1 Pet. 4.17 18. 2 Thes. 1.8 9 10. If the wicked unbelievers saw but the ending of all things as he doth they would be all then of his mind and way This putteth so much life into his prayers his obedience and patience because he seeth the end in all Deut. 32.39 Prov. 19.20 Isai. 47.7 2. And the weakest Christian doth the same in the main so far as to turn his heart from things temporal to things eternal and to resolve him in his main choice and to conduct the course of his life towards heaven But yet in particular actions he is often stopt in present things and forgetfully loseth the fight of the end and so is deluded and entised into sin for want of seeing that which should have preserved him he is like one that travelleth over hills and vallies who when he is upon the hills doth see the place that he is going to but when he cometh into the vallies it is out of his sight Too oft doth the weak Christian think of things as they appear at the present with little sense of the change that is neer when he seeth the bates of sin whether riches or beauty or meat and drink or any thing that is pleasing to the senses the remembrance of the end doth not so quickly and powerfully work to prevent his deceived imaginations as it ought And when poverty or shame or sufferings or sickness are presented to him the foresight of the end is not so speedy and powerful in clearing his judgement and setling his resolution and preventing his misapprehension and trouble as it ought And hence come his oft mistakes and falls and herein consisteth much of that foolishness which he confesseth when Repentance bringeth him to himself 2 Sam. 24.10 2 Chron. 16.9 3. But the seeming Christian hath so dim and doubtful a fore-sight of the end and it is so frequently out of his mind that
of the godly and especially of the Faithful guides of the Flocks Alas that so many of the children of the Church should become the scourges and troublers of the Church and should set their teeth so deep in the breasts that were drawn out for their nourishment If you were never drawn to do any thing to the reproach of the Church yet what a grief must it be to us to see so many of your selves miscarry Ah thinks a poor Minister What hopes had I once of these Professors and are they come to this O mark Sirs the Apostle's warning Heb. 13.9 Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines And his way of prevention is that the heart be established with Grace 9. Consider also that it is a dishonour to Christ that so many of his Family should be such weaklings so mutable and unsetled and unprofitable as you are I do not mean that it is any real dishonour to him for it all the World should forsake him they would dishonour themselves and not him with any competent Judg As it would dishonour the beholders more than the Sun if all the world should say that it is darkness But you are guilty of dishonouring him in the eyes of the misguided world O what a reproach it is to Godliness that so many Professors should be so ignorant and imprudent and so many so giddy and unconstant and so many that manifest so little of the glory of their holy Profession All the enemies of Christ without the Church are not capable of dishonouring him so much as you that bear his Name and wear his Livery While your Graces are weak your corruptions will be strong and all those corruptions will be the dishonour of your Profession Will it not break your hearts to hear the ungodly pointing at you as you pass by to say yonder goes a Covetous Professor or yonder goes a proud or a tipling or a contentious Professor If you have any love to God and sense of his dishonour methinks such sayings should touch you at the heart While you are weak and unconfirmed you will like children stumble at every stone and catch many a fall and yield to temptations which the stronger easily resist and then being scandalous all your faults by foolish men will be charged on your Religion If you do but speak an ill word of another or rail or deceive or over-reach in bargaining or fall into any scandalous Opinions or practice your Religion must bear all the blame with the World Ever since I can remember it hath been one of the principal hinderances of mens Conversion and strengtheners of the wicked in their way that the Godly were accounted a sort of peevish unpeaceable covetous proud self-seeking persons which was a slander as to many but too much occasioned by the scandalousness of some And methinks you should be afraid of that Wo from Christ Wo be to him by whom offence cometh If you be Children you may have the Wo of sharp castigations and if you be Hypocrites you shall have the Wo of overlasting sufferings The world can judg no farther than they see And when they see Professors of Holiness to be so like to common men and in some things worse than many of them what can you expect but that they despise Religion and judg of it by the Professors of it and say If this be their Religion let them keep it to themselves we are as well without it as they are with it And thus will the holy waies of God be vilified through you If you will not excel others in the beauty of your conversations that in this glass the World may see the beauty of your Religion you must expect that they should take it but for a common thing which bringeth forth but common fruits to their discerning You should be such that God may boast of and the Church may boast of to the face of the accuser then would you be an honour to the Church when God may say of you as he did of Job Hast thou considered my servant Job that there is none like him in the earth a perfect and an upright man one that feareth God and escheweth evil Job 1.8 If we could say so of you to the malignant enemies See what men the godly are there is none such among you men of Holiness Wisdome uprightness sobriety meekness patience peaceable and harmless living wholly to God as strangers on earth and Citizens of Heaven then you would be ornaments to your holy profession Were you such Christians as the old Christians were Act. 4. we might boast of you then to the reproaching adversaries 10. Moreover till you are confirmed and built up you may too easily be made the instruments of Satan to further his designs The weakness of your understandings and the strength of your passions and especially the interest that carnal Self hath remaining in you may lay you open to temptations and engage you in many a cause of Satan to take his part against the truth And how sad a case is this to any that have felt the love of Christ Have you been warmed with his wondrous love and washed with his blood and saved by his matchless mercy and may it not even break your hearts to think that after all this you should be drawn by Satan to wound your Lord to abuse his honour to resist his cause to hurt his Church and to confirm his enemies and gratify the Devil I tell you with shame and grief of heart that abundance of weak unsetled Professors that we hope have upright meanings in the main have been more powerful instruments for Satan to do his work by for the hindering of the Gospel the vilifying of the Ministry the dividing of the Church and the hindering of Reformation than most of the notoriously prophane have been What excellent hopes had we once in England of the flourishing of piety and happy union among the Churches and servants of Christ And who hath not only frustrated these hopes but almost broke them all to pieces Have any had more to do in it than weak unstable Professors of Religiousness What sad confusions are most parts of England in at this day by reason of the breaking of Churches into Sects and shreds and the contentions and reproaches of Christians against Christians and the odious abuse of holy truth and Ordinances And who is it that doth this so much as unstable Professors of Piety What greater reproach almost could have befallen us than for the adversary to stand by and see men pulling out each others Throats and hating and persecuting and reproaching one another and that our own hands should pull down the house of God and tear in pieces the miserable Churches while men are striving who shall be the Master of the Reformation O what a sport is this to the Devil when he can set his professed enemies by the ears and make them fall upon one another when if he have any
Wax when yet the Image on the Seal is perfect And therefore the World hath no just cause to censure God or Christ or the Spirit or the Word to be imperfect because that you are so But yet they will do it and their temptation is great O Sirs how would your Prince take it of you or how would your poorest friend take it of you if you should hang forth a deformed picture of them to the view of all that shall pass by and should represent them as blind or leprous or lame wanting a leg or an arm or an eye Would they not say that you unworthily exposed them to scorn So if you will take on you to be the living Images of God of Christ of the Spirit and the Word and yet will be blind and worldly and passionate and proud and untruly and obstinate or lazy and negligent and little differing from those that bear the Image of the Devil what do you but Proclaim that the Image of God and of Satan and the World do little differ and that God is thus unrighteous and unholy as you are 10. Lastly Consider That the faithful servants of Christ are few and therefore if those few dishonour him and prove not fast to him what do you but provoke him to forsake all the World and make an end of all the Sons of men It is but a little flock to whom he will give the Kingdom Luke 12.32 It is but a few from whom God expecteth any great matter And shall those few prove deceitful to him It must be you or none that must honour the Gospel You or none that must be exemplary to the World and shall it be none at all Shall all the Workmanship of God abuse him Shall he have no honour from any inferiour Creature How can you then expect that he should preserve the World For will he be at so much care to keep up a World to dishonour and abuse him If the turning of mens hearts prevent it not he would come and smite the earth with a Curse Mal. 4.6 For the Land that beareth Thorns and Bryars is rejected and is nigh unto Cursing whose end is to be burned Heb. 6.7 8. If therefore Israel play the Harlot yet let not Judah sin Hos. 4.15 If the Vessels of wrath prepared to destruction will be blind and sensual and filthy still yet let pollution be far from the sanctified Such were some of you but ye are washed ye are sanctified ye are justified 1 Cor. 6.11 O let the Lord be magnified in his Saints Blot not out his Image Receive not his impressions defectively and by the halves Let the Name of the most holy one be written in your very foreheads O that you would be so tender of the honour of the Lord and shine forth so brightly in Holyness and Righteousness that he that runs might read whose servants you are and know the Image Superscription of God upon the face of your conversations that as clearly as light is seen in and from the Sun and the power and wisdom and goodness of God is seen in the frame of the Creation and of Scripture so might the same shine forth in you that you might be Holy as God is Holy 1 Pet. 1.16 and perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect Matth. 5.48 that they that would know God may see him in his Saints where his Image is or should be so lively and discernable And they that cannot read and understand the Scripture or the works of Creation or disposing-Providence may read and understand the holy and heavenly representations of your lives Men are apt to look after Images of the Godhead because they are carnal and far from God O you that are appointed to bear his Image see that you so represent him to the eyes of the world as may be to his glory and not to his dishonour and take not the Name of God in vain It is so desirable for God and for the Church and for your own peace and happiness that Christians should grow up to a ripeness in Grace and be rooted built up confirmed and abound according to my Text that it hath drawn out from me all these words of exhortation thereunto Though one would think that to men of such holy Principles and experience it should be more than needs But if all will but serve to awaken the weak to a diligent progress I shall be glad and have my end The great matter that I intended when I began this discourse is yet behind and that is the giving you such Directions as may tend to your Confirmation and perseverance Which I shall now proceed to But I intreat every Reader that hath any spark of Grace in his Soul that he will resolve to put these Directions in practice and turn them not off with a bare perusal or approbation Let me reap but thus much fruit of all my foregoing Exhortations and I shall not think my labour lost XX. DIRECTIONS FOR CONFIRMATION In a state of Grace DIRECT I. Be sure that the Foundation be well laid both in your Heads and Hearts or else you can never attain to Confirmation nor be savingly built up TO this end you must know what the Foundation is and how it must be soundly laid The Foundation hath two parts or respects according to the faculties of the Soul where it must be laid The first is the Truth of the Doctrine and Matter and the second is the Goodness of it As True the Foundation is laid in our Understandings as Good it is laid in the Will Concerning both these we must therefore first consider of the matter of the Foundation and then of the Manner how that must be received or laid And the Foundation is that matter or object of our Faith and Hope and Love which is Essential to a Christian that is to the Christian saving Faith hope and love This hath been alwayes contained in our Baptism because Baptizing us is making us visible Christians or the solemn entrance into the state of Christianity As therefore we are Baptized into the name of the Father Son and Holy Ghost renouncing the Flesh the World and the Devil so the doing of this unfeignedly without equivocation according to the Scripture sense of the words is the Essence of Christianity or the right laying of the Foundation So that the Foundation-Principal or Fundamental Matter is God the Father Son and Holy Ghost The Secondary Foundation or Fundamental Doctrine is those Scripture Propositions that express our Faith in God the Father Son and Holy Ghost When we name the three persons as the object of the Christian Faith we express names of Relation which contain both the persons nature and Offices or undertaken works Without either of which God were not God and Christ were not Christ and the Holy Ghost were not in the sense of our Articles of Faith the Holy Ghost As we must therfore believe that there is One only God So we must
Every sentence is good for somthing All Scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine for reproof for correction for instruction in righteousness that the man of God may be perfect throughly furnished unto all good works 2 Tim. 3.16 17. Not a word is without its usefulness 5. Moreover you must grow not only in knowing the usefulness of truths but also in knowing how to use them that you may have the benefit of that worth that is in them Many a man knows what use a workmans tools are for that yet knows not how himself to use them And many a one knows the use and vertue of herbs and drugs that knows not how to make a medicine of them and compound and apply them There is much skill to be used in knowing the seasons of application and the measure and what is fit for one and what for another that we may make that necessary variation which diversity of conditions do require As it is a work of skill in the Pastors of the Church to divide the word of God aright and speak a word in season to the weary and give the children their meat in due season 2 Tim. 2.15 Isa. 50.4 Mat. 24.45 So is it also a work of skill to do this for your selves to know what Scripture it is that doth concern you and when and in what measure to apply it and in what order and with what advantages or correctives to use it as may be most for your own good You may grow in this skill as long as you live even in understanding how to use the same truths which you have long known O what excellent Christians should we be if we had but this holy skill and hearts to use it We have the whole armour of God to put on and use but all the matter is how to use it The same sword of the spirit in the hand of a strong and skilful Christian may do very much which in the hand of a young unskilful Christian will do very little and next to nothing A young raw Physician may know the same medicines as an able experienced Physician doth but the great difference lieth in the skil to use them This is it that must make you rich in grace when you increase in the skilful use of truths 6. Moreover your understandings may be much advanced by knowing the same truths more experimentally than you did before I mean such truths as are capable of experimental knowledge Experience giveth us a far more satisfactory manner of knowledge than others have that have no such experience To know by hearsay is like the knowing of a Countrey in a Map and to know by experience is like the knowing of the same Countrey by sight An experienced Navigator or Soldier or Physician or Governour hath another manner of knowledge than the most learned can have without experience even a knowledge that confirmeth a man and makes him confident Thus may you daily increase in knowledge about the same points that you knew long ago When you have tasted and seen that the Lord is gracious Psal. 34.8 1 Pet. 2.3 you will know him more experimentally than you did before when you have tasted the sweetness of the promise and of pardon of sin and peace with God and the hopes of glory you will have a more experimental knowledge of the riches of grace than you had before And when you have lived a while in communion with Christ and the Saints and walked a while with God in a heavenly conversation and maintained your integrity and kept your selves unspotted of the world you will then know the nature and worth of holiness by a knowledge more experimental and satisfactory than before And this is confirmation and growth in knowledge 7. Moreover you must labor to grow in a higher estimation of the same truths which you knew before And this will be a consequent of the forementioned acts A child that findeth a jewel may set by it for the shining beauty when yet he may value it many thousand pounds below its worth You see so much wisdom and goodness in God the first hour of your new life as causeth you to prefer him before the world and you see so much necessity of a Saviour so much love and mercy in Jesus Christ as draweth up your hearts to him and you see so much certainty and glorious excellency of the life to come that makes you value it even more than your lives But yet there is in all these such an unsearchable treasure that you can never value them neer their worth for all that thou hast seen of God and Christ and Glory there is a thousand times more excellency in them yet to be discerned For all the beauty thou hast seen in holiness it is a thousand fold more beautiful than ever thou didst apprehend it for all the evil thou hast seen in sin it is a thousand fold worse than ever thou didst perceive it to be So that if you should live a thousand years you might still be growing in your estimation of those things which you knew the first day of your true conversion For the deeper you dig into this precious Mine the greater riches will still appear to you There is an Ocean of excellency in one Article of your belief and you will never find the banks or bottom till you come to heaven and then you will find that it had neither banks nor bottom And thus I have shewed you what confirmation growth is needful for your understandings even about the very same truths which at first you knew And now I shall add 8. You must also labour to understand more truths for number than at the first you understood and to reach to as much of the revealed will of God as you can and not to stop in the meer essentials For all divine revelations are precious and of great use and none must be neglected And the knowledge of many other truths is of some necessity to our clear understanding of the essentials and also to our holding them fast and practising them Secret things belong to God but things revealed to us and to our children Deut. 29.29 But here I must give you this further advice 1. That you proceed in due order from the fundamental points to those that lye next them do not overpass the points of next necessity and weight and go to higher and less needful matters before you are ready for them 2. And also see that you receive all following truths that are taught you as flowing from the foundation and conjoyned with it Disorderly proceedings have unspeakably wrong'd the souls of many thousands when they are presently upon controversies and smaller matters before they understand abundance of more necessary things that must be first understood This course doth make them lose their labour and worse it deceiveth the understanding instead of informing it and thereupon it perverts the will it self and turns
to God He hath respect to the humble contrite soul. Isa. 57.15 and 66.2 Psal. 51.17 The hungry he filleth with good but the rich he sendeth empty away Luk. 1.53 He giveth more grace to the humble when the proud are abhorred by him 1 Pet. 5.5 The Church of Laodicea that said I am rich and increased with goods and have need of nothing was miserable and poor and blinde and naked Rev. 3.17 As many that are proud of their honour and birth run out of all by living above their estates when meaner persons grow rich because they are still gathering and make much of every little So proud Professors of Religion are in a Consumption of the Grace they have while the humble increase by making much of every little help which is sleighted and neglected by the proud and by shunning all those spending courses which the proud are plunged in Be sure to keep mean thoughts of your selves of your knowledg and parts and grace and duties and be content to be mean in the esteem of others if you would not be worse than mean in the esteem of God DIRECT V. Exercise your selves daily in a life of Faith upon Jesus Christ as your Saviour your Teacher your Mediator and your King as your Example your Wisdom your Righteousness and your Hope ALL other studies and knowledg must be meerly subservient to the study and knowledg of Christ 1 Cor. 2.2 That vain kind of Philosophy which St. Paul so much cautioneth Christians against is so far yet from being accounted vain that by many called Christians it is preferred before Christianity it self and to shew that it is Vain while they overvalue it they can shew no solid worth or vertue which they have got by it but only a tumified mind and an idle tongue like a tinkling Cymbal 1 Cor. 13.1 and 12.31 and 2.4.14 15 16. and 1.18 19 20 21 23 24 27. Col. 2.8 9. We are compleat in Christ in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily ver 10. No study in the World will so much lead you up to God and acquaint you with him especially in his Love and Goodness as the study of Christ his Person his Office his Doctrine his Example his Kingdom and his benefits As the Deity is your ultimate end to which all things else are but helps and means so Christ is that great and principal means by whom all other means are animated Remember that you are in continual need of him for direction intercession pardon sanctification for support and comfort and for peace with God Let no thoughts therefore be so sweet and frequent in your hearts nor any discourse so ready in your mouths next to the excellencies of the eternal Godhead as this of the design of mans Redemption Let Christ be to your Souls as the Air the Earth the Sun and your Food are to your bodies without which your life would presently fail As you had never come home to the Father but by him so without him you cannot a moment continue in the Fathers love nor be accepted in one duty nor be protected from one danger nor be supplyed in any want For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell Col. 1.18 19. And by him it is that being justified by Faith we have peace with God and have access by Faith unto this Grace wherein we stand and rejoyce in hope of the Glory of God Rom. â— 1 2. And it is in him the Head that we must grow up in all things from whom the whole body doth receive it's increase Ephes. 4.15 16. You grow no more in Grace than you grow in the true knowledg and daily use of Jesus Christ. But of this I will say no more because I have said so much in my Directions for a sound Conversion DIRECT VI. Let the Knowledg and Love of God and your obedience to him be the Works of your Religion and the everlasting fruition of him in Heaven be the continual end and ruling Motive of your Hearts and Lives that your very Conversation may be with God in Heaven YOu are so far HOLY as you are DIVINE and HEAVENLY A Christian indeed in casting up his accounts being certain that this World doth make no man happy hath been led up by Christ to seek a Happiness with God above If you live not for this everlasting happiness if you trade not for this if this be not your treasure your hope and home the chief matter of your desires love and joy and if all things be not prest to serve it and despised when they stand against it you live not indeed a Christian life GOD and HEAVEN or GOD in HEAVEN is the Life and Soul the beginning and the end the Sum the All of true Religion And therefore it is that we are directed to lift up our Heads and Hearts and begin our Prayers with Our Father which art in Heaven and end them with ascribing to Him the Kingdom the Power and the Glory for ever It is not the Creatures but God the Creator that is the Father the Guide and the felicity of Souls and therefore the ultimate end and object of all Religious actions and affections Dwell still upon God and dwell in Heaven if you would understand the nature and design of Christianity Take God for all that is for God Study after the knowledg of him in all his Works Study him in his Word Study him in Christ And never study him barely to know him but to know him that you may love him Take your selves as dead when you live not in the Love of God Keep still upon your hearts a lively sense of the infinite difference between him and the Creature Look on all the World as a shadow and on God as the substance Take the very worst that man can do to be in comparison of the punishments of God but as a Flea-biting to the sorest death And take all the dreaming pleasures of the World to be less in comparison with the joyes of Heaven than one lick of honey is to a thousand years possession of all the felicities on earth Think not all the pleasures honours or riches of the world to be worthy to be named in comparison of Heaven nor the Greatest of Men to be worthy to be once thought on in comparison of God As one straw or feather won or lost would neither much rejoyce or trouble you if all the City or land were yours So live as men whose eyes are open and who discern a greater disproportion between the portion of a worldling and a Saint Let God be your King your Father your master your friend your wealth your joy your All. Let not a day go over your heads in which your hearts have no converse with God in Heaven when any trouble overtaketh you on Earth look up to Heaven and remember that it is there that Rest and Joy are prepared for believers When you are under any want or cross or