A Christian Directory

Signs of the next Degrees of Pride as against God.

§. 31. Sign 1. A Proud heart is very hardly brought to see the greatness of its sins, or to know its emptiness of Grace, or to be convinced of its unpardoned miserable state, or of the Justice of God if he should damn it to everlasting torments. Concerning others it may confess all this; but hardly of itself. Its own unbelief, and averseness from God and holiness, seemeth to it a small and tolerable fault: Its own pride, and lust, and worldliness, and sensuality, seem not to be so bad as to deserve damnation: Much less the smallest sin which it committeth. Though customarily they may say that God were just, if he did condemn them, yet they believe it not at the heart. The most convincing Preacher shall have much ado to bring a proud man heartily to confess that he is an enemy to God, a child of wrath, and under the guilt of all his sins, and sure to be condemned unless he be converted. He will confess that he is a sinner, or anything else which the most godly must confess, or which doth not conclude him to be in a damnable unrenewed state: But to make an ungodly man know that he is ungodly, and an impenitent person know that he is impenitent, and and unsanctified person know that he is unsanctified, is wonderful hard, because that Pride hath dominion in them. Are we blind also? Say the proud incorrigible Pharisees to Christ, John. 9. 40.

§. 32. Sign 2. A proud heart doth so much overvalue all that is in itself, that every common grace or duty doth seem to it to be a state of godliness: Their common knowledge seemeth to them to be saving illumination: Every little sorrow for their sin, or wish that they had done better, when they have had all the sweetness of it, doth go with them for true Repentance: Their heartless liplabour goes for acceptable prayer: Their Image of Religion seemeth to them to be the life of godliness: They take their own presumption for true faith; and their false expectation for Christian Hope, and their carnal security and blockish stupidity, for spiritual peace of conscience, and their desperate venturing their souls upon deceit, they take for a Trusting them with God: If they forbear but such sins as their flesh can spare, as unnecessary to its ease, provision or content, yea, or such sins as the flesh commandeth them to forbear, as tending to their dishonor in the world, they take this for true obedience to God. Because they had rather have Heaven than Hell, when they must leave the Earth whether they will or no, they think that they are heavenly minded, and lay up their treasure there, and take it for their portion: Because conscience sometime troubleth them for their sin, they think they renew a sincere repentance; and think all is pardoned, because they daily ask for pardon: Their forced submission to the hand of God, they take for patience; And a [ Lord have mercy on us, and forgive us, and save us ] they take for a true preparation for death. Thus Pride deceiveth sinners, by making them believe that they have what they have not, and do what they do not, and are something when they are nothing, Gal. 6. 3. and by multiplying and magnifying the little common good that is in them.

§. 33. Sign 3. A Proud heart hath very little sense of the necessity of a Savior, to die for his sins, and satisfy God's justice, and reconcile him to God: Notionally he is sick of sin; and notionally he thinks he needeth a Physician: But practically at the heart, he feeleth little of his disease, and therefore little s • ts by Christ. He feeleth not that which should thoroughly acquaint him with the Reasons of this blessed work of our Redemption: And therefore indeed is a stranger to the mystery, and an unbeliever at the heart: and would turn Apostate if the trial were strong enough. He never felt himself a condemned man, under the curse and wrath of God, and liable to Hell: And therefore never lay in tears with Mary at his Savior's feet, nor melted over his bleeding Lord; nor feelingly said with Paul, [ He came to save sinners of whom I am chief ] nor esteemed all things as loss and dung for the knowledge of Christ, that he might be found in him, Phil. 3. 7, 8. He is a Christian but as a Turk is a Mahom • tane, because it is the Religion of the King, and the Country, in which he was bred.

§. 34. Sign 4. A Proud heart perceiveth not his own necessity of so great a change as a New birth, and of the Holy Ghost to give him a new nature, and plant the image of God upon him: He findeth perhaps some breaches in his soul; but he thinks there needs no breaking of the heart for them; nor pulling all down and building up his hopes anew: Amending his heart he thinks, may serve the turn, without making it and all things new: The new creature he taketh to be but Baptism, or some patching up of the former state, and amending some grosser things that were amiss. He will confess that without Christ and grace we can do nothing, but he thinketh this grace is an ordinary help. Whereas a humble soul is so emptied of itself, and perceiveth its deadness and insufficiency to good, that it magnifieth grace, and is wondrous thankful for it, as for a new and spiritual life.

§. 35. Sign. 5. A Proud heart hath so little experimental sense of the great accusations which Scripture bringeth against the corrupted heart of man, that it is easily drawn into any Heresy which denieth them: As about our Original sin and misery and need of a Savior: about the desperate wickedness of the heart, and man's insufficiency and impotency to good, yea averseness from it: Whereas humble men are better acquainted with the sin within them, that beareth witness to all these truths.

§. 36. Sign 6. The Proud are insensible of the need and reason of all that diligence to mortify the flesh, and subdue corruptions, and watch the heart, and walk with God in holiness of life, which God requireth: He saith what need all this ado: He feeleth not the need of it, and therefore thinks its more ado than needs. But the humble soul is sensible of that within him that requireth it and justifieth the strictest ways of God: The Rich think they have no need to labor; but labor is a poor man's life and maintenance: If he miss it a day, he feeleth the want of it the next.

§. 37. Sign 7. Proud men are much insensible of the want of frequent and fervent Prayer unto God. Begging is the poor man's trade: The humble soul perceives the need of it: He finds as constant need of God as of air, or bread, or life itself. And he knoweth that the exercise of our desires and faith, and the expression by prayer of our dependence upon God, is the way appointed for our supply. But the proud are full-stomacht, and think this earnest frequent praying is but hypocritical needless work, and they cannot make a trade of begging, and therefore they are sent empty away.

§. 38. Sign 8. A proud man is a great undervaluer of all mercies, and unthankful for them; but especially for spiritual mercy. He receiveth it customarily as if it were his due; and customarily gives God thanks. But though he may rejoice in the prosperity of his flesh, yet he is a stranger to holy thankfulness to God; and thinks diminutively of mercy: yea he is discontent and murmureth if God give him not as much as he desireth. Whereas the humble confess themselves unworthy of the least, Gen. 30. 10. 2 Chron. 32. 24, 25, 26. Hezekiah's lifting up and unthankfullness go together. A poor man will be very thankful for a penny or a piece of bread, which the rich would reject as a great indignity.

§. 39. Sign 9. Proud men are always impatient in their afflictions: If they have a stoutness or stupidity, yet they have not Christian patience: They take it as if God used them hardly or did them wrong. But the humble know that they deserve much worse, and that the mercy that is left them is contrary to their desert: And therefore say with the humbled Church, Mic. 7. 9. I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned against him: Lam. 3. 22. [ It is because his compassions fail not that we are not consumed ].

§. 40. Sign 10. Proud men are fearless of temptations, and confident of their strength and the goodness of their hearts: They dare live among snares, in pomp and pleasure, faring deliciously every day; among plays, and gaming, and lascivious company and discourse, and fear no hurt; their Pride making them insensible of their danger, and what tinder and gunpowder is in their natures, for every spark of temptation to catch fire in. But the humble are always suspicious of themselves, and know their danger, and avoid the snare. Prov. 14. 16. A wise man feareth and departeth from evil; but the fool rageth and is confident. Prov. 22. 3. A prudent man foreseeth the evil and hideth himself: but the simple pass on and are punished.

§. 41. Sign 11. Pride maketh men murmur if the work of God be never so well done, if they had not the doing of it; and sometimes by contending to have the honor of doing it, they destroy the work: If they are officers of Christ, they look more at the Power than their obligation; at the Dignity than at the Duty; and at what the people owe to them, than what they owe to God and to the people. They are like dogs that snarl at any other that would partake with them, or come into the house. They say not as Moses, would all the Lord's people were prophets. Yea the peace and unity of Church and state is often sacrificed to this cursed pride.

§. 42. Sign 12. Pride makes men ashamed of the service of God, in a time and place where it is disgraced by the world; and if it have dominion, Christ and holiness shall be denied or forsaken by them, rather than their honor with men shall be forsaken. If they come to Jesus, it is as Nicodemus did, by night: They are ashamed to own a reproached truth, or scorned cause, or servant of Christ: If men will but mock them with the nick-names or calumnies hatched in Hell, they will do as others, or forbear their duty: A scorn will do more to make them forbear praying in their families to God, than the Lions den would do with Daniel, or the fiery-furnace with the three Confessors Dan. 3. & 6. Especially if they be persons of honor and greatness in the world, then God must be merciful to them while they bow down in the house of Rimmon: As the Rich man, Luke 18. 23. when he heard Christ's terms, was very sorrowful, for he was very rich; so these because their honors and dignities are so great, do think them too good to let go for the sake of Christ: Had they but the proportion of the obscure vulgar to lay down, they could forsake it; but they cannot forsake so fair a portion, nor endure the reproach of so honorable a name. But O what contemptible things are these to a humble soul? He marvelleth what dreaming worldlings find, in the doting thoughts and breath of fools, which men call Honor, that they should prefer it before the honor of God, and their real honor: When Christ hath told them, Mark 8. 38. That whosoever shall be ashamed of him and his words, in an adulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with his holy Angels. I now proceed to the signs of Pride in particular duties.

The Signs of Pride in and about Religious duties.

§. 43. Sign 1. A Proud person is most solicitous in and about that part of duty which is visible to man, and tendeth to advance him in men's esteem: And therefore he is more regardful of the outside than of the inside; of the words than of the heart. He taketh much pains if he be a preacher, to cast his sermon into such a form as tendeth to set forth his parts, according to the quality of them that he would please: If he live where wit is valued above grace, or pedantic jingling above a solid, clear, judicious, masculine discourse, he bends himself to the humor of his auditors, and acts his part as a stage-player for applause: If he live where serious earnest exhortations are in more request, he studieth to put an affected fervency into his style, which may make the hearers believe that he believes himself, and to seem to be what indeed he is not, and to feel what he feeleth not: But all this while about his Heart he is little solicitous; and takes small pains to affect it with the reverence of God, and with a due estimation of his truth, and a due compassion of men's souls, and indeed to believe and feel what he would seem to believe and feel. So also in prayer and discourse, his chief study is to speak so as may best procure applause: And it is seldom that he is so cunning as to hide this his design from the observation of judicious men that know him: They may usually perceive that he is the Image of a Preacher or Christian, by affectation forcing himself to that which he is not truly serious in: He is sounding brass; a tinkling Cymbal; a bladder full of wind; a skin full of words; wise and devout in public on the stage, but at home, and with his companions in his ordinary converse, he is but common if not unclean: He is the admiration of fools, and the compassion of the wise: An Oracle at the first congress to those that know him not, and the pity of those that have seen him at home, and without his mask: He is like proud Gentlewomen that bestow a great part of the morning, in mundifying and adorning themselves when they are to be seen, and go abroad, but at home are very homely. And usually the Proud being Hypocrites are secret haters of the most serious, and judicious Christians; because these are more quick-sighted than others, to see through the cloak of their Hypocrisy: Unless as their Charity constraining them to conceal their fears and jealousies, may reconcile the Hypocrite to them.

§. 44. Sign 2. Proud men art apt to put on themselves to any public duty which may tend to magnify them or set out their parts; and think themselves fitter to be preferred before others, and employed, than indeed they are. They are forward to speak in preaching or praying among others, or in ordinary talk: A little knowledge maketh them think that they are fit to be preachers: Whereas the humble say with Moses, who am I that I should go unto Pharaoh, &c. Exod. 3. 11. I am not eloquent, but slow of speech—O my Lord, send I pray thee by the hand of him whom thou wilt send, Exod. 4. 10, 13. Or as Isaiah 16. 5. W • is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, &c. or as Paul, 2 Cor. 2. 16. Who is sufficient for these things? How many a Sermon hath Pride both studied and preached? And how many a prayer hath it formed? And how well are they like to be heard of God?

§. 45. Sign 3. The Proud are loath to be clouded by the greater abilities of others: They are content that weaker men pray or preach with them, that will not obscure but put off their parts, that they may have the preeminence; as a dwarf that makes another seem a proper man: They are less troubled that God and the Gospel is dishonored by the infirmities, insufficiency and faults of others, than that their glory is obscured by worthier men, though God be honored and his work promoted. Whereas the humbled person wisheth from the bottom of his heart, that all the Lord's people were Prophets; that all men could preach, and pray, and discourse, and live much better than he doth himself (though he would also be as good as they). He is glad when he heareth any speak more judiciously, powerfully and convincingly than he, rejoicing that God's work is done, whoever do it: For he loveth Wisdom and Holiness, Truth and duty, not only because it is his own, but for itself and for God and for the souls of others. A Proud man envieth both the parts, and work, and honor of others: And is like the Devil, repining at the gifts of God; and the better and wiser any one is the more he envieth him: He is an enemy to the fruits of God's beneficence; as if he would have God less Good and bountiful to the world, or to any but himself, and such as will serve his party and interest and honor with their gifts: His eye is evil because God is Good. If others be better spoken of than himself as more learned, able, wise or holy, it kindleth in his breast a secret hatred of them, unless they are such whose honor is his honor, or contributeth thereto: Whereas the holy humble soul, is sorry that he wants what others have, but glad that others have what he wants. He loveth God's gifts where-ever he seeth them; yea though it were in one that hateth him: He would not have the world to be shut up in a perpetual night, because he may not be the Sun; but would have them receive that by another which he cannot give them, and is glad that they have a Sun though it be not he: Though some preached Christ of envy and strife, of contention and not sincerely, to add afflictions to his bonds, yet Paul rejoiced, and would rejoice, that Christ was preached: Phil. 1. 15, 16, 17, 18.

§. 46. Sign 4. When the Proud man is praying or preaching his eye is principally upon the hearers, and from them it is that his work is animated, and from them that he fetcheth principally the fire or motives of his zeal: He is thinking principally of their case, and all the while fishing for their love and approbation and applause: And where he cannot have it, the fire of his zeal goeth out: Whereas though the humble, subordinately look at men, and would do all to edification, yet it is not to be Loved by them so much as to exercise Love upon them; nor to seek for honor and esteem from them so much as to convert and save them; And it is God that he chiefly eyeth, and regardeth, and from him that he fetches his most powerful motives; and it is his approbation that he expecteth: His eye and heart is so upon the auditors as to be more upon God: He would feed the sheep; but would please the Lord and Owner of them.

§. 47. Sign. 5. A Proud man after his duty is more inquisitive how he was liked by men, and what they think or say of him, than whether God and Conscience give him their approbation: He hath his scouts to tell him whether he be honored or dishonored: This is the return of prayer that he looks after: This is the fruit of preaching which he seeks to reap: But these are inconsiderable things to a serious humble soul: He hath God to please; his work to do; and sets not much by human judgment.

§. 48. Sign 6. A Proud man is more troubled when he perceiveth that he is undervalued and misseth of the honor which he sought, than that his preaching succeeds not for the good of souls, or his prayers prevail not for their spiritual good: Every man is most troubled for missing that which is his end: To do good and get good is the end of the sincere, and this he looks after, and rejoiceth if he obtain it, and is troubled if he miss it: To seem good, and wise, and able is the Proud man's end: And if the people honor him, it puffs him up with gladness, as if he were a happy man: And if they slight him or despise him, he is cast down, or cast into some turbulent passion, and falls a hating or wrangling with them that deny him the honor he expects, as if they did him a heinous wrong: As if a Physician should want both skill and care to cure his patients; but hateth and revileth them, because they prefer another that is abler, and will not die to secure his honor, or magnify his skill for killing their friends. The Proud man's honor is his Life and Idol.

§. 49. Sign 7. The Heart of the Proud is not inclined to humbling duties; to penitent confessions and lamentations for sin, and earnest prayer for grace and pardon; but unto some formal observances and lip-labor, or the Pharisees self-applause, I thank thee that I am not as other men, nor as this Publican: Not but that the humblest have great cause to bless God for their spiritual mercies, and his differencing grace: But the Proud thank God for that which they have not; for sanctification, when they are unsanctified; and for justification when they are unjustified; and for the assured hope of Glory, when they are sure to be damned if they be not changed by renewing grace; and for being made the heirs of Heaven while they continue the heirs of Hell: And therefore the proud are least afraid of coming without right or preparation to the sacrament of the Body and blood of Christ: They rush in with confident presumption: When the humble soul is trembling without, as being oft more fearful to enter than it ought.

§. 50. Sign 8. Proud persons are of all others the most impatient of Church discipline, and uncapable of living under the Government of Christ. If they sin, they can scarce endure the gentlest admonition: But if they are reproved sharply (or cuttingly) that they may be found in the faith, you shall perceive that they smart by their impatience. But if you proceed to more public reproof and admonition, and call them to an open confessing of their sin, to those whom they have wronged, or before the Congregation, and to ask forgiveness, and seriously crave the prayers of the Church, you shall then see the power of Pride against the ordinance and commands of God! How scornfully will they spurn at these reproofs and exhortations? How obstinately will they refuse to submit to their unquestionable duty? And how hardly are they brought to confess the most notorious sins? Or to confess that it is their duty to confess them; Though they would easily believe that it is the duty of another, and would exhort another to do that which they themselves refuse! The Physic seemeth so loathsome to them which Christ hath prescribed them, that they hate him that bringeth it, and will die and be damned before they will take it; but perhaps will turn again and all to rent you (unless where they are restrained by the secular arm.) But if you proceed to reject them, for their obstinate impenitence in heinous sin, from the visible communion of the Church, you shall then see yet more how contrary Pride is to the Church-order and Government ordained by Christ. How bitterly will they hate those that put them to such (necessary) disgrace? How will they storm and rage and turn their fury against the Church; as if Christ's remedy were the greatest injury to them in the world? You may read their Character in the second Psalm. Therefore Christ calleth men to come as little Children into his school: or else they will be unteachable and incorrigible, Mat. 18. 3.

§. 51. Sign 9. A Proud man hath an Heretical disposition, even when he crieth out against Heretics. He is apt to look most after matters of dispute and contention in Religion; Obscure prophecies, God's decrees, controversies which trouble the Church more than edify, circumstances, ceremonies, forms, outwards, orders and words: And for his opinion in these he must be somebody.

§. 52. Sign 10. A Proud man is unsatisfied with his standing in communion with the Church of Christ, and is either ambitiously aspiring to a dominion over it, or is inclined to a separation from it: They are too good to stand on even ground with their brethren: If they may be Teachers or Rulers they can approve the constitution of the Church: But otherwise it is too bad for them to have communion with: They must be of some more refined or elevated society: They are not content to come out and be separate from the infidel and idolatrous world, but they must also come out and be separate from the Churches of Christ, consisting of men that make a credible profession of faith and godliness. They think it not enough to forbear sin themselves, and to have no fellowship with the works of darkness, but reprove them, nor to separate from men as they separate from Christ, but they will also separate from them in their duty, and odiously aggravate every imperfection, and fill the Church with clamors and contentions, and break it into fractions by their schisms, and this not for any true reformation or edifying of the body (for how can division edify it), but to tell the world that they account themselves more holy than the Church: Thus Christ himself was quarrelled with as unholy by the Pharisees, for eating with publicans and sinners: And his disciples for not washing before meat, and observing the traditions of the Elders; and for rubbing out corn to eat on the Sabbath day: And they that will not be strict in their conformity to Christ, will be righteous overmuch and stricter than Christ would have them be, where Pride commandeth it: They will be of the strictest party and opinions, and make opinions and parties that are stricter, than God's commands; and run into errors and schisms that they may be singular, from the general communion of the Church; and will be of a lesser than Christ's little flock.

Signs of Pride in common converse.

§. 53. Sign 1. Pride causeth subjects to be too quick in censuring the actions of their Governors, and too impatient of what they suffer from them, and apt to murmur at them, and rebel against them. It makes inferiors think themselves competent judges of those commands and actions of their superiors, the Reasons of which they never heard, nor can be fit to judge of, unless they were of their council. It makes them forget all the benefits of Government, and mind only the burdens and suffering part, and say as Corah, Ye take too much upon you, seeing all the Congregation are holy everyone of them and the Lord is among them. Wherefore then lift ye up yourselves above the Congregation of the Lord?—Is it a small thing that thou hast brought us up out of a land that floweth with milk and honey, to kill us in the wilderness, except thou make thyself altogether a Prince over us?—Wilt thou put out the eyes of these men? Proud men are impatient, and aggravate their disappointments, and think they have reason and justice on their side.

§. 54. Sign 2. A Proud man is more disposed to command than to obey, and cannot serve God contententedly in a mean and low condition: He is never a good subject, or servant, or child; for subjection seems a slavery to him: He thinks it a baseness to be governed by another: He hath a Reason of his own, which still contradicteth the Reason of his Rulers, and a will of his own that must needs be fulfilled, and cannot submit or yield to Government: He is still ready to step out of his rank; and prepare for suffering by disorder, that he may taste the sweetness of present liberty! As if your horse or cattle should break out from you to be free, and famish in the winter, when snow depriveth them of grass. Whereas the humble know it is much easier to obey than Govern; and that the valleys are the most fruitful grounds, and that it is the Cedars and mountain trees that are blown down, and not the shrubs: And that a low condition affordeth not only more safety, but more quietness and leisure to converse with God: And that it is a mercy that others may be employed in his preservation, and keeping the walls, and watching the house, while he may follow his work in quietness and peace; And therefore willingly payeth honor and tribute to whom it is due.

§. 55. Sign 3. If a Proud man be a Ruler, he is apt to be lifted up in mind; and to despise his inferiors, as if they were not men, or he were more: He is apt to disdain the counsels of the wise, and to scorn admonition from the ministers of Christ, and to hate every Michea that prophesieth not good of him, and to value none but flatterers,, and discountenance faithful dealers, and not endure to hear of his faults: He is apt to fall out with the power of Godliness, and the Gospel of Christ, as that which seemeth to cross his interest; and to forget his own subjection to God, and the danger of his subjects: He is more desirous to be obeyed by his inferiors, than himself to obey his absolute Lord▪ He expecteth that his commands be obeyed though God command the contrary; and is more offended at the neglect of his Laws and Honor, than at the contempt of the Honor and Laws of God.

§. 55. Sign 4. If there be any place of office, honor or preferment void, a proud man thinks that he is the fittest for it, and if he seek it, he taketh it for an injury if another be preferred before him as more deserving: And though they that had a hand in putting him by, and preferring another, did it never so judiciously, and impartially, and for the common good, without any respect to any friend or interest of their own, yet all this will not satisfy the Proud, who knoweth no Reason or Law but selfishness, but he will bear a grudge to men for the most righteous necessary action: What ignorant men and impious have we known displeased, because they were not thought worthy to be Teachers in the Church? or because a people that knew the worth of their souls, had the wit and conscience to prefer a worthier man before them! What worthless men (in Corporations and elsewhere) have we seen displeased, because they were not chosen to be Governors? So unreasonable a sin is Pride.

§. 56. Sign 5. A proud man thinks when he looks at the works of his Superiors, that he could do them better himself, if he had the doing of them. There is not one of them of an hundred but think that they could rule better than the King doth, and judge better than the Judge doth, and perhaps preach better than the Preacher doth, unless his ignorance be so palpable as that he cannot question it. Absalom would do the people Justice, better than his Father David, if he were King. If all the matters of Church and Common-wealth were at his dispose, how confident is he, that they should be well ordered, and all faults mended; and O how happy a world should we have!

§. 57. Sign 6. A proud man is apt to over-value his own knowledge, and to be much unacquainted with his Ignorance; He is much more sinsible of what he knoweth, than how much he is wanting, of what he ought to know: He thinks himself fit to contradict the ablest Divine, when he hath scarce so much knowledge as will save his soul. If he have but some smattering, to enable him to talk confidently of what he understandeth not, he thinks himself fittest for the Chair; and is elevated to a pugnacious courage, and thinks he is able to dispute with any man; and constantly gives himself the victory: If it be a woman that hath gathered up a few Receipts, she thinketh herself fit to be a Physician, and venture the lives of dearest friends upon her ignorant skilfulness; when seven years study more is necessary to make such Novices know how little they know, and how much is utterly unknown to them, and seven years more to give them an encouraging taste of knowledge; yet Pride makes them Doctors in Divinity and Physic by its Mandamus without so much ado: And as they commenced, so they practice, in the dark; and to save the labor of so long studies, can spare, and gravely deride that knowledge, which they cannot get at cheaper rates. And, no wonder, when it is the nature of Pride and Ignorance to cause the birth and increase of each other. It were a wonder for an Ignorant person to be Humble; and when he knoweth not what abundance of excellent truths are still unknown to him, nor what difficulties there are in every controversy which he never saw. How many studious, learned, holy Divines would go many thousand miles (if that would serve) to be well resolved of many doubts in the Mysteries of Providence, Decrees, Redemption, Grace, Free-will, and many the like, and that after twenty or forty years study; when I can take them a Boy or a Woman in the Streets, that can confidently determine them all in a few words, and pity the ignorance or error of such Divines, and shake the head at their blindness, and say, God hath revealed them to themselves that are Babes! yea, and perhaps their confidence taketh dissenters for such heretical, erroneous, intoler •••• e persons, that they look upon them as Heathens and Publicans, and either with the Papists reproach and persecute them, or with the lesser Sects divide from them, as from men that receive not the the truth; and thus Pride makes as many Churches as there are different Opinions.

§. 58. Sign 7. Pride maketh men wonderful Partial in judging of their own Virtues and Vices in comparison of other men's. When the humble are complaining of their weaknesses and sinfulness, and have much ado to believe that they are anything, or to discern the sincerity of their grace; and think their prayers are as no prayers, and their duties so bad that God will not regard them, the Proud think well of all they do, and are little troubled at their greater wants. They easily see another man's failings; but the very same or worse, they justify in themselves. Their own passions, their own over-reachings or injurious dealings, their own ill words, are smoothed over as harmless things, when other men's are aggravated as intolerable crimes: Another is judged by them unfit for human societies, for less than that which they cannot endure to be themselves reproved for; and will hardly be convinced that it is any fault: So blind is Pride about themselves.

§. 59. Sign 8. Pride makes men hear their Teachers as Judges, when they should hear them as Learners and Disciples of Christ: They come not to be taught what they knew not, but to censure what they hear; and as confidently pass their judgment on it, as if their Teachers wanted nothing but their instructions to Teach them aright. I know that no poison is to be taken into the soul, upon pretence of any man's authority; and that we must prove all things and hold fast that which is good: But yet I know that you must be Taught even to do this; and that the Pastors office is appointed by Christ as necessary to your good, and that the Scholars that are still quarrelling with their Teachers, and readier to Teach their Masters than to learn of them, and boldly contradicting what they never understood, are too proud to become wise: And that Humility and Reason teacheth men to learn with a sense of their ignorance, and the necessity of a Teacher.

§. 60. Sign 9. A proud man is always hard to be pleased, because he hath too great expectations from others: He looks for so much observance and respect, and to be humoured and honored by all, that it is too hard a task for any man to please him that hath much to do with him, and hath any other Trade to follow: He that will please him, must either have little to do with him, and come but seldom in his way; or else he must▪ study the art of man-pleasing, complement and flattery, till he be ready to commence Doctor in it, and must make it his Trade and business, as Nurses do to tend the sick, or quiet Children. One look, or word, or action, will every day fall cross; and some respect or complement will be wanting. And as godly humble men do justly aggravate their sins from the Greatness and Excellency of God whom they offend; so the proud man foolishly aggravates every little wrong that is done him, and every word that is said against him, and every supposed omission or neglect of him, by the high Estimation he hath of himself against whom it is done.

§. 61. Sign 10. The proud are desirous of Precedency among men: To be saluted with the first; and taken by Great ones into the greatest favor, and to be set in the upper room, at Table, and at Church; and to take the better hand: He grudgeth at those that are set above him and preferred before him, unless they are much his Superiors: Or if he have the wit to avoid the disgrace of contending for such trifles, and showing the childishness of his Pride to others, yet he retaineth a displeasure at the heart. When the humble give precedency to others, and set themselves at the lower end.

§. 62. Sign 11. A proud man expecteth that all the good that he doth be remembered, and that others do keep a register of his good works, and take notice of his learning, worth and virtues: As their own memories are stronger here than in anything, so they think other men's should be: As if (being conscious how unfit they are for the esteem of God) they thought all were lost which is not observed and esteemed by men: As their eye is upon themselves, so they think the eye of others should be also, and that as their own, to admire the good, and not to see the infirmities and evil.

§. 63. Sign 12. No man is taken for so great a friend to the proud as their admirers: whatever else they be, they love those men best, that highliest esteem them: The faults of such they can extenuate and easily forgive: Let them be Drunkards, or Whoremongers, or Swearers, or otherwise ungodly, the proud man loveth them according to the measure of their honoring him: If you would have his favor, let him hear that you have magnified him behind his back, and that you honor him above all other men. But if the holiest servant of God think meanly of him, and speak of him but as he is; especially if he think they are disesteemers of him, or are against his interest and honor, all their wisdom and holiness will not reconcile him to them, if they were as wise or good as Peter or Paul: It signifieth nothing to him that they are honourers of God, if he think they be not honourers of him. Nay, he will not believe or acknowledge their goodness, but take all for hypocrisy, if they suit not with his interest or honor: and all because he is an Idol to himself.

§. 64. Sign 13. A proud man is apt to domineer with insolency, when he gets any advantage, and perceiveth himself on the higher ground. He saith as Pilate to those that are in his power, Knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and power to release thee? Forgetting that they have no power at all against any, but what is given them from above. Victories and successes lift up fools, and make them look big and forget themselves, as if their shadows were longer than before: Servants got on Horsback will speak disdainfully of Princes that are on foot. David saith, The proud have had me in derision. If they get into places of power by preferment, they cannot bear it, but are puffed up and intoxicated, as if they were not the same men they were: They deal worse by their inferiors if they humor them not, than Balaam by his Ass: when they have made them speak, their insolency cannot bear it, whereas the humble remembereth how far he is equal with the lowest, and dealeth gently with his servants themselves, remembering that he also hath a Master in Heaven, Ephes. 6. 9.

§. 65. Sign 14. A proud man is impatient of being contradicted in his speech; be it right or wrong you must say as he, or not gainsay him. Hence it is that Gallants think that a man's life is little enough to expiate the wrong, if a man presume to say, they Lye. I know that Children, and servants, and other inferiors must not be irreverent or immodest, in an unnecessary contradicting the words of their superiors, but must silently give place when they cannot assent to what is said: But yet an impatience of sober and reasonable contradiction, even from an inferior or servant, is not a sign of a humble mind.

§. 66. Sign 15. Wherever a proud man dwelleth he is turbulent and impatient if he have not his will: If he be a public person, he will set a Kingdom all on fire, if things may not go as he would have them. Among the crimes of the last and perilous times, Paul numbereth these; to be Lovers of their own selves, boasters, proud, traitors, heady, high-minded —If they have to do in Church affairs, they will have their will and way, or they will cast all into confusion, and hinder the Gospel, and turn the Churches upside down. In Towns and Corporations they are heady and turbulent, to have their wills. In families there shall be no peace, if everything may not go their way? They cannot yield to the judgment of another.

§. 67. Sign 16 Proud men are passionate and contentious, and cannot put up injuries or foul words: When a humble man giveth place to wrath, and avengeth not himself, nor resisteth evil; but is meek and patient, forbearing and forgiving, and so heaping coals of fire on his enemies heads: Only by Pride cometh contention, Prov. 13. 10. He that is of a proud heart stirreth up strife, Prov. 28. 25. What is their wrath, their scorns, their railing and endeavoring to vilify those that have offended them, but the foam and vomit of their pride? Proud, haughty, scorner is his name, that dealeth in proud wrath, Prov. 21. 24.

§. 68. Sign 17. A proud man is either an open or a secret boaster: If he be ashamed to show his Pride by • pon b •••• ing, then he learneth the skill of setting out himself, and making known his excellencies in a closer and more handsome way: His own commendations shall not seem the design of his speech, but to come in upon the by, or before he was aware, as if he thought of something else: or it shall seem necessary to some other end, and a thing that he is unavoidably put upon, as against his will. Or he will take on him to conceal it, but by a transparent veil, as some proud women hide their beauties: Or he will conjoin the mention of some of his infirmities, but they shall be such as he thinks no matter of disgrace, but like proud women's beauty-spots, to set out the better part which they are proud of: But one way or other, either by ostentation or insinuation, his work is to make known all that tendeth to his honor, and to see that his goodness, and wisdom, and greatness be not unknown or unobserved: And all because he must have men's approbation, the hypocrites reward: He is as buried if he be unknown. Proud and boasters are joined together, Rom. 1. 30. 2 Tim. 3. 2. Theudas the deceiver, boasted himself to be somebody, Acts 5. 36. Simon Magus gave out that himself was some great one, and the people all gave heed to him from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God, Acts 8. 9, 10. Such love the praise of men more than the praise of God, John 12. 43. But the humble hath learned another kind of language; not affectedly but from the feeling of their hearts, to cry out, I am vile: I am unworthy to be called a child; My sins are more than the hairs of my head: And he hateth their vanity that by unseasonable or immoderate commendations, endeavor to stir him up to pride, and so to bring him to be vile indeed, by proclaiming him to be excellent. Much more doth he abhor to praise himself, having learned, Prov. 27. 2. Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips. He praiseth himself by Works, and not by Words, Prov. 31. 31.

§. 69. Sign 18. A proud man loveth honorable Names and Titles: as the Pharisees to be called Rabbi: Matth. 23. And yet they may have so much wit as to pretend, that it is but to promote their service for the common good, and not that they are so weak to care for empty names; or else that they were forced to it, by some bodies kindness without their seeking, and against their wills.

§. 70. Sign 19. Pride doth tickle the heart of fools with content and pleasure to hear themselves applauded, or see themselves admired by the people, or to hear that they have got a great reputation in the world, or to be flocked after, and cried up, and have many followers. Herod loveth to hear in commendation of his Oration, It is the voice of a God, and not of a man: It is a feast to the proud, to hear that men abroad do magnify him, or see that those about him do reverence, and love, and honor, and idolize him. Hence hath the Church been filled with busy Sect-masters, even of those that seemed forwardest in Religion; which was sadly prophesied of by Paul to the Ephesians, Acts 20. 29, 30. Two sorts of troublers under the name of Pastors, pride hath in all Ages thrust upon the Church; Devouring Wolves, and dividing Sect-masters: [ For I know this, that after my departure, shall grievous Wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock: Also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. See also Rom. 16. 16, 17.]

§. 71. Sign 20. Pride maketh men censorious and uncharitable: They extenuate other men's virtues and good works; and suspect ungroundedly their sincerity: A little thing serves to make them think or call a man an hypocrite! Very few are honest, or sincere, or godly, or humble, or faithful, or able, or worthy in their eyes, even among them that are so indeed, or that they have cause to think so: A slight conjecture or report seemeth enough to allow them to condemn or defame another. They quickly see the Mote in a Brothers eye. Their pride and fancy can create a thousand Heretics, or Schismatics, or hypocrites, or ungodly ones, that never were such but in the Court of their presumption. Especially if they take men for their adversaries, they can cast them into the most odious shape, and make them anything that the Devil will desire them. But the humble are charitable to others, as conscious of much infirmity in themselves, which makes them need the tenderness of others. They judge the best till they know the worst, and censure not men until they have both evidence to prove it, and a call to meddle with them, having learned, Matth. 7. 1, 2, 3, 4. Judge not that ye be not judged.

§. 72. Sign 21. Pride causeth men to bate Reproof: The proud are forward in finding faults in others; but love not a plain Reprover of themselves. Though it be a duty which God himself commandeth, Lev. 19. 17. as an expression of love, and contrary to hatred, yet it will make a proud man to be your enemy, Prov. 15. 12. A scorner loveth not one that reproveth him, neither will he go unto the wise, Prov. 9. 7, 8. He that reproveth a scorner getteth himself shame; and he that rebuketh a wicked man, getteth himself a blot: Reprove not a scorner, lest be hate thee: Rebuke a wise man, and be will love thee. It galleth their hearts, and they take themselves to be injured, and they will bear you a grudge for it, as if you were their enemy: If they valued or honored you before, you have lost them or angered them if you have told them of their faults: If they love to hear a Preacher deal plainly with others, they hate him when he dealeth so with them: Herod will give away John's head, when he hath first imprisoned him for telling him of his Sin, though before he reverenced him and heard him gladly. They can easily endure to be evil, and do evil, but not to hear of it. As if a man that had the Leprosy loved the disease, and yet hated him that telleth him that he hath it, or would cure him of it. This pride is the thing that hath made men so unprofitable to each other, by driving faithful reproof and admonition almost out of the world, because men are so proud that they will not bear it. Hence it is that others hear oftener of men's faults, than they do themselves, and that backbiting is grown the common fashion, because proud sinners drive away reprovers, by their impatience and displeasure. Husbands and Wives, yea, Servants with their Masters are so far out of love with just reproof, that they can hardly bear it. He must be exceeding skillful in smoothing and oyling every word, and making it more like to a commendation or flattery, than a reproof, that will escape their indignation.

§. 73. Sign 22. When a proud man is justly reproved, he studieth presently to deny or extenuate his fault; to show you that he is more tender of his honor, than of his honesty. It is a hard thing to bring him to a free confession, and to thank you for your love and faithfulness, and to resolve upon more watchfulness for the time to come: When the humble soul is readier to believe that he is faulty, than that he is innocent, and to say more against himself than you shall say (if truly). This one sign may tell you how commonly pride reigneth in the world. How few are they among many that are heartily thankful for a just and necessary reproof? Mark them whether the first word they speak in answer to you, be not either a denial or an excuse, or an upbraiding you with something that they think you faulty in, or else a passionate proud repulse, bidding you, meddle with yourselves?

§. 74. Sign 23. Pride maketh men talkative; and more desirous to speak than to hear, and to teach than to be taught; because such think highly of their own understandings; and think others have more need of their instructions, than they of other men's. Not that Humility is any enemy to communicative Charity, or to zealous endeavors for the converting and edifying of souls: But a teaching, talking disposition, where there is no need, and beyond the measure of your calling and abilities, when you have more need to learn yourselves, is the fruit of Pride. When you take less heed what another saith to you, than you expect he should take of what you say to him: when your talk is not so much by way of question as becomes a learner, but in the discourses and dictates of a Teacher: when you are so full of anything that is your own, and so contemptuous of what is said by others, that you have not the patience to hear them silently till they come to the end, but unmannerly interrupt them, and set in yourselves; which is as much as to say, Hold your tongue, and let me speak that am more wise and worthy: when you strive to have the most words, and to be speaking; as Horses in a race strive who shall go foremost: This is because pride puffs you up, and moves your tongues as a leaf is shaken by the wind: it fills your sails; and makes you like Bagpipes that are loudest when they are full of wind and pressed. Eccl. 10. 14. A fool is full of words. Prov. 10. 19. In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin: but he that refraineth his lips is wise.

§. 75. Sign 24. Pride maketh men excessively loath to be beholden to others; so that some will starve or perish before they will stoop so far as to seek or be obliged to thankfulness by any; especicially if they be such as they have any quarrel with. And this they take for manlike gallantry, and a scorning to be base. I confess that as Paul saith to servants, if we can be free, we should rather choose it; and that no man should unnecessarily make himself a debtor to another, by being beholding to him: especially Ministers, who should avoid all Temptations of dependence upon man: and therefore should neither hang on Great ones, lest they be tempted to unfaithful silence or flattery, nor needlessly live on the people's charity, lest they be hindered from the free exercise of their Ministry: Therefore Paul labored with his hands where he thought it would hinder his work to be chargeable to the Churches, or give occasion to the envious to reproach him: And he would rather die than any should make this his glorying void. 1 Cor. 9. 15. Innocency and Independency, as Mr. Bolton was wont to say, do steel the face, and help a Minister to be bold and faithful. As Camerarius said when he was invited to the Court,

But yet man is a sociable creature; and we are made to be helpful to each other: we are like the wheels of a Watch, that can none of them do their work alone, without the concurrence of the rest: And therefore a proud man that would live wholly on himself, and scorneth to be beholden, would break himself off from the place that God hath set him in, and separate himself from human society, and be either a world of himself or a God to others. But God hath caused all the members purposely to stand in need of one another, that none might be despised, and that all might still exercise Love in communicating, and Humility in accepting of each others help.

§. 76. Sign 25. Pride maketh people desirous to equal their Superiors, and exceed their equal • , in Apparel, or hansome dwellings, and provisions, and entertainments, and all appearances that tend to 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 set them out, and make them seem considerable in the world: For it excessively regards the eye of man: A fit respect to Decency must be had (so we place no greater a necessity in it than we ought:) But pride would sain go with the highest, and have more curiosity than needs; and maketh a greater matter of Decency than the thing requireth. I am not of their humor, that censure every man whose hair is not of their cut, and whose garments are not of their fashion, and who are bred in a way of more gentility and ceremony than myself: But yet the affectation of imitating fashion-mongers, and bearing a port above ones rank, and rather desiring the converse and company of superiors than inferiors, and to live like those that are a step above us, than those that are a step below us, are signs as significant of Pride, as the Robes of a Judge or a Doctor are of their dignities and degrees. I am sure Humility hath learnt this lesson, Rom. 12. 16. Mind not high things; but condescend to men of low estate: be not wise in your own eyes. As for the ridiculous effeminate fashions and deportment of some men, and the spots, and paintings, and nakedness, and other antick fashions of some women, and the many hours which they daily waste in dressings, and adornings, and preparing themselves for the sight of others, they are the badges of so foolish and worse than childish a sort of pride, that I will not trouble myself and the Reader in reprehending them. Manly pride is ashamed of such toys. Let the Patrons of them please their Patients, by proving them lawful, while they have no wiser work to do; and when they have done, let them go on to prove that it is lawful for sober persons to wear such Irons as they do in Bedlam; and that such Chains as they in Newgate wear, are no signs of a prisoner; and that it is lawful for an honest woman to wear a Harlots habit. If the proud have no more wit than to wear the badges of their childishness or distraction, and show then shame to all they meet, and make themselves as ridiculous as men that lay aside their Breeches, and wear Side-coats again like children, I will leave them to themselves, and will not now trouble them with any longer contradiction.

§. 77. Sign 26. Proud persons are ashamed and troubled if any necessity force them, to go lower in apparel, or provisions, or deportment, than others do of their degree: To show you that it is not as a Duty that Decency is regarded by them, but as the ornaments of pride: else they would be quiet when Providence maketh it cease to be their duty! They are not so much ashamed of sin, and the neglect of God and their salvation, as they are to be seen in sordid attire, or in a poor and homely garb: Beggars and servants show here that they are as proud as Lord's. What abundance of them go but seldom to Church, and give this as a reason [ I wanted clothes: ] As if they would neglect their souls, their God, their greatest duty, rather than do it in such Clothes as they do their common work? Doth Christ appoint you to give him the meeting, that by his Ministers he may instruct you for salvation, and that you may ask and receive the pardon of your sins, and will you disappoint him and refuse to come, for want of better clothes? Sure you do not think that these are the Wedding Garment which he requireth you to bring? You would beg if you were naked or in rags: and will you not come to beg of God, because you have no better clothes? Do you set more by the reputation of your clothes, than the means of your salvation? How little do such wretches set by God, and by his mercy now, that will shortly on their death-beds cry for Mercy, without any such regard of clothes. Naked they come into the world, and naked they must go out, and yet they will turn their backs on the Worship of God, for want of clothes. They are not ashamed nor afraid to be ungodly, and to forsake their duty; but they are ashamed of torn or poor attire. What, say they, shall we make ourselves ridiculous! When their pride and ungodliness is cause of a thousand fold more shame. We read of thousands, even of the poor, that crowded after Christ to hear him; but of none that staid at home for want of clothes; when it is like they had no better than yours.

§. 78. Sign 27. If a proud man be wronged, he looketh for great submission before he will forgive: you must lie down at his feet, and make a very full confession, and behave yourself with great submission; especially if the Law be in his hands. And he is prone to revenge, and cruel in his revenge: But if he have wronged others, he is hardly brought to confess that he wronged them; and more hardly to humble himself for reconciliation, and ask them forgiveness: when a humble person, is ready to let go his right for peace, and easily forgiveth, and easily stoopeth to ask forgiveness.

§. 79. Sign 28. Lastly, Pride maketh men inordinately desire to have an honorable memorial kept of their names when they are dead (if they are persons that rise to the hopes of such a remembrance): Many a monument hath Pride erected: Many a Book it hath written to this end: Many a good work materially it hath done, and made it bad by such a base intention! Many a Hospital, and Alms-house, and School-house it hath built! And many a pound it hath given to charitable uses in pretension, but to proud and selfish uses in intention. Not that any should causelessly suspect another's ends, or blemish the deserved honor of good works, which it is lawful ordinately to regard: But we should suspect our own hearts, and take heed of so horrible a sin, which would turn the excellentest parts and works into poison or corruption: And remember how heinous a thing it is, for a man to be laying proud designs, when he is turning to the dust, and going to appear before his Judge? yea, to set up the monuments of his Pride over his rotten flesh and bones: And to show that he dieth in so great a sin without repentance, by endeavoring that as much as may be of it may survive, when he is dead and gone! If such wicked ends, do sometime offer to intrude into necessary excellent works, an honest heart must abhor them and cast them out, and beg forgiveness; and not for that forbear his work, nor refuse the comfort of his more sincere desires and intents: But such good works do sink the hypocrite into Hell, that are principally done as a service to Pride, to leave a name on earth behind him.

§. 80. Thus I have been long in showing you the signs of Pride, because the discovery is a great part of the cure: Not that every proud person hath all these signs: For everyone hath not the same temptations or occasion to show it: But everyone hath some and many of these: And he that hath any one of them, hath a sign of Pride. And again I say, that for all this our Reputation as it subserveth the Honor of God and our Religion, and our brethren's good, must be carefully by all just means preserved, and by necessary defences vindicated from calumniators: Though we must quietly bear whatever infamy or slander we are tried with.

§. 81. Direct. 3. Having understood the Nature and the signs or effects of PRIDE, consider next of the dreadful consequents and tendency of it, both as it leadeth to farther sin and unto misery. Which I shall briefly open to you in some particulars.

§. 82. 1. At the present it is the Heart of the old man, and the root and life of all corruption and of dreadful signification, if it be predominant. If any man's heart be lifted up the Lord will have no pleasure in him, or it is not upright in him: Hab. 2. 4. I had rather have my soul in the case of an obscure humble Christian that is taken notice of by few or none but God, and is content to approve himself to him, than in the case of the highest and most eminent and honorable in Church or State, that looks for the observation and praise of men: God judgeth not of men by their great parts, and profession, and name; but justifieth the humbled soul that is ashamed to lift up his face to Heaven, and thinketh himself unworthy to speak to God, or to have communion with his Church, or to come among his servants; but standing a far off, smiteth upon his breast, and saith (in true Repentance) O God be merciful to me a sinner. Luke 18. 13. Pride is as a plague-mark on the soul.

§. 83. 2. There is scarce a sin to be thought on that is not a spawn in the bowels of Pride. To stance in some few (besides all that are expressed in the signs), 1. It maketh men Hypocrites, and 〈◊〉 what they are not, for the praise of men. 2. It makes men Liars: Most of the Lyes that are 〈◊〉 in the world, are to avoid some disgrace and shame, or to get men to think highly of them. 〈◊〉 sin is committed against God or your superiors instead of humble confession, Pride would cove •••• with a lie. 3. It causeth covetousness, that they may not want provision for their Pride. 4. 〈◊〉 maketh men flatterers and time-servers, and man-pleasers, that they may win the good esteem others. 5. It makes men run into profaneness, and riotousness, to do as others do to avoid 〈◊〉 shame of their reproach and scorn, that else would account them singular and precise. 6. It can tal •• men off from any duty to God that the company is against: They dare not pray, nor speak a serio •• word of God, for fear of a jear from a scorners mouth. 7. It is so contentious a sin, that it makes men firebrands in the societies where they live: There is no quiet living with them longer than they have their own saying, will and way: They must bear the sway, and not be crossed: And when all is done, there is no pleasing them; for the missing of a word, or a look, or a complement, will catch on their hearts, as a spark on gunpowder. 8. It tears in pieces Church and State: Where was ever civil war raised, or Kingdom endangered or ruined, or Church divided, oppressed or persecuted, but Pride was the great and evident cause? 9. It devoureth the mercies and good creatures of God, and sacrificeth them to the Devil! It is a chargeable sin! What a deal doth it consume in clothes, and buildings, and attendance, and entertainments, and unnecessary things. 10. It is an odious thief and prodigal of precious time. How many hours that should be better employed, and must one day be accounted for, are cast away upon the foresaid works of Pride? Especially in the needless complements and visits of Gallants, and the dressings of some vain light-headed women, in which they spend almost half the day, and can scarce find an hour in a morning for prayer, or meditation, or reading the scriptures, because they cannot be ready: Forgetting how they disgrace their wretched bodies, by telling men that they are so filthy or deformed, that they cannot be kept sweet and cleanly and seemly without so long and much ado. 11. It is odiously unjust: A proud man makes no bones of any falsehood, slander, deceit or cruelty, if it seem but necessary to his greatness, or honor, or preferment, or ambitious ends. He careth not who he wrongeth or betrayeth, that he may rise to his desired height, or keep his greatness. Never trust a Proud man further, than his own interest bids you trust him. 12. Pride is the pander of whoredom and uncleaneness: It is an incentive to lust in themselves, and draws the proud to adorn and set forth themselves in the most enticing manner, as tends to provoke the lust of others. Fain they would be thought comely that others may admire them, and be taken with their comeliness: If they thought that none would see them, they would spare their ornaments. And if a common decency were all that they affected, they would spare their curiosities and fashionable superfluities: Even they that would not be unclean in gross fornication with any, yet would be esteemed beautiful and desirable, and do that which tendeth to corrupt the minds of • ools that see them. These, and indeed almost all sin, are the natural progeny of Pride.

§. 85. 3. As to the misery which they bring on themselves and others, 1. The greatest is that they forsake God and are in danger to be forsaken by him: For God abhorreth the Proud, and beholdeth them as afar off. So far as you are Proud your are hated by him, and have no acceptance or communion with him. Pride is the highway to utter appostacie. It blindeth the mind: It maketh men confident in their own conceits; and venturous upon any new opinion; and ready to quarrel with the word of God before they understand it: When anything seems hard to them, they presently suspect the truth of the matter, when they should suspect their dark unfurnished minds. Mark those that are Pr • ud in any Town, or any company of professors of piety, and if any infection of heresy or infidelity come into that place, these are the men that will soonest catch it. Mark those that have turned from Truth or Godliness, and see whether they be not such as were proud and superficial in Religion before. But God giveth Grace, and more Grace to the humble: He dwelleth with them, and delighteth in them.

2. A proud man is a tormenter of himself. Setting his mind on the Thoughts of men, and desiring more of their esteem than he can attain, and that which is unsatisfying vanity when he hath obtained it: He is still under fruitless v • xatious desires, and frequent disappointments: Every thing that he s •• th, and every word almost that he heareth, or every complement omitted can disturb his peace, and break his sleep, and cast him into a fever of passion or revenge: This wind that swelleth him, is running up and down, and disquieting him in every part: Who would have such a fire in his breast, that will not suffer him to be quiet?

3. Pride bringeth sufferings, and then maketh them seem intolerable: It makes the sin • er more vex and gall his mind with striving and impatient aggravating his afflictions, than the suffering o • itself would ever do.

4. Pride is a deep-rooted and a self preserving sin: And therefore harder to be killed and rooted up than other sins. In hindereth the discovery of itself. It driveth away the light: It hateth r • proo • : It will not give the sinner leave to see his pride when it is reproved; Nor to confess it i • he see i • ; nor to be humbled for it if he do confess it; no • to loath himself▪ and forsake it, though conviction and terror seems to humble him. Even while he heareth all the signs o • pride, he will not see it in himself: When he feeleth his hatred of reproof, and knoweth that this is a sign of pride in others, yet he will not know it in himself: If you would go about • o cure him of this or any other fault, you shall feel that you are handling a wasp or an adder: Yet when he is spitting the venom of pride against the reprover, he perceiveth not that he is proud: This venom is his nature, and therefor • is not felt nor troublesome: If all the Town or Congregation should note him as notoriously proud, yet he himself, that should best know himself, will not observe it. It is a wonder to see how this • in keepeth strength, in persons that have long taken pains for their souls, and seem to be in all other respects the most serious mortyfied Christians! Yet let them but be touched in their interest or reputation▪ or seem • o be slighted, or see another preferred before them while they are neglected, and they boil with envy, malice or discontent, and show you that the Heart of • in, even SELFISHNESS and PRIDE is yet alive, unbroken and too strong. Especially if they are not persons of a natural gentleness and mildness, but of a more passionate temper; than Pride hath, more • ill and fuel to kindle it into these discernible flames. He is a Christian indeed that hath conquered Pride.

5. Pride is the defense not only of itself, but of every other sin in the heart or life. For it • ateth reproof and keepeth off the remedy; It hideth, and extenuateth, and excuseth the sin, and thinketh well of that which should be hated.

6. Pride hindereth every means and duty, from doing you good; and ofttimes corrupteth them and turneth them into sin. Sometimes it keepeth men • rom the duty, and sometime it keepeth them from the benefit of the duty. It makes men think that they are so whole and well▪ as to have little need of all this physic, yea or of their daily necessary food. They think all this is more ado than needs: What need of all this preaching, and praying, and reading, and holy conference, and meditation, and heavenly mindedness? One is ashamed of it, and another wants it not, and another is above it; and they ask you, where are we commanded to pray in our family, and to pray so oft, and to hear so oft, and read any book but the Holy Scriptures, &c. For they feel no obligation from General commands, (as to pray continually, and always, and not wax faint, nor be weary of well doing, to redeem the time, and do all to edification, and be • ervent in spirit serving the Lord, &c.) Because they • e • l not that need or sweetness which should help them to perceive that frequency is good or necessary for them. If the Physician bid two men [ eat often, ] and one of them hath a strong appetite, and the other hath none; he that is hungry will interpr • t the word [ often ] to signify t • ri • e a day at least, and he that hath no appetite will think that once a day is [ often ]. Healthful m • n do not use to ask, How prove you that I am bound to eat twice or thrice a day? Feeling the need and benefit, they will be satsfied with an allowance without a command: They will rather ask, How prove you that I may not do it? For they feel reason in themselves to move them to it, i • God restrain them not. So it is with an humble soul about the means of his edification and salvation: It feeleth a need of preaching, and prayer, and holy spending the Lord's day, and family duties, &c. Yea it feeleth the need and benefit of frequency in duties, and is glad of leave to draw near to God, and feels the bond of Love constrain: Whereas the Proud are full and senseless, and could easily be content with little in Religion, if the Laws of God or man constrained them n • t; and will do no more than needs they must. Yea some of late have been advanced by Pride, above all Ordinances; that is, above obedience to God, in the use of his appointed means; but not above the need of means, nor above the plagues prepared for the proud and disobedient. Humility secureth men from many such pernicious opinions.

§. 86. Direct. 4. To the conquering of Pride its necessary that you perceive that indeed it is in yourselves; and is the radical sin, and the very poison of your hearts; and that you set yourselves matchfully to mark its motions; and make it a principal part of your Religion and business of your lives to overcome it, and to walk in Humility with God and man. For if you see not that it is your sin, you will let it alone, and little trouble yourselves about it. Pride liveth in men that seem Religious, because they perceive it no • , or think they have but some small degree, which is not dangerous. And they see it not in themselves, because they mark not its operations and appearances: The life in the root, must be perceived in the branches, in the leaves and fruit. If you saw more evil in this than in many more disgraceful sins, and set yourselves as heartily and diligently to conquer it, as you do to cast ou • the sins which would make you be judged by men to be utterly ungodly, no doubt but the work would more happily go on, and you would see more excellent fruits of your labor, in the work of mortification than most Christians s • e.

§. 86. Direct. 5. Be much in humbling exercises; but so as to take heed of mistaking the nature of them, or running into extremes. I have told you the true nature of Humility before. Abundance o • Christians are tempted by Satan to think it consisteth much much more than it doth, in passionate grief, and tears, and bodily exercises, of long and frequent fastings, and confessions, and penance or • uch like: And thus Satan diverteth them from true endeavors for true Humiliation, by keeping them employed all their days, in striving for tears, or in these external exercises! Whereas you should most strive, for such a • ight of your sinfulness and nothingness, as will teach you highly to esteem of Christ, and to loath yourselves, and take yourselves to be as vile and sinful as you are, and will make you humbly beg for mercy, and stoop to any means to obtain it; and will make you patient under the rebukes and chastisements of God, and under the contempts and injuries of men: This is the Humility which you must labor for. But in order to this, external exercises of Humiliation must be used: Especially studying the holy Law of God, and searching yourselves, and confession of sin and moderate seasonable fastings, and • aming of the flesh. And indeed the exercises of Humiliation do most become those, that are most prone to Pride: And the doctrine of those men who cry down true Humiliation, doth come from Pride, and is made to cherish Pride in others. A humble soul cannot receive it; but is p • oner here to run into excess.

§. 87. Direct. 6. There is no more powerful means to take down Pride than to look seriously to God, and set yourselves before his eyes, and consider how he loveth the humble, and abhorreth the Proud. One sight of God by a lively faith, would make you know with whom you have to do, and • each you to abhor yourselves as vile. A glow-worm is not discerned in the sunshine, though it gli • ter in the dark. A glimpse of the Majesty of God, would make thee with Isaiah 6. cry out, W • e is me, for I am undone, a man of unclean lips, &c. and with the Israelites desire that Moses and not God might speak unto you lest you die. Men are Proud because they know not God, and look not to him, but to fellow sinners with whom they think they may be bold to compare themselves.

Remember also that God is as it were engaged against the proud both in the holiness of his nature, and in honor: For a proud man sets up himself against him, and is such an Idol as God will either take down by grace, or spurn into the fire of destruction: And if he do appear before God among others in days and external exercises of humiliation, you may judge how much an abhorred person will be accepted. It is not to all that are clothed in sa • kcloath, but to the humble soul that God hath respect: Even to the • el • abhorring person, who judgeth himself unworthy to come among the people o • God, or to be door-keepers in his house, or to eat o • the crumbs of the children's bread; that subject themselves to one another, and think no office of love and service too low for them to perform to the least believer, that in charitable meekness instruct opposers, and bear contradiction and contempt from men▪ that patiently suffer the injuries of enemies and friends, and heartily forgive and love them; that bear the most sharp and plain reproofs with gentleness and thanks; that think the lowest place in men's esteem, affections and respects the • it • est for them; that are much more solicitous how they love others, than how others love them, and how they discharge their duties to others, than how others do what they ought for them; that will take up with smaller evidence to think well of the hearts or actions of others, than of their own; that reprove themselves ofter and sharplier than other men reprove them; and are readier to censure themselves than others, or than most others are to censure them; that have a low esteem of their own understandings, and parts, and doings, and therefore are readier to learn than teach, and to hear than speak; that highly value every bit and drop of mercy, especially Christ, and Grace, and Glory—These are the humble that God accepteth, and this is the fast that he requireth. These are they that pray effectually, and that must save the land: These only are sensible what sin is, when others feel it not, or are proud in the midst of their largest confessions and tears: These only do from their hearts acknowledge their desert of God's severest judgments, and justify God when he afflicteth them: Others rather marvel at the greatness and continuance of judgments, and expostulate with God as dealing hardly and unkindly with them, and tell him how good a people he afflicteth: These only understand the sinfulness of their very humiliations and prayers, through the weakness of that good which should be in them, and the mixture of much • vil; when the proud are marvelling if God hear them not at the first word: These only wait in patience for God's answer, and accept of mercy in his time and measure, when the proud are short-winded, and if God come not just when they expected, they do with Saul make h • ste, or murmur at his providence, and say it is in vain to serve the Lord, and begin to think of forsaking him and taking some better way. These proud ones that have joined in outward Humiliations, and have lift up themselves in heart, while they cast down their bodies, are they that have turned the heart of God so much against us, to break us in pieces, because he hath found among us, so many of the proud whom he taketh for his enemies: We have had those humbling themselves in our assemblies, that were wise in their own eyes, despising, and scorning, and reviling their Teachers, such as undervalued and censured others, that were not for their opinions and interest; that overloved the respect and honor that is from men; and could not endure to be disesteemed or little set by; that could not bear an injury or a foul word, but were prone to anger, if not revenge, that could not seek peace, nor stoop to others; nor bear plain-dealing in reproof; nor forgive a wrong without much submission; that had high expectations from others; and loved those best that most esteemed them; that counted it baseness to stoop to the meanest places or services for others good; yea that quarrelled with God, his word and providences, and valued no other mercies but those that exalted themselves or pleased their flesh (which proved judgments): And yet while they thus by pride excommunicated themselves from the face of God, and made themselves abhorred by him, they separated from the holiest assemblies and servants of God in the land, as unworthy of communion with such as they, unless they would first become of their opinion or s • ct. We little consider how great a hand this Pride hath had in our desolations. God hath been scattering the proud of all sorts in the imaginations of their own hearts.

§. 88. Direct. 7. Look to a humbled Christ to humble you. Can you be proud while you believe that your Savior was clothed with flesh, and lived in meanness, and made himself of no reputation, and was despised and scorned and spit upon by sinners, and shamefully used and nailed as a malefactor to a cross? The very incarnation of Christ is a condescension and humiliation enough to pose both men and Angels, transcending all belief but such as God himself produceth by his supernatural testimony and spirit. And can Pride look a crucified Christ in the face, or stand before him? Did God take upon him the form of a servant, and must thou domineer and have the highest place? Had not Christ a place to lay his head on? and must thou needest have thy adorned well-furnished rooms? Must thou needs brave it out in the most fantastic fashion, instead of thy Savior's seamless coat? Doth he pray for his murderers? And must thou be revenged for a word or petty wrong? Is he patiently spit upon and buffeted? And art thou ready through proud impatiency, to spit upon or bus •• t others? Surely he that condemned sin in the flesh, condemned no sin more than Pride.

§. 89. Direct. 8. Look to the examples of the most eminent saints, and you will see they were all most eminent in humility. The Apostles before the coming down of the Holy Ghost on them, contended which of them should be the greatest (which Christ permitted that he might most sharply rebuke it, and leave his warning to all his Ministers and Disciples to the end of the world, that they that would be greatest must be the servants of all, and that they must by conversion become as little children, or never enter into the Kingdom of God). But afterward in what humility did these Apostles labor, and live and suffer in the world? Paul made himself, a servant unto all, that he might gain the more, though he was free from all men, 1 Cor. 9. 19. They submitted themselves to all the injuries and affronts of men; to be accounted the plagues and troublers of the world, and as the scorn and off-scouring of all things, and a gazing stock to Angels and to men. And are you better than they? If you are, you are more humble, and not more proud.

§. 90. Direct. 9. Look to the holy Angels that condescend to minister for man; and think on the blessed souls with God, how far they are from being proud; And remember if ever thou come to Heaven how far thou wilt he from pride thyself. Such a sight as Isaiah's would take do • n pride, Isa. 6. 1, 2, 3. I saw the Lord sitting upon a Throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the Temple: Above it stood the S • raphims: Each one had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he fled (signifying, Humility, Purity and obedience) And one cried unto another and said, Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord of Hosts: His Glory is the fullness of the whole earth. ] So Rev. 4. 8. and verse. 10. The Elders f • ll down, and • ast down their Crowns before him that sitteth on the Throne. Look up to Heaven and you will abhor your pride.

§. 91. Direct. 10. Look up • n the great imperfection of thy grace, and duties. Should that man be proud that hath so little of the spirit and image of Jesus Christ? That believeth no more, and feareth God no more? And loveth him no more? And can no better trust in him, nor rest upon his word and love? Nor no more delight in him nor in his holy laws and service? One would think that the lamentable weakness of any one of all these graces, should take down pride and abase you in your own eyes? Is he a Christian that doth not even abhor himself, when he perceiveth how little he loveth his God, and how little all his meditations on the Love and blood of Christ, and of the infinite Goodness of God, and of the heavenly Glory, do kendle the fire, and warm his heart? Can we observe the darkness of our minds, and ignorance of God, and strangness to the life to come, and the woeful weakness of our faith, and not be abased to a loathing of ourselves? Can we choose but even abhor those hearts that can love a friend, and love the toys and vanities of this life, and yet can love their God no more? That take no more pleasure in his name, and praise, and word, and service, when they can find pleasure in the accommodations of their flesh? Can we choose but loath those hearts that are so averse to God, so loath to think of him, so loath to pray to him, so weary of prayer or holy meditation or any duty, and yet so forward to the business and recreations of the flesh? Can we feel how coldly and unbelievingly we pray, how ignorantly or carnal • y we discourse, how confusedly and vainly we think and how slothfully we work, and how unprofitably we live, and yet be proud, and not be covered with shame? O for a serious Christian to feel how little of God, of Christ, of Heaven is upon his heart, and how little appeareth in any eminent holiness and fruitfullness and heavenliness of life, is so humbling a consideration, that we have much ado to own ourselves, and not lie down as utterly desolate: Should that soul admit a thought of pride, that hath so little Grace as to be uncertain whether he have any at all in sincerity or not? That cannot with assurance call God Father, or plead his interest in Christ or in the promises? nor knoweth not if he die this hour, whether he shall go to Heaven or Hell? Should he be proud that is no readier to die? and no more assured of the pardon of sin? nor willinger to appear before the Lord? If one pained member will make you groan, and walk dejectedly, though all the rest do feel no pain, a soul that hath this universal weakness, a weakness that is so sinful and so dangerous, hath cause to be continually humbled to the dust.

§. 92. Direct. 11. Look upon thy great and manifold sins, which dwell in thy heart, and have been committed in thy life, and there thou wilt see cause for great humiliation. If thy body were full of Toads and Serpents, and thou couldst see or feel them crawling in thee, wouldst thou then be proud? Why so many sins are ten thousand fold worse, and should make thee far viler in thy own esteem. If thou were possessed with Devils, and knewest it, wouldst thou be proud? Why Devils possessing thy body are not so bad or hurtful to thee, as sin in thy soul. The sight of a sin should more take down thy pride, than the sight of a Devil. Should that man be proud that hath lived as thou hast lived, and sinned as thou hast sinned, from thy childhood until now? that hath lost so much time, and abused so much mercy, and neglected so much means, and omitted so many duties to God and man, and been guilty of so many sinful thoughts, and so many false or foolish words, and hath broken all the Laws of God? Should not he be deeply humbled that hath yet so much ignorance, error, unbelief, hypocrisy, sensuality, worldliness, hard-heartedness, security, uncharitableness, lust, envy, malice, impatience and selfishness, as is in thee? Should not thy very Pride itself be matter of thy great humiliation, to think that so odious a sin should yet so much prevail? Look thus on thy leprous defiled soul, and turn thy very Pride against itself? Know thyself, and thou canst not be Proud.

§. 93. Direct. 12. Look also to the desert of all thy sins, even unto Hell itself, and try if that will bring thee low. Though Pride came from Hell effectively, yet Hell objectively may afford thee a remedy against it. Think on the worm that never dieth, and the fire that never shall be quenched, and consider whether Pride become that soul, that hath deserved these. Wilt thou be proud in the way to thy damnation? Thou mightest better be proud of thy Chains and Rope when thou art going to the Gallows. Think whether the miserable souls in Hell, are now minding neat and well set attire, or seeking for dominion, honor or preferment, or contending who shall be the greatest, or striving for the highest rooms, or setting out themselves to the admiration and applause of men, or quarrelling with others for undervaluing or dishonoring them? Do you think there is any place or matter there for such works of Pride, when God abaseth them?

§. 94. Direct. 13. Look to the day of Judgment, when all proud thoughts and looks shall be taken down, and to the endless misery threatened to the proud. Think of that world in which your souls must ere long appear, before the Great and Holy God whose Presence will abase the proudest sinner. When the Tyrants and Gallants, and Wantons of the Earth, must with trembling and amazement give up their accounts to the most righteous Judge of all the world, then where are their lofty looks and language? Then where is their glory, and gallantry, and proud imperious domineering, and their scornful despising the humble lowly ones of Christ? Would you then think that this is the same man, that lately could scarce be seen or spoken with? that looked so big, and swaggered it out in wealth and honor? Is this he that could not endure a scorn, or to be slighted or undervalued, or plainly reproved? that must needs have the honor and precedency in wit, and greatness, and command? Is this the man that thought he was perfect and had no sin; or that his sins were so small, as not to need the humiliation, renovation and holy diligence of the Saints? Is this the woman that spent half the day in dressing up herself, and house, and furniture, for the view of others, and must needs be in the newest or the neatest fashion? that was wont to walk in an artificial pace, with a wandering eye, in a wanton garb, as if she were too good to tread on the earth? Oh then how the case will be altered with such as these? Can you believe and consider how you must be judged by God, and yet be Proud?

§. 95. Direct. 14. Look to the Devils themselves that tempt you to be Proud, and see what Pride hath brought them to; and remember that a proud man is the Image of the Devil, and Pride is the Devils special sin. He that envieth your happiness, knoweth by sad experience the way to misery; and therefore tempteth you to be proud; that you may come by the same Way, to the same End that he himself is come to. The Angels which kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation, are reserved in everlasting chains under darkness, to the judgment of the great day: Jude 6.

§. 96. Direct. 15. Look well upon thyself both body and soul, and think whether thou be a person fit for Pride. God hath purposely clothed thine immortal soul, in the course attire of corruptible flesh, and placed it in so poor and ruinous a Cottage, that it might be kept from pride: yea, he made this frail and corruptible body, to be a constitutive part of our very persons, that in knowing it, we may know ourselves. Some will have a dead man's skull stand by them, in their Studies or Chambers, as an Antidote against pride. But God hath fastened us yet closer to mortality: Death dwelleth in our bowels. We are apt to marvel that so noble a soul should be lodged in so mean a body, made of the earth, to which it must return? A Stone is durable and clean; but my flesh is corruptible, and must turn to loathsome filth and rottenness: A Marble Pillar will stand firm and beautiful from age to age, but I must perish and consume in darkness. The Seats we sit upon, the Pillars we lean to, the Stones we tread upon, will be here, when we are turned to dust. The house that I build, may stand when I am rotten in the Grave: A Tree will live, when he that planted it is dead. Our bodies are of no better materials than the Brutes: Our substance is in a continual flux or waste, and loseth something every day, and if it were not repaired and patched up by daily air and nourishment, it would soon be spent, and our Oil consumed. If you were chained to a dead carcass, which you must still carry about with you, it were not a matter so fit to humble you, as to be united so nearly to so vile a body of your own. We carry a dunghill continually within us: Alas, how silly a piece is the greatest, the strongest and the comeliest of you all? What is that flesh which you so much pamper, but a skin full of corruption? a bag of filth, of flegm or choller or such like excrements? I • the curiousest Dames had but a sight of the flegm in their heads and bowels, the choller about their liver and galls, the worms or fil • h in other parts, they would go near to vomit at such a sight: The Swine or Beast hath as clean an inside: And what if this filth be covered with a whiter skin, or clearer color than your neighbors have, is there any cause of pride in that? When sickness hath altered and consumed you, then where is that which you called beauty? If but the •• prosi • or the Small Pox deform it, or a Feaver, Consumption or Dropsy waste it, or the Stone, or Gout, or any such torment seize upon thee, thou wilt feel or see that which may shame thy pride. Should such a worm be proud, that cannot, though he be a Herod, keep the worms from eating him alive? that in a flux cannot retain his excr • ments? that cannot bear easily the aking of a tooth? If thou be fit • or Pride, forbid diseases to touch thy flesh, or stain thy beauty: Do not be sick, nor weak, nor pained: Let not the Worm and corruption be thy guests: Or if thou be so poor a thing, as cannot hinder any of these, then know thyself, and be ashamed of Pride.

And when thou art in sickness, thou wilt be burdensome to others: Its likely thou must have their helps, even to fe • d thee, to dress thee, to turn thee, and keep thee clean: And when all is done thou must die, and be laid in darkness in a grave! There must thou lie rotting night and day, till thy flesh be turned into earth. The grass doth wither when it is cut down, but yet it is sweet: The Tree that is cut down, will rot in time; but not with such a loathsome stink as we: He that had seen what the late doleful Wars did often show us, when the fields were strowed with the carcasses of men, and when they lay by heaps among the rubbish of the Ditches of Towns and Castles that had been assaulted, would think such loathsome lumps of flesh, should never have been proud. When once death hath deprived thy body of its soul, thy best friends will quickly be weary of the remainder, and glad to rid thee out of sight and smell: Go to the Church-yard, and look on the dust and bones that are there cast up and scattered, and bethink thee whether those that must come to this, have reason to be proud? See whether there be any differing mark of honor upon the dust of the rich, or strong, or beautiful? and whether the bones there strive for principality and dominion? Therefore the desire of adorned Monuments upon men's Graves, is one of the most odious sorts of pride: when the neighbourhood of rottenness and dust doth shame it: As our serious Poet H •• bert saith,

And though thy soul be far nobler than thy body, yet here how ignorant, and weak, and distempered is it? How full of false Idea's are men's minds? How little know they of that which they might know, or are confident they do know! How da • k are we about all the works of God, and about his word: much more about himself? The greatest Doctors are strongly tempted to be Skeptics; and the ignorant that this year are confident to a contempt and censoriousness of all that differ from them, perhaps the next year do change their judgments, and recant themselves.

And are our Hearts and lives any happier than our understandings? While we are imprisoned in flesh, and its interest is ours, and its appetites and passions have so much advantage, to corrupt, seduce or disturb the soul? Know thyself, and Pride will die.

§. 97. Direct. 16. If thou have anything to be proud of, remember what it is, and that it is not thine own, but given or lent thee by that God who chiefly hateth Pride. 1. Art thou tempted to be proud of Riches? Remember that they are in themselves but dross, which will leave thee at the grave as poor as any: And as to their Usefulness, they are but thy Masters talents; and the more thou hast, the greater will be thine account: And very few rich men scape the snare, and come to Heaven: Thy charge and danger therefore should rather humble thee, and make thee exceedingly to fear. Read I am. 5. 1, 2, 3, 4. and Luke 12. 19, 20.

2. Is it Greatness, and dominion, or human applause, or honor that you are proud of? Remember, that this also is in itself a dream, that maketh thee really neither better nor safer than other men. Thou standest upon higher ground, where thou hast more than others of the storms and dangers, and shalt be levelled with the lowest in thy fall: And as to the Use of thy Power and Greatness, it is for God, and not thyself! And so great will be thy reckoning, according to the trust reposed in thee, as would affright a considerate believer to foresee.

3. Is it youthful strength that you are proud of? How little can it do for thee, of that which thou most needest? And how soon will it be turned to weakness? How many are cut off in youth, and their life is among the unclean, as Elihu speaks Job 36. 14. Their bones are full of the sins of their youth, which shall lie down with them in the dust, Job. 20. 11.

4. Is it Beauty that you are proud of? I have told you what sickness and death will do to that before! When God rebuketh man for sin, he makes his beauty to consume as a moth: surely every man is vanity, Psal. 39. 11. Read Psal. 49. 12, 13, 14. And if your beauty would continue, how little good will it do you? and who but fools do look at the skin of a rational creature, when they would discern their worth? A fool, and a slave of lust and Satan, may be beautiful. A Sepulcher may be guilded that hath rottenness within: Will you choose the finest purse, or the fullest? Who but a child or fool will value his Book by the fineness of the cover, or gilding of the leaves, and not by the worth of the matter within? Absalom was beautiful, and what the better was he? 2 Sam. 14. 25. Prov. 31 30. Favor is deceitful, and beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord she shall be praised.

5. If it be fine Clothes and gaudy Ornaments that you are proud of, it is a sin so foolish and worse than childi • h, that I shall give it no other confutation, than to tell you, that it contradicteth itself, by making the person a scorn and laughing stock to others, when their design was to be more admired; and that an Ass or a Post may have as fine and costly attire as you; and that shortly you shall change it for a Winding-sheet.

6. Is it your birth, and progenitors, and great friends that you are proud of? Personal merits are incomparably more excellent, than this relation to the most meritorious parents; much more than a relation to their empty titles. Cain was the Son of Adam the Father of mankind, and Cham of Noah, and Esau of Jacob, and Absalom of David; when a godly Son of a wicked Father is more honorable than they. Your ancestors are but of the common stock of sinful Adam: and your great friends may possibly become your enemies: and it is little that the greatest of them can do for you, if God be not your friend.

7. Is it your learning, or wisdom, or ability for speech or action that you are proud of? Remember that the Devils and many that are now in Hell, have far exceeded you in these: And that the wiser you are indeed, the humbler you will be; and by pride you confute your ostentation of your wisdom: Ahithophel's wisdom which saveth not the owner from perdition, is little cause of glorying. Ier. 8. 8, 9. There were men that boasted of their wisdom, even in the Law of God, who yet were ashamed and dismayed: for they rejected the Word of the Lord; and then what wisdom could there be in them? Therefore thus saith the Lord, Let not the wise man glory in his wisdom, nor let the mighty man glory in his might, let not the rich man glory in his riches, but let him that glorieth glory in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord, which exercise loving kindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth: for in these do I delight, saith the Lord: Jer. 9. 23, 24. Those were not unlearned, of whom Paul speaketh, 1 Cor. 1. 20. Where is the Wise? Where is the Scribe? Where is the Disputer of this world? Hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

8. Is it success in Wars or great undertakings that you are proud of? But by whose strength did you perform it? And how unhappy a success is that which hindereth your success in the work of your salvation? And how many have been brought down again to shame, that have been lifted up in pride of their successes?

9. Is it the applause of men that proclaim your excellency that you are proud of? Alas, how poor a portion is the breath of man? And how mutable are your applauders? that perhaps the next day will turn their tunes, and as much reproach you. Will you be proud of Praise, when it is the Devils whistle purposely to entice you into this pernicious snare; that he may destroy you? It is a danger to be feared; for it destroyeth many: but not a benefit much to be rejoiced in, much less to be proud of; for few are the better for it. Titles and applause increase not real worth and virtue, but puff up many with a mortal tympanie.

10. Is it your grace and goodness or eminency in Religion that you are proud of? This is most absurd; when predominant Pride is a certain sign that you have no saving grace at all; and so are proud of what you have not: And if you have it, so far as you are proud of it you abuse it, contradict it and destroy it: For Pride is to Grace, what the Plague or Consumption is to Health. It is Novices that have least grace and knowledge that are aptest to be puffed up with Pride, and thereby to fall into the condemnation of the Devil, 1 Tim. 3. 6. that is, into the like punishment for the like sin. When the Pot boileth over, that which was in it is lost in the fire. Rise not too high in the esteem of your grace, lest you rise to the loss of it. Be not high-minded, but fear, Rom. 11. 20. When you think you stand, take heed lest you fall, 1 Cor. 10. 12.

§. 98. Direct 17. Look to the nature and tendency of every Grace, and Ordinance, and Duty; and use them diligently; for they all tend to the destruction of Pride. Knowledge discerneth the folly and pernicious tendency of Pride, and abundant matter for Humiliation: Faith is the casting off our pride, and going with empty hungry souls to Christ for mercy and supply: It showeth us the most powerful sight in the world for the humbling of a soul, even a Crucified Christ, and a most Holy God, and a glorified society of humble souls, and a dreadful judgment and damnation for the proud. I might show you the same of every grace and duty, but for being tedious.

§. 99. Direct. 18. Look to the humbling Judgments of God on yourselves and others, and turn them all against your Pride. You will sure think it an unsuitable and unseasonable thing for the calamitous to be proud. Are you not oft complaining of one thing or other, upon your consciences, your bodies, your estates, your names, your relations or friends? and yet will you be proud while you complain? If the Judgments that have already befallen you, humble you not, it God love you, and will 〈1 page duplicate〉 〈1 page duplicate〉 save you, you may expect you should feel more; and the load should be increased, till it make you s • oop. O miserable obstinate sinners! that can groan with sickness, and yet be proud! and murmur under want, and yet be proud! and daily crossed by one or other, and yet be proud! yea, and tormented with fears of God's displeasure, and yet be proud! Have not all the Wars, and blood, and ruins that have befall • n us in these Kingdoms, been yet enough to take down pride? Many 〈…〉 bling sights we have seen; and many humbling stripes we have felt; and yet are we not humbled? We have seen houses r • bb • d, and Towns fired, and the Country pillaged, and the blood of many thousands shed, and their carcasses scattered about the fields: and yet are we not humbled? If we were proud of our Riches, they have been taken from us: If proud of our buildings, they have been tu •• ed into ruinous heaps: If we have been proud of our Government, and the Fame and Glory of our Countr • y, we have seen how our sins have pulled down our Government, dishonored our Rulers, and bl • mished our Glory, and turned it into shame: and yet are we not humbled? If you lived in a house infected with the Plague, and had buried Father, and Mother, and Brothers, and Sisters, and but a very few were left alive, expecting when their turn came next, if these few were not humbled, would you not think them blind and sottish persons? Do you yet look high, and con • end for prehemin • nce, and look for honor, and envy others, and desire to domineer, and have your will and way, and set out yourselves in the neatest dress? Must you have sharper stripes, before you will be humbled? Must greater injuries, and violences, and losses, and fears, and reproaches be the means? Why will you choose so painful a remedy, by frustrating the easier? If it must be so, the 〈…〉 meant shall shortly come yet nearer to thee: It shall either strip thee of the rest, or cover the • with shame, or lay thee in pain upon thy Couch, where thy head shall ache, and thy heart be sick and thy b • d • wea • y, and thou shalt pant and gasp for breath: Wilt thou then be proud, and c ••••• l for honor? When thou expectest hourly when thy proud and guilty soul, shall be turned out of t • y body and appear before the Holy God? When the Bell is ready to toll for thee, and thy Winding- • heet to be f • tcht out, and thy Coffin prepared, and the Bier to be fetched to carry thee to t •• Grave, and leave thee in the dark with worms and rottenness▪ Wilt thou then be proud! Where then • re your high looks, and lofty minds, and splendid ornaments, and honors! Then will you be climbing into higher rooms, and seeking to be revenged on those that did eclipse your honor? Saith David even of Princes and all the sons of men, Psal. 146. 3, 4. His breath goeth forth: he returneth to his earth▪ in that very day his thoughts perish.

§. 100. Direct. 19. Look on the lamentable effects of Pride about you in the world, and that will help you to see the odiousness and perni •• ous nature of it. Do you not see how it set • eth the whole world on 〈…〉 ? • ow it rais • r Wars, and ruineth Kingdoms, and draweth out men's blood, and filleth the world with malice, and ha •• ed, and cruelty 〈…〉 nd injustice, and treasons, and rebellions, and destroyeth, mercy, truth and honesty, and all that is 〈◊〉 of God upon the mind of man! Whence is all the confusion, and calamity, all the c • nsoriousne •• , revili • gs and cruelties, which we have seen, or felt, or heard of, but from Pride? What is it that hath trampled upon the Int •••• st of Christ and his Gospel through the world, but pride? What else is it that hath burnt his Martyrs, and made havoc of his s •• vants, and distracted and divided his Church with Schisms, and set up so many Sect-masters and Sects, and c • us • d them almost all to set against others, but this cursed unmor •• fied Pride? He that hath seen but what Pride hath been doing in England in this age, and yet discerneth not its hatefulness and perniciousness, is strangely blind. Every proud man is a plague or burden to the place he liveth in: If he get high, he is a Nabal: a man can scarce speak to him: He thinks all under him are made but to serve his will and honor, as inferior creatures are made for man. If he be an i •••• riour, he scorneth at the honor and government of his Superiors, and thinks they take too much upon them and that it is below him to obey. If he be rich, he thinks the poor mu 〈…〉 bow to him, as to 〈…〉 Golden Calf▪ or Nebuchadnezzar's Golden Image: If he poor, he envieth the rich, and is impat •• nt of the state that God hath set him in: If he be learned, he thinks himself an Oracle: •• u • learned, he d • spiseth the knowledge which he wanteth, and scorneth to be ta 〈…〉 What sta •• so • ver he is in, he is a very Salamander, that liveth in the fire; he troubleth House, a 〈…〉 own, and Coun •••• , if his power be answerable to his heart: he is an unpolished stone, that will never lie even in any building; he is a natural enemy to quietness and peace.

§. 101. Direct. 20▪ Consider well how God hath designed the humbling of all that he will save, in his •••• le con 〈…〉 nce of the work of our Redemption. He could have saved man by keeping him in his pr •• itive innocence, if he had pleased. Though he causeth not sin, he knoweth why he permitteth it. He thought it 〈◊〉 enough that man should have the thought of creation to humble him, as being taken from the dust, and made of nothing; but he will also have the sense of his moral nothingness and sinfulness to humble him: He will have him beholden to his Redeemer and Sanctifier for his new life and his salvation, as much as to his Creator for his natural life. He is permitted first to undo himself, and bring himself under condemnation, to be a child of death, and near to Hell, before he is rans • med and delivered: that he may take to himself the shame of his misery, and ascribe all his hopes and recovery to God. No flesh shall be justified by the works of the Law, or by a righteousness of his own performance; but by the satisfaction and merits of his Rede • mer; that so all boasting may be excluded, and that no flesh might glory in his sight, and that man might be humbled, and our Redeemer have the praise to all eternity. And therefore God prepareth men for faith and pardon, by humbling works, and forceth sinners to condemn themselves before he will justify them.

§. 102. Direct. 21. Read over the character which Christ himself giveth of his true Disciples; and you will see what great self-denial and humility he requireth in all. In your first conversion you must become as little children, Matth. 18. 3. Instead of contending for superiority and greatness you must be ambitious of being servants unto all. Matth. 23. 11. & 20. 27. You must learn of him to be meek and lowly of heart, Matth. 11. 28, 29. and to •• oop to wash your brethren's feet. John 13. 5. 14. Instead of revenge or unpeaceable contending for your right, you must rather obey those that injuriously command you, and turn the other che • k to him that smiteth you, and let go the rest to him that hath injuriously taken from you; and bless them that curse you, and pray for them that hu • t and persecu • e you, and d • spitefully use you, Matth. 5. 39, 40, 41, 44. These are the followers of Christ.

§. 103. Direct. 22. Remember how Pride contradicteth itself by exposing you to the hatred or contempt of all. All men abhor that Pride in others which they cherish in themselves. A humble man is well thought of by all that know him; and a proud man is the mark of common obloquy. The rich disdain him: the poor envy him; and all hate him, and many deride him: This is his success.

§. 104. Direct. 23. Look still unto that dismal end, which Pride doth tend unto. It threateneth Apostasy: If God forsake any one among you, and any of you forsake God, his Truth, and your Consciences, and be made as Lots Wife, a monument of his vengeance for a warning unto others, it will be the proud and self-conceited person. It maketh all the mercies of God, your duties and parts, and objectively your very graces, to be its food and fuel. It is a sign you are near some dreadful fall, or heavy judgment: For God hath given you this prognostic, Luke 14. 11. & 1. 51. Prov. 15. 25. & 16. 5. Isa. 2. 11, 12. An Ahab is safer when he humbleth himself▪ and an Hezekiah is falling when he is lifted up. They are the most hardened sinners, scorning reproof, and therefore ordinarily forsaken both by God and man, and left to their self-delusion till they perish.

§. 105. Direct. 24. Converse with humbled and afflicted persons, and not with proud secure worldlings. Be much in the house of mourning, where you may see the end of all the living, and be made better by laying it to heart; and let not your hearts be in the house of mi • th, Eccles. 7. 2, 3, 4. Delight not to converse with men that be in •• n • ur and understand not, but are like the beasts that perish, for though they think of perpetuating their houses, and call their lands after their own names, yet they abide not in their honor; and this their way is their folly, though yet their posterity approve their sayings, Psal. 49. 20. 12. 13, 14. Converse with penitent humbled souls, that have seen the odiousness of sin, and the wickedness and deceitfulness of the heart, and can tell you by their own feeling what cause of humiliation is still before you! With these are you most safe.

§. 106. I have been the larger against PRIDE, as seeing its prevalency in the world, and its mischievous effects on souls and families, Church and State, and because it is not discerned and resisted by many as it ought: I would fain have God dwell in your hearts, and peace in your societies, and fain have you stand fast in the hour of temptation, from prosperity or adversity, and fain have affliction easy to you: But none of this will be without humility. I am loath that under the mighty hand of God we should be unhumbled; even when judgments bid us lay our mouths in the dust. The storms have been long up; the Cedars have fallen: It is the Shrubs, and bending Willows that now are likest to scape. I am loath to see the prognostics of wrath upon your souls, or upon the Land. I am loath that any of you should through Pride be unhumbled for sin, or ashamed to own despised godliness: or that any should through Pride be unhumbled for sin, or ashamed to own despised godliness: or that any that have seemed Religious, should prove seditious, unpeaceable or Apostates: And therefore I beseech you in a special manner, take heed of pride; be little in your own esteem: Praise not one another unseasonably; be not offended at plain reproofs: Look to your duties, and then leave your reputations to the will of God. Rebuke pride in your children: Use them to mean attire and employments: Cherish not that in them which is most natural (now) and most pernicious. God dwelleth with the Humble, and will take the Humble to dwell with him, Isa. 57. 15. Job 22. 29. Put on humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering, forbearing one another, Col. 3. 12, 13. Be clothed with humility: Serve the Lord with all humility of mind, and • e will exalt you in due time. Acts 20. 19. 1 Pet. 5. 6, 7.

PART VI. Directions against Covetousness, or Love of Riches, and against worldly Cares.

I Shall say but little on this subject now, because I have written a Treatise of it already, called [ The Crucifying of the World by the Cross of Christ ], in which I have given many Directions (in the Preface and Treatise ) against this sin.

§. 1. Direct. 1. Understand well the Nature and Malignity of this sin; both what it is, and why it is so great and perilous: I shall here show you, 1. What Love of Riches is lawful: 2. What it is that is unlawful, and in what this sin of Covetousness or Worldliness doth consist: 3. Wherein the Malignity or Greatness of it lieth: 4. The Signs of it: 5. What Counterfeits of the contrary vertu • do hide this sin from the eyes of worldlings: 6. What false appearances of it, do cause many to be suspected of Covetousness unjustly.

§. 2. I. All love of the creature, the world, or riches is not sin: For 1. The works of God are all Good, as such: and all Goodness is amiable. As they are related to God, and his Power, and Wisdom, and Goodness is imprinted on them, so we must love them, even for his sake. 2. All the impressions of the A • tributes of God appearing on his works, do make them as a Glass in which at this distance we must see the Creator, and their sweetness is a drop from him, by which his Goodness and Love • s tasted: And so they were all made to lead us up to God, and help our minds to con •••• with him, and kindle the Love of God in our breasts, as a Love-token from our dearest friend: And thus as the means of ou • communion with God, the Love of them is a duty, and not a sin. 3. They are naturally the means of sustaining our bodies, and preserving life, and health, and all •••• ty: And as such, our sensitive part hath a Love to them, as every Beast hath to their food: And this Love in itself is not of moral kind, and is neither a virtue nor a vice: till it either be used in obedience 〈…〉 Reason (and so it is good) or in disobedience to it, (and so it is evil.) 4. The creatures are necessary means to support our bodies, while we are doing God the service which we owe him in the world: And so they must be Loved as a means to his service: Though we cannot say properly that Riches are ordinarily thus necessary: 5. The Creatures are necessary to sustain our bodies in our journey to Heaven, while we are preparing for eternity: And thus they must be loved as remote helps to our salvation. And in these two last respects we call it in our prayers [ our daily bread ]. 6. Riches may enable us to relieve our needy brethren, and to promote good works for Church or State. And thus also they may be loved: so far as we must be thankful for them, so far we may Love them: For we must be Thankful for nothing but what is Good.

§. 3. II. But Worldliness or sinful Love of Riches is, 1. When Riches are loved, and desired, and sought more for the Flesh, than for God or our Salvation: even as the matter or means of our worldly prosperity, that the flesh may want nothing to please it and satisfy its desires. Or that Pride may have enough wherewith to support itself, by gratifying and obliging others, and living at those rates, and in that splendor, as may show our Greatness, or further our Domination over others. 2. And when we therefore desire them in that proportion which we think most agreeable to these carnal ends, and are not contented with our daily bread, and that proportion which may sustain us as passengers to Heaven, and tend most to the securing of our souls, and to the service of God. So that it is the end by which a sinful Love of Riches is principally to be discerned, when they are l • ved for pride or flesh-pleasing, as they are the matter of a worldly corporal felicity; and not principally for God and his service, and servants, and our salvation. And indeed as Sensualists love them, they should be hated.

§. 4. Worldliness is either predominant and so a certain sign of death; or else mortified and in a subdu • d degree, consistent with some saving grace. Worldliness predominant as in the Ungodly 〈…〉 s [ When men that have not • lively belief of the everla • sting happiness, no • have not laid up their treasure and hopes in Heaven, do take the pleasure and prosperity of this life for that felicity which is highest in their esteem, and dearest to their hearts, and therefore love the Riches of the world, or full provisions, as the matter and means of this their temporal felicity ]. Worldliness in a mortified person, is [ When • e he that hath laid up his treasure in Heaven, and practically esteemeth his everlasting h • pes above all the pleasure and prosperity of the flesh, and seeketh first the Kingdom of God and his righte • usness, and useth his estate principally for God and his salvation, h • th yet s • me remnants of i • ordinate desire to the p •• sperity and pleasure of the flesh, and some inordinate desire of Riches for that end; which yet he •••• eth, lame • teth, re • uteth, and so far subd •• th, that it is not predominant, against the interest of God and his salvation. ] Yet this is a great sin, though it be forgiven.

§. 5. III. The Malignity or Greatness of this sin consisteth in these points, (especially when it is predominant). 1. The love of the World, or of Riches, is a sin of Deliberation, and not of mere temerity or sudden passion: Worldlings contrive the attaining of their ends. 2. It is a sin of Interest, • ove and Choice, set up against our chiefest Interest: It is the setting up of a false end, and seeking that; and not only a sin of error in the means, or a seeking the right end in a mistaken way. 3. It is Idolatry, or a denying God, and deposing him in our hearts, and setting up his creatures in his s •• ad, in that measure as it prevaileth. The worldling giveth that Love, and that Trust unto the creature, which is due to God alone: He delighteth in it instead of God, and seeketh and holdeth it as his felicity instead of God: And therefore so far as any man loveth the world, the love of the Father is not in him. 1 Jo • n 2. 15. And the friendship of the world is enmity to God. 4. It is a contempt of Heaven; when it must be neglected, and a miserable world preferred. 5. It showeth that unbelief prevaileth at the heart, so far as worldliness prevaileth: For if men did practically believe the Heavenly Glory, and the promise thereof, they would be carried above these present things. 6. It is a debasing of the soul of man, and using it like the Brutes, while it is principally set upon the serving of the flesh, and on a temporal felicity, and neglecteth its eternal happiness and concernments.

7. It is a perverting of the very drift of a man's life, as employed in seeking a wrong end, and not only of someone faculty or act: It is a habitual sin of the state and course of mind and life, and not only a particular actual sin. 8. It is a perverting of God's creatures to an End and Use clean contrary to that which they were made and given for: and an abusing God by his own gifts by which he should be served and honored: And a destroying our souls with those mercies which were given us for their help and benefit. This is the true character of this heinous sin. In a word, it is the forsaking God, and turning the heart from him, and alienating the Life from his service, to this present world, and the service of the flesh. Fornication, drunkenness, murder, swearing, perjury, lying, stealing, &c. are very heinous sins: But a single act of one of these committed rashly in the violence of passion, or temptation, speaketh not such a malignant turning away of the heart habitually from God, as to say a man is Covetous or a Worldling.

§. 6. IV. The signs of Covetousness are these: 1. Not preferring God and our everlasting Happiness before the Prosperity and Pleasure of the flesh; but valuing and loving fleshly prosperity above its worth. 2. Esteeming and loving the creatures of God as provision for the flesh, and not to further us in the service of God. 3. Desiring more than is needful or useful to further us in our duty. 4. An inordinate eagerness in our desires after earthly things. 5. Distrustfulness, and carking cares, and c • ntrivances for time to come. 6. Discontent, and trouble, and repining at a poor condition, when we have no more than our daily bread. 7. When the world taketh up our thoughts inordinately: when our thoughts will easilier run out upon the world, than upon better things: And when our thoughts of worldly plenty are more pleasant and sweet to us, than our thoughts of Christ, and Grace, and Heaven: And our thoughts of want and poverty are more bitter and grievous to us, than our thoughts of sin and God's displeasure. 8. When our speech is freer and sweeter about prosperity in the world, than about the concernments of God and our souls. 9. When the world beareth sway in our families and converse, and shutteth out all serious eade • vours in the service of God, and for our own and others souls: Or at least doth out short Religious duties, and is preferred before them, and thrusteth them into a corner, and maketh us slightly huddle them over. 10. When we are dejected over much, and impatient under losses, and crosses, and worldly injuries from m • n. 11 When worldly matters seem sufficient to engage us in contentions, and to make us break peace: and we will by Law-suits seek our right, when greater hurt is liker to follow to our brothers soul, or greater wrong to the cause of Religion, or the honor of God, than our Right is worth. 12. When in our trouble and distress we fetch our comfort more from the thoughts of our provisions in the world, or our hopes of supply, than from our trust in God, and our hopes of Heaven. 13. When we are more thankful to God or man, for outward riches, or any gift for the provision of the flesh, than for hopes, or helps in order to salvation: for a powerful Ministry, good Books, or seasonable instructions for the s •• l. 14. When we are quiet and pleased if we do but prosper, and have plenty in the world, though the soul be miserable, unsanctified and unpardoned. 15. When we are more careful to provide a worldly than a heavenly portion, for children and friends, and rejoice more in their bodily, than their spiritual prosperity, and are troubled more for their poverty, than their ungodliness or sin. 16. When we can see our brother have need, and shut up the bowels of our compassion; or can part with no more than mere superfluities for his relief: when we cannot spare that which makes but for our better being, when it is necessary to preserve his Being itself: or when we give unwillingly or sp •• ingly. 17. When we will venture upon sinful means for gain, as lying, over-reaching, deceiving flattering, or going against our Consciences, or the Commands of God. 18. When we are too much in expecting liberality from others, and think that all we buy of, should sell cheaper to us than they can afford; and consider not their loss or want, so that we have the gain: nor are contented if they be never so bountiful to others, if they be not so to us. 19. When we make too much ado in the world for riches, taking too much upon us, or striving for preferment, and flattering great ones, and envying any that are preferred before us, or get that which we expected. 20. When we hold our money faster than our innocence, and cannot part with it for the sake of Christ, when he requireth it; but will stretch our consciences and sin against him or forsake his cause, to save our estates: Or will not part with it for the service of his Church, or of our country, when we are called to it. 21. When the Riches which we have are used but for the pampering of our flesh, and superfluous provision for our posterity, and nothing but some inconsiderable crumbs or driblets are employed for God and his servants, nor used to further us in his service, and towards the laying up of a treasure in Heaven. These are the signs of a worldly covetous wretch.

§. 7. V. The counterfeits of liberality or freedom from covetousness which deceive the worldling are such as these. 1. He thinks he is not Covetous because he hath a necessity of doing what he doth for more: Either he is in debt or he is poor, and scarcely hath whereon to live; And the poor think that none are worldlings and covetous but the Rich. But he may love riches that wanteth them, as much as he that hath them: If you have a necessity of laboring in your callings, you have no necessity of loving the world, or of caring inordinately, or of being discontented with your estate: Impatience under your wants, shows a love of the world and flesh, as much as other men's bravery that possess it.

§. 8. 2. Another thinks he is not a worldling, because if he could but have necessaries even food and raiment and conveniencies for himself and family, he would be content; and it is not riches or great matters that he desireth. But if your hearts are more set upon the getting of these necessaries or little things, than upon the preparing for death, and making sure of the Heavenly treasure, you are miserable worldlings still: And the poor man that will set his heart more upon a poor and miserable life, than upon heaven, is more inexcusable than he that setteth his heart more upon Lordships and Honors than upon Heaven: Though both of them are but the slaves of the world, and have as yet no treasure in Heaven. Math. 6. 19, 20, 21. And moreover, you that are now so covetous for a little more, if you had that, would be as covetous for a little more still; and when you had that, for a little more yet. You would next wear better clothing, and have better fare; and next you would have your house repaired, and then you would have your land enlarged, and then you would have something more for your children; and you would never be satisfied: You think otherwise now; but your hearts deceive you: You do not know them. If you believe me not, judge by the case of other men that have been as confident as you, that if they had but so much or so much they would be content; but when they have it, they would still have more. And this which is your pretense is the common pretence of almost all the covetous: For Lord's and Princes think themselves still in as great necessity as you think yourselves: As they have more, so they have more to do with it; and usually are still wanting as much as the poor. The question is not How much you desire, but to what use? And to what end, and in what order?

§. 9. 3. Another thinks he is not covetous because he coveteth not anything that is his neighbors: They think that covetousness is only a desiring that which is not our own. But if you love the world, and worldly plenty inordinately, and covet more, you are covetous worldlings, though you wish it not from another. It is the worldly mind and love of wealth that is the sin at the root: The ways of getting it are but the branches.

§. 10. 4. Another thinks he is no worldling because he useth no unlawful means, but the labor of his calling, to grow rich. The same answer serves to this. The love of wealth for the satisfying of the flesh is unlawful, whatever the means be: And is it not also an unlawful means of getting, to neglect God and your souls, and the poor, and shut out other duties for the world, as you often do?

§. 11. 5. Another thinks he is no worldling because he is contented with what he hath, and coveteth no more. When that which he hath is a full provision for his fleshly desires. But if you overlove the world, and delight more in it than God, you are worldlings though you desire no more. He is described by Christ as a miserable worldly fool, Luke 12. 19, 20. that saith, [ Soul take thy ease, eat, drink and be merry, thou hast much goods laid up for many years. ] To overlove what you have is worldliness as well as to desire more.

§. 12. 6. Another thinks he is no worldling, because he gives God thanks for what he hath, and asked it of God in prayer. But if thou be a Lover of the world, and make provision for the desires of the flesh, it is but an aggravation of thy sin, to desire God to be a servant to thy fleshly lusts, and to thank him for satisfying thy sinful desires: Thy prayers and thanks are profane and carnal: They were no service to God but to thy flesh: As if a drunkard or a glutton should beg of God provision for their greedy throats, and thank him for it when they have it: Or a fornicator should pray God to be a pandor to his lusts, and then thank him for it: Or a wanton gallant should make fine clothes and gallantry, the matter of his prayer and thanksgiving.

§. 13. 7. Another thinks he is no worldling because he hath some thoughts of Heaven, and is loath to be damned when he can keep the world no longer, and prayeth often, and perhaps fasteth with the Pharisee twice a week, and giveth alms often, and payeth tithes, and wrongeth no man. But the Pharisees were covetous for all these: Luke 16. 14. The question is not whether you think of Heaven, and do something for it? But whether it be Heaven or Earth which you seek first, and make the end of all things else, which all are referred to: Every worldling knoweth that he must die, and therefore he would have Heaven at last for a reserve, rather than Hell. But where is it that you are laying up your treasure, and that you place all your Happiness and hopes? And where are your hearts? On earth or in Heaven? Col. 3. 1, 2, 3. Mat. 6. 20, 21. The question is not whether you give now and then an alms to deceive your Consciences, and part with so much as the flesh can spare, as a swine will do when he can eat no more: But whether all that you have be devoted to the will of God, and made to stoop to his service and the saving of your souls, and can be forsaken rather than Christ forsaken. Luke 14. 33.

§. 14. 8. Another thinks that he is not Covetous because it is but for his Children that he provideth: And he that provideth not for his own, is worse than an infidel. 1 Tim. 5. 8. But the Text speaketh only of providing necessaries for our families and kindred rather than cast them on the Church to be maintained. If you so overvalue the world, that you think it the happiness of your children to be Rich, you are worldlings and Covetous both for yourselves and them: It is for their Children that the Richest and Greatest make provision, that their posterity may be great and wealthy after them; and this maketh them the more worldlings and not the less; because they are covetous for after ages, when they are dead, and not only for themselves.

§. 15. 9. Another thinks he is no worldling because he can speak as hardly of covetous men as any other: But many a one revileth others as covetous that is covetous himself: Yea covetous men are aptest to accuse others of covetousness, and of selling too dear, and buying too cheap, and giving too little because they would get the more themselves. And many Preachers by their reading and knowledge, may make a vehement sermon against worldliness, and yet go to Hell at last for being worldlings. Words are cheap.

§. 16. 10. Another thinks he is not covetous, because he purposeth to leave much to charitable uses when he is dead. I confess that much is well: I would more would do so. But the flesh itself can spare it, when it seeth that it must lie down in the grave. If they could carry their riches with them, and enjoy them after death, they would do it, no doubt. To leave it when you cannot keep it any longer, is not thank-worthy. So the glutton and drunkard, and whoremonger, and the proud must all leave their pleasure at the grave. But do you serve God or the flesh with your Riches while you have them? And do you use them to help or to hinder your salvation? Deceive not yourselves, for God is not mocked. Gal. 6. 7.

§. 17. VI. Yet many are falsely accused of covetousness upon such grounds as these. 1. Because they possess much and are Rich: For the poor take the Rich for worldlings. But God giveth not to all alike: He putteth ten talents into the hands of one servant, and but one into another's: And to whom men commit much, of them will they require the more: Therefore to be entrusted with more than others, is no sin, unless they betray that trust.

§. 18. 2. Others are accused as covetous because they satisfy not the covetous desires of those they deal with, or that expect much from them, and because they give not where it is not their duty, but their sin to give. Thus the buyer saith the seller is covetous: and the seller saith the buyer is covetous, because they answer not their covetous desires: An idle beggar will accuse you of uncharitableness, because you maintain him not in sinful idleness. The proud look you should help to maintain their pride: The drunkard, and riotous, and gamesters expect their parents should maintain their sin. No man that hath anything, shall scape the censure of being covetous, as long as there is another in the world that coveteth that which he hath: selfishness looketh to no rules but their own desires.

§. 19. 3. Others are judged covetous because they give not that which they have not to give: Those that know not another's estate, will pass conjectures at it: And if their hansom apparel or deportment, or the common fame, do make men think them richer than they are, then they are accounted covetous because their bounty answereth not men's expectations.

§. 20. 4. Others are thought covetous because they are laborious in their callings, and thrifty, and saving, not willing that anything be lost. But all this is their duty: If they were Lord's or Princes, idleness, and wastfullness would be their sin. God would have all men labor in their several callings that are able: And Christ himself said, when he had fed many thousands by miracle, yet [ Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost ] The question is, How they use that which they labor so hard for, and save so sparingly. If they use it for God, and charitable uses, there is no man taketh a righter course. He is the best servant for God, that will be laborious and sparing that he may be able to do good.

§. 21. 5. Others are thought covetous because to avoid hypocrisy, they give in secret, and keep their works of charity from the knowledge of men: These shall have their Reward from God: and his wrath shall be the reward of their presumptuous censurers.

§. 22. 6. Others are thought covetous because they lawfully and peaceably seek their right, and let not the unjust and covetous wrong them at their pleasure. Its true, we must let go our right, when ever the recovering of it will do more hurt to others, than it will do us good: But yet the Laws are not made in vain: Nor must we encourage men in covetousness thievery and deceit, by letting them do what they list: Nor must we be careless of our masters talents: If he intrust us with them, we must not let everyone take them from us, to serve his lusts with.

§. 23. Direct. 2. Seriously consider of your everlasting state, and how much greater things than Riches you have to mind: Behold by faith the endless joys which you may have with God, and the endless misery which worldlings must undergo in Hell. There is no true cure for an earthly mind, but by showing it the far greater matters to be minded: by acquainting it better with its own concernments; and with the greater miseries than poverty or want which we have to scape; and the greater good than worldly plenty which we have to seek. Its want of faith that makes men worldlings: They see not what is in another world: They say their creed, but do not heartily believe the day of Judgment, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. There is not a man of them all, but if he had one sight of Heaven and Hell, would set lighter by the world than ever he did before; and would turn his covetous cares and toil, to a speedy and diligent care of his salvation. If he heard the joyful praises of the saints, and the woeful lamentations of the damned, but one day or hour, he would think ever after that he had greater matters to mind, than the scraping together a heap of wealth▪ Remember man that thou hast another world to live in; and a far longer life to make provision for; and that thou must be in Heaven or Hell forever: This is true, whether thou believe it or not: And thou hast no time but this to make all thy preparation in: And as thou believest and livest and laborest now, it must go with thee to all eternity: Th • se are matters worthy of thy care: Canst thou have while to make such a pudder here in the dust, and care and labor for a thing of naught, while thou h • st such things as these to care for, and a work of such transcendent consequence to do? Can a man that understands what Heaven and Hell is, find room for any needless matters, or time for so much unnecessary work? The providing for thy salvation is a thing that God hath made thy own work, much more than the providing for the flesh. When he speaks of thy Body, he saith, T • k • no thought for your life, what you shall eat or drink, nor for your body what you shall put on—for your father knoweth that ye have need of all these things, Math. 6. 25, 32. Be careful for nothing, Phil. 4. 6. Cast all your care upon him, for he careth for you. 1 Pet. 5. 7. But when he speaks of your salvation he bids you, work it out with fear and trembling, Phil. 2. 12. and give di • igence to make your calling and election su • e, 2 Pet. 1. 10. and strive to enter in at the strait gate, Mat. 7. 13. Luke 13. 24. Labor not for the me • t that perisheth, but for that which endureth to everlasting life, John 6. 27. That is, Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you: Mat 6. 33. Look up to Heaven man, and remember that there is thy Home, and there is thy Hopes, or else thou art a man undone forever: and therefore it is for that that thou must care and labor. Believe un • eign • dly that thou must dwell forever in Heaven or Hell as thou makest thy preparation here, and consider of this as becometh a man, and then be a worldling and covetous it thou cans • : Riches will seem dust and chaste to thee, if thou believe and consider thy everlasting state. Write upon the doors of thy Shop and Chamber, [ I must be in Heaven or Hell forever ] or [ This is the time on which my endless life dependeth ]; and methinks every time thou readest it, thou shouldst feel thy cov • tousness stabbed at the heart. O blinded mortals! that love like worms to dwell in earth! would God but give you an eye of faith, to foresee your end, and where you must dwell to all eternity, what a change would it make upon your earthly minds? Either faith or sense will be your guides. Nothing but Reason sanctified by Faith can govern sense. Remember that thou art not a beast, that hath no life to live but this: Thou hast a Reasonable Immortal soul, that was made by God for higher things; even for God himself, to admire him, Love him, serve him and enjoy him. If an Angel were to dwell a while in fl • sh, should he turn an earth-worm, and forget his higher life of glory? Thou art like to an incarnate Angel; and mayest be equal with the Angels when thou art free • d from this sinful fl • sh. Luke 20. 36. O beg of God a Heavenly light, and a Heavenly mind, and look often into the word of God, which tells thee where thou must be forever: and worldliness will vanish away in shame.

§. 24. Direct. 3. Remember how short a time thou must keep and enjoy the wealth which thou hast gotten: How quickly thou must be stripped of all. Canst thou keep it when thou hast it▪ Canst thou make a covenant with Death, that it shall not call away thy soul? Thou knowest beforehand that thou art of short continuance, and the world is but thy Inn or passage, and that a narrow grave for thy flesh to rot in, is all that thou canst keep of thy largest possessions, save what thou laiest up in Heaven, by laying it out in obedience to God. How short is l •• e? How quickly gone? Thou art almost dead and gone already. What is a few days or a few years more? And wilt thou make so much ado for so short a life? And so careful a provision for so short a stay? Yea how uncertain is thy time as well as short? Thou canst not say what world thou shall • be in tomorrow. Remember man, that Thou must die, Thou must die, Thou must quickly die; Thou knowest not how soon; breath yet a few breaths more and thou art gone: And yet canst thou be covetous, and drown thy soul with earthly cares? Dost thou soberly read thy Savior's warning, Luke 12. 19, 20, 21. Is it not spoken as to thee? Thou •• ol, this night thy soul shall be required of thee, then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided? So is everyone that layeth up Riches for himself, and is not Rich towards God. If If thou be rich today, and be in another world tomorrow, had not poverty been as good? Distracted soul! Dost thou make so great a matter of it, whether thou have much or little for so short a time? and takest no more care either where thou shalt be, or what thou shalt have to all eternity? Dost thou say, thou wilt cast this care on God? I tell thee, he will make thee care thyself, and care again before he will save thee? And why canst thou not cast the care of smaller matters on him, when he commandeth thee? Is it any great matter whether thou be Rich or poor, that art going so fast unto another world, where these are things of no signification? Tell me, if thou were sure that thou must die tomorrow, (yea or the next month or year,) wouldst thou not be more indifferent whether thou be Rich or Poor? And look more after greater things. Then thou wouldst be of the Apostles mind, 2 Cor. 4. 18. 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. Our eye of faith should be so fixed on invisible eternal things▪ that we should scarce have leisure or mind to look at or once regard the things that are visible and temporal. A man that is going to execution scarce looks at all the bussle or business that is done in Streets and Shops as he passeth by; because these little concern him in his departing case: And how little do the wealth and honors of the world concern a soul that is going into another world, and knows not but it may be this night. Then keep thy wealth, or take it with thee, if thou canst.

§. 25. Direct. 4. Labor to feel thy greatest wants, which worldly wealth will not supply. Thou hast sinned against God; and money will not buy thy pardon: Thou hast incurred his displeasure, and money will not reconcile him to thee: Thou art condemned to everlasting misery by the Law, and money will not pay thy ransom: Thou art dead in sin, and polluted, and captivated by the flesh, and money will sooner increase thy bondage, than deliver thee. Thy Conscience is ready to tear thy heart for thy willful folly and contempt of grace; and money will not bribe it to be quiet: Judas brought back his money, and hanged himself, when Conscience was but once awaked. Money will not enlighten a blinded mind, nor soften a hard heart, nor humble a proud heart, nor justify a guilty soul. It will not keep off a Feavor or Consumption; nor ease the Gout, or Stone, or Tooth-ache! It will not keep off ghastly death, but die thou must, if thou have all the world. Look up to God, and remember that thou art wholly in his hands: and think whether he will love or favor thee for thy wealth. Look unto the day of Judgment, and think whether money will there bring thee off: or the Rich speed better than the poor?

§. 26. Direct. 5. Be often with those that are sick and dying, and mark what all their Riches will do for them, and what esteem they have then of the world; and mark how it useth all at last. Then you shall see that it forsaketh all men in the hour of their greatest necessity and distress; when they would cry to friends, and wealth, and honor, if they had any hopes, If ever you will help me, let it be now: If ever you will do anything for me, O save me from death, and the wrath of God: But, alas, such cries would be all in vain. Then, O then, one drop of mercy, one spark of grace, the smallest well g • ounded hope of Heaven, would be worth more than the Empire of Caesar or Alexander! Is not this true sinner? Dost thou not know it to be true? And yet wilt thou cheat and betray thy soul? Is not that best now, which will be best then? And is not that of little value now, which will be then so little set by? Dost thou not think that men are wiser then than now? Wilt thou do so much and pay so dear, for that which will do thee no more good, and which thou wilt set no more by when thou hast it? Doth not all the world cry out at last of the deceitfulness of riches, and the vanity of pleasure and prosperity on Earth, and the perniciousness of all worldly cares? And doth not thy conscience tell thee, that when thou comest to die, thou art like to have the same thoughts thyself? And yet wilt thou not be warned in time? Then all the content and pleasure of thy plenty and prosperity will be past: And when its past its nothing: And wilt thou venture on everlasting woe, and cast away everlasting joy, for that which is today a dream and shadow, and tomorrow, or very shortly will be nothing? The poorest then will be equal with thee: And will honest poverty or over-loved wealth, be sweeter at the last? How glad then wouldst thou be, to have been without thy wealth, so thou mightest have been without the sin and guilt! How glad then wouldst thou be, to die the death of the poorest Saint? Do you think that Poverty or Riches are liker to make a man loath to die? or are usually more troublesome to the Conscience of a dying man? O look to the end, and live as you die, and set most by that, and seek that now, which you know you shall set most by at last, when full experience hath made you wiser.

§. 27. Direct. 6. Remember that Riches do make it much harder for a man to be saved, and the love of this world is the commonest cause of men's damnation. This is certainly true, for all that Poverty also hath its temptations; and for all that the poor are far more • umerous than the rich: For even the poor may be undone by the love of that wealth and plenty which they never get: and those may perish for over-loving the world, that yet never prospered in the world. And if thou believe Christ, the point is out of Controversy: For he saith, Luke 18. 24, 25, 26, 27. How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of God? For it is easier for a Camel to go through a Needles eye, than for a rich man to enter into the Kingdom of God. And they that heard it said, Who then can be saved? And he said, The things which are impossible with men, are possible with God. So Luke 6. 24, 25. But woe unto you that are rich, for you have received your consolation: Woe unto you that are full, for ye shall hunger. Make but sense of these and many such like Texts, and you can gather no less than this from them, that Riches make the way to Heaven much harder, and the salvation of the rich to be more difficult and rare, proportionably, than of other men: And Paul saith, 1 Cor. 1. 26. Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble are called. And the Lovers of riches, though they are poor must remember that it is said, 1 Tim. 6. 10. That the Love of money is the root of all evil: And 1 John 2. 15. Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world: For if any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him: Do you believe that here lieth the danger of your souls? and yet can you so love, and choose, and seek it? Would you have your salvation more difficult, and doubtful, and impossible with men? You had rather choose to live where few die young, than where most die young? and where sicknesses are rare, than where they are common? If you were sick, you had rather have the Physician, and Medicines, and Dyet which cure most, than those which few are cured by? If the Country were beset with Thieves, you had rather go the way that most scape in, than that few scape in. And yet so it may but please your flesh, you will choose that way to Heaven, that fewest scape in; and you will choose that state of life which will make your salvation to be most hard and doubtful? Doth your Conscience say that this is wisely done? I know that if God put Riches into your hand, by your Birth, or his blessing on your honest labors, you must not cast away your Masters talents, because he is austere; but by a holy improvement of them, you may further his service and your salvation. But this is no reason why you should ov • r-love them, or desire and seek so great a danger. Believe Christ heartily, and it will quench your Love of Riches.

§. 28. Direct. 7. Remember that the more you have, the more you have to give account for. And • f the day of Judgment be dreadful to you, you should not make it more dreadful, by greatening your own accounts. If you desired Riches but for the service of your Lord, and have used them for him, and can t • uly give in this account, that you laid them not out for the needless pleasure or pride of the fl • sh, but • o furnish yourselves, and families, and others for his service, and as near as you •• uld employ them according to his will, and for his use, then you may expect the reward of good and faithful servants: But if you desired and used them for the pride and pleasure of yourselves while you lived, and your posterity or kindred when you are dead, dropping some inconsiderable • r • ms for God, you will then find that Mammon was an unprofitable Master, and Godliness with content would have been greater gain.

§. 29. Direct. 8. Remember how dear it costeth men, thus to hinder their salvation, and greaten their danger and accounts. What a deal of precious Time is lost upon the world by the Lovers of it, which might have been improved to the getting of Wisdom and Grace, and making their calling and election sure. If you had believed that the gain of holy wisdom, had been so much better than the gaining of Gold, as Solomon saith, Pr • v. 3. 14. you would have laid out much of that time in laboring to understand the Scriptures, and preparing for your endless life. How many unnecessary Thought • have you cast away upon the world, which might better have been laid out on your greater concernments? How many • ares, and vexations, and passions doth it cost men, to overload themselves with worldly provisions? Like a foolish travel • r, who having a days journey to go, doth spend all the day in gathering together a load of m • at, and clothes and money, more than he can carry, for fear of wanting by the way: or like a foolish runner that hath a race to run for his life, and spends the time in which he should be running, in gathering a burden of pretended necessaries. You have all the while God's work to do, and your souls to mind, and judgment to prepare for, and you are tiring and vexing yourselves for unnecessary things; as if it were the top of your ambition, to be able to say in Hell, that you died rich, 1 Tim. 6. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Godliness with contentment is great gain: For we brought nothing into this world and it is certain that we can carry nothing out. And having food and raiment, let us be therewith content: But they that will be Rich, fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and perdition: For the love of money is the root of all evil, which while some coveted after, they have erred (or been seduced ) from the • aith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. Piercing sorrows here, and damnation hereafter, are a very dear price to give for money. For saith Christ himself, What shall it profit a man to gain all the world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? that is, What money or price will recover it, if for the love of gain he lose it? Mark 8. 36, 37. Prov. 15. 27. He that is greedy of gain, troubleth his own house, but he that hateth gifts, shall live. Do you not know, that a godly man contented with his daily bread, hath a far sweeter and quietter life and death, than a self-troubling worldling? You may easily perceive it. Prov. 15. 16. Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure and trouble therewith.

§. 30. Direct. 9. Look much on the life of Christ on earth, and see how strangely he condemned worldliness, by his example: Did he choose to be a Prince or Lord, or to have great possessions, lands, or money, or sumptuous buildings, or gallant attendance, and plentiful provisions? His housing you may read of, Matth. 8. 20. F • xes have holes, and the Birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. His clothing you may read of at his crucifying when they parted it. As for money, he was fain to send Pet • r to a •••• h for some to pay their tribute. If Christ did scrape and care for Riches, then so do thou: I • he thought it the happiest life, do thou think so too. But if he contemned it, do thou contemn it: If his whole life was directed to give thee the most perfect example of the contempt of all the prosperity of this world, then learn of his example, if thou take him for thy Savior, and if thou love thyself▪ Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor, that you through his poverty might be rich, 2 Cor. 8, 9.

§. 31. Direct. 10. Think on the example of the primitive Christians, even the best of Christ's servants, and see how it condemneth worldliness. They that by miracle in the name of Christ could give limbs to the lame, yet tell him, Silver and Gold have we none. Acts 3. 6. Those that had possessions sold them, and laid the money at the Apostles feet, and they had all things common, to show that faith overcometh the world, by contemning it, and subjecting it to charity, and devoting it entirely to God. Read whether the Apostles did live in sumptuous houses, with great attendance, and worldly plenty and prosperity? And so of the rest.

§. 32. Direct. 11. Remember to what ends all worldly things were made and given you, and what a happy advantage you may make of them by renouncing them as they would be provision for your lusts, and by devoting yourselves and them to God. The use of their sweetness is, to draw your souls to taste by faith the heavenly sweetness. They are the Looking-glass of souls in flesh that are not yet admitted to see things spiritual face to face. They are the provender of our bodies; our travelling furniture and helps; our Inns, and solacing company in the way; they are some of God's Love-tokens; some of the lesser pieces of his Coin, and bear his Image and superscription: They are drops from the Rivers of the eternal pleasures; to tell the mind by the way of the senses how good the Donor is, and how amiable; and what higher Delights there are for souls; and to point us to the better things which these foretell: They are messengers from Heaven to testify our Fathers care and love, and to bespeak our thankfulness, love and duty; and to bear witness against sin, and bind us faster to obedience: They are the first Volume of the Word of God: The first Book that man was set to read, to acquaint him fully with his Maker: As the Word which we read and hear is the Chariot of the Spirit, by which it maketh its accesses to the soul; so the delights of sight, and taste, and smell, and touch, and hearing were appointed as an ordinary way for the speedy access of heavenly love and sweetness to the Heart, that upon the first perception of the goodness and sweetness of the creature, there might presently be transmitted by a due progression, or deep impression of the goodness of God upon the soul: That the creature being the Letters of God's Book, which are seen by our eye, the sense (even the Love of our great Creator) might presently be perceived by the mind: and no letter might once be looked upon but for the sense: no creature ever seen, or tasted, or heard, or felt in any delectable quality, without a sense of the Love of God: That as the touch of the hand upon the strings of the Lute do cause the melody, so God's touch by his mercies upon our hearts, might presently tune them into Love, and Gratitude, and Praise. They are the Tools by which we must do much of our Masters work: They are means by which we may refresh our brethren, and express our love to one another, and our love to our Lord and Master in his servants: They are our Masters stock which we must trade with, by the improvement of which, no less than the Reward of endless Happiness may be attained. These are the Uses to which God gives us outward mercies. Love them thus, and Delight in them, and Use them thus, and spare not: yea, seek them thus, and be thankful for them. But when the creatures are given for so excellent a use, will you debase them all by making them only the fuel of your lusts, and the provisions for your flesh? And will you love them and dote upon them in these base respects; while you utterly neglect their noblest use? You are just like children that cry for Books, and can never have enouw; but its only to play with them because they are fine; but when they are set to learn and read them, they cry as much because they love it not: Or like one that should spend his life and labor in getting the finest clothes, to dress his Dogs and Horses with, but himself goeth naked and will not wear them.

§. 33. Direct. 12. Remember that God hath promised to provide for you, and that you shall want nothing that is good for you, if you will live above these worldly things, and seek first his Kingdom, and the righteousness thereof. And cannot you trust his promise? If you truly believe that he is God, and that he is true, and that his particular providence extendeth to the very numbering of your hairs, you will sure trust him rather than trust to your own forecast and industry. Do you think his provision is not better for you than your own? All your own care cannot keep you alive an hour, nor cannot prosper any of your labors, if you provoke him to blast them. And if you are not content with his provisions, nor submit yourselves to the disposals of his love and wisdom, you disoblige God, and provoke him to leave you to the fruits of your own care and diligence: And then you will find that it had been your wiser way to have trusted God.

§. 34. Direct. 13. Think often on the dreadful importance and effects of the Love of Riches, or a worldly mind. 1. It is a most certain sign of a state of death and misery where it hath the upper hand. It is the departing of the heart from God to creatures: See the malignity of it before. Good men have been overtaken with heinous sins; but its hard to find where Scripture calleth any of them Covetous. A heart secretly cleaving most to this present world and its prosperity, is the very killing sin of every hypocrite, yea, and of all ungodly men. 2. Worldliness makes the Word unprofitable, and keepeth men from believing and repenting, and coming home to God, and minding seriously the everlasting world: What so much hindereth the Conversion of sinners, as the love and ca • es of earthly things? They cannot serve God and Mammon: Their treasure and hearts cannot be chiefly be both in Heaven and Earth? They will not yield to the terms of Christ that love this world: They will not forsake all for a treasure in Heaven. In a word, as you heard, The love of money is the root of all evil, and the Love of the Father is not in the lovers of the world. 3. It destroyeth holy meditation, and conference, and turneth the thoughts to worldly things: And it corrupteth Prayer, and maketh it but a means to serve the flesh, and therefore maketh it odious to God. 4. It is the great hindrance of men's necessary preparation, for death and judgment, and stealeth away their hearts and time till it is too late. 5. It is the great cause of contentions even among the nearest relations; and the cause of the Wars and calamities of Nations; and of the woeful divisions and persecutions of the Church; when a worldly generation think that their worldly interest doth engage them, against self-denying and spiritual principles, practices and persons. 6. It is the great cause of all the injustice, and oppression, and cruelty that rageth in the world. They would do as they would be done by, were it not for the love of money. It maketh men perfidious and false to all their friends and engagements: No vows to God, nor obligations to men, will hold a Lover of the world. The world is his God, and his worldly interest is his rule and law. 7. It is the great destroyer of Charity and Good works: No more is done for God and the poor, because the Love of the world forbids it. 8. It disordereth and pro • aneth families; and betrayeth the souls of Children and Servants to the Devil: It turneth out prayer, and reading the Scripture, and good books, and all serious speeches of the li • e to come, because their hearts are taken up with the world; and they have no rel • sh of anything but the provisions of their flesh: Even the Lord's own Day cannot be reserved for holy works, nor a duty performed, but the world is interposing, or diverting the mind. 9. It temp • eth m • n to sin against their knowledge, and to forsake the truth, and fit themselves to the rising side▪ and save their bodies and estates, whatever become of their souls: It is the very price that the D • vil gives for souls! With this he bought the soul of Judas, who went to the Pharis • es with a [ What will you give me, and I will deliver him to you: ] With this he attempted Christ himself, Matth. 4. 9. All these will I give thee, if th • u wilt fall down and worship me. It is the cause of Ap •••• acy and unfaithfulness to God: And its the price that sinners sell their God, their Conscience and their salvation for. 10. It depriveth the soul of holy communion with God, and comfort from him, and of all foretaste of the life to come, and finally of Heaven itself: For as the Love of the world keepeth out the Love of God and Heaven, it must needs keep out the hopes and comforts which should arise from holy love. It would do much to cure the love of money, and of the world, if you knew how pernicious a sin it is.

§. 35. Direct. 14. Remember how base a sin it is, and how dishonorable and debasing to the mind of man: If earth be baser than Heaven, and money than God, than an earthly mind is baser than a heavenly mind: As the Serpents feeding on the dust is a baser life than that of Angels, that are employed in admiring, and obeying, and praising the M • st Holy God.

§. 36. Direct. 15. Call yourselves to a daily reckoning, how you lay out all that God committeth to your trust, and try whether it be so as you would hear of it at judgment. If you did but use to sit in judgment daily upon yourselves, as those that believe the judgment of God, it would make you more careful to use well what you have, than to get more: And it would quench your thirst after plenty and prosperity, when you perceived you must give so strict an account of it: The flesh itself will less desire it, when it finds it may not have the use of it.

§. 37. Direct. 16. When you find your Covetousness most eager and dangerous, resolve most to cross it, and give more to pious or charitable uses though •••• t another time. For a man hath reason to fly furthest from that sin, which he is most in danger of. And the acts tend to the increase of the habit. Obeying your Covetousness doth increase it: And so the contrary acts, and the disobeying and displeasing it, do destroy it. This course will bring your Covetousness into a despair of attaining its desires; and so will make it sit down and give over the pursuit. It is an open protesting against every covetous desire: and an effectual kind of repenting: and a wise and honest disarming sin, and turning its motions against itself to its own destruction: Use it thus oft, and Covetousness will think it wisdom to be quiet.

§. 38. Direct. 17. Above all take heed that you think not of reconciling God and Mammon, and mixing Heaven and Earth to be your felicity, and of dreaming that you may keep Heaven for a reserve at last, when the world hath been loved as your best, so long as you could keep it. Nothing so much defendeth worldliness, as a cheating hope, that you have it but in a subdued pardoned degree; and that you are not worldlings, when you are: And nothing so much supports this hope, as because you confess that Heaven only must be your last refuge, and full felicity, and therefore you do something for it on the by. But is not the world more loved, more sought, more delighted in, and • aster held? Hath it not more of your hearts, your delight, desire and industry? If you cannot let go all for Heaven, and forsake all this world, for a treasure above, you cannot be Christ's true Disciples.

§. 39. Direct. 18. If ever you would overcome the love of the world, your great care must be to mortify the Flesh; for the world is desired but as its provision. A mortified man hath no need of that, which is a sensualists felicity. Quench your hydropical feverish thirst, and then you will not make such a stir for drink. Cure the disease which enrageth your appetite; and that is the safest and cheapest way of satisfying it: Then you will be thankful to God, when you look on other men's wealth and gallantry, that you need not these things! And you will think what a trouble, and burden, and interruption of your better work and comfort, it would be to you, to have so much land, and so many servants, and goods, and business, and persons to mind, as rich men have: And how much better you can enjoy God and yourself in a more retired quiet state of life. But of this more in the next Part.

§. 40. Did men but know how much of an ungodly damnable state, doth consist in the Love of the world; and how much it is the enemy of souls; and how much of our Religion consisteth in the contempt and conquest of it; and what is the meaning of their renouncing the World in their baptismal Covenant; and how many millions the Love of the world will damn forever; they would not make such a stir for nothing, and spend all their days in providing for their perishing flesh; nor think them happiest that are richest; nor boast themselves of their hearts desire, and bless the Covetous whom the Lord abhorreth, Psal. 10. 3. They would not think that so small a sin which Christians should not so much as name (but in detestation) Ephes. 5. 3. When God hath resolved that the covetous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God, 1 Cor. 6. 10. Ephes. 5. 5. And a Christian must not so much as eat with them, 1 Cor. 5. 11. Did Christ say in vain, Take heed and beware of Covetousness? Luke 12. 15. Woe to him that coveteth an evil Covetousness to his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the power of evil, Hab. 2. 9. O what deserving servants hath the world, that will serve it so diligently, so constantly, and at so dear a rate, when they before hand know that besides a little transitory deluding pleasure, it will pay them with nothing but everlasting shame! O wonderful deceiving power, of such an empty shadow, or rather wonderful folly of mankind! That when so many ages have been deceived before us, and almost everyone at death confesseth it did but deceive them, so many still should be deceived, and take no warning by such a world of examples. I conclude with Heb. 13. 5. Let your conversation be without Covetousness, and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.

PART VII. Directions against the Master sin; SENSUALITY, FLESH-PLEASING or Voluptuousness.

§. 1. I Shall be the shorter on this also, because I have spoken so much already in my Treatise of Self-denial. Before we come to more particular Directions, it is needful that we discern the nature and evil of the sin which we speak against: I shall therefore 1. Telly you what is meant by [ Flesh ] here: And 2. What flesh-pleasing it is that is unlawful, and what sensuality is. 3. Wherein the Malignity of this sin consisteth. 4. I shall answer some Objections: 5. I shall show you the Signs of it. 6. The Counterfeits of the contrary: 7. And the false Signs, which make some accused wrongfully by themselves or others.

§. 2. I. Because you may find in Writings between the Protestants and Papists, that its become a Controversy, whether by [ flesh ] in Scripture (where this sin is mentioned) be meant the Body it self, or the soul so far as it is unregenerate, I shall briefly first resolve this question. When we speak of the unregenerate part, we mean not that the soul hath two parts, whereof one is regenerate and the other unregenerate: But as the purblind eye hath both Light and Darkness in the same subject, so is it with the soul which is regenerate but in part, that is, in an imperfect degree: And by the unregenerate part, is meant the whole soul so far as it is unregenerate. The word [ flesh ] in its primary signification, is taken for that part of the Body as such without respect to sin: and next for the whole body, as distinct from the soul. But in respect to sin and duty, it is taken 1. Sometime for the sensitive appetite, not as sinful in itself, but as desiring that which God hath obliged Reason to deny it. 2. More frequently for this sensitive appetite as inordinate, and so sinful in its own desires: 3. Most frequently for both the inordinate sensitive appetite itself, and the Rational powers, so far as they are corrupted by it, and sinfully disposed to obey it, or to follow inordinately sensual things: But then the Name is primarily taken for the sensual appetite itself, (as diseased) and but by participation for the Rational powers. For the understanding of which, you must consider, 1. That the appetite itself might innocently (even in innocence) desire a forbidden object: when it was not the Appetite that was forbidden, but the Desire of the Will, or the actual taking it. That a man in a Feavor doth Thirst for more than he may lawfully drink, is not of itself a sin: But to Desire it by Practical Volition, or to Drink it is a sin: For it is these that God forbids; and not the Thirst which is not in our power to extinguish. That Adam had an Appetite to the forbidden fruit was not his sin: but that his will obeyed his appetite, and his mouth did eat. For the Appetite and sensitive nature is of God, and is in nature antecedent to the Law: God made us Men, before he gave us Laws: And the Law commandeth us not, to alter ourselves from what he made us, or anything else which is naturally out of our power. But it is the sin of the will and executive powers, to do that evil which consisteth in obeying an innocent Appetite: The Appetite is necessary, and not free; and therefore God doth not direct his commands or prohibitions to it directly, but to the Reason and free-will. 2. But since man's fall, the Appetite itself is corrupted and become inordinate, that is, more impetuous, violent and unruly, than it was in the state of Innocency; by the unhappy distempers that have befallen the Body itself. For we find now by experience, that a man that useth himself to sweet and wholesome temperance, hath no such impetuous strivings of his Appetite against his reason (if he be healthful ) as those have that are either diseased, or used to obey their appetites: And if Use and Health make so great alteration, we have cause to think that the Depravation of Nature by the Fall did more. 3. This inordinate appetite is sin, by Participation; so far as the Appetite may be said to be Free by participation, though not in itself: Because it is the Appetite of a Rational free-agent: For though sin be first in the will in its true form, yet it is not the will only that is the subject of it (though primarily it be) but the whole man, so far as his acts are Voluntary: For the will hath the Command of the other faculties: and they are Voluntary acts which the will either commands, or doth not forbid when it can and ought. To lie is a voluntary sin of the man, and the tongue partaketh of the guilt. The will might have kept out that sin, which caused a disorder in the appetite. If a Drunkard or a Glutton provoke a venerous inordinate appetite in himself, that lust is his sin, because it is voluntarily provoked. 4. Yet such additions of inordinacy, as men stir up in any Appetite, by their own actual sins and customs, are more aggravated and dangerous to the soul, than that measure of distemper which is merely the fruit of original sin. 5. This inordinateness of the sensitive Appetite, with the mere Privation of Rectitude in the Mind and Will, is enough to cause man's Actual sin. For if the Horses be headstrong, the mere weakness, sleepiness, negligence, or absence of the Coachman is enough to concur to the overthrow of the Coach: So if the Reason and Will had no Positive inclinations to evil or sensual objects, yet if they have not so much Light and Love to higher things, as will restrain the sensual appetite, it hath positive inclination enough in itself to forbidden things to ruin the soul by actual sin 6. Yet (though it be a great controversy among Divines) I conceive that in the Rational Powers themselves, there are Positive habitual inordinate inclinations to sensual forbidden things. For as actually its certain the Reason of the Proud and Covetous do contrive, and oft approve the sin, and the Will embrace it; so these are done so constantly in a continued stream of action by the whole man, that it • eems apparent that the same faculties which run out out in such strong and constant action, are themselves the subjects of much of the inclining Positive habits: And if it be so in additional acquired sin, its like it was so in Original sin. 7. Though sin be formally subjected first in the Will, yet Materially it is first in the sensitive appetite (at least this sin of Flesh-pleasing or sensuality is): The flesh or sensitive part is the first Desirer, though it be sin no further than it is voluntary. 8. All this set together telleth you further; that the word [ flesh ] signifieth the sensual inclinations of the whole man; but first and principally the corrupted sensual appetite; and the Mind and Wills (whether Privative or Positive ) concurrence, but secondarily, and as falling in with sense. The Appetite 1. Preventeth Reason, 2. And resisteth reason: 3. And at last corrupteth and enticeth Reason and Will to be its servants and purveyors.

§. 3. And that the name [ flesh ] doth primarily signify the sensitive appetite itself, is evident in the very notation of the name. Why else should the Habits or Vices of the Rational powers be called [