A Christian Directory
§. 27. Direct. 13. Take nothing as universally Necessary in Religion, which was not so taken in the days of the Apostles, and Primitive Church; and take that for the safest way to Heaven which the Apostles went who certainly are there: value the Apostolical purity, simplicity, charity and unity: and follow not them that by being wise and pious overmuch, corrupt our sacred pattern by their additions, and fill the Church with uncharitableness and strife.
§. 28. If it were not a thing too evident, that Dominion and Riches go for Religion with them, and gain for Godliness, and honor and money instead of argument, it would be a most stupendous wonder, that so many learned men should be found among Christians in the world, to hinder the peace and unity of the Church, as do it vehemently and implacably in the Church of Rome; when so easy a thing, and so reasonable, would unite almost all the Christian world, as is, the requiring no more as necessary to our Union, than what was made necessary in the days of the Apostles, and the obtruding nothing as necessary to salvation, which the Apostles and primitive Church were saved without. This easy reasonable thing, which no man hath anything of seeming sense and weight to speak against, would end all the ruinating differences among Christians.
§. 29. Direct. 14. Be desirous to know all that God would have you know, and be willing to be ignorant of all that God would have you ignorant of: and pry not into unrevealed things; and much less make them the matter of any uncharitable strife.
§. 30. Abundance of contentious Volumes between the Dominicans, and Jesuits, and many others, are stuffed with bold enquiries, wranglings, or determinations of unsearchable mysteries, utterly unknown to those that voluminously debate them, and never revealed in the Word or Works of God. Keep off with reverence from concealed mysteries: Talk not as boldly of the Divine influx, and the priority, posteriority, dependence or reason of God's Decrees, as if you were talking of your common affairs. Come with great reverence when you are called of God to search into those high and holy truths, which he hath revealed. But pretend not to know that which is not to be known. For you will but discover your ignorance and arrogance, and know never the more, when you have doted about Questions never so long.
§. 31. Direct. 15. Avoid both extremes, of them that study no more, but to know what others have written and held before them; and of them that little regard the discoveries of others: Learn all of your Teachers and Authors that they can teach you; but make all your own, and see things in their proper evidence, and improve their discoveries by the utmost of your diligence; abhorring a proud desire of singularity, or to seem wiser than you are.
§. 32. Most Students through slothfulness look no further for knowledge, than into their Books; and their learning lieth but in knowing what others have written, or said, or held before them; especially where the least differing from the judgment of the party which is uppermost, or in reputation, doth tend to hazard a man's honor, or preferments, there men think it dangerous to seem to know more than is commonly known; and therefore think it needless to study to know it: Men are backward to take much pains to know that which tendeth to their ruin to be known, but doth them no harm while they can but keep themselves ignorant of it: Which makes the opposed Truth have so few entertainers or Students among the Papists, or any that persecute or reproach it. And others discerning this extreme, do run into the contrary; and under pretence of the loveliness of Truth, and the need of liberty of judging, do think the edifying way is first to pull down all that others have built before them, and little regard the judgment of their predecessors, but think they must take nothing on trust from others, but begin all from the very ground themselves. And usually their pride makes them so little regard the most approved Authors, that they have not patience to read them till they thoroughly understand them; but reject that which is received, before they understand it, merely because it was the received way: And while they say, that nothing must be taken upon trust, they presently take upon trust themselves that very opinion, and with it the other opinions of those Novelists that teach them this. And believing what such say in disgrace of others, withal they believe what they hold in opposition to those that they have disgraced. But it is easy to see how sad a case mankind were in, if every man must be a fabricator of all his knowledge himself, and posterity should be never the better for the discoveries of their ancestors; and the greatest labors of the wisest men, and their highest attainments must be no profit to any but themselves. Why do they use a Teacher, if they must do all themselves? If they believe not their Tutors, and take nothing on trust, it seems they must know every Truth before they will learn it: And what difference is there between believing a Tutor and an Author? And is not that more credible which upon long experience is approved by many Nations and Ages, than that which is recommended to you but by one or few? These Students should have made themselves an Alphabet or Grammar, and not have taken the common ones on trust. It is easier to add to other men's inventions, than to begin and carry on all ourselves. By their course of study, the world would never grow wiser; but every age and person be still beginning, and none proceed beyond their rudiments.
§. 33. Direct. 16. Be sure you make choice of meet Teachers and companions for your studies and your lives; That they be such as will assist you in the holy practice of what you know, as well as in your knowledge: And shun as a plague the familiarity, 1. Of sensual, idle, brutish persons; 2. And of carnal ambitious ones, who know no higher end than preferment and applause, 3. And of proud heretical contentious wits, whose wisdom and Religion is nothing but censuring, reproaching and vilifying them that are wiser and better than themselves.
§. 34. Bad company is the common ruin of youth: Their own sensuality is easily stirred up by the temptations of the sensual; and their consciences over-born by the examples of other men's voluptuous lives: It emboldeneth them to sin, to see others sin before them: as Cowards themselves are drawn on in an Army to run upon the face of death, by seeing others do it, and to avoid the reproach of cowardice: And the noise of mirth and ranting language, are the Drums and Trumpets of the Devils, by which their ears are kept from hearing the cries of wounded dying men, the lamentations of those that have found the error of that way. And there is in corrupted nature, so strong an inclination to the prosperity and vain-glory of the world, that makes them quickly take the bait, especially when the Devil doth offer it them by a fit instrument, which shall not deter them, as it would do, if he had offered it them himself. It is a pleasant thing to flesh and blood to be rich and great, and generally applauded: and a grievous thing to be poor, and despised, and afflicted. The rawness also and unsettledness of youth, who want well furnished understandings and experience, is a great advantage to Heretics and deceivers, who still sweep many such away, where ever they come and have but opportunity. Children are easily tost up and down, and carried to and fro • with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning slight and subtility of them that lie in wait to deceive, Ephes. 4. 14. Deceivers have their Methods; and Methods are the common instruments of deceit; which are not easily detected by the inexperienced. On the contrary, the benefit of wise, and staid, and sober, and peaceable, meek, humble, holy, heavenly companions, is exceeding great, especially to youth! Such will lead them in safe paths, and be still preserving them, and promoting the most necessary parts of knowledge, and quickening them to holy practice, which is the End of all.
§. 35. Direct. 17. In all your studies be jealous of both extremes, and distinctly discern which are the extremes; that you run not into one, while you avoid the other: And be specially careful, that you imagine not co-ordinates or subordinates to be opposites, and throw not away every truth, which you cannot presently place rightly in the frame, and see it fall in agreeably with the rest: For a further insight into true Method (attained but by very few) may reconcile you to that which now offendeth you: What God hath joined together be sure that you never put asunder: though yet you cannot find their proper places.
§. 36. There is scarce any error more common among Students, than supposing those Truths to be inconsistent, which indeed have a necessary dependence on each other; and a casting truth away as error, because they cannot reconcile it to some other truth: And there is nothing so much causeth this, as want of a true Method: He that hath no Method considerable, or after much curious labor hath fallen upon a false Method, or a Method that in any one considerable point is out of joint, will deal thus by many certain truths: As an ignorant person that is to set all the scattered parts of a Clock or Watch together, if he misplace one, will be unable rightly to place all the rest; and then when he finds that they fit not the place which he thinks they must be in, he casteth them away, and thinks they are not the right, and is searching for, or making something else to fit that place. False Method rejecteth many a truth.
§. 37. And (unless it be in Loving God, or other acts of the superior faculties, about their ultimate end and highest object ) there is scarce anything in morality but hath its extremes. And where they are not discerned, they are seldom well avoided. And usually narrow sighted persons, are fearful only of one extreme, and see no danger but on one side; and therefore are easily carried, by avoiding that, into the contrary.
§. 38. I think it not unprofitable to instance in several particular Cautions, that you imitate not them that put asunder what God hath conjoined, and cast not away truth as oft as you are puzzled in the right placing or methodizing it.
§. 39. Inst. 1. The first and second Causes are conjoined in their operations, and therefore must not be put asunder. If the way of influx, concourse, or co-operation be dark and unsearchable to you, do not deny that it is, because you see not how it is. The honor of the first and second Cause also are conjunct, according to their several interests in the effects: Do not therefore imagine, that all the honor ascribed to the second cause is denied or taken away from the first: For then you understand not their order: Otherwise you would see, that as the second causeth independence on the first, and in subordination to it, and hath no power but what is communicated by it, so it hath no honor but what is received from it: and that it is no less honor for the first cause to operate mediately by the second, than immediately by itself: And that there is no less of the Power, Wisdom or Goodness of God in an effect produced by means and second causes, than in that which he produceth of himself only without them: And that it is his Goodness to communicate a power of doing good to his creatures, and the honor of working and causing under him: but he never loseth anything by communicating, nor hath the less himself by giving to his creatures: For if all that honor that is given to the Creature were taken injuriously from God, then God would never have made the world, nor made a Saint; and then the worst creatures would least dishonor God: Then he would not shine by the Sun, but by himself immediately: and then he would never Glorify either Saint or Angel. But on the contrary, it is God's honor to work by adapted means: And all their honor is truly his. As all the commendation of a Clock or Watch is given to the Workman. And though God do not all so immediately as to use no means or second causes; yet is he never the further from the effect, but immediatione virtutis & suppositi is himself as near, as if he used none.
§. 40. Inst. 2. The special Providence of God, and his being the first Universal cause, are conjunct with the culpability of sinners; and no man must put these asunder. Those that cannot see just how they are conjoined, may be sure that they are conjoined. It is no dishonor to an Engineer that he can make a Watch which shall go longer than he is moving it with his finger: Nor is it a dishonor to our Creator, that he can make a Creature which can Morally determine itself to an action as commanded or forbidden, without the predetermination of his Maker, though not without his universal concourse necessary to action as action. If Adam could not do this through the natural impossibility of it, than the Law was, that he should die the death if he did not overcome God, or do that which was naturally impossible; and this was the nature of his sin. Few dare say, that God cannot make a free self-determining agent: And if he can, we shall easily prove that he hath; and the force of their opposition then is vanished.
§. 41. Inst. 3. The Omniscience of God, and his Dominion, Government and Decrees, are conjunct with the liberty and sin of man; yet these by many are put asunder: As if God must either be Ignorant, or be the author of sin! As if he made one poor, by Decreeing to make another Rich! As if he cannot be a perfect Governor, unless he procure all his subjects perfectly to keep his Laws! As if all the fault of those that break the Law were to be laid upon the Maker of the Law: As if all God's will de debito were not effective of its proper work, unless man fulfill it in the Event! And as if it were possible for any Creature to comprehend the way of the Creators Knowledge!
§. 42. Inst. 4. Many would separate Nature and Grace which God the author of both conjoineth. When Grace supposeth Nature, and in her Garden soweth all her seed, and exciteth and rectifieth all her powers; yet these men talk as if Nature had been annihilated, or Grace came to annihilate it, and not to cure it. As if the Leprosy and Disease of Nature were Nature itself! And as if Natural Good had been lost as much as Moral Good! As if man were not man, till Grace make him a man!
§. 43. Inst. 5. Many separate the Natural Power of a sinner from his Moral impotency and his Natural freedom of will, from his Moral servitude; as if they were inconsistent, when they are conjunct. As if the Natural faculty might not consist with an evil disposition: or a Natural power with an habitual unwillingness to exercise it aright! And as if a sinner were not still a man!
§. 44. Inst. 6. Many separate General and special Grace and Redemption, as inconsistent, when they are conjunct! When the General is the proper way and means of accomplishing the ends of the special Grace; and is still supposed: As if God could not give more to some, if he give anything to all! Or as if he gave nothing to all, if he give more to any! As if he could not deal equally and without difference with all as a Legislator, and righteously with all as a Judge, unless he deal equally and without difference with all as a Benefactor in the free distribution of his gifts! As if he were obliged to make every Worm and Beast a man, and every man a King, and every King an Angel, and every Clod a Star, and every Star a Sun!
§. 45. Inst. 7. Many separate the Glory of God and man's salvation, God and man, in assigning the ultimate End of man! As if a Moral Intention might not take in both! As if it were not finis amantis! and the end of a Lover were not union in Mutual Love! As if Love to God may not be forever the final act, and God himself the final object! And as if in this magnetick closure, though both may be called the End, yet there might not in the closing parties, be an infinite disproportion, and one only be finis ultimate ultimus!
§. 46. Inst. 8. Yea, many would separate God from God, while they would separate God from Heaven, and say that we must be content to be shut out of Heaven for the Love of God! When our Heaven is the perfect Love of God: And so they say in effect, that for the Love of God we must be content to be shut out from the Love of God.
§. 47. Inst. 9. Thus also the vulgar separate the Mercy and the Justice of God! As if God knew not better than man to whom his mercy should extend! And as if God be not merciful, if he will be a righteous Governor, and unless he will suffer all the world to spit in his face and blaspheme him, and let his enemies go all unpunished?
§. 48. Inst. 10. Thus many separate Threatenings and Promises, Fear and Love▪ a perfect Law, and a pardonining Gospel: As if he that is a man, and hath both fear and Love in his nature, must not make use of both for God and his salvation! and the Law-giver might not fit his Laws to work on both? As if Hell may not be feared, and Heaven loved at once.
§. 49. Inst. 11. Thus hypocrites separate in conceit their seeming Holiness and devotion to God from duties of Justice and Charity to men: As if they could serve God acceptably, and disobey him willfully! Or as if they could love him whom they never saw, and not love his Image in his works and children whom they daily see! As if they could hate and persecute Christ in his little ones, or at least neglect him, and yet sincerely love him in himself!
§. 50. Inst. 12. Thus by many Scripture and Tradition, Divine faith, and human faith are commonly opposed: Because the Papists have set Tradition is a wrong place, many cast it away because it fits not that place: When man's Tradition and Ministerial Revelation, is necessary to make known and bring down God's Revelation to us: And a subservient Tradition is no disparagement to Scripture, though a supplemental Tradition be: And man must be believed as man, though not as God! And he that will not believe man as man, shall scarce know what he hath to believe from God.
§. 51. Inst. 13. Thus many separate the sufficiency of the Law and Rule from the usefulness of an Officer, Minister and Judge! As if the Law must be imperfect, or else need no Execution, and no Judge for execution! Or as if the Judges execution were a supplement or addition to the Law! As if the Question, Who shall be the Judge? Did argue the Law of insufficiency! and the promulgation, and execution were not supposed?
§. 52. Inst. 14. Thus also many separate the necessity of a public Judge, from the lawfulness and necessity of a private judgment, or discerning in all the rational subjects! As if God and man did govern only Brutes! or we could obey a Law, and not judge it to be a Law, and to be obeyed! and not understand the sense of it, and what it doth command us! As if fools and mad men were the only subjects! As if our learning of Christ as his Disciples, and meditating day and night in his Law, and searching for Wisdom in his Word, were a disobeying him as our King! As if it were a possible thing for subjects to obey, without a private judgment of discretion! Or as if there were any repugnancy between my judging what is the Kings Law? and his judging whether I am punishable for disobeying it! or as if judging ourselves, contradicted our being judged of God!
§. 53. Inst. 15. So, many separate between the operation of the Word and Spirit, the Minister and Christ: As if the Spirit did not usually work by the Word; and Christ did not preach to us by his Ministers and Ambassadors! And as if they might despise his Messengers, and not be taken for despisers of himself! Or might throw away the dish, and keep the milk.
§. 54. Inst. 16. Thus many separate the special Love of Saints from the common Love of man as man: As if they could not Love a Saint, unless they may hate an enemy, and despise all others, and deny them the Love which is answerable to their Natural Goodness.
§. 55. Inst. 17. Thus many separate Universal or Catholic Union and Communion from particular. And some understand no Communion but the Universal, and some none but the particular. Some say we separate from them as to Catholic Communion, if we hold not local particular Communion with them; yea, if we join not with them in every mode! As if I could be personally in ten thousand thousand Congregations at once, or else did separate from them all! Or as if I separated from all mankind, if I differed from all men in my visage or complexion? Or as if I cannot be absent from many thousand Churches, and yet honor them as true Churches of Christ, and hold Catholic communion with them in Faith, Hope and Love! Yea, though I durst not join with them personally in Worship for fear of some sinful condition which they impose! Or as if I need not be a member of any ordered worshipping Congregation, because I have a Catholic faith and Love to all the Christians in the world!
§. 56. Inst. 18. Thus are the outward and inward worship separated by many, who think that all which the Body performeth is against the due spirituality; or that the spirituality is but fancy and contrary to the form or outward part: As if the heart and the knee may not fitly bow together; nor decency of order concur with Spirit and truth.
§. 57. Inst. 19. Thus many separate faith and obedience; Paul's Justification by faith without the works of the Law, from James 's Justification by works, and not by faith only, and Christ's Justification by our words, Matth. 12. 37. And thus they separate free Grace and Justification from any necessary condition, and from the rewardableness of obedience, (which the Ancients called Merit ): But of this at large elsewhere.
§. 58. Inst. 20. And many separate Prudence and zeal, meekness and resolution, the wisdom of the Serpent, and the innocence of the Dove! yielding to no sin, and yet yielding in things lawful; maintaining our Christian liberty, and yet becoming all things to all men, if by any means we may save some. These Instances are enow; I will add no more.
§. 59. Direct. 18. Take heed of falling into factions and parties in Religion, (be the party great or small, high or low, in honor or dishonor), and take heed lest you be infected with a factious, censorious, uncharitable, hurting zeal: For these are much contrary to the interest, Will and Spirit of Christ: Therefore among all your readings, deeply suck in the doctrine of charity and peace; and read much Reconciling moderating Authors: Such as Drury, Hall, Davenant, Crocius, Bergius, Martinius, Amyraut, Dallaeus, Testardus, Calixtus, Hottonus, Junius, Pareus and Burroughs their Irenicons.
§. 60. The reading of such Books extinguisheth the consuming flame of that infernal envious zeal described James 3. and kindleth charity, and meekness, and mellowness, and moderation in the heart; and cureth those bloodshotten eyes which are unable till cured to discern the truth: It helpeth us to knowledge; and to that which is more edifying, and keepeth knowledge from puffing us up. And experience will tell you at long running, that among Ancients and Moderns, Greeks and Latins, Papists and Protestants, Lutherans and Calvinists, Remonstrants and Contraremonstrants, Prelatists, Presbyterians, Independents, &c. commonly the Moderaters are not only the best and most charitable, but the wisest, most judicious men.
§. 61. Direct. 19. With all your Readings still join the reading of the Scriptures, and of the most holy and practical Divines; not fantastical Enthusiastic counterfeits; Paracelsian Divines; but those that lead you up by the solid doctrine of faith and Love to true Devotion, and Heavenly mindedness and conversation.
§. 62. This must be your bread and drink; your daily and substantial food: without this you may soon be filled with air, that cannot nourish you, and prove in the end as sounding brass and tinkling Cymbals: These will breed strength, and peace, and joy, and help you in your Communion with God, and hopes of Heaven, and so promote the End of all your Studies! There is more life and sweetness in these, than in the things that are more remote from God and Heaven.
§. 63. Direct. 20. Lastly, Do all as dying men: promise not yourselves long life, lest it tempt you to waste your time on things least necessary, and to loiter it away; or lest you lose the quickening benefit, which the sight of death and eternity would yield you, in all your studies.
§. 64. The nearer you apprehend yourselves to death and Heaven, the greater help you have to be mortisied and Heavenly: This will make you serious, and keep up right intentions, and keep out wrong ones, and powerfully help you against temptations, that when you have studied to save others you may not be cast-awayes; nor be cheated by the Devil with the shell, and leaves, and flowers, while you go without the saving fruit.
§. 65. I have spoken the more on this subject of Governing the Thoughts, because it is so great and excellent a part of the work of man; and God doth so much regard the heart; and the Spirit of Christ and Satan so much strive for it; and grace is so much employed about it: and our Happiness or misery, Joy or sorrow, is greatly promoted by our Thoughts. And more I would have said, but that in the third Chapter, and in my Treatise of the Divine Life there is much said already. And for a Method and Directions for particular Meditations, I have given it at large in the fourth Part of the Saints Rest, from whence it may easily be taken, and applied to other subjects, as it is there to Heaven: It is easy to write and read Directions: but I fear lest slothfulness through the difficulty of Practice, will frustrate my Directions to the most. But if any profit by them, my labor is not lost.
CHAP. VII. Directions for the Government of the Passions.
§. 1. THE Passions are to be considered, 1. As in themselves, and the sin of them as respecting God and ourselves only: And so I am to speak of them here. 2. As they are a wrong to others, and a breach of the commandments which require Love and duty towards our Neighbor: And so I shall speak of them after.
§. 2. Passions are not sinful in themselves, for God hath given them to us for his service: And there is none of them but may be sanctified and used for him: But they are sinful, 1. When they are misguided and placed on wrong objects: 2. When they darken reason and delude the mind, and keep out truth, and seduce to error. 3. When they rebel against the Government of the will, and trouble it and hinder it in its choice or prosecution of good, or urge it violently, to follow their brutish inclination. 4. When they are unseasonable. 5. Or immoderate and excessive in degree, 6. Or of too long continuance: 7. And when they tend to evil effects, as to unseemly speeches or actions, or to wrong another.
§. 3. Passions are Holy when they are devoted to God, and exercised upon him or for him: They are Good when, 1. They have right objects, 2. And are guided by Reason, 3. And are obedient to the well-guided will, 4. And quicken, and awake the Reason and the will to do their duty, 5. And tend to good effects, exciting all the other powers to their office, 6. And exceed not in degree, so as to disturb the brain or body.
Tit. 1. Directions against all sinful Passions in general.
§. 4. Direct. 1. TRust not to any present actual resistance, without any due Habitual mortification of Passions, and fortification of the soul against them. Look most to the holy constitution of your mind and life, and then sinful Passions will fall off like scabs from a healthful body when the blood is purified.
§. 5. No wonder if an unholy soul be a slave to Passion, when the Body is inclined to it: For such a one is under the power of selfishness, carnality and worldliness; and from under the Government of Christ and his spirit; and wanteth that life of Grace by which he should cure and subdue the corruptions of nature. The way for such a one to master passion, is not to strive by natural selfish principles and reasons, which are partial, poor and weak; but to look first to the main, and to seek with speed and earnestness for a New and sanctified heart, and get God's Image, and his spirit and renewing quickening Grace: This is the only effectual conqueror of Nature. A dull and gentle disposition may seem without this to conquer that which never much assaulted it; (the trial of such persons being some other way): But none conquereth Satan indeed but the spirit of Christ. And if you should be free from passion, and not be free from an unholy carnal worldly heart, you must perish at last, if you seemed the • almest persons upon earth. Begin therefore at the foundation, and see that the Body of sin be mortified, and that the whole tree be rooted up which beareth these evil bitter fruits; and that the Holy victorious new-nature be within you; and then you will resist sin with Light and Life, which others resist but as in their sleep.
§. 6. Direct. 2. More particularly, let your souls be still possessed with the fear of God, and live as in his family under his eye and Government, that his authority may be more powerful than temptations, and your holy converse with him, may make him still more regarded by you than men or any creatures. And then this Sun will put out the lesser lights, and the thunder of his voice will drown the whisperers that would provoke you, and the humming of those wasps which make you so impatient: God would make the creature nothing, and then it would do nothing to disturb you, or carry you into sin.
§. 7. Direct. 3. Dwell in the delightful Love of God, and in the sweet contemplation of his Love in Christ, and • owl over his tender mercies in your thoughts, and let your conversation be with the Holy ones in Heaven, and your work be Thanksgivings and Praise to God: And this will habituate your souls to such a sweetness, and mellowness, and stability, as will resist sinful passion even as heat resisteth cold.
§. 8. Direct. 4. Keep your Consciences continually tender, and then they will check the first appearance of sinful passions; and will smart more with the sin than your passionate natures do with the provocation: A scared Conscience, and a hardened senseless heart is to every sin, as a man thats fast asleep is to thieves: They may come in and do what they will, so they do not waken him: But a tender Conscience is always awake.
§. 9. Direct. 5. Labor after wisdom, strength of Reason, and a solid judgment: for Passion is cherished by folly: Children are easily overthrown, and leaves are easily shaken with every little wind; when men keep their way, and rocks and mountains are not shaken. Women and children, and old, and weak, and sick people are usually most passionate. If a wise man should have a passionate nature, he hath that which can do much to control it: When folly is a weathercock at the winds command.
§. 10. Direct. 6. See that the will be confirmed and resolute, and then it will soon command down passion. Men can do much against Passion if they will. Nature hath set the will in the Throne of the soul: It is the sinful connivance and negligence of the will, which is the guilty cause of all the rebellion: As the connivance of the commanders is the common cause of mutinies in an Army. The will either consenteth or is remis • in its office, and in forbidding and repressing the rage of passion: When I say, you can do it if you will, you think this is not true, because you are willing, and yet passion yieldeth not to your wills command: But I mean not that every kind of willingness will serve: It is not a sluggish wish that will do it: But if the will were resolute without any compliance or connivance or negligence in its proper office, no sinful passion could remain: For it is no further sin, than it is voluntary, either by the wills compliance or omission and neglect. Therefore let most of your labor be to waken and confirm the will; and then it will command down passion.
§. 11. Direct. 7. Labor after holy fortitude, courage and magnanimity: Great minds are above all troubles; desires or commotions about little things: A poor, base, low and childish mind, is never quiet, longer then it is rockt asleep or flattered.
§. 12. Direct. 8. Especially see that you want not self-denial, and that worldliness and fleshly-mindedness be thoroughly mortified: For sinful passion is the very breath and pulse of a selfish, fleshly worldly mind. It is not more natural for dogs to fight about a bone, than for such to snarl and quarrel, or be in some distempered Passion, about their selfish carnal -interest. Covetousness will not let the mind be quiet. Its as natural for a selfish man to be under the power of sinful Passions, as for a man to shake that hath an ague, or to fear that is melancholy: Fleshly men have a Canine appetite, and feverish thirst continually upon them, after some flesh-pleasing toy or other.
§. 13. Direct. 9. Keep a Court of Justice in your souls, and call yourselves daily to account, and let no passion scape without such a censure as is due. If Reason and Conscience thus exercise and maintain their authority, and passion be every day soundly rebuked, it will wither, like a plant that is cropped as fast as it springeth.
§. 14. Direct. 10. Deliberate and foresee the end: examine whether passion tend to that which will be approvable when its past. Looking to the end doth shame all sinful passions: They are blind, and moved only by things present: They cannot endure the sight of the time to come, nor to be examined whether they go, or where is their home.
§. 15. Direct. 11. Keep a continual apprehension of the danger and odiousness of sinful passions, by knowing how full they are of the spawn of many other sins. See the evil of them in the effects. Mark what passion doth in others and yourselves: what abundance of evil thoughts and words and deeds do come from sinful passions?
§. 16. Direct. 12. Observe the immediate troublesome effects, and the disorders of your soul, and so turn the fruit of passions against themselves. Mark how they discompose you, and disturb your Reason, and make your minds like muddyed waters; and breed a diseased unquietness in you, unfitting you for your work, and breaking your peace; so that you can neither know, nor use, nor enjoy yourselves.
§. 17. Direct. 13. Let Death look your passions frequently in the face. It hath a mortifying virtue; and as it showeth us the vanity of the creature, so it taketh down those passions, which creature-interest and deceit have caused. It exciteth reason, and restoreth it to its dominion, and silenceth the rebellion of the senses: A man that is to die tomorrow, and knoweth it, would easilier repel today a temptation to lust, or covetousness, or drunkenness, or revenge, than at another time he could have done: One look into eternity will powerfully rebuke all carnal passions.
§. 18. Direct. 14. Remember still that God is present: Will you behave yourselves passionately before him? When the presence of your Prince would calm you? Shall God and his holy Angels see thee like a Bedlam lay by thy reason and mis-behave thyself?
§. 19. Direct. 15. Have still some pertinent scripture ready to rebuke thy passions: That thou mayst say as Christ to Satan, Thus it is written. Speak to it in the name and word of God: Though the bare words will not charm these evil spirits, yet the authority will curb them. For this word is quick and powerful, a discerner of the throughts, Heb. 4. 12. mighty though God, to the pulling down of stro •• holds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringeth into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
§. 20. Direct. 16. Set Christ continually before you as your pattern, who calleth you to learn of him to be meek and lowly: Matth. 11. 29. Who desired not the wealth or glory of the world: who loved his own that were in the world, but loved not the things of the world: who never was lifted up or sinfully cast down: who never despised, or envied man, nor never feared man: who never was over-merry or over-sad: who being reviled, reviled not again; but was dumb as a lamb before the shearers.
§. 21. Direct. 17. Keep as far from all occasions of your passions as other duties will allow you: And contrive your affairs and occasions into as great an opposition as may be to the temptation. Run not into temptation if you would be delivered from evil: Much might be done by a willing prudent man, by the very ordering of his affairs: God and Satan works by means: let the means then be regarded.
§. 22. Direct. 18. Have a due care of your bodies, that no distemper be cherished in them, which causeth the distemper of the soul. Passions have a very great dependence on the temperament of the body: And much of the cure of them lieth (when it is possible) in the bodies emendation.
§. 23. Direct. 19. Turn all your passions into the right channel, and make them all Holy, using them for God upon the greatest things. This is the true cure: The bare restraint of them is but a palliate cure; like the easing of pain by a dose of opium. Cure the fear of man, by the fear of God, and the Love of the creature, by the Love of God, and the cares for the body, by caring for the soul, and earthly fleshly desires and delights, by spiritual desires and delights, and worldly sorrow, by profitable godly sorrow.
§. 24. Direct. 20. Controul the effects, and frustrate your passions of what they would have; and that will ere long destroy the cause. Cross yourselves of the things which carnal Love and desire would have: Forbear the things which carnal mirth or anger would provoke you to, and the fire will go out for want of fuel. (Of which more in the particulars).
Tit. 2. Directions against sinful Love of Creatures.
§. 1. LOve is the Master Passion of the soul, because it hath the chiefest Object, even Goodness which is the object of the will: And simple Love is nothing but Complacencie, which is nothing but the simple Volition of Good; And it is a Passionate Volition or Complacencie which we call the Passion of Love. When this is Good and when its sinful I shown before: But yet because the one half of the cure here lieth in the conviction, and it is so hard a thing to make any Lover perceive a sinfulness in his Love, I shall first help you in the trial of your Love, to show the sinfulness of it: when I have first named the objects of it.
§. 2. Any creature which seemeth Good to us, may possibly be the object of sinful Love: As Honor, Greatness, authority, praises, money, houses, lands, cattle, meat, drink, sleep, apparel, sports, friends, relations, and life itself. As for Lustful Love I shall speak of it anon.
Helps for discovering of sinful Love.
§. 3. Direct. 1. Make God's interest and his word the standard to judge of all affections by. That which is against the Love of God, and would abate or hinder it, yea which doth not directly or indirectly tend to further it, is certainly a sinful Love: And so is all that is against his word. For the Love of God is our final act upon our ultimate end, and therefore all that tends not to it, is a sin against our very end, and so against our nature and the use of our faculties.
§. 4. Direct. 2. Therefore whatever creature is Loved ultimately for itself, and not for a higher end, even for God, his service, his honor, his relation to it, or his excellency appearing in it, is sinfully loved. For it is made our God, when it is Loved ultimately for itself.
§. 5. Direct. 3. Suspect all Love to creatures which is very strong and violent, and easily kindled, and hardly moderated or quieted: Though you might think it is for some spiritual end or excellency, that you Love any person or anything, yet suspect it if it be so easy and strong: Because that which is truly and purely spiritual is against corrupted nature, and comes from Grace which is but weak: we find no such easiness to Love God, and scripture, and prayer, and holiness: nor are our affections so violent to these. Its well if all the fuel and blowing we can use will keep them alive. Its two to one that the flesh and the Devil have put in some of their fuel or gunpouder, if it be fierce.
§. 6. Direct. 4. Suspect all that Love which selfishness and fleshly-interest have a hand in. Is it some bodily pleasure and delight that you love so much? Or is it a good book or other help for your soul? We are so much apter to exceed and sin in carnal fleshly mindedness, than in Loving what is good for our souls, that there we should be much more suspicious: If it be violent and for the body, its ten to one there is sin in it.
§. 7. Direct. 5. Suspect all that Love to creatures which your Reason can give no good account of, nor show you a justifiable cause. If you Love one place or person much more than others, and know not why, but Love them because you cannot choose, this is much to be suspected: Though God may sometime kindle a secret Love between friends, from an inexpressible unity or similitude of minds, beyond what reason will undertake to justify, yet this is rare, and commonly fancy or folly or carnality is the cause: However it is more to be suspected and tried, than Rational Love.
§. 8. Direct. 6. Suspect all that fervent Love to any Creature which is hasty before sufficient trial: for commonly both persons and things have the best side outward, and seem better at the first appearance than they prove. Not but that a moderate Love may be taken up upon the first appearance of any excellency, especially spiritual: But so as to allow for a possibility of being deceived, and finding more faultiness upon a fuller trial, than we at first perceive. Have you dwelt in the house with the persons whom you so much admire? and have you tried them in their conversations? and seen them tried by crosses, losses, injuries, adversity, prosperity, or the offers of preferment or plenty in the world? you would little think what lurketh undiscovered in the hearts of many, that have excellent parts, till trial manifest it!
§ 9. Direct. 7. Try your affections in prayer before God, whether they be such as you dare boldly pray God either to increase or continue and bless; and whether they be such as Conscience hath no quarrel against. If they endure not this trial, be the more suspicious, and search more narrowly: The name and presence of God in Prayer, doth much dispel the frauds of carnal reasonings. Yet persons who by Melancholy are cast into diseased fears and scrupulosities, are uncapable of this way of trial.
§. 10. Direct. 8. Consult with wise impartial persons: and open your case to them without deceit, before affection have gone so far as to blind you, or leave you uncapable of help. In this case if in any case, the judgment of a stander by that's faithful and impartial is usually to be preferred before your own. For we are too near ourselves; and judgment will be bribed and biased even in the best and wisest persons.
§. 11. Direct. 9. Yet cast not away all, because you discover much excess or carnality in your affections: For frequently there is a mixture both in the cause of Love and in the Love itself of good and evil. And when you have but taken out all that was selfish and carnal and erroneous in the cause, the carnal violent Love will cease; but not all Love: For still there will and must remain the moderate rational and holy Love, which is proportioned to the creatures worth and merit, and is terminated ultimately on God: The separation being made, this part must be preserved.
§. 12. Direct. 10. Meer Natural appetite in itself is neither morally good or evil: But as it is well placed and ordered it is good, and as unruled or ill-ruled it is evil.
Helps to mortify sinful Love.
§. 13. Direct. 1. The greatest of all means to cast out all sinful Love, is to keep the soul in the Love of God. Jud. 21. wholly taken up in admiring him, serving him, praising him and rejoicing in him: of which see Chap. 3. Dir. 11. we see that they that are taken up in the Love and Service of one person, are not apt to be taken much with any other. But it is not only by diversion, nor only by prepossessing and employing all our Love, that the Love of God doth cure sinful Love; but besides these there is also a Majesty in his objective presence which aweth the soul, and commandeth all things else to keep their distance: And there is an unspeakable splendor and excellency in him, which obscureth and annihilateth all things else: (though they are more near, and clearly seen and known.) And there is a celestial kind of sweetness in his Love, which puts the soul that hath tasted it out of relish, with transitory inferior go • d. As he that hath conversed with wise and learned men, will no more admire the wit of fools: And as he that hath been employed in the Government of a Kingdom or the sublimest studies, will be no more in love with Children's games and paddling in the dirt.
§. 14. Direct. 2. The next help is to see that the Creature deceived you not; and therefore that you be not rash and hasty; but stay while you come nearer it, and see it unclothed of borrowed or affected ornaments: and see it not only in the dress in which it appeareth abroad, which often covereth great deformities, but in its homely habit and night attire: Bring it to the light▪ and if it may be also see it when it hath endured the fire, which hath taken off the paint and removed the dress. Most of your inordinate Love to creatures is by mistake and rashness. The Devil tricks them up and paints them, that you may fall in love with them: or else he showeth you only the outside▪ of some common good, and hideth the emptiness or rottenness within. Come nearer therefore, and stay longer, and prevent your shame and disappointments. Is it not a shame to see you dote on that place, or office, or thing this year, which you are weary of before the next? Or to see two persons impatiently fond of each other till they are married, and then to live in strife as aweary of each other? How few persons or things have been too violently loved, that were but sufficiently first tried?
§. 15. Direct. 3. The next great help is to destroy self-love, (as carn • l and inordinate) For this is the Parent, life and root of all other sinful love whatever. Why doth the Worldling over-love his wealth, and the proud man his greatness and repute, and the sensualist his pleasures, but because they first over-love, that flesh and self which all these are but the provision for. Why doth a dividing Sectary over-value and over-love all the party or sect that are of his own opinion; but because he first over-valueth and over-loveth himself: why do you love those above their worth who think highly of you, and are on your side, and use to praise you behind your back, or that do you a good turn, but because you first over-love yourselves? Why doth Lustful Love enflame you, or the Love of meat and drink and sport and bravery, carry you into such a gulf of sin, but that first you over-love your fleshly pleasure? what ensnareth you in fondness to any person, but that you think they love you, or are suitable to your carnal ends. See therefore that you mortify the flesh.
§. 16. Direct. 4. Still remember how jealous God is of your Love, and how much he is wronged when any creature encroacheth upon his right. 1. You are his own by Creation? and did he give you Love to lay out on others, and deny it to himself? 2. He daily and hourly maintaineth you; he giveth you every breath and bit and mercy that you live upon, and will you love the creature with his part of your love. 3. How dearly hath he bought your Love in your Redemption? 4. He hath adopted you and brought you into the nearest relation to him that you may love him. 5. He hath pardoned all your sins and saved you from Hell (if you are his own) that you may Love him. 6. He hath promised you eternal glory with himself that you may Love him. 7 His excellency best deserveth your love. 8. His creatures have nothing but from him, and were purposely sent to bespeak your love for him rather than for themselves. And yet after all this shall they encroach upon his part? If you say, It is not God's part that you give them, but their own; I tell you, All that Love which you give the creature above its due, you take from God. But if it be such a Love to the creature as exceedeth not its worth, and is intended ultimately for God, and maketh you not Love him the less but the more, it is not it that I am speaking against, or persuading you to mortify.
§. 17. Direct. 5. Look on the worst of the creature, with the best, and foresee what it will be when it withereth, and what it will appear to you at the last. I have applied this against worldliness before Chap. 4. Part 6. and I shall afterwards apply it to the lustful love. Bring your beloved creature to the grave, and see it as it will appear at last, and much of the folly of your Love will vanish.
§. 18. Direct. 6. Understand well the most that it will do for you, and how short a time you must enjoy it, and flatter not yourselves with the hopes of a longer possession than you have reason to expect. If men considered for how short a time they must possess what they dote upon, it would somewhat cool their fond affections.
§. 19. Direct. 7. Remember that too much Love, hath the present trouble of too much care, and the future trouble of too much grief, when you come to part with what you love. Nothing more createth care and grief to us, than inordinate Love. You foreknow that you must part with it: and will you now be so glued to it that then it may tear your flesh and heart. Remember you caused all that yourselves.
§. 20. Direct. 8. Remember that you provoke God to deprive you of what you overlove, or to suffer it to grow unlovely to you. Many a man's horse that he over-loved hath broke his neck: And many a man's child that he over-loved hath died quickly, or lived to be his scourge and sorrow: And many a Husband or Wife that was over-loved, hath been quickly snatched away or proved a thorn, or a continual grief and misery.
§. 21. Direct. 9. If there be no other means left, prudently and moderately embitter to thyself the creature which thou art fond on: which may be done many ways, according to the nature of it. By the seldomer or more abstemious use of it; or by using it more to benefit than delight: or by mixing some mortifying humbling exercises: or mixing some self-denying acts, and minding more the good of others, &c.
§. 22. Direct. 10. In the practice of all Directions of this nature, there must abundance of difference be made between a carnal voluptuous heart, that is hardly taken off from sensual Love, and a mortified, melancholy, or over-scrupulous person, who is running into the contrary extreme, and is afraid of every bit they eat, or of all they possess, or wear or use, and sometime of their very children and relations, and ready to over-run their mercies, or neglect their duties, suspecting that all is too much loved. And it is a very hard thing for us so to Write or Preach to one party, but the other will mis-apply it to themselves, and make an ill use of it. All that we can write or say is too little to mortify the fleshly man's affections: And yet speak as cautelously as we can, the troubled soul will turn it into gall, to the increase of his trouble: And what we speak to his peace and settlement, though it prove too little and ineffectual, yet will be effectual to harden the misapplying sensualist in the sinful affections and liberty which he useth. Therefore it is best in such cases to have still a wise experienced faithful guide, to help you in the application in cases of difficulty and weight.
Tit. 3. Directions against sinful Desires and Discontent.
§. 1. I Shall say but little here of this subject, because I have already treated so largely of it, in my Book of self-denial, and in that of Crucifying the World; and here before in Chap. 4. Part 6. & 7. against worldliness and Flesh-pleasing; and here against sinful Love which is the cause.
§. 2. How sinful Desires may be known, you may gather from the discoveries of sinful Love: As, 1. When you Desire that which is forbidden you. 2. Or that which will do you no good, upon a misconceit that it is better or more needful than it is. 3. Or when you desire it too eagerly, and must needs have it, or else you will be impatient and discontented, and cannot quietly be ruled and disposed of by God, but are murmuring at his providence, and your lot. 4. Or when you desire it too hastily, and cannot stay God's time. 5. Or else too greedily as to the measure, being not content with God's allowance, but must needs have more than he thinks fit for you. 6. Or special when your desires are perverse, preferring lesser things before greater; desiring bodily and transitory things more than the mercies for your souls which will be everlasting. 7. When you desire anything ultimately and merely for the flesh, without referring it to God, it is a sin: Even your daily bread and all your comforts, must be desired but as Provender for your Horse, that he may the better go his journey, even as Provision for your bodies, to fit them to the better and more cheerful service of your souls and God. 8. Much more when your desires are for wicked ends, (as to serve your lust or pride or covetousness or revenge) they are wicked desires. 9. And when they are injurious to others.
§. 3. Direct. 1. Be well acquainted with your own Condition, and consider what it is that you have most need of; and then you will find that you have so much grace and mercy to desire for your souls, without which you are lost forever, and that you have a Christ to desire, and an endless life with God to desire, that it will quench all your thirst after the things below. This if anything will make you wiser; when you see you have greater things to mind. A man that is in present danger of his life, will not be solicitous for pins or fool-gawds: And the hopes of a Lordship or a Kingdom will cure the desire of little things: A man that needeth a Physician for the Dropsy or Consumption, will scarce long for Children's balls or tops. And methinks a man that is going to Heaven or Hell, should have somewhat greater than worldly things to long for. O what a vain and doting thing, is a carnal mind; that hath pardon and grace and Christ and Heaven and God to think of, and that with speed before it be too late; and can forget them all, or not regard them, and eagerly long for some little inconsiderable trifle; as if they said, I must needs taste of such a dish before I die: I must needs have such a house, or a Child, or friend before I go to another world: O study what need thy distressed soul hath of a Christ, and of peace with God, and preparation for Eternity, and what need thy darkened mind hath of more knowledge, and thy dead and carnal heart of more life and tenderness and Love to God, and communion with him: Feel these as thou hast cause, and the eagerness of thy carnal Desires will be gone.
§. 4. Direct. 2. Remember how much your carnal Desires do aggravate the weakness of your spiritual Desires, and make the sin more odious and inexcusable. Are you so eager for a Husband, a Wife, a Child, for wealth, for preferment or such things, while you are so cold and indifferent in your Desires after God and grace and glory? Your desires after these are not so earnest! They make you not so importunate and restless: They take not up your thoughts both day and night: They set you not so much on contrivances and endeavors: You can live as quietly without more grace or assurance of salvation or communion with God, as if you were indifferent in the business: But you must needs have that which you desire in the world, or there is no quiet with you. Do you consider what a horrible contempt of God and grace and Heaven is manifested by this? Either you are Regenerate or unregenerate. If you are Regenerate, all your instructions, and all your experiences of the worth of spiritual things, and the vanity of things temporal, do make it a heinous sin in you to be now so eager for those things which you have so often called vanity, while you are so cold towards God, whose Goodness you have had so great experience of. Do you know no better yet the difference between the creature and the Creator? Do you yet no better understand your necessities and interest, and what it is that you live upon and must trust to, for your everlasting blessedness and content. If you are unregenerate (as all are that Love anything better than God) what a madness is it for one that is condemned in Law to endless torments, and shall be quickly there, if he be not regenerate and justified by Christ, to be thirsting so eagerly for this or that thing or person upon earth, when he should presently bestir him with all his might to save his soul from endless misery▪ How incongruous are these Desires to the good and bad?
§. 5. Direct. 3. Let every sinful Desire humble you, for the worldliness and fleshliness which it discocovereth to be yet unmortified in you: and turn your Desires to the mortifying of that flesh and concupiscence which is the cause. If you did not yet love the world, and the things that are in the world, you would not be so eager for them. If you were not too carnal, and did not mind too much the things of the flesh, you would not be so earnest for them as you are. It should be a grievous thing to your hearts to consider, what worldliness and fleshliness this showeth to be yet there. That you should set so much by the creature, as to be unable to bear the want of it: Is this renouncing the world and flesh? The thing you need is not that which you so much desire; but a better heart, to know the Vanity of the Creature, to be dead to the world, and to be able to bear the want or loss of anything in it; and a fuller mortification of the flesh: mortifying and not satisfying it, is your work.
§. 6. Direct. 4. Ask your hearts seriously whether God in Christ be enough for them, or not? If they say no; they renounce him and all their hope of Heaven: For no man takes God for his God that takes him not for his portion, and as enough for him: If they say, yea; then you have enough to stop the mouth of your fleshly desires, while your hearts confess that they have enough in God. Should that soul that hath a filial interest in God, and an inheritance in eternal life, be eager for any conveniences and contentments to the flesh? If God be not enough for you, you will never have enough. Turn to him more, and know him better, if you would have a satisfied mind.
§. 7. Direct. 5. Remember that every sinful Desire is a rebelling of your wills against the will of God; and that it is his will that must govern and dispose of all, and your wills must be conform to his▪ yea that you must take pleasure and rest in the will of God. Reason the case with your hearts, and say; who is it that is the Governor of the World? and who is to rule me, and dispose of my affairs, Is it I or God? whose will is it that must lead, and whose must follow? whose will is better guided? God's or mine? either it is his will that I shall have what I desire, or not: If it be, I need not be so eager, for I shall have it in his time and way: If it be not his will, is it fit for me to murmur and strive against him? Remember that your discontents and carnal desires are so many accusations brought in against God: As if you said, Thou hast not dealt well, or wisely or mercifully by me: I must have it better: I will not stand to thy will and government: I must have it as I will: and have the disposal of myself.
§. 8. Direct. 6. Observe how your eager Desires are condemned by yourselves in your daily prayers, or else they make your prayers themselves condemnable: If you pray that the will of God may be done, why do your wills rebel against it, and your desires contradict your prayers? And if you ask no more than your daily bread; why thirst you after more? But if you pray as you desire, Lord let my will be done, and my selfish carnal desire be fulfilled, for I must needs have this or that, then what an abominable Prayer is this? Desire as you must Pray.
§. 9. Direct. 7. Remember what Covenant you have made with God, that you renounced the world and the flesh, and took him for your Lord and King and Father, and yielded up yourselves as his own, as his Subject and as his Child, to be disposed of, Ruled, and provided for by him: And this Covenant is essential not only to your Christianity but to your taking him for your God. And do you repent of it? or will you break it, and forfeit all the benefits of the Covenant? If you will needs have the disposal of yourselves, you discharge God of his Covenant and Fatherly care for you: and then what will become of you, if he so forsake you?
§. 10. Direct. 8. Bethink you how unmeet you are to be the choosers of your own condition. You foresee not what that person or thing or place will prove to you, which you so eagerly desire: For ought you know it may be your undoing, or the greatest misery that ever befell you: Many a one hath cried with Rachel; Give me Children or else I die, that hath died by the wickedness and unkindness of their Children. Many a one hath been violent in their desires of a Husband or a Wife, that afterwards have broken their hearts, or proved a greater affliction to them, than any enemy they had in the world: many a one hath been eager for riches and prosperity and preferment, that hath been ensnared by them, to the damnation of his soul. Many a one hath been earnest for some office, dignity or place of trust, which hath made it a great increaser of his sin and misery. And it is flesh and self that is the eager desirer of things that are against the will of God, and nothing is so blind and partial as self and flesh. You think not your Child a competent judge of what is best for him, and make not his desires but your own understanding, the guide and rule of your dealings with him, or disposals of him. And are you fitter choosers for yourselves in comparison of God, than your Child is in comparison of you? Either you take God for your Father, or you do not. If you do not, call him not Father, and hope not for Mercy and Salvation from him: If you do, is he not wise and good enough to dispose of you, and to determine what is best for you, and to choose for you?
§. 11. Direct. 9. Remember that it is one of the greatest plagues on this side Hell, to be given up to our own Desires, and that by your eagerness and discontents you provoke God thus to give you up, Psal. 81. 12, so I gave them up to their own hearts lust, and they walked in their own Counsels: O that my people had hearkened to me, &c. Rom. 1. 24, 26. wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, through the lusts of their own hearts, &c. For this cause God gave them up to vile affections —verse. 28. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient. 2 Thes. 2. 10, 11, 12. God may give you that which you so eagerly desire, as he gave Israel a King, even in his anger, Hos. 13. 10, 11. or as he gave the Israelites their own desire, even flesh which he rain • d upon them as dust, and feathered fowls as the Sand of the Sea, they were not •••• ranged from their lust: But while their meat was yet in their mouths, the w • ath of G • d came upon them, and slew the fattest of them, Psal 78. 27, 29, 30, 31. They lusted exceedingly in the Wilderness, and tempted God in the desert, and he gave them their request, but sent leanness into their souls, P • all. 1 • 6. 14, 15. God may say, Follow your own lust, and if you are so eager, take that which you desire, take that person, that thing, that dignity which you are so earnest for; but take my curse and vengeance with it; Never let it do you good, but be a snare and torment to you. Let a fire c • me out of the bramble and devour you, Judge. 9. 15.
§. 12. Direct. 10. Take heed lest concupiscence and partiality entice you to justify your sinful desires and •••• them to b • l • wful. For if you do so, you will not repent of them; you will not confess them to God, • or beg pardon of them, nor beg help against them, nor use the means to extinguish them; but will cherish them, and be angry with all that are against them, and love those temp • ers best that encourage them: And how dangerous a case is this? And yet nothing is more ordinary among sinners, than to be blinded by their own affections, and think that they have sufficient reason to desire that which they do desire. And affection maketh them very witty and resolute to deceive themselves. It setteth them on studying all that can be said to defend their enemy, and put a deceitful gloss upon their cause. Try your Desires well (as I before directed you) Q. 1. Is the thing that you desire a thing that God hath bid you desire, or promised in his word to give you, (as grace, Christ and Heaven) If it be so, then Desire it and spare not: But if not so, Q. 2. Why then are you so eager for it, when you should at most have but a submissive conditional desire after it? Q. 3. Nay is it not something which you are forbidden to desire? If so, dare you excuse it?
§. 13. Direct. 11. Remember that Concupiscence or sinful desire is the beginning of all sin of commission, and leadeth directly to the act. Theft, Adultery, Murder, Fraud, Contention, and all such mischiefs begin in inordinate desires. For everyone is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enti • ed: Then when lust hath conceived it bringeth forth sin; and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death, Jam. 1. 14, 15. By lust is meant, any fleshly desire or will. Therefore when the Apostle forbiddeth glutt • ny and drunkenness, chambering and wantonness, strife and envying, he strikes at the root of all in this one word, Make no privision for the flesh to satisfy its lusts (or wills).
§. 14. Direct. 12. Pull off the deceiving vizor, and see that which you so eagerly desire, as it is. What will it be to you at the last? It is now in its Spring or Summer: but see in it its fall and winter? It is now in its youth; but see it withered to skin and bone in its decrepit age: It is now in its clean and curious ornaments, but see it in its uncleanness and in its homely dress: Cure your deceit, and your Desire is cured.
§. 15. Direct. 13. Promise not yourselves long life, but live as dying men, with your grave and winding sheet always in your eye; and it will cure your thi • st after the creature when you are sensible h • w short a time you must enjoy it; and especially how near you are unto eternity: This is the Apostles method, 1 Cor. 7. 29, 30, 31. But this I say brethren, the time is short: It remaineth that both they that have Wives • e as though they had none; and they that weep as though they wept not; and they that rejoice as though they rejoiced not, and they that buy as though they p • ssessed not: and they that use the world as not abusing it (or as if they used it not) for the fashion of this world passeth away. So you will Desire as if you desired not, when you perceive well how quickly the thing desired will pass away.
§. 16. Direct. 14. In all your Desires remember the account as well as the thing desired. Think not only what it is now at hand, but what account you must make to God of it: For to whom men give or commit much, of them they require the more, Luk. 12. 48. will you thirst after more power, more honor, more wealth, when you remember that you have the more to give account of? Matth. 25. Have you not enough to reckon for already, unless you had hearts to use it better?
§. 17. Direct. 15. Keep yourselves close to the holy use of all your mercies, and let not the fl • sh devour them, nor any inordinate appetite fare ever the better for them when you have them, and this will powerfully extinguish the inordinate desire itself. We are in little danger of being over eager after things spiritual and holy, for the honor of God: Resolve therefore that all you have shall be thus sanctified to God, and used for him, and not at all to satisfy any inordinate desire of the fl • sh, and then the fl • sh will cease its suit, when it finds it fares never the better for it. You are able to do much in this way if you will. If you cannot presently suppress the Desire, you may presently resolve to deny the flesh the thing desired, (As David would not drink the water, though he longed for it, 2 Sam. 23. 15, 17.) and you may presently deny it, the more of that you have? If you cannot forbear your thirst, you can forbear to drink: If you cannot forbear to be hungry, you can forbear to eat whatever is forbidden or unfit: If Eve must needs have an appetite to the forbidden fruit, yet she might have commanded her hand and teeth, and not have eaten it. If you cannot otherwise cool your Desire of curious Apparel, wear that which is somewhat homelyer than else you would have worn, on purpose to rebuke and control that desire: If you cannot otherwise quench your Covetous desires, give so much the more to the poor to cross that desire. You cannot say that the outward act is out of your power, if you be but willing.
§. 18. Direct. 16. When your Desires are over-eager, bethink you of the mercies which you have received already and do possess: Hath God done so much for you, and are you still calling for more, even of that which is unnecessary, when you should be giving thanks for what you have? This unthankful greediness is an odious sin. Think what you have already for soul and body, estate and friends, and will not all this quiet you, (even this with Christ and Heaven) unless you have the other lust or fancy satisfied; and unless God humor you in your sick desires?
§. 19. Direct. 17. Understand how little it will satisfy you, if God should give you all that you carnally desire. When you have it, it will not quiet you nor answer your expectations. You think it will make you happy and be exceeding sweet to you, but it deceiveth you, and you promise yourselves, you know not what: And therefore desire you know not what? It would be to you but like a dreaming feast, which would leave you hungry in the morning.
§. 20. Direct. 18. Remember still that the greatest hurt that the Creature can do thee is in being overloved and desired, and it is never so dangerous to thee as when it seemeth most desirable. If you remembered this aright, you would be cast into the greatest fear and caution, when anything below is presented very pleasing and desirable to you.
§. 21. Direct. 19. Consider that your desires do but make those wants a burden and misery to you, which otherwise would be none. Thirst makes the want of drink a torment, which to another is no pain or trouble at all. The lustful wanton is ready to die for love of the desired mate, which nobody else cares for, nor is ever the worse for being without. A proud ambitious Haman thinks himself undone if he be not honored, and is vexed if he be but cast down into the mean condition of a farmer: When many thousand honest contented men live merrily and quietly in as low a condition. It is men's own Desires and not their real wants which do torment them.
§. 22. Direct. 20. Remember that when you have done all, if God love you he will be the chooser, and will not grant your sick desires, but will correct you for them till they are cured. If your child cry for a knife, or for unwholesom meat, or anything that would hurt him, you will quiet him with the rod, if he give not over. And it is a sign some rod of God is near you, when you are sick for this or that or the other thing, and will not be quiet and content unless your fancy and concupiscence be humoured.
Tit. 4. Directions against sinful Mirth and Pleasure.
§. 1. MIrth is sinful, 1. When men rejoice in that which is evil; as in the hurt of others, or in men's sin, or in the sufferings of God's servants, or the afflictions of the Church, or the success or prosperity of the enemies of Christ, (or of any evil cause:) This is one of the greatest sins in the world, and one of the greatest signs of wickedness, when wickedness is it that they rejoice in. 2. When it is unseasonable or in an unmeet subject: As to be merry in the time and place of mourning; to feast when we should fast: or for an unsanctisied miserable soul to be taken up in mirth, that is in the power of sin and Satan and near to Hell. 3. Mirth is sinful when it tendeth to the committing of sin, or is managed by sin: as to make merry with lies and fables and tempting unnecessary time-wasting dances, plays or recreations; or with the slander or abuse of others; or with drunkenness, gluttony or excess. 4. Mirth is sinful when it is a hindrance to our duty, and unfitteth the soul for the exercise of that grace, which is most suitable to its estate. As when it hindereth a sinners conviction and humiliation, and resisteth the spirit of God, and bawleth down the calls of grace, and the voice of conscience, that they cannot be heard: And when it banisheth all sober consideration about the matters that we should most regard, and will not give men leave to think, with fixedness and sobriety, upon God and upon themselves, their sin and danger, upon death and judgment and the life to come: when it makes the soul more unfit to take reproof, to profit by a sermon, to call upon God: This drunken mirth which shuts out Reason, and silenceth Conscience, and laughts at God, and jesteth at Damnation, and doth but intoxicate the brain, and make men mad in the matters where they should most show their wisdom, I say this mirth, is the Devils sport, and the sinners misery, and the wise man's pity: of which Solomon speaketh, Eccles. 2. 2. I said of laughter, it is mad, and of mirth what doth it. Prov. 26. 18, 19. As a mad man who casteth fire-brands, arrows and death, so is the man that deceiveth his neighbor and saith Am I not in sport: Prov. 10. 23. It is a sport to a fool to do mischief. 5. But mirth is most horridly odious when it is blasphemous and profane: when incarnate Devils do make themselves merry with jesting and mocking at scripture or at the judgments of God, or the duties of Religion; or in horrid Oaths and cursed speeches, against the servants of the Lord.
§. 2. Direct. 1. First see that thou be a person fit for mirth, and that thou be not a miserable slave of Satan, in an unregenerate, unholy, unjustified state. Thou wouldst scarce think the innocent games or sports were becoming a malefactor that must die tomorrow. An unregenerate unholy person, is sure whenever he dieth such, to be damned: If he believe not this, he must deny God or the Gospel to be true. And he is not sure to live an hour: And he is sure that he shall die ere long. And now, if you have not fooled away your Reason, tell me whether your Reason can justify the mirth of such a man? Dost thou ask, what harm is it to be merry? None at all for one that hath cause to be merry, and rejoiceth in the Lord. But for a man to be merry in the way to Hell, and that so near it; for a man to be merry, before his soul be sanctified, and his sin be pardoned, or before he seeketh it with all his heart, this is harm, if folly, and unbelief, and contempt of God and his dreadful justice, be any harm. O hearken to the Calls of God, abhor thy sins, and set thy heart on Heaven and Holiness, and then God and Conscience will allow thee to be merry. Get a renewed Heart and life, and get the pardon of thy sins, and a title to Heaven, and a readiness to die, and then there is reason and wisdom in thy mirth. Then thy mirth will be honorable and warrantable; better than the lame man's that was healed, Acts 3. 8. that went with Peter and John into the Temple, walking and leaping and praising God. But it is a most pitiful sight to see an ungodly unregenerate sinner, to laugh, and sport, and play, and live merrily, as if he knew not what evil is near him! It would draw tears from the eyes of a believer that knoweth him, and thinketh where he is like to dwell forever. I remember the credible narrative of one that lived not far from me, that in his profaneness was wont to wish that he might see the Devil; who at last appeared to him to his terror; and sometime he smiled on him: and the man was wont to say, that he never seemed so ugly and terrible as when he sailed (and the man was affrigh • ed by it into a reformed life). So though a servant of the Devil, be never comely, yet he never seemeth so ghastly as when he is most merry in his misery.
§. 3. Direct. 2. Yet do not destroy nature by overmuch heaviness, under pretense that thou hast no right to be merry. For, 1. The very discovery of thy misery puts thee into the fairer hopes of mercy, 2. And many of God's children live long without assurance of their justification, and yet should not therefore cast away all joy. 3. And so much ease and quiet of mind must be kept up by the unsanctified themselves as is necessary to preserve their natures, that they may have time continued, and may wait on God till they obtain his grace. Above all men, they have reason to value their lives, lest they die and be lost, before they be recovered: And therefore as they must not famish themselves by forbearing meat or drink, so their sorrows must not be such as may destroy their bodies (of which more anon).
§. 4. Direct. 3. See that you first settle the Peace of your souls, upon solid grounds, and get such evidences of your special interest in Christ and Heaven, as will rationally warrant you to rejoice; and then make it the business of your lives to Rejoice and delight yourselves in God, and take this as the principal part of grace and Godliness, and not as a small or indifferent thing, and so let all lawful natural mirth be taken in, as animated and sanctified by this holy delight and joy, and know that this natural sanctified mirth, is not only lawful, but a duty exceeding congruous and comely for a thankful believer in his way to everlasting joy.
§. 5. This is the true method of rejoicing: Though as I said, so much quietness may be kept up by the unregenerate as is needful to keep up life and health, and the Gospel where it cometh, is tidings of great joy to those that hear it, yet no man can live a truly comfortable merry life, but in this method; but all his mirth beside that which either supporteth nature, or meeteth mercy in his returning to God, will be justly chargeable with Madness; and maketh him a more pitiful sight.
§. 6. The first thing therefore to be done, is to lay the Ground work of true mirth. And this is done by unfeigned Repenting, and turning to God, by faith in Christ, and becoming new-creatures, a sanctified peculiar people, and being justified and adopted to be the children of God; and then by discerning (upon sober trial) the evidences and witness of all this in ourselves, that we may know that we have passed from death to life.
§. 7. And though there are several Degrees both of Grace and of the Discerning of it, some having but little holiness, and some but little discerning of it in themselves, yet the least may afford much comfort to the soul upon justifiable grounds, though not so much as the greater degrees of grace, and clearer discerning of it may do.
§. 8. The foundation being thus laid, it must be our next endeavor to build upon it a settled Peace of Conscience, and quietness of soul: For till we can attain to Joy, it is a great mercy to have Peace, and to be free from the accusations, fears and griefs which belong to the unjustified: And Peace must be the temper more ordinary than much joy, to be expected in this our frail condition.
§. 9. Thirdly Peace being thus settled we must endeavor to rise up daily into Joy, as our great duty, and our great felicity on earth: It being frequently and earnestly commanded in the Scriptures, that we Rejoice in the Lord always, and shout for joy, all that are upright in Heart, Psalm 33. 1. Phil. 3. 1. & 4. 4. Deut. 12. 12, 18. & 27. 7. Thus he that proveth his own work, may have Rejoicing in himself, Gal. 6. 4. even in the testimony of his Conscience of his own simplicity and godly-sincerity, 2 Cor. 1. 12. And this all believers should maintain and actuate in themselves.
§. 10. Fourthly, with this Rejoicing in God our lawful natural mirth must be taken in, as subordinate or sanctified; that is, we must further our holy joy by natural mirth and cheerfulness, and by the comforts of our Bodys in God's lower mercies, promote the service and the comforts of our souls. And this is the right Place for this mirth to come in, and this is the true Method of rejoicing.
§. 11. Direct 4. Mark well the usefulness and tendency of all thy Mirth: and if it be useful to fit thee for thy duty, and intended by thee to that end (though you always observe not that intention at the time) and if it tend to do thee good, or help thee to do good, without a greater hurt or danger, then cherish and promote it: But if it tend to carry thee away from God, to any creature, and to unfit thy soul for the duties of thy place, and to carry thee into sin, then avoid it as thy hurt. Still remembering that the necessary support of nature must not be avoided by good or bad. A Christian that hath any acquaintance with himself, and with the work of holy watchfulness, may discern what his mirth is by the tendency and effects, and know whether it doth him good or harm.
§. 12. Direct. 5. Take heed that the flesh defile not your mirth, by dropping in any obscene or ribbald talk, or by stirring up fleshly lust and sin. Which it will quickly do, if not well watched, and holy mirth and cheerfulness, is very apt to degenerate on a sudden into sinful mirth.
§. 13. Direct. 6. Consider what your mirth is like to prove to others as well as to yourselves. If it be like to stir up sin in others, or to be offensive to them, you must the more avoid it in their presence, or manage it with the greater caution: If it be needful to cheer up the drooping minds of those you converse with, or to remove their prejudice against a holy life, you must the more give place to it: For it is good or bad as it tendeth unto good or bad.
§. 14. Direct. 7. Never leave out Reason or Godliness from any of your mirth. Abhor that mirth that maketh a man a fool, or playeth the fool: And take heed of that ungodliness which maketh a man merriest when he is furthest from God, like the Horse or Ox that leapeth and playeth for gladness when he is unyoaked or loosed from his labor. Something of God and Heaven should appear or be dropped into all our mirth, to sweeten and to sanctify it.
§. 15. Direct. 8. Watch your tongues in all your mirth; for they are very apt to take liberty then to sin. Mirth is to the tongue as Holydays and Playdays to idle scholars; who are glad of them as a time in which they think they have liberty to game and fight and do amiss.
§. 16. Direct. 9. If a word break forth from yourselves or your companions to the wrong of others in your mirth, as of backbiting, evil speaking, jeering, scorning, defaming (yea though it be your enemy) rebuke it, and cast it out, as dirt or dung that falleth into your dish or cup.
§. 17. Direct. 10. If Profaneness intrude, and any make merry with jesting at Scripture, Religion or the slanders or scorns of godly persons, with a tendency to make Religion odious or contemptible; if they are such as you may speak to, reprove them with reverent seriousness to their terror: if they are not, then show your abhorrence of it by turning your backs and quitting the place and company of such devilish enemies of God. Be not silent or seemingly-consenting witnesses of such odious mirth, against your maker.
§. 18. Direct. 11. If the mirth of others in your company begin to grow insipid, frothy, foolish, wanton, or impious or otherwise corrupt, drop in some holy salt to season it; and something that is serious and divine to awe it and repress it. As to remember them of God's presence, or to recite such a text as, Ephes. 5. 3, 4. But fornication and all uncleaneness or covetousness, let it not be once named amongst you as becometh saints: neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor jesting; which are not convenient: but rather giving of thanks.
§. 19. Direct. 12. If mirth grow immoderate and exceed in measure, and carry you away from God and duty by the very carnal pleasure of it, have always at hand these following considerations to repress it. 1. Remember that God is present; and levity is not comely in his sight. 2. Remember that Death and judgment are at hand, when all this levity will be turned into seriousness. 3. Remember that your souls are yet under a great deal of sin and wants and danger, and you have a great deal of serious work to do. 4. Look on Jesus Christ, and remember what an example he gave you upon earth: Whether he laughed, and plaid, and jested, and taught you immoderate or carnal mirth: And whether you live like the Disciples of a crucified Christ. 5. Think on the ordinary way to Heaven, described in Scripture; which is through many tribulations, afflictions, fastings, temptations, humiliation, sufferings and mortification: And think whether a wanton, jesting, playful life be like to this. 6. Think of the course of the ancient and excellent Christians, who went to Heaven through labor, and watchings and fasting, and poverty, and cruel persecutions, and not through carnal mirth and sport. 7. Think of the many calamitous objects of sorrow that are now abroad in the world! Of the millions of Heathens and Mahometanes and other strangers or enemies to Christ! Of the obstinate Jews; of the dark corrupted lamentable state of the Greek, Armenian, Ethiopian and Roman Churches; where Religion is so woefully obscured and dishonored by ignorance, error, superstition, and profaneness: Of the Papal tyranny and usurpation: and of the divided state of all the Churches, and the profaneness and persecution and uncharitableness, and contentions, and mutual reproaches and revilings which make havoc for the Devil among the members of Christ.
Tit. 5. Directions against sinful Hopes.
HOPE is nothing but a Desirous expectation: Therefore the Directions given before against sinful Love and Desire may suffice also against sinful Hopes, save only for the expecting part. Hope is sinful, 1. When it is placed ultimately upon a forbidden object; as to Hope for some evil to yourselves which you mistakingly think is good: To hope for felicity in the creature, or to hope for more from it, than it can afford you? To hope for the hurt of other men, for the ruin of your enemies; for the hindrance of the Gospel, and injury to the Church of Christ. 2. When you hope for a Good thing by evil means; as to Hope to please God, or to come to Heaven by persecuting his servants, or by ignorance or superstition, or schism, or Heresy or any sin. 3. To Hope ungroundedly for that from God, which he never promised. 4. To Hope deceitfully for that from God which he hath declared he will never give. All these are sinful Hopes: But it is not these last that I shall here say much to, because▪ I have said so much already of them in many other writings.
§. 2. Direct. 1. Hope for nothing from God against faith or without faith; that is, for nothing which he hath said he will not give, nor for anything which he hath not promised to give, or given you some reason to expect. To hope for that which God hath told us he will not give, or that which is against the Holiness and Justice of God to give, this is but to Hope that God will prove a liar, or unholy or unjust, which are wicked and blaspheaming hopes. Such are the H • pes which abundance of ignorant and ungodly persons have; who hope to be saved without regeneration, and without true Holiness of heart or life; and hope to be saved in their willful impenitence and beloved sins: who hope that God forgiveth them those sins, which they hate not, nor will not be persuaded to forsake: And hope that the saying over some words of prayer, or doing something which they call a good work, shall save them though they have not the spirit of Christ: Or that hope to be saved, though they are unsanctified, because they are not so bad as some others, and live not in any notorious disgraceful sin: All these believe the Devil who tells them that an unholy person may be saved, and believe that the Gospel is false which saith, without Holiness none shall see the Lord, Heb. 12. 14. and they Hope that God will prove unholy, unjust, and false to save them, and yet this they call a Hoping in God. Hope for that which God hath promised, and spare not; but not for that which he hath said he will not do, yea protested cannot be? John 3. 3, 5.
§. 3. Direct. 2. When thou Hopest for any evil to others, or thyself, remember what a monstrous thing it is to make evil the object of thy Hope, and how those Hopes are but thy hastening unto chosen misery, and contradict themselves. For thou Hopest for it as Good, and to be greedy for evil on supposition that its good, doth show thy folly that wilt try no better the objects of thy Hopes: Like a sick man that longs and hopeth for that which if he take it will be his death: Thus sinners hope for the poisoned bait.
§. 4. Direct. 3. Understand how much of the root of worldliness consisteth in your worldly Hopes. Poor worldlings have little in possession to delight in: but they keep up a Hope of more within them. Many a covetous or ambitious wretch, that never reacheth that which he desireth, yet liveth upon the Hopes of it: And Hope is it that setteth and keepeth men at work in the service of the world, the flesh and the Devil; as Divine Hope doth set and keep men at work, for Heaven, for their souls, and for Jesus Christ. And many an Hypocrite that loseth much upon the account of his Religion, yet showeth his rottenness by keeping up his worldly hopes, and going no further than will stand with those.
§. 5. Direct. 4. Hath not the world deceived all that have hoped in it unto this day: Consider what is become of them and of their Hopes? What hath it done for them, and where hath it left them? And wilt thou place thy Hopes in that which hath deceived so many generations of men already.
§. 6. Direct. 5. Remember that thy worldly Hopes are a sin so fully condemned by natural demonstration, that thou art utterly left without excuse. Thou art certain beforehand that thou must die: Thou knowest how vain the world will be then to thee: and how little it can do for thee; And yet art thou Hoping for more of the world?
§. 7. Direct. 6. Consider that the world declareth its vanity in the very Hopes of worldlings. In that it is still drawing them by Hopes, and never giveth them satisfaction and content. Almost all the life of a worldlings pleasure is in his Hopes: The very thing which he hopeth for, doth not prove so sweet to him in the possession, as it was in his hopes. A Hoping and Hoping still for that which they never shall attain, is the worldlings life.
§. 8. Direct. 7. O turn your souls to those blessed Hopes of life eternal, which are sent you from Heaven by Jesus Christ, and set before you in the holy Scriptures, and proclaimed to you by the messengers of grace. Doth God offer you sure well-grounded hopes, of living forever in his Joy and Glory? And do you neglect them, and lie hoping for that felicity in the world which cannot be attained, and which will give no content when you have attained it? This is more foolish than to toil and impoverish yourselves in Hope to find the Philosophers stone, and refuse a Kingdom freely offered.
Tit. 6. Directions against sinful Hatred, Aversation or Backwardness towards God.
§. 1. THe hatred to God and backwardness to his service, which is the chief part of this sin, is to be cured according to the Directions in the first Chapter, as a state of wickedness is: and more I shall say anon, about the Worship of God: and Chap. 3. Direct. 11. containeth the cure also. Only here I shall add a few Directions to a God-hating Generation.
§. 2. Direct. 1. The first thing you have to do, is to discover this to be your sin: For you are confident that you love God above all, while you hate him above all, even above the Devil? You will confess, that this is horrid wickedness, where it is found, and well deserveth damnation: Take heed lest thy own confession judge thee. Remember then that it is not the bare Name that we now speak of: I know that God's Name is most honored, and the Devils name is most hated▪ Nor is it everything in God that is hated: None hateth his Mercifulness and Goodness as such: Nor is it everything in the Devil that is loved: None love his hatred to man, nor his cruelty in tormenting men. But the Holiness of God, which is it that man must receive the Image of, and be conformed to, is hated by the unholy: And the Devils unholiness, and friendship to men's sin and sensuality is loved by the sensual and unholy. And this hatred of God (and Love of the Devil) one would think you might casily perceive.
§. 3. 1. In that you had rather God were not so Just and Holy; you had rather he had never commanded you to be Holy, but le • t you to live as your flesh would have you: you had rather God were indifferent as to your sins, and would give you leave to follow your lusts. Such a God you would have: And a God that will damn you unless you be Holy, and hate your sins and forsake them, you like not, you cannot abide, but indeed do hate him.
§. 4. 2. Therefore you will not Believe that God is such a holy sin-hating God: Because you would not have him so, you will not believe he is so; and so hate his nature, while you believe that you love him; and love but an Idol of your unholy fantasies. Psal. 50. 21, 22. These things hast thou done, and I kept silence: thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thy eyes: Now consider this ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.
§. 5. 3. You love not the Holiness of the Word of God, which beareth his Image: You love not these strict and holy passages in it, John. 3. 3, 5. Luke 14. 26, 33. Matth. 18. 3. Rom. 8. 13. Col. 3. 1, 2, 3, 4. 2 Cor. 5. 17. with abundance more. You had rather have had a Scripture that would have left your ambition, covetousness, lust and appetite to their liberties; and that had said nothing for the absolute necessity of Holiness; nor had condemned the ungodly.
§. 6. 4. You love not the holiest Ministers or servants of Christ, that most powerfully preach his holy Word, or that most carefully, seriously and zealously obey it: your hearts rise against them, when they bring in the Light, which showeth that your deeds and you are evil, John 3. 19, 20. They are an eye-sore to you: your hearts rise not so much against Whoremongers, Swearers, Liars, Drunkards, Atheists or Infidels, as against them. What sort of persons on the face of the earth, are so hated by the ungodly in all Nations and of all degrees, and used by them so cruelly, and pursued by them so implacably, as the holiest servants of the Lord are?
§. 7. 5 You love not to call upon God in serious fervent spiritual prayer, praises and thanksgiving: You are quickly weary of it: you had rather be at a Play, or Gaming, or a Feast: your hearts rise against holy Worship as a tedious irksome thing.
§. 8. 6. You love not holy edifying discourse of God, and of heavenly things. Your hearts rise against it, and you hate and scorn it, as if all serious talk of God, were but hypocrisy, and God were to be banished out of our discourse.
§. 9. 7. You cannot abide the serious frequent Thoughts of God in secret; but had rather stuff your minds with thoughts of your Horses, or Hawks, or bravery, or honor; or preferments, or sports, or entertainments, or business and labors in the world: So that one hour of a thousand or ten thousand was never spent in serious delightful thoughts of God, his holy truths, or works, or Kingdom.
§. 10. 8. You love not the blessed day of Judgment, when Christ will come with his holy Angels to judge the world, to justify his accused and abused servants, to be glorified in his Saints and admired in all them that do believe, 2 Thess. 1. 8, 9, 10, 11. And can you be so blind after all this, as not to see that you are HATERS OF GOD?
§. 11. Direct. 2. Know God better and thou canst not hate him: especially know the beauty and glorious excellency of that Holiness and Justice which thou hatest. Should the Sun be darkened or disgraced, because sore eyes cannot endure its light? Must Kings and Judges be all corrupt, or change their Laws, and turn all men loose to do what they list, because Malefactors and licentious men would have it so?
§. 12. Direct. 3. Know God and Holiness as they are to thee thyself; and then thou wilt know them not only to be Best for thee, as the Sun is to the world, and as life and health is to thy body, but to be thy only good and happiness: and then thou canst not choose but love them. Thy prejudice and false conceits of God and Holiness cause thy Hatred.
§. 13. Direct. 4. Cast away thy cursed unbelief: If thou believe not what the Scripture saith of God and man, and of the souls immortality and the life to come, thou wilt then hate all that is Holy as a deceit, and needless troubler of the world: But if once thou believe well the Word of God, and the life everlasting, thou wilt have another heart.
§. 14. Direct. 5. Away with thy beastly blinding sensuality: While thou art a slave to thy flesh, and lusts, and appetite, and its interest reigneth in thee, thou canst not choose but hate that Holiness which is against it, and hate that God that forbiddeth it, and tells thee that he will judge thee and damn thee for it if thou forsake it not: This is the true cause of the Hatred of God and Godliness in the world. God's Laws condemn the very life and pleasure of the fleshly man: Godliness is irreconcilable to concupiscence and the carnal interest: Lay by thy fleshly mind and interest, or as sure as thou art a man, thou wilt be judged and damned as an enemy to God: Dost thou not feel that this is the cause of thy enmity, that God putteth thee on unpleasing (holy) courses, and will not let thee please thy flesh, but affrighteth thee with the threatenings of Hell? Rom. 8. 6 7, 8. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace: Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the Law of God, neither indeed can be: so then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. ver. 13. If ye live after the flesh ye shall die. It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks, Acts 9. 5. Woe to him that striveth with his Maker! Isa. 45. 9. Read Luke 19. 27.
§. 15. Direct. 6. Draw ne • r and accustom thy soul to serious thoughts of God: For it is strangeness that maketh thee the more averse to him: We have less pleasure in the company of strangers than of familiar acquaintance. Reconciliation must be made by coming nearer, and not by keeping at a distance still.
§. 16. Direct. 7. Study well the wonderful Love and Mercy which he hath manifested to thy soul in the Redemption wrought by Jesus Christ, in the Covenant of Grace, in all the patience he hath exercised towards thee, and all his offers of mercy and salvation, entreating thee to turn and live. Canst thou remember what God hath done for thee all thy life, and how patiently and mercifully he hath dealt with thee, and yet canst thou hate him, or thy Heart be against him?
§. 17. Direct. 8. Judge not of God or Holiness by the faults of any men that have seemed holy: No more than you will censure the Sun, because Thieves rob by the light of it, or because some men are purblind. God hateth sin in them and you, where ever he findeth it. Judge of God and holiness by his proper nature and true effects, and by the holy Scripture, and not by the crimes of sinners which he condemneth, who if they had been more Holy, had less offended.
§. 18. Direct. 9. Come among the godly, and try a holy life a while, and judge not of it or them that use it, by the reports of the Devil and wicked men: Malice will speak ill o • God himself, and of his holiest servants? Can worse be said, than was said of Christ himself, and his Apostles? The Devil was not ashamed to bely Job to God's own face, and tell God that he was such a one, as that a little trial to his flesh, would turn him from his Godliness. But those that come near and try the ways and servants of God, do find that the Devil did bely them.
§. 19. Direct. 10. Remember thy near approaching end, and how dreadful it will be to be found and judged among the malignant enemies of Holiness: And if the Righteous be scarcely saved, where then shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? 1 Pet. 4. 18. Then what wouldst thou give to be one of those holy ones that now thou hatedst? and to be judged as those that lived in that holiness which thy malignant heart could not abide? Then thou wilt wish that thou hadst lived and died as the righteous, that thy latter end might have been like his.
Tit. 7. Directions against sinful Wrath or Anger.
§. 1. AS Anger is against the Love of our neighbor, I shall speak of it afterwards: As it is against the soul itself, I shall speak of it in this place. Anger is the rising up of the heart in passionate displicency against an apprehended evil, which would cross or hinder us of some desired good. It is given us by God for Good, to stir us up to a vigorous resistance of those things which within us or without us do oppose, his Glory or our salvation, or our own or our neighbors real good.
§. 2. Anger is Good when it is thus used to its appointed end, in a right manner and measure: But it is sinful, 1. When it riseth up against God or any Good, as if it were evil to us! As wicked men are angry at those that would convert and save them, and that tell them of their sins, and hinder them from their desires. 2. When it disturbeth Reason, and hindereth our judging of things aright. 3. When it casteth us into any unseemly carriage, or causeth, or disposeth to any sinful words or actions: when it inclineth us to wrong another by word or deed, and to do as we would not be done by. 4. When it is mistaken, and without just cause: 5. When it is greater in measure than the cause alloweth. 6. When it unfitteth us for our duty to God or man. 7. When it tendeth to the abatement of Love and brotherly kindness, and the hindering of any good which we should do for others: Much more when it breedeth malice, and revenge, and contentions, and unpeaceableness in societies, oppression of inferiors, or dishonoring of superiors. 8. When it stayeth too long, and ceaseth not when its lawful work is done. 9. When it is selfish and carnal, stirred up upon the account of some carnal interest, and used but as a means to a selfish carnal sinful end: As to be angry with men only for crossing your Pride, or profit, or sports, or any other fleshly will: In all these it is sinful.
Directions Meditative against sinful Anger.
§. 3. Direct. 1. Remember that immoderate anger is an injury to humanity, and a rebel against the Government of Reason. It is without reason and against reason. Whereas in man all Passions should be obedient to Reason: It is the misery of madness, and the crime of drunkenness to be the suppressing and dethroning of our Reason: And sinful Anger is a short madness or drunkenness. Remember that thou art a man, and scorn to subject thyself to a bestial fury.
§. 4. Direct. 2. It is also against the Government of God: for God governeth the Rational powers first, and the inferior by them. If you destroy the Kings Officers and Judges, you oppose the Government of the King. Is a man in passion fit to obey the commands of God, that hath silenced his Reason?
§. 5. Direct. 3. Sinful Passion is a pain and malady of the mind. And will you love or cherish your disease or pain? Do you not feel yourselves in pain and diseased while it is upon you? I do not think you would take all the world to live continually in that case yourselves. If you should be still so, what were you good for, or what could you enjoy, or what comfort would your lives be to you? Why, if a long pain be so bad, a short one is not lovely? Keep not willfully so troublesome a malady in your mind.
§. 6. Direct. 4. Observe also what an enemy it is to the body itself: It inflameth the blood, and stirreth up diseases, and breedeth such a bitter displeasedness in the mind, as tends to consume the strength of nature, and hath cast many into Acute, and many into Chronical sicknesses, which have proved their death. And how uncomfortable a kind of death is this?
§. 7. Direct. 5. Observe how unlovely and unpleasing it rendereth you to beholders: deforming the countenance, and taking away the amiable sweetness of it, which appeareth in a calm and loving temper. If you should be always so, would anybody love you? or would they not go out of your way, (if not lay hands on you) as they do anything that is wild or mad? You would scarce desire to have your picture drawn in your fury, till the frowning wrinkles, and inflamed blood are returned to their places, and have left your visage to its natural comeliness. Love not that which maketh you so unlovely to all others.
§. 8. Direct. 6. You should love it the worse because it is a hurting passion, and an enemy to Love and to another's good. You are never angry but it inclineth you to hurt those that angered you, if not all others that stand in your way: It putteth hurting thoughts into your mind, and hurting words into your mouths, and inclineth you to strike or do some mischief: And no men love a hurtful creature. Avoid therefore so mischievous a passion.
§. 9. Direct. 7. Nay, mark the tendency of it, and you will find that if it should not be stopped it would tend to the very ruin of your brother, and end in his blood, and your own damnation. How many thousand hath anger murdered or undone: It hath caused Wars, and filled the world with blood and cruelty! And should your hearts give such a fury entertainment?
§. 10. Direct. 8. Consider how much other sin immoderate anger doth incline men to. It is the great crime of drunkenness that a man having not the government of himself, is made liable by it to any wickedness: And so is it with immoderate anger. How many Oaths and Curses doth it cause every day? How many rash and sinful actions? What villainy hath not anger done? It hath slandered, railed, reproached, falsely accused, and injured many a thousand. It hath murdered, and ruined Families, Cities and States: It hath made Parents kill their Children, and Children dishonor their Parents: It hath made Kings oppress and murder their Subjects, and Subjects rebel and murder Kings. What a world of sin is committed by sinful anger throughout all the world? How endless would it be to give you instances. David himself was once drawn by it to purpose the murdering of all the family of Nahal. Its effects should make it odious to us.
§. 11. Direct. 9. And it is much the worse in that it suffereth not a man to sin alone, but stirreth up others to do the like. Wrath kindleth wrath, as fire kindleth fire. Its two to one, but when you are angry you will make others angry, or discontent, or troubled by your words or deeds. And you have not the power of moderating them in it, when you have done. You know not what sin it may draw them to! It is the Devils bellows to kindle men's corruptions, and sets hearts, and families, and Kingdoms in a flame.
§. 12. Direct. 10. Observe how unfit it maketh you for any holy duty; for prayer, or meditation, or any communion with God. And that should be very unwelcome to a gracious soul, which maketh it unfit to speak to God, or to be employed in his Worship. If you should go to prayer or other Worship in your bedlam passion, may not God say as the King of Gath did of David, Have I need of mad men? Yea, it unfitteth all the family, or Church, or society where it cometh, for the Worship of God? Is the family fit for prayer, when wrath hath muddied and disturbed their minds? Yea, it divideth Christians and Churches, and causeth confusion and every evil work.
§. 13. Direct. 11. It is a great dishonor to the grace of God, that a servant of his should show the world that grace is of no more force and efficacy, that it cannot rule a raging passion, nor so much as keep a Christian sober: that it possesseth the soul with no more patience, nor fear of God, nor Government over itself. O wrong not God thus by the dishonoring of his Grace and Spirit.
§. 14. Direct. 12. It is a sin against Conscience, still repented of and disowned by almost all when they come to themselves again, and a mere preparation for after sorrow: That therefore which we fore-know we must repent of afterwards, should be prevented and avoided by men that choose not shame and sorrow.
§. 15. Object. 1. But (you will say) I am of a hasty choleric nature, and cannot help it.
Answ. That may strongly dispose you to anger, but cannot Necessitate you to anything that is sinful: Reason and Will may yet command and master passion, if they do their Office. And when you know your disease and danger, you must watch the more.
§. 16. Object. 2. But the provocation was so great it would have angered any one: Who could choose?
Answ. It is your weakness that makes you think that anything can be great enough to discharge a man's reason, and allow him to break the Laws of God. That would have been small or nothing to a prepared mind, which you call so great: You should rather say, God's Majesty and dreadfulness is so great, that I durst not offend him for any provocation. Hath not God given you greater cause to obey, than man can give you to sin?
§. 17. Object. 3. But it is so sudden that I have no time of deliberation to prevent it.
Answ. Have you not Reason still about you? And should it not be as ready to rule, as passion to rebel. Stop passion at first, and take time of deliberation.
§. 18. Object. 4. But it is but short, and I am sorry for it when I have done.
Answ. But if it be evil, the shortest is a sin, and to be avoided: And when you know before hand that you must be sorry after, why will you breed your own sorrow?
§. 19. Object. 5. But there is none that will not be angry sometime: no not the best of you all.
Answ. The sin is never the better because many commit it. And yet, if you live not where grace is a stranger, you may see that there are many that will not be angry easily, frequently, furiously, nor miss-behave themselves in their anger by railing, or cursing, or swearing, or ill language, or doing wrong to any.
§. 20. Object. 6. Doth not the Apostle say, Be angry and sin not: let not the Sun go down upon your wrath. Ephes. 4. 26. My wrath is down before the Sun: therefore I sin not.
Answ. The Apostle never said that anger is never sinful, but when it lasteth after Sun-setting: But entertain no sinful anger at all; but if you do, yet quickly quench it, and continue not in it: Be not angry without or beyond cause: and when you are, yet sin not by uncharitableness or any evil words or deeds, in your anger; nor continue under the justest displeasure, but hasten to be reconciled and to forgive.
These Reasons improved may rule your Anger.
Directions Practical against sinful Anger.
§. 1. Direct. 1. The principal help against sinful anger, is in the right habituating of the soul, that you live as under the Government of God, with the sense of his authority still upon your hearts, and in the sense of that mercy that hath forgiven you, and forbeareth you, and under the power of his healing and assisting grace, and in the life of Charity to God and man. Such a Heart is continually fortified, and carrieth its preservatives within itself, as a wrathful man carrieth his incentives still within him: There is the main cause of Wrath or Mee • ness.
§. 2. Direct. 2. Be sure that you keep a humbled soul, that overvalueth not itself; for Humility is patient and aggravateth not injuries: But a proud man takes all things as • einous or intolerable that are said or done against him. He that thinks meanly of himself, thinks meanly of all that is said or done against himself. But he that magnifieth himself, doth magnify his provocations. Pride is a most impatient sin: There is no pleasing a proud person, without a great deal of wit, and care, and diligence. You must come about them as you do about Straw or Gunpowder with a Candle. Prov. 13. 10. Only by pride cometh contention: Prov. 28. 25. He that is of a proud heart stirreth up strise. Prov. 21. 24. Proud and haughty scorner is his name, who dealeth in proud wrath. Psal. 31. 18. Let the lying lips be put to silence, which speak grievous things proudly and contemptuously against the righteous. Humility and meekness and patience live and die together.
§. 3. Direct. 3. Take heed of a worldly covetous mind: for that setteth so much by earthly things, that every loss, or cr • ss, or injury will be able to disquiet him, and enflame his passion. Neither neighbor, nor child, nor servant can please a covetous man: Every little trespass, or crossing his commodity toucheth him to the quick, and maketh him impatient.
§. 4. Direct. 4. Stop your Passion in the beginning, before it go too far. Its easiest moderated at first. Watch against the first stirrings of your wrath, and presently command it down: Reason and Will, can do much if you will but use them according to their power. A spark is sooner quenched than a flame: and this Serpent is easiliest crushed in the spawn.
§. 5. Direct. 5. Command your tongue, and hand, and countenance, if you cannot presently quiet or command your passion: And so you will avoid the greatest of the sin, and the passion itself will quickly be stifled for want of vent: You cannot say, that it is not in your power to hold your tongue or hands if you will. Do not only avoid that swearing and cursing which are the marks of the profane, but avoid many words till you are • itter to use them, and avoid expostulations, and contending, and bitter, opprobious, cutting speeches, which tend to stir up the wrath of others. And use a mild and gentle speech, which favoreth of Love, and tendeth to asswage the heat thats kindled, Prov. 15. 1. A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger. And that which mollifieth and appeaseth another, will much conduce to the appeasing of yourselves.
§. 6. Direct. 6. At least command yourself into quietness till Reason be heard speak, and while you deliberate: Be not so hasty as not to think what you say or do. A little delay will abate the fury, and give Reason time to do its office. Prov. 25. 15. By long forbearing is a Prince persuaded, and a soft answer breaketh the bone. Patience will lenifie another's wrath: and if you use it but so long as a little to stay yourselves, till reason be awake, it will lenifie your own. And he is a fury and not a man, that cannot stop while he considereth.
§. 7. Direct. 7. If you cannot easilier quiet or restrain yourselves, go away from the place and company. And then you will not be heated by contending words, nor exasperate others by your contending. When you are alone the fire will asswage, Prov. 14. 7. Go away from the presence of a foolish man, when thou perceivest not in him the lips of knowledge: You will not stand still and stir in a Wasps Nest when you have enraged them.
§. 8. Direct. 8. Yea, ordinarily avoid much talk, or disputes, or business with angry men, as far as you can without avoiding your duty: and avoid all other occasions and temptations to the sin: A man that is in danger of a Feavor, must avoid that which kindleth it. Come not among the infected, if you fear the Plague. Stand not in the Sun, if you are too hot already. Keep as far as you can from that which most provoketh you.
§. 9. Direct. 9. Meditate not on injuries or provoking things when you are alone: suffer not your thoughts to feed upon them. Else you will be Devils to yourselves, and tempt yourselves when you have none else to tempt you; and will make your solitude as provoking as if you were in company: And you will be angering yourselves by your own imaginations.
§. 10. Direct. 10. Keep upon your minds the lively thoughts of the exemplary meekness and patience of Jesus Christ: who calleth you to learn of him to be meek and lowly, Matth. 11. 28, 29. Who being reviled, reviled not again, when he suffered he threatened not: leaving us an example that we should follow his steps, 1 Pet. 2. 21, 23. Who hath pronounced a special blessing on the Meek, that they shall inherit the earth. Matth. 5. 50.
§. 11. Direct. 11. Live as in God's presence: and when your passions grow bold repress them with the reverend Name of God, and bid them remember that God and his holy Angels see you.
§. 12. Direct. 12. Look on others in their passion, and see how unlovely they make themselves: With • rowning countenances, and flaming eyes, and threatening devouring looks, and hurtful inclinations: And think with yourselves, whether these are your most desirable patterns.
§. 13. Direct. 13. Without any delay confess the sin to those that stand by (if easier means will not repress it): And presently take the shame to yourselves, and shame the sin and honor God: This means is in your power if you will; and it will be an excellent effectual means. Say to those that you are angry with, I find a sinful anger kindling in me, and I begin to forget God's presence and my duty, and am tempted to speak provoking words to you, which I know God hath forbidden me to do. Such a present opening of your temptation, will break the force of it: And such a speedy confession will stop the fire that it go no further: For it will be an engagement upon you in point of honor, even the reputation both of your wit and honesty, which will both suffer by it, if you go on in the sin just when you have thus opened it by confession. I know there is prudence to be used in this, that you do it not so as may make you ridiculous, or harden others in their sinful provocations: But with prudence and due caution it is an excellent remedy, which you can use if you are not unwilling.
§. 14. Direct. 14. If you have let your passion break out to the offense or wrong of any, by word or deed, freely and speedily confess it to them, and ask them forgiveness, and warn them to take heed of the like sin by your example. This will do much to clear your consciences, to preserve your Brother, to cure the hurt, and to engage you against the sin hereafter: If you are so proud that you will not do this, say no more, You cannot help it, but that you will not. A good heart will not think this too dear a remedy against any sin.
§. 15. Direct. 15. Go presently (in the manner that the place alloweth you) to prayer to God for pardon and grace against the sin: Sin will not endure prayer and God's presence: Tell him how apt your peevish hearts are to be kindled into sinful wrath, and entreat him to help you by his sufficient grace, and engage Christ in the cause, who is your head and advocate: and then your souls will grow obedient and calm: Even as Paul, when he had the prick in the flesh prayed thrice (as Christ did in his agony) so you must pray and pray again and again till you find God's grace sufficient for you.
§. 16. Direct. 16. Covenant with some faithful friend that is with you to watch over you, and rebuke your passions as soon as they begin to appear: and promise them to take it thankfully and in good part. And perform that promise that you discourage them not. Either you are so far aweary of your sin and willing to be rid of it, as to be willing to do what you can against it, or you are not: If you are, you can do this much if you please: If you are not, pretend not to repent, and to be willing to be delivered from your sin upon any lawful terms, when it is not so. Remember still, the mischievous effects of it do make it to be no contemptible sin, Eccles. 7. 9. Be not hasty in thy Spirit to be angry: for anger resteth in the bosom of fools: Prov. 16. 32. He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty: and he that ruleth his Spirit, than he that taketh a City. Prov. 15. 18. A wrathful man stirreth up strife; but he that is slow to anger appeaseth strife. The discretion of a man deferreth his anger, and it is his glory to pass over a transgression, Prov. 19. 11.
Tit. 8. Directions against sinful Fear.
§. 1. THe chief of my advice concerning this sin, I have given you before Chap. 3. Direct. 12. Yet somewhat I shall here add. Fear is a necessary Passion in man, which is planted in Nature for the restraining of us from sin, and driving us on to duty, and preventing misery. It is either God, or Devils, or men, or inferior creatures, or ourselves, that we fear. God must be feared as he is God: as he is Great, and Holy, and Just, and True: as our Lord, and King, and Judge, and Father: And the fear of him is the beginning of wisdom. Devils must be feared only as subordinate to God, as the executioners of his wrath: And so must men, and beasts, and fire, and water, and other creatures be feared and no otherwise: We must so discern and fear a danger as to avoid it. Our selves we are less apt to fear, because we know that we Love ourselves. But there is no creature that we have so much cause to fear, as our folly, weakness and willfulness in sin.
§. 2. Fear is sinful 1. When it proceedeth from unbelief, or a distrust of God. 2. When it ascribeth more to the creature than is its due: As when we fear Devils or men, as Great, or bad, or as our enemies, without due respect to their dependence upon the will of God: When we fear a chained creature, as if he were unchained. 3. When we fear God upon mistake or error, or fear that in him which is not in him, or is not to be feared. As when we fear least he will break his promise; lest he will condemn the keepers of his Covenant, lest he will not forgive the penitent, that hate their sin; lest he will despise the contrite; lest he will not hear the prayers of the humble faithful soul; lest he will fail them and forsake them, lest he will not cause all things to work together for their good; lest he will forsake his Church; lest Christ will not come again; lest our bodies shall not be raised; lest there be no life of glory for the just, or no immortality of souls; all such fears as these are sinful. 4. When our fear is so immoderate in degree, as to distract us, or hinder us from faith and prayer, and make us melancholy: or when it hindereth Love, and praise, and thanks, and necessary joy, and tendeth not to drive us to God, and to the use of means to avoid the danger, but to drive us from God, and kill our hope, and make us sit down in despair.
Directions against sinful fear of God.
§. 3. Direct. 1. Know God in his Goodness, Mercifulness and Truth, and it will banish sinful fears of him: For they proceed from the ignorance or unbelief of some of these; or not considering and applying them to the cause that is before you. Psal. 9. 10. They that know thy Name, will put their trust in thee.
§. 4. Direct. 2. Know God in Jesus Christ the Mediator, and come to him by him: And then you may have access with boldness and confidence, Ephes. 3. 12. We have boldness to enter into the holiest by his blood, by the new and living way which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say his flesh: And having an High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, Heb. 10. 19, 20, 21, 22. The sight of Christ by faith should banish immoderate fear, Matth. 14. 27. Be of good cheer it is I, be not afraid.
§. 5. Direct. 3. Understand the tenor of the Gospel, and the freeness of the Covenant of Grace, and then you will there find abundant encouragement against the matter of inordinate fears.
§. 6. Direct. 4. Employ yourselves as much as possible in Love and praise: for Love expelleth tormenting fear: there is no fear in Love, 1 John 4. 18.
§. 7. Direct. 5. Remember God's particular mercies to yourselves: for those will persuade you that he will use you kindly, when you find that he hath done so already. As when Manoah said, We shall surely die, because we have seen God; his Wife answered, If the Lord were pleased to kill us, he would not have received an offering at our hands, neither would he have shown us all these things, Judge. 13. 22, 23.
§. 8. Direct. 6. Labor to clear up your title to the promises and special interest in Christ. Otherwise the doubts of that will be still feeding and justifying your fears.
§. 9. Direct. 7. Consider what a horrible injury it is to God, to think of him as you do of the Devil, as an enemy to humble willing souls, and a destroyer of them, and an adversary to them that diligently seek him: of whom he is a lover and rewarder. And so to think of God as Evil, and fear him upon such misapprehensions.
§. 10. Direct. 8. Observe the sinfulness of your fear in the effects; how it driveth you from God, and hindereth faith, and love, and thankfulness, and discourageth you from prayer, and Sacraments, and all duty: And therefore it must needs be pleasing to the Devil, and displeasing to God, and no way to be pleaded for or justified.
§. 11. Direct. 9. Mark how you contradict the endeavors of God, in his Word, and by his Ministers: Do you find God driving any from him, and frightning away souls that would fain be his? Or doth he not prepare the way himself, and reconcile the world to himself in Christ, and then send his Ambassadors in his name and stead to beseech them to be reconciled unto God, and to tell them that all things are ready, and compel them to come in?
§. 12. Direct. 10. Consider how thou wrongest others and keepest them from coming home to God: When they see thee terrified in the way of piety, they will fly from it, as if some enemies or robbers were in the way. If you tread fearfully, others will fear there is some quicksand: If you tremble when you enter the Ship with Christ, others will think he is an unfaithful Pilot, or that its a leaking Vessel. Your fear discourageth them.
§. 13. Direct. 11. Remember how remediless, as to comfort, you leave yourselves, while you inordinately fear him, who alone must comfort you against all your other fears. If you fear your Remedy, what shall cure the fear of your disease? If you fear your meat, what shall cure your fear of hunger? If you fear him that is most Good and faithful, and the friend of every upright soul, what shall ease you of your fear of the wicked and the enemies of holy souls? If you fear your Father, who shall comfort you against your foes? You cast away all peace, when you make God your terror.
§. 14. Direct. 12. Yet take heed lest under this pretence you cast away the necessary fear of God; even such as belongeth to men in your condition, to drive them out of their sin and security unto Christ, and such as the truth of his threatenings require. For a senseless presumption and contempt of God, are a sin of a far greater danger.
Directions against sinful fear of the Devil.
§. 1. Direct. 1. Remember that the Devil is chained up, and wholly at the will and beck of God: He could not touch Job, nor an Ox, nor an Ass of his, till he had permission from God: He cannot appear to thee, nor hurt thee unless God give him leave.
§. 2. Direct. 2. Labor therefore to make sure of the Love of God, and then thou art safe: Then thou hast God, his Love and Promise always to set against the Devil.
§. 3. Direct. 3. Remember that Christ hath conquered the Devil, in his temptations, on the Cross, by his Resurrection and Ascension: He destroyed through death him that had the power of death, even the Devil, that he might deliver them who through fear of death were all their life time subject to bondage, Heb. 2. 14, 15. The Prince of this world is conquered and cast out by him, and wilt thou fear a conquered foe?
§. 4. Direct. 4. Remember that thou art already delivered from his power and dominion, if thou he renewed by the Spirit of God: And therefore let his own be afraid of him, that are under his power, and not the free men and redeemed ones of Christ: God hath delivered thee in the day that he converted thee, from a thousand fold greater calamity, than the seeing of the Devil would be: And having been saved from his greatest malice, you should not over-fear the less.
§. 5. Direct. 5. Remember what an injury it is to God, and to Christ that conquered him, to fear the Devil, while God is your protector, (any otherwise than as the instrument of God's displeasure): It seemeth as much as to say, I fear lest the Devil be too hard for God; or lest God cannot deliver me from him.
§. 6. Direct. 6. Remember how you honor the Devil by fearing him, and pleasure him by thus honoring him. And will you not abhor to honor, and please such an enemy of God and you? This is it that he would have; to be feared instead of God: He glorieth in it as part of his dominion: As Tyrants rejoice to see men fear them, as those that can destroy them when they will, so the Devil triumpheth in your fears as his honor. When God reprehendeth the Idolatry of the Israelites, it is as they feared their Idols of Wood and Stone. To fear them, shown that they took them for their God's, 2 Kings 17. 38, 39. Dan. 6. 26.
§ 7. Direct. 7. Consider that it is a folly to be inordinately fearful of that which never did befall thee, and never befalleth one of many hundred thousand men: I mean any terrible appearance of the Devil. Thou never sawest him: nor hearest credibly but of very few in an age that see him (besides Witches): This fear therefore is irrational, the danger being utterly improbable.
§. 8. Direct. 8. Consider that if the Devil should appear to thee, yea, and carry thee to the top of a Mountain, or the pinnacle of the Temple, and talk to thee with blasphemous temptations, it would be no other than what thy Lord himself submitted to; who was still the dearly beloved of the Father, Matth. 4. One sin is more terrible than this.
§. 9. Direct. 9. Remember that if God should permit him to appear to thee, it might turn to thy very great advantage: by killing all thy unbelief or doubts, of Angels, and Spirits, and the unseen world: It would sensibly prove to thee that there is indeed an unhappy race of Spirits, who envy man and seek his ruin, and so would more convince thee of the evil of sin, the danger of souls, the need of godliness, and the truth of Christianity: And it is like this is one cause why the Devil no more appeareth in the world, not only because it is contrary to the ordinary Government of God, who will have us live by faith and not by fight: but also because the Devil knoweth how much it would do to destroy his Kingdom, by destroying Infidelity, Atheism, and security, and awakening men to faith, and fear, and godliness. The Fowler or the Angler must not come in sight, lest he spoil his Game by frighting it away.
§ 10. Direct. 10. If it be the spiritual temptations and molestations only of Satan which you fear, remember that you have more cause to fear yourselves; for he can but tempt you; and if you do not more against yourselves than all the Devils in Hell can do, you will never perish. And if you are willing to accept▪ and yield to Christ, you need not inordinately fear either Satan or yourselves. For it is in the name and strength of Christ, and under his conduct and protection, that you are to begin and finish your warfare: And the Spirit that is in us is greater and stronger than the Spirit that is in the world, and that molesteth us, 1 John 4. 4. And the Father that giveth us to Christ is greater than all, and none can pluck us out of his hands: John 10. 29. And the God of peace will tread down Satan under our feet, Rom. 16. 20. If it were in his power he would molest us daily, and we had never escaped so far as we have done: Our daily experience telleth us that we have a Protector.
Directions against the sinful fear of men, and sufferings by them.
§. 1. Direct. 1. Bottom thy soul and hopes on Christ, and lay up thy treasure in Heaven; be not a worldling that liveth in hope of happiness in the creature; and then thou art so far above the fear of men; as knowing that thy treasure is above their reach, and thy foundation and fortress safe from their assaults. It is a base hypocritical worldly heart that maketh you immoderately afraid of men! Are you afraid lest they should storm and plunder Heaven? Or lest they cast you into Hell? or lest they turn God against you? or lest they bribe or over-awe your Judge! No, no: these are none of your fears! No, you are not so much as afraid lest they hinder one of your prayers from prevailing with God; nor lest their Prison walls and chains should keep out God and his Spirit from you, and force you from your communion with him! You are not afraid lest they forcibly rob you of one degree of grace, or heavenly mindedness, or hopes of the life to come! (If it be lest they hinder you from these by tempting or affrightning you into sin (which is all the hurt they can do your souls) then you are the more engaged to cast away the fears of their hurting your bodies, because that is their very temptation to hurt your souls): No, it is their hurting of your flesh, the diminishing your estates, the depriving you of your liberty or worldly accommodations, or of your lives, which is the thing you fear. And doth not this show how much your hearts are yet on earth! and how much unmortified worldliness and fleshliness is still within you? and how much yet your hearts are false to God and Heaven? O how the discovery should humble you! to find that you are yet no more dead to the things of the world, and that the Cross of Christ hath yet no more crucified it to you! to find that yet the fleshly interest is so powerful in you; and the interest of Christ and Heaven so low: That God seemeth not enough for you, and that you cannot take Heaven alone for your portion, but are so much afraid of losing earth! O presently search into the bottom of this corruption in your hearts, and lament your worldliness and hypocrisy, and work it out, and set your hearts and hopes above, and be content with God and Heaven alone, and then this inordinate fear of man will have nothing left to work upon.
§. 2. Direct. 2. Set God against man, and his wisdom against their policy, and his Love and mercy against their malice and cruelty, and his power against their impotency, and his truth and omniscience and righteousness against their slanders and lies, and his promises against their threatenings; and then if yet thou art inordinately afraid of man, thou must confess that in that measure, thou believest not in God. If God be not wise enough, and good enough, and just enough, and powerful enough to save thee, so far as it is • est for thee to be saved, then he is not God: Away with Atbeism, and then fear not man.
§. 3. Direct. 3. Remember what man is that thou art afraid of: He is a bubble raised by Providence, to 〈…〉 ut the world, and for God to honor himself by or upon: He is the mere product of his 〈…〉 ill: His breath is in his Nostrils: he is hasting to his dust, and in that day his worldly hop 〈…〉 ghts do perish with him: He is a worm that God can in one moment tread into the E 〈…〉 : He is a dream, a shadow, a dry leaf or a little chaff, that's blown awhile about the W 〈…〉 . He is just ready in the height of his pride and fury, to drop into the grave; and that same •• n or all those men, whom now thou fearest shall one of these days, most certainly lie rotting in the dust, and be hid in darkness, l • st their ugly sight and stink be an annoyance to the living. Where now are all the proud ones that made such a bussle in the world but awhile ago? In one age they look big, and boast of their power, and rebel, and usurp authority, and are mad to be Great and Rulers in the World, or persecute the Ministers and people of the Lord; and in the next (or in the same) they are viler th • n the dirt; their carcasses are buried, or their bones scattered abroad and made the horror and wonder of beholders. And is this a creature to be feared above God, or against God? see Isa. 51. 7. Hearken to me ye that know righteousness, the people in whose heart is my Law. Fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be afraid of their revilings: For the moth shall eat them up like a garment, and the worm shall cat them like wool: but my righteousness shall be f • r ever and my salvation from generation to generation, Isa. 2. 22. cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils, for wherein is he to be accounted of, Psal. 146. 3, 4. Put not your trust in Princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help: his breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day all his thoughts perish. When Herod was magnified as a God, he could not save himself from being devoured alive by worms. When Pharaoh was in his pride and glory, he could not save his people from Frogs and Flies and Lice. Saith God to Sennacharib, The Virgin, the Daughter of Zion hath despised thee, and laughed thee to scorn—and hath shaken her head at thee; whom hast thou reproached and blasphemed, and against whom hast thou exalted thy voice and lifted thine eyes on high? O what a worm is man that you are so afraid of!
§. 4. Direct. 4. Remember that men as well as Devils are chained, and dependant upon God, and have no power but what he giveth them, and can do nothing but by his permission. And if God will have it done, thou hast his promise that it shall work unto thy good, Rom. 8. 28. And are you afraid le • t God should do you good by them? If you see the knife or lancet in an enemies hand only, you might fear it; but if you see it in the Surgeons or in a fathers hand, though nature will a little shrink, yet Reason will forbid you to make any great matter of it, or inordinately to fear. What if God will permit Joseph's brethren to bind him, and sell him to the Amalekites? and his masters Wife to cause him to be imprisoned? Is he not to be trusted in all this, that he will turn it to his good? what if he will permit Shimei to curse David, or the King to cast Daniel into the Lions Den, or the three Confessors into the Furnace of Fire? Do you believe that your Fathers will is the disposer of all? and yet are you afraid of man? Our Lord told Pilate when he boasted of his power to take away his life or save it, Thou couldst have no power at all against me except it were given thee from above, Joh. 19. 11.
I know you will say that it is only as God's instruments that you fear them, and that if you were certain of his favor, and were not first afraid of his wrath, you should not fear the wrath of men. Answ. By this you may see then what it is to be disobedient, and to cherish your fears of God's displeasure and to hinder your own assurance of his love, when this must be the cause of, or the pretense for so many other sins: But if really you fear them but as the instruments of God's displeasure, 1. Why then did you no more fear his displeasure before, when the danger from men did not appear? you know God never wanteth instruments to execute his wrath or will: 2. And why fear you not the sin which doth displease him more than the instruments, when they could do you no hurt were it not for sin? 3. And why do you not more fear them as tempters than as afflict • rs? and consequently why fear you not their flatteries and enticements and preferments and your prosperity, more than adversity, when prosperity more draweth you away to sin. 4. And why fear you not Hell more than anything that man can do against you, when God threateneth Hell more than human penalties. 5. And why do you not apply yourselves to God chiefly for deliverance; but study how to pacify man? why do you with more fear and care and diligence and compliance apply yourselves to those that you are afraid of, if you fear God more than them? Repent and make your peace with God through Christ, and then be quiet, if it be God that you are afraid of: Your business then is not first with the Creature, but with God. 6. And if you fear them only as God's instruments, why doth not your fear make you the more cautelously to fly from further guilt, but rather make you to think of stretching your consciences as far as ever you dare, and venturing as far as you dare upon God's displeasure, to escape man's? Are these signs that you fear them only as the Instruments of God's displeasure? or do you see how deceitful a thing your heart is? Indeed man is to be feared in a full subordination to God, 1. As his officers commanding us to obey him, 2. As his executioners punishing us for disobeying him. 3 But not as Satan's instruments (by God's permission) afflicting us for obeying him, or without desert. Rom. 13. 3, 4. For Rulers are not a terror to good works but to the evil: wilt thou then not be afraid of the power. Do that which is good and thou shalt have praise of the same: For he is the minister of God to thee for good: But if thou do that which is evil be afraid: for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God; a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doth evil. Would you have the fuller exposition of this? It is in 1 Pet. 3. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. For he that will love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and his lips that they speak no guile: Let him eschew evil and do good, let him seek peace and ensue it: For the eyes of the Lord are over the righteous, and his ears are open to their prayers: but the face of the Lord is against them that do evil: And who is he that will harm you if ye be followers of that which is good. But and if ye suffer for righteousness sake happy are ye: and be not afraid of their terror neither be troubled: but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear. Having a good conscience, that whereas they speak evil of you as evil-doers, they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation in Christ. For it is better if the will of God be so, that ye suffer for well-doing than for evil doing. See also, 1 Pet. 4. 13, 14, 15.
§. 5. Direct. 5. Either you fear sufferings from men as guilty or as innocent, for evil doing or for well doing, or for nothing! If as guilty and for evil doing, turn your fears the right way, and fear God, and his wrath for sin, and his threatenings of more than men can inflict; and acknowledge the goodness of Justice both from God and man: But if it be as innocent or for well doing, remember that Christ commandeth you exceedingly to rejoice; and remember that martyrs have the most glorious Crown: And will you be excessively afraid of your highest honor and gain and joy. Believe well what Christ hath said, and you cannot be much afraid of suffering for him. Matth. 5. 10, 11, 12. Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness sake; for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake: Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in Heaven: for so persecuted they the Prophets which were before you. And will you fear the way of blessedness and exceeding joy? Matth. 10. 17, 18, 19. Beware of men, for they will deliver you up to the Councils, and they will scourge you in their Synagogues, and ye shall be brought before Governors and Kings for my sake for a testimony against them—But take no thought, &c. You are allowed to beware of them, but not to be over fearful or thoughtful of the matter. Vers. 22, 23. And ye shall be hated of all men for my names sake; but he that endureth to the end shall be saved. But when they persecute you in this City fly to another—Fly but fear them not, with any immoderate fear: verse. 39. He that findeth his life shall lose it, and he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. Luk. 18. 29, 30. Verily I say unto you, there is no man that hath left house or Parents or Brethren or Wife or Children for the Kingdom of God's sake, who shall not receive manifold more in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting. Can you believe all this, and yet be so afraid of your own felicity? O what a deal of secret unbelief is detected by our immoderate fears! 1 Pet. 4. 12, 13, 14, 16, 19. Beloved think it not strange concerning the fiery trial, which is to try you as though some strange thing happened to you: But rejoice in as much as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings, that when his glory shall be revealed ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ happy are ye: for the spirit of Glory and of God resteth on you: On their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified. But let none of you suffer as an evil doer—yet if any man suffer as a Christian, let him glorify God on that behalf—wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing as unto a faithful Creator. There is scarce any point that God hath been pleased to be more full in, in the holy Scriptures, than the encouraging of his suffering servants against the fears of men; acquainting them that their sufferings are the matter of their profit and exceeding joy; and therefore not of too great fear.
§. 6. Direct. 6. Experience telleth us that men have never so much joy on earth as in suffering for the cause of Christ; nor so much honor as by being dishonored by men for him. How joyfully did the ancient Christians go to Martyrdom? many of them lamented that they could not attain it: And what comfort have Christ's Confessors found, above what they could ever attain before? And how honorable now are the names and memorials of those Martyrs, who died then under the slanders scorn and cruelty of men? Even the Papists that bloodily make more, do yet honor the names of the ancient Martyrs with keeping Holy days for them, and magnifying their shrines and relicts: For God will have it so, for the honor of his holy sufferers, that even that same generation that persecute the living Saints shall honor the dead, and they that murder those they find alive, shall honor those whom their forefathers murdered: Matth. 23. 29, 30, 31. Woe unto you scribes and Pharisees hypocrites! because ye build the Tombes of the Prophets, and garnish the Sepulchers of the righteous: And say, if we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them of the blood of the Prophets. Comfort and Honor attend the pain and shame of the Cross. Act. 5. 41. They departed from the presence of the Council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name. Acts 16. 25. Paul and Silas sang praises to God at midnight in the prison and stocks when their backs were sore with stripes. Its written of some of the Christians that were imprisoned by Julian, that they would not forbear in the Emperors hearing as he passed by, to sing, Let God arise, and his enemies shall be scattered.
§. 7. Direct. 7. Love better the holy Image of God upon your souls, and then you will be glad of the great helps to holiness which sufferings do afford. Who findeth not that adversity is more safe and profitable to the soul than prosperity? Especially that adversity which Christ is engaged to bless to his servants, as being undergone for him? Rom. 10. 3, 4, 5. We glory in tribulation also; knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope, and hope maketh not ashamed. God chasteneth us for our profit that we may be partakers of his holiness: Now no chastisement for the present seemeth joyous, but grievous, nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby. Heb. 12. 10, 11. Moses esteemed the very reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt: and therefore rather chose to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. Heb. 11. 25, 26. It is but now for a season, and if need be, that we are in heaviness through manifold temptations, that the trial of our faith being much more precious than of Gold that perisheth might be found unto praise, and honor, and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ, 1 Pet. 1. 6, 7. Who is it that knoweth himself, that feeleth not a need of some afflictions? to awake us from our drowsiness, and quicken us from our dullness, and refine us from our dross, and wean us from the world, and help us to mortify the flesh, and save us from the deceits of sin?
§. 8 Direct. 8. Remember that sufferings are the ordinary way to Heaven. Love Heaven better and your sufferings will seem lighter, and your fear of them will be less. Christ hath resolved on it, that If any man come to him, and hate not his Father, and Mother, and Wife, and Children, and Brethren, and Sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be his disciple: And whoever doth not bear his Cross and follow him, cannot be his disciple: and whoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be his disciple, Luke 14. 26, 27, 33. In the world we shall have tribulation, but peace in him. John 16. 33. Through much tribulation we must enter into the Kingdom of God.