A Christian Directory

DIRECT. IV. Let it be your chiefest study to attain to a true, orderly, and practical knowledge of God, in his several Attributes and Relations; and to find a due impression from each of them upon your hearts, and a distinct effectual improvement of them in your lives.

§. 1. BEcause I have written of this point more fully in another Treatise, ( Of the Knowledge of God, and Converse with him ), I shall but briefly touch upon it here, as not willing to repeat that which there is delivered: Only let me briefly mind you of these few things: 1. That the true knowledge of God is the sum of Godliness, and the end of all our other knowledge, and of all that we have or do as Christians. As Christ is a Teacher that came from God, so he came to call and lead us unto God: Or else he had not come as a Savior: It is from God that we fell by sin, and to God that we must be restored by grace: To save us, is to restore us to our perfection, and our happiness: and that is to restore us unto God.

§. 2. 2. That the true knowledge of God is powerful and effectual upon the heart and life: And every Attribute and Relation of God, is so to be known, as to make its proper Impress on us: And the measure of this saving knowledge, is not to be judged of, by Extensiveness or number of Truths concerning God which we know, so much as by the Clearness, and Intensiveness, and the measure of its holy effects upon the heart.

§. 3. 3, This is it that denominateth both ourselves and all our Duties HOLY: when God's Image is thus imprinted on us; and we are like him by the new birth, as Children to their Father; and by his knowledge both our Hearts and Lives are made Divine; being disposed unto God, devoted to him, and employed for him; he being our Life, and Light, and Love.

§. 4. This is the sum of the Covenant of God with man [ I will be thy God, and thou shalt be my people. ] And the other parts of the Covenant, ( that Christ be our Savior, and the Holy Ghost our Sanctifier ) are both subservient unto this; there being now no coming unto God, but as Reconciled in Christ our Mediator, and by the teaching and drawing of the Holy Ghost. To be our God, is to be to us An Absolute Owner, a most Righteous Governor, and a most Bountiful Benefactor or Father, as having Created us, Redeemed and Regenerated us; and this according to his most Blessed Nature, properties and perfections.

§. 5. 5. It is not only a loose and inconstant effect of your particular thoughts of God, that is the necessary Impress of his Attributes, (as to Fear him when you remember his Greatness and Justice ): But it must be an Habit or holy nature in you, every Attribute having made its stated Image upon you: and that Habit or Image being in you a constant Principle of holy spiritual operations. A Habit of Reverence, Belief, Trust, Love, &c. should be as it were your Nature.

§. 6. 6. Not that the knowledge of God in his perfections should provoke us to desire his properties and perfections: For to have such an aspiring desire to be God's, were the greatest Pride and wickedness: But only we must desire, 1. To be as like God in all his communicable excellencies, as is agreeable to our created state and capacity. 2. And to have as near and full communion with him, as we can attain to and enjoy.

§. 7. 7. The Will of God, and his Goodness, and Holiness, is more nearly propounded to us to be the Rule of our Conformity, than his Power and his Knowledge. Therefore his Law is most immediately the expression of his Will; and our Duty and Goodness lieth in our Conformity to his Law; being Holy as he is Holy.

Because I may not stand on the particulars, I shall give you a brief imperfect Scheme of that of God which you must thus know.

GOD is to be known by us

• I. As •• •••••• .
  • I. In his BEING, Q • od •••• .
    • 1. One; and indivisible: In Three Persons.
    • 2. Immense: and incomprehensible.
    • 3. Eternal.▪
      • 1. The FATHER,
      • 2. The SON,
      • 3. The HOLY GHOST.
        • 1. Necessary,
        • 2. Independent,
        • 3. Immutable.
  • II. In his NATURE: Quod •• t.
    • A SPIRIT
      • 1. Simple: uncompounded.
      • 2. Impassionate, incoruptible, immortal.
      • 3. Invisible, intactible, &c.
    • and LIFE itself
      • 1. POWER,
      • 2. UNDERSTANDING,
      • 3. WILL.
  • III. In his PERFECTIONS. Q • ali • •••• .
    • 1. OMNIPOTENT,
    • 2. OMNISCIENT,
    • 3. MOST GOOD.
      • 1. MOST GREAT,
      • 2. MOST WISE,
      • 3. MOST HOLY and HAPPY.▪
        • 1. BEING HIMSELF.
        • 2. KNOWING HIMSELF.
        • 3. LOVING & ENJOYING HIMSELF.
• II. As R • la •• d to his Creatures.
  • I. The EFFICIENT Cause of all things: Rom. 9. 36. [OF HIM]
    • 1. CREATOR & Conserver.
      • 1. Our OWNER or LORD: most Absolute, Free, and Irresistible.
        • (d) 1. Our Life, and Strength, and Safety.
          • (e) 1. Perfecting our Natures in Heavenly Life.
          • II. The DIRIGENT Cause: [THROUGH HIM,]
          • 2. REDEEMER & Savior.
          • 2. Our RULER or KING:
            • 1. By Legislation:
            • 2. Judgment:
            • 3. Execution: Absolute, Perfect, True, Holy, Just, Merciful, Patient, Terrible.
          • 2. Our Light, and Wisdom.
          • 2. Whom we shall behold in Glorious Light.
          • III. The FINAL Cause: [TO HIM are all things: To him be Glory forever: Amen. ]
          • 3. REGENERATOR & Sanctifier.
          • 3. Our BENEFACTOR or FATHER;
            • 1. Most Loving:
            • 2. Most Bountiful:
            • 3. Most Amiable: (Patient, Merciful, Constant.) Causally and Objectively (d)
          • 3. Our Love and Joy: And so our End, and Rest, and Happiness hereafter (e)
          • 3. Whom we shall Please and Love; and be Pleased in him, and Loved by him; Rejoice in him, Praise him, and so Enjoy him, Perfectly and Perpetually.

See these Practically opened and improved, in the First Part of my Divine Life. The more full Explication of the Attributes fit for the more capacious, is reserved for another Tractate.

§. 8. For the right improvement of the Knowledge of all these Attributes of God, I must refer you to the fore-mentioned Treatise. The acts which you are to exercise upon God are these: 1. The clearest Knowledge you can attain to: 2. The firmest Belief: 3. The highest Estimation: 4. The greatest Admiration: 5. The • eartiest and sweetest Complacency or Love: 6. The strongest Desire: 7. A filial Awfulness, Reverence and Fear: 8. The boldest quietting Trust and confidence in him: 9. The most fixed Waiting, Dependance, Hope and Expectation: 10. The most absolute self-resignation to him. 11. The fullest and quiettest submission to his disposals. 12. The humblest and most absolute subjection to his Governing Authority and Will, and the exactest obedience to his Laws. 13. The boldest courage and fortitude in his cause, and owning him before the world in the greatest sufferings. 14. The greatest Thank fullness for his Mercies. 15. The most faithful improvement of his Talents, and use of his Means, and performance of our trust. 16. A reverent and holy use of his Name, and Word: with a Reverence of his Secrets; forbearing to intrude or meddle with them. 17. A wise and cautelous observance of his Providences, public and private; neither neglecting them, nor mis-interpreting them: neither running before them, nor striving discontentedly against them. 18. A dis •• rning, loving and honoring his Image in his children, notwithstanding their infirmities and faults; without any friendship to their faults, or over magnifying, or imitating them in any evil. 19. A reverent, serious, spiritual adoration, and worshipping him, in public and private, with soul and body, in the use of all his holy Ordinances: but especially in the joyful celebration of his Praise, for all his Perfections and his Mercies. 20. The highest Delight and fullest Content and Comfort in God that we can attain: Especially a Delight in Knowing him, and Obeying and Pleasing him, Worshipping and Praising him; Loving him, and being beloved of him, through Jesus Christ; and in the hopes of the Perfecting of all these in our Everlasting fruition of him in Heavenly Glory.

All these are the Acts of Piety towards God; which I lay together for your easier observation and memory: But some of them must be more fully opened, and insisted on.

DIRECT. V. Remember that God is your Lord or Owner: and see that you make an absolute Resignation of yourselves, and all that you have to him as his Own: and Use yourselves and all accordingly; Trust him with his Own; and rest in his disposals.

§. 1. OF this I have already spoken in my Sermon of Christ's Dominion, and in my Directions for a sound Conversion: and therefore must but touch it here. It is easy notionally to know and say that God is our Owner, and we are not our Own: But if the Habitual Practical knowledge of it, were as easy, or as common, the happy effects of it would be the sanctification and reformation of the world. I shall first tell you, what this Duty is, and how it is to be performed; and then what fruits and benefits it will produce; and what should move us to it.

§. 2. I. The duty lieth in these acts. 1. That you consider the Ground of God's Propriety in you, 1. In making you of Nothing, and preserving you. 2. In Redeeming you by purchase. 3. In Regenerating you, and renewing you for himself. The first is the Ground of his Common Natural Propriety in you and all things: The second is the Ground of his Common Gracious Propriety in you and all men, as Purchased by Christ, Rom. 14. 9, John 13. 3. The third is the Ground of his special Gracious Propriety in you, and all his sanctified peculiar people. Understand and acknowledge what a Plenary Dominion God hath over you, and how absolutely and wholly you are His. 2. Let it exceedingly Please you to think that you are wholly his: it being much better for you, as to your Safety, Honor and Happiness, than to be your Own, or any's else. 3. As God requireth it in his Covenant of Grace, that he have his Right by your Consent, and not by Constraint; so you must thankfully accept the motion, and with hearty and full Consent of Will, Resign yourselves to him as his Own, even as his Creatures, his Ransomed ones, and his Regenerate Children, by a Covenant never to be violated. 4. You must carefully watch against the Claim and reserves of carnal selfishness; lest while you confess you are God's, and not your Own, you should secretly still keep possession of yourselves against him, or re-assume the possession which you surrendered. 5. You must Use yourselves ever after as God's, and not your Own.

§. 3. II. In this Using yourselves as wholly God's, consisteth both your further duty, and your benefits: 1. When God's Propriety is discerned and consented to, it will make you sensible how you are obliged to employ all your powers of soul and body to his service, and to perceive that Nothing should be alienated from him, no creature having any coordinate title to a thought of your hearts, or a glance of your affection, or a word of your mouths, or a minute of your time. The sense of God's Propriety must cause you, to keep constant accounts between God and you, and to call yourselves to a frequent reckoning, whether God have his Own, and you do not defraud him: whether it be his work that you are doing: and for him that you think, and speak, and live? And all that you have, will be Used as his, as well as yourselves? For no man can have any good thing that is more his Own, than he is his own himself.

§. 4. 2. Propriety discerned doth endear us in affection to our Owner. As we love our Own Children, so they love their Own Fathers. Our very Dogs love their Own Masters better than another. When we can say with Thomas, My Lord and my God, it will certainly be the voice of Love. God's Common Propriety in us as his Created and Ransomed ones, obligeth us to Love him with all our heart: But the knowledge of his peculiar propriety by Regeneration, will more effectually command our Love.

§. 5. 3. God's Propriety perceived, will help to satisfy us of his Love and Care of us; and will help us to Trust him in every danger; and so take off our inordinate fear and anxieties, and caring for ourselves. The Apostle proveth Christ's Love to his Church, from his Propriety, Ephes. 5. 29. No man ever yet hated his Own flesh. God is not regardless of his Own: As we take care of our Cattle to preserve them, and provide for them, more than they do for themselves; for they are more Ours than their own▪ so God is more concerned in the welfare of his children, than they are themselves, they being more his than their own. Why are we afraid of the wrath and cruelty of man? Will God be mindless and negligent of his Own? Why are we over-careful and distrustful of his providence? Will he not take care of his Own, and make provision for them? God, even our own God shall bless us, Psal. 67 6. God's interest in his Church, and Cause, and Servants, is an argument which we may plead with him in prayer, (1 Chron. 17. 21, 22.) and with which we may greatly encourage our confidence, Isa. 48. 9, 11. For my Names sake will I defer mine anger, and for my praise will I refrain for thee, that I cut thee not off—For mine Own sake, even for mine Own sake, will I do it: For how should my Name be polluted? and I will not give my Glory to another. Isa. 43. 1, 2. But now, thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel; Fear not, for I have Redeemed thee; I have called thee by name; thou art Mine: When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee, &c. If God should neglect Our interest, he will not neglect his Own.

§. 6. 4. God's propriety in us discerned, doth so much aggravate our sin against him, that it should greatly restrain us; and further our humiliation and recovery when we are fallen: Lev. 20. 26. Ye shall be Holy unto me, for I the Lord am Holy, and have severed you from other people, that you should be mine. Ezek. 16. 8. I sware unto thee, and entered into a Covenant with thee, and thou becamest mine, saith the Lord, when he is aggravating Jerusalem's sin. 1 Cor. 6. 19, 20. Ye are not your own; for ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your Spirits, which are God's. Justice requireth that everyone have his own.

§. 7. 5. It should silence all murmurings and repinings against the Providence of God, to consider that we are his Own. Doth he afflict you? and are you not his own? Doth he kill you? Are you not his own? As a Ruler, he will show you reason enough for it in your sins: But as your absolute Lord and Owner he need not give you any other Reason, than that he may do with his own as he list. It is not possible that he can do any wrong to that which is absolutely his Own. If he deny you health or wealth, or friends, or take them from you; he denieth you, or taketh from you nothing but his own. Indeed as a Governor and a Father, he hath secured the faithful of eternal life: Otherwise as their Owner he could not have wronged them, if he had made the most innocent as miserable as he is capable to be. Do you labor, and beat, and kill your Cattle, because they are your own (by an imperfect propriety)? and dare you grudge at God for afflicting his Own, when their Consciences tell them, that they have deserved it and much more?

§. 8. And that you may not think that you have Resigned yourselves to God entirely, when you do but hypocritically profess it, observe: 1. That that man is not thus Resigned to God, that thinketh any service too much for God, that he can do: 2. Nor he that thinketh any cost too great for God that he is called to undergo: 3. Nor he that thinketh that all is won (of his time, or wealth, or pleasure, or anything) which he can save or steal from God: For all is lost that God hath not. 4. Nor he that must needs be the Disposer of himself, and his condition and affairs, and God must humor him, and accommodate his Providence to his carnal interest and will, or else he cannot bear it, or think well of it. 5. Remember that all that is bestowed in sin upon God's enemies is used against him, and no • as his Own. 6. And that he that hideth his Talent, or useth it not at all, cannot be said to Use it for God. Both idleness and alienating the gifts of God, are a robbing him of his own.

§. 9. III. To help you in this work of self-resignation, often consider: 1. That if you were your Own, you were most miserable: You could not support, preserve or provide for yourselves: who should save you in the hour of temptation or distress? Alas, if you are humbled Christians, you know so much of your Own insufficiency, and feel yourselves such a daily burden to yourselves, that you have sure enough of yourselves ere now: And beg of God, above all your enemies, to save you from yourselves; and of all judgments to save you from being forsaken of God, and given up to yourselves. 2. Remember that none in the world hath sufficient Power, Wisdom, and Goodness, to take the full care and charge of you but God: None else can save you, or sanctify you, or keep you alive one hour: And therefore it is your happiness and honor, that you are His. 3. His Right is absolute, and none hath Right to you but he. None else did Create you, Redeem you, or Regenerate you. 4. He will Use you only in safe and honorable services, and to no worse an end, than your endless happiness. 5. What you deny him or steal from him, you give to the Devil, the World and the flesh: And do they better deserve it? 6. You are his own in Ti • le, whether you will or not; and he will fulfil his will upon you. Your Consent and Resignation is necessary to your good, to • ase you of your cares, and secure you from present and eternal misery.

DIRECT. VI. Remember that God is your Sovereign King, to Rule and Judge you: And that it is your Rectitude and happiness to obey and please him: Labor therefore to bring your souls and bodies into the most absolute subjection to him, and to make it your Delight and business sincerely and exactly to obey his Will.

§. 1. HAving Resigned yourselves absolutely to God as your Owner, you are next to subject yourselves absolutely to God as your Governor or King. How much of our Religion consisteth in this, you may see in the nature of the thing, in the design of the Law and Word of God, in the doctrine and example of Jesus Christ, in the description of the last judgment, and in the common consent of all the world. Though Love is the highest work of man, yet is it so far from discharging us from our subjection and obedience, that it constraineth us to it most powerfully and most sweetly, and must itself be judged of by these effects. John 14. 15. If ye love me, keep my Commandments. 21. He that hath my Commandments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: 23. If any man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will Love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him. 24. He that loveth me not, keepeth not my sayings. John 15. 10. If ye keep my Commandments, ye shall abide in my Love, even as I have kept my Fathers Commandments, and abide in his Love: 14. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. John 13. 17. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them. 1 John 5. 3. For this is the Love of God, that ye keep his Commandments, and his Commandments are not grievous. 1 John 2. 4. He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his Commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5. But who so keepeth his word, in him verily, is the Love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him. 6. He that saith he is in him, ought himself also to walk, even as he walked. 29. If ye know that he is Righteous, you know that everyone that doth Righteousness is born of him 1 John 3. 6. Whosoever abideth in him, sinneth not: whosoever sinneth, hath not seen him, neither known him. 7. Little children, let no man deceive you: he that doth righteousness, is righteous, even as he is righeeous. 8. He that committeth sin, is of the Devil: for the Devil sinneth from the beginning: for this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the Devil. 9. Whosoever is born of God, doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. 10. In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the Devil: whosoever doth not righteousness, is not of God —22. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his Commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight. Rev. 22. 14. Blessed are they that do his Commandments, that they may have right to the Tree of Life, and may enter in by the gates into the City.

I set together these testimonies of the Scripture, that the stream of Divine authority may carry you to a lively sense of the necessity of Obedience.

§. 2. I shall here first tell you what this full subjection is, and then I shall Direct you how to attain it.

I. As in God there is first his Relation of our King, and then his actual Government of us, by his Laws and Judgment: so in us there is first our Relation of Subjects to God, and then our actual obedience. We are Subjects by Divine obligation, before we consent (as Rebels are): but our Consent or self-obligation is necessary to our Voluntary obedience, and acceptation with God. Subjection is our stated obligation to Obedience. This subjection and habit of Obedience is then right and full, 1. When the sense of God's authority over us, is Practical and not notional only. 2. And when it is deep-rooted and fixed, and become as a Nature to us: As a man's intention of his End is that hath a long journey to go, which carrieth him on to the last step: or as a Childs subjection to his Parents, or a Servant to his Master, which is the Habit or principle of his daily course of life. 3. When it is Lively, and ready to put the soul upon obedience. 4. When it is constant, keeping the soul in a continual attendance upon the Will of God. 5. When it hath universal respect to all his Commandments. 6. When it is resolute, powerful and victorious against temptations to disobedience: 7. When it is superlative, respecting God as our supreme King, and owning no authority against him, nor any but what is subordinate to him. 8. When it is Voluntary, Pleasant, Chearful, and delectable to us to Obey him to the utmost of our Power.

§. 3. II. To bring the soul to this full subjection and Obedience to God, is so Difficult, and yet so reasonable, so necessary, and so excellently good, that we should not think any diligence too great, by which it is to be attained. The Directions that I shall give you, are some of them to Habituate the mind to an Obediential frame, and some of them also practically to further the exercise of Obedience in particular acts.

§. 4, Direct. 1. Remember the unquestionable plenary Title, that God hath to the Government of you, and of all the world. The sense of this will awe the soul, and help to subject it to him, and to silence all rebellious motions. Should not God Rule the Creatures which he hath made? Should not Christ Rule the souls which he hath purchased? Should not the Holy Ghost Rule the souls which he hath 〈◊〉 and qui • kned?

§. 5. Direct. 2. Remember that God is perfectly fit for the Government of you and all the world: You can desire nothing reasonably in a Governor, which is not in him. He hath perfect wisdom to know what is best: He hath perfect Goodness, and therefore will be most regardful of his subjects good, and will put no Evil into his Laws. He is Almighty, to protect his Subjects, and see to the execution of his Laws: He is most Just, and therefore can do no wrong, but all his Laws and Judgments are equal and impartial. He is infinitely perfect and self-sufficient, and never needed a Lye, or a deceit, or unrighteous means to Rule the world; nor to oppress his subjects to attain his Ends. He is • ur very End, and Interest, and felicity, and therefore hath no Interest opposite to our good, which should cause him to destroy the innocent. He is our dearest friend and Father, and loveth us better than we love ourselves: and therefore we have reason confidently to Trust him, and cheerfully and gladly to obey him, as one that Ruleth us in order to our own felicity.

§. 6. Direct. 3. Remember how unable and unfit you are to be Governors of yourselves. So blind and ignorant; so biased by a corrupted will; so turbulent are your passions; so uncessant and powerful is the temptation of your sense and appetite; and so unable are you to protect or reward yourselves, that methinks you should fear nothing in this world more, than to be given up to your own hearts lusts, to walk in your own seducing counsels. Psal. 81. 11, 12. The brutish appetite and sense, hath got such d • minion over the Reason of carnal unrenewed men, that for such to be governed by themselves, is for a man to be governed by a Swine, or the Rider to be ruled by the Horse.

§. 7. Direct. 4. Remember how great a matter God maketh of his Kingly prerogatives, and of man's obedience. The whole tenor of the Scripture will tell you this: his precepts, his promises, his threatenings, his vehement exhortations, his sharp reproofs, the sending of his Son and Spirit; the example of Christ and all the Saints, the Reward prepared for the obedient, and the punishment for the disobedient; all tell you aloud, that God is far from being indifferent, whether you obey his Laws or not. It will teach you to regard that, which you find is so regarded of God.

§. 8. Direct. 5. Consider well of the excellency of full obedience, and the present benefits which it bringeth t • yourselves and others. Our full subjection and obedience to God, is to the world and the soul, as Health is to the body: When all the humors keep their due temperament, proportions and place, and every part of the body is placed and used according to the intent of nature, then all is at e • se within us. Our food is pleasant; our sleep is sweet; our labor is easy, and our vivacity maketh Life a pleasure to us: we are useful in our places, and helpful to others that are sick and weak. So is it with the soul that is fully obedient: God giveth him a Reward, before the full reward: He findeth that obedience is a Reward to itself; and that it is very pleasant to do good: God owneth him, and Conscience speaketh peace and comfort to him: His mercies are sweet to him; his burdens and his work are easy: He hath easier access to God than others: Yea, the world shall find, that there is no way to its right order, unity, peace, and happiness, but by a full subjection and obedience to God.

§. 9. Direct. 6. Remember the sad effects of disobedience, even at present, both in the soul and in the world. When we rebel against God, it is the confusion, ruin and death of the soul, and of the world: When we disobey him, it is the sickness or disordering of the soul, and will make us groan: Till our bones be set in joint again, we shall have no ease: God will be displeased, and hide his face: Conscience will be unquiet: The soul will lose its peace and joy: Its former mercies will grow less sweet: Its former rest will turn to weariness: Its duty will be unpleasant: Its burden heavy: who would not fear such a state as this?

§. 10. Direct. 7. Consider that when God doth not Govern you, you are Ruled by the flesh, the world and the Devil. And what right or fitness they have to govern you, and what is their work, and final reward, methinks you should easily discern. If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die, Rom. 8. 13. And if ye saw to the flesh, of the flesh ye shall reap corruption. Gal. 6. 8. It will strike you with horror, if in the hour of temptation, you would but think: I am now going to disobey my God, and to obey the flesh, the world, or the Devil; and to prefer their Will before his Will.

§. 11. Direct. 8. Turn your eye upon the rebellious Nations of the earth, and upon the state of the most malignant and ungodly men, and consider that such madness and misery as you discern i • them, every willful disobedience to God doth tend to, and partaketh of in its degree. To see a swinish Drunkard in his Vomit; to hear a raging Bedlam curse and swear; or a malignant Wretch blaspheme and scorn at a holy life; to hear how foolishly they talk against God; and see how maliciously they hate his servants, one would think should turn ones stomach against all sin forever. To think what Bea • s or incarnate Devils many of the ungodly are: to think what confusion and inhumanity possesseth most of those Nations that know not God, one would think should make the least degree of sin seem odious to us, when the dominion and ripeness of it is so odious.

§. 12. Direct. 9. Mark what obedience is expected by men; and what influence Government hath upon the state and affairs of the would, and what the world would be without it; and sure this will make you think honourably and delightfully of the Government of God. What would a Nation be without Government, but like a company of Thieves and lawless Murderers? or like the Pikes in a Pond, that first eat up the other Fish, and then devour one another, the greater living upon the less. Bears and Wolves would live quietlier together, than ungoverned men (except those few that are truly subject to the Government of God.) Government maintaineth every man in his propriety; and keepeth lust and madness from breaking out; and keepeth peace and order in the world. What would a family be without Government? Children and Servants are kept by it in their proper place and work. Think then how necessary and excellent is the Universal Government of God.

§. 13. Direct. 10. Think well • f the Endless Rewards and Punishments, by which God will procure obedience to his Laws, or vindicate the honor of his Government on the disobedient: That the world may see that he giveth sufficient motives for all that he requireth; he will reward the obedient with everlasting blessedness, and punish the Rebells with endless misery. You shall not say, that he bids you work for nothing. Though you can give him nothing but his own, and therefore can merit nothing of him, in point of Commutative Justice; yet as he is a Governor and a Father he will put so wide a difference between the obedient and the rebellious, that one shall be judged to everlasting joy (with a Well done, good and faithful servant ) and the other to everlasting punishment, Matth. 25. Is there not enough in Heaven, in a life of endless joys with God; to make obedience lovely to you, and to make sin loathsome? Is there not enough in Hell to deter you from disobedience, and drive you unto God? God will Rule whether you will or not. Consent to be obedient, or he will punish you without asking your consent.

§. 14. The Directions for the nearer exciting of your obedience, and confirming your full subjection, are these.

Direct. 1. Keep still the face of your souls upon God, and in the sense of his Greatness, and of his continual presence, and of his particular providence. And this will keep you in an obediential frame. You will easily then perceive that so great a God cannot be disobeyed, without great iniquity and guilt: And that a God that is continually with you, must be continually regarded: And that a God that exactly observeth and mindeth the thoughts and words of every man, should by every man be exactly minded and observed. This will help you to understand the meaning of the Tempter, when you perceive that every Temptation is an urging of you, to offend (for nothing) so great a God, that is just then observing what you do.

§. 15. Direct. 2. Always remember whither you are going; that you are preparing for Everlasting Rest and Joy, and must pass through the righteous judgment of the Lord; and that Christ is your Guide and Governor, but to bring you safely home, as the Captain of your salvation; and that sin is a rejecting of his help, and of your happiness. Think not that God doth Rule you as a Tyrant, to your hurt or ruin, to make his own advantage of you; or by needless Laws, that have no respect to your good and safety: But think of him, as one that is conducting you to eternal life; and would now guide you by his counsel, and afterwards take you to his glory. Think that he is leading you to the world of Light, and Life, and Love, and Joy, where there are Rivers of pleasure, and fullness of delight for evermore, that you may see his face, and feel his Love among a world of blessed Spirits, and not be weeping and gnashing the teeth with impious impenitent souls. And is not such a Government as this desirable? It is but like the Government of a Physician, to save his Patients life: Or like your Government of your children, which is necessary to their good, that cannot feed or rule themselves: Or like a Pilots governing the Ship, which is conveying you to possess a Kingdom: If the Mariners obey him, they may safely arrive at the desired Port; but if they disobey him, they are all cast away and perish. And should such a Government as this is, seem grievous to you? or should it not be most acceptable, and accurately obeyed?

§. 16. Direct. 3. Still think what dangers, difficulties and enemies you must pass through to this Rest, and that all your safety dependeth upon the conduct and assistance of your Guide. And this will bring over self-love to command you strict obedience. You are to pass through the Army of your enemies? And will you here disobey the Captain of your salvation? or would you have him leave you to yourselves? Your disease is mortal, and none but Jesus Christ can cure it; and if he cure it not, you are lost forever: no pain of Gout or Stone is comparable to your everlasting pain! And yet will you not be obedient to your Physician? Think when a Temptation comes, If there were a narrow Bridge over the deepest Gulf or River, and all my friends and happiness lay on the further side, and I must needs go over whether I will or not, if Christ would take me by the hand and lead me over, would I be tempted to refuse his help, or to lose his hand? or if he should offer to lose me, and leave me to myself, should I not tremble, and cry out as Peter, Lord save me, Matth. 14. 30. Or as the disciples, Save Master, we perish? And should I not then hold him fast, and most accurately obey him, when he is leading me to Life Eternal, that I may escape the Gulf of endless misery?

§. 17. Direct. 4. Remember still how bad, and blind, and backward, and deceitful and weak you are yourselves, and therefore what need you have of the greatest watchfulness, lest you should disobey your Pilot, and lose your Guide, before you are aware. O what a heart have we to watch? A lazy heart that will be loitering or sitting down, when we should be following our Lord. A foolish heart that will let him go while we play with every play-fellow in our way: A cowardly heart that will steal away, or draw back in danger, when it should follow our General. A treacherous heart that will give us the slip, and deceive us, when we seemed surest of it. A pur-blind heart, that even when it followeth Christ our Guide, is hardly kept from missing the Bridge, and falling into the Gulf of misery. Think well of these, and you will obey your Governor.

§. 18. Direct. 5. Forget not the fruits of your former obedience and disobedience; if you would be kept in an obedient frame. Remember that obedience hath been sweetest afterward: and that you never yet found cause to repent or be ashamed of it. Remember that the fruit of sin was bitter, and that when your eyes were opened, and you saw your shame, you would fain have fled from the face of God; and that then it appeared another thing to you, then it seemed in the committing. Remember what gr • ans, and hearts grief it hath cost you? and into what fears it brought you of the wrath of G • d: 〈…〉 how long it was before your broken bones were healed; and what it cost both Christ and you? And th • s will make the very name and first approach of • in, to cast you into a preventing fear. A B • ast that hath once fallen into a Gulf or Quick-sand, will hardly be driven into the same again: A F • sh that was once s •• icken and scapit the hook, will fear and fly from it the next time: A Bird that hath once escap▪t the S • are o • the Tallons of the Hawk, is afterwards afraid of the fight or noise of such a thing. Remember where you fell, and what it cost you, and what you scaped which it might have cost you, and you will obey more accurately hereafter.

§. 19. Direct. 6. Remember that this is your day of trial, and what depends upon your accurate obedience. God will not cr • wn untryed Servants. Satan is purposely suffered to tempt you, to try whether you will be true to God or not. All the hope that his malice hath of undoing you forever, •• nsisteth in his hope to make you disobedient to God. Methinks these considerations should awaken you to the most watchful and diligent obedience. If you were told before hand, that a Thief or •• t purse had undertaken to rob you, and would use all his cunning and industry to do it, you would then watch more carefully than at another time. If you were in a Race to run for your lives, you w • uld not go then in your ordinary pace. Doth God tell you before, that he will try your obedience by temptation, and as you stand or fall, you shall speed forever; and will not this keep you watchful and obedient?

§. 20. Direct. 7. Avoid those tempting and deluding objects, which are still enti • ing your hearts from your obedience; and avoid that diverting crowd and noise of company or worldly business, which drowns the v • i • e of God's commands. If God call you into a life of great temptations, he can bring you safely through them all: But if you rush into it willfully; you may soon find your own disability to resist. It is dangerous to be under strong and importunate temptations, lest the stream should bear us down: But especially to be long under them, lest we be weary of resisting. They that are long solicited, do too often yield at last: It is hard to be always in a clear, and ready, and resolute frame: Few men have their wits, much less their graces, always at hand, in a readiness to use. And if the Thief come when yo • are dropt asleep, you may be robbed before you can awake. The constant drawings of temptation, do ofttimes aba • e the habit of obedience, and diminish our hatred of sin, and holy resolutions, by • low ins • nsible degrees, before we yield to commit the act. And the mind that will be kept in full subjecti • n, must not be so diverted in a crowd of distracting company or business, as to have no time to th •• k on the motives of his obedience. This withdrawing of the fuel may put out the fire.

§. 21. Direct. 8. If you are unavoidably cast upon strong Temptation, take the Alarm, and put on all t • e 〈◊〉 of God, and call up your souls to watchfulness, and resolution, remembering that you are now a •• ng your enemies, and must resist as for your lives. Take every temptation in its naked proper sense, • s coming from the Devil, and tending to your damnation by enticing your hearts from your subjection unto God: suppose you saw the Devil himself in his instruments offering you the bait of preferment, o • honor, or riches, or fleshly lusts, or sports, or of delightful meats, or drinks, to tempt you to excess; and suppose you heard him say to you plainly, [Take this for thy salvation: Sell me for this thy God, and thy soul, and thy everlasting hopes: Commit this sin, that thou mayest fall under the judgment of God, and be tormented in Hell with me forever. Do this to please thy flesh, that thou mayest displease thy God, and grieve thy Savior: I cannot draw thee to Hell, but by drawing thee to sin: And I cannot make thee sin against thy will; nor undo thee, but by thy own consent and doing: Therefore I pray the • consent and do it thyself, and let me have thy company in torments.] This is the naked meaning of every temptation: Suppose therefore you saw and heard all this, with what detestation then would you reject it? With what horror would you fly from the most enticing bait? If a Robber would entice you out of your way and company, with flattering words, that you might fall into the hands of his companions, if you knew all his meaning and design before hand, would you be enticed after him? Watch therefore, and Resolve when you know before hand the Design of the Devil, and what he intendeth in every temptation.

§. 22. Direct. 9. Be m • st suspicious, fearful and watchful about that, which your flesh doth most desire, •• finds the greatest pleasure in. Not that you should deny your bodies all delight in the mercies of God: If the body have none, the mind will have the less: Mercy must be differenced from punishment; and must be valued, and relished as mercy: Meer Natural pleasing of the senses is in itself no m • ral good or evil. A holy improvement of lawful pleasure, is a daily duty: Inordinate pleasure is a sin: All is inordinate which tendeth more to corrupt the soul, by enticing it to sin, and turning it from God, than to • it and dispose it for God and his service, and preserve it from sinning. But still remember, it is not sorrow; but Delight that draweth away the soul from God, and is the fleshes interest which it sets up against him. Many have sinned in sorrows and discontents: but none ever sinned f • r sorrows and discontents: Their discontents and sorrows are not taken up and loved for themselves; but are the effects of their love to some pleasure and content, which is denied them, or taken from them. Therefore though all your bodily pleasures are not sin, yet seeing nothing but the pleasures of the flesh and carnal mind is the End of sinners, and the Devils great and chiefest bait, and this only causeth men's perdition, you have great reason to be most afraid of that which is most pleasing to your flesh, and to the mind as it is corrupt and carnal: escape the delusions of fleshly pleasure, and you escape damnation: You have far more cause to be afraid of prosperity, than of adversity; of riches, than of poverty, of honor, than of obscurity and contempt; of men's praises and applause, than of their dispr •• ses▪ slanders and rep •••• h▪ of pre • erment and greatness, than of a low and mean condition; of a delicious, than of l • ss tempting meats and drinks; of curious, costly, than of mean, and cheap, and plain attire. Let those that have hired out their reason to the service of their fleshly lusts, and have delivered the Crown and S • epter to their appetites, think otherwise. No wonder if they that have sold the birthright of their intellects to their senses, for a me • s of Pottage, for a Whore, or a high place, or a domineering power over others, or a belly full of pleasant Meats or Liquors, do deride all this, and think it but a melancholy conceit, more suitable to an Eremi • e or Anchorite, than to men of society and business in the world. As Heaven is the portion of serious believers, and mortified Saints alone, so it shall be proper to them alone, to understand the doctrine and example of their Savior, and practically to know what it is to deny themselves, and forsake all they have, and take up their Cross and follow Christ, and by the Spirit to mortifi • the deeds of the body, Luke 14. 26, 27, 28, 29, 33. Rom. 8. 5, 6, 7, 13. Col. 3. 1, 2, 3, 4. Such know that millions part with God for Pleasures, but none for Griefs: and that Hell will be stored with those that preferred Wealth, and Honor, and Sports, and gluttony, drink and filthy lusts, before the Holiness and happiness of believers, but none will be damn▪ ed for preferring poverty, and disgrace, and abstinence, hunger, and thirst, and chastity, before them. It must be something that seemeth good, that must entice men f • om the chiefest Good: Apparent Evil is no fit bait for the Devils hook. Men will not displease God, to be themselves displeased; nor choose present sorrows instead of everlasting joys: but for the pleasures of sin for a season many will despise the endless pleasures.

§. 23. Direct. 10. Meet every motion to disobedience with an Army of holy Graces, with wisdom, and fear, and hatred, and resolution, with Love to God, with Zeal and courage: and quench every spark that falls upon your hearts bef • re it break out into a flame. When sin is little and in its infancy, it is weak and easily resisted: It hath not then turned away the mind from God, nor quenched grace, and disabl • d it to do its office. But when its grown strong, then grace grows weak, and we want its help, and want the sense of the presence, and Attributes and truths of God, to rebuke it. O stay not till your hearts are gone out of hearing, and stragled from God beyond the observance of his Calls. The Habit of Obedience will be dangerously abated, if you resist not quickly the acts of sin.

§. 24. Direct. 11. Labor for the clearest understanding of the Will of God, that doubtfulness about your duty do not make you flag in your obedience, and doubtfulness about sin, do not weaken your detestation and resistance, and draw you to venture on it. When a man is sure what is his Duty, it is a great help against all temptations that would take him off: And when he is sure that a thing is sinful, it makes it the easier to resist. And therefore it is the D • vils Method to delude the understanding, and make men believe that duty is no duty, and sin is no sin: and then no wonder if duty be neglected, and sin committed: And therefore he raiseth up one false Pr • phet or other to say to Ahab, Go and prosper; or to say, There is no hurt in this. To dispute for sin, and to dispute against Duty: And it is almost incredible how much the Devil hath got, when he hath once but made it a matter of Controversy. Then every hypocrite hath a cloke for his sin, and a dose of Opium for his Conscience: when he can but say, [It is a Controversy; some are of one mind, and some of another: you are of that Opinion, and I am of this:] Especially if there be wise and learned on both sides: and yet more, if there be Religious men on both sides: And more yet, if he have an equal number on his side: And most of all if he have the major Vote (as error and sin have commonly in the world): If Ahab have but four hundred lying flattering Prophets to one Micaiah, he will think he may hate him, reproach him and persecute him without any s •••• ple of Conscience. If it be made a Controversy whether Bread be Bread, and Wine be Wine, when we see and taste it, some will think they may venture to subscribe or swear that they hold the Negative, if their credit, or livings, or lives lie upon it; much more if they can say, It is the judgment of the Church? If it be once made a Controversy, whether perjury be a sin, or whether a Vow materially lawful bind, or whether it be lawful to equivocate, or lie with a mental reservation for the truth, or to do the greatest evil, or speak the falsest thing with a true and good intent and meaning, almost all the hypocrites in the Country will be for the sinful part, if their fleshly interest require it: And will think themselves wronged, if they are accounted hypocrites, lie • rs, or perjured, as long as it is but a Point of Controversy among learned men. If it be once made a Controversy, whether an Excommunicate King become a private man, and it be lawful to kill him, and whether the Pope may absolve the subjects of Temporal Lord's from their Allegiance (notwithstanding all their Oaths), and if such Learned men as Zuarez, Bellarmine, Perron, &c. are for it (to say nothing of Santarellus, Mariana, &c. ) you shall have a Clement, a Ravilliack, a Faux, yea, too great choice of instruments, that will be satisfied to strike the blow: If many hold it may or must be d • ne, some will be found too ready to do it: especially if an approved General Council ( Lateran. sub Inn • c. 3. Can. 3.) be for such Papal absolution. We have seen at home, how many will be emboldened to pull down Government, to sit in Judgment on their King, and condemn him, and to destroy their Brethren, if they can but say, that such and such men think it lawful. If it were but a Controversy once whether drunkenness, whoredom, swearing, stealing, or any villainy be a sin or not, it would be committed more commonly, and with much less regret of conscience. Yea, good men will be ready to think that modesty requireth them to be less censorious of those that commit it, because in controverted cases they must suspect their own understandings, and allow something to the judgment of dissenters: And so all the Rules of Love, and Peace, and Moderation, which are requisite in Controversies that are about small and difficult points, the Devil will make use of, and apply them all to the patronage of the most odious sins, if he can but get them once to have some learned, wise, or religious defenders. And from our tenderness of the persons we easily slide to an indulgent tenderness in censuring the sin it • elt. And good men themselves by these means are dangerously disabled to resist it, and prepared to commit i • .

§ 25. Direct. 12. Take • eed lest the Devil do either cast you into the sleep of carnal security, or into such doubts, and fears, and perplexing seruples, as shall make holy obedience seem to you an imposs •• le •• a ti •• s • me thing. When you are asleep in carelessness, he can use you as he list: And if Obedien • e be made grievous, and ungrateful to you, your heart will go against it, and you will go but like a tired horse, no longer than you feel the spur: you are half conquered already, because you have lost the •• ve, and pleasure of obedience: and you are still in danger lest difficulties should quite tire you, and weariness make you yield at last. The means by which the Tempter effecteth this, must afterward be spoken of, and there • fore I shall omit it here.

§. 26. By the faithful practice of th • se Directions Obedience may become, as it were, your Nature; a • am • liar, • asi • , and delightful thing: and may be like a cheerful servant or child, that waiteth for your commands, and is glad to be employed by you. Your full subjection of your wills to God, will be as the health, and ease, and quietness of your wills: You will feel that it is never well or easy with you▪ but when you are obedient and pleasing to your Creators will. Your delight will be in the Law of the •• rd Psal. 1. 2. It will be sweeter than honey to you, and better than thousands of gold and silver: And this not for any by respect, but as it is the Law of God; a Light unto your feet, and an in •• l •• ble guide in all your duty. You will say with David Psal. 119. 16, 24, 35, 47, 70, 77, 174. I will deligh • myself in thy Statut • s▪ I will not forget thy word. Thy Testimonies are my delight and my C •• unsellers. Make me to go in the path of thy •• mma • dments: for therein do I delight. And as Psal. 40. 8. I delight to d • thy will O my God; yea thy Law is within my heart. And O Blessed is the man that • eareth the Lord; that delighteth greatly in his Commandments: Psal. 112. 1.

DIRECT. VII. Continue as the Covenanted Scholars of Christ, the Prophet and Teacher of his Church, to learn of him by his Spirit, word and Ministers, the farther knowledge of God, and the things that tend to your Salvation; and this with an honest willing mind, in faith humility and diligence; in obedience, patience and peace.

§. 1. THough I spake before, of our Coming to God by Jesus Christ, as he is the way to the Father; It is meet that we distinctly speak of our Relation and Duty to him, as he is our Teacher, our Captain and our Master, as well as of our improving him as Mediator immediately unto God. The necessity of Believers, and the office and work, of Christ himself, doth tell us how much of our Religion doth consist in Learning of him as his Disciples. Acts 7. 37. A Prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you of your brethren, like unto me, him shall ye hear: This was the voice that came out of the cloud in the holy mount, Mat. 17. 5. This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased; H • ar ye Him. Therefore is the title of Disciples commonly given to Believers. And there is a two • old T •• ching which Christ hath sent his Ministers to perform; both mentioned in their Commission Mat. 28. 19, 20. The one is so to teach the Nations, as to make Disciples of them, by persuading them into the School of Christ, which containeth the Teaching of faith and Repentance and whatever is necessary to their first admission, and to their subjecting themselves to Christ himself as their stated and infallible Guide: The other is the Teaching them further to know more of God, and to observe all things whatever be commanded them. And this last is it we are now to speak of, and I shall add some sub-directions for your help.

DIRECT. VIII. Remember that you are Related to Christ as the Physician of your souls, and to the Holy Ghost as your Sanctifier: Make it therefore your serious study, to be cured by Christ, and cleansed by his Spirit, of all the sinful diseases and defilements of your hearts and lives.

§. 1. THough I did before speak of our Believing in the Holy Ghost, and using his help for our access to God, and converse with him; yet I deferred to speak fully of the Cleansing and Mortifying part of his work of Sanctification till now; and shall treat of it here as it is the same with the Curing work of Christ, related to us as the Physician of our souls: it being part of our Subjection and Obedience to him, to be Ruled by him in order to our cure. And what I shall here write against sin in general will be of a twofold use. The one is to help us against the inward corruptions of our hearts, and for the outward obedience of our lives, and so to further the work of Sanctification, and prevent our sinning. The other is to help us to Repentance and Humiliation habitual and actual, for the sins which are in us, and which we have already at any time committed.

§. 2. The General Directions for this curing and cleansing of the soul from sin, are contained for the most part in what is said already; and many of the particular Directions also may be fetched from the sixth Direction before going. I shall now add but two General Directions, and many more Particular ones.

Direct. 1. I. The two General Directions are these: 1. Know what corruptions the soul of man is naturally defiled with: And this containeth the knowledge of those faculties that are the seat of th • se corruptions, and the knowledge of the corruptions that have tainted and perverted the several faculties.

Direct. 2. 2. Know what sin is, in its nature or intrinsic evil, as well as in the effects.

§. 3. 1. The Parts or faculties to be cleansed and cured, are both the Superior and Inferior. 1. The Understanding (though not the first in the sin) must be first in the cure: For all that is done upon the Lower faculties must be by the Governing power of the will: And all that is done upon the will (ac cording to the order of human nature) must be done by the Understanding: But the Understanding hath its own diseases which must be known and cured. Its malady in general is Ignorance: which is not only a privation of actual knowledge, but an undisposedness also of the understanding to know the truth. A man may be deprived of some actual knowledge that hath no disease in his mind that causeeth it: as in case that either the object be absent and out of reach, or that there be no sufficient Revelation of it, or that the mind be taken up wholly upon some other thing, or in case a man shut out the thoughts of such an object, or refuse the evidence (which is the act of the will ) even as a man that is not blind, may yet not see a particular object, 1. In case it be out of his natural reach: 2. Or if it be night, and he want extrinsic light; 3. Or in case he be wholly taken up with the observation of other things, 4. Or in case he willfully either shut or turn away his eyes.

It is a very hard question to resolve how far and wherein the diseases of the Understanding may be called sin? Because the Understanding is not a Free, but a Necessitated faculty: And there can be no sin, where there is no Liberty. But to clear this, it must be considered, 1. That it is not this or that faculty that is the full and proper subject of sin, but the Man: the fullness of sin being made up of the vice of both faculties ( understanding and will ) conjunct: Its properer to say, The man sinned, than, the Intellect or Will sinned, speaking exclusively as to the other. 2. Liberum arbitrium, Free choice is belonging to the Man, and not to his Will only; though principally to the Will. 3. Though the Will only be Free in itself originally; yet the Intellect is Free by participation so far as it is commanded by the Will, or dependeth on it for the Exercise of its acts. 4. Accordingly though the Understanding primitively and of itself, be not the subject of morality; of moral Virtues, or of moral Vices (which are immediately and primarily in the Will) yet participatively its Virtues and Vices are moralized, and become graces or sins, laudable and rewardable, or vituperable and punishable, as they are imperate by the will, or depend upon it.

Consider then the Acts, and Habits, and disposition of the Understanding. And you will find, 1. That some acts, and the privation of them, are Necessary, Naturally, Originally, and unalterably: and these are not virtues or sinful at all, as having no morality. As to know unwillingly as the Devils do, and to Believe, when it cannot be resisted, though they would; this is no moral Virtue at all, but a natural perfection only. So 1. To be ignorant of that which is no object of knowledge, or which is naturally beyond our knowledge (as of the Essence of God ) is no sin at all: 2. Nor to be ignorant of that which was never revealed, when no fault of ours hindered the revelation, is no sin. 3. Nor to be without the present actual knowledge or consideration of one point, at that moment when our thoughts are lawfully diverted (as in greater business) or suspended (as in sleep.) 4. But to be ignorant willfully is a sin, participatively in the intellect, and originally in the will. 5. And to be ignorant for want of Revelation, when ourselves are the hinderers of that revelation, or the meritorious cause that we want it, is our sin: Because though that ignorance be immediately necessary and hyp • th • tically, yet originally and remotely it is Free and Voluntary.

So as to the Habits and Dispositions of the intellect: It is no sin to want those which man's Understanding in its entire and primitive Nature was without. (As not to be able to know without an object, or to know an unrevealed or too distant object; or actually to know all things know able at on •• .) But there are defects or ill dispositions that are sinfully contracted; and though these are now immediately natural and necessary, yet being originally and remotely voluntary or free, they are participatively sinful: Such is the natural man's disability or undisposedness to know the things of the Spirit, when the Word revealeth them. This lieth not in the want of a Natural faculty to know them, but 1. Radically in the will: 2. And thence in contrary false apprehensions which the Intellect is prepossessed with, which resisting the truth, may be called, its blindness or impotency to know them. And 3. In a strangeness of the mind to those spiritual things which it is utterly unacquainted with.

Note here, 1. That the will may be guilty of the understandings ignorance two ways: either by P • sitive averseness prohibiting or diverting it from beholding the evidence of truth: Or by a Privation and forbearance of that command, or excitation which is necessary to the exercise of the acts of the understanding. This last is the commonest way of the sin in the understanding; and that may be truly called Voluntary which is from the wills neglect of its office, or suspension of its act, though there be no actual Volition or Nolition.

2. That the will may do more in causing a disease in the understanding, than it can do in cur •••• it, I can put out a man's eyes, but I cannot restore them.

3. That yet for all that, God hath so ordered it in his gracious dispensation of the •• a •• of the Redeemer, that certain means are appointed by him, for man to use in order to the obtaining of his grace for his own recovery: And so though grace cure not the understanding of its primitive natural weakness, yet it cureth it of its contracted weakness, which was voluntary in its Original, but necessary being contracted. And as the will had a hand in the causing of it, so must it have (in the Voluntary use of the foresaid means) in the Cure of it. So much to show you how the Understanding is guilty of sin.

§. 4. Though no actual knowledge be so immediate as to be without the Mediation of the sense and fantasie, yet supposing these, Knowledge is distinguished into Immediate and Mediate. The Immediate is when the Being, Quality, &c. of a thing, or the Truth of a proposition is known immediately in itself by its proper evidence. Mediate knowledge is when the Being of a thing, or the truth of a proposition is known by the means of some other intervenient thing or proposition, whose evidence affordeth us a light to discern it.

The understanding is much more satisfied when it can see Things and Truths immediately in their proper evidence. But when it cannot, it is glad of any means to help it.

The further we go in the series of Means (knowing one thing by another, and that by another, and so on) the more unsatisfied the understanding is, as apprehending a possibility of mistake, and a difficulty in escaping mistake in the use of so many media's.

When the evidence of one thing in its proper nature showeth us another, this is to know by mere discourse or argument.

When the Medium of our knowing one thing, is the Credibility of another man's report that knoweth it, this is (though a discourse or argument too, yet) in special called, Belief: which is strong or weak, certain or uncertain, as the evidence of the reporters Credibility is certain or uncertain, and our apprehension of it strong or weak.

In both cases the understandings fault is either an utter privation of the act (or disposition to it), or else a privation of the rectitude of the act. When it should know by the proper evidence of the Thing, the privation of its act is called Ignorance or Nescience, and the privation of its rectitude is called, Error (which differ as not-seeing and seeing-falsely ): When it should know by Testimony, the privation of its act is simple unbelief, or not-believing, and the privation of its rectitude is either Disbelief, (when they think the reporter erreth), or Mis-belief, when it believeth a Testimony that is not to be believed.

So that you see by what is said, that the diseases of the Mind to be cured, are 1. Meer ignorance, 2. Error, thinking truth to be falsehood, and falsehood truth. 3. Unbelief: 4. Disbelief: and 5. Misbelief.

But as the Goodness is of chief regard in the object; so the discerning of the Truth about Good and Evil, is the chiefest office of the understanding. And therefore its Disesteem of God, and Glory, and Grace, and its Misesteem of the fleshly pleasure, and worldly prosperity, wealth and honor, is the principal malady of the mind.

§. 5. 2. The diseases of the Will are in its Inclination and its Acts: 1. An inordinate Inclination to the pleasing of the fleshly appetite and fantasie, and to all Carnal baits and Temporal things, that tend to please it; and inordinate acts of desire accordingly. 2. An irrational backwardness to God, and grace, and spiritual good, and a Refusal or Nolition in act accordingly. These are in the will, 1. Because it is become much subject to the sensitive appetite, and hath debased itself, and contracted by its sinful acts, a sensual inclination, the flesh having the dominion in a corrupted soul. 2. Because the Intellect being also corrupted, oft times mis-leadeth it, by over-valuing transient things. 3. Because the Will is become destitute (in its corrupted state) of the power of Divine Love, or an Inclination to God and holy things, which should countermand the seduction of carnal objects. 4. And the understanding is much destitute of the Light that should lead them higher. 5. Because the rage of the corrupted appetite is still seducing it. Mark therefore for the right understanding of this our greatest malady.

§. 6. 1. That the will never desireth evil as evil, but as a carnal or a seeming good. 2. Nor doth it hate good as good, but as a seeming evil, because God and grace do seem to be his enemies and to hurt him, by hindering him of the good of carnal pleasure which he now preferreth. 3. Nay, at the same time that he loveth evil as it pleaseth the flesh, he hath naturally as a man some averseness to it, so far as he apprehendeth it to be Evil: And when he hateth God and holiness as evil, for hindering him of his carnal pleasure, he naturally loveth them so far as he apprehendeth them to be good. So that there is some love to God and good, and some hatred to evil in the ungodly: For while Man is Man, he will have Naturally an Inclination to good as good, and against evil as evil. 4. But the apprehension of sensitive good is the strongest in him, and the apprehension of spiritual good is weakest; and therefore the will receiving a greater impress from the Carnal Appetite and Mind, than from the weak apprehensions of spiritual good, is more inclined to that which indeed is worst; and so things carnal have got the dominion or chief commanding interest in the soul. 5. Note also, that sin receiveth its formality or moral evil first in the will, and not in the Intellect or sensitive appetite: (For it is not sin, till it be positively or privatively, immediately or mediately voluntary.) But the first motions to sin are not in the will, but in the sensitive appetite; Though there as first it be not formally sin. 6. Note, that neither Intellect, Object, Appetite, or Sense, necessitate naturally the will to sin, but it remaineth the first in the sin and guilt.

§. 7. It is a matter of great difficulty to understand how sin first entered into the innocent soul: And it is of great importance, because an error here is of dangerous consequence. Two sorts seem to me to make God so much the necessitating cause of Adams first sin (and so of all sin) as that it was as naturally impossible for Adam to have forborne it according to their doctrine, as to have conquered God. 1. Those that assert the Dominican immediate Physical pre-determining pre-motion: (which no created power can resist.) 2. And those that say the Will acts as Necessitated by the Intellect in all its Acts (and so is necessitated in all its Omissions ); and that the Intellect is necessitated by Objects (as, no doubt, it is, unless as its acts are sub imperio voluntatis ); and all those objects are caused and disposed of by God. But it is certain that God is not the cause of sin; and therefore this certainty overruleth the case against these Tenets.

§. 8. At present it seemeth to me, that sin entered in this method. 1. Sense perceiveth the forbidden thing: 2. The appetite desireth it: 3. The imagination thinketh on its desirableness yet further. 4. The intellect conceiveth of it (truly) as good, by a simple apprehension. 5. The Will accordingly willeth it by a simple complacency or volition. Thus far there was no sin: But 6. The Will here adhered to it too much, and took in it an excess of Complacency, when it had power to do otherwise: And here sin begun. 7. And so when the Cogitations should have been called off: 8. And the Intellect should have minded God, and his Command, and proceed from a simple apprehension to the comparing Act, and said [The favor of God is better, and his will should rule,] it omitted all these acts, because the will omitted to command them; (yea, and hindered them) 9. And so the intellect was next guilty of a [ non-renuo ] [ I will not forbid or hinder it ] (and the will accordingly). 10. And next of a positive deception, and the will of consent unto the sin, and so it being finished, brought forth death.

If you say, The wills first sinful adhaesion in the sixth instance, could not be, unless the Intellect first directed it so to do; I deny that, because the will is the first principle in men's actions quoad exercitium, though the Intellect be the first as to specification: And therefore the will could suspend its exercise, and its excitation of the mind. In all this I go upon common principles: But I leave it to further enquiry: 1. How far the sensitive appetite may move the Locomotive faculty without the Wills command, while the will doth not forbid? And whether Reason be not given man, as the Rider to the Horse, not to enable him to move, but to Rule his motion: so that as the Horse can go if the Rider hinder not, so the sensitive appetite can cause the actions of eating, drinking, thinking, speaking sensually, if Reason do but drop asleep, or not hinder. 2. And so whether in the first sin, (and ordinarily) the sensitive appetite, fantasie and passion be not the active mover, and the Rational powers first guilty only by omitting their restraining Government, which they were able to have exercised? 3. And so, whether sin be not (ordinarily) a brutish motion, or a voluntary unmanning of ourselves, the Rational powers in the beginning being guilty only of omission or privation of restraint; but afterwards brought over to subserve the sensitive appetite actively? 4. And so whether the will which is the principium actu • quoad exercitium were not the first in the omission? The intellect having before said, [ This must b • further considered ] the will commanded not that further consideration, when it could and should?

However if it be too hard for us to trace our own souls in all their motions, it is certain that the will of Man is the first subject of Moral good and evil: And uncertainties must not make us deny that which is certain.

The Reader who understandeth the importance and consequence of these points, I am sure will pardon me for this interposition of these difficult controverted points, (which I purposely avoid where I judge them not very needful in order to the defense or clearing of the plainer common truths): And as for others I must bear their censure.

§. 9. The Degree of sinfulness in the will lieth in a stiffness, and obstinacy, a tenaciousness, of deceit •••• temporal Good, and an Eagerness after it; and stubborn averseness to spiritual good as it is against that temporal fl • shly good. This is the wills disease.

§. 10. 3. The sinfulness of the memory is in its Retentiveness of Evil, or things hurtful and prohited: and its Looseness and Neglect of better, spiritual, necessary things. If this were only as things present have the natural advantage to make a deeper impress upon the fantasie, and things unseen, and absent have the disadvantage, it were then but a natural innocent infirmity: or if in sickness, age, or weakness, all kind of memory equally decay. But it is plain that if the Bible be open before our eyes, and preaching be in our ears, and things unseen have the advantage of their infinite greatness, and excellency, and concernment to us, yet our Memories are like walls of stone to anything that is spiritual, and like walls of wax, on which you may write anything, of that which is secular or evil. Note here also that the faultiness of the memory is only so far sinful as it is Voluntary: It is the will where the sin is as in its Throne or chiefest subject: Because men Love carnal things, and Love not spiritual things, therefore it is that they mind, and understand, and remember the one, and not the other. So that it is but as Imperate, and Participatively that the memory is capable of sin.

§. 11. 4. The sinfulness of the Imagination consisteth in its readiness to Think of Evil, and of common earthly things, and its unaptness to Think of anything that is Holy and Good: And when we do force ourselves to holy Thoughts, they are disorderly, confused, unskilfully managed, with great averseness: Here also voluntariness is the Life of the sin.

§. 12. 5. The sin of the Affections, or Passions consisteth in this: That they are too easily, and violently moved by the sensitive interest and appetite; and are Habitually prone to such carnal inordinate motions, running before the understanding and will (some of them) and soliciting and urging them to evil; and resisting and disobeying the commands of Reason and the Will: but dull and backward to things spiritually good, and to execute the right dictates of the Mind and Will.

§. 13. 6. The sin of the sensitive appetite consisteth in the inordinate rage or immoderateness to its object, which causeth it to disobey the Commands of Reason, and to become the Great inciter of Rebellion in the soul; violently urging the Mind and Will to consent to its desires. Materially this dependeth much on the temper of the body: but formally this also is so far sinful as (positively or privatively, mediately or immediately) it is voluntary. To have an Appetite simply to the object of Appetite is no sin: But to have a diseased, inordinate, unruly appetite, is a sin: not primarily in itself considered; but as it is voluntary; as it is the Appetite of a Rational free agent, that hath thus disordered the frame of its own Nature.

§. 14. 7. The sin of the exterior parts, tongue, hand, eyes, feet, &c. is only in Act and not in Habit, or at least, the Habits are weak and subject to the will. And it is in the execution of the sinful desires of the flesh, and commands of the will that the fame consisteth. These parts also are not the primary subject of the guilt, but the will that either Positively puts them upon evil, or doth not restrain them when it ought: And so they are guilty but participatively and secondarily as the other imperate faculties are: It is not Good or Evil merely as it is the act of tongue, or hand, but as it is the act of the tongue, or hand of a Rational free agent (agreeable, or disagreeable to the Law). If a mad-man should speak blasphemy, or should kill, or steal, it were no further sin, than as he had Voluntarily contracted the ill disposition which caused it, while he had the use of Reason. If a man's hand were held and forced by another to do mischief utterly against his will, it is the sin of the chief agent, and not of the involuntary instrument. But no force totally excuseth us from Guilt, which leaveth the act to our Rational Choice. He that saith, Take this Oath or I will kill thee or torment thee, doth use force as a Temptation which may be resisted, but doth not constrain a man to swear: For he leaveth it to his Choice whether he will swear, or die, or be tormented: And he may and ought to choose death rather than the smallest sin. The will may be tempted but not constrained.

§. 15. Direct. 2. Labor clearly to understand the evil of sin, both intrinsical in itself, and in its aggravation • and effects. When you have found out where it is, and wherein it doth consist, find out the malignity, and odiousness of it. I have heard some Christians complain, that they read much to show them the evil of sin in its Effects, but meet with few that show them its evil in itself sufficiently: But if you see not the evil of sin in itself as well as in the effects, it will but tempt you to think God unjust in overpunishing it; and it will keep you from the principal part of true Repentance and Mortification; which lieth in hating sin, as sin. I shall therefore show you wherein the intrinsical malignity of sin consisteth.

§. 16. 1. Sin is (formally) the violation of the perfect holy, righteous Law of God.

2. It is a denial or contempt of the Authority, or Governing-power of God: As if we said, Thou shalt not be our Governor in this.

3. It is an usurping the Sovereign Power to ourselves of governing ourselves, in that act: For when we refuse God's Government, we set up ourselves in his stead; and so make God's of ourselves as to ourselves; as if we were self-sufficient, independent, and had Right hereto.

4. It is a denying or contempt of the Wisdom of God, as if he had unwisely made us a Law, which is unmeet to Rule us.

5. It is a setting up of our f • lly in the place of God's Wisdom, and preferring it before him; as if we were wiser to know how to Govern ourselves, and to know what is fittest and best for us now to do, than God is.

6. It is a contempt of the Goodness of God as he is the maker of the Law: As if he had not done that which is Best, but that which may be corrected or contradicted; and there were some Evil in it to be avoided.

7. It is a preferring our Naughtiness before his Goodness, as if we would do it Better, or choose better what to do.

8. It is a contempt or denial of the Holiness and Purity of God, which sets him against sin, as Light is against Darkness.

9. It is a violation of God's Propriety or Dominion, robbing him of the use and service of that which is absolutely and totally his Own.

10. It is a claiming of Propriety in ourselves, as if we were our own, and might do with ourselves as we list.

11. It is a contempt of the gracious Promises of God by which he allured and bound us to obedience.

12. It is a contempt of the dreadful Threatenings of God, by which he would have restrained us from evil.

13. It is a contempt or denial of the dreadful day of Judgment, in which an account must be given of that sin.

14. It is a denying of God's Veracity and giving him the lie; as if he were not to be believed in all his Predictions, Promises and Threats.

15. It is a contempt of all the present Mercies (which are innumerable and great) by which God obligeth and encourageth us to obey.

16. It is a contempt of our own afflictions, and his Chastisements of us, by which he would drive us from our sins.

17. It is a contempt of all the Examples of his Mercies on the obedient, and his terrible judgments on the disobedient, (men and Devils) by which he warned us not to sin.

18. It is a contempt of the person, office, sufferings, and grace of Jesus Christ, who came to save us from our sins, and to destroy the works of the Devil; being contrary to his bloodshed, authority and healing work.

19. It is a contradicting, fighting against, and, in that act prevailing against, the sanctifying office and work of the Holy Ghost, that moveth us against sin, and to obedience.

20. It is a contempt of Holiness, and a defacing (in that measure) the Image of God upon the soul, or a rejecting it: A vilifying of all those Graces which are contrary to the sin.

21. It is a pleasing of the Devil, the enemy of God and us, and an obeying him before God.

22, It is the fault of a Rational Creature, that had Reason given him, to do better.

23. It is all Willingly done and Chosen, by a free-agent that could not be constrained to it.

24. It is a robbing God of the Honor and Pleasure which he should have had in our Obedience; and the Glory which we should bring him before the world.

25. It is a contempt of the omnipresence and omniscience of God; when we will sin against him before his face, when he stands over us, and seeth all that we do.

26. It is a contempt of the Greatness and Almightiness of God, that we dare sin against him, who is so Great and able to be avenged on us.

27. It is a wrong to the Mercifulness of God, when we go out of the way of mercy, and put him to use the way of Justice and severity; who delighteth not in the death of sinners, but rather that they obey, repent and live.

28. It is a contempt of the attractive Love of God, who should be the End, and Felicity, and Pleasure of the soul. As if all that Love and Goodness of God, were not enough to draw or keep the heart to him, and to satisfy us and make us happy; or he were fit to be our full delight. And it showeth the want of Love to God: For if we Loved him rightly we should willingly obey him.

29. It is a setting up the sordid creature, before the Creator, and dung before Heaven, as if it were more worthy of our Love and Choice, and fitter to be our Delight; and the Pleasure of sin were better for us than the Glory of Heaven

30. In all which it appeareth, that it is a practical Atheism, in its degree; A taking down God, or denying him to be God: and a practical Idolatry, setting up ourselves and other creatures in his stead.

31. It is a contempt of all the means of Grace, which are all to bring us to obedience, and keep us or call us from our sins: Prayer, Sacraments &c.

32. It is a contempt of the Love and Labors of the Ministers of Christ; a disobeying them, grieving them, and frustrating their hopes and the labors of their lives.

33. It is a debasing of Reason, the superior faculty of the soul, and a setting up of the flesh or inferior faculties, like setting-dogs to Govern men, or the horse to rule the rider.

34. It is a blinding of reason, and a misusing the noblest faculties of the soul, and frustrating them of the use and ends which they were made for: And so it is the disorder, monstrosity, sickness, or death of the soul.

35. It is (in its measure) the Image of the Devil upon the soul, who is the Father of sin: and therefore the moss odious deformity of the soul: And this where the Holy Ghost should dwell, and the Image and delight of God should be.

36. It is the moral destruction not only of the soul, but of the whole Creation, so far as the Creatures are appointed as the Means to bring or keep us unto God: For the Means, as a Means is destroyed when it is not used to its End: A ship is useless if no one be carried in it: A watch as such is useless, when not used to show the hour of the day. All the world as it is the Book that should teach us the will of God, is cast by, when that use is cast by. Nay sin useth the