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Compassionate Counsel to all Young Men (1681) by Richard Baxter is now located at the following URL:
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COMPASSIONATE COUNSEL to all YOUNG MEN: especially I. LONDON APPRENTICES; II. STUDENTS OF DIVINITY, PHYSIC, AND LAW; III. THE SONS OF MAGISTRATES AND RICH MEN.
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CHAPTER I.
THERE is no man that ever understood the interest of mankind, of families, cities, kingdoms, churches, and of Jesus Christ the King and Saviour, but he must needs know that the right instruction, education, and sanctification of youth, is of unspeakable consequence to them all. In the place where God most blessed my labours, (at Kidderminster, in Worcestershire,) my first and greatest success was upon the youth. And (which was a marvellous way of divine mercy) when God had touched the hearts of young men and girls with a love of goodness, and delightful obedience to the truth, the parents and grandfathers, who had grown old in an ignorant, worldly state, did many of them fall into liking and love of piety, induced by the love of their children, whom they perceived to be made by it much wiser and better, and more dutiful to them. And God, by his unexpected disposing providence, having now twenty years placed me in and near London, where, in variety of places and conditions, (sometimes under restraint by men, and sometimes at more liberty,) I have preached but as to strangers, in other men's pulpits as I could, and not to any special flock of mine, I have been less capable of judging of my success: but by much experience I have been made more sensible of the necessity of warning and instructing youth than I was before. The sad reports of fame have taught it me: the sad complaints of mournful parents have taught it me: the sad observation of the wilful impenitence of some of my acquaintance tells it me: the many score (if not hundred) bills that have been publicly put up to me to pray for wicked and obstinate children, have told it me: and, by the grace of God, the penitent confessions, lamentations, and restitutions of many converts have more particularly acquainted me with their case. Which moved me on my Thursday's lecture awhile to design, the first of every month, to speak to youth and those that educate them.
And though I have already loaded the world with books, finding that God seems to be about ending my life and labours, I am urged in my mind by the greatness of the case to add yet this epistle to the younger sort. Which shall contain, I. The great importance of the case of youth. II. How it stands with them in matter of fact. III. What are the causes of their sin and dangerous degeneracy. IV. How great a blessing wise and godly youth are to themselves and others. V. How great a plague and calamity the ungodly are. VI. What great reason ungodly, sensual youth have, presently to repent and turn to God. VII. Directions to them how to do it. VIII. And some directions to parents about their education. And all must be with the brevity of an epistle.
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CHAPTER II.
TO BEGIN BETIMES TO LIVE TO GOD, IS OF UNSPEAKABLE IMPORTANCE TO YOURSELVES.
FOR, 1. You were betimes solemnly dedicated to God, as your God, your Father, your Saviour, and your Sanctifier, by your baptismal vow. And as that was a great mercy, it obliged you to great duty: you were capable in infancy of that holy dedication and relation; and your parents were presently obliged, as to dedicate you to God, so to educate you for God: and as soon as you are capable of performance, the vow is upon yourselves to do it. If your childhood is not presently obliged to holiness, according to your natural capacity, no doubt your vow and baptism should have been also delayed. Little think many that talk against anabaptists, how they condemn themselves by the sacred name of christians, while they by perfidious sacrilege deny God that which they vowed to him.
2. All your time and life is given you by God, for one end and use; and all is little enough; and will you alienate the very beginning, and be rebels so soon?
3. The youngest have not assurance of life for a day, or an hour. Thousand go out of the world in youth. Alas, the flesh of young men is corruptible, liable to hundreds of diseases, as well as the old. How quickly may a vein break, and cold seize on your head and lungs, and turn to an uncurable consumption! How quickly may a fever, a pleurisy, an imposthume, or one of a thousand accidents, turn your bodies to corruption! And oh that I knew how to make you sensible how dreadful a thing it is to die in an unholy state, and in the guilt of any unpardoned sin! An unsanctified soul, that hath lived here but to the flesh and the world, will be but fuel for the fire of hell, and the wrathful justice of the most holy God. And though in the course of undisturbed nature, young men may live longer than the old, yet nature hath so many disturbance and crosses, that our lives are still like a candle in a broken lantern, which a blast of wind may soon blow out. To tell you that you are not certain in an unsanctified state to be one day or hour more out of hell, I expect, will not move you so much as the weight of the case deserveth, because mere possibility of the greatest hurt doth not affect men when they think there is no probability of it. You have long been well, and long you hope to be so: but did you think how many hundred veins, arteries, nerves, must be kept constantly in order, and all the blood and humours in due temper; and how the stopping of one vein, or distemper of the blood, may quickly end you; it would rather teach you to admire the merciful providence of God, that such a body should be kept alive one year.
4. But were you sure to live to maturity of age, alas, how quickly will it come! What haste makes time! How fast do days and years roll on! Methinks it is but as a few days, since I was playing with my school fellows, who now am in the sixty-sixth year of my age: had I no service done for God that I could now look back upon, I should seem as if I had not lived. A thousand years, and one hour, are all one (that is, nothing) when they are past. And every year, day, and hour of your lives, hath its proper work; and how will you answer for it? Every day offereth you more and more mercies; and will you despise and lose them? If you were heirs to land, or had an annuity, which amounted but to a hundred pounds a year, and you were every day to receive a proportionable part of it, or lose it; would you lose it through neglect, and say, I will begin to receive it when I am old? Poor labourers will work hard all the day, that at night they may have their wages: and will you contemptuously lose your every day's mercies, your safety, your communion with God, your daily blessings and his grace, which you should daily beg and may daily receive?
5. Either you will repent and live to God, or not; if not, you are undone for ever. Oh how much less miserable is a dog, or a toad, than such a sinner! But if God will show you so great mercy, oh how will it grieve you to think of the precious time of youth which you madly cast away in sin! Then you will think, Oh what knowledge, what holiness might I then have gotten! What a comfortable life might I have lived! Oh what days and years of mercy did I cast away for nothing! Yea, when God hath given you the pardon of your sin, the task of his love, and the hopes of heaven, it will wound your hearts to think that you should so long, so unthankfully, so heinously offend so good a God, and neglect so merciful a Saviour, and trample upon infinite divine love, for the love of so base a fleshly pleasure,-that ever you should be so bad, as to find more pleasure in sinning than in living unto God.
6. And be it known to you, if God in mercy convert and save you, yet the bitter fruit of your youthful folly may follow you in this world to the grave. God may forgive the pains of hell to a penitent sinner, and not forgive the temporal chastisement to his flesh. If you waste your estate in youth, you may be poor at age. If you marry a wicked wife, you may feel it till death, notwithstanding your repentance. If by drinking, gluttony, idleness, or filthy lust, you contract any uncurable diseases in youth, repentance may not cure them till death. All this might easily have been prevented, if you had but had foreseeing wisdom. Beggary, prisons, shame, consumptions, dropsies, stone, gout, pox, which make the lives of many miserable, are usually caused by youthful sins.
7. If ever you think to be men of any great wisdom, and usefulness in the world to yourselves or others, your preparations must be made in youth. Great wisdom is not got in a little time. Who ever was an able lawyer, physician, or philosopher, without long and hard study? If you will not learn in the grammar-schools in your childhood, you will be unfit for the university at riper age; and if, when you should be doctors, you are to learn to spell and read, your shame will tell you that you should have sooner begun. Oh that you well knew how much of the safety, fruitfulness, and comfort of all your afterlife, dependeth on the preparations of your youth, on the wisdom and the grace which you should then obtain! as men's after-trading doth on their apprenticeship.
8. And oh what a dreadful danger is it, lest your youthful sin become remediless, and custom harden you, and deceivers blind you, and God forsake you for your wilful resistance of his grace! God may convert old hardened sinners: but how ordinarily do we find, that age doth but answer the preparations of youth, and the vessel ever after savoureth of the liquor which first thoroughly tainted it! And men are but such as they learned to be and do at first. If you will be perfidious breakers of your baptismal vows, it is just with God to leave you to yourselves, to a deluded understanding, to think evil good, and good evil, to a seared conscience, and a hardened heart, and, as "past feeling, to work uncleanness with greediness," Eph. iv. 19; and to fight against grace and your own salvation, till death and hell convince you of your madness. O sport not with the justice of a sin-hating God! Play not with sin, and with the unquenchable fire! Forsaking God, is the way to be forsaken of him. And what is a forsaken soul, but a miserable slave of Satan?
9. Yea, did you but know of what moment it is to prevent all the heinous sins that else you will commit, you would make haste to repent, though you were sure to be forgiven. Forgiveness maketh not sin to be no sin, or to be no evil, no shame or grief to the soul that hath committed it. You will cry out, Oh that I had never known it! To look back on such an ill-spent life, will be no pleasant thought. Repentance, though a healing work, is bitter; yea, oftentimes exceedingly bitter: make not work for it, if you love your peace.
10. And is it a small thing to you, that you are all this while doing hurt to others, and drawing them to sin, and plunging them into that dangerous guilt which can no way be pardoned but by the blood of Christ, upon true conversion. And when they have joined with you in lust and fleshly pleasure, it is not in your power to turn them, that they may join with you in sound repentance; and if not, they must lie in hell for ever. And can you make a sport of your own and other men's damnation?
But this leadeth me to the second point. I have showed you of what vast concernment it is to yourselves to begin betimes a holy life. I will next show you of what concernment it is to others.
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CHAPTER III.
OF WHAT PUBLIC CONCERNMENT THE QUALITY OF YOUTH IS.
SECT. 1. The welfare of the world is of far greater worth than of any one single person; and he hath put off humanity who doth not more earnestly desire it. If this world consisted but of one generation, then to make that generation wise and good would be enough to make it a happy world. But it is not so. In heaven, and in the future glorious kingdom, "there is neither marrying, nor giving in marriage, but they are as the angels," in a fixed everlasting state, and one continued generation maketh up the new Jerusalem: being once holy and happy, they are so for ever. But here it is not so: one generation cometh, and another goeth: if the father be as wise as Solomon, the son may be as foolish as Rehoboam. Oh what a great work it is to make a man truly wise and good! How many years' study doth it usually require! What wisdom and diligence in teachers! What teachableness and diligence in learners; and especially the grace of God! And when all is done, the man quickly dieth, and obtaineth his ends in another world. But his children are born as ignorant, and perhaps as bad, as he was born: he can neither leave them his knowledge, nor his grace. They must have all the same teaching, and labour, and blessing as he had, to bring them to the same attainments. The mercy and covenant of God taketh them into his church, where they have great advantages and helps; and promiseth them more mercy for their relation to a faithful parent, if he or they do make no forfeiture of it. But as their nature is the same with others, so their actual wisdom must come by God's blessing on the use of the same means, which are necessary to the children of the worst men. A christian's child is born with no more knowledge than a heathen's, and must have as much labour and study to make him wise.
Sect. 2. It is certain then, that the welfare of this world lieth on a good succession of the several generations; and that all the endeavours of one generation, with God's greatest blessing on them, will not serve for the ages following. All must begin anew, and be done over again, or all will be as undone to the next age. And it is not the least blessing on the faithful, that their faith and godliness dispose them to have a care of posterity, and to devote their children wholly to God, as well as themselves, and to educate them in his fear. If nature had not taught birds and beasts to feed their young, as well as to generate them, their kind would be soon extinct. Oh what a blessed world were it, if the blessings of men famous for wisdom and godliness were entailed on all that should spring from them! and if this were the common case!
Sect. 3. But the doleful miseries of the world have come from the degenerating of good men's posterity. Adam hath his Cain, and Noah his Ham, and David his Absalom; Solomon, Hezekiah, and Josiah, left not their like behind them. The present state of the Eastern churches is a dreadful instance. What places on earth were more honourable for faith and piety than Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, Constantinople, Ephesus, Philadelphia, and the rest of those great and noble countries? and these also strengthened with the powerfullest christian empire that ever was on earth. And now they are places of barbarism, tyranny, and foolish Mahometanism, where the name of Christ is made a scorn, and the few christians that keep up that sacred profession, by tyranny kept in so great ignorance, that, alas! the vices of most of them dishonour their profession, as much as their enemies' persecutions do. Oh what a doleful difference is there between that great part of the world now, and what it was fourteen hundred or a thousand years ago!
And alas! were it not for the name of a pompous christian church, how plain an instance would Rome be of the same degeneracy! And some countries that received the blessing of reformation, have revolted into the darkness of popery. What a change was in England by Queen Mary's reign! And how many particular cities and towns are grown ignorant and malignant, which in former times were famous for religion! The Lord grant it may never be the case of London! Yea, how many persons of honourable and great families have so far degenerated from the famous wisdom and piety of their grandfathers yea, and fathers, as to hate that which their parents loved, and persecute those whom their ancestors honoured! The names of many great men stand honoured in history for their holiness to God, and their service to their several countries, whose posterity are the men that we are most in danger of. Alas! in how few such houses hath piety kept any long succession! Yea, some take their fathers' virtues to be so much their dishonour, that they turn malignant persecutors, to free themselves from the supposed reproach of their relations. Yea, some preachers of the gospel, devoted to God by pious parents, become revilers of their own parents, and despisers of their piety, as the effect of factious ignorance.
Sect. 4. And on the other side, when piety hath successively, as a river, kept its course, what a blessing hath it proved! (But how rare is that!) And when children have proved better than their parents, it hath been the beginning of welfare to the places where they lived. How mavellously did the Reformation prevail in Germany in Luther's time, when God brought out of popish monasteries many excellent instruments of his service; and princes became wise and pious, whose parents had been blind or impious! Godliness or wickedness, welfare or calamity, follow the changes and quality of posterity.
And men live so short a time, that the work of educating youth aright is one half of the great business of man's life. He that hath a plantation of oaks, may work for twenty generations: but he that planteth gardens and orchards with plants that live but a little time, must be still planting, watering, and defending them.
Sect. 5. Among the ancient sages of the world the Greeks and Romans, and much more among the Israelites, the care of posterity and public welfare was the great thing which differenced the virtuous and laudable, from those of a base, selfish, sensual disposition. He was the bravest citizen of Rome that did most love and best serve his country. And he was the saint among the Jews who most loved Sion, and the security and succession of its holy and peaceable posterity. And the christian faith, hope, and interest, do lead us herein to a much higher pitch, and to a greater zeal for public good, in following HIM that whipped out profaners from the temple,-Äeven a zeal of God's house which eateth us up. It teacheth us, by the cross, most effectually to deny ourselves, and to think nothing too dear to part with to edify the church of God; nor any labour or suffering too great for common good. It teacheth us to pray for the hallowing of God's name, the coming of his kingdom, and the doing of his will on earth, as it is done in heaven, before our daily bread, and any other personal interest of our own. Therefore the families of christians should be as so many schools or churches, to train up a succession of persons meet for the great communicative works to which God calleth all believers, in their several measures: it is eminently teachers, but it is also all others in their several ranks, who must be "the salt of the earth, and the lights of the world." And indeed the spirit of holiness is so eminently the spirit of love to God and man, that it inclineth every sanctified person to a communicative zeal, to make others wise, and good, and happy.
Sect. 6. And God in great mercy hath planted, yet more deeply and fixedly, the natural love of parents to their children, that it might be in them a spring of all this duty; so that though fleshly vice may make men mistake their children's good, as most ungodly men do their own, and think that it consisteth in that in which it doth not; yet still the general desire of their children's welfare, as well as of their own is deeply rooted, and will work for their welfare, as soon as they well know wherein it doth consist. And God hath not given them this love, only for the good of the individual children, but much more for the commonwealth and church; that as many sticks make one fire, and many exercised soldiers one army, so many well-educated children may make up one peaceable and holy society.
Sect. 7. And accordingly it is much to be observed, that God hath not given children a natural love and submissiveness to parents, only for the personal benefit of their provision, and other helps; but especially that hereby they may be teachable and obedient to those instructions of their parents by which they may become blessings in their generations, and may conjunctly make up wise and holy societies, families, churches, and commonwealths. For these ends it is, that God hath bound you, as to reverence your masters, tutors, and pastors, so especially both to reverence and love your parents, that you may be the more capable of their necessary instruction and advice.
Sect. 8. Yea, the great strictness of God, in condemning polygamy, adultery, and fornication, seemeth to be especially for the securing of the good education of children, for their souls and for the public good. For it is notorious, that confusion in marriages and generation would many ways tend to the depraving of human education, while mothers had not the necessary encouragement to perform their part. The younger women would be awhile esteemed, and afterwards be cast off and made most miserable; and families be like wandering beggars, or like exposed orphans; disorder and confusion would deprive children of much of their necessary helps, and barbarousness and brutishness corrupt mankind.
By all this it is most evident, that the great means of the welfare of the world must be the faithful and holy endeavours of parents, and the willing teachableness and obedience of children, that they may escape the snares of folly and fleshly lusts, and may betimes get that wisdom and love of goodness which may make them fit to be blessings to the places where they live.
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CHAPTER IV.
HOW THE CASE STANDETH WITH OUR YOUTH IN MATTER OF FACT.
SECT. 1. Through the great mercy of God, many families are sacred nurseries for church and kingdom; and many parents have great comfort in the grace of God appearing in their children. From their early childhood many are of humble, obedient dispositions, and have a love to knowledge, and a love to the word of God, and to those that are good and virtuous persons. They have inward convictions of the evil of sin, and a fear of sinning, and a great dislike of wicked persons, and a great love and reverend obedience to their parents; and when they grow up, they diligently learn in private and in public: they increase in their love to the Scriptures and good books, and to godly teachers and godly company; and God saveth them from temptations, and worldly deceits, and fleshly lusts; and they live to God, and are blessings to the land, the joy of their friends, and exemplary and useful to those whom they converse with.
Sect. 2. But all, even religious parents, have not the like blessing in their children. 1. Some of them, though religious otherwise, are lamentably careless of the duty which they promised to perform (at baptism) in the education of their children, and do but superficially and formally instruct them; and are too faulty as to the example which they should give them, and seem to think that God must bless them because they are theirs, and because they are baptized, while they neglect their promised endeavours. 2. And some children when they grow up, and are bound to resist temptations, and to use God's appointed means for their own good, do wilfully resist God's grace, and run into temptations, and neglect and wretchedly betray themselves, and forfeit the mercies which they needed.
Sect. 3. In all my observation, God hath most blessed the children of those parents who have educated them as followeth: 1. Those that have been particularly sensible what they promised for them in the baptismal vow, and made conscience of performing it. 2. Those that have had more care for their souls than of their outward wealth. 3. Those that have been most careful to teach them the depravity of corrupted nature by original sin, and to humble them, and teach them the need of a Saviour, and his renewing as well as pardoning grace, and to tell them the work of the Spirit of sanctification, and teach them above all to look to the inward state of their souls. 4. Those that have most seriously minded them of death, judgment, and the life to come. 5. Those that have always spoken of God with the greatest reverence, affection, and delight. 6. Those that have most wisely laboured to make all the knowledge and practice of religion pleasant unto them, by the suitableness of doctrines and duties to their capacity. 7. Those that have most disgraced sin to them, especially base and fleshly pleasures. 8. Those that have kept them from the baits of sensuality, not gratifying their appetites in meats and drink, to bring them to an unruly habit; but used them to a habit of temperance, and neglect of appetite. 9. Those that have most disgraced worldliness and pride to them, and used them to low things in apparel and possession, and told them how the proud are hateful to God, and set before them the example of a crucified Christ, and opened to them the doctrine of mortification, and self-denial, and the great necessity of true humility. 10. Those that have been most watchful to know their children's particular inclinations and temptations, and apply answerable remedies, and not carelessly leave them to themselves. 11. Those that have been most careful to keep them from ill company, especially, (1.) Of wicked youths, of their own growth and neighbourhood; (2) And of tempting women. 12. Those that have most wisely used them to the meetest public teachers, and helped them to remember and understand what they hear, especially the fundamental truths in the catechism. 13. Those that have most wisely engaged them into the familiarity and frequent converse of some suitable, godly, exemplary companions. 14. Those that have most conscionably spent the Lord's day in public and in their families. 15. Those that have done all this, as with reverend gravity, so especially with tender endearing love to their children; convincing them that it is all done for their own good; and that do not by imprudent weaknesses, ignorance, passions, or scandal, frustrate their own endeavours. 16. Those that use not their children as mere patients, only to hear what their parents say; but engage them to constant endeavours of their own, for their own good; especially in the reading of Scripture, and the most suitable books, and meditating on them, and daily personal prayer to God. 17. Lastly, those that pray most heartily and believingly for God's grace and his blessing on their endeavours.ÄSuch men's children are usually blessed.
Sect. 4. But it is no wonder, where such means are neglected, (much more when parents are ungodly, fleshly, worldly persons, and perhaps enemies to a holy life,) if the children of such are ignorant, deluded, ungodly, and drowned in fleshly lust. And alas! it is the multitude of such, and their sad conditions, which is the occasion of my writing this epistle.
Sect. 5. 1. We see to our grief, that many children are of a stupid and unteachable disposition, and almost incapable of instruction, who yet can as quickly learn to talk of common matters as other persons, and can as easily learn a trade, or how to do any ordinary business. And though some inconsiderate persons overlook the causality of the more immediate parents' sins, in such judgments on their children, as if it were only Adam's sin that hurt them, I have elsewhere proved, that this is their great and dangerous mistake. As David's child died for the father's sin, the children of gluttons, drunkards, fornicators, oft contract such bodily distempers as greatly tend to stupify or further vitiate the mind. And their souls may have sad additions to the common human pravity.
2. Accordingly many children have more violent passions, and carnal desires, than others, which run them into wicked ways impetuously, as if they were almost brutes, that had no reason or power to resist. And all words and corrections are to them of little force; but they are as blocks, that, when you have said and done what you can, go away as if they had not heard you.
3. And some have cross and crooked natures, addicted to that which is naught, and the more, by how much the more you do contradict them: froward and obstinate, as if it were a desirable victory to them to overcome their parents, and escape all that would make them wise and good: dogged, sour, proud, self-willed, and utterly disobedient.
4. And too many have so great an enmity and averseness to all that is holy, spiritual, and heavenly, that they are weary to hear you talk of it; and you persuade them to learn, to read, to pray, to meditate or consider, as you persuade a sick man to meat which he doth loathe, or a man to dwell with those that he hateth. They have no appetite to such things, no pleasure in them; when you have said all of God, and Christ, and glory, they believe it not, or they savour it not: they are things above their reach and love, yea, things against their carnal minds. You tire them worse than if you talked in a strange language to them,-such enmity is in the heart of corrupted man to God and heaven, till the grace of the Great Reconciler overcome it by a new life, and light, and love.
5. And when custom is added to all these vicious dispositions, alas, what slaves and drudges of Satan doth it make them! For instance,
(1.) Some are so corrupted with the love of sport, that gaming or stage-plays, or one such foolery or another, becometh so pleasant to them, that they can understand or believe nothing that is said against it by God or man; their diseased fantasy hath so conquered reason, that they cannot restrain themselves; but in their callings and in religious exercises they are weary, and long to be at their sports, and must be gone: neither God, nor holiness, nor the joys of heaven are half so sweet to their thoughts as these are. For they have that mark of misery, (2 Tim. iii. 4,) "They are lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God."
The same I say of sinful mirth, and the company which doth cherish it. Little do they believe Solomon: Eccl. vii. 2-4, "lt is better to go to the house of mourning, than to go to the house of feasting: for that is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to his heart. Sorrow is better than laughter: for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better. The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning, but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth. It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise, than for a man to hear the song of fools: for as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of fools."
It is true, that mirth is very desirable to nature; and God is not against it, but much more for it than sinners will believe. But it is a rational mirth which beseemeth a rational creature, and such as he can justify, and as will make him better, and tends to felicity and everlasting mirth; and not the causeless mirth of mad-men, who set their house on fire, and then laugh and sing over it; nor like the mirth of a drunken man, whose shame exposeth him to pity or derision; nor any such mirth as leadeth a man from God to sin, and keepeth him from the way of manlike and everlasting joy, and prepareth for the greatest sorrows.
(2.) There are some so enslaved to their appetites, that their reason hath no power to rule them; but, like brutes, they must needs have what the belly and throat desire. And if they be the children of the rich, (who have always full and pleasant food,) constant flesh-pleasing and true gluttony is taken for no sin: and, like swine, they do but live to eat, whereas they should but eat to live, and cheerfully serve God.
But it is never so dangerous as when it turneth to the love of drink. Then the pleasing of the throat, and the pleasing of the brain by mirth, going together, do so much corrupt the appetite and fancy, that their thoughts run after it, and reason hath no power to shut their mouths, nor keep them from the house of sin. Some sin against an accusing conscience, and under their convictions and terrors do drink on; which yet they could forbear, if they knew there were poison in the cup. Some are more miserable, and have sinned themselves into searedness of conscience and past feeling, and perhaps into infidelity and a blinded mind, persuading them that there is no great harm or danger in the sin, and that it is but some precise people that make so great a matter of it. And some, that have purposes to forsake the sin when appetite stirs, forget it all; and when company enticeth, and when they see the cup, they have no power to forbear. Oh what a pitiful sight it is to see men in the flower of youth and strength, when they should most rejoice in God and holiness, to be still thirsty after a forbidden pleasure, and hasting to the tavern or ale-house, as a bird to the snare of the fowler, and sweetly and greedily swallowing the poisonous cup which God forbiddeth! And that false repentance which conscience and experience force them to sometimes, is forgotten the next day when the temptation is renewed: yea, the throat madness, and the merry and belly devils are within them a continual temptation, which the miserable slaves cannot resist.
(3.) And these beastly, fleshly sins do usually make them weary of their callings, and of any honest labour: the devil hath by this time got possession of their thoughts, by the bias of delight and sinful lust; and they are thinking of meat or drink, or play, or merry company, when they should be diligent at work: and so idleness becomes the nursery of temptation, and of all their other vice, as well as a constant sin of omission and loss of hasty, precious time. And custom increaseth the habits, and maketh them good for nothing, and like dead men to all that life is given them for, and only alive to prepare by sin for endless misery.
(4.) And usually pride also takes its part, to make the sin of Sodom in them complete: Ezek. xvi. 49, "Pride, fulness, and idleness." They that must be in their jovial company, must not seem despicable among them, but must be in the mode and fashion whatever it cost. When they make themselves odious in the sight of God, and the pity of all wise men, and a terror to themselves, yet they must be somebody to their sottish companions, especially of the female sex; lest the image of the devil, and his victory over them, should not be perfect, if pride were left out, how unreasonable soever.
(5.) And by this time they have (usually here amongst the rich and idle) a further step towards hell to go, and yet a deep gulf to fall into; fleshly lust next entangleth them in immodest converse with women, and thence into filthy fornication. The devil will seldom lose a soul for want of a temptation: either he will provide them one abroad, among their lewd companions, or at home some daughter or servant of the house, where they can oft get opportunity, first for uncivil sights and touches, and then for actual fornication. And if they have done it once, they are usually like the bird that is fast in the lime-twigs: conscience may struggle, but lust holds them fast, and the devil saith, If once may be pardoned, why not twice, and if twice, why not thrice? "And so they go on as an ox to the slaughter, and as a fool to the correction of the stocks, and knows not that it is for their lives," Prov. vii. 21-23. "Till they mourn at last (perhaps) when flesh and body are consumed, and say, How have I hated instruction, and my heart despised reproof, and have not obeyed the voice of my teachers, nor inclined my ears to them that instructed me! I was almost in all evil," &c. Prov. v. 12-14. And it is well for the wretches if this repentance be true and in time, that though the flesh be destroyed, the spirit may be saved: for Solomon saith, Prov. ii. 18, 19, "Her house inclineth to death, and her paths to the dead: none that go unto her return again, neither take they hold of the path of life."
God, I doubt not, recovereth come, but the case is dangerous. For though age and sickness cure lust, usually before that the conscience is seared and debauched, and "they being past feeling, work uncleanness with greediness;" and, forsaking God, are so forsaken by him that all other sin, sensuality and enmity against a holy life, prevail against them, and the unclean devil lets in many more. Most debauched drunkards, gluttons, and fornicators, are so enslaved to Satan, that they think, say, and do what he would have them, and become the enemies and persecutors of those that are against their sin; and the blinded Sodomites go on to grope for the door of Lot, as one that reproveth them, till the flames of justice stop the rage.
(6.) And when all these sins have enslaved sensual youths, they must have money to maintain them; and if they have it not of their own, and be not the sons of great men, who will maintain them in the service of the flesh, they must steal to get it, which usually is either by thievish borrowing when they cannot pay, or by robbing their parents or masters. If all the masters in London knew what thieves their apprentices' vices are, for their own sakes they would take greater care to watch over them, and keep them from ill company, drunkenness, and plays, and would teach them to seek pleasure in good books, good company, and serving God. I had not known it myself if the confessions and restitution of many penitent converts had not made me know it. I thank God that he recovereth any, yea, so many; but I must tell foolish youth, that repentance itself, especially when it must have restitution, is so bitter, that they would prevent that need of it, if they had but the use of reason and foresight. Oh what heart-tearing confessions and sad letters have I had from many young apprentices in this city! Much ado to escape utter despair they had, when conscience was awakened to remember all their sin and danger! And when they knew that they must return (if possible) all that ever they deceived or robbed their masters or any others of, oh what difficulties hath it put them to, both as to the shame of confession and the actual restitution! Some have not money; and to go and confess the sin and debt, and to promise to pay it if ever they were able, seemeth hard, but must be done. Some have rough masters, that will disgrace them when they confess it. Some have parents that paid dear to set them apprentices, and would go near to cast them off if they knew their case. Some marry after, and it will grieve their wives to know what they have been, and how much they must restore. Wisdom might have prevented this; but if the thorn be got into the conscience it will come out, and if the poison be swallowed it must come up, what gripes soever the vomit cost. There is no playing with hell-fire, nor jesting with the justice of the most holy God. One penitent review of fleshly lust and sinful pleasure, of falsehood and deceit (though wholesome, if true and timely,) will turn it all into gall and wormwood: for the end of sinful mirth is sorrow.
(7.) And too many there be who escape the gross and disgraceful part of the aforesaid sensuality and unrighteousness, that yet do but choose another idol, and set themselves wholly to rise in the world; and riches, preferment, and honour have almost all their hearts and care: that have no delight in God and holiness; nor doth the state of their souls, or the thought of their everlasting state, affect them in any measure according to its unspeakable weight, nor so much as these shadows which they pursue. And when great travellers that have seen much of the world, and old men and dying men that have had all that it can do, are forced by experience to call all vanity and vexation, unexperienced youth that are taken up with the hopes of long prosperity, and provision for all that the flesh desireth, have other thought of it, and will not know that it is deceitful vanity till it hath deceived them of their chiefest hope and treasure. And when they have overtaken the shadow which they pursue so greedily, they find it (what others have done before them) the sweeter the more dangerous, and the parting will be the more bitter. Whereas had they sought first God's kingdom and its righteousness, and six days laboured in obedience to God, and referred all corporal blessings to spiritual uses and everlasting ends, taking them as from God to serve him by them, they might have had enough as an overplus to their satisfying treasure.
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CHAPTER V.
HOW SAD A CASE IT IS THAT I HAVE DESCRIBED.
I have told you the very lamentable case of too many young men, especially rich men's sons, and apprentices in this city: I told you before of what concern the state of youth is to themselves and others. From thence (and, alas! from sad experience) it is easy to gather the dolefulness of the case of those that are drowned in fleshly lust, and have sinned themselves into the guilt and danger which I have described. But I will name some parts of the misery more particularly again.
Review the second chapter, and think what a doleful case this is to yourselves.
Sect. 1. Do you not know that you are not beasts, but men who have reason given them to know, and love, and serve their Maker? And how sad is it to see a man forget all this, and wilfully brutify himself! Were the poets' fictions true of men turned into trees, and birds, and beasts, how small were the misery in comparison of yours! It is no sin in brutes to lust, or to eat and drink too much. They have not reason to restrain and rule them; but lest they should kill themselves by excess, God hath made reasonable man their governor, and moderateth their appetite in the temper of their natures. But for a reasonable creature to subject himself to fleshly appetite, and wilfully degrade his soul to the rank or brutes, is worse than if he had been made with the body and the unreasonableness of brutes. Are you capable of no better things than these?
Sect. 2. And what an odious thing is it,-when God hath chosen you out of the world to be members of his visible church, and given you the great privilege of early entrance into his holy covenant, and washed you in the laver of visible regeneration, and you are vowed to Christ, renouncing the lusts of the flesh, of the world, and the devil, that you might follow a crucified Christ in the way of holiness to everlasting life,-that you should so soon prove false, perfidious traitors and rebels against him that is your only hope, and, by wickedness and covenant-breaking, make your sin greater than that of infidels, Turks, and heathens, who never were taken into the church and covenant of Christ, nor ever broke the vows which you have broken, nor so cast away the mercies which you had received!
Sect. 3. And what a doleful case is it, that so much of your minds, and love, and delight, which were all made for God, should be so misemployed, even in your strength, when they should be most vigorous; and all worse than cast away on filth and folly! If your souls be more worth than your money, it is more folly and lose to misemploy and abuse your souls, your reason, love, and your delight, than to abuse or cast away your money. And what a traitor or murderer deserveth, that would give his money to hire one to kill the king, or his neighbour, I suppose you know; and what deserveth he that will use, not only his money, but himself, his soul, his thoughts, his love, his desire and pleasure, against the most glorious God that made him? That you cannot hurt him is no thanks to you while you break his laws, and deny him your love and duty, and love more that one thing which only he hateth, and will never be reconciled to.
Sect. 4. And how doleful a case is it that all the care, and love, and labour of your parents, masters, and teachers should be lost upon you! God hath made all this their great duty for your good; and will you despise God and them, and wilfully for nothing reject it all? Shall all the pain of a child-bearing mother, and all her trouble and labour to breed you up, and all the care of your parents to provide for you, be but to breed up a slave for the flesh, the world, and the devil, and a firebrand for hell? Shall godly parents' prayers for you, and teaching and counsel of you, and all their desire and care for your salvation, be despised by you, and all forgotten and cast away for a swinish lust?
Sect. 5. And how doleful a case is it, that so much of so short a life should be lost, and a thousand times worse than lost,-even turned into sin to prepare for misery, when, alas! the longest life is little enough for our important work, and quickly gone, and the reckoning and Judge are hard at hand! All the wealth, wit, or power in the world, cannot bring or buy you back one hour of all that precious time which you now so basely cast away. Oh how glad would you be of a little of it, ere long, on the terms that now you have it, when you lie dying, and perceive that your souls are unready to appear before a righteous God! Then oh for one year more of precious time! oh that you knew how to call again that time which you cast away on sin! You will then perceive with a terrified conscience, that time was not so little worth as you once thought it, nor given you for so base a work. Yea, if God in mercy bring you hereafter to true conversion, oh how it will wound your hearts to think how much of your youth was so madly cast away, while your God, your souls, and everlasting hopes, were all neglected and despised!
Sect. 6. And, alas, if you should be cut off in that unholy, miserable state, no heart on earth can sufficiently bewail your case! How many thousands die young, that promised themselves longer pleasure in sin, and repentance after it! O foolish sinners! cannot you so long borrow the use of your reason, as to think seriously whither you must go next? Do you never think when the small-pox or a fever hath taken away one of your companions, whither it is that his soul is gone? Have you your wit for nothing but to taste the sweetness of drink or lust, which is as pleasant to a dog or swine as to you? O, little do you know what it is to die! what it is for a soul to leave the body, and enter into an endless world, to come to judgment for all his sins, and all his ill-spent days and hours, and for choosing the pleasures of a swine before heaven and the pleasures of a saint! Little know you what it is for devils presently to take away to hell a wretched soul which they have long deceived! I tell you, the thought of appearing before God, and Christ, and angels in another world, and entering on an endless state, is so dreadful, even to many that have spent their lives in holy preparation, and are indeed in a safe condition, that they have much ado to overcome the terror of death. Even some of God's own faithful servants are almost overwhelmed, when they think of so great a change: and though the belief of God's love and the heavenly glory do support them, and should make them long to be with Christ, yet, alas! faith is weak, and the change is great beyond our comprehension, and therefore feared. Oh then in what case is a wicked, unpardoned, unprepared wretch, when his guilty soul must be torn from his body, and dragged in terror to hear its doom, and so to the dreadful execution! Sinners! is this a light matter to you? Doth it not concern you? Are you not here mortal? Do you not know what flesh is, and what a grave is? And are not your abused souls immortal? Are you so mad as to forget this, or so bad as not to believe it? Will your not believing it, make void the justice and the law of God, and save you from that hell which only believing could have saved you from? Will not the fire burn you, or the sea drown you, if you can but run into it drunk or winking? Is feeling, remediless feeling, easier than believing God in time? Alas! what should your believing friends do to save you? They see by faith whither you are posting. They foresee your terror and undone case; and fain, if possible, they would prevent it: but they cannot do it without you. If you will not consent and help yourselves, it is not the holiest nor wisest friends in the world that can help you. They would pull you out of the fire in fear, and out of the mouth of the roaring lion, but you will not be delivered! They call and cry to you, O fear God, and turn to him while there is hope; and you will not let conscience and reason be awakened. But those that go asleep to hell, will be past sleeping there for ever. O run not madly into the everlasting fire!
Sect. 7. And indeed your sleepy security and presumption do make your case more dangerous in itself, and more pitiful to all that know it. Oh what a sight is it to see a man go merry and laughing towards damnation, and make a jest of his own undoing! to see him at the brink of hell, and will not believe it! like a mad-man boasting of his wit, or a drunken man of his sobriety; or as the swine is delighted, when the butcher is shaving his throat to cut it; or as the fatted lambs are skipping in the pasture, that tomorrow must be killed and eaten; or as the bird sits singing when the gun is levelled to kill him; or as the greedy fish run striving which shall catch the bait, that must presently be snatched out of her element, and lie dying on the bank.
But because I touched much of this in the second chapter, I will pass by the rest of your own concerns, and a little further consider how sad the case of such wretched youths is also unto others.
Sect. 8. And if parents be wise and godly, and understand such children's case, what a grief must it needs be to their hearts to think that they have begotten and bred up a child for sin and hell, and cannot make him willing to prevent it! to see their counsel set at nought, their teaching lost, their tears despised, and an obstinate lad seem wiser to himself than all his teachers, even when he is swallowing the devil's bait, and cruelly murdering his own soul! Ah! thinks a believing father and mother, have I brought thee into the world for this? Hath all my tender, natural love so sad an issue? Is this the fruit of all my sorrows, my care and kindness, to see the child of my bowels, whom I dedicated in baptism to Christ,-to make himself the child of the devil, the slave of the flesh and world, the enemy of God and holiness, and his own destroyer? and all this wilfully, obstinately, and against all the counsel and means that I can use! Alas! must I breed up a child to become an enemy to the church of God into which he was baptized, and a soldier for Satan against Christ? Must I breed up a child for hell, and see him miserable for ever, and cannot persuade him to be willing to be saved? Oh what a heart-breaking must this be to those whom nature and grace have taught to love them with tenderness, even as themselves!
Sect. 9. But if they be wicked parents, and as bad as themselves, the misery is far greater, though they yet feel it not: for,
1. As the thief on the cross said to his companion, "Thou art in the same condemnation, and we suffer justly; for we receive the due reward of our deeds," Luke xxiii. 40, 41; wicked parents and wicked children are in the same gall of bitterness and bond of iniquity. They sinned together, and they must suffer for ever together, if true faith and conversion do not prevent it.
2. And it is their wickedness which was much of the cause of their children's sin and misery; and their own deep guilt will be more to them than their children's suffering. God and conscience will say to them ere long, O cruel parents, that had no mercy on your children or yourselves! What did nature teach you to love more than yourselves and your children? and would you wilfully and obstinately be the ruin of both? You would not have done as the mad idolaters, that offered their children in fire to Moloch: and will you offer them by sin to Satan and to hell? Had a serpent stung them, or a bear devoured them, they had done but according to their nature: but was it natural in you to further their damnation? This was work too bloody for a cannibal, too cruel for an enemy, fitter for a devil than a father or mother. As your child had from you his vicious nature, it was your part to have endeavoured his sanctification and recovery. You should have taught him betimes to know the corruption of his nature, and to seek and beg the grace of Christ; to know his God, his duty, the evil of sin, the danger of temptations, and his everlasting hopes and fears. You should have taught him to know what man hath done against himself, by disobeying and departing from his God, and what Jesus Christ hath done for his redemption, and what he himself must do to be saved. You should have taught him early how to live and how to die, what to seek and what to shun. You should have given him the example of a holy and heavenly mind and life. You should have watched over him for his safety, and unweariedly instructed him for his salvation. But you led him the way to despise God's word, and set light by Christ, and holiness, and heaven, to hate instruction and reproof, to spend the Lord's day in idleness or worldly vanity, and to seek first the world and the prosperity of the body, and glut the flesh with sinful pleasure. What wonder if a serpent breed a serpent, and quickly teach him to hiss and sting, and if swine teach their young to feed on dung and wallow in the mire? This is part of the fruit of your worldliness, fleshliness, ungodliness, and neglect of your own salvation and your child's. Now he is as you are, a slave of sin and an heir of hell. Was this it that you vowed him for to God in baptism? was it to serve the flesh, the world, and the devil, against our God, our Saviour, and our Sanctifier? or did the mistake of the liturgy deceive you, to think that it was not you, but the godfathers, that were bound by charge and vow to bring him up in the faith and fear of God, and teach him all that a christian should know for his soul's health? Was it not you whom God bound to all this? The sin and misery of your child now is so far your curse, as you are guilty of it, and will add to your misery for ever.ÄSuch are the sorrows that wicked parents and wicked children do prepare and heap on one another. Such miseries will come; but woe to those by whom they come! it had been good for that man that he had never been born.
Sect. 10. And it is no small grief to faithful ministers, to see their labour so much lost; and to see so much evil among their flocks, and such sad prognostics of worse to come. He is no true minister of Christ, (as to his own acceptance and salvation,) whose heart is not set on the winning, and sanctifying, and saving of souls. What else do we study for, preach for, live for, long for, or suffer for in our work? All faithful teachers can say with Paul, that they "are willing to spend and be spent for them," and "now we live if ye stand fast in the Lord," 2 Cor. xii. 15; 1 Thess. iii. 8. He told them, "weeping, of those that were enemies to the cross of Christ, whose God was their belly, who glory in their shame, and mind earthly things," instead of a conversation in heaven, Phil. iii. 18, I9. When God hath blessed us with the comfortable enjoyment of many ancient, holy christians, who are the beauty and honour of the assemblies, and death calls home one of them after another to Christ, and the rest are ready to depart, alas! must a seed of serpents come after them? Must those take their places to our grief and shame, who are bred up to the world and flesh, in drunkenness, fornication, and enmity to God and a holy life? Oh what a woeful change is this!
And if any be like to be the stain and plague of the church, it is such as these.
If we preach holy truth to them, lust cannot love it. If we tell them of God's word, the fleshly mind doth not savour it, nor can be subject to it, Rom. viii. 5-7. If we reprove them sharply, they smart and hate us. If we call them to confession and repentance, their pride and carnality cannot bear it. If we excommunicate them for impenitency, as Christ requireth, or but deny them the sacrament as unmeet, they rage against us as our fiercest enemies. If we neglect discipline, and admit sin to the communion of saints, we harden and deceive them, and flatter them in their sin, pollute the church, and endanger our souls by displeasing the Chief Pastor. What then shall we do with these self-murdering, ungodly men?
Many of them have so much reverence of a sacrament, or so little regard of it, that they never seek it, but keep away themselves. Perhaps they are afraid lest they eat and drink damnation to themselves, by the profanation of holy things. But do they think that it is safe to be out of the church and communion of saints, because it is dangerous to abuse it? Are infidels safe because false-hearted christians perish? What! if breaking your vows and covenant be damnable, is it not so to be out of the holy covenant? What! if God be a consuming fire to those that draw near him in unrepented heinous sin, is it therefore wise or safe to avoid him? Neither those that come not to him, nor those that come in their hypocrisy and reigning sin, shall be saved.
And yet, what to do with these self-suspenders, we know not. Are they still members of the churches, or are they not? If they are, we are bound to call them to repentance for forsaking the communion of saints in Christ's commanded ordinance. If they are not, we should make it know, that christians and no christians may not be confounded, and they themselves may understand their case. And neither of these can they endure; but for dwelling in the parish, and hearing the liturgy and sermons, must still pass for church members, lest discipline should exasperate and further lose them. This is that discipline which is thought worthy the honour of episcopal dignity and revenues, and is supposed to make the church of England the best in the world, by the same men that would rage, were discipline exercised on them; and must either be admitted to the sacrament in a life of fornication, drunkenness, sensuality, and profaneness, without any open confession, repentance, and reformation, or else must pass for church members without any exercise of discipline, while they shun the sacramental communion of the church. Such work doth wickedness make among you!
Sect. 11. Indeed these are the men that are the trouble of families, the trouble of neighbours, the trouble of good magistrates, the shame of bad ones, and the great danger of the land. All the foreign enemies whom we talk so much against, and fear, are not so hurtful and dangerous to us as these,-these that spring out of your own bowels; these that are bred up with care, and tenderness, and cost in your houses, these that should succeed godly ancestors in wisdom and well-doing, and be their glory. Who plot against us but homebred sinners? Who more hate the good, and persecute them? Who are more malignant enemies of godliness, and scorners of a holy life, and hinderers of the word of God, and patrons of profaneness, and of ministers and people that are of the same mind? If England be undone, (as the Eastern churches, and much of the Western, are undone,) it will be by your own carnal, ungodly posterity.
He that is once a slave to Satan and his fleshly lust, is ready, for preferment or a reward, to be a slave to the lust of any other. He that is false to his God and Saviour, after his baptismal vows, is unlike to be true to his country or his king, if he have but the bait of a strong temptation: and he that will sell his soul, his God, and heaven, for a whore, or for to please his appetite, it is like will not stick to betray church or state, or his dearest friend, for provision to satisfy these lusts. Can you expect that he should love any man better than himself? A wicked, fleshly, worldly, man is a soil for Satan to sow the seeds in of any sort of actual sin, and is fuel dried, or tinder for the sparks of hell to kindle in. Will he suffer much for God or his country, who will sell heaven for nothing? An evil tree bringeth forth evil fruit. If he have the heart of an Achan, a Gehazi, an Ahithophel, no wonder if he hath their actions and their reward. If he be a thief and bear the bag, no wonder if Judas sell his master.
Sect. 12. And these wretches, if they live, are likely to be a plague to their own posterity. Woe to the woman that hath such a husband! And how are the children like to be bred, that have such a father? Doth not God threaten punishment to the third and fourth generation of them that hate him, and to visit the iniquities of the fathers on the children? Were not the children of the old world drowned, and those of Sodom and Gomorrah burned, and Achan's stoned, and Dathan's and Abiram's swallowed up, and Gehazi's struck with leprosy, &c. for their fathers' sins? And the Amalekites' children all destroyed, and the posterity of the infidel Jews forsaken, the curse coming on them and on their children? And as their children are like to speed the worse for such parents' sins, so are such parents like to be requited by their children. As you shamed and grieved the hearts of your parents, so may your children do by you. And by that time, it is like, if grace convert you not, though you have no hatred to your own sins, worldly interest may make you dislike your children's. Their lust and appetite do not tempt and deceive you, as your own did. Perhaps when they shame your family, debauch themselves with drink and whores, and consume the estates which you sold your souls for, you may perceive that sin is an evil and destructive thing; especially when they proceed to despise and abuse your persons also, and to desire your death, and be weary of you. Sooner or later you shall know better what sin is.
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CHAPTER VI.
THE JOYFUL STATE AND BLESSING OF GOOD CHILDREN, TO THEMSELVES AND OTHERS.
SECT. 1. From what is said in the second and fifth chapters, it is easy to gather how joyful a case to themselves, and what a blessing to parents and others, it is when children betimes are sober, wise, godly, and obedient. The difference doth most appear at age, and when they come to bring forth to themselves and others the fruits of their dispositions. And the end, and life to come, will show the greatest difference; but yet, even here, and that betimes, the difference is very great.
Sect. 2. I. As to themselves: how blessed a state is it to be quickly delivered from the danger of damnation, and God's displeasure, that they need not lie down and rise in fear lest they be in hell whenever death removeth them from the body! Can one too soon be out of so dreadful a state? Can one who is in a house on fire, or fallen into the sea, make too much haste to be delivered? If a man deep in debt be restless till it be paid, and glad when it is discharged; if a man in danger of sickness, or a condemning sentence of the judge, be glad when the fear of death is over; how glad should you be to be safe from the great danger of damnation! And till you are sanctified by grace, you are far from safety.
Sect. 3. And if a man's sickness, pain, or distraction be a calamity, the cure of which brings ease and joy; how much more ease and joy may it bring, to be cured from all the grievous maladies of reigning sin! Sanctification will cure your minds of spiritual blindness and madness, that is, of damnable ignorance, unbelief, and error. It will cure your affections of idolatrous, distracting, carnal love; of the itch of fleshly desires or lusts, of the fever of revengeful passions, and malignant hatred to goodness and good men; and of self-vexing envy and malice against others, of the greedy worm of covetousness, and the drunken desire of ambitious and imperious minds. It will cure your wills of their fleshly servitude and bias, and of that mortal backwardness to God and holy things, and that sluggish dulness and lothness to choose and do what you are convinced must be done. It will make good things easy and pleasant to you; so that you will no more think you have need to beg mirth from the devil or steal it from sin,-as if God, grace, and glory had none for you. But it will be so easy to you to love and find pleasure in the Bible and good books, in good company and good discourse, in spiritual meditation and thoughts, in holy sermons, prayers, and church communion and sacraments, even in Christ, in God, and the forethoughts of heaven, that you will be sorry and ashamed to think that ever you forsook such joys for fleshly pleasure, and defiled your souls with filthy and forbidden things. And is not the itch of lust better cured than scratched? is not the feverish and dropsical thirst after drink, wealth, and honour, better cured than pleased to the sinner's death? And is not a lazy backwardness to duty better cured by spiritual health than pleased with idleness and sleep?
Sect. 4. And certainly you cannot too soon attain the delights of faith, hope, and love, of holy knowledge and communion with God and saints. You cannot too soon have the great blessing of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost; and live night and day in peace of conscience,-in assurance that all your sins are pardoned, and that you are the adopted sons of God and heirs of heaven, sealed by his Spirit, accepted in your prayers, welcome to God through Christ, and when you die shall be with him. Can you make too great haste from the folly and filth of sin, and the danger of hell, into so safe and good a state as this?
Sect. 5. And it will be a great comfort to you thus to find, at age and use of reason, that your baptismal blessings ceased not with your infancy by your own rejection, but that you are now by your own consent in the bond of God's covenant, and have a right to all the blessings of it, which the sacrament of Christ's body and blood will confirm; as you had your entrance by your parent's consent and accepted dedication: for the covenant of grace is our certain charter for grace and glory.
Sect. 6. And is it not a joy to you to be your parents' joy, to find them love you not only as their children, but as God's? Love maketh it sweet to us to please and be beloved by those whom we love. If it be not your grief to grieve your parents, and your pleasure to please them, you love them not, but are void of natural affection.
Sect. 7. And oh what a mercy will you find it, when you come to age and business in the world! 1. That you come with a clear conscience, not clogged, terrified, and shamed with the sins of your youth. 2. And that you come not utterly unfurnished with the knowledge, righteousness, and virtue, which you must make use of in every condition, all your lives; when others are like lads who will go to the universities before they can so much as read or write. To live in a family of your own, and to trade and converse in the world, and especially to go to church, to hear, to pray, to communicate, to pray in private, to meditate, in a word, to live or die like a christian, like a man, without the furniture of wisdom, faith, and serious godliness,-is more impossible and unwise than to go to sea without provision, or to war without arms, or to become a priest without book or understanding.
Sect. 8. II. And you that are young men, can scarce conceive what a joy a wise and godly child is to his wise and godly parents. Read but Prov. x. 1; xiii.1; xvii. 2, 25; xix. 13, 26; xxvii. 11; xviii. 15, 19, 24, &c. The prayers and instructions of your parents are comfortable to them, when they see the happy fruit and answer. They fear not God's judgments upon their houses, as they would do if you were Cains, or Hams, or Absaloms: they labour comfortably, and comfortably leave you their estates at death, when they see that they do not get and leave it for those that will serve the devil with it, and consume it on their lusts; but will use it for God, for the gospel, and their salvation. If you fall sick and die before them, they can rejoice that you are gone to Christ; and need not mourn as David for Absalom, that you go to hell. If you overlive them, they leave the world the easier, when they leave as it were part of themselves here behind them, who will carry on the work of God which they lived for, and be blessings to the world when they are gone.
Sect. 9. III. And oh what a mercy is it to church and state, to have our posterity prove better than we have been, and do God more service than we have done, and take warning by our faults to avoid the like! Solomon tells us of one poor wise man that saved a city; and God would have spared Sodom, had there been but ten righteous persons in it. Wherever yet I lived, a few persons have proved the great blessings of the place,-to be teachers, guides, and exemplary to others, as the little leaven that leaveneth the lump, and as the stomach, liver, and other nutritive parts are to the body. Blessed is that church, that city, that country, that kingdom, which hath a wise, just, and holy people! The nearest good and evil are the greatest: our estates are not so near us as wives and children, nor they so near us as our bodies, nor they so much to us as our souls. It is more to a person, house, or country, what they are, than what they have, or what others do for them or against them.
It is these that are God's children as well as ours, who are the blessing so often mentioned in the Scripture, who will, as the Rechabites, obey their fathers' wholesome counsels, rather than their lusts and carnal companions, and God before all: "Who walk not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stand in the way of sinners, nor sit in the seat of the scornful. But their delight is in the law of the Lord, and in that law they meditate day and night," Psal. i. "Lo, such children are an heritage of the Lord; such fruit of the womb is his reward. They are as arrows in the hand of a mighty man. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. They shall not be ashamed; but they shall speak with the enemies in the gate," Psal. cxxvii. 3-5. Were it not for wise and godly children to succeed us, religion, peace, and all public good, would be but as we frail mortals are,-like the grass or flowers of a few days' or years' continuance; and the difference between a church and no church, between a kingdom of christians and of infidels, would be but like the difference between our waking and our sleeping time, so short as would make it the less considerable.
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CHAPTER VII.
UNDENIABLE REASONS FOR THE REPENTANCE AND SPEEDY AMENDMENT OF THOSE THAT HAVE LIVED A FLESHLY AND UNGODLY LIFE: BY WAY OF EXHORTATION.
SECT. 1. And now the commands of God, the love of my country and the church, the love of piety, true prosperity, and peace, and the love of mankind, even of your own souls and bodies, do all command me to become once more an earnest suitor to the youth of this land, especially of London, who have hitherto miscarried, and lived a fleshly, sinful life. Thousands such as you are dead in sin, and past our warning, and past all hope and help for ever. Thousands that laughed at judgment and damnation, are now feeling that which they would not believe. By the great mercy of God it is not yet the case of you who read these words; but how soon it may be, if you are yet unsanctified, you little know. Oh that you knew what a mercy it is to be yet alive, and, after so many sins and dangers, to have one to warn you, and offer you salvation, and to be yet in possibility, and in a state of hope! In the name of Christ I most earnestly entreat you, a little while try to use your reason, and use it seriously in retired, sober consideration, till you have first well perused the whole course of your lives, and remembered what you have done and how, till you have thought what you have got or lost by sinning, and why you did it, and whether it was justifiable reason which led you to it, and such as you will stand to in your sober thoughts, yea, such as you will stand to before God at last. Consider seriously what comes next, and whither you are going, and whether your life have fitted you for your journey's end, and how your ways will be reviewed ere long, and how they will appear to you, and taste at death, judgment, and in the world to come. Hold on and think soberly a little while, what is in your hearts, and what is their condition, what you most love, and what you hate, and whether God or sinful pleasure be dearer and more delightful to you, and how you stand affected and related to the world that you are very near. Sure reason would be reason if you would but use it; sure light would come in, if you would not shut the windows, and draw the curtains on you, and rather choose to sleep in darkness. Is there nothing within you that grudgeth at your folly, and threateneth you for being wilfully beside yourselves? If you would but spend one half hour in a day, or a week, in sober thinking whither you are going, and what you have done, and what you are, and what you must shortly see and be; how could you choose but be deeply offended with yourselves, for living like men quite void of understanding, against your God, against yourselves, against all the ends and obligations of life, and this for nothing?
But, it may be, the distinctness of your consideration may make it the more effectual: and if I put my motives by way of questions, will you consider them till you have well answered them all?
Sect. 2. Quest. 1. Are you not fully convinced, that there is a God of infinite power, knowledge, and goodness, who is the perfect Governor of all the world? God forbid that any of you should be so bad and so mad, as seriously to doubt of this, which the devils believe, while they would draw you to unbelief. To doubt of a perfect governing God, is to wink and doubt whether there be a sun, to stop your ears against the notorious testimony of heaven and earth, and every creature. You may next doubt whether there be any thing, if you doubt of God. For atoms and shadows are hardlier perceived with certainty, than the earth, the heavens, and sun.
Quest. 2. If you believe that there is a governing God, do you not believe that he hath governing laws or notifications of his will, and that we owe this God more full, more absolute, exact obedience, than can be due to any prince on earth, and greater love than to our dearest friend, He being infinitely good and love itself? Can you owe more to your flesh, or to any, than to your God that made you men, by whom you have life, and health, and time, and all the good that ever you received? And can you give him too much love and obedience? or can you think that you need to fear being losers by him, and that your faithful duty should be in vain?
Quest. 3. Is it God that needeth you, or you that need him? Can you give him any thing that he wants, or do you want what he hath to give? Can you live an hour without him? or be kept without him from pain, misery, or death? Is it not for your own need, and your own good, that he requireth your service? Do you know what his service is? It is thankfully to receive his greatest gifts, to take his medicines to save your souls, and to feast on his prepared comforts. He calls you to far better and needfuller obedience for yourselves, than when you command your child to take his meat, or wear his clothes, or, when he is sick, to take a necessary remedy. And is such obedience to be refused?
Quest. 4. Hath not nature taught you to love yourselves? Surely you cannot be willing to be damned, nor be indifferent whether you go to heaven or hell! And can you believe, that God would set you on that which would do you hurt, and that the devil is your friend and would save you from him? Can you believe that to please your throat and lust, till death snatch away your souls to judgment, is more for your own good than to live here in holiness and the love of God, and hereafter to live for ever in glory? Do you think you have lived as if you truly loved yourselves, or as self-destroyers? All the devils in hell, or enemies on earth, could never have done so much against you, as, by your sensuality, ungodliness, and sloth, you have done against yourselves. Oh poor sinner, as ever thou wouldst have mercy from God in thy extremity, be entreated to show some mercy on thyself!
Quest. 5. Hath not nature deeply taught all the world, to make a great difference between virtue and vice, between moral good and evil? If the good and bad do not greatly differ, what makes all mankind, even the sons of pride, to be so impatient of being called or accounted bad, and love to be accounted wise and good? How tenderly do most men bear a reproof, or to hear that they do amiss! To be called a wicked man, a liar, a perjured man, a knave, how ill is it taken by all mankind! This certainly proveth that the conscience of the great difference between the GOOD and the BAD, is a common natural notice. And will not God make a greater difference, who better knoweth it than man?
Quest. 6. If God had only commanded you duty, even a holy, righteous, and sober life, and forbidden you the contrary, and had only bidden you to seek everlasting happiness, and made you no promise of it, should you not in reason seek it cheerfully in hope? Our folly leadeth us to do much in vain; but God setteth no man on any vain employment. If he do but bid you resist temptation, mortify lust, learn his word, pray to him, and praise him, you may be sure it is not to your loss. A reward you may be sure of, though you know not what it will be. Yea, if he set you upon the hardest work, or to pass the greatest danger, or serve him at the dearest rate, or lose your estate for him, and life itself, what reason can there be for fear of being losers by obeying God? Yea, the dearest service hath the greatest reward. But when he hath moreover ascertained your reward by a promise, a covenant sworn and sealed by his miracles, by Christ's blood, by his sacraments, by his Spirit, if yet you will be ungodly because you cannot trust him, you have no excuse.
Quest. 7. Do you know the difference between a man and a brute? Brutes have no capacity to think of a God, and a Saviour, and a life to come, and to know God's law, and study obedience, and fear hell and sin; nor reason to rule their appetites and lusts, nor any hope or joy in foreseen glory. But man is made capable of all this: and can you think God maketh such noble faculties in vain? Or should we live like brutes that have none such?
Qest. 8. Do you not certainly know, that you must die? All the world cannot hinder it: YOU MUST DIE. And is it not near, as well as sure? How swift is time! Oh how quickly shall we all be at our race and warfare's end! And where then is the pleasure of pride, and appetite, and lust? Neither the dismal carcass, nor the dust or bones, retain or taste it: and alas! the unconverted soul must pay for it for ever. And can you think that so short a brutish pleasure, that hath so sure and sad an end, is worthy the grieving of your friends, the offending God, the hazard of your souls, the loss of heaven, and the suffering of God's justice in hell for ever? O foolish sinners! I beseech you think in time how mad a bargain you are making. Oh what an exchange! for a filthy lust or fleshly pleasure, to sell a God, a Saviour, a Comforter, a soul, a heaven, and all your hopes!
Quest. 9. If the devil or deceivers should make you doubt whether there be any judgment and life to come, should not the mere possibility and probability of such a day and life be far more regarded by you than all fleshly pleasure, which is certainly short and base? Did you ever hear a man so mad as to say, I am sure there is no heaven or hell for souls? But you are sure that your flesh must rot in a dark grave; you are sure that death will quickly put an end to all that this world can afford you. House and land, and all that now deceive poor worldlings, will be nothing to you, (no more than if you had never seen them,) save the terrible reckoning that the soul must make. Sport and mirth, and meat and drink, and filthy lusts, are ready all to leave you to the final sentence of your Judge. And is not even an uncertain hope of heaven more worth than certain transitory vanity? Is not an uncertain hell to be more feared and avoided, than the forsaking of these certain trifles and deceits? Much more when God hath so certainly revealed to us the life to come!
Quest. 10. Is it a wise and reasonable expectation, that the righteous God should give that man everlasting glory, who will not leave his whores, his drunkenness, or the basest vanity, for all his love and for all his mercies, for the sake of Christ or for the hopes of all his glory? Heaven is the greatest reward of holiness, and of the diligent and patient seekers of it: heaven is the greatest gift of the great love of God: and can you believe that he will give it to the slaves of the devil, and to contemning, wilful rebels? May not you next think, that the devils may be saved? If you say that "God is merciful," it is most true; and this will be the unconverted man's damnation,-that he would for a base lust offend so MERCIFUL a GOD, and sell everlasting mercy for nothing, and abuse so much MERCY all his life. Abused and refused mercy will be the fuel to feed the flames of hell, and torment the conscience of the impenitent for ever. Doth not God know his own mercy better than you do? Can he not be merciful, and yet be holy and just? Is the king unmerciful, if he make use of jails and gallows for malefactors? It is mercy to the land to destroy such as would destroy others. The bosom of Eternal Love is not a place for any but the holy. The heavenly paradise is not like Mahomet's,-a place of lust and sensual delights. You blaspheme the most just and holy God, if you make him seem indifferent to the holy and the unholy, to his faithful servants and to the despisers of his grace.
Quest. 11. If there were any possibility, that unsanctified souls should be sanctified and saved in another world, is it not a madness to cast everlasting life upon so great uncertainty or improbability, when we have life, and time, and helps to make our salvation sure? God hath called you to "give all diligence to make it sure," 2 Peter i. 10. He hath made infallible promises of it to sanctified believers: he calleth you to examine and judge yourselves, 2 Cor. xiii. 5. And do you know the difference between CERTAINTY and UNCERTAINTY in so great a case? O none can now sufficiently conceive what a difference there is, between a soul that is going out of the body with a joyful assurance that Christ will presently receive him, and so that, in the guilt of sin, must say, I am going to an endless life, and know not but it may be an endless misery! I am here now, and know not but I may be presently with devils that here deceived me! Just fear of passing presently to hell-fire, is a dreadful case, to be avoided above all earthly sufferings, Luke xii. 4; xiv. 33; much more when God's threatenings to the impenitent are most sure.
Quest. 12. Do you think in your hearts that you have more pleasure, and sound content, and peace, with your whores, and in your sports, and drink, or riches, than true believers have in God and Christ, in a holy life and the hopes of everlasting glory? Judge but by the cause; is not the love of that God who is the Lord of life, and death, and all, and the pleasure of pleasing him, and the sense of pardon and mercy through Christ, and the firm expectation of endless joy by a promise of God sealed by his Son, his sacraments, and Spirit; I say, is not all this matter more worthy to rejoice a soul, than money, and meat, and drink, and lust? Have not you those secret gripes of conscience, when you think how short the sport will be, and that for all these things you must come to judgment, which much abateth the pleasure of your sin? Had you spent that time in seeking first the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and in honest, obedient labouring in your callings, you need not have looked back on it with the gripes of an accusing conscience. If you see a true believer sorrowful, it is not for serving and obeying God, or being holy and hating sin; but for serving God no better, and hating sin no more.
Quest. 13. Have you not often secret wishes in your hearts, that you were in the case of those persons whom you judge to be of the most holy and heavenly hearts and conversations? Do you not think they are in a far safer and better case than you? Unless you are forsaken to blindness of mind, it is certainly so. And doth not this show that you choose and follow that which is worse, when your consciences tell you it is worse, and refuse that which your consciences tell you is best? But it is not such sluggish wishes that will serve: to lie still and live idle, and to wish yourselves as rich as the industrious, is not the way to make you so.
Quest. 14. At least, if you have no such wishes now, do you not think that you shall wish it at death or judgment? Do at your consciences now tell you that you shall shortly wish, Oh that I had hated sinful pleasure! Oh that I had spent my short life in obeying and trusting God! Will you not say with Balaam, "Let me die the death of the righteous, and let my last end be like his?" Oh that I were in the case of those that mortified the flesh, and lived to God, and laid not up their treasure on earth, but in heaven? And why choose you not now that which you know you shall deeply wish that you had chosen?
Quest. 15. I take it for granted, that your merry, and sensual, and worldly tempters and companions deride all this, and persuade you to despise it, as if it were but needless, melancholy, troublesome talk. But tell me, do you think in conscience that it is sound reason that they give you, and such as should satisfy a sober man, who careth what becomes of his soul for ever? If it be, I make a motion to you. Bring any of them to me, or any such man, and in your hearing let the case be soberly debated. I will hear all that they can say against a holy, sober life, for the world, and for their fleshly pleasure, and you shall hear what I can say on the contrary: and then do but use the reason of a man, and judge as you see cause. As Elias said to the Israelites, "Why halt you between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him; if Baal be God, follow him." If money, preferment, drink, and lust be best, take it: but if God, heaven, Christ, faith, hope, and holiness be best, at your peril refuse them not, and halt no longer. I suppose you sometimes think of the case, or else you are dead in sin: I pray you, tell me, or tell yourselves, which cause seemeth best upon the deepest thoughts and consideration? But if you will take the laughter or scorns of ignorant sots, instead of reason, and instead of sober consideration, you are well worthy of the damnation which you so wilfully choose.
Quest. 16. But if you think highly of their wit or learning, who sin as you, and who encourage and deceive you, I pray you answer these two questions.
1. Which side is Christ, and his prophets and apostles on? Which side doth the Scripture speak for? Which way went all the saints whose names are now honoured? Were they for the fleshly or the spiritual life? Were they for the love of pleasures more than God? Doth Christ from heaven teach you an earthly or a heavenly choice and life? Did he come to cherish sin, or to destroy it and save us from it? You can make no doubt of this, if ever you read or heard the Bible. And,
2. Which do you think were the wiser and better men, and worthy to be believed and followed,-whether Christ, and all his apostles and saints, that ever were in the world, to this day; or the drunkards, and whoremongers, and worldlings, who deride the doctrine sent from heaven? If there be a heaven, is drunkenness or sobriety liker to be the way to it? But if indeed you will take the mocks of a swinish sot to be wiser than God, than Christ, than prophets and apostles, and all that ever went to heaven, and their jeers to be more credible than all God's word, what can a man say to convince such wretches with any hope?
Quest. 17. I further ask you, Have you not some secret purposes hereafter to repent? If not, alas! how far are you from it, and how forlorn is your case! But if you have, conscience is a witness against you, that you choose and live in that case and course which you know is worst. Were it not worst, you need not purpose to repent of it. And will you wilfully choose known evil, when the very nature of man's will is to love good?
Quest. 18. If you believe that the faithful are in a happier case than you, tell me, what hindereth yet but you may be like them, and yet be happy as well as they? Hath God put any exception against you in his word? Are not mercy and salvation proclaimed and offered to you, as freely as to them? Did any thing make you so bad as you are, but your own choice and doing? And can any thing yet hinder you from pardon and salvation, if you yourselves were but truly willing? What if your parents were bad, and bred you up amiss? God hath told you, in Ezek. xviii. and xxxiii. that if you will but do your own part yet, and take warning and avoid your parents' sin, and give up yourselves unfeignedly to him, he will save you, whatever your parents were. What if princes, or lords, or learned men should be your tempters, by words or example? None of them can force you to one sin. God is greater and wiser than they, and more to be believed and obeyed; and your salvation is not in any of their power. What if your old companions tempt you! They can but TEMPT you; they cannot CONSTRAIN you to any evil. All the devils in hell, or men on earth, cannot damn you; no, nor make you sinners, if you do it not yourselves. Refuse not Christ, and he will not refuse you. And when he is willing, if you be but willing,-truly willing to be saved from sin and misery, and, to have Christ, grace, and glory in the use of the means which God hath appointed you,-neither earth nor hell can hinder your salvation. Who, but yourselves, keep you from forsaking the company, house or baits which have deceived you? Who, but yourselves, keep you from lamenting your sin and flying to Christ, from begging mercy and giving yourselves to God? If you think that serious christians are the happiest, refuse not to be such yourselves. It will be your own doing, your own wilful obstinacy, if you perish. But of this I have already said more in my "Call to the Unconverted."
Quest. 19. Dare you deliberate, resolve, or bargain to take your fleshly pleasures for your part, instead of all your hopes of heaven? I hope none of you are yet so mad. I think it is but few (if any) of the witches that make so express a bargain with the devil. If they did, oh how they would tremble when they see their glass almost run out, and death at hand! If you dare not make such a bargain in plain words, oh do not do the same in the choice of your hearts, and in the practice of your lives, and deceive yourselves by thinking that you do it not, when you do. It is God (and not you) that maketh the conditions of salvation and damnation. If you choose that life which, God hath told us, is the condition of damnation, and finally refuse that life which God hath made the condition of salvation, it will in effect be an one as to choose damnation and refuse salvation. He that chooseth deadly poison, or refuseth his necessary food, chooseth death, and refuseth life, in effect. God hath said, "If ye live after the flesh, ye shall die; but if, by the Spirit, ye mortify the deeds of the body, you shall live," Rom. viii. Christ tells you, that, unless you are born again and converted, you cannot enter into his kingdom, John iii. 3, 5; Matt. xviii. 3; and that "without holiness none shall see God." Refuse these, and choose the world and sinful pleasures, and you refuse salvation, and shall have no better than you choose. What you judge best, choose resolvedly; and do not cheat yourselves.
Quest. 20. Have you no natural love to your parents, or your country? Oh what inhuman cruelty is it, to break the hearts of those from whom you had your being, and who were tender of you when you could not help yourselves! Doubtless, one reason why God hath put so strong a love in parents to their children, and made your birth and breeding so costly to your mother, and made the milk which is formed in her own body to be the first nourishment of your lives, is, to oblige you to answerable love and obedience. And if, after all this, you prove worse than brutes, and become the grief of their souls who thus bred, and loved, and nourished you, do you think God will not at last make this far sadder to YOU, than ever it was to THEM? If cruelty to an enemy (much more to a stranger, to a neighbour, to a friend!) be so hateful to the God of love that it goeth not unrevenged, oh what will unnatural cruelty to parents bring upon you! Yea, even in this life, as honouring father and mother hath a special promise of prosperity and long life, so dishonouring and grieving parents is usually punished with some notable calamity, as a forerunner of the GREAT REVENGE hereafter.
And you cannot but perceive that such as live in sensuality, and lust, and wickedness, are the great troublers of the church and state. God himself hath said it, "There is no peace to the wicked," Isa. xlviii. 22. "For the wicked are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.ÄThe way of peace they know not; there is no judgment in their goings: they have made them crooked paths: whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace," Isa. lvii. 20, 21; lix. 8. They give no peace to others, and God will deny peace to themselves. Yea, the nature of their own sin denieth it them, as broken bones and griping sickness deny ease to the body. And can you think you shall become the shame of the church and the troublers of the land, and that God will not trouble you for it? If you will be enemies of God and your country, you will prove the sorest enemies to yourselves.
And who is the gainer by all this? No one in the world; unless you will call it the devil's gain, to have his malicious, cruel will fulfilled. And sure the pleasing the devil and a fleshly lust, fancy, or appetite, can never compensate all your losses, nor comfort you under the sufferings which you wilfully bring upon yourselves.
Young men, the reason I thus deal with you by way of question is, that I may, if possible, engage your own thoughts in answering them. For I find most are aptest to learn of themselves: and indeed, without yourselves and your own serious thoughts, we cannot help you to true understanding. He that readeth the wisest lecture to boys or men who take no heed to what is said, yea, or who will not make it their own study to understand and remember, doth but cast away his labour. It is hard saving any man from himself; but there is no saving any man without himself, and his own consent and labour. If you will but now take these twenty questions in secret into your serious thoughts, and consider of them till you can give them such an answer as reason should allow, and as you will stand to before God when the mouth of all iniquity shall be stopped, I should not doubt but you will reap the benefit.
Oh what should a man do, who pitieth blind and wilful sinners, to make them willing of their own recovery! Here all stops. And must it stop at this? Are you not willing? And will you not so much as consider of the reasons that should make you willing, when heaven or hell must be the consequence? Oh what a thing is a blind mind, and a dead and hardened heart! What a befooling thing is fleshly lust! Oh what need had mankind of a Saviour! And what need have all of a sanctifier, and of his holy word, and of all the holy means of grace!
Poor sinners! O let not your teachers' and your parents' counsel and tears be brought in as witnesses against you to your condemnation! O add not this to all their griefs, that their counsel and their sorrows must sink you deeper into hell! Alas, it were sadness enough to them to see that it is all in vain! Let not this counsel of mine to you be rejected to the increase of your guilt and misery: if it do you no good, it will leave you worse. Were I present with you, I should not think it too much, would that prevail, to kneel to you, to beg that you would but well consider your own case and ways, and think before of what will follow, and that you will study a wise and satisfactory answer to the questions put to you, till you are resolved. Your case is not desperate; mercy is yet offered you; the day of grace is not yet past; God is not willing to receive you; Christ is not unwilling to be your Saviour, if you consent. No difficulty in the world maketh us afraid of your damnation, but your own foolish choice and wicked wills. Our care is not to make God merciful, nor to make Christ's merits and sacrifice sufficient, nor to get God to promise you pardon if you repent and come to him by Christ: all this is done already. But that which is undone, is, to make you considerate and truly willing, and to live as those that indeed are willing to let go the poisonous pleasures of sin, to take God and heaven for your hope and portion, and to be saved and ruled by Christ and sanctified by his Spirit, and to receive his daily help and mercies to this end, in the use of his appointed means; and, without this, you are undone for ever. And is there any hurt in all this? If there were, is it worse than the filth of sin, and the plagues that follow here and for ever? Worthy is he to hear at last, "Depart from me, thou worker of iniquity," and to be thrust away from the hopes of heaven, who, after all that can be said and done, chooseth sin as more desirable than this God, this Saviour, this Sanctifier, and this glory.
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CHAPTER VIII.
GENERAL DIRECTIONS TO THE WILLING
THROUGH the blindness and obstinacy of fleshly sinners too oft frustrate great endeavours, yet we may well hope that the prayers and tears of parents, and the calls of God, may prevail with many; and I may hope, that some that have read what is before written, will say, We are willing to hear and learn that we may be saved: tell us what it is that we must do. And on that hope, I shall give such miscarrying youth some general advice, and some counsel about their particular cases, and all as briefly as I may. Oh that the Lord would make you who read this truly willing to practice these ten directions following! How happy yet you may be!
I. Set your understandings seriously and diligently to the work which they are made for, and consider well what is your interest and your duty, till you come to a fixed resolution that is for your good, and what is for your hurt, and what that good or hurt will be.
Should it be a hard thing to persuade a man in his wits to love himself, and to think what is good or hurtful to himself, especially for everlasting? Why are you men, if you live like dogs? What do you with understandings, if you will not use them? What will you use them for, if not for your own good and to avoid misery? What good will you desire, if not everlasting joy and glory? And what hurt will you avoid, if not hell-fire? Have you reason, and can you live as if these were not worth the thinking on? Will you bestow your thoughts all the day and year upon you know not what nor why, and not one hour soberly think of such important things as these? O sirs! will you go out of the world before you well think wither you must go? Will you appear before the Judge of souls, to give up your great account, before you think of it, and how it must be done? Is he worthy of the help of Grace, that will not use his natural REASON? I beg it of you, as ever you care what becomes of you for ever, that you will some time alone set yourselves for one hour seriously to think, who made you, and why; what you owe him; how much you depend on him; what you have done against him; how you have spent your time; what case your souls are in; what Christ hath done for you; and what he is or would be to you; whether you are sanctified and forgiven; what God's Spirit must do for you; and what you must be and do, if you will be saved; and if it be otherwise, whither it is that you must go.
II. Therefore I next advise you and entreat you, that you live not as at a great distance from eternity, nor foolishly flatter yourselves with the deceitful promises of long life: and were it sure to be a hundred years, remember how quickly and certainly they will end. Oh! time is nothing! therefore think of nothing in this world as separated from the world to come. Whatever you are doing, or saying, or thinking, the boat is hastening to the gulf. You are posting to death and judgment: which way ever you go, by wealth or poverty, health or sickness, busy or idle, single or married, you are going still to the grave and to eternity. Judge then of every thing as it tendeth to that end; and think of nothing as not relating, as a means, to the near and everlasting end. O choose and do that which reason and conscience tell you, that you will at last earnestly wish that you had chosen and done! When you are tempted to be prayerless and averse to good, or to run to lust or sinful pleasure, ask yourselves seriously, How will this look in the final review? What shall I think of this at last? Will it be my comfort, or my torment? O judge as you will judge at last.
III. My third counsel is, If your consciences tell you that you have foolishly sinned against God and your salvation, make not light of it; but, presently and openly, go to your parents or masters, and penitently confess your sinful life in general, and your known or open sins particularly. But such secret sins which wronged not them and will blast your reputation, you are not bound to confess openly, unless the ease or future direction of your doubtful and troubled consciences require it. But when your vicious fleshly life is known, excuse it not, hide not the evil by lies or extenuation. When you have wronged your parents or masters by disobedience, and by robbing them of part of your time and service, if not also of their money or goods, go to them with sorrow and shame, and confess how foolishly you have served the flesh, to the injury of them, to the offending of God, and to the unspeakable hurt of your own souls. Lament your sin, and ask them forgiveness, and entreat their prayers, and their careful government of you for the time to come, and sincerely promise them reformation and obedience.
Yea, if you have had familiar companions in your sin, go to them, and tell them, God and reason have convinced me of my sinful folly, that for brutish, fleshly pleasure, have wilfully broken the laws of my Creator and Redeemer, and, for nothing, undone and lost my soul, if Christ do not recover me by sound repentance. Oh how madly have we despised our salvation! How easily might we have known, had we but searched and considered the word of God, that we were displeasing God, undoing ourselves, and making work for future sorrows! Should I, when I know this, and when I know that I am going to death and judgment, yet obstinately go on and be a hardened rebel against Christ and grace, what can I expect but to be forsaken of God and lost for ever? O therefore, as we have sinned together, let us repent together. You have been a snare to me, and I to you. We have been agents of the devil to drag each other to sin and misery: certainly all this must sooner or later be repented of. O let us join together in sorrow, and reformation, and a holy, obedient life. If you will not consent, I here declare to you before God, (for I know that he seeth and heareth me,) that I will be your companion in sin no more. I beg pardon for tempting you. I resolve by God's grace to prefer my salvation and my obedience to God, before a base and beastly pleasure. Whatever you say against it, I will never more forsake my salvation to follow you, nor ever take you to be wiser than God, nor better friends to me than my Saviour, nor your words more regardable than God's word, nor a whore, or a merry cup, or vanity, to be better than heaven, nor temperance and holiness to be worse than hell. If you will not be undeceived with me, I will pray for you; but I renounce your sinful company, and my warning will be a witness against you to your confusion.
Stick not at the scorn of fools, nor at the shame of such repentance and confession; it may profit others. But, however, it is no more than, in duty, you owe them whom you have wronged and endangered by sin. And it will lay some new obligation on yourselves to amend, by doing what you have so professed: and sure conscience and shame will somewhat the more hinder you from ever more joining with them in the sin which you have so bewailed and renounced. And think not this too much, for there is no jesting with God, and with everlasting joy or misery.
IV. My next counsel is, Presently, understandingly, and considerately, renew the covenant which you made in baptism with God your Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier.
Consider whether to be a christian is not necessary to your salvation; and then consider what it is to be a christian, and whether it be not a far higher thing, than merely to take that name upon you, and be of that party, and to join with the right church, and to have the bare words and picture of believers: and then consider whether God will be mocked with shows, and ceremonies, and dead formalities, and false professions; and whether the lifeless carcass or image of christianity will be taken by God instead of the life and power of it, and will ever save a soul: yea, whether a false, counterfeit christian, bred up under christian instructions and examples, does not make your guilt far greater, and your case more miserable, than Americans or Indians, who never heard what you have heard: and when perhaps you have spoken against hypocrites yourselves, whether there be any more notorious hypocrites than such as you, who say you are christians, and yet live to the flesh in the odious sins which Christ abhorreth. Think what a dreadful thing it is, to profess a religion which condemeth you, and to save over that creed which you believe not, and those petitions in the Lord's prayer which you desire not, and those commandments which you break and will condemn you;Äto rebel against God, while you say you believe in him; to despise Christ's government, while you say you trust him for salvation; to ask for his grace, when you would not have it to sanctify you and save you from your sin; to beg mercy of God, and to reject this mercy, and to have no mercy on yourselves! O think what a doleful case it is to see distracted sinners such hypocrites, playing with such contradictions so near God's bar and in his sight; and to make no better use of prayers, and the name of christians, and the profession of the truth, than to give the devil more matter to accuse you, and conscience to torment you, and a righteous God to say to you at last, Out of thy own mouth will I judge thee, thou wicked rebel! Didst thou not confess, that Jesus was the Christ, and that thou didst believe the gospel, and the life to come? and yet didst live in the willful disobeying of Christ and the gospel, and base contempt of God and thy salvation.
And when you have considered the sad case of hypocrites, that call themselves CHRISTIANS to their own condemnation when they are none such, then think seriously what the covenant was which was made for you in your baptism, and you have taken on you to own. Think what it is devotedly to trust to God as your reconciled Father, and devotedly to trust to Christ as your Saviour, your great Teacher, Governor, and Mediator with the Father; what it is devotedly to trust the Holy Spirit to illuminate, to sanctify, and quicken you in a holy life, and to strengthen and comfort you against and under all your trials. Consider what it is to take the flesh, the world, and the devil, (as they are against this holy life and heavenly hope,) for your enemies, and to enlist yourselves under Christ, in avowed war to the death against them. Think how you have perfidiously broken this covenant, on which all the hope of your salvation lieth. And then, if you dare not utterly renounce all that holy, presently and resolvedly renew this covenant. Lament your violation of it to God: do it, not only in a passion, but upon serious considerations make that choice and resolution which you dare stand to at a dying hour, and on which you may believe that God, for Christ's sake, will accept you, and forgive you. O think what a mercy it is to have a Saviour, who, after all your heinous sins, will bring you reconciled as sons to God, for the merits of his sacrifice and righteousness, and by his powerful intercession; and will send from heaven the Spirit of God into your hearts, to renew those blind, dead, carnal minds to God's holy image; and will dwell in you and carry on your sanctification to the end. Thankfully, joyfully accept this covenant and grace, and again give up yourselves to God, your Father, Saviour, and Sanctifier; but be sure that you do it absolutely, without deceitful exceptions and reserves; and that you do it resolvedly, and not only in a frightened mood; and yet that you do it as in the strength of the grace of Christ, not trusting the steadfastness of your own deceitful, mutable hearts. And when you can truly say, that you unfeignedly consent, and renew this covenant in your hearts, then go the next opportunity to the sacrament of the Lord's supper, and there penitently and faithfully renew it openly in the solemn way that Christ hath appointed you; thankfully profess your trust in Christ, and receive a sealed pardon of your sins, and title to everlasting life, and settle your conversation in the communion of saints, as you hope to live with such for ever.
V. Henceforward set yourselves, as the true scholars of Christ, to learn his doctrine; and as his true subjects, to know his laws; and as those that trust their souls into his hand, to understand and firmly believe his promises for this life and that which is to come; and as the blessed man, "to delight in the law of the Lord, and meditate in it day and night," Psal. i. 2, 3. As you were wont to steal some hours from God and your masters, to go to the house of sin and death, so now get such hours as lawfully you can from your other employments and diversions, but especially on the Lord's days; and get alone, and beg mercy and grace from God, and set yourselves to read the Bible, and with it read some catechisms, and some sound and serious treatises of divinity, which are most suitable to your state.
It is young men who have miscarried, and being convinced, are willing to turn to God, whom I am now directing. And therefore supposing that you will ask me what books I would commend to you, I will answer you accordingly, supposing still that you prefer the Bible.
1. For the full resolving of your hearts to a sound repentance and a holy life, read Joseph Allen's book of Conversion, Richard Allen's Vindication of Godliness, and their book of Covenanting with God, and his Victory over the World; Mr. Whateley's New Birth; and some of the old sermons of Repentance, such as Mr. Stock's, Mr. Perkins's, Mr. Dikes's, and Mr. Marbury's; Bunny's Correction of Parson's Book for Resolution; John Rogers's Doctrine of Faith; William Fenner's books; Samuel Smith on the first and the fifty-first Psalms, and his Great Assize, and on the Eunuch's Conversion; Bifield's Marrow, Mr. Howe's Blessedness of the Righteous, and of Delighting in God.
And if you would have any of mine, read the Call to the Unconverted, or the Treatise of Conversion, and the Directions for a Sound Conversion, and Now or Never, and A Saint or a Brute, or which of all these God's providence shall afford you.
2. If you would have help to try your hearts lest they be deceived, read Allen's foresaid Book of the Covenant, and Pinke's Trial of Sincere Love to Christ. Many books of marks are extant, Bifield's, Rogers's, Harsnet's, Berries's, &c. and Mr. Chishull and Mr. Mead of Being Almost Christians. If you would have any of mine, read the Right Method for Peace of Conscience, and Directions for Weak Christians, where are the characters of the false, the weak, and the strong.
3. For the daily government of heart and life, read the Practice of Piety, Scuder's Daily Walk, Mr. Reyner's Directions, (three excellent books,) and Mr. Corbet's small Private Thoughts. And if you would have any of mine, read my Family Book, and The Divine Life, the Life of Faith, or The Saints' Rest, and, for those that can read great ones, my Christian Directory.
4. And it will not be unuseful to read some profitable history, especially the lives of exemplary persons, and the funeral sermons which characterize them. I have prefaced to two, which are eminently worth your reading, and most true,-both young men,-that is, John Janeway's Life, and Joseph Allen's, and given you the true exemplary characters (in their funeral sermons) of Mr. Ashurst, (an excellent pattern for apprentices and tradesmen,) Mr. Stubs, Mr. Corbet, Mr. Wadsworth, and Mrs. Baker. Read Mr. Samuel Clark's Lives, and his Martyrology, and his Mirror, Dr. Beard's Examples, or Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Some church history, and history of the Reformation, and the history of our own country, will be useful.
5. As you grow up to more judgment, you may read methodical sums of divinity, especially Ames's Marrow, and his Cases of Conscience (which are in English translated,) and Commentaries.
Great store of all sorts of good books (through the great mercy of God) are common among us: he that cannot buy, may borrow.
But take heed that you lose not your time in reading romances, play-books, vain jests, or seducing or reviling disputes, or needless controversies.
This course of reading Scripture and good books will be many ways to your great advantage.
1. It will, above all other ways, increase your knowledge.
2. It will help your resolutions and holy affections, and direct your lives.
3. It will make your lives pleasant. The knowledge, the usefulness, the variety, will be a continual recreation to you, unless you are utterly besotted or debauched.
4. The pleasure of this will turn you from your filthy, fleshly pleasure. You will have no need to go for delight to a play-house, a drinking-house, or to beastly lusts.
5. It will keep you from the sinful lose of time, by idleness or unprofitable employment or pastimes. You will cast away cards and dice, when you find the sweetness of useful learning.
But be sure that you choose the most useful and necessary subjects, and that you seek knowledge for the love of holiness and obedience.
VI. The sixth part of my advice is, forsake ill company; and converse with such as will be helps to your knowledge, holiness, and obedience, and not such as will draw you to sin and misery.
You have found by sad experience what power ill company hath on fools; with such a merry tale, a laugh, a jest, a scorn, a merry cup, and a bad example and persuasion, do more than reason, or God's authority, or the love of their souls. A physician may go among the sick and mad to cure them; and a wise man that seeth these will pity them, and hate sin the more. But what do you do there, where you have already caught the affection of their disease? The mind of a man is known much by the company which he chooseth; and if you choose ill, no wonder if you speed ill. "He that walketh with wise men shall be wise; but a companion of fools shall be destroyed," Prov. xiii. 20. "Whoso keepeth the law is a wise son, but he that is a companion of riotous men shameth his father," Prov. xxviii. 7. David saith, "I am a companion of all them that fear thee, and of them that keep thy precepts," Psalm cxix. 63. "I have not sat with vain persons, neither will I go in with dissemblers, I have hated the congregation of evildoers, and will not sit with the wicked," Psalm xxvi. 4, 5. "Depart from me, ye evil-doers, for I will keep the commandments of my God," Psalm cxix. 115.
VII. Especially be sure that you run not wilfully upon temptation, but keep as far from every tempting bait and object as you can. Fire and gunpowder, or straw, must be kept at a sufficient distance. No man is long safe at the very brink of danger, especially if it be a sin that his nature is much inclined to. No wise man will trust corrupted nature very far, especially where he hath often fallen already. The best man that is, should live in fear when an enticing bait of sin is near him. If David, who prayed, "Turn away mine eyes from beholding vanity," had better practiced it, oh what heinous sin had he escaped! Had he "made a covenant with his eyes," as Job did, what wounds had he prevented! The feast that you see not, the cup that is a mile off, the person that is far distant, the words which you hear not, are not they that you are most in danger of. But when tempting meat and drink are before you, and the tempting person hath secret familiarity with you, and tempting or provoking words are at your ears, then, alas! many have need of more grace, resolution, and mortification than they have.
If you knew well what sin is, and what is the consequence, you would be more watchful and resolved against temptations than against thieves, and fire, or the places infected by the plague.
VIII. Make it the chief study of your lives to understand what man's everlasting hope is, and to get a lively, well-settled belief of it, and to bring your souls to take it joyfully for your true felicity and end, and thence daily to fetch the powerful motives of your duty and your patience, and your contenting comfort in life and at your death.
1. The end is the life of all the means. If heavenly blessedness be not the chief end that you live, hope, and labour for in the world, your whole lives will be but carnal, vain, and the way to misery: for the means can be no better than the end. God, that is the BEGINNING, is our END; we are made and governed by him and for him. Heavenly glory is the sight of his glory, and the everlasting perfection and pleasure of joyful, mutual love.
But we are not the noblest creatures, next to God in excellency and desert, yea, we are sinners who have deserved to be cast out from his love. And therefore, as in the way we must come to him by a Saviour, so at the blessed end we must enjoy him by a Mediator. And to see God's glory in Christ, and the heavenly Jerusalem, the blessed society of saints and angels, continually flaming in love, joy, and praises to the most holy God,-this, this is the felicity for which we labour, suffer, and hope.
2. And oh how great and how needful a work it is, to search, study, and pray for so firm a belief of this unseen glory, as may so resolve, engage, and comfort us in some good measure, as if we had seen it with these eyes! Oh what men would one hour's being in heaven make us, or one clear sight of it! Faith hath a greater work to do than a dreaming or dead opinion can perform. If it be not well grounded first, and well exercised upon God's love, promise, and glory from day to day, you will find cause sadly to lament the weakness of it. For this use you have great need of the help of such books, as open clearly the evident proofs of the christian verity, which I have briefly done in the beginning of the second part of my "Life of Faith," and more largely in two other books, viz. "The Unreasonableness of Infidelity," and "The Reasons of the Christian Religion." A firm belief of the world to come, is it that must make us serious christians, and overcome the snares of worldly vanity.
And your faith being well settled, set yourselves daily to use it, and live by it: dwell in the joyful hopes of the heavenly glory. What is a man that liveth not in the use of reason? And you must know that you have as daily use for your FAITH, as for your REASON. Without reason, you can neither safely eat or drink; nor converse with men as a man, but as a Bedlamite; nor do any business that concerneth you; and therefore you must live by your reason. And without faith you cannot please God, nor obtain salvation; no, nor use your reason for any thing higher than to serve your appetites and purvey for the flesh: and therefore you must "live by faith," or live like beasts, and worse than beasts; and cannot otherwise live to God, nor live in the hopes of blessedness hereafter. O consider that the difference between living chiefly upon and for an earthly, fleshly felicity, or a heavenly, is the great difference between the holy and the unholy, and the foregoer of the difference between those in heaven and those in hell.
IX. Still remember that the GREAT MEANS of all the good that here or hereafter you can expect, is the GREAT MEDIATOR, the GREAT TEACHER, RULER, and INTERCESSOR for his people; and therefore, out of him you can do nothing. All duty that you offer to God, must be by his mediation; and so must all mercy which you receive from God. "To come to God by him, who is the way, the truth, and the life," must be your daily work of faith. His blood must wash you from all sin past, and from the guilt of daily failings and infirmities. None but he can effectually teach you to know God and yourselves, your duty and your everlasting hopes. None but he can render your persons, praises, and actions acceptable to God; because you are sinners, and unmeet for God's acceptance without a Mediator. "All power in heaven and earth is given him," and your lives and souls are at his will. And it is he that must judge you, and with whom you hope to live in glory. Therefore you must so "live by the faith of the Son of God, who hath loved you and given himself for you," that you may say it is he that liveth in you, Gal. ii. 20, 21. This is the fountain from whence you must daily fetch your strength and comfort.
X. And still remember that it is by the operation of the HOLY SPIRIT that the Father and the Son do sanctify souls, and regenerate and breed them up for glory. It is by the Holy Ghost that God dwelleth in us by love, and Christ by faith. Therefore see that you rest not in corrupted nature, and trust not to yourselves or to the flesh. Your souls are dead to God and holiness, and your duties dead, till the Spirit of Christ do quicken them. You are blind to God and made in vain, till the Spirit illuminate you, and give you understanding. You are like enemies, out of love with God, heaven, and holiness, till this Spirit reconcile you, and sanctify your wills. You will have no man-like, spiritual, holy pleasure, till the Holy Spirit renew your hearts, and make them fit to delight in God. Oh that men knew the great necessity of the illuminating, quickening, sanctifying, comforting influence of the Spirit of God, how far would they be from deriding it, as some profane ones do! By this Holy Spirit the sacred records were written; and by miracles of Christ and his apostles, and evangelists and prophets, sealed and delivered to the churches. And by this Spirit, the orders and government of the church were settled; and by Him we are enlightened to understand the Scriptures, and inclined to love them, and delightfully to believe them and obey them. Study therefore obediently these writings of the Holy Ghost, and confidently trust them. O be not found among the resisters or neglecters of the Spirit's help and motions, when proud self-confidence or fleshly lust do rise against them.
Christ's bodily presence is taken from the earth; he promised instead of it, (which was but in one place at once,) to send his Spirit, which is to the soul more than the sun's light to the eye, and can shine in all the world at once. This is his agent on earth, by whom (in teachers and learners) he carrieth on his saving work. This is his advocate, who pleadeth his cause effectually against unbelief, and fleshly lusts, and worldly wisdom. This is the "well of living water, springing up in us to everlasting life;" the name, the mark of God on souls; the divine regenerator, the author of God's holy image; and the divine nature, even divine life, and light, and love; the conqueror of the world and flesh, the strengthener of the weak, the confirmer of the wavering, the comforter of the sad, and the pledge, earnest, and first-fruits of everlasting life. O therefore pray earnestly for the Spirit of grace, and carefully obey him, and joyfully praise God, in the sense of his holy encouragement and help!
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CHAPTER IX.
ADDITIONAL COUNSEL TO YOUNG MEN, WHO ARE BREED UP TO LEARNING, AND PUBLIC WORK, ESPECIALLY SO THE SACRED MINISTRY, IN THE UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLS.
SECT. 1. It was the case of the London apprentices, who are nearest me, and I have oft to do with, which first provoked me to this work; and therefore which was the chief in my intention. But had I as near opportunity to be a counsellor to others, there are three sorts whom I should have preferred, for the sake of the church and kingdom, to which they are of greater signification:Ä
1. Those in the schools and universities, who are bred up for the sacred ministry.
2. Those there, and in the inns of court, who are bred up to the knowledge of the law.
3. Those of noblemen, knights and others, who are bred up for some places of government in the kingdom, according to their several ranks. And of these it is the first that I shall most freely speak to.
Sect. 2. And, first I shall mention the importance of their case; and secondly the danger that they are in of miscarrying, and what they should do to escape it.
Sect. 3. I. And indeed their condition, as they prove good or bad, is of unspeakable importance.
1. To the church and the souls of men.
2. To the peace of the kingdom.
3. To themselves. And,
4. To their parents, above the common case of others.
Sect. 4. 1. Of how great importance the quality of the clergy is to the church and men's salvation, many thousands have found to their joy and happiness; and, I fear, many more thousands to their sorrow and destruction. And then of what importance the quality of scholars and young candidates is to the soundness of the clergy, I need not many words to make men of reason and experience know.
Sect. 5. 2. God, who hath instituted the sacred office, and by his Spirit qualifieth men for the work doth usually work according to the fitness of their work and qualifications. As he doth the works of nature according to the fitness of natural second causes, (giving more light by the sun, than by a star or candle, &c.) so he doth the works of morality according to the fitness of moral causes. Holiness is the true morality, and usually wrought by holy means. And though it be so supernatural in several respects, (as it is wrought by the supernatural revelation or doctrine, or a supernatural teacher, Christ, by the operation of the Holy Ghost, a supernatural agent, commonly called infusion, and raising the soul to God, a supernatural object, and to a better state than that of corrupted nature,) yet we are natural recipients and agents, and it is our natural faculties which grace reneweth; and, being renewed, exercise the acts of holiness. And God worketh on us according to our nature, and by causes suited to our capacities and to the work. As he useth not to give men the knowledge of languages, philosophy, or any art, by the teaching of the ignorant and unskillful, so much as by learned and skillful teachers, we must say the same of our teachers of sacred truth; and though grace be the gift of the Holy Ghost, experience constraineth all sorts of christians almost to acknowledge what I here assert. Why else do they so earnestly contend, that they may live under the teachers