part 2. at large; especially in my Directions to the Melancholy.

I have been forced to put off many things briefly here, which deserved a larger handling; and I must now omit the discovery of those temptations, by which Satan keepeth men in sin, when he hath drawn them into it. 2. And those by which he causeth declining in grace, and apostasy. 3. And those by which he discomforteth true believers; because else this direction would swell to a treatise; and most will think it too long and tedious already, though the brevity which I use, to avoid prolixity, doth wrong the matter through the whole. Acquaintance with temptations is needful to our overcoming them.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: For serving Christ our Master in good works.]

_Grand Direct._ X. Your lives must be laid out in doing God service, and doing all the good you can, in works of piety, justice, and charity, with prudence, fidelity, industry, zeal, and delight; remembering that you are engaged to God, as servants to their lord and master; and are intrusted with his talents, of the improvement whereof you must give account.

The next relation between Christ and us, which we are to speak of, (subordinate to that of King and subjects,) is this of Master and servants. Though Christ saith to the apostles, John xv. 15, "Henceforth I call you not servants, but friends;" the meaning is not that he calleth them not servants at all, but not mere servants, they being more than servants, having such acquaintance with his counsels as his friends. For he presently, verse 20, bids them "Remember that the servant is not greater than his lord." And John xiii. 13, "Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am." And Matt. xxiii. 8, "One is your Master, Christ; and all ye are brethren:" so ver. 10. And the apostles called themselves the "servants of Jesus Christ," Rom. i. 1; and 1 Cor. iv. 1; Phil. i. 1: and "of God," Tit. i. 1, &c.

[Sidenote: What it is to be Christ's servants.]

He is called our Master, and we his servants, because he is our Rector, _ex pleno dominio_, with absolute propriety; and doth not give us laws to obey, while we do our own work, but giveth us his work to do, and laws for the right doing of it: and it is a service under his eye, and in dependence on him for our daily provisions, as servants on their lord. God hath work for us to do in the world; and the performance of it he will require. God biddeth his sons "Go work to day in my vineyard," Matt. xxi. 28; and expecteth that they do it, ver. 31. His "servants" are as "husbandmen," to whom "he intrusteth his vineyard, that he may receive the fruit," ver. 33, 34, 41, 43. "Faithful servants shall be made rulers over his household," Matt. xxiv. 45, 46. Christ delivereth to his servants his talents to improve, and will require an account of the improvement at his coming, Matt. xxv. 14. Good works, in the proper, comprehensive sense, are all actions internal and external, that are morally good; but in the narrower acceptation, they are works, not only formally good, as acts of obedience in general, but also materially good, such as a servant doth for his master, that tend to his advantage, or the profit of some other, whose welfare he regardeth. Because the doctrine of good works is controverted in these times, I shall first open it briefly, and then give you the directions.

1. Nothing is more certain, than that God doth not need the service of any creature; and that he receiveth no addition to his perfection or felicity from it; and, consequently, that on terms of commutative justice, (which giveth one thing for another, as in selling and buying,) no creature is capable of meriting at his hands.

2. It is certain, that on the terms of the law of works, (which required perfect obedience as the condition of life,) no sinner can do any work so good, as in point of distributive, governing justice, shall merit at his hands.

3. It is certain, that Christ hath so fulfilled the law of works, as to merit for us.

4. The redeemed are not masterless, but have still a Lord, who hath now a double right to govern them. And this Governor giveth them a law: and this law requireth us to do good works, as much as we are able, (though not so terribly, yet) as obligingly as the law of works: and by this (of Christ) we must be judged: and thus we must be judged according to our works: and to be judged is nothing else but to be justified or condemned. Such works therefore are rewardable according to the distributive justice of the law of grace, by which we must be judged. And the ancient fathers, who (without any opposition) spoke of good works as meritorious with God, meant no more, but that they were such as the righteous Judge of the world will reward according to the law of grace, by which he judgeth us. And this doctrine being agreed on as certain truth, there is no controversy with them, but whether the word merit was properly or improperly used: and that both Scripture and our common speech alloweth the fathers' use of the word, I have showed at large in my "Confession."

5. Christ is so far from redeeming us from a necessity of good works, that he died to restore us to a capacity and ability to perform them, and hath new-made us for that end. Tit. ii. 14, "He gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify to himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." Eph. ii. 10, "For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them."

6. Good works opposed to Christ, or his satisfaction, merit, righteousness, mercy, or free grace in the matter of justification or salvation, are not good works, but proud self-confidence and sin. But good works, in their due subordination to God's mercy, and Christ's merits and grace, are necessary and rewardable.

7. Though God need none of our works, yet that which is good materially pleaseth him, as it tendeth to his glory, and to our own and others' benefit, which he delighteth in.

8. It is the communicating of his goodness and excellencies to the creature, by which God doth glorify himself in the world; and in heaven, where is the fullest communication, he is most glorified. Therefore the praise which is given to the creature, who receiveth all from him, is his own praise. And it is no dishonour to God, that his creature be honoured, by being good, and being esteemed good: otherwise God would never have created any thing, lest it should derogate from himself; or he would have made them bad, lest their goodness were his dishonour; and he would be most pleased with the wicked, and least pleased with the best, as most dishonouring him. But madness itself abhorreth these conceits.

9. Therefore, as an act of mercy to us, and for his own glory, (as at first he made all things very good, so) he will make the new creature according to his image, which is holy, and just, and good, and will use us in good works; and it is our honour, and gain, and happiness to be so used by him. As he will not communicate light to the world without the sun (whose glory derogateth not from his honour); so will he not do good works in the world immediately by himself only, but by his servants, whose calling and daily business it must be, as that which they are made for, as the sun is made to give light and heat to inferior things, Eph. ii. 10. "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven," Matt, v. 16. Christ was far from their opinion that think all good works that are attributed to good men are dishonourable to God.[110]

10. He is most beholden to God, that is most exercised in good works. The more we do, the more we receive from him: and our very doing itself is our receiving; for it is he that "giveth us both to will and to do," by his operation in us, Phil. ii. 13; even "he, without whom we can do nothing," John xv. 5.

11. The obligation to good works, that is, to works of piety, justice, and charity, is essential to us as servants of the Lord. We are practical atheists, if we do not works of piety to God: we are rebels against God, and enemies to ourselves, and unmeet for human society, if we do not the works which are good for ourselves, and for others, if we have ability and opportunity. This is our fruit which God expecteth; and if we bear it not, he will hew us down, and cast us into the fire.

12. Though doing no hurt will not serve turn, without doing good, yet it is not the same works that are required of all, nor in the same degree, but according to every man's talent and opportunities, Matt. xxv. 14, 15, &c.

13. God looketh not only nor principally at the external part of the work, but much more to the heart of him that doth it; nor at the length of time, but at the sincerity and diligence of his servants. And therefore, though he is so just, as not to deny the reward which was promised them, to those that have borne the burden and heat of the day; yet he is so gracious and bountiful, that he will give as much to those that he findeth as willing and diligent, and would have done more if they had had opportunity, Matt. xx. 12-15. You see in all this, what our doctrine is about good works, and how far those papists are to be believed, who persuade their ignorant disciples, that we account them vain and needless things.

_Directions for faithful serving Christ, and doing good._

_Direct._ I. Be sure that you have that holiness, justice, and charity within, which are the necessary principles of good works.--For "a good tree will bring forth good fruit, and an evil tree evil fruit. Make the tree good, and the fruit good. A good man out of the good treasure of his heart, bringeth forth good things, and an evil man out of the evil treasure of his heart, bringeth forth evil things." As out of the heart proceed evil works, Matt. xv. 19, 20, so out of the heart must good works come, Matt. vii. 16-20. Can the dead do the works of the living? or the unholy do the works of holiness? or the unrighteous do the works of justice? or the uncharitable do the works of charity? Will he do good to Christ in his members on earth, who hateth them? Or will he not rather imprison them, than visit them in prison; and rather strip them of all they have, than feed and clothe them? Or if a man should do that which materially is good, from pride, or other sinful principles, God doth not accept it, but taketh all sacrifice but as carrion that is offered to him without the heart.

_Direct._ II. Content not yourselves to do some good extraordinarily on the by, or when you are urged to it; but study to do good, and make it the trade or business of your lives.--Having so many obligations, and so great encouragements, do what you do with all your might. If you would know whether you are servants to Christ, or to the flesh, the question must be, which of these have the main care and diligence of our lives; for as every carnal act will not prove you servants to the flesh, so every good action will not prove you the servants of Christ.

_Direct._ III. Before you do any work, consider whether you can truly say, it is a service of God, and will be accepted by him. See therefore that it be done, 1. To his glory, or to please him. 2. And in obedience to his command.--Mere natural actions, that have no moral good or evil in them, and so belong not to morality, these belong not to our present subject; as being not the matter of rational (or at least of obediential) choice. Such as the winking of the eye, the setting of this foot forward first, the taking of this or that meat, or drink, or instrument, or company, or action, when they are equal, and it is no matter of rational (or obediential) choice, &c. But every act that is to be done deliberately and rationally, as matter of choice, must be moralized, or made good, by doing it, 1. To a right end; and, 2. According to the rule. "Whether we eat, or drink, or whatsoever we do, (that is matter of rational choice,) must be done by us to the glory of God," 1 Cor. x. 31. All works tend not alike to his glory; but some more immediately and directly, and others remotely; but all must ultimately have this end. Even servants that labour in their painful work, must "do it as to the Lord, and not (only, or ultimately) to men; not with eye-service as men-pleasers, but as the servants of Christ," from whom they must have their greatest reward or punishment, Eph. vi. 5-8; Col. iii. 22-25. All the comforts of food, or rest, or recreation, or pleasure which we take, should be intended to fit us for our Master's work, or strengthen, cheer, and help us in it. Do nothing, deliberately, that belongs to the government of reason, but God's service in the world; which you can say, he set you on.

_Direct._ IV. Set not duties of piety, justice, or charity against each other, as if they had an enmity to each other; but take them as inseparable, as God hath made them.--Think not to offer God a sacrifice of injury, bribery, fraud, oppression, or any uncharitable work. And pretend not the benefit of men, or the safety of societies or kingdoms, for impiety against the Lord.[111]

_Direct._ V. Acquaint yourselves with all the talents which you receive from God, and what is the use to which they should be improved.--Keep thus a just account of your receivings, and what goods of your Master's is put into your hands. And make it a principal part of your study, to know what every thing in your hand is good for to your Master's use; and how it is that he would have you use it.

_Direct._ VI. Keep an account of your expenses; at least, of all your most considerable talents; and bring yourselves daily or frequently to a reckoning, what good you have done, or endeavoured to do. Every day is given you for some good work. Keep therefore accounts of every day (I mean, in your conscience, not in papers). Every mercy must be used to some good: call yourselves therefore, to account for every mercy, what you have done with it for your Master's use. And think not hours and minutes, and little mercies, may be past without coming into the account. The servant that thinks he may do what he list with shillings and pence, and that he is only to lay out greater sums for his master's use, and lesser for his own, will prove unfaithful, and come short in his accounts. Less sums than pounds must be in our reckonings.

_Direct._ VII. Take special heed that the common thief, your carnal self, either personal or in your relations, do not rob God of his expected due, and devour that which he requireth.--It is not for nothing that God calleth for the first-fruits. "Honour the Lord with thy substance, and with the first-fruits of all thine increase: so shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst forth with new wine," Prov. iii. 9, 10. So Exod. xxiii. 16, 19; xxxiv. 22, 26; Lev. ii. 12, 14; Nehem. x. 35; Ezek. xx. 40; xliv. 30; xlviii. 14. For if carnal self might first be served, its devouring greediness would leave God nothing. Though he that hath godliness with contentment hath enough, if he have but food and raiment, yet there will be but enough for themselves and children, where men have many hundreds or thousands a year, if once it fall into this gulf. And indeed, as he that begins with God hath the promise of his bountiful supplies, so he whose flesh must first be served, doth catch such an hydropic thirst for more, that all will but serve it: and the devil contriveth such necessities to these men, and such uses for all they have, that they have no more to spare than poorer men; and they can allow God no more but the leavings of the flesh, and what it can spare, which commonly is next to nothing.) Indeed though holy uses in particular were satisfied with first-fruits and limited parts, yet God must have all, and the flesh (inordinately or finally) have none. Every penny which is laid out upon yourselves, and children, and friends, must be done as by God's own appointment, and to serve and please him. Watch narrowly, or else this thievish carnal self will leave God nothing.

_Direct._ VIII. Prefer greater duties (_cæteris paribus_) before lesser; and labour to understand which is the greater, and to be preferred.--Not that any real duty is to be neglected: but we call that by the name of duty which is materially good, and a duty in its season; but formally, indeed, it is no duty at all, when it cannot be done without the omission of a greater. As for a minister to be praying with his family, or comforting one afflicted soul, when he should be preaching publicly, is to do that which is a duty in its season, but at that time is his sin. It is an unfaithful servant that is doing some little char, when he should be saving a beast from drowning, or the house from burning, or doing the greater part of his work.

_Direct._ IX. Prudence is exceeding necessary in doing good, that you may discern good from evil, discerning the season, and measure, and manner, and among divers duties, which must be preferred.--Therefore labour much for wisdom, and if you want it yourself, be sure to make use of theirs that have it, and ask their counsel in every great and difficult case. Zeal without judgment hath not only entangled souls in many heinous sins, but hath ruined churches and kingdoms, and under pretence of exceeding others in doing good, it makes men the greatest instruments of evil. There is scarce a sin so great and odious, but ignorant zeal will make men do it as a good work. Christ told his apostles, that those that killed them, should think they did God service. And Paul bare record to the murderous, persecuting Jews, "that they had a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge," Rom. x. 2. The papists' murders of christians under the name of heretics, hath recorded it to the world, in the blood of many hundred thousands, how ignorant, carnal zeal will do good, and what sacrifice it will offer up to God.[112]

_Direct._ X. In doing good, prefer the souls of men before the body, _cæteris paribus_. To convert a sinner from the error of his way is to save a soul from death, and to cover a multitude of sins, Jam. v. 20.--And this is greater than to give a man an alms. As cruelty to souls is the most heinous cruelty, (as persecutors and soul-betraying pastors will one day know to their remediless woe,) so mercy to souls is the greatest mercy. Yet sometimes mercy to the body is in that season to be preferred (for every thing is excellent in its season). As if a man be drowning or famishing, you must not delay the relief of his body, while you are preaching to him for his conversion; but first relieve him, and then you may in season afterwards instruct him. The greatest duty is not always to go first in time; sometimes some lesser work is a necessary preparatory to a greater; and sometimes a corporal benefit may tend more to the good of souls than some spiritual work may. Therefore I say still, that prudence and an honest heart are instead of many directions: they will not only look at the immediate benefit of a work, but to its utmost tendency and remote effects.

_Direct._ XI. In doing good, prefer the good of many, especially of the church or commonwealth, before the good of one or few.[113]--For many are more worth than one; and many will honour God and serve him more than one: and therefore both piety and charity require it. Yet this also must be understood with a _cæteris paribus_; for it is possible some cases of exception may be found. Paul's is a high instance, that "could have wished himself accursed from Christ" for the sake of the Jews, as judging God's honour more concerned in all them than in him alone.

_Direct._ XII. Prefer a durable good that will extend to posterity, before a short and transitory good.--As to build an alms-house is a greater work than to give an alms, and to erect a school than to teach a scholar; so to promote the settlement of the gospel and a faithful ministry is the greatest of all, as tending to the good of many, even to their everlasting good. This is the pre-eminence of good books before a transient speech, that they may be a more durable help and benefit. Look before you with a judicious foresight; and as you must not do that present good to a particular person, which bringeth greater hurt to many; so you must not do that present good to one or many, which is like to produce a greater and more lasting hurt. Such blind reformers have used the church, as ignorant physicians use their patients, who give them a little present ease, and cast them into a greater misery, and seem to cure them with a dose of opium or the Jesuit's powder, when they are bringing them into a worse disease than that which they pretend to cure. Oh when shall the poor church have wiser and foreseeing helpers!

_Direct._ XIII. Let all that you do for the church's good be sure to tend to holiness and peace; and do nothing under the name of a good work, which hath an enmity to either of these.--For these are to the church as life and health are to the body; and the increase of its welfare is nothing else but the increase of these. Whatever they pretend, believe none that say they seek the good and welfare of the church, if they seek not the promoting of holiness and peace: if they hinder the powerful preaching of the gospel, and the means that tendeth to the saving of souls, and the serious, spiritual worshipping of God, and the unity and peace of all the faithful; and if they either divide the faithful into sects and parties, or worry all that differ from them, and humour them not in their conceits;--take all these for such benefactors to the church, as the wolf is to the flock, and as the plague is to the city, or the fever to the body, or the fire in the thatch is to the house. "The wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle," &c. "But if ye have bitter envying and strife in your hearts, glory not, and lie not against the truth: this wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish; for where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work," Jam. iii. 14-18.

_Direct._ XIV. If you will do the good which God accepteth, do that which he requireth; and put not the name of good works upon your sins, nor upon unnecessary things of your own invention; nor think that any good must be accomplished by forbidden means.--None know what pleaseth God so well as himself. Our ways may be right in our own eyes, and carnal wisdom may think it hath devised the fittest means to honour God, when he may abominate it, and say, Who required this at your hand? And if we will do good by sinning, we must do it in despite of God, who is engaged against our sins and us, Rom. iii. 8. God needeth not our lie to his glory: if papists think to find at the last day their foppish ceremonies, and superstition, and will-worship, their "touch not, taste not, handle not," to be reckoned to them as good works; or if Jesuits or enthusiasts think to find their perjury, treasons, rebellions, or conspiracies numbered with good works; or the persecuting of the preachers and faithful professors of godliness to be good works; how lamentably will they find their expectations disappointed!

_Direct._ XV. Keep in the way of your place and calling, and take not other men's works upon you without a call, under any pretence of doing good.--Magistrates must do good in the place and work of magistrates; and ministers in the place and work of ministers; and private men in their private place and work; and not one man step into another's place, and take his work out of his hand, and say, I can do it better: for if you should do it better, the disorder will do more harm than you did good by bettering his work. One judge must not step into another's court and seat, and say I will pass more righteous judgment. You must not go into another man's school, and say, I can teach your scholars better; nor into another's charge or pulpit, and say, I can preach better. The servant may not rule the master, because he can do it best; no more than you may take another man's wife, or house, or lands, or goods, because you can use them better than he. Do the good that you are called to.

_Direct._ XVI. Where God hath prescribed you some particular good work or way of service, you must prefer that before another which is greater in itself.--This is explicatory or limiting of Direct. viii. The reason is, because God knoweth best what is pleasing to him, and "obedience is better than sacrifice." You must not neglect the necessary maintenance of wife and children, under pretence of doing a work of piety or greater good; because God hath prescribed you this order of your duty, that you begin at home (though not to stop there). Another minister may have a greater or more needy flock; but yet you must first do good in your own, and not step without a call into his charge. If God have called you to serve him in a low and mean employment, he will better accept you in that work, than if you undertook the work of another man's place, to do him greater service.

_Direct._ XVII. Lose not your resolutions or opportunities of doing good by unnecessary delays.--Prov. iii. 27, 28, "Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it. Say not unto thy neighbour, Go, and come again, and to-morrow I will give; when thou hast it by thee."--Prov. xxvii. 1, "Boast not thyself of to-morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth." It is two to one, but delay will take away thine opportunity, and raise such unexpected diversions or difficulties as will frustrate thine intent, and destroy the work. Take thy time, if thou wilt do thy service: it is beautiful in its season.

_Direct._ XVIII. Yet present necessity may make a lesser work to be thy duty, when the greater may better bear delay.--As to save a man's life in sickness or danger, when you may after have time to seek the saving of his soul. Not only works of mercy may be thus preferred before sacrifice, but the ordinary conveniences of our lives; as to rise, and dress us, and do other business, may go before prayer, when prayer may afterwards be done as well or better, and would be hindered if these did not go before.

_Direct._ XIX. Though, _cæteris paribus_, the duties of the first table are to be preferred before those of the second, yet the greater duties of the second table must be preferred before the lesser duties of the first.--The love of God is a greater duty than the love of man (and they must never be separated); but yet we must prefer the saving a man's life, or the quenching a fire in the town, before a prayer, or sacrament, or observation of a sabbath. David ate the shew-bread, and the disciples rubbed out the corn on the sabbath day, because the preserving of life was a greater duty than the observing of a sabbath, or a positive ceremonial law. And Christ bids the Pharisees, "Go, learn what this meaneth,--I will have mercy, and not sacrifice:" the blood of our brethren is an unacceptable means of pleasing God, and maintaining piety, or promoting men's several opinions in religion.

_Direct._ XX. Choose that employment or calling (so far as you have your choice) in which you may be most serviceable to God.--Choose not that in which you may be most rich or honourable in the world; but that in which you may do most good, and best escape sinning.

[Sidenote: Is doing good or avoiding sin to be most looked at in our choice of callings.]

_Quest._ But what if in one calling I am most serviceable to the church, but yet have most temptations to sin? And in another I have least temptations to sin, but am least serviceable to the church, (which is the ordinary difference between men in public places and men in solitude,) which of these should I choose?

_Answ._ 1. Either you are already engaged in your calling, or not; if you are, you must have greater reasons to desert it than such as might require you at first not to choose it. 2. Either the temptations to sin are such as good men ordinarily overcome, or they are extraordinarily great. You may more warrantably avoid such great ones as you are not like to overcome than small or ordinary ones. 3. Either you are well furnished against these temptations, or not: if not, you must be more cautelous in approaching them; but if you are, you may trust God the boldlier to help you out. 4. Either they are temptations to ordinary human frailties in the manner of duty, or temptations to more dangerous sin: the first will not so much warrant you to avoid doing good for to escape them as the latter will. 5. The service that you are called to (being supposed great and necessary to be done by somebody) is either such as others will do better, or as well, if you avoid it, or not. If the church or common good receive no detriment by your refusal, you may the more insist on your own preservation; but if the necessities of the church or state, and the want of fitter instruments, or any apparent call of God, do single you out for that service, you must obey God, whatever the difficulties and temptations are: for no temptations can necessitate you to sin; and God that calleth you, can easily preserve you: but take heed what you thrust yourselves upon.

[Sidenote: A calling may be changed.]

_Quest._ But may I change my calling for the service of the church, when the apostle bids every man abide in the calling in which he was called? 1 Cor. vii. 20.

_Answ._ The apostle only requireth men to make no unlawful change (such as is the forsaking of a wife or husband) nor no unnecessary change, as if it were necessary (as in the case of uncircumcision): but in the next words he saith, "Art thou called being a servant? care not for it: but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather." He bids every man abide with God in the place he is called to, but forbids them not to change their state when they are called to change it, ver. 24. He speaks more of relations (of single persons and married, servants and free, &c.) than of trades or offices: and yet no doubt but a single person may be married, and the married must be separated; and servants may be free. No man must take up or change any calling without sufficient cause to call him to it; but when he hath such cause, he sinneth if he change it not. The apostles changed their callings, when they became apostles; and so did multitudes of the pastors of the church in every age. God no where forbids men to change their employment for the better, upon a sufficient cause or call.

[Sidenote: Who excused from a calling.]

_Direct._ XXI. Especially be sure that you live not out of a calling, that is, such a stated course of employment, in which you may best be serviceable to God.--Disability indeed is an unresistible impediment. Otherwise no man must either live idly, or content himself with doing some little chars, as a recreation, or on the by; but every one that is able, must be statedly and ordinarily employed in such work, as is serviceable to God, and the common good. _Quest._ But will not wealth excuse us? _Answ._ It may excuse you from some sordid sort of work, by making you more serviceable in other; but you are no more excused from service and work of one kind or other, than the poorest man; unless you think that God requireth least where he giveth most. _Quest._ Will not age excuse us? _Answ._ Yes, so far as it disableth you; but no further. _Object._ But I am turned out of my calling. _Answ._ You are not turned out of the service of God: he calleth you to that, or to another. _Quest._ But may not I cast off the world, that I may only think of my salvation? _Answ._ You may cast off all such excess of worldly cares or business as unnecessarily hinder you in spiritual things; but you may not cast off all bodily employment and mental labour in which you may serve the common good. Every one that is a member of church or commonwealth, must employ their parts to the utmost for the good of the church and commonwealth: public service is God's greatest service. To neglect this, and say, I will pray and meditate, is as if your servant should refuse your greatest work, and tie himself to some lesser, easy part. And God hath commanded you some way or other to labour for your daily bread, and not live as drones on the sweat of others only. Innocent Adam was put into the garden of Eden to dress it; and fallen man must "eat his bread in the sweat of his brow," Gen. iii. 19; and he that "will not work must be forbidden to eat," 2 Thess. iii. 6, 10, 12. And indeed it is necessary to ourselves, for the health of our bodies, which will grow diseased with idleness; and for the help of our souls, which will fail if the body fail: and man in flesh must have work for his body as well as for his soul. And he that will do nothing but pray and meditate, it is like will (by sickness or melancholy) be disabled ere long either to pray or meditate: unless he have a body extraordinarily strong.

_Direct._ XXII. Be very watchful redeemers of your time, and make conscience of every hour and minute, that you lose it not, but spend it in the best and most serviceable manner that you can.--Of this I intend to speak more particularly anon; and therefore shall here add no more.

_Direct._ XXIII. Watchfully and resolutely avoid the entanglements and diverting occasions by which the tempter will be still endeavouring to waste your time and hinder you from your work.--Know what is the principal service that you are called to, and avoid avocations: especially magistrates and ministers, and those that have great and public work, must here take heed. For if you be not very wise and watchful, the tempter will draw you, before you are aware, into such a multitude of diverting care or business, that shall seem to be your duties, as shall make you almost unprofitable in the world: you shall have this or that little thing that must be done, and this or that friend that must be visited or spoken to, and this or that civility that must be performed: so that trifles shall detain you from all considerable works. I confess friends must not be neglected, nor civilities be denied; but our greatest duties having the greatest necessity, all things must give place to them in their proper season. And therefore, that you may avoid the offence of friends, avoid the place or occasions of such impediments; and where that cannot be done, whatever they judge of you, neglect not your most necessary work; else it will be at the will of men and Satan, whether you shall be serviceable to God or not.

_Direct._ XXIV. Ask yourselves seriously, how you would wish at death and judgment that you had used all your wits, and time, and wealth; and resolve accordingly to use them now.--This is an excellent direction and motive to you for doing good, and preventing the condemnation which will pass upon unprofitable servants. Ask yourselves, Will it comfort me more at death or judgment, to think, or hear, that I spent this hour in plays or idleness, or in doing good to myself or others? How shall I wish then I had laid out my estate, and every part of it? Reason itself condemneth him that will not now choose the course which then he shall wish that he had chosen, when we foresee the consequence of that day.

_Direct._ XXV. Understand how much you are beholden to God, (and not he to you,) in that he will employ you in doing any good; and how it is the way of your own receiving; and know the excellency of your work and end, that you may do it all with love and pleasure.--Unacquaintedness with our Master, and with the nature and tendency of our work, is it that maketh it seem tedious and unpleasant to us: and we shall never do it well, when we do it with an ill will, as merely forced. God loveth a cheerful servant, that loveth his Master and his work. It is the main policy of the devil to make our duty seem grievous, unprofitable, undesirable, and wearisome to us: for a little thing will stop him that goeth unwillingly and in continual pain.

_Direct._ XXVI. Expect your reward from God alone, and look for unthankfulness and abuse from men, or wonder not if it befall you.--If you are not the servants of men, but of God, expect your recompence from him you serve. You serve not God indeed, if his reward alone will not content you, unless you have also man's reward. "Verily you have your reward," if, with the hypocrite, you work for man's approbation, Matt. vi. 2, 5. Expect, especially if you are ministers or others that labour directly for the good of souls, that many prove your enemies for your telling them the truth; and that if you were as good as Paul, and as unwearied in seeking men's salvation, yet the more you love, the less you will (by many) be loved: and those that he could have wished himself accursed from Christ to save, did hate him, and persecute him, as if he had been the most accursed wretch: a pestilent fellow, and a mover of sedition among the people, and one that turned the world upside down, were the names they gave him; and wherever he came, "bonds and imprisonment did attend him;" and slandering, and reviling, and whipping, and stocks, and vowing his death, are the thanks and requital which he hath from those, for whose salvation he spared no pains, but did spend and was spent. If you cannot do good upon such terms as these, and for those that will thus requite you, and be contented to expect a reward in heaven, you are not fit to follow Christ, who was worse used than all this, by those to whom he showed more love than any of his servants have to show. "Take up your cross, and do good to the unthankful, and bless them that curse you, and love them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you, if you will be the children of God," Matt. v.

_Direct._ XXVII. Make not your own judgments or consciences your law, or the maker of your duty; which is but the discerner of the law of God, and of the duty which he maketh you, and of your own obedience or disobedience to him.--There is a dangerous error grown too common in the world, that a man is bound to do every thing which his conscience telleth him is the will of God; and that every man must obey his conscience, as if it were the lawgiver of the world; whereas, indeed, it is not ourselves, but God, that is our lawgiver. And conscience is not appointed or authorized to make us any duty, which God hath not made us; but only to discern the law of God, and call upon us to observe it: and an erring conscience is not to be obeyed, but to be better informed, and brought to a righter performance of its office.

In prosecution of this direction, I shall here answer several cases about doubting.

_Quest._ I. What if I doubt whether a thing be a duty and good work or not? must I do it while I doubt? Nay, what if I am uncertain whether it be duty or sin?

_Answ._ I. In all these cases about an erring or doubting conscience, forget not to distinguish between the being of a duty and the knowledge of a duty: and remember, that the first question is, Whether this be my duty? and the next, How I may discern it to be my duty? And that God giveth it the being by his law, and conscience is but to know and use it: and that God changeth not his law, and our duty, as oft as our opinions change about it. The obligation of the law is still the same, though our consciences err in apprehending it otherwise. Therefore, if God command you a duty, and your opinion be that he doth not command it, or that he forbids it, and so that it is no duty, or that it is a sin, it doth not follow that indeed God commands it not because you think so: else it were no error in you; nor could it be possible to err, if the thing become true, because you think it to be true. God commandeth you to love him, and to worship him, and to nourish your children, and to obey the higher powers, &c. And do you think you shall be discharged from all these duties, and allowed to be profane, or sensual, or to resist authority, or to famish your children, if you can but be blind enough to think that God would have it so? 2. Your error is a sin itself: and do you think that one sin must warrant another? or that sin can discharge you from your duty, and disannul the law? 3. You are a subject to God, and not a king to yourself; and therefore, you must obey his laws, and not make new ones.

_Quest._ II. But is it not every man's duty to obey his conscience?

_Answ._ No: it is no man's duty to obey his conscience in an error, when it contradicteth the command of God. Conscience is but a discerner of God's command, and not at all to be obeyed strictly as a commander; but it is to be obeyed in a larger sense, that is, to be followed wherever it truly discerneth the command of God. It is our duty to lay by our error, and seek the cure of it, till we attain it, and not to obey it.

_Quest._ III. But is it not a sin for a man to go against his conscience?

_Answ._ Yes: not because conscience hath any authority to make laws for you; but because interpretatively you go against God. For you are bound to obey God in all things; and when you think that God commandeth you a thing, and yet you will not do it, you disobey formally, though not materially. The matter of obedience is the thing commanded: the form of obedience is our doing the thing, because it is commanded; when the authority of the commander causeth us to do it. Now you reject the authority of God, when you reject that which you think he commandeth, though he did not.

_Quest._ IV. Seeing the form of obedience is the being of it, and denominateth, which the matter doth not without the form, and there can be no sin which is not against the authority of God, which is the formal cause of obedience, is it not then my duty to follow my conscience?

_Answ._ 1. There must be an integrity of causes, or concurrence of all necessaries to make up obedience, though the want of any one will make a sin. If you will be called obedient, you must have the matter and form, because the true form is found in no other matter; you must do the thing commanded, because of his authority that commandeth it. If it may be called really and formally obedience, when you err, yet it is not that obedience which is acceptable; for it is not any kind of obedience, but obedience in the thing commanded, that God requireth. 2. But indeed as long as you err sinfully, you are also wanting in the form as well as the matter of your obedience, though you intend obedience in the particular act. It is not only a wilful opposing, and positive rejecting the authority of the commander, which is formal disobedience; but it is any privation of due subjection to it; when his authority is not so regarded as it ought to be; and doth not so powerfully and effectually move us to our duty as it ought. Now this formal disobedience is found in your erroneous conscience; for if God's authority had moved you as it should have done, to diligent inquiry and use of all appointed means, and to the avoiding of all the causes of error, you had never erred about your duty. For if the error had been perfectly involuntary and blameless, the thing could not have been your particular duty, which you could not possibly come to know.

_Quest._ V. But if it be a sin to go against my conscience, must I not avoid that sin by obeying it? Would you have me sin?

_Answ._ You must avoid the sin, by changing your judgment, and not by obeying it; for that is but to avoid one sin by committing another. An erring judgment is neither obeyed nor disobeyed without sin; it can make you sin, though it cannot make you duty; it doth insnare, though not oblige. If you follow it, you break the law of God in doing that which he forbids you. If you forsake it and go against it, you reject the authority of God, in doing that which you think he forbids you. So that there is no attaining to innocence any other way, but by coming first to know your duty, and then to do it. If you command your servant to weed your corn, and he mistake you, and verily think, that you bid him pull up the corn, and not the weeds; what now should he do? Shall he follow his judgment, or go against it? Neither, but change it, and then follow it; and to that end inquire further of your mind, till he be better informed: and no way else will serve the turn.

_Quest._ VI. Seeing no man that erreth doth know or think that he erreth, (for that is a contradiction,) how can I lay by that opinion, or strive against it, which I take to be the truth?

_Answ._ It is your sin, that you take a falsehood to be a truth. God hath appointed means for the cure of blindness and error, as well as other sins; or else the world were in a miserable case. Come into the light, with due self-suspicion, and impartiality, and diligently use all God's means, and avoid the causes of deceit and error, and the light of truth will at once show you the truth, and show you that before you erred. In the mean time sin will be sin, though you take it to be duty, or no sin.

_Quest._ VII. But seeing he that knoweth his master's will and doth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes; and he that knoweth it not, with few; is it not my duty chiefly to avoid the many stripes, by avoiding sinning against my conscience or knowledge?

_Answ._ 1. Your duty is to avoid both; and if both were not sinful, they would not both be punished with stripes. 2. Your conscience is not your knowledge when you err, but your ignorance. Conscience, as it signifieth the faculty of knowing, may be said to be conscience when it erreth; as reason is reason, in the faculty, when we err. And conscience, as to an erring act, may be called conscience, so far as there is any true knowledge in the act: as a man is said to see, when he misjudgeth of colours, or to reason, when he argueth amiss. But, so far as it erreth, it is no conscience in act at all; for conscience is science, and not nescience. You sin against your knowledge when you sin against a well-informed conscience, but you sin in ignorance when you sin against an erring conscience. 3. And if the question be not, what is your duty, but, which is the smaller sin, then it is true, that, _cæteris paribus_, it is a greater sin to go against your judgment, than to follow it. But yet, other imparities in matter and circumstances may be an exception against this rule.

_Quest._ VIII. But it is not possible for every man presently to know all his duty, and to avoid all error about his duty. Knowledge must be got in time. All men are ignorant in many things: should I not then in the mean time follow my conscience?

_Answ._ 1. Your ignorance is culpable, or not culpable. If it be not culpable, the thing which you are ignorant of is not your duty. If culpable, (which is the case supposed,) as you brought yourself to that difficulty of knowing, so it will remain your sin till it be cured; and one sin will not warrant another. And all that time you are under a double command; the one is, to know, and use the means of knowledge; and the other is, to do the thing commanded. So that how long soever you remain in error you remain in sin, and are not under an obligation to follow your error, but first to know, and then to do the contrary duty. 2. And as long as you keep yourselves in a necessity, or way of sinning, you must call it sin as it is, and not call it duty. It is not your duty to choose a lesser sin before a greater; but to refuse and avoid both the lesser and the greater. And if you say you cannot, yet, remember, that it is only your sin that is your impotency, or your impotency is sinful. But it is true, that you are most obliged to avoid the greatest sin: therefore, all that remaineth in the resolving of all such cases, is but to know, of two sins, which is the greatest.

_Quest._ IX. What if there be a great duty, which I cannot perform without committing a little sin? or, a very great good, which I cannot do but by an unlawful means; as, to save the lives of many by a lie?

_Answ._ 1. It is no duty to you, when you cannot do it without wilful sin, be it never so little. Deliberately to choose a sin, that I may perform some service to God, or do some good to others, is to run before we are called, and to make work for ourselves which God never made for us; and to offer sin for a sacrifice to God; and to do evil that good may come of it; and abuse God, and reject his government, under pretence of serving him. "The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord: how much more, when he bringeth it with a wicked mind?" Prov. xxi. 27; xv. 8. "He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination," Prov. xxviii. 9. "Be more ready to hear, than to offer the sacrifice of fools: for they consider not that they do evil," Eccles. v. 1. 2. If you will do good by sinning, you must do good in opposition to God: and how easily can he disappoint you, and turn it into evil! It is not good indeed, which must be accomplished by sin. The final good is never promoted by it; and all other good is to be estimated by its tendency to the end. You think that good which is not so, because you judge by the present feeling of your flesh, and do not foresee how it stands related to the everlasting good.

_Quest._ X. Seeing then that I am sure beforehand that I cannot preach, or hear, or pray, or do any good action without sin, must I not, by this rule, forbear them all?

_Answ._ No; because your infirmities in the performance of your duty, which you would avoid and cannot, are not made the condition of your action, but are the diseases of it. They are not chosen and approved of. The duty is your duty notwithstanding your infirmities, and may be accepted of; for you cannot serve God in perfection till you are perfect; and to cast away his service is a far greater sin, than to do it imperfectly. But you may serve him without such wilful, chosen sin, if not in one way, yet in another. The imperfection of your service is repented of while it is committed; but so is not your approved, chosen sin. For a man to make a bargain against God, that he will commit a sin against him, though the action be the same which he hath often done before in pardonable weakness; this is to turn it to a presumptuous, heinous sin. If he do it for worldly gain or safety, he selleth his obedience to God for trifles. If he do it to serve God by, he blasphemeth God; declaring him to be evil, and a lover of sin, or so impotent as not to be able to do good, or attain his ends by lawful means. It is most dangerous to give it under our hands to the devil, that we will sin, on what pretence soever.

_Quest._ XI. What if I am certain that the duty is great, and uncertain whether the thing annexed to it be a sin or not? Must I forbear a certain duty for an uncertain sin? or forbear doing a great and certain good, for fear of a small, uncertain evil?

_Answ._ 1. The question _de esse_ must go before the question _de apparere_. Either that which you say you are uncertain of is indeed a sin, or it is none. If it be no sin, then you are bound both to search till you know that it is no sin, and not to forbear your duty for it. But if really it be a sin, then your uncertainty of it is another sin; and that which God bindeth you to, is to forsake them both. 2. Your question containeth a contradiction: you cannot be certain that it is a duty at all to you, any further than you are certain whether the condition or means be lawful or a sin. What if an auditor in Spain or Italy say, I am certain that it is a duty to obey my teachers; but I am uncertain whether their doctrines of the mass, purgatory, and the rest, have any untruth or sin in them; therefore, I must not forbear certain obedience for uncertain sin. Or if a priest among them say, I am certain that it is a duty to preach God's word, but I am not certain that the Trent Articles, which I must swear or subscribe, are sinful or false; therefore I must not leave a great and certain duty for an uncertain sin. The answer to them both is easy. 1. It is your sin that you are uncertain of the sinfulness of those things, which God hath forbidden: and God biddeth you first to search the Scriptures, and cure that error. He made his law before your doubts arose, and will not change it because you doubt. 2. You contradict yourselves by a mistake. You have no more certainty that you should obey your teachers in these particulars, than you have that the things which they teach or command you are not against that law of God. You are certain that you must obey them in all things not forbidden by God, and within the reach of their office to require. And you are as certain that it is unlawful to obey them against the law of God, and that God must be obeyed before man. But whether you must obey them in this particular case, you cannot be certain, while you are uncertain whether it be forbidden of God. And the priest must be as uncertain whether it be any duty of his at all, to preach God's word, as he is uncertain of the lawfulness of the Trent oath or subscription, unless he can do it without. If a subject say, I am certain, that to govern the kingdom well is a great, good work and duty, but I am uncertain whether to depose the king if he govern not well, and set up myself, be a sin; therefore, the certain good must overrule the uncertain evil. I give him the same answer: 1. It is your sin to be uncertain whether rebellion be a sin; and God bindeth you to lay by the sin of your judgment, and not to make it a shoeing-horn to more. 2. You are sure that governing well is a good work; but you should be as sure, that it is no duty of yours, nor good work for you to do, as you are sure that you are but a private man and a subject, and never called to do the good of another's office. A private man may say, I am sure preaching is a good work; but I am not sure that a private, unordained man may not statedly separate himself to do it. But he can be no surer that it is a duty to him, than he is that he is called to it.

_Quest._ XII. Well, suppose my ignorance be my sin, and suppose that I am equally uncertain of the duty and of the sin annexed, yet if I have done all that I am able, and remain still unresolved, and after my most diligent inquiry am as much in doubt as ever, what should I then do?

_Answ._ 1. If you had by any former sin so forfeited God's assistance, as that he will leave you to your blindness, this altereth not his law and your obligations, which are still the same (to learn, understand, and practise). 2. But if you are truly willing to understand, and practise, and use his means, you have no cause to imagine that he will thus forsake you; undoubtedly he appointeth you no means in vain. If you attain not sufficient resolution to guide you in your duty, it is either because your hearts are false in the inquiry, and biassed, or unwilling to know the truth, or do it; or because you use not the true appointed means for resolution, but in partiality or laziness neglect it.

_Quest._ XIII. Suppose still my ignorance be my sin; which is the greater sin, to neglect the good work, or to venture on the feared evil that is annexed? I am not conscious of any unfaithfulness, but human frailty, that keepeth me from certainty. And no man is so perfect as to have no culpable ignorance, and to be certain in every point of duty. Therefore I must with greatest caution avoid the greatest sin, when I am out of hope of avoiding all. On one side, it is a common rule that I must do nothing against conscience, (no, not a doubting conscience,) though I must not always do what it biddeth me. "For he that doubteth is condemned if he eat: for whatsoever is not of faith is sin," Rom. xiv. 23. On the other side, if all duty be omitted which conscience doubteth of, I may be kept from almost every duty.

_Answ._ The heart is so deceitful that you have great cause to watch, lest human frailty be pretended, for that error, which a corrupted, biassed, partial mind, or wilful laziness, is the cause of. Diligent study, and inquiry, and prayer, with a sincere desire to know the truth, may succeed, at least, to so much satisfaction, as may keep your minds in quietness and peace, and give you comfort in your way, and preserve you from all such sin as is inconsistent with this your safety and acceptance with God. But yet it is true that human frailty will occasion in the best uncertainties in some particular cases; and though God make it not our duty of two sins to choose the less, but to refuse both, yet he maketh it our duty more diligently to avoid the greater than the less. And ofttimes the case is so sudden that no inquiry can be made: and therefore I confess a christian should know which sins are greatest and to be most avoided. At present I shall lay down these following rules, premising this, that where accidents and circumstances which make sins great or small are to be compared, they are ofttimes so numerous and various, that no rules can be laid down beforehand, that will serve all turns, no more than in law and physic, any law books or physic books will serve all cases without a present experienced judicious counsellor: present prudence and sincerity must do most.

_Rule_ I. In things altogether indifferent, nothing must be done that conscience doubteth of, because there is a possibility or fear of sinning on the one side, but none on the other; and in that case it is a certain sin to venture on a feared sin. But then it is supposed that the thing be indifferent as clothed with all its circumstances, and that there be no accident that taketh away its indifferency.

_Rule_ II. In case the thing be really unlawful, and I think it to be lawful, but with some doubting, but am clear that the forbearing it is no sin; there the sin is only in the doing it; because all is clear and safe on the other side.

_Rule_ III. There are many sins which are always and to all persons in all cases sins, and not doubted of by any without gross unfaithfulness or negligence; and here there is no room for any doubting whether we must do that good which cannot be done without that sin, it being certain that no such good can be a duty. As, to commit idolatry, to blaspheme God, to deny Christ, to deny the Scriptures, to hate, or reproach, or oppose a holy life, to be perjured, to approve or justify the sin of others, &c. It can be no duty which cannot be done without the wilful yielding to or committing these or any known sin.

_Rule_ IV. There are some duties so great, and clear, and constant to all, that none but a profligate or graceless conscience (or one that is fearfully poisoned with sin) can make a doubt of it deliberately: these therefore come not within the case before us.

_Rule_ V. If moral evil be compared only with natural good, or moral good with natural evil, there is no doubt to be made of the case: the least sin having more evil in it than the prosperity or lives of millions of men have good (considered in themselves as natural good); and the least duty to God having more good in it than the death of millions of men (as such) hath evil. For the good of duty and the evil of sin are greatened by their respect to God, and the other lessened as being good or evil only unto men, and with respect to them.

_Rule_ VI. Where I am in an equal degree uncertain of the duty to be omitted, and of the sin to be committed, it is a greater sin to venture doubtfully upon the committing of a positive sin that is great, (in case it prove a sin,) than upon the omitting a duty which (in case it prove a duty) is less; and on the contrary, it is worse to venture on the omitting of a great duty, than on the committing of a small, positive sin. As, suppose my own or my neighbour's house be on fire, and I am in doubt whether I may take another man's water to quench it against his will; or if my own, or my child's, or neighbour's life be in danger by famine, and I doubt whether I may take another man's apples, or pears, or ears of corn, or his bread, against his will, to save my own life or another's. Really, the thing is already made lawful or unlawful (which I now determine not) by the law of God; but in my unavoidable uncertainty, (if I be equally doubtful on both sides,) it is a far greater sin (if it prove a sin) to omit the saving of the house or life, than to take another man's water, or fruit, or bread, that hath plenty (if this prove the sin). So if king and nobles were in a ship, which would be taken and all destroyed by pirates, unless I told a lie, and said, they are other persons; if I were equally in doubt which course to take, to lie or not, (though sin have more evil than all our lives have good,) yet a sinful omitting to save all their lives is a greater sin than a sinful telling of such a lie. Suppose I am in doubt, whether I may lawfully save an ox, or ass, or a man's life, by labour on the sabbath day? or David had doubted, whether he might eat the consecrated shew-bread in his necessity? it is clear, that the sinful neglect of a man's life is worse than the sinful violation of a sabbath, or the sinful use of the consecrated bread. If I equally doubt, whether I may use a ceremony, or disorderly, defective form of prayer, and whether I should preach the gospel to save men's souls, where there are not others enough to do it; it is clear, that sinfully to use a ceremony, or disorderly form of prayer, is, _cæteris paribus_, a lesser sin than sinfully to neglect to preach the gospel and to save men's souls. On the other side, suppose I dwelt in Italy, and could not have leave to preach the gospel there, unless I would subscribe to the Trent Confession, or the canon 3d of Concil. Lateran sub Innocent III.; one of which requireth men to swear for transubstantiation, and to interpret the Scriptures only according to the unanimous consent of the fathers (who never unanimously consented in any exposition of the greatest part of the Scriptures at all); the other decreeth the pope's deposing temporal lords, and disobliging their subjects from their allegiance. On the one side, I doubt, whether by subscribing I become not guilty of justifying idolatry, perjury, and rebellion, and making myself guilty of the perjury of many thousand others: on the other side, I doubt, whether I may disobey my superiors who command me this subscription, and may forbear preaching the gospel, when yet I apprehend that there are others to preach it, and that my worth is not so considerable as that there should be any great loss in putting me out and putting in another; and God needeth not me to do him service, but hath instruments at command; and that I know not how soon he may restore my liberty, or that I may serve him in another country, or else in sufferings at home; in such a case the sinful justifying of perjury or rebellion in whole countries is a far greater sin than the sinful omission of my preaching: for he that justifieth perjury destroyeth the bonds of all societies, and turneth loose the subjects against their sovereigns. Or if I, being a minister, were forbidden to preach the gospel where there is necessity, unless I will commit some sin; if I doubt on one side whether I should disobey my superiors, and on the other whether I should forbear my calling, and neglect the souls of sinners; it is a lesser sin, _cæteris paribus_, to disobey a man sinfully, than to disobey God, and to be cruel to the souls of men to their perdition sinfully. Or if I have made a vow, and sworn that I will cast away a penny or a shilling, and I am in doubt on one side whether I be not bound to keep it as a vow, and on the other whether it be not a sin to keep it, because to cast away any of my talents is a sin; in this case, the sinful casting away of a penny or a shilling is not so great a sin as sinful perjury. If Daniel and the three witnesses had been in equal doubt, whether they should obey the king or pray to God, (as Dan. vi.) and renounce the bowing to his idol, (Dan. iii.) the sinful forbearance of prayer as then commanded, and the sinful bowing to the idol had been a greater sin than a sinful disobeying the king's command in such a case, if they had mistaken.

_Rule_ VII. If I cannot discern whether the duty to be omitted, or the sin to be committed, be materially and in other respects the greater, then that will be to me the greater of the sins which my doubting conscience doth most strongly suspect to be sin, in its most impartial deliberation. For if other things be equal, certainly the sinning against more or less conviction or doubting must make an inequality. As, if I could not discern whether my subscription to the Trent Confession, or my forbearing to preach, or my preaching though prohibited, were the greater sin, in case they were all sinful; but yet I am most strongly suspicious of sinfulness in the subscription, and less suspicious of sinfulness in my forbearing in such a case to preach, and least of all suspicious of sinfulness in my preaching though prohibited: in this case to subscribe sinfully is the greatest sin, and to forbear sinfully to exercise my office is the next, and to preach unwarrantably is the least.

_Rule_ VIII. If I could perceive no difference in the degrees of evil in the omission and the commission, nor yet in the degrees of my suspicion or doubting, then that is the greater sin which I had greater helps and evidence to have known, and did not.

_Rule_ IX. If both greater material evil be on one side than on the other, and greater suspicion or evidence of the sinfulness also, then that must needs be the greater sin.

_Rule_ X. If the greatness of the material evil be on one side, and the greatness of the suspicion and evidence be on the other, then the former (if sin) will be materially and in itself considered the worst; but the latter will be formally the greater disobedience to God. But the comparison will be very difficult. As, suppose that I swear to God that I will cast away a shilling, or that I will forbear to pray for a week together; here I take perjury to be a greater sin than my casting away a shilling, or forbearing to pray a week: but when I question whether the oath should be kept or not, I have greater suspicion that it should not than that it should, because no oath must be the bond of the least iniquity. Here, if the not keeping it prove a sin, I shall do that which is the greater sin in itself if I keep it not; but I shall show more disobedience in keeping it, if it be not to be kept.

_Rule_ XI. If it be a double sin that I suspect on one side, and but a single one on the other, it maketh an inequality in the case. As, suppose that in my father's family there are heretics and drunkards, and I swear that in my place and calling I will endeavour to cast them out. My mother approveth my vow; my father is against it, and dischargeth me of it because I did it not by his advice. On one side, I doubt whether I am bound, or may act against my father's will: on the other side, I as much doubt whether I am not perjured, and disobedient to my mother, if I do it not, and whether I disobey not God, that made it my duty to endeavour the thing in my place and calling before I vowed it.

_Rule_ XII. There is a great deal of difference between omitting the substance of a duty for ever, and the delaying it, or altering the time, and place, and manner. For instance, that which will justify or excuse me for shortening my prayer, or for praying but once a day, or at noon rather than in the morning, or for defect in method, or fervency, or expressions, may not justify or excuse me for denying, renouncing, or long forbearing prayer. And that which may excuse an apostle for not preaching in the temple or synagogues, or not having the emperor's or the high priest's allowance or consent, or for not continuing in one city or country; would not excuse them if they had renounced their callings, or totally, as to all times, and places, and manner of performance, have ceased their work for fear of men.

_Rule_ XIII. If the duty to be omitted and the sin to be committed seem equal in greatness, and our doubt be equal as to both, it is commonly held safer to avoid the commission more studiously than the omission. For which there are many reasons given.

_Rule_ XIV. There is usually much more matter for fear and suspicion, _cæteris paribus_, of sins to be committed, than of duties to be omitted, when the commission is made necessary to the doing of the duty. Both because it is there that the fear beginneth: for I am certain that the good work is no duty to me, if the act be a sin which is its necessary condition. Therefore, so far as I suspect the act to be sinful, I must needs suspect the duty to be no duty to me at that time: it is not possible I should be rationally more persuaded that the duty is my duty, than that the condition is no sin. If it were the saving of the lives of all men in the country, I could no further take it to be my duty, than I take that to be no sin by which it must be done, it being a thing past controversy, that we must not sin for the accomplishment of any good whatsoever. And also because the sin is supposed to be always sin, but few duties are at all times duties: and the sin is a sin to every man, but the duty may be another man's duty, and not mine. For instance: Charles V. imposeth the Interim upon Germany: some pastors yielded to it; others refused it, and were cast out. Those that yielded pleaded the good of the churches, and the prevention of their utter desolation, but yet confessed that if the thing imposed were sinful, it was not their duty to do it for any good whatsoever, but to seek the good of the church as well as they could without it. The other that were cast out argued, that so far as they were confident the Interim was sinful, they must be confident that nothing was their duty that could not be done without it, and that God knew best what is good for his church, and there is no accomplishing its good by sin and God's displeasure; and that they did not therefore forsake their ministry, but only lose the ruler's licence; for they resolved to preach in one place or other till they were imprisoned, and God can serve himself by their imprisonment or death, as well as by their preaching. And while others took their places that thought the Interim lawful, the churches were not wholly destitute; and if God saw it meet, he could restore their fuller liberties again: in the mean time, to serve him, as all pastors did for three hundred years after Christ, without the licence of the civil magistrate, was not to cast away their office. Another instance: the zealous papists in the reign of Henry III. in France, thought that there was a necessity of entering the League, and warring against the king, because religion was in danger, the preservation whereof is an unquestionable duty. The learned and moderate lawyers that were against them said, that there being no question but the king had the total sovereignty over them, they were sure it was a sin to resist the higher powers, and therefore no preservation of religion could be a duty or lawful to them which must be done by such a certain sin: sin is not the means to save religion or the commonwealth.

_Rule_ XV. When a thing is not prohibited and sinful simply in itself, but because of some accidental or consequential evil that it tendeth to, there a greater accidental or consequential good may preponderate the evil, and make the thing become no sin, but a duty. It is a matter of exceeding difficulty to discern ofttimes whether a thing be simply and absolutely forbidden, or only by accident and alterably, and to discern which accident doth preponderate. There are so many observations that should here be taken in, and so much of a man's life and peace is concerned in it, that it deserveth a treatise by itself. And therefore I shall not meddle with it any further here, lest an insufficient tractate be worse than none, in a case where error is so easy and perilous.

_Rule_ XVI. As to the danger of the sinner himself, there is a great deal of difference between an error and sin of human frailty, when the service of God, and true obedience, and the common good, is sincerely intended, and an error and sin of false-heartedness and sloth, when selfishness is the secret spring of the error, and carnal interest the real end, though God and his service be pretended. And usually the concomitants will show something of this to others. For instance; two magistrates and two ministers submit to some questioned imposition, all pretend that the glory of God, and his service, is it that prevaileth with them to submit. The one of the magistrates faithfully serves God afterward with his authority, and showeth thereby that he meant sincerely: the other doth no good in his place, and showeth his hypocrisy. One of the ministers preacheth zealously, and privately laboureth as one that thirsteth for the saving of souls: the other preacheth formally, and coldly, and heartlessly, and never converteth a soul, and neglecteth the work which he pretended was his end.

* * * * *

[Sidenote: For loving God as our Father, our Benefactor, and our end.]

_Grand Direct._ XI. Let it be most deeply engraven on thy heart, that God is infinitely good and amiable; thy grand Benefactor and Father in Christ; the end of all that thou art and hast; and the everlasting rest and happiness of thy soul: see therefore that thy inflamed heart be entirely and absolutely offered up unto him by the mediation of his Son, to love him, to trust him, to delight in him, to be thankful to him, to glorify him, and through faith to long for the heavenly glory, where all this will be perfectly done for ever. And first let us speak of LOVE.

I did in the first direction persuade you to lay a good foundation in faith and knowledge. In the second I directed you how to live upon Christ. In the third, how to believe practically in the Holy Ghost. In the fourth I directed you to the orderly and practical knowledge of all the attributes of God. In the fifth, how to know God practically in his first grand relation, as he is your Owner. In the sixth, how to know him practically in his second grand relation, as he is your King or Governor; and in subordination to his governing relation. In the seventh I directed you in your relation of disciples to Christ your Teacher. And in the eighth I directed you in your relation of patients to Christ your Physician, and the Holy Ghost as your Sanctifier. In the ninth I directed you in your relation of soldiers to Christ the Captain of your salvation. In the tenth I directed you in the relation of servants to Christ your Master. And now being past those subordinate relations (to the second), I proceed to direct you in your third grand relation to God as your Benefactor, Father, and Felicity. And because there are divers great duties in this general, I shall first begin with this of love; and afterwards speak distinctly of the rest.

_Directions for loving God as our Father and Felicity._

Here I shall first give you these general preparatives (and then give you directions for the exercise of holy love). 1. You must understand the nature of love to God. 2. You must understand the differences of this love. 3. You must understand the reasons of it. 4. And the contraries of it. 5. And the counterfeits of it.

[Sidenote: God is not loved as a particular good, but as the universal good.]

I. For the understanding its nature observe these things: 1. It is not the love of a particular good, but of the infinite, Universal Good. The creature is a particular good, and our love to it is a particular, limited love, confined as to a point. God is the Universal Good, and our love to him is not limited by the object, but by the narrowness and imperfection of our faculties themselves. As suppose you had variety of candles in your room, and you had diamonds and other refulgent things; you love each of these with a particular love, for their splendour and usefulness; and you more easily observe and feel the motion of this confined love. But light itself, as light, you love with a more universal love; which is greater, but not so sensibly observed. (Not as we speak of notional universals in logic, which have no existence but in particulars; but of the natural, transcendent, infinite good, eternally existent, and arbitrarily appearing in some created particles.) As the love of an infinite light would differ from the love of a candle, and the love of an infinite heat from the love of a fire, and the love of infinite wisdom itself from the love of a wise man, and the love of infinite goodness itself from the love of a good man; so doth the love of God from the love of a particular, created good.

[Sidenote: Whether God may be the object of passionate love.]

2. Our love to God is not ordinarily so passionate as our love to creatures; because the nearness and sensibleness of the creature promoteth such sensible operations. But God is not seen, or felt, or heard, but believed in by faith, and known by reason. And the narrowness of the creature making resistances, stops, and difficulties, occasioneth a turbulent passionateness of love; when the infiniteness of God hath no such occasion. Our love to creatures is like the running of a stream in a channel that is too narrow for it, where stops and banks do make it go on with a roaring violence; but our love to God is like the brook that slideth into the ocean, where it is insensibly devoured. Therefore our love to God must principally be perceived, not in violent passions, but in, 1. A high estimation of him. 2. In the will's adhering to him. 3. And in the effects (to be mentioned anon). Yet when a passionate love is added to these, it may be the most excellent significatively and effectively. Some philosophers think that God cannot at all be loved with a passionate love, because he is a pure, immaterial Being, and therefore cannot be the object of a material act or motion, such as our passions are; and, therefore, that it is some idol of the imagination that is so loved. But, 1. If they mean that his pure essence, in itself, is not the immediate object of a passion, they may say the same of the will itself; for man (at least in flesh) can have no other volition of God, but as he is apprehended by the intellect. And if by an idol they mean the image of God in the mind, gathered from the appearances of God in creatures, man in flesh hath no other knowledge of him; for here we know him but darkly, enigmatically, and as in a glass, and have no formal, proper conception of him in his essence. So that the rational powers themselves do no otherwise know and will God's essence, but as represented to us in a glass. 2. And thus we may also love him passionately; it being God in his objective being as apprehended by the intellect that we both will and passionately love. The motion of the soul in flesh may raise passions, by the instrumentality of the corporeal spirits, towards an immaterial object; which is called the object of those passions, not merely as passions, but as the passions of a rational agent; it being more nearly or primarily the object of the intellect and will, and then of the passions, as first apprehended by these superior powers. A man may delight in God; or else, how is he our felicity? and yet, we know of no delight which is not passion. A man may love his own soul with a passionate love; and yet it is immaterial. When I passionately love my friend, it is his immaterial soul, and his wisdom, and holiness, which I chiefly love.

[Sidenote: What of God is the object of our love.]

3. It is not only for his excellencies and perfections in himself, nor only for his love and benefit to us, that grace doth cause a sinner to love God; but it is for both conjunctly; as he is good, and doth good, especially to us, in the greatest things.

[Sidenote: What is the motive of our first love to God.]

4. Our first special love to God, is orderly and rationally to be raised, the belief of his goodness in himself, and his common love and mercy to sinners, manifested in his giving of his Son for the world, and giving men the conditional promise of pardon and salvation, and offering them Christ and life eternal, and all this to us as well as others: and not to be caused by the belief or persuasion of his special, peculiar, electing, redeeming, or saving love to us above others, that have the same invitations and offers. It is the knowledge of common love and mercy, and not of special love and mercy, as already possessed, that is appointed to be the motive of our first special love to God. (Yet there is in it an apprehension that he is our only possible felicity, and that he will give us a special interest in his favour, if we return by faith in Christ unto him.) For, 1. Every man is bound to love God with a special love: but every man is not specially beloved by him: and no man is bound to love God as one that specially loveth him but those that indeed are so beloved by him; for else they were bound to believe a falsehood, and to love that which is not; and grace should be an error and deceit. The object is before the act. God's special love must in itself be before its revelations; and as revealed it must go before our belief of it; and as believed it must go before our loving it, or loving him as such, or for it. 2. The first saving faith is inseparably conjunct with special love; for Christ is believed in and willed, as the way or means to God as the end (otherwise it is no true faith). And the volition of the end (which is love) is in order of nature before the choice or use of the means as such: and if we must love God as one that specially loveth us, in our first love, then we must believe in him as such by our first faith: and if so, it must be to us a revealed truth. But (as it is false to most that are bound to believe, so) it is not revealed to the elect themselves: for if it be, it is either by ordinary or extraordinary revelation. If by ordinary, either by Scripture directly, or by evidences in ourselves which Scripture maketh the characters of his love. But neither of these; for Scripture promiseth not salvation to named, but described persons; and evidence of special love there is none, before faith, and repentance, and the first love to God. And extraordinary revelation from heaven, by inspiration or angel, is not the ordinary begetter of faith; for faith is the belief of God, speaking to us (now) by his written word. So that where there is no object of love, there can be no love; and where there is no revelation of it to the understanding, there is no object for the will; and till a man first believe and love God, he hath no revelation that God doth specially love him. Search as long as you will, you will find no other. 3. If the wicked were condemned for not loving a false or feigned object, it would quiet their consciences in hell when they had detected the deceit, and seen the natural impossibility and contradiction. 4. The first love to God is more a love of desire, than of possession; and therefore it may suffice to raise it, that we see a possibility of being for ever happy in God, and enjoying him in special love, though yet we know not that we possess any such love. The nature of the thing proclaimeth it most rational and due, that we love the infinite Good, that hath done so much by the death of his Son, to remove the impediments of our salvation; and is so far reconciled to the world in his death, as by a message of reconciliation, to entreat them to accept of Christ, and pardon, and salvation freely offered them, 2 Cor. v. 19, 20; and is himself the offered happiness of the soul. He that dare say, that this much hath not an objective sufficiency to engage the soul in special love, is a blind undervaluer of wonderful mercy. 5. The first special grace bringeth no new object for faith or love, but causeth a new act upon the formerly revealed object.

5. But our love to God is greatly increased and advantaged afterwards by the assurance or persuasion of his peculiar, special love to us. And therefore all christians should greatly value such assurance, as the appointed means of advancing them to greater love to God.

6. As we know God here in the glass of his Son, and word, and creatures, so we most sensibly love him here, as his goodness appeareth in his works, and graces, and his word, and Son.

7. The nearer we come to perfection, the more we shall love God for himself and his infinite natural goodness and perfections, not casting away the respects of his goodness and love as to ourselves, but highliest regarding himself for himself, as carried to him above ourselves.

II. Though love in its own nature be still the same, and is nothing but the rational appetite of good; or the will's volition of good apprehended by the understanding; the first motion of the will to good, arising from that natural inclination to good, which is the nature of the will, and the _pondus animæ_, the poise of the soul; or from healing grace which repaireth the breach that is made in nature; yet love in regard of the state of the lover, and the way of its imperate acting, is thus differenced. 1. Either the lover is in the hopeful pursuit of the thing beloved, and then it is desiring, seeking love. 2. Or he is, or seemeth to be, denied, destitute, and deprived of his beloved (in whole or in part); and then it is a mourning, lamenting love. 3. Or he enjoyeth his beloved, and then it is enjoying, delighting love. 1. The ordinary love which grace causeth on earth is a predominancy of seeking, desiring love, encouraged by some little foretastes of enjoying, delighting love, and, in a great measure, attended with mourning, lamenting love. 2. The state of deserted, dark, declining, relapsing, and melancholy, tempted christians, is a predominance of mourning, lamenting love, assisted with some help of seeking, desiring love; but destitute of enjoying, delighting love. 3. The state of the glorified is perfection of enjoying, delighting love alone. And all the rest are to bring us unto this.[114]

III. The reasons why love to God is so great, and high, and necessary a thing, and so much esteemed above other graces, are: 1. It is the motion of the soul that tendeth to the end; and the end is more excellent than all the means as such. 2. The love, or will, or heart is the man; where the heart or love is, there the man is: it is the fullest resignation of the whole man to God, to love him as God, or offer him the heart. God never hath his own fully till we love him. Love is the grand, significant, vital motion of the soul; such as the heart, or will, or love is, such you may boldly call the man. 3. The love of God is the perfection and highest improvement of all the faculties of the soul, and the end of all other graces, to which they tend, and to which they grow up, and in which they terminate their operations. 4. The love of God is that spirit or life of moral excellency in all other graces in which (though not their form, yet) their acceptableness doth consist, without which they are to God as a lifeless carrion is to us. And to prove any action sincere and acceptable to God, is to prove that it comes from a willing, loving mind, without which you can never prove it. 5. Love is the commander of the soul, and therefore God knoweth that if he have our hearts, he hath all, for all the rest are at its command; for it is, as it were, the nature of the will, which is the commanding faculty; and its object is the ultimate end which is the commanding object. Love setteth the mind on thinking, the tongue on speaking, the hands on working, the feet on going, and every faculty obeyeth its command. 6. The obedience which love commandeth, participateth of its nature, and is a ready, cheerful, sweet obedience, acceptable to God, and pleasant to ourselves. 7. Love is a pure, chaste, and cleansing grace; and most powerfully casteth out all creature pollution from the soul:[115] the love of God doth quench all carnal, sinful love; and most effectually carrieth up the soul to such high delights, as causeth it to contemn and forget the toys which it before admired. 8. The love of God is the true acknowledging and honouring him as good. That blessed attribute, his goodness, is denied, or despised, by those that love him not. The light of the sun would not be valued, honoured, or used by the world, if there were no eyes in the world to see it. And the goodness of God is to them that love him not, as the light to them that have no eyes. If God would have had his goodness to be thus unknown or neglected, he would never have made the intellectual creatures. Those only give him the glory of his goodness that truly love him. 9. Love (in its attainment) is the enjoying and delighting grace: it is the very content and felicity of the soul: both as it maketh us capable to receive the most delightful communications of God's love to us; and as it is the soul's delightful closure with its most amiable felicitating object. 10. Love is the everlasting grace, and the work which we must be doing in heaven for ever. These are the reasons of love's pre-eminence.

IV. The love of creatures hath its contraries on both extremes, in the excess and in the defect; but the love of God hath no contrary in excess: for Infinite Goodness cannot possibly be loved too much (unless as the passion may possibly be raised to a degree distracting or disturbing the brain). The odious vices contrary to the love of God are, 1. Privative; not loving him. 2. Positive; hating him. 3. Opposite; loving his creatures in his stead: all these concur in every unsanctified soul. That they are all void of the true love of God, and taken up with creature love, is past all doubt; but whether they are all haters of God, may seem more questionable. But it is as certain as the other; only the hatred of God in most doth not break out into that open opposition, persecution, or blasphemy, as it doth with some that are given up to desperate wickedness; nor do they think that they hate him. But the aversation of the will is the hatred of God; and if men had not a great aversation to him, they would not forsake him, and refuse to be converted to him, notwithstanding all the arguments of love that can be used to allure them. Displacency, nolition, and aversation are hatred.

If you think it impossible that men can hate God, whom they confess to be infinitely good, consider for the true understanding of this hatred, 1. That it is not as good that they hate him; 2. and it is not God simply in himself considered; 3. and therefore it is not all in God; 4. and it is not the name of God; 5. but it is, 1. God as he seemeth unsuitable to them, and unfit for their delight and love: which seeming is caused by their carnal inclination to things of another nature, and the sinful perverting of their appetites, and the blindness and error of their minds. 2. And it is God as he is an enemy to their carnal concupiscence; whose holy nature is against their unholiness, and hateth their sin, and his laws forbid them the things which they most love and take delight in: and so they hate God, as a madman hateth his keeper and physician, and takes them for his enemies; and as a hungry dog doth hate him that keepeth him from the meat which he loveth, or would take it out of his mouth. 3. And they hate God, as one who by his holiness, justice, and truth is engaged to condemn them for their sin, and so (consequently to their sin) is their enemy that will destroy them (unless they forsake it): when their wills are enslaved to their sins, and they cannot endure to be forbidden them, and yet see that God will damn them in hell-fire if they cast them not away: this filleth them with displacency against God, as holy and just. 4. And then, consequently, they hate him in the rest of his attributes: as his omniscience, that he always seeth them; his omnipresence, that he is always with them; his omnipotency, that he is irresistible and able to punish them: his very mercy as expressed to others, when they must have no part in it; yea, his very immutability, eternity, and being, as he is to continue an avenger of their iniquity: so that the wicked in despair do wish that there were no God; and in prosperity, they wish he were not their Governor and Judge, or were unholy and unjust, allowing them to do what they list without account or punishment. Thus God is hated by the wicked according to the measure of their wickedness, and carnal interest, and concupiscence which he is against. Where you may note, 1. that the hatred of God beginneth at the sensual love of things temporal which he forbiddeth; 2. that the wicked great ones of the world, and those that have the strongest concupiscence, are usually the greatest haters of God, as having the greatest adverse interest, and being most in love with the things which he prohibiteth and will condemn.

V. The counterfeit of love to God is something that seemeth like it, and yet is consistent with prevalent hatred, or privation of true love, and maketh self-deceiving hypocrites. 1. One is when so much of God is loved as men think hath no opposition to their lusts and carnal interest (as his mercy and readiness to forgive); and then they think that they truly love God, though they hate his holiness and other attributes. 2. Another counterfeit is, to love God upon mistakes, imagining that he is of the sinner's mind, and will bear with him and not condemn him, though he continue sensual and ungodly: this is not indeed to love God, but something contrary to God. If men's fantasies will take God to be like the devil, a friend to sin, and no friend to holiness, and false in his threatenings, &c. and thus will love him; this is so far from being indeed the love of God, that it is an odious blaspheming of him. 3. Another counterfeit is, to love God only for his temporal mercies, as because he preserveth and maintaineth them, when yet he is resisted when he would give them things spiritual. 4. Another is, when the opinionative approbation of the mind, and honouring God with the lips and knee, are mistaken for true love. In a word, whatever love of God respecteth him not as God indeed, and is not superlative, but is subservient to creature love, is but a counterfeit.

VI. The directions for the exercise of the love of God are these:

_Direct._ I. Consider well, that the love of our Creator, Redeemer, and Regenerator, is the very end for which we are created, redeemed, and regenerate; and how just it is that God should have the end of such excellent works, and that by neglecting or opposing the love of God, which is the end, we neglect or oppose the works of creation, redemption, and regeneration themselves.--Let us plead these works of God with our hearts, and say,--1. O sluggish soul! dost thou forget the use for which thou wast created, and for which thou wast endowed with rational faculties? Dost thou repent that thou art a man, and refuse the employment of a man? What is the means or instrument good for, but its proper end, and use, and action? God made the sun to shine, and it shineth; he made the earth to support us and bear fruit, and it doth accordingly: and he made thee to love him, and wilt thou refuse and disobey? How noble and excellent is thy employment in comparison of theirs! Is the fruit of the earth, or the labour of thy beast, or the service of any inferior creature, so sweet and honourable a work as thine, to know and love thy bountiful, glorious Creator? How happy is thy lot! how blessed is thy portion in comparison of theirs! And dost thou forsake thy place, and descend to more ignoble objects, as if thou hadst rather been some silly, sordid animal? If thou hadst not rather be a beast than a man, why choosest thou the love and pleasures of a beast, and refusest the love and pleasures of a man? Is creation, and the image of God in a rational, free soul, a thing thus to be contemned for nothing? What is the sun good for, if it should yield no light or heat? And what art thou good for more than the beasts that perish, if thou know not and love not thy Creator? If God should offer to unman thee, and turn thee into a horse or dog, thou wouldst think he thrust thee into misery; and yet thou canst voluntarily and wilfully unman thyself, and take it as thy ease and pleasure. If death came this night to dissolve thy nature, it would not please thee; and yet thou canst daily destroy thy nature, as to its use and end, and not lament it! It were better I had never been a man, nor never had a heart or love within me, if I use it not in the holy love of my Creator. It is true, I have a body that is made to eat, and drink, and sleep; but all this is but to serve my soul in the love of him that giveth me all. Life is not for meat, or drink, or play; but these are for life, and life for the higher ends of life.

2. Look unto thy Redeemer, drowsy soul! and consider for what end he did redeem thee: Was it to wander a few years about the earth, and to sleep, and sport awhile in flesh? Or was it to crucify thee to the world, and raise thee up to the love of God? He came down to earth from love itself, being full of love, to show the loveliness of God, and reconcile thee to him, and take away the enmity, and by love to teach thee the art of love. His love constrained him to offer himself a sacrifice for sin, to make thee a priest thyself to God, to offer up the sacrifice of an inflamed heart in love and praise; and wilt thou disappoint thy Redeemer, and disappoint thyself of the benefits of his love? The means is for the end; thou mayst as well say, I would not be redeemed, as to say, I would not love the Lord.

3. And bethink thyself, O drowsy soul, for what thou wast regenerated and sanctified by the Spirit? Was it not that thou mightst know and love the Lord? What is the Spirit of adoption that is given to believers, but a Spirit of predominant love to God? Gal. iv. 6. Thou couldst have loved vanity, and doted on thy fleshly friends and pleasures, without the Spirit of God: it was not for these, but to destroy these, and kindle a more noble, heavenly fire in thy breast, that the Spirit did renew thee. Examine, search, and try thyself, whether the Spirit hath sanctified thee or not. Knowest thou not, that if "any man have not the Spirit of Christ, the same is none of his?" 2 Cor. xiii. 5; Rom. viii. 9. And if Christ and his Spirit be in thee, thy love is dead to earthly vanity, and quickened and raised to the most holy God. Live then in the Spirit, if thou have the Spirit: to walk in the Spirit is to walk in love. Hath the regenerating Spirit given thee on purpose a new principle of love, and done so much to excite it, and been blowing at the coals so oft, and shall thy carnality or sluggishness yet extinguish it? As thou wouldst not renounce or contemn thy creation, thy redemption, and regeneration, contemn not and neglect not the love of thy Creator, Redeemer, and Regenerator, which is the end of all.

_Direct._ II. Think of the perfect fitness of God to be the only object of thy superlative love; and how easy and necessary it should seem to us to do a work so agreeable to right reason and uncorrupted nature; and abhor all temptations which would make God seem unsuitable to thee.--O sluggish and unnatural soul! should not an object so admirably fit allure thee? Should not such attractive goodness draw thee? Should not perfect amiableness win thee wholly to itself? Do but know thyself and God, and then forbear to love him if thou canst! Where should the fish live, but in the water? And where should birds fly, but in the air? God is thy very element: thou diest and sinkest down to brutishness, if thou forsake him or be taken from him. What should delight the smell, but odours? or the appetite, but its delicious food? or the eye, but light, and what it showeth? and the ear, but harmony? and what should delight the soul, but God? If thou know thyself, thou knowest that the nature of thy mind inclineth to knowledge; and by the knowledge of effects, to rise up to the cause; and by the knowledge of lower and lesser matters, to ascend to the highest and greatest. And if thou know God, thou knowest that he is the cause of all things, the Maker, Preserver, and Orderer of all, the Being of beings, the most great, and wise, and good, and happy; so that to know him, is to know all; to know the most excellent, independent, glorious Being, that will leave no darkness nor unsatisfied desire in thy soul. And is he not then most suitable to thy mind? If thou know thyself, then thou knowest that thy will, as free as it is, hath a natural, necessary inclination to goodness. Thou canst not love evil as evil; nor canst thou choose but love apprehended goodness, especially the chiefest good, if rightly apprehended. And if thou know God, thou knowest that he is infinitely good in himself, and the cause of all the good that is in the world, and the giver of all the good thou hast received, and the only fit and suitable good to satisfy thy desires for the time to come. And yet, shall it be so hard to thee to love, so agreeably to perfect nature, so perfect, and full, and suitable a good? even Goodness and Love itself, which hath begun to love thee? Is any of the creatures which thou lovest so suitable to thee? Are they good, and only good, and perfectly good, and unchangeably and eternally good? Are they the spring of comfort, and the satisfying happiness of thy soul? Hast thou found them so? or dost thou look to find them best at last? Foolish soul! canst thou love the uneven, defective, troublesome creature, if to some one small, inferior use it seemeth suitable to thee? and canst thou not love Him, that is all that rational love can possibly desire to enjoy? What though the creature be near thee, and God be infinitely above thee? He is nearer to thee than they. And though in glory he be distant, thou art passing to him in his glory, and wilt presently be there. Though the sun be distant from thee, it communicateth to thee its light, and heat, and is more suitable to thee than the candle that is nearer thee. What though God be most holy, and thou too earthly and unclean? is he not the fitter to purify thee, and make thee holy? Thou hadst rather, if thou be poor, have the company and favour of the rich that can relieve thee, than of beggars that will but complain with thee. And if thou be unlearned or ignorant, thou wouldst have the company of the wise and learned that can teach thee, and not of those that are as ignorant as thyself. Who is so suitable to thy desires, as he that hath all that thou canst wisely desire, and is willing and ready to satisfy thee to the full? Who is more suitable to thy love, than he that loveth thee most, and hath done most for thee, and must do all that ever will be done for thee, and is himself most lovely in his infinite perfections? O poor, diseased, lapsed soul! if sin had not corrupted, and distempered, and perverted thee, thou wouldst have thought God as suitable to thy love, as meat to thy hunger, and drink to thy thirst, and rest to thy weariness, and as the earth and water, the air and sun, are to the inhabitants of the world! O whither art thou fallen? and how far, how long, hast thou wandered from thy God, that thou now drawest back from him as a stranger to thee, and lookest away from him as an unsuitable good?

_Direct._ III. Imagine not God to be far away from thee, but think of him as always near thee and with thee, in whose present love and goodness thou dost subsist.--Nearness of objects doth excite the faculties: we hear no sound, nor smell any odour, nor taste any sweetness, nor see any colours, that are too distant from us. And the mind being limited in its activity, neglecteth, or reacheth not things too distant, and requireth some nearness of its object, as well as the sense; especially to the excitation of affections and bodily action. A distant danger stirreth not up such fears, nor a distant misery such grief, nor a distant benefit such pleasure, as that which is at hand. Death doth more deeply affect us, when it seemeth very near, than when we think we have yet many years to live. So, carnal minds are so drowned in flesh, and captivated to sense, that they take little notice of what they see not, and therefore think of God as absent, because they see him not: they think of him as confined to heaven, as we think of a friend that is in the East Indies, or at the antipodes, who is, if not out of mind as well as out of sight, yet too distant for us delightfully to converse with.--Remember always, O my soul, that none is so near thee as thy God. A Seneca could say, of good men, that God is with us, and in us. Nature taught heathens, that in him we live, and move, and have our being. Thy friend may be absent, but God is never absent from thee; he is with thee, when, as to men, thou art alone. The sun is sufficient to illuminate but one part of the earth at once; and therefore must leave the rest in darkness. But God is with thee night and day; and there is no night to the soul, so far as it enjoyeth him. Thy life, thy health, thy love, and joy, are not nearer to thee than thy God: he is now before thee, about thee, within thee, moving thee to good, restraining thee from evil, marking and accepting all that is well, disliking and opposing all that is ill. The light of the sun doth not more certainly fill the room, and compass thee about, than God doth with his goodness. He is as much at leisure to observe thee, to converse with thee, to hear and help thee, as if thou wert his only creature: as the sun can as well illuminate every bird and fly, as if it shined unto no other creature. Open the eye of faith and reason, and behold thy God! Do not forget him, or unbelievingly deny him, and then say, He is not here. Do not say, that the sun doth not shine, because thou winkest. O do not quench thy love to God, by feigning him to be out of reach, and taken up with other converse! Turn not to inferior delights, by thinking that he hath turned thee off to these: and love him not as an absent friend; but as the friend that is always in thy sight, in thy bosom, and in thy heart; the fuel that is nearest to the flames of love.

_Direct._ IV. All other graces must do their part in assisting love, and all be exercised in subservience to it, and with an intention, directly or remotely, to promote it.--Fear and watchfulness must keep away the sin that would extinguish it, and preserve you from that guilt which would frighten away the soul from God. Repentance and mortification must keep away diverting and deceiving objects, which would steal away our love from God. Faith must show us God as present, in all his blessed attributes and perfections. Hope must depend on him, for nearer access and the promised felicity. Prudence must choose the fittest season, and means, and helps from our special approaches to him, and teach us how to avoid impediments. And obedience must keep us in a fit capacity for communion with him. The mind that is turned loose to wander after vanity the rest of the day, is unfit in an hour of prayer or meditation, to be taken up with the love of God. It must be the work of the day, and of our lives, to walk in a fitness for it, though we are not always in the immediate, lively exercise of it. To sin wilfully one hour, and be taken up with the love of God the next, is as unlikely, as one hour to abuse our parents, and provoke them to correct us, and the next to find the pleasure of their love; or one hour to fall and break one's bones, and the next to run and work as pleasantly as we did before.

And we must see that all other graces be exercised in a just subserviency to love; and none of them degenerate into noxious extremes, to the hinderance of this, which is their proper end. When you set yourselves to repent and mourn for sin, it must be from love, and for love: that by ingenuous lamentation of the injuries you have done to a gracious God, you may be cleansed from the filth that doth displease him, and being reconciled to him in Christ, may be fit to return to the exercises and delights of love. When you fear God, let it be with a filial fear, that comes from love, and is but a preservative or restorative for love. Avoid that slavish fear, as a sin, which tendeth to hatred, and would make you fly away from God. Love casteth out this tormenting fear, and freeth the soul from the spirit of bondage. The devil tempteth melancholy persons to live before God, as one that is still among bears or lions that are ready to devour him; for he knoweth how much such a fear is an enemy to love. Satan would never promote such fears, if they were of God, and tended to our good. You never found him promoting your love or delight in God! But he careth not how much he plungeth you into distracting terrors. If he can, he will frighten you out of your love, and out of your comforts, and out of your wits. A dull and sluggish sinner he will keep from fear, lest it should awaken him from his sin; but a poor, melancholy, penitent soul he would keep under perpetual terrors: it is so easy to such to fear, that they may know it is a sinful, inordinate fear; for gracious works are not so easy. And resist also all humiliation and grief, that do not, immediately or remotely, tend to help your love. A religion that tendeth but to grief, and terminateth in grief, and goeth no further, hath too much in it of the malice of the enemy, to be of God. No tears are desirable, but those that tend to clear the eyes from the filth of sin, that they may see the better the loveliness of God.

_Direct._ V. Esteem thy want of love to God (with the turning of it unto the creature) to be the heart of the old man; thy most comprehensive, odious sin: and observe this as the life of all thy particular sins, and hate it above all the rest.--This is the very death and greatest deformity of the soul; the absence of God's image, and Spirit, and objectively of himself.--I never loathe my heart so much, as when I observe how little it loveth the Lord. Methinks all the sins that ever I committed, are not so loathsome to me, as this want of love to God. And it is this that is the venom and malignity of every particular sin. I never so much hate myself, as when I observe how little of God is within me, and how far my heart is estranged from him. I never do so fully approve of the justice of God, if it should condemn me, and thrust me for ever from his presence, as when I observe how far I have thrust him from my heart. If there were any sin, which proceeded not from a want of love to God, I could easilier pardon it to myself, as knowing that God would easilier pardon it. But not to love the God of love, the fountain of love, the felicity of souls, is a sin, unfit to be pardoned to any till it be repented of, and partly cured; Christ will forgive it to none that keep it; and when it is incurable, it is the special sin of hell, the badge of devils and damned souls. If God will not give me a heart to love him, I would I had never had a heart. If he will give me this, he giveth me all. Happy are the poor, the despised, and the persecuted, that can but live in the love of God! O miserable emperors, kings, and lords, that are strangers to this heavenly love, and love their lusts above their Maker! Might I but live in the fervent love of God, what matter is it in what country, or what cottage, or what prison I live? If I live not in the love of God, my country would be worse than banishment, a palace would be a prison; a crown would be a miserable comfort, to one that hath cast away his comfort, and is going to everlasting shame and woe.--Were we but duly sensible of the worth of love, and the odiousness and malignity that is in the want of it, it would keep us from being quiet in the daily neglect of it, and would quicken us to seek it, and to stir it up.

_Direct._ VI. Improve the principle of self-love, to the promoting of the love of God, by considering what he hath done for thee, and what he is, and would be to thee.--I mean not carnal, inordinate self-love, which is the chiefest enemy of the love of God; but I mean that rational love of happiness, and self-preservation, which God did put into innocent Adam, and hath planted in man's nature as necessary to his government. This natural, innocent self-love, is that remaining principle in the heart of man, which God himself doth still presuppose in all his laws and exhortations; and which he taketh advantage of in his works and word, for the conversion of the wicked, and the persuading of his servants themselves to their obedience. This is the common principle in which we are agreed with all the wicked of the world, that all men should desire and seek to be happy, and choose and do that which is best for themselves; or else it were in vain for ministers to preach to them, if we were agreed in nothing, and we had not this ground in them to cast our seed into, and to work upon. And if self-love be but informed and guided by understanding, it will compel you to love God, and tell you that nothing should be so much loved. Every one that is a man must love himself; we will not entreat him, nor be beholden to him for this: and every one that loveth himself, will love that which he judgeth best for himself: and every wise man must know, that he never had nor can have any good at all, but what he had from God. Why do men love lust, or wealth, or honour, but because they think that these are good for them? And would they not love God, if they practically knew that he is the best of all for them, and instead of all?--Unnatural, unthankful heart! canst thou love thyself, and not love him that gave thee thyself, and gives thee all things? Nature teacheth all men to love their most entire and necessary friends: do we deserve a reward by loving those that love us, when publicans will do the like? Matt. v. 46. Art thou not bound to love them that hate thee, and curse, and persecute thee? ver. 44, 45. What reward then is due to thy unnatural ingratitude, that canst not love thy chiefest Friend? All the friends that ever were kind to thee, and did thee good, were but his messengers to deliver what he sent thee. And canst thou love the bearer, and not the Giver? He made thee a man, and not a beast. He cast thy lot in his visible church, and not among deluded infidels, or miserable heathens, that never heard, unless in scorn, of the Redeemer's name. He brought thee forth in a land of light, in a reformed church, where knowledge and holiness have as great advantage as any where in all the world; and not among deluded, ignorant papists, where ambition must have been thy governor, and pride and tyranny have given thee laws, and a formal, ceremonious image of piety must have been thy religion. He gave thee parents that educated thee in his fear, and not such as were profane and ignorant, and would have restrained and persecuted thee from a holy life. He spoke to thy conscience early in thy childhood, and prevented the gross abominations which else thou hadst committed. He bore with the folly and frailties of thy youth. He seasonably gave thee those books, and teachers, and company, and helps, which were fittest for thee; and blest them to the further awakening and instructing of thee, when he passed by others, and left them in their sins. He taught thee to pray, and heard thy prayer. He turned all thy fears and groans to thy spiritual good. He pardoned all thy grievous sins: and since that, how much hath he endured and forgiven! He gave thee seasonable and necessary stripes, and brought thee up in the school of affliction; so moderating them, that they might not disable or discourage thee, but only correct thee, and keep thee from security, wantonness, stupidity, and contempt of holy things, and might spoil all temptations to ambition, worldliness, voluptuousness, and fleshly lust. By the threatenings of great calamities and death, he hath frequently awakened thee to cry to Heaven; and by as frequent and wonderful deliverances, he hath answered thy prayers, and encouraged thee still to wait upon him. He hath given thee the hearty prayers of many hundreds of his faithful servants, and heard them for thee in many a distress. He hath strangely preserved thee in manifold dangers. He hath not made thee of the basest of the people, whose poverty might tempt them to discontent; nor set thee upon the pinnacle of worldly honour, where giddiness might have been thy ruin, and where temptations to pride, and lust, and luxury, and enmity to a holy life, are so violent that few escape them. He hath not set thee out upon a sea of cares and vexations, worldly businesses and encumbrances; but fed thee with food convenient for thee, and given thee leisure to walk with God. He hath not chained thee to an unprofitable profession, nor used thee as those that live like their beasts, to eat, and drink, and sleep, and play, or live to live; but he hath called thee to the noblest and sweetest work; when that hath been thy business, which others were glad to taste of as a recreation and repast. He hath allowed thee to converse with books, and with the best and wisest men, and to spend thy days in sucking in delightful knowledge: and this is not only for thy pleasure, but thy use; and not only for thyself, but many others. O how many sweet and precious truths hath he allowed thee to feed on all the day, when others are diverted, and commonly look at them sometimes afar off! O how many precious hours hath he granted me, in his holy assemblies, and in his honourable and most pleasant work! How oft hath his day, and his holy uncorrupted ordinances, and the communion of his saints, and the mentioning of his name and kingdom, and the pleading of his cause with sinners, and the celebrating of his praise, been my delight! O how many hundreds that he hath sent, have wanted the abundant encouragement which I have had! When he hath seen the disease of my despondent mind, he hath not tried me by denying me success, nor suffered me, with Jonah, according to my inclination to overrun his work; but hath enticed me on by continued encouragements, and strewed all the way with mercies: but his mercies to me in the souls of others, have been so great, that I shall secretly acknowledge them, rather than here record them, where I must have respect to those usual mercies of believers, which lie in the common road to heaven. And how endless would it be to mention all! All the good that friends and enemies have done me! All the wise and gracious disposals of his providence; in every condition, and change of life, and change of times, and in every place wherever he brought me! His every day's renewed mercies! His support under all my languishings and weakness; his plentiful supplies; his gracious helps; his daily pardons; and the glorious hopes of a blessed immortality which his Son hath purchased, and his covenant and Spirit sealed to me! O the mercies that are in one Christ, one Holy Spirit, one holy Scripture, and in the blessed God himself! These I have mentioned, unthankful heart, to shame thee for thy want of love to God. And these I will leave upon record, to be a witness for God against thy ingratitude, and to confound thee with shame, if thou deny thy love to such a God. Every one of all these mercies, and multitudes more, will rise up against thee, and shame thee, before God and all the world, as a monster of unkindness, if thou love not him that hath used thee thus.

Here also consider what God is for your future good, as well as what he hath been hitherto; how all-sufficient, how powerful, merciful, and good. But of this more anon.

_Direct._ VII. Improve the vanity and vexation of the creature, and all thy disappointments, and injuries, and afflictions, to the promoting of thy love to God.--And this by a double advantage: First, by observing that there is nothing meet to divert thy love, or rob God of it; unless thou wilt love thy trouble and distress! Secondly, that thy love to God is the comfort by which thou must be supported under the injuries and troubles which thou meetest with in the world; and therefore to neglect it, is but to give up thyself to misery.--Is it for nothing, O my soul, that God hath turned loose the world against thee? that devils rage against thee; and wicked men do reproach and slander thee, and seek thy ruin; and friends prove insufficient, and as broken reeds? It had been as easy to God, to have prospered thee in the world, and suited all things to thy own desires, and have strewed thy way with the flowers of worldly comforts and delights; but he knew thy proneness to undo thyself by carnal loves, and how easily thy heart is enticed from thy God; and therefore he hath wisely and mercifully ordered it, that thy temptations shall not be too strong, and no creature shall appear to thee in an over amiable, tempting dress. Therefore he hath suffered them to become thy enemies: and wilt thou love an enemy better than thy God? what! an envious and malicious world; a world of cares, and griefs, and pains; a weary, restless, empty world? How deep and piercing are its injuries! How superficial and deceitful is its friendship! How serious are its sorrows! What toyish shows and dreams are its delights! How constant are its cares and labours! How seldom and short are its flattering smiles! Its comforts are disgraced by the certain expectation of succeeding sorrows: its sorrows are heightened by the expectations of more: in the midst of its flatteries, I hear something within me saying, Thou must die: this is but the way to rottenness and dust: I see a winding-sheet and a grave still before me: I foresee how I must lie in pains and groans, and then become a loathsome corpse. And is this a world to be more delighted in than God? What have I left me for my support and solace, in the midst of all this vanity and vexation, but to look to him that is the all-sufficient, sure, never-failing good? I must love him, or I have nothing to love but enmity or deceit. And is this the worst of God's design, in permitting and causing my pains and disappointments here? It is but to drive my foolish heart unto himself, that I may have the solid delights and happiness of his love. O then let his blessed will be done! Come home, my soul, my wandering, tired, grieved soul! Love, where thy love shall not be lost: love Him that will not reject thee, nor deceive thee; nor requite thee as the world doth, with injuries and abuse: despair not of entertainment, though the world deny it thee. The peaceable region is above. In the world thou must have trouble, that in Christ thou mayst have peace. Retire to the harbour, if thou wouldst be free from storms. God will receive thee, when the world doth cast thee off, if thou heartily cast off the world for him.--Oh what a solace is it to the soul, to be driven clearly from the world to God, and there to be exercised in that sacred love, which will accompany us to the world of love!

_Direct._ VIII. Labour for the truest and fullest conceptions of the goodness and excellencies of God, which are his amiableness; and abhor all misrepresentations of him as unlovely.--That which is apprehended as unlovely cannot be loved; and that which is apprehended as evil, is apprehended as unlovely. Therefore, it is the grand design of Satan to hide God's goodness, and misrepresent him as evil: not to deny him to be good in himself, for in that he hath no hope to be believed; but to persuade men that he is not good to them, or to make them forget or overlook his goodness. Not to persuade them that God is evil in himself; but that he is evil to them, by restraining them from their beloved sins, and hating them as sinners, and resolving to damn them if they go on impenitently. This, which is part of the goodness of God, he maketh them believe is evil, by engaging them in a way and interest, which he knoweth that God is engaged against, and enticing them under the strokes of his justice. And he tempteth believers themselves to poor, diminutive, unworthy thoughts of the goodness and mercifulness of God, and to continual apprehensions of his wrath and terrors. And if he can make them believe that God is their enemy, and think of him only as a consuming fire, how little are they like to love him! If christians knew how much of the devil's malice against God and them doth exercise itself in this, to make God appear to man unlovely, they would more studiously watch against such misrepresentations, and fly from them with greater hatred.[116] Not that we must first, by the advice of arrogant reason, and self-love, as some do, draw a false description of goodness and amiableness in our minds, and make that the measure of our judgment of God, his nature, attributes, and decrees; nor take his goodness to be only his suitableness to our opinions, wills, and interest. But we must take out from the word and works of God, that true description of his goodness which he hath given of himself, and expunge out of our conceits whatsoever is contrary to it. Think of God's goodness in proportion with his other attributes.--O my soul, how unequally hast thou thought of God! Thou easily believest that his power is omnipotence, and that, his knowledge is omniscience; but of his goodness, how narrow and poor are thy conceivings! as if it were nothing to his power and knowledge. How oft hast thou been amazed in the consideration of his greatness, and how seldom affected with the apprehensions of his goodness! Thou gratifiest him that would have thee believe and tremble as he doth himself, and not him that would have thee believe and love. How oft hast thou suffered the malicious enemy to accuse God to thee, and make thee believe that he is a hater of man, and hateful to a man, or a hater of thee, that he might make thee hate him! How oft hast thou suffered him to draw in thy thoughts a false representation of thy dearest Lord, and show him to thee as in that unlovely shape! How oft have thy conceptions dishonoured and blasphemed his love and goodness, while thou hast seemed to magnify his knowledge and his power! Think of him now as love itself, as fuller of goodness than the sea of water, or the sun of light. Love freely and boldly, without the stops of suspicions and fears, where thou art sure thou canst never love enough; and if all the love of men and angels were united in one flame, they could never love too much, or come near the proportion of the glorious goodness which they love! Cast thyself boldly into this ocean of delights. Though the narrowness of thy own capacity confine thee, yet, as there are no bounds in the object of thy love, let not false, unbelieving thoughts confine thee. Oh that I were all eye, to see the glorious amiableness of my God! Oh that I were all love, that I might be filled with his goodness! Oh that all the passions of my soul were turned into this holy passion! Oh that all my fears, and cares, and sorrows, were turned into love! and that all the thoughts that confusedly crowd in upon me and molest me, were turned into this one incessant thought, of the infinite goodness of my God! Oh that all my tears and groanings, yea, and all my other mirth and pleasures, were turned into the melodious songs of love! and that the pulse, and voice, and operations of love, were all the motion of my soul! Surely in heaven it will be so, though it is not to be expected here.

_Direct._ IX. The great means of promoting love to God, is duly to behold him in his appearances to man, in the ways of nature, grace, and glory. First, therefore, learn to understand and improve his appearances in nature, and to see the Creator in all his works, and by the knowledge and love of them to be raised to the knowledge and love of him.--Though sin hath so disabled us to the due improvement of these appearances of God in nature, that grace must restore us, before we can do it effectually and acceptably; yet objectively nature is still the same in substance, and affordeth us much help to the knowledge and love of God. He knoweth nothing of the world aright, that knoweth not God in it, and by it. Some note that the greatest students in nature are not usually the best proficients in grace; and that philosophers and physicians are seldom great admirers of piety; but this is to judge of the wise by the foolish, and to impute the ignorance and impiety of some, to others that abhor it. Doubtless he is no philosopher, but a fool, that seeth not and admireth not the Creator in his works. Indeed if a man do wholly give himself to know the shape and form of letters, and to write them curiously, or cut them in brass or stone, or to print them, and not to understand their significations or use, no wonder if he be ignorant of the arts and sciences, which those letters well understood would teach him; such a man may be called an engraver, a scrivener, a printer, but not a scholar: and no better can the atheist be called a philosopher or learned man, that denieth the most wise Almighty Author, while he beholdeth his works, when the nature and name of God is so plainly engraven upon them all. It is a great part of a christian's daily business, to see and admire God in his works, and to use them as steps to ascend by to himself. Psal. cxi. 2-4, "The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein. His work is honourable and glorious: and his righteousness endureth for ever. He hath made his wonderful works to be remembered." Psal. cxliii. 5, "I meditate on all thy works; I muse on the work of thy hands." Psal.