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of this life become subject and tributary to heaven: and, what we thus do upon God's account, he will certainly reward.

2dly. When we do any action unto Spiritual and Heavenly Ends, then we glorify God by it.

As when we act, not for vain-glory, or only secular advantages; but to give a good example to others, or to fit ourselves the more vigorously to serve God, or to be beneficial to others, &c.

We have thus seen how we ought to glorify God Actively, both in our bodies and in our spirits, by doing the Will of his Precept.

(2) The next thing in order, is to shew you how we ought to glorify him Passively in both, by suffering the Will of his Purpose.

Indeed, the best and perhaps the greatest part of a Christian's life is spent in sufferings. When we lie long fallow in a continued prosperity, not ploughed up by any afflictions, our hearts are apt, like rank soil, to spend themselves in unprofitable weeds: our corruptions and vanities will overtop and eat out the very heart of our graces; so that God sees it necessary sometimes to plough us up, and make long furrows upon our backs. And, as husbandmen use to lop off the superfluous excrescences of their trees, to make them the more fruitful: so, that we may become the more fruitful to his praise and glory, the methods of his wisdom and goodness engage him to use the discipline of his pruning-knife; to cut off from us those luxuriances, which, although they may seem to add to our flourishing, yet hinder our fruitfulness.

Now all our sufferings do either respect our bodies, or our spirits; either the outward state of this present life, or else the inward and spiritual state of the soul.

The former may well be divided into Two kinds: for they are either,

First. Simply, Afflictions; brought upon us by the hand and providence of God, without respecting any other cause but only God's good pleasure and our own evil demerits. Or, else,

Secondly. They are Persecutions; brought upon us by the wicked rage of men, for righteousness' sake, and the testimony of a good conscience.

Those sufferings, which concern the spirit and the inward state

of the soul, may likewise be well reduced unto Two heads: for, usually, they are either temptations or desertions. In the one, we suffer from Satan; in the other, from God.

In all these various kinds of sufferings, some of which fall to the lot of every true Christian, and all of them lie very hard upon some, God ought to be glorified by us.

Indeed our way to heaven is set all along with thorns: troubles and sorrows are thick strewed in it. He is a fool, that sits not down and computes what his religion will cost him. It may be, troubles without, and terrors within; poverty, reproach, bonds; yea, and it may be death itself: besides many sharp agonies and conflicts of the soul; many dark and gloomy seasons, wherein neither sun nor stars may appear to him for divers days: his outward comforts may be to him all sequestered by the rage of men, and his inward by the wrath of God: on which side soever he looks, he may behold nothing but sorrow and anguish; heaven covered with clouds, and the earth with storms. This hath been the portion of many of God's dearest children; and we must make our account that it shall certainly, more or less, be ours. The Apostle hath forewarned us, Heb. xii. 6. Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth: this is the proof of our legitimation, v. 8. If ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bas tards, and not the genuine sons of God. We know not what particular trials shall befal us, saving that God hath every where testified that afflictions and tribulations abide us. This is the highway to the heavenly city: the cross is our mark; and, if we frequently meet not with this, we may certainly conclude that we have mistaken our road, and shall fall short of our journey's end. And, therefore, St. Paul speaks of it as a case of neces sity, Acts xiv. 22. We must, through much tribulation, enter into the kingdom of God. Indeed, as we are men, we are born to trouble as naturally as the sparks fly upwards: and, therefore, although we may well conclude negatively, that certainly we are not travelling towards heaven if we meet with no rubs nor difficulties in our way; yet we cannot conclude in the affirma tive, that, if we now suffer, we shall hereafter be glorified, unless we be careful to glorify God by our present sufferings.

Our sufferings, then, being so great and considerable a part of our lives, let us see how we may glorify God in this fire. [1] I shall begin with those, which concern the Body, and the outward state of this present life.

And here I shall give you several rules, some of which shall be Cautionary, and some Directive.

1st. For Cautionary Rules,

(1st) The first shall be this: If thou wouldst glorify God by thy sufferings, beware that thou dost not rashly and unwarrantably precipitate thyself into them.

By those sufferings, wherein thou thyself canst have no comfort, God can have no glory. Now consider what small ground for comfort thou canst have, when thou thou needlessly bringest afflictions upon thyself; and entanglest thyself in those troubles, which either piety or prudence would have taught thee to avoid. These sparks will fly about thee fast enough of themselves thou needest not blow the coals: but, if thou dost, and art burnt by them, thou hast nothing to complain of, but thine own folly; nor to comfort thee, but that it was thine own choice and resoluteness.

There be Two things, that make sufferings rash and unwarrantable.

When thou sufferest, what thou hast deserved.

When thou sufferest, what thou mightest have avoided. [1st] Thou rashly and unwarrantably plungest thyself into troubles, when thou sufferest what thy vices have deserved.

How many such wretched creatures are there, who have no other hope nor plea for future happiness, but that they are extremely miserable here! and yet all their sufferings are nothing alse, but the just revenge that their own lusts and vices take upon them. It is an old maxim, Non poena, sed causa facit martyrem: "Not the punishment, but the cause makes a martyr." It is not so much what we suffer, as wherefore, by which God is glorified. What saith the Apostle, 1 Pet. iv. 14, 15? If ye be reproached for the name Christ, happy are ye.....on their part, he is evil spoken of; but, on your part, he is glorified. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evil-doer, or as a busy-body in other men's matters: for, thus to suffer, is a dishonour to the name of God, and to the profession of the Christian Religion. Hast thou, by an idle and dissolute life, brought thyself to want and poverty? or, by intemperance and luxury, exhausted thy body, and dishonoured it with diseases as noisome as they are painful? or, by enormous and flagitious crimes, exposed thyself to the censure and penalty of the law? what comfort canst thou take in this suffering, the shame and infamy of which will be a sad accruement to the affliction? Never think

that such sufferings can bring any honour to God, when the cause of them was the dishonouring of him. In these, thou art not his, but only the Devil's, confessor and martyr.

[2dly] Thou rashly and unwarrantably castest thyself into trouble, when thou sufferest what thou mightest lawfully have avoided.

Be the cause never so good and glorious, yet if we suffer for it needlessly, we can have but little comfort, and God but little glory by such sufferings. It was a strange frenzy in the Circumcellions, a sect of heretical Christians in St. Austin's time, who ambitiously affected martyrdom when there was no persecution and would forcibly compel others to lay violent hands on them; or, if they failed of that, would lay violent hands upon themselves; glorying in this, as martyrdom and suffering for the sake and testimony of Jesus. And, before these, the Montanists also were very fond and eager of suffering: who, though they did not invite and court it, yet thought it a base and carnal cowardice to use any means to escape it; yea, even that, which our Saviour Christ hath prescribed, Mat. x. 23, When they persecute you in one city, flee ye into another: and therefore Tertullian, misled by that erroneous spirit, hath writ, ten a whole treatise against flight in persecution. This is a _strong kind of supererogation, when men shall undergo more for Christ's sake, than he himself is willing to have them. These are not his martyrs, but martyrs to their own vain-glory, and sacrifice themselves to their own fancies and self-will. And so, again, whosoever he be, that chooseth the greater suffering, ra ther than the less; as death before imprisonment, or imprisonment before a small mulct; let his cause be what it will, though really as glorious and excellent as he himself conceits it; yet he suffers rashly for it; and, when he comes to present himself be. fore God, all scourged, and maimed, and famished, and bloody, expecting to receive the crown of glory, he may possibly receive no other guerdon, but that cutting reproof, Who hath required these things at your hands? As it is not true courage and fortitude to rush headlong into dangers,' when we have no call nor warrant to engage us; so neither is it any true Christian valour to affect dangers and sufferings: we ought not to seek them out, and challenge the combat: it is enough, if we cannot escape them without sordid and sinful courses, bravely to bear their shock, and sustain their onset. That Christian doth sufficiently discharge his duty, who is first careful to avoid dangers; but, if

he cannot do this, without making use of unlawful shifts, deny. ing the faith and betraying his own conscience, suffers them without shrinking: but those, who wilfully expose themselves to sufferings, either by doing what they need not, or by not avoiding what they may, let them not think that they glorify God by such sufferings; for they suffer not according to his will, but their own: and we may take up the same lamentation concerning them, that David did concerning Abner; Died Abner as a fool dieth? so suffer these, die these, as a fool suffers and dies, when it was in their own power to prevent those troubles and afflictions, into which they fall, nay into which they precipitate themselves.

But you will say, " How is it then, that the Apostle so highly extols the heroic fortitude of those martyrs of which he tells us, Heb. xi. 35. who, when they were tortured, would not accept of deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection? It seems, by their example, that God may be glorified by a voluntary and arbitrary suffering."

To this I answer, That, if they had refused deliverance offered to them upon conditions that had been righteous and lawful, their refusal of it had been utterly sinful and unlawful, and the Apostle would never have strewed flowers upon their hearses; for they had not been martyrs, but self-murderers: but, if we consult the story to whieh this passage relates, as it is at large described, 2 Mac. vii. which, though it be not Canonical Scripture, yet gives us a good account of the Jewish affairs under the Grecian Empire; we shall find that the Apostle commends their faith and patience, because they would not accept of deliverance upon unworthy and sinful terms: they were indeed offered freedom and safety, yea honour and rewards by Antio chus, if so be they would eat swine's flesh, and things offered to idols, contrary to the commands of the Law: but, upon such conditions as these, they refused to accept of deliverance; expecting, as they professed and the Apostle testifies, a better resurrection; and esteeming it infinitely more eligible, to sacrifice their lives for the glory of the true God, than to save their lives by sacrificing to false and idol gods. This instance, therefore, makes nothing in favour of those, who rashly thrust themselves intò dangers, when they have neither call nor necessity to encounter them; and, then, either complain, or glory, that they are persecuted. This is not to glorify God: for he would have none of his champions come forth to combat, till he himself

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