prevent it. But abundance of such consequences | God; to be saved or happy without enjoying must needs follow from the denying of the high- God by love, or to love him and not desire him, est good, which is God himself, and confessing seek him or obey him, are as great contradicnone but his efficient goodness. But some will tions as to be illuminated without light, or quickbe offended with me for being so serious in con- ened without life. What way soever it be that futing such an irrational, atheistical conceit, who God conveys his sanctifying Spirit, I am sure know not how far it prevails with an atheistical that if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, generation. the same is none of his,' and that without holiness none shall see God,' and that if you will have the kingdom of God, you must seek it first, preferring it before all earthly things. Then if all the question that remains undecided be, Whether God do you wrong or not in damning you, or whether God be good because he will not save you when he can, I shall leave you to him to receive satisfaction, who will easily silence and confound your impudence, and justify his works and laws. Prepare your accusations against him, if you will needs insist upon them, and try whether he or you shall prevail: but remember that thou art a worm, and he is God, and that he will be the only judge when all is done; and ignorance and impiety, that prate against him to their own confusion, in the day of his patience, shall not then usurp the throne. Be it known to you, careless sinners, that though the sun will shine on you whether you think on it or not, or love it, or thank it or not; and the fire will warm you whether you think on it, and love it or not; yet God will not justify or save you, whether you love him or think on him or not: God doth not operate unwisely in your salvation; but governs you wisely, as rational creatures are to be governed; and therefore will give you happiness as a reward; and therefore will not deal alike with those that love him, and that love him not; that seek him, and that seek him not; with the labourers and the loiterers, the faithful and the slothful servant. Would you have us believe that you know better than God himself what pleases himself, or on what terms he will give his benefits, and save men's souls? or do you know his nature better than he knows it, that you dare presume to say, because he needs not our love or duty, therefore they are not pleasing to him? Then what hath God to do in governing the world, if he be pleased and displeased with nothing that men do, or with good and evil actions equally? Though you cannot hurt him, you shall find that he will hurt you, if you disobey him: though you cannot make him happy by your holiness, you shall find that he will not make you happy without it. If he did work as necessarily as the sun doth shine, according to your similitude; yet, 1. Even the shining of the sun doth not illuminate the blind nor doth it make the seeds of thorns and nettles to bring forth vines or roses, nor the gendering of frogs to bring forth men; but it actuates all things according to the several natures of their powers. Therefore how can you expect that an unbelieving and unholy soul, should enjoy felicity in God, when in that state they are incapable of it? 2. If the sun do necessarily illuminate any one, he must necessarily be illuminated; and if it necessarily warm or quicken any thing, it must be necessarily warmed and quickened; else you would assert contradictions. So if God did necessarily save you, and make you happy, you would necessarily be saved and made happy. That contains essentially your holiness, your loving, desiring and seeking after Object. 2. But how can God be fit for mortals to converse with, when they see him not, and are infinitely below him? Answ. I hope you will not say that you have nothing to do at home, with your own souls: yet you never saw your souls. It is the soul, the reason and the will of men that you daily converse with here in the world, more than their bodies, and yet you never saw their souls, their reason or their wills. If you have no higher light to discern by than your eye-sight, you are not men but beasts. If you are men, you have reason; and if you are Christians, you have faith, by which you know things that you never saw. You have more dependence on the things that are unseen, than on those which you see, and have much more to do with them. Though God be infinitely above us, yet he condescends to communicate to us according to our capacities: as the sun is far from us, and yet doth not disdain to enlighten, warm, and quicken a worm or fly here below. If any be yet so much an atheist as to think that religious converse with God is but a fancy, let him well answer me these few questions. Quest. 1. Doth not the continued being and well-being of the creatures, tell us that there is a God on whom, for being and well-being, they depend, and from whom they are, and have whatsoever they are and whatsoever they have? And therefore that passively all the creatures have more respect to him by far, than to one another. Quest. 2. Seeing God communicates to every creature according to their several capacities; is it not meet then that he deal with man as man, even as a creature rational, capable to know, love, and obey his great Creator, and to be happy in the knowledge, love and fruition of him? That man hath such natural faculties, and capacities, is not to be denied by a man that knows what it is to be a man: that God hath not given him these in vain, will be easily believed by any that indeed believe that he is God. Quest. 3. Is there any thing else that is finally worthy of the highest actions of our souls? or that is fully adequate to them, and fit to be our happiness? If not, then we are left either to certain infelicity, contrary to the tendency of our natures, or else we must seek our felicity in God. Quest. 4. Is there any thing more certain than that by the title of creation, our Maker hath a full and absolute right to all that he hath made: and consequently to all our love and obedience, our time and powers? For whom should they all be used but for him from whom we have obtained them? Quest. 5. Can any thing be more sure, than that God is the righteous governor of the world, and that he governs man as a rational creature, by laws and judgment? Can we live under his absolute sovereignty, under his many righteous laws, under his promise of salvation to the justified, and under his threatenings of damnation to the unjustified, and yet not have more to do with God than with all the world? If indeed you think that God doth not love and reward the holy and obedient, and punish the ungodly and disobedient, then either you take him not to be governor of the world, or, which is worse, you take him to be an unrighteous governor: then you must by the same reason say, that magistrates and parents should do so too, and love and reward the obedient and disobedient alike: but if any man's disobedience were exercised to your hurt, by slandering, or beating, or robbing you, I dare say you would not then commend so indifferent and unjust a governor. Quest. 6. If it be not needless for man to labour for food and raiment, and necessary provision for his body, how can it be needless for him to labour for the happiness of his soul? If God will not give us our daily bread while we never think of it, or seek it, why should we expect that he will give us heaven though we never think on it, value it, or seek it? Quest. 7. Is it not a contradiction to be happy in the fruition of God, and yet not to mind him, desire him, or seek him? How is it that the soul can reach its object, but by estimation, desire and seeking after it: how should it enjoy it but by loving it, and taking pleasure in it? Quest. 8. While you seem but to wrangle against the duty of believers, do you not plead against the comfort and happiness of believers? For surely the employment of the soul on God, and for him, is the health and pleasure of the soul; to call away the soul from such employment, is to imprison it in the dungeon of this world, and to forbid us to smell the sweetest flowers, and confine us to a sink or dunghill, and to forbid us to taste of the food of angels, or of men, and to offer us vinegar and gall, or turn us over to feed with swine. He that pleads that there is no such thing as real holiness and communion with God, doth plead in effect that there is no true felicity or delight for any of the sons of men and how welcome should ungodly atheists be unto mankind, that would for ever exclude them all from happiness, and make them believe they are all made to be remedilessly miserable? Here take notice of the madness of the unthankful world, that hates and persecutes the preachers of the gospel, who bring them the glad tidings of pardon, hope, and life eternal, of solid happiness, and durable delight; and yet they are not offended at these atheists and ungodly cavillers, that would take them off from all that is truly good and pleasant, and make them believe that nature hath made them capable of no higher things than beasts, and hath enthralled them in remediless infelicity. Quest. 9. Do you not see by experience that there are a people in the world whose hearts are upon God, and the life to come; and that make it their chief care and business to seek him and to serve him? How then can you say that there is no such thing, or that we are not capable of it, when it is the case of so many before your eyes? If you say that it is but their fancy or self-deceit: I answer, that really their hearts are set upon God, and the everlasting world, and that it is their chief care and business to attain it; this is a thing that they feel, and that you may see in the bent and labour of their lives; and therefore you cannot call that a fancy, of which you have so full experience; but whether the motives that have invited them, and engaged them to such a choice and course, be fancies and deceits or not, let God be judge, and let the awakened consciences of worldlings themselves be judge, when they have seen the end, and tried whether it be earth or heaven that is the shadow, | afford, it is all but folly and impertinent dotage, and whether it be God or their unbelieving hearts if it reach not unto God. that was deceived. 2. Yea, your thoughts are erroneous and false, Quest. 10. Have you any hopes of living with which is more than barely ignorant, if God be God for ever, or not? If you have not, no not in them. You have false thoughts of the wonder if you live as beasts, when you have no world, of your houses and lands, friends, and higher expectations than beasts: when we are so pleasures, and whatsoever is the daily employblind as to give up all our hopes, we will also ment of your minds. You take them to be somegive up all our care and holy diligence, and thing, when they are nothing; you are covetous think we have nothing to do with heaven. But of the empty purse, and know not that you cast if you have any such hopes, can you think that away the treasure: you are thirsty after the any thing is fitter for the chief of your thoughts empty cup, when you wilfully cast away the and cares, than the God and kingdom, which | drink. You hungrily seek to feed upon a painted you hope for ever to enjoy? Or is there any feast: you murder the creature by separating it thing that can be more suitable, or should be more delightful to your thoughts, than to employ them about your highest hopes, upon your endless happiness and joy, and should not that be now the most noble and pleasant employment for your minds, which is nearest to that which you hope to be exercised in for ever? Undoubtedly he that hath true and serious thoughts of heaven, will highly value that life on earth which is likest to the life in heaven: and he that hates or is most averse to that which is nearest to the work of heaven, does boast in vain of his hopes of heaven. By this time you may see (if you love not to be blind) that man's chief business in the world is with his God, and that our thoughts, and all our powers, are made to be employed upon him, or for him; and that this is no such needless work as atheists make themselves believe. Remember that it is the description of the desperately wicked, that God is not in all his thoughts.' And if yet you understand it not, I will a little further show you the evil of such atheistical unhallowed thoughts. from God who is its life, and then you are ena- 4. If God be not in all your thoughts, they are nothing but confusion: there can be no just unity in them, because they forsake him who is the only centre, and are scattered abroad upon inco1. There is nothing but darkness in all thy herent creatures. There can be no true unity thoughts, if God be not in them. Thou know- but in God: the further we go from him, the est nothing, if thou knowest not him; and thou further we run into divisions and confusions. usest not thy knowledge, if thou use it not on There can be no just method in them, because he him. To know the creature as without God, is is left out that is the beginning and the end. to know nothing: no more than to know all the They are not like a well-ordered army, where letters in the book, and not to know their signi- every one is moved by the will of one commander, fication or sense. All things in the world are and all know their colours and their ranks, and but insignificant cyphers, and of no other sense unanimously agree to do their work: but like a or use, if you separate them from God, who is swarm of flies, that buzz about they know not their sense and end. If you leave out God in | whither, nor why, nor for what. There is no all your studies, you do but dream and doat, and true government in your thoughts, if God be not not understand what you seem to understand. in them; they are masterless and vagrants, and Though you were taken for the most learned have no true order, if they be not ordered by men in the world, and were able to discourse of him, and to him, if he be not their first and all the sciences, and your thoughts had no lower last. employment daily than the most sublime speculations which the nature of all the creatures doth 5. If God be not in all your thoughts, there is no life in them: they are but like the mction of a bubble, or a feather in the air : they are impo- | your folly, and vexing yourselves, that you took tent as to the resisting of any evil, and as to the not warning, and made not a wiser choice in doing of any saving good: they have no strength time? The creature was never made to be our in them, because they are laid out upon objects end, or rest, or happiness: and therefore you are that have no strength: they have no quickening, but like a man in a wilderness or maze, that may renewing, reforming, encouraging, resolving, con- | go up and down, but knows not whither, and firming power in them, because there is no such finds no end, till you come home to God, who power in the things on which they are employed: only is your proper end, and make him the whereas the thoughts of God and everlasting life, Lord, and life, and pleasure of your thoughts. can do wonders upon the soul: they can raise 7. As there is no present fixedness in your up men above this world, and teach them to de- thoughts, so the business and pleasure of them spise the worldling's idol, and look upon all the will be of very short continuance, if God be not pleasures of the flesh as upon animal delight in the chief in all. Who would choose to employ wallowing in the mire. They can renew the his thoughts on such things as he is sure they soul, and cast out the most powerful beloved sin, must soon forget, and never more have any and bring all our powers into the obedience of business with to all eternity? You shall think God, and that with pleasure and delight: they of those houses, lands, friends, and pleasures but can employ us with the angels, in a heavenly a little while, unless it be with repenting torconversation, and show us the glory of the world menting thoughts, in the place of misery: you above, and advance us above the life of the will have no delight to think of any thing, which greatest princes upon earth: but the thoughts of is now most precious to your flesh, when once earthly fleshly things have power indeed to de- the flesh itself decays, and is no more capable of lude men, mislead them, and hurry them about delight; his breath goeth forth, he returneth in a vertiginous motion; but no power to sup- to his earth; in that very day his thoughts port us, or subdue concupiscence, or heal our | perish. folly, or save us from temptations, to lead us back from our errors, or help us to be useful in the world, or to attain felicity at last. There is no life, nor power, nor efficacy in our thoughts, if God be not in them. 6. There is no stability or fixedness in your thoughts if God be not in them. They are like a boat upon the ocean, tossed up and down with winds and waves: the mutable uncertain creatures can yield no rest or settlement to your minds. You are troubled about many things ;' and the more you think on them, and have to do with them, the more are you troubled: but you forget the one thing necessary, and fly from the eternal Rock, on which you must build, if ever you will be established. While the creature is in your thought instead of God, you will be one day deluded with its unwholesome pleasure, and the next day feel it pierce you at the heart: one day it will seem your happiness, and the next you will wish you had never known it: that which seems the only comfort of your lives this year, may the next year make you weary of your lives. One day your are impatiently desiring and seeking it, as if you could not live without it: and the next day, or ere long, you are impatiently desiring to be rid of it: you are now taking in your pleasant morsels, and drinking down your delicious draughts, and jovially sporting it with your inconsiderate companions: but how quickly will you be repenting of all this, and complaining of Call in your thoughts then from these transitory things, that have no consistency or continuance, and turn them unto him with whom they may find everlasting employment and delight: remember not the enticing baits of sensuality and pride, but remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.' 8. Thy thoughts are but sordid, dishonourable and low, if God be not the object of them. They reach no higher than the habitation of beasts; nor do they attain to any sweeter employment than to meditate on the felicity of a brute: thou choosest with the fly to feed on corruption, when thou mightest have free access to God himself, and mightest be entertained in the court of heaven, and welcomed thither by the holy angels: thou wallowest in the mire with the swine, or diggest thyself a house in the earth, as worms and moles do, when thy thoughts might be soaring up to God, and might be taken up with high and holy and everlasting things. What if your thoughts were employed for preferment, wealth, and honour in the world? Alas! what silly things are these, in comparison of what your souls are capable of; you will say so yourselves when you see how they will end, and disappoint your expectations. Imprison not your minds in this infernal cell, when the superior regions are open to their access: confine them not to this narrow vessel of the body, whose tossings and dangers on these boisterous seas will make them restless, and disquiet them with tumultuous passions, when they may safely land in paradise, and there converse with Christ. God made you men, and if you reject not his grace, will make you saints: make not yourselves like beasts. God gave you souls that can step in a moment from earth to heaven, and there foretaste the endless joys do not you stick then fast in clay, and fetter them with worldly cares, or intoxicate them with fleshly pleasures, nor employ them in the worse than childish toys of ambitious, sensual, worldly men: your thoughts have manna, angels' food, provided them by God: if you will lothe this and refuse it, and choose with the serpent to feed on the dust, or upon the filth of sin, God shall be judge and your consciences one day shall be more faithful witnesses, whether you have dealt like wise men or like fools; like friends or enemies to yourselves; and whether you have not chosen baseness, and denied yourselves the advancement which was offered you. 9. If God be not the chief in your thoughts, they are no better than dishonest and unjust. You are guilty of denying him his own. He made not your minds for lust and pleasure, but for himself: you expect that your cattle, your goods, your servants, be employed for yourselves, because they are your own. But God may call your minds his own by a much fuller title: for you hold all but derivatively and dependently from him what will you call it but injustice and dishonesty, if your wife, or children, or servants, or goods, be more at the use and service of others, than of you? If any can show a better title to your thoughts than God doth, let him have them; but if not, deny him not his own. O stray not so much from home; for you will be no where else so well there: Desire not to follow strangers, you know not whither, nor for what; you have a master of your own, that will be better to you than all the strangers in the world. Bow not down to creatures, that are but images of the true and solid good: commit not idolatry or adultery with them in your thoughts; remember still that God stands by: bethink you how he will take it at your hands; and how it will be judged of at last, when he pleads his right, his kindness, and solicitations for you; and you have so little to say for any pretence of right or merit in the creature. Why are not men ashamed of the greatest dishonesty against God, when all that have any humility left them, do take adultery, theft, and other dishonesty against creatures, for a shame? The time will come when God and his interest shall be better understood, when this dishonesty against him, will be the matter of the most confounding shame, that ever did or could befall men. Prevent this by the juster exercise of your thoughts, and keeping them pure and chaste to God. 10. If God be not in your thoughts there will be no matter in them of solid comfort or contentment. Trouble and deceit will be all their work: when they have fled about the earth, and taken a taste of every flower, they will come home loaded with nothing better than vanity and vexation. Such thoughts may excite the laughter of a fool, and cause that mirth that is called madness. But they will never conduce to settled peace, and durable content: therefore they are always repented of themselves, and are troublesome to our review, as being the shame of the sinner, which he would be cleared of, or disown. Though you may approach the creature with passionate fondness, and the most delightful promises and hopes, be sure of it, you will come off at last with grief and disappointment, if not with the loathing of that which you choose for your delight. Your thoughts are in a wilderness among thorns and briars, when God is not in them as their guide and end: they are lost and torn among the creatures; but rest and satisfaction they will find none. It may be at the present it is more pleasant to you to think of recreation, or business, or worldly wealth, than to think of God: but the pleasure of these thoughts is as delusory, and short-lived, as are the things themselves on which you think. How long will you think with pleasure on such fading transitory things? The pleasure cannot be great at the present, which reaches but the flesh and fancy, and which the possessed knows will be but short. Nay you will shortly find by sad experience, that of all the creatures under heaven there will none be so bitter to your thoughts, as those in which you now find greatest carnal sweetness. O how bitter will the thought of idolized honour, and abused wealth and greatness be, to a dying or a damned Dives! The thoughts of that ale-house or play-house where thou hadst thy greatest pleasure, will trouble thee more than the thoughts of all the houses in the town besides: the thoughts of that one woman with whom thou didst commit thy pleasant sin, will wound and vex thee more than the thoughts of all the women in the town besides. The thoughts of that beloved sport which thou couldst not be weaned from, will be more troublesome to thee than the thoughts of a thousand other things in which thou hadst no inor |