lEItfe pnox, ]} iievcvx WaU^im, (nifj, (/^^f/ THE CnillSTIAX'.S :. MKNT or .s> R^CHAI^n -iW . J STEK ROW; OPPOU, M:n (, ■-■ ..- .^'IS'l'KR; Bt. ■ ''■■ ' -■■ I'll ,R,IPS\v'i' II, sLVn: i^iT^/r^ ineffectually, and as on the by. But is he esteemed as your God, if he have n©t the com- mand, and if he have not the precedency of his creatures ? Can you dream that indeed you walk with God, when your hearts were never grieved for offending him, nor never much solicitous how to be reconciled to him ; nor much inqui- sitive whether your state or way be pleasing or displeasing to him ? when all the business of al^ unspeakable importance, which you have to do with God, before you pass to judgment, is for- gotten and undone, as if you knew not of any such work that you had to do? when you make no serious preparation for death ; when you call- not upon God in secret, or in your families, unless with a little heartless lip labour ; and when you love not the spirituality of his wor- ship, but only delude your souls with the mockage of hypocritical outside compliment? Do you walk with God while you are plotting for preferment, and gaping after worldly great- ness ; while you are gratifying all the desires of you*: flesh, and making provision for the future Walking with God. 103 satisfying of its lusts ? Rom. xiii. 13. Are you walking with God when you are hating him in his holiness, his justice, his word and ways, and hating all that seriously love and seek him.' when you are doing your worst to dispatch the work of your damnation, and put your salvation past all hope, and draw as many to hell witli you as you can? If this be a walking with God, you may take further comfort that you shall also dwell with God according to the sense of such a walk : you shall dwell with him as a devouring fire, and as just, whom you thus walked with in the contempt of his mercies, and the provocation of his justice ! I tell you, if you walked with God indeed, his authority would rule you, his greatness would much take up your minds, and leave less room for little things : you would trust his promises, and fear his threatenings, and be awed by his presence, and the idols of your hearts v/ould fall before him ; he would overpower your lusts, and call you off from your ambitious and covetous designs, and obscure all the creature's glory. Believing serious effectual thoughts of God, are very much different from the common, doubtful, dreaming, ineffectual cogitations of the ungodly world. Object. But (perhaps some wiil say) — This seemeth to be the work of preachers, and not of every christian, to be always meditating of God : poor people must think of other matters : they f. o 104 Walk'iNg with God. have their business to do, and their families^ to provide for : and ignorant people are weak- headed, and are not able either to manage or endure a contemplative life : so much thinkino of God will make them melancholy and mad, as experience tells us it hath done by many . and therefore this is no exercise for them. To this I answer, 1 . Every christian hath a God to serve, and a so«l to save, and a Christ to believe in and obey, and an endless happiness to secure and enjoy, as well as preachers : pas- tors must study to instruct their flock, and to save themselves, and those that hear them : the people must study to understand and receive the mercy offered them, and to make their own calling and election sure. It is not said of pas- tors only, but of every blessed man, that his delight is in the law of the Lord, and therein doth he meditate day and night. Ps. i. 2. 2. And the due meditation of the soul upon God, is so far from taking you off from your necessary business in the world, that it is the only way to your orderly and successful management of it. 3. And it is not a distractino- thoughtfulness that I persuade you to, or which is included in a christian's walk with God: but it is a direc- ting, quickening, exalting, comforting course of meditation. Many a hundred have grown melancholy and mad with careful discontentful thoughts of the world ; it doth not follow there- fore that no man must think of the world at alL Welking with God. 105 for fear of being mad or melancholy ; but only that they should think of it more regularly, and correct the error of their thoughts and passions-: —so is it about God and heavenly things: our thoughts are to be well ordered, and the error of them cured, and not the use of them forborne. Atheism and impiety, and forgetting God, are unhappy means to prevent melancholy. There are wiser means for avoiding madness, than by renouncing all our reason, and living by sense like the beasts that perish, and forgetting that we have an everlasting life to live. But yet because 1 am sensible that some do here mistake on the other hand, and I would not lead you into any extreme, I shall fully remov-e the scruple contained in this objection, by shew- ing you in those following propositions, in what sense, and how far your thoughts must be take-a yp with God (supposing what was said in the beginning, where I described to you the duty of walking with God.) Pro. 1. When we tell you that your thoughts must be on God, it is not a course of idle musing, or mere thinking that we call you to, but it is a necessary practical thinking of that which you have to do, and of him that you must love, obey and enjoy. You will not forget your parents, or husband, or wife, or friend; and yet you will not spend your time in sitting stiil and thinking of them, with a musing unprofitable thoughtfulness; b.it you will have such thoughts 106 Walking zeith God. of them, and so many as are necessary to the ends, even to the love and service which you owe them, and to the delight that your hearts should have in the fruition of them. You can- not love, or obey, or take pleasure in those that you will not think of: you will follow your trades, or your master's service but unhappily, if you will not think on them. Thinking is not the work that we must take up with : it is but a subservient instrumental duty, to promote some greater higher duty : therefore we must think of God, that we may love him, and do his service, and trust him, and fear him, and hope in him, and make him our delight. And all this is it that we call you to, when we are persuading you 10 think on God. 2. An hypocrite, or a wicked enemy of God, may think of him speculatively, and perhaps be more frequent in such thoughts than many prac- tical believers. A learned man may study about God, as he doth about other matters, and names, and notions ; and propositions and decision? 'concerning God, may be a principal part of his learning. A preacher may study about God and the matters of God, as a physician or a lawyer do about the matters of their own pro- fession, either for the pleasure which knowledge as knowledge brings to human nature, or for the credit of beins esteemed wise and learned, or because their gain and maintenance comes in this way. They that fill many volumes with Wal/wig with God. 107 controversies concernhio; God, and fill the church with contentions and troubles by them, and their own hearts with malice and uncharitableness against those that are not of their opinions, have many and many a thought of God, which yet will do nothing to the saving of their souls, no more than they do to the sanctifying of them. And such learned men may think more ortho- doxly and methodically concerning God, than many an honest serious christian, who yet thinks of him more effectually and savingly ; even as they can discourse more orderly and copiously of God, when yet they have no saving know- ledge of him. 3. All men must not bestow so much time in meditation as some must do. It is the calling of ministers to study so as to furnish their minds with all those truths concerning God, which are needful to the edification of the church ; and so to meditate on these things as to give themselves wholly to them, I Tim. iv. 15, 16: it is both the work of their common and their special calling. The study necessary to christians as such, belongeth as well to others as to them : but other men have another special or particular calling, which also they must think of, so far as the nature and ends of their daily labors do require. It is a hurtful error to imagine that men must either lay by their callings to -meditate on God, or that they must do them negligently, or to be taken up in the 108 JValking ivith God, midst of their employments with such studies of God as ministers are that are separated to that work. 4. No man is bound to be continually taken up with actual, distinct cogitations about God : for in duty we have many other things to think on, which must have their time : and as we have callings to follow, and must eat our bread in the sweat of our brows, so we must manage them with prudence: a good man will guide his affairs with discretion. Ps. cxii. 5. It is both necessary as duty, and necessary as a means to ihe preservation of our very faculties, that both body and mind have their times of employ- ment about oar lawful business in the world : the understandings of many cannot bear it to be always employed on the greatest and most serious things : like lute strings they will break, if they be raised too high, and be not let down and relaxed when the lesson is played. To think of nothing else but God, is to break the law of God, and to confound the mind, and to disable it to think aright of God, or any thing. As he that bid us pray continually, did not mean that we should do nothing else, or that actual prayer should have no interruptions, but that habitual desires should on all meet occasion be actuated and expressed ; so he that would be chief in all our thouohts, did never mean that we should have no thoughts of any thing else, or that our serious meditation on him should be continual Walking loith God. 109 without interruption : but that the final intend- ing of God, and our dependance on him, should be so constant as to be the spring or mover of the rest of the thoughts and actions of our lives. 5. An habitual intending God as our end, and depending on his support, and subjection to his government, will carry on the soul in a sincere and constant course of godliness, though the actual most observed thoughts of the soul, be fewer in number about God, than about the means that lead unto him, and the occurrences in- our way. The soul of man is very active and comprehensive, and can think of several things at once ; and when it is once clear and resolved in any case, it can act according to that know- ledge and resolution, without any present sen- sible cogitation ; nay, while its actual mcft observed thoughts are upon something else. A musician that hath an habitual skill, can keep time and tune while he is thinking of some other matter : a weaver can cast his shuttle right, and work truly, while he is thinking or talking nf other things : a man can eat and drink with discretion while he talks of other things: some men can dictate to two or three scribes at once,, upon divers subjects : a traveller can keep on his way, though he seldom think distinctly cf his journeys end, but be thinking or discoursing most of the way upon other matters ; for before he undertook his journey he thought both of the «nd and way, and resolved then which way to g3 110 Walking with God. go, and that he would go through all both fail' and foul, and not turn back, till he saw the place : and this habitual understanding and re- solution, may be secretly and unobservedly active, so as to keep a man from erring, and from turning back, though at the same time the traveller's most sensible thoughts and his dis- course may be upon something else. When a man is once resolved of his end, and hath laid his design, he is past deliberating of that, and therefore hath less use of his cogitations there- about ; but is readier to lay them out upon tjie means, which may be still uncertain, or may require his frequent deliberation. We have usually more thoughts and speeches by the way, about our company, or our horses, or inns, or other accommodations, or the fairness or foulness of the way, and other such occurrences, than we have about the place that we are going to : and yet this secret intention of our end, will bring us thither. So when a soul hath cast up his accounts, and hath renounced a worldly and sensual felicity, and hath fixed his hopes and resolutions upon heaven, and is resolved to cast himself upon Christ, and take God for his only portion, this secret habitual resolution will do much to keep him constant in the way, though his thoughts and talk be frequently on other things : yea, when we are thinking of the crea- ture, and feel no actual thoughts of God, it is yet God more than the creature that we think Walking with God. Ill of: for we did before hand look on the creature as God's work, representing him unto the woikl, and as his talents which we must employ for him, and as every creature is related to him : and this estimation of the creature is still habi- tually (and in some secret less-perceived acts) most prevalent in the soul. Though I am not always sensibly thinking of the king, when I use his coin, or obey his law, &c. yet it is only as his coin still that I use it, and as his laws that I obey them. Weak habits cannot do their work without great carefulness of thoughts : but perfect habits will act a man with little thoughtfulness, as coming near the natural way of operation. And indeed the imperfection of our habitual godliness doth make our sei'ious tlioughts, and vigilance, and industry to be the more necessary to us, 6. There are some thoughts of God that are necessary to the very being of a holy state; as that God be so much in our thoughts, as to be preferred before all things else, and principally beloved and obeyed ; and to be the end of our lives, and the bias of our wills : and there are some thoughts of God that are necessary only to acting and increase of grace. 7. So great is the weakness of our habits, «o many and great are the temptations to be over- come, so many difficulties are in our way, and the occasions so various for the exercise of each ^race, that it behoveth a christian to exercise i)ig 112 Walking with God. much thoughtfulness about his end and work, as hath any tendency to promote his work and to attain his end : but such a thoughtfulness as hindereth us in our work, by stopping, or distracting, or diverting us, is no way pleasing unto God. So excellent is our end, that we can never encourage and delight the mind too much in the forethoughts of it. So sluggish are our liearts, and so loose and inconstant are our apprehensions and resolutions, that we have need to be most requently quickening them, and lifting at them, and renewing our desires, and suppressing the contrary desires, by the serious thoughts of God and immortality. Our thouohts are the bellows that must kindle the fiames of love, desire, hope, and zeal : our thoughts are the spur that must put on a slufffish tired heart — and so far as they con- duce to any such works and ends as these, they are desirable and good. 15ut what master loveth to see his servant sit down and think, when he should be at work ? or to use his thoughts only -to gfieve and vex himself for his faults, but not to mend them? to sit down lamenting that he is so bad and unprofitable a servant, when he should be up and doing his master's business as "well as he is able ? Such thoughts are sins as hinder us from duty, or discourage or unfit us -for it, however they may go under a better name. ■ 8'. The godly themselves are very much want- ing in the holiness of their thoughts, and the Walking with God. 113 liveliness of their affections. Sense leadeth away the thoughts too easily after these present sensible things, while faith being infirm, the thoughts of God and heaven are much disad- vantaged by their invisibility. Many a gracious soul crieth out, O that I could think as easily, and as affectionately, and as unweariedly about the Lord and the life to come, as I can do about my friends, my health, my habitation, my busi- ness, and other concernments of this life ! But alas ! such thoughts of God and heaven have far more enemies and resistance, than the thoughts of earthly matters have. 9. It is not distracting, vexatious thoughts of Go(^, that the holy scriptures call us to; but it is to such thoughts as tend to the healing, and peace, and felicity of the soul; and therefore it is not to a melancholy, but a joyful life. If God be better than the world, it must needs be better to think of him. If he be more beloved than any friend, the thoughts of him should be sweeter to us. If he be the everlasting hope and happiness of the soul, it should be a fore- taste of happiness to find him nearest to our hearts. The nature and use of holy thoughts, and of all religion, is but to exalt, and sanctify, and delight the soul, and bring it up to ever- lasting rest: and is this the way to melancholy or madness? Or is it not liker to make men melancholy, to think of nothing but a vain, deceitful, and vexatious world, that hath much 114 WaUcing with God, to disquiet us, but nothing to satisfy us, and can give the soul no hopes of any durable delight ? 10. Yet as God is not equally related unto all, so is he not the same to all men's thoughts. If a wicked enemy of God and godliness be forced and frightened into some thoughts of God, you cannot expect that they should be as sweet and comfortable thoughts as those of his most obedient children are. While a man is under the guilt and power of his reigning sin, and under the wrath and curse of God, unpar- doned, unjustified, a child of the devil, it is not this man's duty to think of God, as if he were fully reconciled to him, and too'R pleasure in him as in his ovtU. Nor is it any wonder if such a man think of God with fear, and think of his sin with grief and shame. Nor is it any wonder if the justified themselves do think of God with fear and grief, when they have provoked him by some sinful and unkind behaviour, or are cast into doubts of their sincerity and interest in Christ, and when he hides his face, or assaulteth them with his terrors. To doubt whether a man shall live for ever in heaven or hell, may ratio- nally trouble the thoughts of the wisest man in the world ; and it were but sottishness not to be troubled at it: David himself could say, " In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord : my sore ran in the night and ceased not: my soul Infused tjo be comforted. I remeuibered God and Walking raitk God. 115 & was troubled : I complained and my spirit was overwhelmed. Thou holdest mine eyes waking : I am so troubled that I cannot speak. Will the Lord cast off for ever?" Ps. Ixxvii. 2 — 5, 7. Yet all the sorrowful thoughts of God, which are the duty of either the godly or the wicked, are but the necessary preparatives of their joy. It is not to melancholy, distraction, or despair, that God calleth any, even the worst : but it is that the wicked would " Seek the Lord while he may be found, and call upon him while he is near : that he would forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him ; and to our God, and he will abundantly pardon." Isa. Iv. 6, 7. Despair is sin; and the thoughts that tend to it are sinful thoughts, even in the wicked. If worldly crosses, or the sense of danger to the soul had cast any into melancholy, or overwhelmed them with fears, you can name nothing in the world that in reason should be so powerful a remedy to recover them, as the thoughts of God, his goodness and mercy and readiness to receive and pardon those that turn unto him, his covenant and promises and grace through Christ, and the everlasting happiness which all may have that will accept and seek it in the time of grace, and prefer it before the deceitful transitory pleasures of the world. If the thoughts of God and of the heavenly ever- lasting joys, will not comfort the soul, and cure 116 Walking with God. a sad despairing mind, I know not what can rationally do it. Though yet it is true that an awakened sinner must needs be in a trembhng state, till he find himself at peace with God; and mistaken christians that are cast into cause- less doubts and fears, by the malice of Satan, are unlikely to walk comfortably with God, till they are resolved and recovered from their mis- takes and fears. CHAPTER V. Object. But it may be the objector will be ready to think, that — If it be indeed our duty to walk with God, yet thoughts are no considerable part of it : what more uncertain or mutable than our thoughts ? It is deeds and not thoughts that God regardeth : to do no harm to any, but to do good to all, this is indeed to walk with God! You set a man upon a troublesome and impossi- ble work, while you set liim upon so strict a guard and so much exercise of his thoughts! What cares the Almighty for my thoughts? Anmv. 1. If God know better than you, and be to be believed, then thoughts are not so inconsiderable as you suppose. Doth he not say, that " the thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord ? " Prov. xv. 26. It is tlie work of the gospel by its power to pull down Walking with God. 117 strong holds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. 2 Cor. X. 4, 5. The unrighteous man's forsaking his thoughts, is part of his necessary conversion. Isa. Iv. 7. It was the description of the deplo- rate state of the old world. Gen. vi. 6, 6, " God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually ; and it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart." Judge by this whether thoughts be so little regarded by God as you imagine. David saith of himself '*' 1 hate vain thoughts." Vs. cxix. 113. Solomon saith, " The thoughts of the righteous are right." Prov. xii. 5. Paul saith that charity thinketh not evil. 1 Cor. xiii. 5. 2. Thouo-hts are the issue of a rational soul. And if its operations be contemptible, its essence is contemptible : if its essence be noble, its ope- rations are considerable. If the soul be more excellent than the body, its operations must be more excellent. To neglect our thoughts, and not employ them upon God, and for God, is to vilify our noblest faculties, and deny God, who is a Spirit, that spiritual service which he re- quireth. 3. Our thoughts are commonly our most cor- dial voluntary acts, and shew the temper and 118 Walking luith God. inclination of the heart : and therefore are re- gardable to God that searcheth the heart, and calleth fiFst for the service of the heart. 4. Our thoughts are radical and instrumental acts : such as they are, such are the actions of our lives. Christ telleth us that out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, for- nications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies, which defile the man. Matt. xv. 19. 5. Our thoughts are under a law, as well as words and deeds. Prov. xxiv. 9. " The thought of foolishness is sin." And Matt. v. 28, &c. Christ extendeth the law even to the thoughts and desires of the heart. And under the law it is said, Deut. xv. 9. " Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart," &c. viz. of unmercifulness towards thy brother, 6. Thoughts can reach higher much than sense, and may be employed upon the most excellent and invisible objects, and therefore are lit instruments to elevate the soul that would converse with God. Though God be infinitely above us, our thoughts may be exercised on him : our persons never were in heaven, and yet our conversation must be in heaven, Phil. iii. 20. And how is that but by your thoughts ? Though we see not Christ, yet by the exercise of be- lieving thoughts on him, we love him and rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Though God be invisible, yet our meditation of him may be sweet, and we may delight in the Lord. Pb. Walking with God. 119 civ. 34. Say not that all this is but fantastical and delusory, as long as thoughts of things unseen are meeter to actuate and elevate the love, desires and delights of the soul, and to move and guide us in a regular and holy life, than the sense of lesser present good. The thoughts are not vain or delusory, unless the object of them be false and vain and delusory. Where the object is great, and sure and excel- lent, the thoughts of such things are excellent operations of the soul. If thoughts of vain glory, wealth and pleasure, can delight the ambitious, covetous and sensual ; no wonder if the thoughts •of God and life eternal afford us solid high delights, 7. The thoughts are not so liable to be coun- terfeit and hypocritical as are the words and outward deeds : and therefore they shew more what the man is, and what is in his heart. For as Solomon saith, Prov. xxiii. 7. '* As he thinketh in his heart, so is he." 8. Our thoughts may exercise the highest graces of God in man ; and also shew those graces, as being their effects. How is our faith, and love, and desire, and trust, and joy, and hope to be exercised but by our cogitations? If grace were not necessary and excellent, it would not be wrought by the Spirit of God, and called the divine nature, and the image of God : and if grace be excellent, the use and exercise of it is excellent : and therefore our thoughts 120 Walking xoith God. by which it is exei'cised must needs have their excellency too. 9. Our thoughts must be the instruments of our improving all holy truth in scripture, and all the mercies which we receive, and all the afSictions which we undergo. What good will reading a chapter in the Bible do to any one that never thinketh on it? Our delight in the law of God must engage us to meditate in it day and night. Ps. i. 2. What good shall he get by hearing a sermon that exerciseth not his thoughts for the receiving and. digesting it. Our consi- dering what is said, is the way in which we may expect that God should give us understanding in all thinos. 2 Tim. ii. 7. What the better will he be for any of the merciful providences of God, who never bethinks him whence they come, or what is the use and end that they are given for? what good will he get by any afflic- tion, that never bethinks him who it is that chastiseth him, and for what, and how he must get them removed and sanctified to his good ? A man is but like one of the pillars in the church, or like the corpse which he treadeth on, or at best but like the dog that folio weth him thither for company, if he use not his thoughts about the work which he hath in hand, and cannot say, as Ps. xlviii. 9, " We have thought of thy loving kindness O God in the midst of thy temple." He that biddeth you hear, dotJi also bid you take heed how you hear, Luke Walking with God. 121 vlii. 18. And you are commanded to lay up the Avord in your heart and soul. Deut. xi. 18, 19. " And to set your hearts to all the words which are testified among you: for it is not a vain thing for you, because it is your life." 10. Our thoughts are so considerable a part of God's service, that they are oft put for the whole. Mai. iii. 16. "A book of remembrance was written for them that feared the Lord and that thought upon his name." Our believing and loving God, and trusting in him, and desir- ing him and his grace, are the principal parts of his service, which are exercised immediately by our thoughts: and in praise and prayer it is this inward part that is the soul and life of all. He is a foolish hypocrite that thinks to be heard for his much babbling. Matt. vi. 7. And on the contrary the thoughts are named as the sum of all iniquity: Isa. lix. 7. " Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity." Isa. Ixv. 2- " I have spread out my hands all the day long unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts." Jar. iv. 14. " O Jerusalem, wash thy heart from wickedness that thou mayest be saved : how long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee! " Ps. xiv. 1. "The fool hatii said in his heart, there is no God." 11. A man's thoughts are the appointed orderly way for the conversion of a sinner, and the preventing of his sin and misery. David 122 Walking with God. saith, Ps. cxix. 59, " I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto thy testimonies." The pro- digal (Luke XV. 17, 18) came to himself and returned to his father, by the success of his own consideration. " Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider your ways," Hag. i. 5, is a voice that every sinner should hear. Ezek. xviii. 14. It is he that considereth and doth not according to his father's sins, that shall not die. Therefore it is God's desire, — O that they were wise and understood this, and that they would consider their latter end. Deut. xxxii. 29. It is either men's inconsiderateness, or the error of their thoughts that is the cause of all their wicked- ness. Isa. i. 3. " My people doth not consider." Paul verily thought that he ought to do many things against the name of Jesus. Acts xxvi. 9. Many deceive themselves by thinking themselves something when they are nothing. Gal. vi. 3. They think it strange that we run not with them to excess of riot; and therefore they speak evil of us. 1 Pet. iv. 4. Disobedient formalists con- sider not that they do evil, when they think they are offering acceptable sacrifices to God. Eccles. V. 1, 2. The very murder of God's holy ones hath proceeded from these erroneous thoughts : they that kill you shall think they do God service. John xvi. 2. All the ambition, and covetousness, and injustice, and cruelty foUow- ino; thereupon, which troubleth the world, and ruineth men's souls, is, from their erroneous IValkhfg with God. 123 thoughts, overvaluing these deceitful things. Ps. xiix. 11. "Their inward thought is that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations." The presumptuous and impenitent are surprised by destruction, for want of thinking of it to prevent it: " In such an hour as you think not, the Son of Man cometh." 12. Lastly, the thoughts are the most con- stant actions of a man, and therefore most of the man is in them. We are not always reading, or hearing, or praying, or working; but we are always thinking: and therefore it doth especially concern us to see that this constant breath of the soul be sweet, and that this constant stream be pure and run in the right channel. Well, therefore, did David make this his request, Ps. cxxxix. 23, 24. " Search me O God and know my heart : try me and know my thoughts ; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." I say, therefore, to those that insist on this irrational objection, that these very thoughts of tbeir's, concerning the inconsiderabieness of thoughts, are so foolish and ungodly, that when they understand the evil even of these, they will know that thoughts were more to be regarded. " If therefore thou hast done foolishly in lifting up thyself, or if thou hast thought evil, lay thy hand upon thy mouth." And though, after all this, I still confess that it is so exceeding hard a matter to keep the thoughts 124 Walking with God. in holy exercise and order, that even the best do daily and hourly sin, in the omissions, the disorder, or the vanity of their thoughts ; yet for all that we must heeds conclude that the incli- nation and design of our thoughts must be principally for God, and that the thoughts are principal instruments of the soul, in acting it in his service, and mo vino; it towards him, and in all this holy woik of our walking with God : and therefore to imagine that thoughts are incon- siderable and of little use, is to unman us and unchristen us. The labour of the mind is neces- sary for the attaining the felicity of the mind, as the labour of the body is necessary for the things that belong vinto the body. As bodily idleness bringeth unto beggary, when the dili- gent hand makes rich ; so the idleness of the soul doth impoverish the soul, when the labo- rious christian liveth plentifully and comfortably through the blessing of God upon his industry and labour. You cannot expect that God appear to you in a bodily shape, that you may have immediate converse with him in the body : the corporal eating of him in transubstantiate bread, supposed common to men and mice or dogs, we leave to papists, who have made them- selves a singular new religion, in despite of the common sense and reason of mankind, as well as of the scriptures and the judgment of the church. It is in the spirit that you must con- verse with God who is a Spirit. The mind seeth Walking with God. 1'25 him by faith, who is invisible to the bodily eyes. Nay, if you will have a true and saving know- ledge of God, you must not liken him to any thing that is visible, nor have any corporal con- ceivings of him : earthly things may be the glass in which we may behold him, while we are here in the flesh, but our conceivings of him must be spiritual ; and minds that are immersed in flesh and earth, are unmeet to hold commu- nion with him: the natural man knoweth him not, and the carnal mind is enmity to him, and they that are in the flesh cannot please him. Rom. viii. It is the pure, abstracted, elevated soul, that understandeth by experience what it is to walk with God. CHAPTER VI. § 1 . Having in the foregoing uses reproved the atheism and contempt of God, which ungodly men are continually guilty of, and endeavoured to convince them of the necessity and desirable- ness of walking with God, and in particular of improving our thoughts for holy converse with him, and answered the objections of the impious and atheists; 1 shall next endeavour to cure the remnants of this disease, in those that are sin- cerely holy, who live too strangely to God their father in the world. In the performance of this, VOL. II. II 126 Walking with God. I shall first shew you what are the benefits of this holy life which should make it appear desi- rable and delightful. 2. I shall shew you why believers should addict themselves to it as doubly obliged, and how it appeareth that their neglect of it is a sin of special aggravations. This is the remainder of my task. § 2. I. To walk with God in a holy and heavenly conversation, is the employment most suitable to human nature: not to its corrupt dis- position, nor to the carnal interest and appetite ; but to nature as nature, to man as man. It is the very work that he was made for : the facul- ties and frame of soul and body were composed for it by the wise Creator : they are restored for it by the gracious Redeemer. Though in corrupted nature where sensuality is predomi- nant, there is an estrangedness from God, and an enmity and hatred of him, so that the wicked are more averse to all serious holy converse with him (in prayer, contemplation, and a heavenly life) than they are to a worldly sinful life; yet all this is but the disease of nature, corrupting its appetite, and turning it against that proper food, which is most suitable to its sound desires, and necessary to its health and happiness. Though sinful habits are become as it were a second nature to the ungodly, so depraving their judgments and desires, that they verily think the business and pleasures of the flesh are most suitable to them; yet these are as Walking with God. 127 contrary to nature as nature, (that is, to the primitive tendencies of all our faculties, and the proper use to which they were fitted by our Creator, and to that true felicity which is the end of all our parts and powers) even as madness is contrary to the rational nature, though it were hereditary. 1. What can be more agreeable to the nature of man, than to be rational and wise, and to live in the purest exercise of reason? And certainly there is nothing more rational than that we should live to God, and gladly accept of all that communion with him which our natures on earth are capable of. Nothing can be more reasonable than for the reasonable soul to be entirely addicted to him that did create it, that doth preserve it, and by whom it doth subsist and act. Nothing is more reasonable than that the absolute Lord of nature be honored and served wholly by his own. Nothing is more reasonable than that the reasonable creature do live in the truest dependence upon, and subor- dination to the highest reason; and that derived, imperfect, defectible wisdom be subservient to and guided by the primitive, perfect, indefectible wisdom.. It is most reasonable that the children depend upon the father, and the foolish be ruled by the most wise, and that the subjects be governed by the universal king, and that tliey honor him and obey him ; and that the indigent apply themselves to him that is all-sufficient, H 2 128 Walking with God. and is most able and ready to supply their wants; and that the impotent rest upon him that is omnipotent. 2. Nothing can be more reasonable, than that the reasonable nature should intend its end, and seek after its true and chief felicity : and that it should love good as good, and therefore prefer the chiefest good before that which is transitory and insufficient. Reason comraandeth the reasonable creature to avoid its own delusion and destruction, and to rest upon him that can everlastingly support us, and not upon the crea- ture that will deceive us and undo us : and to prefer the highest and noblest converse before that which is inferior, unprofitable and base; and that we rejoice more in the highest, purest, and most durable delights, than in those that are sordid, and of short continuance. And who knoweth not that God is the chiefest good, and true felicity of man, the everlasting rock, the durable delight, and to be preferred before his creatures? And who might not find, that would use his reason, that all things below are vanity and vexation ? 3. Nothing can be more rational and agree- able to man's nature, than that the superior faculties should govern the inferior; that the brutish part be subject to the rational ; and that the ends and objects of this higher faculty be preferred before the objects of the lower, that the objects of sense be made subservient to the Walkh^ ivith God. J 29 o\)jects of reason. If this be not natural and rational, then it is natural to man to be no man, but a beast, and reasonable to be unreasonable. Now it is evident that a holy living unto God, is but the improvement of true reason, and its employment for and upon its noblest object, and its ultimate end ; and that a sensual life is the exercise of the inferior brutish faculties, in predominancy above and before the rational : and therefore to question whether God or the creature should be first sought, and loved, and principally desired, and delighted in, and served, is but to question whether we should live like men or like beasts, and whether dogs or wise men be fitter companions for us; and whether the rider or the horse should have the rule : whether the rational or sensitive powers be superior and proper to the nature of a man. Object. But there is a middle state of life, betwixt the sensual and the divine or holy life which sober philosophers did live, and tliis is the most natural life, and most properly so called. Amtv. I deny this: there is no middle state of life, if you denominate the several states of life from the several ends, or the several powers. I grant that the very sensitive powers in man, especially the imagination, is much advanced by the conjunction of reason, above that of a brute: and I grant that the delights of the fantasy may be preferred before the immediate 130 Walking with God. pleasure of the senses : and I grant that some little distant knowledge of God, and things divine, and hopes of attaining them, may affect an unsanctified man with an answerable plea- sure. But all this is nothing to prove that there is a third sort of end, or of powers, and so a third or middle state of life, specifically distinct from the sensitive and the holy life. Besides, the vegetative man hath no other life or facul- ties, than the sensitive and the rational; and therefore one of these must be in predominancy or rule: and therefore he can have no middle sort or end, and therefore no middle state of life, that can be said to be agreeable to his nature. Those that seek and take up their chief felicity in riches and plenty, and provisions for the flesh, though not in present pleasing of the sense, do live but the life of sensuality. A fox or dog takes pleasure when he hath eaten his belly full, to hide and lay up the rest; and so doth the bee to fill the hive, and make provision for the winter. The proud that delight in honour and applcLuse, and making others subject to their iusts, do live but the life of sensuality : a dog, a horse, and other brutes, have something of the same. They that are grave through melancholy, or because they can reach no great matter in the world, and because their old or duller spirits are not much pleased with juvenile delights, and so live retiredly, and seek no higher pleasure or fehcity, but only sit down with the weeping or Walking with God. 131 the laughing philosopher, lamenting or deriding the vanity of the world, do yet live no other than a sensual life : as an old dog that hath no pleasure in hunting or playfulness, as he had when he was a whelp ; only he is less deluded and less vain, than other sensualists that find more pleasure in their course. All the doubt is concerning those that place their felicity in knowledge, and those that de- light in moral virtues, or that delight in studying of God, though they are no christians. The point is weighty, and hath oft unhappily fallen into injudicious hands. I shall endeavour to resolve it as truly, clearly and impartially as I can. 1. It is a great error against the nature of man, to say, that knowledge, as such, is fit to be any man's chief and ultimate end : it may be that act which is next the enjoying act of the will, which is it that indeed is next the end, objectively considered ; but it is not that act which we call ultimate ultimm. And this is plain 1. Because the object of the under- standing, which is truth, is not formally the nearest object or matter of full felicity or delight : it is goodness that is the nearest object. 2. And therefore the office of the intellect is but introductive and subservient to the office of the will, to apprehend the verity of good, and pre- sent it to the will to be prosecuted or embraced, or delighted in. There are many truths that are ungrateful and vexatious, and which men would 132 Walking with God. wish to be no truths ; and there is a knowledge which is troublesome, useless, undesirable and tormenting, which even a wise man would fain avoid if he knew how. Morality is but prepara- tively in the intellect ; and therefore intellectual acts, as such, are not morally good, or evil, but only participatively, as subject to the will. .And therefore knowledge, as such, being not a moral good, can be no other than such a natural good as is bonum alicui, only so far as it tendeth to some welfare or happiness, or pleasure of the possessor or some other : and this welfare or pleasure is either that which is suited to the sensitive powers, or to the rational (which is to be found in the love of God alone.) 2. I add therefore that even those men that seem to take up their felicity in common know- ledge, indeed do but make their knowledge subservient to something else which they take for, their felicity ; for knowledge of evil may torment them : it is only to know something which they take to be good, that is their delight ; and it is the complacency or love of that good at the heart, which sets them on work, and causeth the delight of knowing. If you will say that common knowledge as knowledge doth immediately delight, yet will it be found but such a pleasing of the fantasy, as an ape hath in spying marvels, which if it have no end that is higher, is still but a sensitive delight; but if it be referred to a higher delight (in God) it doth Walking with God. 133 participate of the nature of it. Delight in gene- ral is the common end of men and brutes : but in specie they are distinguished as sensual cr rational. 3. If you suppose a philosopher to be delighted in studying mathematics, or any of the works of God, either he hath herein an end, or no end beyond the knowledge of the crea- ture : either he terminateth his desires and delights in the creature, or else useth it as a means to raise him to the Creator. If he study and delight in the creature ultimately, this is indeed the act of a rational creature, and an act of reason, as to the faculty it proceeds from (and so is a rational contrivance for sensual ends and pleasures :) but it is but the error of reason, and is no more agreeable to the rational nature, than the deceit of the senses is to the sensitive : nor is it finally to be numbered with the operations felicitating human nature, any more tlian an erroneous dream of pleasure, or than that man is to be numbered with the lovers of learning, who taketh pleasure in the binding, leaves or letters of the book, while he understandeth nothing of the sense. But if this philosopher seek to know the Creator in and by the creatures, and take delight in the maker's power, wisdom and goodness, which appeareth in them, then this is truly a rational delight, in itself consi- dered, and beseeming a man. And if he reach go far in itp as to make God his highest desire h3 134 Walking with God. and delight, overpowering the desires and delights of sensuality, he shall be happy, as being led by the Son unto the Father : but if he make but some little approaches towards it, and drown all such desires in the sensual desires and delights, he is then but an unhappy sen- sualist, and liveth brutishly in the tenor of his life, though in some acts in part he operate rationally as a man. The like I may say of them that are said to place their delight in moral virtues. Indeed nothing is properly a moral good (or virtue) but that which is exercised upon God as our end, or upon the creature as a means to this end. To study and know mere notions of God, or what IS to be held and said of him in discourse, is not to study or to know God, no more than to love the language and phrase of holy writing is to love God. To study God as one that is less regardable and desirable than our sensual de- lights, is but to blaspheme him. To study, seek, and serve him as one that can promote or hinder our sensual felicity, is but to abuse him as a means to your sensuality. And for the virtues of temperance, justice, or charity, they are but analogically and secundum quid to be found in any ungodly person : materially they may have them in an eminent degree ; but not as they are informed by the end which moralizeth them. Jezabel's fast was not formally a virtue, but an odious way of hypocrisy to oppress the innocent. Walking %oith God. 135 He that doth works of justice or mercy, to evil ends only, (as for applause, or to deceive, &c.) and not from the true principles of justice and mercy, doth not thereby exercise moral virtue, but hypocrisy, and other vice. He that doth works of justice and mercy, out of mere natural compassion to others, and desire of their good, without respect to God, as obhging, or rewarding, or desiring it, doth perform such a natural good work, as a lamb or a gentle beast doth to his fellows, which hath not the true form of moral virtue, but the matter only. He that in such works hath some little by-respect to God, but more to his carnal interest among men, doth that which on the by participateth of moral good, or is such secundum quid, but not simplidter, •being to be denominated from the part predomi- nant. He that doth works of justice or charity principally to please God, and in true obedience to his will, and a desire to be conformed thereto, doth' that which is formally a moral good, and holy, though there may be abhorred mixtures of worse respects. So that there are but two states of life here : one of those that walk after the flesh, and the other of those that walk after the spirit. How- ever the flesh hath several materials and wavs of pleasure : and even the rational actings that have a carnal end, are carnal finally and morally^ though they are acts of reason; for they are but the errors of reason, and defectiveness of 136 Walking with God. true rationality ; and being but the acts of erroneous reason as captivated by the flesh, and subservient to the carnal interest, they are them- selves to be denominated carnal : and so even the reasonable soul, as biased by sensuality, and captivated thereto, is included in the name of " flesh" in scripture. How much moral good is in that course of piety or obedience to God, which proceedeth only from the fear of God's judgments, without any love to him, I shall not now discuss, because I have too far digressed already. All that I have la*t said, is to shew you the reasonableness of living unto God, as being indeed the proper and just employment of the superior faculties of the soul, and their govern- ment of the lower faculties. For if any other called moralists do seem to subject the sensual life to the rational, either they do but seem to do so, (the sensual interest being indeed pre- dominant, and their rational operations subjected thereto); or at the best, it is but some poor and erroneous employment of the rational faculties which they exercise, or some weak approaches towards that high and holy life, which is indeed the life which the rational nature was created for, and which is the right improvement of it. 4. Moreover, nothing is more beseeming the nature of man, than to aspire after the highest and noblest improvement of itself; and to live the Tiiost excellent life that it is capable of. Fof Walking tcith God. 137 every nature tendeth to its own perfection. But it is most evident that to walk with God in holiness, is a thing that human nature is capable of, and that is the highest life that we are capable of on earth; and therefore it is the life most suitable to our natures. 5. And what can be more rational and beseeming a created nature, than to live to those ends, which our Creator intended in the fabrication of our natures? It is his ends that are principally to be served. But the very composure of our faculties plainly prove, that his end was that we should be fitted for his service : he gave us no powers or capacity in vain ; and therefore to serve him and walk with him, is most suitable to our natures. Object. That is natural which is first, and born with us: but our enmity to holiness is first, and not our holiness. Answ. It may be called natural indeed, because it is first, and born with us ; and in that respect we confess that sin and not holiness is natural to us. But holiness is called natural to us, in a higher respect, because it was the primitive natural constitution of man, and was before sin, and is the perfection or health of nature, and the right employment and improve- ment of it, and tends to its happiness. An hereditary leprosy may be called natural, as it js first, and before health in that person: but Jiealth and soundness is natural, as being the 138 Walkins: with God. b well-being of nature, when the leprosy is un- natural, as being but its disease, and tending to its destruction. Object. But nature in its first constitution was not holy, but innocent only, and it was by a superadded gift of grace that it became holy as some schoolmen think; and as others think, Adam had no holiness till his restoration. Answ. These are popish unproved fancies, and contrary to nature and the word of God. 1. They are nowhere written, nor have no evi- dence in nature, and therefore are the groundless dreams of men. 2. The work of our recovery to God is called in scripture a redemption, renovation, restora- tion, which imply that nature was once in that holy estate before the fall. And it is expressly said, that the new man which we put on is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him. Col. iii. 10. And after God's imag-e Adam was created. 3. If it belong to the soundness and integrity of nature to be holy (that is, disposed and addicted to live to God) then it is an abusive temerity, for men out of their own imagination, to feign, that God first made nature defective, and then mended it by superadded grace. But if it belong not to the soundness and integrity of human nature to be holy, then why did God pive him grace to make him so ? Nay, then it would follow that when God sanctified Adam, Walking with God. 139 or any since, he made him specifically another thing, another creature, of another nature, and did not only cure the diseases of his nature. 4. It is yet apparent in the very nature of man's faculties, that their very usefulness and tendency, is to live to God, and to enjoy him : and that God should make a nature apt for such a use, and give it no disposedness to its proper use, is an unnatural conceit. We see to this day that it is but an unreasonable abuse of reason, when it is not used holily for God ; and it is a very disease of nature to be otherwise disposed. Therefore primitive nature had such a holy inclination. 5. The contrary opinion tendeth to infidelity, and to brutify human nature. For if no man can believe that he must be holy and live to God, and enjoy him hereafter in heaven, but he that also believeth that primitive nature was never disposed or qualified for such a life; and that God must first make a man another creature in specie, of another nature (and consequently not a man), this is not only so improbable, but so contrary to scripture and reason, that few considerate persons would believe it: as if we .must believe that God would turn brutes into men. God healeth, elevateth, and perfecteth nature, but doth not specifically change it, at least in this life. Object. But let it be granted that he giveth not man specifically another nature, yet he may 140 Walking with God. give him such higher gifts, as may be like another nature to him so far. jinsio. No doubt he may and doth give him such gifts as actuate and perfect nature: but some disposition to our ultimate end is essential to our nature ; and therefore to assign man another ultimate end, and to give a disposition to it, of which he had no seed, or part, or principle before, is to make him another crea- ture. I confess that in lapsed man, the holy disposition is so far dead, as that the change maketh a man a new creature in a moral sense (as he is a new man that changeth his mind and manners) : but still nature hath its aptitude as rational to be employed for its maker; so that he is not a new creature in a natural sense. An actual or habitual willingness to this holy employment, a promptitude to it, and a due understanding of it, is the new creature morally so called which is given in our sanctification: but the natural aptitude that is in our faculties as rational, to this holy life, is essential to us as men, or as rational; even to have the poteti' tiam naturalem which must yet have further help or moral life to actuate it. - And Adam had both these: the one he retained, or else he had not ' continued a man; the other he lost, or else he ^ad not had need of renovation. 6. If Adam's nature had not been disposed to God as to his end and sovereign, then the law of nature (to adhere to God, and obey and Walking with God. 141 serve him) was not written in his heart : and then it would not have been his duty to adhere to God, and to obey and serve him ; which is so false, that even in lapsed unrenewed nature, there is left so much aptitude hereto, as will prove him to be still under the obligations of this law of nature, even actually to adhere to God, and to obey him, which a dead man, a mad man, or an infant is not (immediately.) By all this you see, that though the blindness and disease of reason is contrary to faith and holiness, yet reason itself is so much for it, as that faith itself is but the act of elevated well informed reason ; and supernatural revelation is but the means to inform our reason, about things which have not a natural evidence, discernible by us. And sanctification (actively taken) is but the healing of our reason and rational appe- tite : and holiness is but the health or soundness of them. The error of reason must be renounced by believers ; but not the use of reason : the sufficiency of reason and natural light without supernatural light and help, we must all deny : but to set reason as reason in opposition to faith or holiness, or divine revelation, is as gross a piece of foolery, as to set the visive faculty iii opposition to the light of the sun, or to its objects. It is the unreasonableness of sinners that is to be cured by illuminating grace. They are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge. Their reason is wounded, depraved 142 Walking with God, and corrupted about the matters of God : they have reason to serve the flesh, but not to master it. God doth renew men by giving them wis- dom, and bringing them to a sound mind. As logic helpeth reason in discourse and arguing, so theology informeth reason about the matters of God and our salvation ; and the Spirit of God doth make his doctrine and revelation effectual. Make nature sound, and reason clear, and then we will consent that all men be persuaded to live according to their nature and their reason. But if a bedlam will rave and tear himself and others, and say, this is according to my nature or my reason ; it is fitter that chains and whips do cure that nature and reason, than that he be allowed to live according to his madness. If a drunkard or whoremonger will say, my nature and reason incline me to please my appetite and lust, it is fit that the swinish nature be cor- rected, and the beast which rideth and ruleth the man, be taken down; and when indeed his nature is the nature of a man, and fitted to the use and ends that it was made for, then let him live according to it and spare not. If a malicious man will abuse or kill his neighbours, and say, this is according to my nature, let that nature be used as the nature of wolves and foxes, and other noxious creatures are. But let human nature be cured of its blindness, carnality and corruption, and then it will need no external testimony to convince it, that no employment is Walking with God. 143 so natural and suitable to man, as to walk with God, in love and confidence, and reverent wor- ship, and cheerful obedience to his will. A worldly fleshly sensual life, Avill then appear to be below the rational nature of a man, as it is below us to go to grass with horses, or to live as mere companions of brutes. It will then appear to be as natural for us to love and live to our Creator and Redeemer, and to walk with God, as for a child to love his parents, and to live with them and serve them. When I say that this is natural, I mean not that it is neces- sary by natural necessity, or that grace doth operate per modum natures, as the irrational motion is so called. There is a brutish or manimate nature, and there is a rational volun- tary nature : grace worketh not according to the way of inanimate or brutish nature, but accord- ing to the way of rational nature, in free agents. I may well say that whatever is rational, is natural to a rational creature as such, so far as he discerneth it. Yea, and habits, though they effect not necessarily, but freely in a rational nature, yet they incline necessarily, and per modum naturae. They contain in their being a natural aptitude and propensity to action. Object. But thus you confound nature and grace, natural and supernatural operations, while you make grace natural. Amiv. No such matter : though walking with God be called natural, as it is most agreeable 144 Walking with God. to nature so far as it is sound, and is the felicity and meetest employment of the rational nature as such; yet 1. Diseased nature doth abhor it, as a diseased stomach the pleasantest and most wholesome food, (as I said before.) 2. And this disease of nature cannot be cured without divine supernatural grace : so that as to the efficient cause, our holiness is supernatural. But it is unsound doctrine of those that affirm that Adam in his pure natural state of inno- cency, had no natural holiness, or aptitude and promptitude to walk with God in order to ever- lasting happiness, but say that all this was either wanting to him, and was a state speci- fically distinct, which he fell short of by his sin, or that it was given him by superadded grace, and was not in his entire nature. And yet we deny not but as to degrees, Adam's nature was to grow up to more per- fection ; and that his natural holiness contained not a sufficient immediate aptitude and prompti- tude to every duty which might afterward be required of him; but this was to be obtained in the exercise of that holiness which he had. Even as a vine or other fruit tree, though it be natural to it to bear its proper fruit, yet hath it not an immediate sufficient aptitude hereto, whilst it is but appearing out of the seed, before it be grown up to just maturity: or as it is natural to a man to discourse and reason ; but yet his nature in infancy, or untaught and Walking wilh God. 145 unexercised, hath not a sufficient immediate aptitude and promptitude hereunto : or as grace inclineth a renewed soul to every holy truth and duty ; and yet such a soul in its infancy of grace, hath not a sufficient immediate apti- tude or promptitude to the receiving of every holy truth, or the doing of every holy duty, but must grow up to it by degrees. But the addition of these degrees, is no specifical altera- tion of the nature of man, or of that grace which was before received. Having been so long upon this first con- sideration (that walking with God is most agree- able to human nature), I shall be briefer in the rest that follow. II. To walk with God and live to him, is incomparably the highest and noblest life. To converse with men only, is to converse with worms; whether they be princes or poor men, they differ but as the bigger vermin from the lesser : if they be wise and good, their converse may be profitable and delightful, because they have a beam of excellency from the face of God; (and O how unspeakable is the distance between his wisdom and goodness, and theirs !) but if they be foolish, ungodly and dishonest, how loathsome is their conversation ! What stinking breath is in their profane and filthy language ! in their lies and slanders of the just ! in their sottish jeers and scorns of those that walk with God ! which expose at once their (n 146 Walking with God. folly and misery to the pity of all that are truly understanding. When they are gravely speaking evil of the things which they under- stand not, or with a fleering confidence deriding merrily the holy commands and ways of God, they are much more lamentably expressing their infatuation, than any that are kept in chains in bedlam: though indeed with the most they scape the reputation which they deserve, because they are attended with persons of their own proportion of wisdom, that always reverence a silken coat, and judge them wise that wear gold lace and have the greatest satisfaction of their wills and lusts, and are able to do most mischief in the world : and because good men have learnt to honor the worst of their superiors, and not to call them as they are. But God is bold to call them as they are, and give them in his word such names and characters by which they might come to know themselves. And is it not a higher, nobler life to walk with God, than to converse in bedlam, or with intoxicated sen- sualists, that live in a constant deliration ? Yea, worse than so. Ungodly men are chil- dren of the devil, so called by Jesus Christ himself, John viii. 44, because they have much of the nature of the devil, and the lusts of their father they will do ; yea they are taken captive by him at his will. 2 Tim. ii. 26. They are the servants of sin, and do the drudgery that so vile a master sets them on. John viii. 34. Walking with God. ' 147 Certainly as the spirits of the just are so like to angels, that Christ saith, we shall be as they and equal to them ; so the wicked are nearer kin to devils than they themselves will easily believe. They are as like him as children to their father. He is a liar, and so are they. He is a hater of God, and godliness, and godly men ; and so are they. He is a murderer, and would fain devour the holy seed ; and such are they. He envieth the progress of the gospel, and the prosperity of the church, and the increase of holiness; and so do they. He hath a special malice against the most powerful and successful preachers of the word of God, and against the most zealous and eminent saints ; and so have they. He cares not by what lies and fictions he disgraceth them, nor how cruelly he useth them; no more do they (or some of them at least). He cherisheth licentiousness, sensuality, and impiety; and so do they. If they do seem better in their adver- sity and restraint, yet try them but with pros- perity, and power, and you shall see quickly how like they are to devils. And shall we delight more to converse with brutes and incarnate devils, than with God ? Is it not a more high and excellent conversation to walk with God, and live to him, than to be companions of such degenerate men, that have almost forfeited the reputation of humanity? Alas! they are com- panions so deluded and ignorant, and yet so wilful ; so miserable, and yet so confident and 148 Walking with God. secure, that they are, to a believing eye, the most lamentable sight that the whole world can shew us out of hell. And how sad a life must it then needs be, to converse with such, were it not for the hope that we have of furthering their * recovery and salvation! But to walk with God is a word so high, that I should have feared the guilt of arrogance in using it, if I had not found it in the holy scrip- tures. It is a word that importeth so high and holy a frame of soul, and expresseth such high and holy actions, that the naming of it striketh my heart with reverences, as if I had heard the voice to Moses, " Put off thy shoes from off tiiy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground." Exod. iii. 5. Methinks he that shall say to me, Come see a man that walks with God, doth call me to see one that is next unto an angel, or glorified soul! It is a far more reverend object in mine eye, than ten thousand lords or princes, considered only in their fleshly glory. It is a wiser action for people to run and crowd together to see a man that walks with God, than to see the pompous train of princes, their entertainments, or their triumphs. O happy man, that walks with God, though neglected and contemned by all about him ! What blessed sights doth he daily see I What ravishing tidings, what pleasing melody doth he daily hear, imless it be in his swoons or sickness ! What delectable food doth he Walking with God. 149 daily taste! He seeth by faith the God, the glory, which the blessed spirits see at hand by nearest intuition: he seeth that in a glass and darkly, which they behold with open face : he seeth the glorious majesty of his Creator, the eternal king, the cause of causes, the com- poser, upholder, preserver, and governor of all the worlds: he beholdeth the wonderful methods of his providence: and what he cannot reach to see, he admireth, and waiteth for the time when that also shall be open to his view ! He seeth by faith the world of spirits, the hosts that attend the throne of God; their perfect righte- ousness, their full devotedness to God, their ardent love, their flaming zeal, their ready and cheerful obedience, their dignity and shining- glory, in which the lowest of them exceedeth that which the disciples saw on Moses and Elias when they appeared on the holy mount, and talked with Christ. They hear by faith the heavenly concert, the high and harmonious songs of praise, the joyful triumphs of crowned saints, the sweet commemorations of the thing's that were done and suffered on earth, with the praises of him that redeemed them by his blood, and made them kings and priests to God. Herein he hath sometime a sweet foretaste of the ever- lasting pleasures, which though it be but little, as Jonathan's honey on the end of his rod, or as the clusters of grapes which were brought from Canaan into the wilderness, yet are they more VOL. II. I 150 Walking with God. excellent than all the delights of sinners. And in the beholding of this celestial glory, some beams do penetrate his breast, and so irradiate his longing soul, that he is changed thereby into the same image from glory to glory ; the spirit of glory and of God doth rest upon him; and O what an excellent holy frame doth this con- verse with God possess his soul of I How reverently doth he think of him! What life is there in every name and attribute of God which he heareth or thinketh on ! The mention of his^ power, his wisdom, his goodness, his love, his holiness, his truth — how powerful and how plea- sant are they to him .* when to those that know him but by the hearing of the ear, all these are but like common names and notions : and even to the weaker sort of christians, whose walking with God is more uneven and low, interrupted by their sins, and doubts, and fears, this life and glory of a christian course is less perceived. And the sweet appropriating and applying works of faith, by which the soul can own his God, and finds itself owned by him, are exercised most easily and happily in these near approaches unto God. Our doubts are cherished by our darkness, and that is much caused by our distance :^ the nearer the soul doth approach to God, the more distinctly it heareth the voice of mercy, the sweet recon- ciling invitations of love; and the more clearly it discerneth that ooodness and amiableness ixk Walking with God. 151 Ood wliich maketh it easier to us to believe that he loveth us, or is ready to embrace us ; and banisheth all those false and horrid apprehen- sions of him, which before were our discourage- ment, and made him seem to us more terrible than amiable. As the ministers and faithful servants of Christ are ordinarily so misrepre- sented by the malignant devil, to those that know them not, that they are ready to think them some silly fools, or falsehearted hypocrites, and to shun them as strange undesirable per- sons; but when they come to a thorough acquaintance with them by a nearer and familiar converse, they see how much they were mis- taken, and wronged by their prejudice and belief of slanderers' misreports: even so a weak believer that is under troubles, in the apprehen- sion of his sin and danger, is apt to hearken to the enemy of God, that would shew him nothing but his wrath, and represent God as an enemy to him : and in this case it is exceeding hard for a poor sinner to believe that God is reconciled to bim, or loveth him, or intends him good ; but he 5s ready to dread and shun him as an enemy, or as he would fly from a wild beast or murderer, or from fire or water that would destroy him : and all these injurious thoughts of God are cherished by strangeness and disacquaintance. But as the soul doth fall into an understanding and serious converse with God, and having been often with him doth find him more merciful than he was i2 152 Walkins, with Geyd, * by Satan represented to him, his experience reconcileth his mind to God, and maketh it much easier to him to believe that God is recon- ciled unto him, when he hath found much better entertainment with God than he expected, and hath observed his benignity, and the treasures of his bounty laid up in Christ, and by him dis- tributed to believers, and hath foimd him ready to hear and help, and found him the only full and suitable felicitating good, this banisheth his former horrid thoughts, and maketh him ashamed that ever he should think so suspiciously, inju- riously, and dishonorably of his dearest God and Father. Yet I must confess that there are many upright troubled souls, that are much in reading, prayer, and meditation, that still find it hard to be per- suaded of the love of God, and that have much more disquietment and fear since they set them- selves to think of God than they had before: but yet, for all this, we may well conclude- that to walk with God is the way to consolation,, and tendeth to acquaint us with his love. As for those troubled souls whose experience is objected against this, some of them are such as are yet but in their return to God, from a life of former sin and misery, and are yet but like the needle in the compass that is shaken, in a trem- bling motion towards their rest, and not in any settled apprehensions of it. Some of them by the straining of their imagination too high, and Wulkive. with God. 153 'to putting themselves upon more than their heads can bear, and by the violence of fears or other passions, do make themselves incapable of those sweet consolations which else they might find in their converse with God; as a lute when the strings are broken with straining, is incapable of making any melody: all of them have false apprehensions of God, and therefore trouble thejRselves by their own mistakes. And if some perplex themselves by their error, doth it follow that therefore the truth is not comfortable? Is not a father's presence consolatory because some children are afraid of their fathers, that l^now them not because of some disguise? And some of God's children walk so unevenly and carelessly before him, that their sins provoke him to hide his face, and to seem to reject them and disown them, and so to trouble them that he may bring them home : but shall the com- forts of our father's love and family be judged of by the fears or smart of those whom he i-s scourging for their disobedience, or their trial? Seek God with understanding, as knowing his essential properties, and what he will be to thern that sincerely and diligently seek him, and then you will quickly have experieiice that nothing so much tendeth to quiet and settle a doubting troubled unstable soul, as faithfully to walk witli God. But the soul that estrangeth itself from God, piiay indeed for a time have the quietness ©f i3 154 Walking with God. security; but (so far) it will be strange to tli-e assurance of his love, and to true consolation. Expect not that God should follow with his comforts in your sinfulness and negligence, and cast them into your hearts whilst you neither seek nor mind them, or that he give you the fruit of his ways in your own ways. Will he be your joy when you forget him ? will he delight your souls with his goodness and amiableness, while you are taken up with other matters, and think not of him ? can you expect to find the comforts of his family, among his enemies, out of doors? The experience of all the world can tell you, that prodigals while they are straggling from their Father's house, do never taste the comfort of his embraces; the strangers meddle not with his children's joys: they grow not in the way of ambition, covetousness, vainglory, or sensuality ; but in the way of holy obedience, and of believing contemplations of the divine everlasting objects of delight. For, lo, they that are far from him shall perish : he destroyeth them that go a whoring fro^ii him: but it is good for us to draw nigh to God. Ps. Ixxiii, 27, 28. III. Walking with God, is the only course that can prove and make men truly wise. It proves them wise that make so wise and good a choice, and are disposed and skilled in any measure for so high a work. Practical wisdom .is the solid/ useful, profitable vvisdom : and Walking with God. 155 practical wisdom is seen in our choice of good, and refusal of evil, as its most immediate and excellent effect. And no choosing or refusing doth shew the wisdom or folly of man so much as that which is about the greatest matters, and which everlasting life or death depends on. He is not thought so wise among men that can write a volume about the orthography or ety- mology of a word, or that can guess what wood the Trojan horse was made of, or that can make a chain to tie a flea in, as he that can bring home gold and pearls, or he that can obtain and manage governments, or he that can cure mor- tal maladies : for as in lading we difference bulk and value, and take not that for the best com- modity which is of greatest quantity or weight, but that which is most precious and of greatest use : so there is a bulky knowledge, extended far, to a multitude of words and things, which are all of no great use or value ; and therefore the knowledge of them is such as they : and there is a precious sort of knowledge, which fixeth upon the most precious things ; which being of greatest use and value, do accordingly prove the knowledge such. Nothing will prove a man simply and properly wise, but that which will prove or make him happy. He is wise in- deed, that is wise to his own and others' good : and that is indeed his good, which saveth his soul, and maketh him for ever blessed. Though ^e yiay admire the cunning of those that can 156 Walkins: with God. ' make the most curious engines, or by deceiving others advance themselves, or that can subtly dispute the most curious niceties, or criticise upon the words of several languages ; yet I will never call them wise, that are all that while the devil's slaves, the enemies of God, the refusers of grace, and are making haste to endless misery : and I think there is not one of those in hell who were once the subtle men on earth, that now take themselves to have been truly wise, or glory much in the remembrance of such wisdom. And as this choice doth prove men wise, so the practice of this holy walking with God doth make them much wiser than they were. As there must be some work of the Spirit to draw men to believe in Christ, and yet the Spirit is promised and given (in a special sort or mea- sure) to them that do believe; so must there be some special wisdom to make men choose to walk with God ; but much more is given to them in this holy course. As Solomon was wiser than most of the world, before he asked, wisdom of God, or else he would not have made so wise a choice, and preferred wisdom before the riches and honors of the world ; and yet it was a more notable degree of wisdom that v^ as afterwards given h"im in answer to his prayer : so it is in this case. There are many undeniable evidences to prove, that walking with God doth do more to make tValkins: with God. 157 men truly wise, than all other learning or policy in the world. 1. He that walketh with God, doth begin aright, and settle upon a sure foundation ; (and we use to say, that a work is half finished that is well begun.) He hath engaged himself to the best and wisest teacher; he is a disciple to him that knoweth all things ; he hath taken in infallible principles, and taken them in their proper place and order; he hath learnt those truths which will eveiy one become a teacher to him, and help him to that which is yet unlearnt : whereas many that thought they were doctors in Israel, if ever they will be wise and happy, must become fools, (that is, such as they have esteemed fools) if ever they will be wise, 1 Cor. iii. 18, and must be called back with Nicodemus to learn Christ's cross, and to be taught that that which is born of the flesh is but flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit; and that therefore they must be born . again (not only of water, but also of the Spirit), if ever they will enter into the kingdom of hea- ven. John iii. 3,5, 6. O miserable beginning! and miserable progress ! when men that never soundly learnt the mysteries of regeneration, and faith, and love, and self-denial^ and mor- tification, do proceed to study names and words, and to turn over a multitude of books, to fill their brains with airy notions, and their common- places with such sayings as may be provision 158 Walkino; with God. and furniture for their pride and ostentatio'-l, and ornament to their style and language ; and know not yet what they must do to be saved, and indeed know nothing as they ought to know! 1 Cor. viii. 2. As every science hath its principles, which are supposed in all the consequential varieties ; so hath religion as doctrinal and practical, those truths which must be first received before any other can be received as it ought; and those things which must be first done, before any other can be done so as to attain their ends. And these truths and duties are principally about God himself, and are known and done effectually by those, and only those, that walk with God, or are devoted to him. It is a lamentable thing to see men immersed in serious studies, even till they grow aged, and to hear them seriously disputing and discoursing about the contro- versies or difficulties in theology, or inferior sciences, before ever they had any saving know- ledge of God, or of the work of the Holy Ghost in the converting and sanctifying of the soul, or how to escape everlasting misery ! 2. He that walketh with God, hath fixed upon a right end, and is renewing his estimation and intention of it, and daily prosecuting it : and this is the first and greatest part of practical wisdom. When a man once knoweth his end aright, he may the better judge of the aptitude and seasonableness of all the means. When Walking with God. 1^9 we know once that heaven containeth the only felicity of man, it will direct us to heavenly cogitations, and to such spiritual means as are fitted to that end : if we have the rioht mark in our eye, we are liker to level at it than if we mistake our mark. He is the wise man, and only he, that hath steadily fixed his eye upon that blessedness which he was created and redeemed for, and maketh straight towards it, and bends the powers of soul and body, by faithful constant diligence to obtain it. He that hath rightly and resolvedly determined of his end, hath virtually resolved a thousand contro- versies that others are unsatisfied and erroneous in. He that is resolved, that his end is to please and glorify God, and to enjoy him for ever, is easily resolved whether a holy life, or a sensual and worldly, be the way : whether the way be to be godly, or to make a mock at godli- ness : whether covetousness and riches, ambition and preferment, voluptuousness and fleshly plea- sures, be the means to attain his end: whether it will be attained rather by the studying of the word of God, and meditating on it day and night, and by holy conference, and fervent prayer, and an obedient life ; or by negligence, or worldliness, or drunkenness, or gluttony, or cards and dice, or beastly filthiness, or injustice and deceit. Know once but whither it is that we are going, and it is easy to know whether the saint, or the swine, or the swaggerer be in the 160 > Walking luith God. way. But a man that doth mistake his end, is out of his way at the first step ; and the further he goes, the further he is from true felicity; and the more he erreth, and the further he hath to go back again, if ever he return. Every thing that a man doth in the world, which is not for the right end, (the heavenly felicity) is an act of foolishness and error, how splendid soever the matter or the name may make it appear to ignorant men. Every word that an ungodly person speaketh being not for a right end, is in him but sin and folly, however materially it may be an excellent and useful truth. While a mise- rable soul hath his back upon God, and his face upon the world, every step he goeth is an act of folly, as tending unto his further misery. It can be no act of wisdom, which tendeth to a man's damnation. When such a wretch begins to enquire and bethink him where he is, and whither he is going, and ^whither he should go, and to think of turning back to God, then and never till then he is beginning to come to him- self, and to be wise. Luke xv. 17. Till God and glory be the end that he aimeth at, and seriously bends his study, heart and hfe to seek, though a man were searching into the mysteries of nature, though he were studying or discussing the notions of theology, though he were admired for his learning and wisdom by the world, and cried up as the oracle of the earth, he is all the while but playing the fool, and going a cleanlier way to Walking with God. 161 hell than the grosser sinners of the world ! For is he wise, that knoweth not whether heaven or earth be better? whether God or his flesh should be obeyed? whether everlasting joys, or the transitory pleasures of sin, should be preferred ? or that seemeth to be convinced of the truth in these and such like cases, and yet hath not the wit to make his choice, and bend his life accord- ing to his conviction ? He cannot be wise that practically mistakes his end. 3. He that walketh with God, doth know those things, with a deep, effectual, heart-changing knowledge, which other men know but super- ficially, by the halves, and as in a dream. And true wisdom consisteth in the intensiveness of the knowledge subjectively, as much as in the extensiveness of it objectively. To see a few things in a narrow room perspicuously and clearly, doth shew a better eye-sight, than in the open air to see many things obscurely so as scarce to discern any of them aright; (like him that saw men walk like trees). The clearness and depth of knowledge, which makes it effec- tual to its proper use, is the greatness and excellency of it: therefore it is that unlearned men that love and fear the Lord, may well be said to be incomparably more wise and knowing men, than the most learned that are ungodly. As he hath more riches that hath a little gojd or jeviels, than he that hath many load of stones : so he that hath a deep effectual knowledge of VOL. n. K 162 Walkinrr with God. to God the Father, and the Redeemer, and of the life to come, is wiser and more knowing than he that hath only a notional knowledge of the same things, and of a thousand more. A wicked man hath so much knowledge as teacheth him to speak the same words of God, and Christ, and heaven, which a true believer speaks; but not so much as to work in him the same affec- tions and choice, nor so much as to cause him to do the same work. As it is a far more excel- lent kind of knowledge which a man hath of any country by travel and habitation there, tliau that which cometh but by reading or report; or which a man hath of meat, of fruits, of wine, by eating and drinking, than that which another hath by hearsay ; so is the inward heart-affect- ing knowledge of a true believer more excellent than the flashy notions of the ungodly. Truth, simply as truth, is not the highest and most excellent object of the mind : but good, as good, must be apprehended by the understanding, and commended to the will, which entertaineth it with complacency, adhereth to it with choice and resolution, prosecuteth it with desire and endeavour, and enjoyeth it with delight: and though it be the understanding which appre- hendeth it, yet it is the heart or will that relisheth it, and tasteth the greatest sweetness in it, working upon it with some mixture of internal sense (which hath made some ascribe a know- ledge of good as such unto the will) ; and it is. Walking with God. 163 tlie will's intention that causeth the understand- ing to be denominated practical : and therefore 1 may well say that it is wisdom indeed when it reacheth to the heart. No man.knoweth the truth of God so well as he that most firmly believeth him; and no man knoweth the good- ness of God so well as he that loveth him most : no man knoweth his power and mercy so well as he that doth most confidently trust him; and no man knoweth his justice and dreadfulness so well as he that feareth him: no man knoweth or belie veth the glory of heaven so well as he that most esteemeth, desireth, and seeketh it, and hath the most heavenly heart and conversation : no man believeth in Jesus Christ so well as he that giveth up himself unto him, with the greatest love and thankfulness, and trust and obedience. As James saith, — Shew me thy faith by thy works, so say I, Let me know the measure and value of my knowledge by my heart and life. That is wisdom indeed which conformeth a man to God, and saveth his soul: this only will l)e owned as wisdom to eternity, when dreaming notions will prove but folly. 4. He that walketh with God hath an infal- lible rule, and taketh the right course to have the best acquaintance with it, and skill to use it. The doctrine that informeth him is divine : it is from heaven, and not of men : and therefore if God be wiser than man, he is able to make his disciples wisest; and his teaching will k2 164 V/alkuig with God. more certainly and powerfully illuminate. Many among men have pretended to infallibility, that never could justify their pretensions, but have confuted them by their own mistakes and crimes : but none can deny the infallibility of God. He never yet was deceived, or did de- ceive : he erreth not, nor teacheth error. Nico- demus knew Christ was to be believed, when he knew that he was a teacher come from God. John iii. 2. Christ knew that the Jews them- s Dives durst not deny the truths of John's doc- trine, if he could but convince them that it was " from heaven, and not of men." It is impossible for God to lie: it is the devil that was a liar from the beginning, and is yet the father of lies : no wonder if they believe lies that follow such a teacher. And those that follow the flesh and the world, do follow the devil : they that will believe what their fleshly interest and lusts per- suade them to believe, do believe what the devil persuadeth them to believe ; for he persuadeth them by these, and for these. What marvel then if there be found men in the world, that can believe that holiness is hypocrisy, or a needless thing ; that those are the worst men that are most careful to please God; that the world is more worthy of their care and labor, than their salvation is ; that the pleasures of sin for a season are more desirable, than the ever- lasting happiness of the saints; that cards and dice, and mirth and lust, and wealth and honor^ Walkhw with God. 165 o are matters more delectable, than prayer, aiid meditating on the word of God, and loving him, and obeying him, and waiting in the hopes of life eternal ; that gluttons and drunkards, and whoremongers, and covetous persons, may enter into the kingdom of God, &c. What wonder if a thousand such damnable lies, are believed by the disciples of the father of lies! what wonder if there are so many saint-haters, and God- haters in the world, as to fill the earth with per- secutions and cruelties, or make a scorn of that which God most highly valueth ; and all this under pretences of order, or unity, or justice, or something that is good, and therefore fit to pal- liate their sin! Is there any thing so false, or foul, or wicked, that Satan will not teach his followers? Is he grown modest, or moderate, or holy, or just ? Is he reconciled to Christ, to scripture, to godliness, or to the godly? Or is liis kingdom of darkness at an end ? and hath he lost the earth ? Or are men therefore none of the servants of the devil, because they were baptised (as Simon Magus was) and call and think themselves the servants of Christ ? As if still it were not the art by which he gets and keeps disciples, to suffer them to wear the livery of Christ, and to use his name, that he may thus keep possession of them in peace, who else would be frighted from him, and fly to Christ I He will give them leave to study arts and sci- ences, and to understand things excellent of 166 Walking tvith God. inferior use, so be it they will be deceived by hira in the matters of God and their salvation: he can allow them to be learned lawyers, excel- lent physicians, philosophers, politicians, to be skilful artists, so be it they will follow him in sin to their damnation, and will overlook the truth that should set them free: John viii. 32. yea, he will permit them (when there is no remedy) to study the holy scriptures, if he may but be the expounder and applier of it; yea, he will permit them notionally to understand it, if they will not learn by it to be converted, to be lioly, and to be saved : he can suffer them to be eminent divines, so they will not be serious christians. Thus is the world by the grand deceiver hurried in darkness to perdition, being taken captive by him at his will. 2 Tim. ii. 26. But the sanctified are all illuminated by the Holy Ghost, by whom their eyes are so effectually opened, that they are turned from darkness unto light, and from the power of Satan unto God. Acts xxvi. 18. The Father of glory hath given them the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, in the knowledge of Christ, that the eyes of their understanding being enlightened, they may know what is the hope of his calling, and what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints. Eph. i. 17, 18. Certainly that illumi- nation of the Holy Ghost which is so often mentioned in scripture as given to all true believers, is not a fancy, nor an insignificant Walkincr with God. 167 «ame : and if it signify any thing, it signifieth somewhat that is much above the teaching of man. All that walk with God are taught of God ! And can man teach like God ? God hath access unto the heart, and there he doth tran- scribe his laws, and put them into our inward parts : and they that v/alk with him have not only his word to read, but his Spirit to help them to understand it; and being with him in his family (yea, he dwelleth in them and they in him) he is ready at hand to resolve their doubts ! When he gave them his fear, he gave them the beofinnino- of wisdom, Ps. cxi. 10. He causeth them to incline their ear to wisdom, Prov. ii. 2j and to apply their hearts unto it, Ps. xc. 12, and maketh them to know it in the hidden parts. Ps. li. 6. It is his law that they have determined to make their rule: they live as under his autho- rity : they are more observant of his will and government, than of any laws or government of man: and as they obey man in and for the Lord, so they do it in subordination to him, and therefore not against him and his laws, which being the standard of justice, and the rule of rulers, and of subjects both, they are in the safest way of unerring wisdom, who walk with God according to that rule, and refuse to turn aside, though commanded by man, or enticed by Satan, the world, or flesh. 5. He that walketh with God is the most 168 TValking with God. considerate person, and therefore hath great advantage to be wise : the frequent and serious thoughts of God, do awaken all the powers of the soul, so that drowsiness doth not hinder the understanding, and so occasion its deceit. There is scarce a more common and powerful cause of men's folly and delusion and perdition, in all the world, than that sleepiness and stu- pfdity which hindereth reason from the vigorous performance of its office. In this senseless case, though a man both know and consider of the same truths, which in their nature are most powerful to cleanse and govern and save bis soul, yet sluggishness doth enervate them ; he knoweth them as if he knew them not, and considereth them as if he never thought of them ; they work little more upon him, than if he believed them not, or had never heard of them ; even as a dream of the greatest matters, moveth not the sleeper from his pillow. In this senseless state, the devil can do almost any thing with a sinner; he can make him sin against his knowledge ; and when conscience hath frighted him into some kind of penitence, and made him cry out, I have sinned and done foolishly, and caused him to promise to do so no more; yet doth the devil prevail with him to go on, and to break his promises, as if he had' never been convinced of his sins, or con fessed them, or seen any reason or necessity to amend; he doth but imprison the truth in [Walking with God, 169 unrighteousness, and bury it in a senseless heart : whereas if you could but awaken all the powers of his soul, to give this same truth its due entertainment, and take it deeper into his heart, it would make him even scorn the baits of sin, and see that the ungodly are beside themselves, and make him presently resolve and, set upon a holy life. And hence it is that sick- ness which causeth men to receive the sentence of death, doth usually make men bewail their former sinful lives, and marvel that they could be before so sottish as to resist such known and weighty truths : and it makes them purpose and prornise reformation, and wish themselves in the case of those that they were wont before to deride and scorn ; because now the truth is deeplier received and digested by their awakened souls, and appeareth in its proper evidence and strength. There is no man but must acknow- ledge, that the same truth doth at one time command his soul, which at another time seems of little force : it is a wonder to observe how differently the same consideration worketh with a man when he is awakened, and when he is in a secure stupid case ! Now this is his advantage that walks with God. — He is much more frequently than others awakened to a serious apprehension of the things which he understandeth : the thoughts of the presence of the most holy God, will not puffer him to be as secure and senseless as others k3 170 Walking with God. are, or as he is himself when he turneth aside from this heavenly conversation. He hath in God such exceeding transcendent excellencies, such greatness, such goodness continually to behold, that it keepeth his soul in a much more serious lively state, than any other means could keep it in : so that whenever any truth or duty is presented to him, all his faculties are awake and ready to observe it and improve it. A ser- mon, or a good book, or godly conference, or a merey, when a man hath been with God in prayer or contemplation, will relish better with him, and sink much deeper, than at another time. Nay, one serious thought of God himself will do more to make a man truly and solidly wise' than all the reading and learning in the world, which shuts him out. 6. Walking with God doth fix the mind, and' keep it from diversions and vagaries, and con- sequently much helpeth to make men wise. A strao-gling mind is empty and unfurnished. He that hath no dwelling, for the most part hath no wealth. Wandering is the beggar's life. Men do but bewilder and lose themselves, and not grow wise, whose thoughts are ranging in the- corners of the earth, and are like masterless dogs, that run up and down according to their fancy, and may go any whither, but have busi- ness nowhere. The creature will not fix the soul; but God is the centre of all our cogita- tions : in him only they may unite, and fix, and Walking zcith God. 171 rest. He is the only loadstone that can effectu- ally attract and hold it steadfast to himself: therefore he that walks with God is the most constant and unmoveable of men. Let pros-- perity or adversity come; let the world be turned upside down^ and the mountains be hurled into the sea, yet he changeth not. Let inen allure or threat, let them scorn or rage, let laws, and customs, and governments, and inte- rest change, he is still the same : for he knoweth that God is still the same, and that his word changeth not. Let that be death one year which was the w^ay to reputation another, and let the giddy world turn about as the seasons of the year, this changeth not his mind and life (though' in things lawful he is of a yielding temper) : for he knoweth that the interest of his soul doth not change with the humors or interests of men. He still feareth sinning, for he knoweth that judgment is still drawing on, in all changes and seasons whatsoever. He is still set upon the pleasing of the most holy God, whoever be' uppermost among men ; as knowing that the God whom he serveth is able to deliver him from man, but man is not able to deliver hini from God. He still goeth on in the holy path, as knowing that heaven is as sure and as desira- ble as ever it was. Ps. cxii. 6 — 8. " Surelv he shall not be moved for ever: the righteous shall be in everlasting remembrance. He shall not be afraid of evil tidings : his heart is fixed 172 Walking with God. trusting in the Lord. His heart is established, he shall not be afraid." 7. He that walketh with God hath the great master-truths upon his heart, which are the standard of the rest, and the stock, as it were, out of which they spring. The great truths about God, and grace, and glory, have a greater power than many hundred truths of an inferior nature. And moreover, such a one is sure that lie shall be wise in the greatest and most neces- sary points. He is guilty of no ignorance or error that shall keep him out of heaven, or hin- der his acceptance with his God. And if he be wise enough to please God and to be saved, he is wise indeed : (as before was hinted.) 8. Walking with God doth take off the visor of deluding things, and keepeth us out of the reach and power of those objects and arguments which are the instruments of deceit. When a man hath been believingly and seriously with God, how easily can he see through the sophis- try of the tempting world! How easily can he practically confute the reasonings of the flesh ; and discern the dotage of the seeming subtleties of wicked men, that will needs think they have reason for that which is displeasing to their maker, and tends to the damning of their souls ! So far as a man is conversant with God, so far he is sensible, that all things are nothing, which can be offered as a price to hire him to sin : and that the name of preferment, and honor an4 Walking with God. 173 wealth, or of disgrace and imprisonment and death, are words almost of no signification, as to the tempter's ends, to draw the soul from God and duty. It is men that know not God, and know not what it is to walk with him, that think these words so big and powerful, to whom wealth and honor signify more than God and heeven ; and poverty, disgrace and death, do signify more than God's displeasure and ever- lasting punishment in hell. As it is easy to cheat a man that is far I'rom the light, so is it easy to . deceive tKe learnedst man that is far from God. 9. Walking with God, doth greatly help us against the deceitfulness and erroneous dispo- sition of our own hearts. The will hath a very great power upon the understanding : and there- fore ungodly fleshly men will very hardly receive any truth which crosseth the carnal interest or disposition ; and will hardly let go any error that feedeth them, because their corrupted wills are a bias to their understandings, and make them desperately partial in all their reading and hearing, and hypocritical in their prayers and enquiries after truth : interest and corruption locketh up their hearts from their own obser- vation. Whereas a man that walketh with God, that is jealous, and holy, and just, and a searcher of the heart, is driven from hypocrisy, and forced to behave himself as in the open light, and to do &J.1 jis in the sight of all the world, as knowing 174 Walking with God. that the sight of God is of far greater concern-' ment and regard. The partiality, corruption and bias of the heart, is detected and shamed by the presence of God : therefore to walk with God is to walk in the light, and as children of the light, and not in darkness. And he that doth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds might be manifest, that they are wrought in God :' when every one that doth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved : and this is their condemnation, that light is come into the world, and m5n love the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds are evil. John iii. 19 — 21. It tendeth therefore exceedingly to make men wise, to walk with God, because it is a walking in the light, and in such a presence as most powerfully prevaileth against that hypocrisy, deceitfulness, and partiality of the heart, which is the common cause of damning error. 10. Lastly, they that walk with God are entitled by many promises, to tlie guidance and direction of his Spirit. And blessed are those that have such a guide : at once a light in the world without them, and a light immediately from God within them : for so far as he is received and worketh in them, he will lead them into truth, and save them from deceit and folly; and having guided them by his counsel, wilj afterward take them unto glory. Ps. Ixxiii. 24. Whereas the ungodly are led by the fleshy and Walking with God. 175 often given up to their own hearts' kists, to walk in their own counsels, Rom. viii. 1 — 13. Ps. Ixxxi. 12, till at last the fools do say in their hearts, there is no God, Ps. xiv. 1. and they become corrupt and abominable, eating up the people of the Lord as bread, and call not on his name, ver. 2. &c. deceiving and being deceived: sensual, having not the Spirit, Jude 19. who shall receive the rev.ard of their unrighteous- ness, as accounting it pleasure to riot in the day time. 2 Pet. ii. 13. IV. Another benefit of walking with God, is, that it maketh men good, as well as wise : it is the most excellent means for the advancement of man's soul to the highest degree of holiness attainable in this life. If conversing with good men doth powerfully tend to make men good ; conversing with God must needs be more effec- tual ; which may appear in these particulars. 1. The apprehensions of the presence and attributes of God, do most effectually check the stirrings of corruption, and rebuke all the vicious inclinations and motions of the soul : even the most secret sin of the heart, is rebuked by his presence, as well as the most open transgression of the life : for the thoughts of the heart are open to his view. All that is done before God, is done as in the open light : nothing of it can be hid : no sin can have the encouragement of secrecy to embolden it : it is all committed in the presence of the universal king and lawgiver 176 Walking with God. of the world, who hath forbidden it : it is done before him that most abhorreth it, and will never be reconciled to it: it is done before him that is the judge of the world, and will shortly pass the sentence on us according to what we have done in the body : it standeth up in his presence who is of infinite majesty and perfection, and there- fore most to be reverenced and honored ; and therefore if the presence of a wise and grave and venerable person will restrain men from sin, the presence of God apprehended seriously, will do it much more: it is comrnitted before him that is our dearest friend, and tender father, and chiefest benefactor; and therefore ingenuity, gratitude ?ind love, will all rise up against it in those that walk with God. There is that in God, before the eyes of those that walk with him, which is most contrary to sin, and most powerful against it, of any thing jn tjie world. Every one will confess that if men's eyes were opened to see the Lord in glory standing over them, it would be the most powerful meaps to restrain them from transgressing : the drunkard would not then venture upon his cups ; the for- nicator would have a cooling for his lusts; the swearer would be afraid to take his maker's name in vain; the profane would scarce presume to scorn or persecute a holy life. And he that walketh with God, though he see him not cor- poreally, yet seeth him by faith, and liveth as ijSi his presence ; and therefore must needs \)§ Walking with God. 177 restrained from sin, as having the means which is next to the sight of God. If pride should begin to stir in one that walks with God, O what a powerful remedy is at hand ! how effectually would the presence of the great and holy God rebuke it, and constrain us to say, as Job, xlii. 5, 6. " I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear ; but now mine eye seeth thee : where- fore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." If worldly love or carnal lust should stir in such a one, how powerfully would the terrors of the Lord repress it, and his majesty rebuke it, and his love and goodness overcome it! If worldly carca or murmuring discontents begin to trouble such a one, how effectually will tiie goodness, the all-sufficiency, and the faith- fulness of God allay them, and quiet and satisfy the soul, and cause it to be offended at its own offence, and to chide itself for its ripenings and distrust! If passion arise and begin to dis- compose us, how powerfully will the presence of God rebuke it! and the reverence of his majesty, and the sense of his authority and pardoning grace will assuage it, and shame us into silent quietness. Who dare let out his passions upon man in the presence of his maker, that apprehendeth his presence? The same I might say of all other sins. 2. The presence and attributes of God appre- hended by those that walk with him, is the potent remedy against temptations. Who will 178 Walking with God. i5 once turn an eye to the gold and glory of the world that is offered him to allure him to sin, if he see God stand by ? Who would be tempted to lust, or any sinful pleasure, if he observe the presence of the Lord? Satan can never come in so ill a time with his temptations, and have so little hope to speed, as when the soul is contemplating the attributes of God, or taken up "in prayer with him, or any way apprehen- sive of his presence. The soul that faithfully walks with God, hath enough at harfd in him to answer all temptations : and the further any man is from God, and the less he knoweth him, the more tempUilioas can do upon him. 3. The presence of God, afFordeth the most powerful motives unto good, to those that walk with him. There is no grace in man, but what is from God, and may find in God its proper object or incentive. As God is God, above the creature transcendently and infinitely in all perfections, so all the motives to goodness which are fetched from him, are transcendently above all that may be fetched from any creature. He that liveth always by the fire or in the sun- shine, is likest to be warm : he that is most with God, will be most like to God in holiness: frequent and serious converse with him, doth most deeply imprint his communicable attributes on the heart, and make there the clearest im- pression of his image. Believers have learned by their own experience, that one hour's serious Walking with God. 179 prayer or meditation, in which they can get nigh to God in the Spirit, doth more advance their grace, than any help that the creature can afford them. 4. Moreover, those that walk with God, have not only a powerful, but an universal incentive for the actuating and increasing of every grace. Knowledge, and faith, and fear, and love, and trust, and hope, and obedience, and zeal, and all have in God their proper o])jects and incentives: one creature may be useful to us in one thing, and another in another thing ; but God is the most effectual mover of all his graces; and that in a holy harmony and order. Indeed he hath no greater motive to draw us to love him, and fear him, and trust him, and obey him, than himself. It is life eternal to know him in his Son, John xvii. 3 ; and that is, not only because it entitleth us to life eternal, but also because it is the beg-innino; and incentive of that life of holiness which will be eternal. 5. Moreover, those that walk with God, have a constant as well as a powerful and universal incentive to exercise and increase their graces. Other helps may be out of the way ; their preachers may be silenced or removed ; their friends may be scattered or taken from them ; their books may be forbidden, or not at hand ; but God is always ready and willing: they have leave at all times to come to him, and be wel- come. Whenever they are willing they may go 180 Walking ivith God. to him by prayer or contemplation, and find all in him which they can desire. If they want not hearts, they shall find no want of any thing in God. At what time soever fear would torment them, they may draw near and put their trust in him. Ps. Ivi. 2—4. xi. 1 . xviii. 2, 30. xxxi. 1, 6. He will be a sure and speedy refuge for them, a very present help in trouble. Ps. xlvi. 1. Ixii. 7, 8. xci. 2, 9. xciv. 22. Whenever coldness or lukewarmness would extinguish the work of grace, they may go to him, and find those streams of flaming love flow from him, those strong attractives, those wonderful mercies, those terrible judgments, of which while they are musing, the fire may again wax hot -within them. Ps. xxxix. iii. 6. Lastly, by way of encouraging reward, God useth to give abundantly of his grace, to those that walk most faithfully with him : he will shew most love to those that most love him ; he will be nearest to them that most de- sirously draw nigh to him ; while he forsaketh those that forsake him, and turneth away from those that turn away from him. 2 Chron. xv. 2. Prov. i. 32. Ezra viii. 22. " The hand of our God is for good upon all them that seek him : but his power and his wrath is against all them that forsake him." Thus it is apparent in all those evidences, that walking with God, is not only a discovery of the goodness that men have, but the only way to Walking with God. 151 increase their grace, and make them better. O what a sweet huraiUty and seriousness, and spi- rituality appeareth in the conference, or conver- sation, or both, of those that newly come from a believing close converse with God ; when they that come from men and books, may have but- a common mind or life : and those that come from the business and pleasure of the world and flesh, and from the company of foolish riotous gallants, may come defiled, as the swine out of the mire ! V. Lastly, to walk with God, is the best pre- paration for times of suffering, and for the day of death. As we must be judged according to what we have done in the body ; so the nearer we find ourselves to judgment, the more we shall be constrained to judge ourselves accord- ing to what we have done, and shall the more perceive the effects upon our souls. That this is so excellent a preparative for sufferings and death, will appear by the conside- ration of these particulars. 1. They that walk with God are safest from all destructive sufferings ; and shall have none but what are sanctified to their good. Rom. viii. 28. They are near to God, where destruction cometh not ; as the chicken under the wings of the hen. They walk with him that will not lead them to perdition : that will not neglect them, nor sell them for nought, nor expose them to the will of men and devils, though he may suffer 182 Walking with God. them to be tried for their good. No one can take them out of his hands. Be near to him, and you are safe : the destroyer cannot fetch you thence. He can fetch you (when the time is come) from the side of your merriest compa- nions, and dearest friends ; from the presence of the greatest princes ; from the strongest tower, or most sumptuous palace, or from your heaps of riches, in your securest health : but he cannot take you from the arms of Christ, nor from under the wings of your Creator's love. For there is no God like him, in heaven above, or on the earth beneath, who keepeth covenant and mercy with his servants, that walk before him with all their heart. 1 Kings viii. 23. xi. 38. However we are used in our Father's presence, we are sure it shall be for good in the latter end : for he wanteth neither power nor love to deliver usj if he saw deliverance to be best. 2. Walking with God is the surest way to obtain a certainty of his special love, and of our salvation : and what an excellent preparative for sufferings or death such assurance is, I need not tell any considerate believer. How easy may it be to us to suffer poverty, disgrace, or wrongs, or the pains of sickness or death, when once we are certain that we shall not suffer the pains of hell? How cheerfully may we go out of this troublesome world, and leave the greatest prosperity behind us, when we are sure to live in heaven for ever ! Even an infidel will say. Walking with God. 183 that he could suffer or die, if he could but be certain to be glorified in heaven when he is dead. 3. Walking with God doth mortify the flesh, and allay the affections and lusts thereof. The soul that is taken up with higher matters, and daily seeth things more excellent, becometh as dead to the things below : and thus it weaneth us from all that is in the world which seemeth most desirable to carnal men. And when the flesh is mortified, and the world is nothing to us, or but as a dead and loathsome carcase, what is , there left to be very troublesome in any suffering from the world ; or to make us loath by death to leave it? Tt is men that know not God, that overvalue the profits and honors of the world ; and men that never felt the comforts of commu- nion with God, that set too much by the plea- sures of the flesh : and it is men that set too much by these, that make so great a matter of suffering. It is he that basely overvalueth wealth, that whineth and repineth when he comes to poverty : it is he-that set too much by his honor, and being befooled by his pride, doth greatly esteem the thoughts or applauding words of men, that swelleth against those that disesteem him, and breaketh his heart when he falieth into disgrace. He that is cheated out of his wits by the pomps and splendour of a high and prosperous estate, doth think he is undone when he is brought low. But it is not so with him that walks with God : for being taken up 184 Walking with God. with far higher things, he knoweth the vanity of these: as he seeth not in them any thing that is worthy of his strong desires, so neither any thing that is worthy of much lamentation when they are gone. He never thought that a shadow or feather, or a blast of wind could make him happy : and he cannot think that the loss of these can make him miserable. He that is taken up with God hath a liigher interest and business, and findeth not himself so much concerned in the storms or calms that are here below.,, as others are, who know no better, and never minded higher things. 4. Walking; with God doth much overcome the fear of man. The fear of him that can destroy both soul and body in hell fire, will extinguish the fear of them that can but kill the body. Luke xii. 4. The threats or frowns of a worm are inconsiderable to him that daily walketh with the great and dreadful God, and hath his power and word for his security. As Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, because he had respect to the recompense of reward; so he feared not the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him that is invisible. Heb. xi. 27. 5. Walking with God doth much prepare for sufferings and death, in that it breedeth quiet- ness in the conscience : so that when all is at peace within, it will be easy to suffer any thing from without. Though there is no proper merit Walking with God. 185 in our works to comfort us, yet it is an unspeak- able consolation to a slandered persecuted mun to be able to say, These evil sayings are spoken falsely of me, for the sake of Christ; and I suffer not as an evil doer, but as a christian: and it is matter of very great peace to -a man that is hasting unto death, to be able to say as Hezekiah, 2 Kings xx. 3, " Remember now, O Lord, how I have walked before thee .in truth, and with a perfect heart, and have done that which is good in thy sight:" and as Paul, 2 Tim. iv. 7, 8, " T have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness," &c. and as 2 Cor. i. 12, " For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our con- science, that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our conversation in the world:" such a testimony of conscience is a precious coi-dial to a suffering or a dying man. The time that we have spent in a holy and heavenly conversation, will be exceeding sweet in the last review, when time spent in sinful vanity, and idleness, and in worldly and fleshly designs, will be grievous and tormenting. The day is coming, and is even at hand, when those that are now the most hardened infidels, cr obstinate presumptuous sinners, or scornful malicious enemies of holiness, would wish and wish a thousand times, that they had spent that VOL, 11. L 186 WalJwig with God. life in a serious obedient walking with Go J, wliich they spent in seeking worldly wealth, and laying up a treasure on earth, and feeding the inordinate desires of their flesh. I tell you it is walking with God, that is the only way to have a sound and quiet conscience: and he that is healing and settling his conscience upon the love of God and the grace of Christ, in the time of his prosperity, is making the wisest preparation for adversity: and the preparation thus made so long before (perhaps twenty, or forty, or threescore years or more) is as truly useful and comfortable at a dying hour, as that part which is made immediately before. I know that besides this general preparation, there should be also a particular special preparation, for sufferings and death : but yet this general part is the chiefest and most necessary part. A man that hath walked in his lifetime with God, shall certainly be saved, though death surprize him unexpectedly, without any more particular preparation: but a particular preparation, with- out either such a life or such a heart as would cause it if he had recovered, is no sufficient preparation at all, and will not serve to any man's salvation. Alas I what a pitiful provision doth that man make for death and for salvation, who neglecteth his soul, despiseth the commands of God, and disregardeth the promises of eternal life, till he is ready to die, and then crieth out ' I repeat, I am sorry for my sin, I would I Walking zoith God. 187 had lived better,' and this only from the con- straint of fear, without any such love to God and holiness which would make him walk with God if he should recover! What if the priest absolve this man from all bis sins ? Doth God therefore absolve him? or shall he thus be saved? No, it is certain that all the sacraments and absolution in the world, will never serve to save such a soul, without that grace which must make it new and truly holy. The absolution of a minister of Christ, which is pronounced in his name, is a very great comfort to the truly peni- tent: for such God hath first pardoned by his general act of oblivion in the gospel, and it is God that sendeth his messenger to them (in sacraments and ministerial absolution) with that pardon particularized and applied to themselves. But where the heart is not truly penitent and converted, that person is not pardoned by the gospel, as being not in the covenant, or a child of promise ; and therefore the pardon of a minister, being upon mistake, or to an unquali- fied person, can reach no further than to admit him into the esteem of men, and to the commu- nion and outward privileges of the church (which is a poor comfort to a soul that must lie in hell) ; but it can never admit him into the kingdom of heaven. God indeed may approve the act of his ministers, if they go according to his rule, and deal in church administrations with those that make a credible profession of faith h 2 188 Walhifig with God. AND HOLINESS, as if tliey had true faith and holiness : but yet he will not therefore make such ministerial acts effectual to the saving of unbelieving or unholy souls. Nay (because I have found many sensual ungodly people in- clining to turn papists, because vs^ith them they can have a quick and easy pardon of their sins^ by the pope, or by the absolution of the priest) let me tell such, that if they understand what they do, even this cheat is too thin to quiet their defiled consciences : for even the papist's school-doctors do conclude, that when the priest absolveth an impenitent sinner, or one that is nat qualified for pardon, such a one is not loosed or pardoned in heaven — Leg. Martin, de llipalda exposit. Liber. Magist. li. 4. dist. 18. /?. €54, 655, cS' p. 663, 664. dist. 20. Aquin. Dist. 20. q. 1. a. 5. Suar. Tom. 4. in 3. p. disp. 52. Greg. Valent. Tom. 4. disp. 7. q. 20. p. 5. Tolet. lib. 6. cap. 27. Navar. Notab. 17. ^ 18. Cordub. de indulg. li. 5. q. 23. they deny not the truth of those words of Origen, Horn. 14. ad cap. 24. Levit. " Exit quis a Jide, perexit de castris ecclesicE etiamsi episcopi voce lion abjiciatur: sicut contru inlerdum Jit, tit aliquis non recto judicio eorum qui prasurt ecclesicc, for as mittatur: sed si non egit ut mcreretur exire, nihil laditur: interdum enint quod for as mittitur, intus est; Sf qui for is est, intus videtur retineri:" and what he saith of excommunication, is true of absolution : an erring key doth neither lock oyt of heaven, nor let into heaven. A godly Walking ivlth God 189 believer shall be saved though the priest con- demn him : and an unbeliever or ungodly person shall be condemned by God, though be be absolved by the priest. Nay, if you have not walked with God in the spirit, but walked after the flesh, though your repentance should be sound and true at the last, it will yet very hardly serve to comfort you, though it may serve to your salvation : because you will very hardly get any assurance that it is sincere. It is dangerous lest it should prove but the effect of fear (which will not save) v.heu it Cometh not till death do flight you to it. As Augustine saith, Niillus expectct, quaitdo peccare non potest : arbitrii eiiim lUierlateni qiKvrit Deas, lit deleri possint commissa ; non necessltatem, sect charitaiem, non tantuni tinwrem : quia non in solo timore vivit homo. Therefore the same Augustine saith, Siquis positiis in ultima necessitate voluerit occipere panitentiam, and accipit ; fateor vohis, lion illi negamus quod petit ; sed non prasumimus quod bene hinc exit: si securns hinc exierit, ego nescio : poenitentiam dare possumus, securitatem non possumus. You see then how much it is needful to the peace of conscience at the hour of death, that you walk with God in the time of life. 6. Moreover, to walk with God is an excellent preparation for sufferings and death, because it tendeth to acquaint the soul with God, and to embolden it both to go to him in prayer, and to 190 Waikmg with God. trust on him, and expect salvation from him. He that walketh with God is so much used to holy- prayer, that he is a man of prayer, and is skilled in it, and hath tried what prayer can do with God : so that in the hour of his extremity, he is not to seek either for a God to pray to, or a Mediator to intercede for him, or a spirit of adoption to enable him as a child to fly for help to his reconciled Father. And having- not only been frequently with God, but frequently enter- tained and accepted by him, and had his prayers lieard and sfranted, it is a great encouragement to an afflicted soul in the hour of distress, to go to such a God for help. And it is a dreadful thing when a soul is ready to go ont of the world, to have no comfortable knowledge of God, or skill to pray to him, or encouragement to expect acceptance with him : to think that he must presently appear before a God, whom he never knew, nor heartily loved, being never ac- quainted with that communion with him in the way of grace, which is the way to communion in glory, O what a terrible thought is this ! But how comfortable is it when the soul can say — I know v.'hora I have believed ! The God that afflicteth me is he that loveth me, and hath manifested his love to me by his daily attrac- tive, assisting and accepting grace ! I am going by death to see him intuitively, whom I have often seen by the eye of faith, and to live with him in heaven, with whom I lived here on earth ; WalJdng ivith God. 191 from whom, and through whom, and to whom was my life ! I go not to an enemy, nor an utter stranger, but to that God who was the spring, the ruler, the guide, the strength and the com- fort of my life. He hath heard me so oft, that I cannot think he will now reject me: he hatli so often comforted my soul, that I will not believe he will now thrust me into hell : he halh mercifully received me so oft, that I cannot be- lieve he will now refuse me : those that come to him in the way of grace, I have found he will iu no wise cast out. As strangeness to God doth fill the soul with distrustful fears, so walking with him doth breed that humble confidence, which is a wonderful comfort in the hour of distress, and a happy preparation to sufferings and death. 7. Lastly, to walk with God, doth increase that love of God in the soul, which is the hea- venly tincture, and inclineth it to look upward, and being weary of a sinful flesh and world, to desire to be perfected with God. How happy a preparation for death is this, when it is but the passage to that God with whom \ye desire to be, and to that place where we fain v.'ould dwell for ever! To love the state and place that we are going to, being made connatural and suitable thereto, will much overcome the fears of death. But for a soul that is acquainted with nothing but this life, and savoreth nothing but earth and flesh, and hath no connaturality with the things 192 Walkhis with God. b above, for such a soul to be surprised with the tidings of death, alas, how dreadful must it be ! And thus 1 have shewed you the benefits that come by walking with God, which if you love yourselves with a rational love, methinks should resolve every impartial considerate reader, to give up himself without delay, to so desirable a course of life ! or, if he have begun it, to follow it more cheerfully and faithfully than he had done. CHAPTER VIL I am next to shew you that believers have special obligations to this holy course of life, and therefore are doubly faulty if they neglect it ; though indeed, to neglect it totally, or in the main drift of their lives, is a thing incon- sistent with a living faith. Consider, I. If you are true christians, your relations engage you to walk with God. Is he net your reconciled Father, and you his children in a special sense? and whom should children dwell with, but with their father? You Avere glad when he received you into his covenant that he would enter into so near a relation to you, as he expresseth, 2 Cor. vi. 17, 18, " I will receive you, and will be a Father to you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Walking icith God. 193 Lord Almighty." And do you draw back, as if you repented of your covenant, and were not only weary of the duty, but of the privileges and benefits of your relation ? You may have access to God, \\\\e\\ others are shut out; your prayers may be heard, when the prayers of the wicked are abominable ; you may be welcome, when the worldhng, and ambitious, and carnal are despised. He that dwelleth in the highest heave^i, is willing to look to you with respect, and dwell with you, when he beholdeth the proud afar off; Isa. Ixvi. 1, 2, and Ivii. 15, 16. and yet will you not come that may be welcome ? Doth he put such a difference between you and others, as to feed you as his children at his table, while others are called dogs and are with- out the doors, and have but your crumbs and leavings; and yet will you be so foolish and unthankful as to run out of your father's pre- sence, and choose to be without, among the dogs? How came your father's presence to be so grievous to you, and the privileges of his family to seem so vile ? Is it not some unchild- like carriage ; the guilt of some disobedience or contempt that hath first caused this? or have you fallen again in love with fleshly pleasures, and some vanity of the world ? or have you had enough of God and godliness, till you begin to grow weary of him? if so, you never tr\dy knew him. However it be, if you grow indif- ferent as to God, do not wonder if shortly you l3 194 Walking with God. find him set as light by you : and believe it, the day is not far off, in which the fatherly relation of God, and the privileges of children, will be more esteemed by you : when all things else forsake you in your last distress, you will be loath that God should then forsake you, or seem as a stranger to hide his face : then you will cry out, as the afflicted church, Isa. Ixiii. 15, 16. " Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory : where is thy zeal and thy strength, the sounding of thy bowels and of thy mercies towards me? are they restrained? Doubtless thou art our father, though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou O Lord art our father, our redeemer; thy name is from ever-« lasting." Nothing but God, and his fatherly relation, will then support you : attend him therefore, and with reverent, obedient cheerful- ness and delight, converse with him as with your dearest father. For since the beginning of the world, men have not known by sensible evidence, either the ear or the eye, besides God himself, what he hath prepared for him that waiteth for him. Isa. Ixiv. 4. Though he be wroth with us because we have sinned, yet doth he meet him that rejoice th and worketh righte- ousness, that remembereth him in his ways, ver. 5, Say not, I have played abroad so long- that I dare not now go home ; I have sinned so greatly, that I dare not speak to him, or look Walkins. with God. 195 him in the face: come yet but with a penitent returning heart, and thou mayest be accepted through the Prince of Peace : prodigals find better entertainment than they did expect, when once they do but resolve for home. If he allow us to begin with " Our Father which art in heaven" we may boldly proceed to ask forgive- ness of our trespasses, and whatever else is truly good for us. But alas, as our iniquities seduce us away from God, so the guilt of them aftVighteth some from returning to him, and the love of them corrupteth the hearts of others, and makes them too indifferent as to their com- munion with him ; so that too many of his children live as if they did not knov*' their father, or had forgotten him. We may say as Isa. Ixiv. 6 — 9, " But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy ras:s; and we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. And there is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee : for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us because of our iniquities. But now, O Lord, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand. Be not wroth, very sore, O Lord, neither remember iniquity for ever : behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people." O do not provoke your father to disown you, or to withdraw his help, or hi^le 196 Walking to'ith God. his face, or to send the rod to call you home ! for if you do, you will wish you had known the privileges of his presence, and had kept nearer to him! Be not so unnatural, so unthankful, so unkind, as to be weary of your father's pre- sence (and such a father's too) and to take more delight in any others. Moreover, you are related to God in Christ, as a wife unto a husband, as to covenant union, and nearness and dearness of affection, and as to his tender care of you for your good: and is it seemly, is it wisely or gratefully done of you, to desire rather the company of others, and delight in creatures more than him? Isa. liv. 5, 6. How affectionately doth thy maker call him- self the husband of his people! And can thy heart commit adultery, and forsake him ? " My covenant they brake, though I was an husband to thee, saith the Lord." Jer. xxxi. 32. O put not God to exercise his jealousy. It is one of liis terrible attributes, to be " a jealous God." And can he be otherwise to thee, when thou lovest not his converse or company, and carest not how long thou art from him in the world ? Woe to thee if he once say, as Hos. ii. 2. " She is nut my wife, neither am I her husband." Nay, more than this, if you are christians, you are members of the body of Christ: and there- fore how can you withdraw yourselves from him and not feel the pain and torment of so sore a wound or dislocation? You cannot live witliout Walking with God, 197 a constant dependance on him, and communica- tion from him. John xv. 1, 4, 5, 7. " I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Abide in me, and I in you. 1 am tlie vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit : for without me ye can do nothing. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you." So near are you to Christ, that he delighteth to acquaint you with his secrets. O how many mysteries doth he reveal to those that walk with him, which carnal strangers never know! mys- teries of wisdom! mysteries of love and saving grace ! mysteries of scripture, and mysteries of providence ! mysteries felt by inward experience, and mysteries revealed, foreseen by faith ! Not only the strangers that pass by the doors, but even the common servants of the family are unacquainted with the secret operations of the Spirit, and entertainments of grace, and joy in believing, which those that walk with God either do or may possess. Therefore Christ calleth you friends as being more than servants. John XV. 14, 15. " Ye are my friends if ye do what- soever I command you : henceforth I call you not servants ; for the servant knoweth not what the Lord doth: but I have called you friends- for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." It is true, for all this, that every true christian hath reason (and 198 Walldrw with God. is apt) to complain of his darkness and distance from God. Alas, they know so little of him, and of the mysteries of his love and kingdom, that sometimes they are apt to think that they are indeed but utter strangers to him: but this is because there is infinitely more still unknown to them than they know! What! can the silly shal- low cveatui-e comprehend his infinite Creator ? or shall we know all that is to be known in heaven, before we enjoy all that is to be enjoyed in heaven? It is no more wonder to hear a believer pant and mourn after a fuller knowledge of God, and nearer access to him, than to seek after heaven, where this will be his happiness. But yet, though his knowledge of God be small, compared with his ignorance, that little knowledge of God which he hath attained, is more mysterious, sublime, and excellent, than all the learning of the greatest unsanctified, scholars in the world. Walk with him according to the nearness of your relations to him, and you shall have this excellent knowledge of his inysteries, which no books or teachers alone can give. You shall be effectually touched at the heart with the truths which others do ineffec- tually hear. You shall be powerfully moved, when they are but ineffectually exhorted. When they only hear the voice without them, you shall hear the voice within you, and as it were behind you, saying, This is the way, walk in it. O that you could duly value such a friend, to watch Walking with God. 199 over you, and for you, and dwell in you, and tell you faithfully of every danger, and of every duty, and teach you to know good and evil, and what to choose, and what to refuse ! How closely and delightfully would you converse wit|i such a blessed friend, if you rightly valued him! II. Moreover, you that are the servants of God, have by your covenant and profession, re- nounced and forsaken all things else (as they stand in any opposition to him, or competition with him) and have resigned yourselves wholly unto him alone : and therefore with him must you converse, and be employed, unless you will forsake your covenant. You knew first that it was your interest to forsake the world and turn to God : you knew the world would not serve your turn, nor be instead of God to you either in life, or at death : and upon this knowledge it was that you changed your master, and changed your minds, and changed your way, your work, your hopes : and do you dream now that you were mistaken ? do you begin to think that the world is fitter to be your God or hap- piness ? if not, you must still confess that both your interest and your covenant do oblige you to turn your hearts and minds from the things which you have renounced, and to walk with him that you have taken for your God, and to obey him whom you have taken for your king and judge, and to keep close to him with purest love, whom you have taken for your everlasting 200 Walking with God. portion. Mark what you are minding all the dayj while you are neglecting God. — Is it not something that you have renounced ? And did you not renounce it upon sufficient cause? Was it not a work of your most serious deliberation? and of as great wisdom, as any that ever you performed? if it were, turn not back in your hearts ao-ain from God unto the renounced creature. You have had many a lightning from heaven into your understandings, to bring you to see the difference betv,'een them : you have had many a teaching, and many a warning, and many a striving of the spirit, before you were prevailed with to renounce the world, the flesh and the devil, and to give up yourself entirely and absolutely to God. Nay, did it not cost you the smart of some afflictions, before you would be made so wise ? And did it not cost you many a gripe of conscience, and many a terrible thought of hell, and of the wrath of God, before you would be heartily engaged to hinr, in his covenant? And will you now live as strangely and neglectfully towards him, as if those days were quite forgotten ? and as if you Ijad never felt such things ? and as if you had never been so convinced, or resolved ? O chris- tians, take heed of forgetting your former case i your former thoughts ! your former convictions and complaints and covenants ! God did not work all that upon your hearts to be forgotten : he intended not only your present change, but Walking with God. 201 your after remembrance of it, for your close adhering to him while you live, and for your quickening and constant perseverance to the end. The forgetting of their former miseries, and the workings of God upon their hearts in their conversion, is a great cause of mutability and revolting, and of unspeakable hurt to many a soul. Nay, may you not remember also what sorrow you had in the day of your repentance, for your forsakino- and neo;lectinj. But it is said. If we knew Christ after the flesh, henceforth know we him no more. A)isiu. No doubt but all the carnality in principles, matter, manner and ends of our knowledge \n\\ then cease, as it is imperfectiork; but that a carnal knowledge be turned into a Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 28 1 spiritual, is no more a diminution to it, than it is to the glory of our bodies, to be made like the stars in the firmament of our Father. Ohj. But then I shall have no more comfort in my present friends than in any other. Anbzo. 1. If you had none in them, it is no diminution to our happiness, if indeed we should have all in God immediately and alone. 2. But if you have as much in others that you never knew before, that will not diminish any of your comfort in your ancient friends. 3. But it is most probable to us, that as there is a two-fold object for ouv love in the glorified saints ; one is their holiness, and the uther is the relation which they stood in between God and us, being made his instruments for our conversion and salvation, so that we shall love saints in heaven in both respects : and in the first respect (which is the chiefest) we shall love those most that have most of God, and the greatest glory (though such as we never knew on earth ;) and in the second respect we shall love those most that were employed by God for our greatest good. And that we shall not there lay by so much respect to ourselves, as to forget or disregard our benefactors, is manifest, 1. In that we shall for ever remember Christ, and love him, and praise him, as one that formerly redeemed us, and washed us in his blood, and hath made us kings and priests. to God: and therefore we mny k3 282 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. also in just subordination to Christ, remember them, with love and thankfulness, that were his instruments for the collation of these benefits. 2. And this kind of self-love (to be sensible of good and evil to ourselves) is none of the sinful or imperfect selfishness to be renounced or laid by, but part of our very natures, and as inseparable from us as we are from ourselves. Much more, were it not digressive, might be said on this subject; but I shall only add, that as God doth draw us to every holy duty by shew- ing us the excellency of that duty ; and as per- petuity is not the smallest excellency ; so he hath purposely mentioned that love endureth for ever (when he had described the love of one another) as a principal motive to kindle and increase this love. And therefore those that think they shall have no personal knowledge of one another, nor personal love to one another (for we cannot love personally, if we know not personally) do take a most effectual course to destroy in their souls all holy special love to saints, by casting away that principal or very great motive given them by the Holy Ghost. I am not able to love much where I foreknow that I shall not love long. I cannot love a comely inn, so well as a nearer dwelling of my own, because I must be gone to-morrow. Therefore must I love my Bible better than my law books, or physic books. Sec. because it leadeth to eternity. And therefore I must love holiness in myself and others, better Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 2S3 than meat and drink, and wealth and honor, and beauty and pleasure ; because it must be loved for ever, when the love of these must needs be transitory, as they are transitory. I must pro- fess, from the very experience of my soul, that it is the belief that I shall love my friends in heaven, that principally kindleth my love to them on earth : and if I thought I should never love them after death, and consequently never love them more, when this life is ended, I should in reason number them with temporal things, and love them comparatively but a little; even as I love other transitory things (allowing for the excellency in the nature of grace,) But now I converse with some delight with my godly friends, as belieYing I shall converse with them for ever, and take comfort in the very dead and absent, as believing we shall shortly meet in heaven : and I love them, I hope, with a love that is of a heavenly nature, while I love them as the heirs of heaven, with a love which 1 expect shall there be perfected, and more fully and for ever exercised. 12. The last reason that I give you, to move you to bear the loss or absence of your friends, is, that it gives you the loudest call to retire from all the world, and to converse with God himself, and to long for heaven, where you shall be separated from your friends no more. And your forsaken state will somewhat assist you to that solitary converse with God, which it calls 284 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. you to. — But this brings us up to the third part of the text. " And yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me." Doct. When all forsake us, and leave us (as to them) alone, we are far from being simply alone; because God is with us. He is not without company, that is with the kin^, though twenty others have turned him oft'. He is not without light that hath the shining sun, though all his candles be put out. If God be our God, he is our all, and is enough for us : and if he be our all, we shall not much find the want of creatures while he is with us. For 1. He is with us, who is every where, and therefore is never from us ; and kuoweth all the ways and projects of our enemies; being with them in wrath, as he is with us in mercy. 2. He is with us who is almighty, sufficient to preserve us, conquerable by none ; and there- fore while he is with us, we need not fear what man can do unto us : for they can do nothing but what he will: no danger, no sickness, no trouble or want can be so great as to make it any difficulty to God to deliver us when and how he please. 3. He is with us who is infinitely wise, and therefore we need not fear the subtilty of ene- mies ; nor shall any of his undertaken works for his church or Us miscarry for want of foresight, or through any oversight. We shall be preserved even from our own tolly, as well as from our Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 285 enemies' subtilty : for it is not our own wisdom that our greatest concernments do principally rest upon, nor that our safety and peace are chiefly secured by ; but it is the wisdom of our Great Preserver. He knoweth what to do with us, and what paths to lead us in, and what is best for us in all conditions. And he hath pro- mised to teach us, and will be our sure infallible guide. 4. He is with us who is infinitely good, and therefore is only fit to be a continual delight and satisfaction to our souls: that hath nothing in him to disaflfect us, or discourage us : whom we may love without fear of overloving ; and need not set any bounds to our love, the object of it being infinite. 5. He is with us, who is most nearly related to us, and most dearly loveth us; and therefore will never be wanting to us in any thing that is fit for us to have. This is he that is with us, when all have left us, and as to man we are alone ; and therefore we may well say that we are not alone. Of this I shall say more anon in the application. Quest. But how is he with us ? Ansto. 1. He is with us not only in his essential presence, as he is every where, but as by his gracious fatherly presence. We are in his family, attendino- on him, even as the eye of a servant is to the hand of his master ; we are always with him, and (as he phraseth it himself in the parable, Luke xv.) 286 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. all that he hath is ours, that is, all that is fit to be communicated to us, and all the provisions ot" his bounty for his children. When we awake, we should be still with him ; when we go abroad we should be always as before him : our life and works should be a walkino- with God. 2. He is always with us efficiently to do us good ; though we have none else that careth for us, yet will he never cast us out of his care, but biddeth us cast our care on him, as promising that he will care for us. Though we have none else to provide for us, he is always with us, and our Father knoweth what we want, and will make the best provision for us. Matt. vi. 32, 33. Though Vt'e have none else to defend us against the power of our enemies, he is always with us to be our sure defence : he is the rock to which we fly, and upon which we are surely built. He gathereth us to himself as the hen gathereth her chickens under her wings. Matt, xxiii. 37. And sure while love is thus protecting us, we may well say that the Father himself is with us. Though in all our wants we have no other to supply us, yet he is still with us to perform his promise, that no good thing shall be wanting to them that fear him. Though we may have none else to strengthen and help us, and support us in our weakness, yet he is always with us, whose grace is sufficient for us, to manifest his strength in weakness. Though we have no other to teach us, and to resolve our doubts, yet he is with us Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 287 that is our chiefest master, and hath taken us to be his disciples, and will be our light and guide, and will lead us into the truth. Though we have none else to be our comforters, in our agony, darkness or distress ; but all forsake us, or are taken from us, and we are exposed as Hagar with Ishmael in a wilderness ; yet still the Father of all consolations is with us, his Spirit who is the comforter is in us : and he that so often speaketh the words of comfort to us in his gos- pel, and saith " Be of good cheer ; let not your hearts be troubled, neither be afraid," 5cc. will speak them (in the season and measure which is fittest for them) unto our hearts. Though all friends turn enemies, and would destroy us, or turn false accusers, as Job's friends, in their ignorance or passion ; though all of them should add affliction to our affliction, yet is our redeemer and justifier still with us, and will lay his restraining hand upon our [enemies, and say to their proudest fury " Hitherto and no further shalt thou go." He is angry with Job's accusing friends, notwithstanding their friendship and good meaning, and though they seemed to plead for God and godliness against Job's sin : and who shall be against us while God is for us? or who shall condemn us when it is he that justi- fieth us ? Though we be put to say as David, Ps. cxlii. 4. " I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me : refuge failed me ; no man cared for my 288 0/ Conversing with God in Solitude. soul :" yet we may say with him, ver. 5 and 7, "I cried unto thee, O Lord: I said, thou art my refuge, and my portion in the land of the living. Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name ; the righteous shall com- pass me about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with me," 2, 3. *' I poured out my complaint before him ; I shewed before him my trouble : when my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path: in the way wherein I walked, have they privily laid a snare for me." Thus " God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble." Ps. xlvi. 1. " Therefore should we not fear, though the earth were removed, and though the mountains were car- ried into the midst of the sea : though the waters thereof roar, and be troubled," &c. ver. 2, 3. Though as David saitli, Ps. xH. 5—9. ** Mine enemies speak evil of me ; when shall he die, and his name perish? And if he come to see me, he speaketh vanity : his heart gather- eth iniquity to itself; when he goeth abroad he telleth it: all that hate me whisper together against me : against me do they devise my hurt. An evil disease, say they, cleaveth fast unto him: and now that he lieth, he shall rise up no more: yea, my own famihar friend, in whom I trusted, that did eat of my bread, hath lift up his heel against me." Yet we may add as he, ver. 12. '■ And as for me, thou upholdest me in mine integrity, and settest me before thy face Of Conversing zcith God in Solitude. 289 for ever." Though as Ps. xxxv. 7, &c. " With- out cause they have hid for me their net in a pit, which without cause they have digged for my soul." 11. " And false witnesses did rise up : they laid to my charge things that I knew not: they rewarded me evil for good." 15, 16. " In my adversity they rejoiced, and gathered themselves together: the abjects gathered themselves toge- ther against me, and I knew it not; they did tear, and ceased not : with hypocritical mockers in feasts : they gnashed upon me with their teeth." 20. " For they speak not peace; but they devise deceitful matters against them that are quiet in the land." Yet ver. 9. " My soul shall be joyful in the Lord; it shall rejoice in his salvation." 10. " All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like unto thee, who deliverest the poo?' from him that is too strong for him; yea, th© poor and the needy from him that spoileth him?" Though friends be far off, "• the Lord is nigh to them that are of a brojien heart ^ and saveth suoh as be of a contrite spirit. Many ure the afflictions of the righteous ; but the Lord dolivereth him out of them all." Ps. xxxiv. 18, ^9. " The Lord redeemeth the soul of his servants ; and none of them that trust in him shall be desolate." ver. 22. Therefore " I will be glad and rejoice in his mercy; for he hath considered my trouble, and hath known (and owned) my soul in adversity; and hath not §but me in the hand of the enemy. When my 290 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. life was spent with grief, and my years with sighing: my strength failed because of mine iniquity, and my bones were consumed : I was a reproach among all mine enemies, but especially among my neighbours, and a fear to mine ac- quaintance : they that did see me without fled from me. I was forgotten, and as a dead man out of mind : I was like a broken vessel. I heard the slander of many : fear was on every side : while they took counsel together against me, they devised to take away my life. But I trusted in thee, O Lord: I said, thou art my God: my times are in thy hand: deliver me from the hand of mine enemies, and from them that persecute me. Make thy face to shine upon thy servant : save me for thy mercies sake. O how great is thy goodness, which thou hast laid up for them that fear thee ; which thou hast wrought for them that trust in thee before the sons of men ! Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the pride of man; thou shalt keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues." Ps. xxxi. Thus God is with us when men are far from us, or against us : his people find by happy experience that they are not alone. Because he is nigh them, evil shall not come nigh them, unless as it worketh for their good. He is their hiding place to preserve them from trouble : the great water-floods shall not come nigh them: he will compass them about with songs of deliverance. Ps. xxxii. 6, 7. Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 291 3. And as God is with us thus relatively and efficiently, so also objectively for our holy con- verse. Wherever our friends are, God is still at hand to be the most profitable, honorable and delightful object of our thoughts. There is enough in him to take up all the faculties of my soul. He that is but in a well furnished library may find great and excellent employment for his thoughts many years together; and so may he that liveth in the open world, and hath all the visible works of God to meditate upon : but all this were nothing, if God were not the sense of books and creatures, and the matter of all these noble studies. He that is alone, and hath only God himself to study, hath the matter and sense of all the books and creatures in the world, to employ his thoughts upon. He never need to want matter for his meditation, that hath God to meditate on : he need not want matter of discourse (whether mental or vocal) that hath God to talk of, though he have not the name of any other friend to mention. All our affections may have in him the highest and most pleasant work. The soul of man cannot have a more sweet and excellent work than to love him: he wanteth neither work nor pleasure, that in his solitude is taken up in the believing contemplations of eternal love, and of all his blessed attributes and works. O then what happy and delightful converse may a believer have with God alone! He is always Dresent, 29^ Of Conversing with God in Solitude. and always at leisure to be spoken with ; and always willing of our access and audience : he hath no interest cross to our felicity, which should move him to reject us (as worldly great ones often have). He never misunderstandeth us, nor chargeth that upon us which we were never guilty of. If we converse with men, their mistakes, and interests, and passions, and insuf- ficiencies, do make the trouble so great, and the benefit so small, that many have become thereby weary of the world, or of human society, and Jiave spent the rest of their days alone in desert places. Indeed so much of God as appears in pien, so i}iuch is their converse excellent and delightful: and their's is the best that have most of God. But there is so much of vanity, and ^elf, and flesh, and sin, \n the most or all of us, ^s very much darkeneth our light, and dampetl; the pleasure, and blasteth the fruit of our societies ai)d converge. O how oft have I been solaced in God, w]ie}i I four^d nothing but deceit and darkness ii^ the world ! How oft hath |ie comforted me, when it was past the power of man! Mow oft hath he relieved and delivered me, when all the help of man was vain ! It hath been my stay and rest, to look to him, when the creature hath been a broken staff, and deceitful friends have been but as a broken tooth, or a foot that is out of joint, (as Solomon speaketh of confidence in an unfaithful man in time of trouble. Prov. x^v. 29.) Verily as the world Of Conveislng with God in Solitude. 293 were but an horrid dungeon without the sun, so it were a howling wilderness, a place of no considerable employment or delight, were it not that in it we may live to God and do him ser- vice, and sometime be refreshed with the light of his countenance, and the communications of his love. But of this more anon. Use 1. We see our example, and our encou- ragements. Let us now as followers of Christ, endeavour to imitate him in this, and to live upon God, when men forsake us, and to know that while God is with us, we are not alone, nor indeed forsaken while he forsakes us not. I shall, 1. Shew you here negatively, what you must not do. 2. Affirmatively, what you must do; for the performance of your duty in this imitation of Christ. 1. You must not make this any preteuce for the undervaluing of your useful friends ; nor for your unthankfulness for so great a benefit as a godly friend : nor for the neglect of your duty in improving the company and help of friends : two is better than one : the communion of saints, and help of those that are wise and faithful, is a mercy highly to be esteemed. And the under- valuing; of it, is at least a sign of a declinins; soul. 2. You must not hence fetch any pretence to slight your friends, and disoblige them, or neg- lect any duty that you owe them, or any means therein necessary to the continuation of their friendship. 294 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 3. You must not causelessly withdraw from human society into solitude. A weariness of converse with men, is oft conjunct with a wea- riness of our duty : and a retiring voluntarily into solitude, when God doth not call or drive us thither, is oft but a retiring from the place and work which God hath appointed us : and consequently a retiring rather from God, than to God. Like some idle servants, that think they should not work so hard, because it is but worldly business, and think their masters deal not religiously by them, unless they let them neglect their labor, that they may spend more time in serving God : as if it were no serving God to be faithful in their master's service. 1 deny not but very holy persons have lived in a state of retirement from human converse : in such cases as these it may become a duty, 1. In case of such persecution as at present leaveth us no opportunity of serving or honoring God so much in any other place or state. 2. In case that natural infirmity or disability or any other accident shall make one less service- able to God and his church in society than he is in solitude. 3. In case he hath committed a sin so heinous and of indelible scandal and reproach, as that it is not fit for the servants of Christ any more to receive him into their local communion, though he repent: (for as to local communion, I think, such a case may be.) Of Conversing with God in Solilude. 295 4. In case a man through custom and ill company be so captivated to some fleshly lust, as that he is not able to bear the temptations that are found in human converse ; but falleth by them into frequent heinous sinning: in this case the right hand or eye is rather to be parted with, than their salvation. And though a mere restraint by distance of temptations and oppor- tunities of sinning, will not prove a man sanc- tified, nor save the soul that loveth the sin and fain would live in it; yet, 1. Grace may some- time appear in the strength and self-denial which is exercised in the very avoiding of temptations, when yet perhaps the person hath not strength enough to have stood against the temptation if it had not been avoided. And, 2. The distance of temptations, and opportunity of serious and frequent consideration, may be a means to help them to sincerity that want it. 5. In case a man by age or sickness find him- self so near to death, as that he hath now a more special call to look after his present actual pre- paration, than to endeavour any more the good of others ; and find withal, that solitude will help him in his preparations, his society being such as would but hinder him. In these five cases I suppose it lawfid to retire from human converse into solitude. But when there is no such necessity or call, it usually proceedeth from one of these vicious distempers : 1. From cowardice and fear of 296 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. suffering, when the soldiers of Christ do hide their heads, instead of confessing him before men, 2. From a laziness of mind and weariness of duty : when slothful unprofitable servants hide their talents, pretending their fear of the auste- rity of their Lord. It is easier to run away from our work, than do it : and to go out of the reach of ignorance, malice, contradiction and ungodli- ness, than to encounter them, and conquer them by truth and holy lives. So many persons as we converse with, so many are there to whom we owe some duty : and this is not so easy as it is to over-run our work, and to hide ourselves in some u-ilderness or cell, whilst others are fioht- ing the battles of the Lord. 3. Or it may pro- ceed from mere impatience : when men cannot bear the frown, and scorns, and violence of the ungodly, they fly from sufferings, which by patience they should overcome. 4. Or it may come from humour and mutability of mind, and discontent with one's condition : many retire from human converse to please a discontented passionate mind ; or expecting to find that in privacy, which in public they could not find, nor is any where to be found on earth. 5. And some do it in melancholy, merely to please a sick ima- gination, which is vexed in company, and a little easeth itself in living as the possessed man among the tombs. 6. And sometimes it proceedeth from self-ignorance, and an unhumbled state of a soul : when men think much better of them- Of Conversing mth God in Solitude. 297 selves than others, they thhik they can more comfortably converse with themselves than with others ; whereas if they well understood that they are the worst or greatest enemies, or trou- bles to themselves, they would more fear their own company than other men's : they would then . consider what proud, and fleshly, and worldly, and selfish, and disordered hearts they are like to carry with them into their solitude, and there to be annoyed with from day to day : and that the nearest enemy is the worst, and the nearest trouble is the greatest. These vices or infirmities carry many into solitude; and if they live where popish vanity may seduce them, they will perhaps imagine, that they are serving God, and entering into perfection, when they are but sinfully obeying their corruptions : and that they are advanced above others in degrees of grace, while they are pleasing a diseased fancy, and entering into a dangerous course of sin. No doubt but the duties of a public life are more ih number, and greater in weight, and of more excellent conse- quence and tendency (even to the most public good, and greatest honor of God) than the duties of privacy or retirement. T'ir bonus est connnune honum. — A good man is a common good. And (saith Seneca) " Nulla essent communia nisi pars il/orum pertineret ad singulos." If every one have not some share or interest in them, how are they common? Let me add these few considerations, VOL. II. s 298 Of Conversing with God in Solitude, to shew you the evil of voluntary unnecessary solitude. 1. You less contribute to the honor of your Redeemer, and less promote his kingdom in the world, and less subserve his death and office, while you do good but to few, and live but almost to yourselves. 2. You live in the poorest exercise of the grace of charity ; and therefore in a low undesirable condition. 3. You will want the communion of saints, and benefit of public ordinances (for I account not a college life a solitary life :) and you will want the help of the charity, graces, and gifts of others, by which you might be benefitted. 4. It will be a life of smaller comfort, as it is- a life of smaller benefit to others. They that do- but little good (according to their ability) mus^t expect but little comfort. They have usually most peace and comfort to themselves, that are the most profitable to others. " Aow potest guisquam bene degere qui se tantum intiietu? : alteri vivas oportet, si tibi vis vivere" Sen, — " !No man can live well, that looketh but to himself: thou must live to another, if thou wilt live to thyself." O the delight that there is in doing good to many ! None knoweth it that hath not tried it: not upon any account of merit; but as it pleaseth God, and as goodness itself is amiable and sweet; and as we receive by communi- Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 299 eating; and as we are under promise; and as charity makes all the good that is done to another to be to us as our own! 5. We are dark, and partial, and heedless of ourselves, and hardly brought or kept in acquaintance with our hearts ; and therefore have the more need of the eye of others : and even an enemy's eye may be useful, though malicious ; and may do us good while he intends us evil: saith Bernard " Malum quod nemo videt nemo arguii: ubi autem non timet ur reprehensor, securus accedit tentator ; licentius perpetratur iniquitas" — " The evil that none seetli, none rep^oveth: and where the reprover is not feared, the tempter cometh more boldly, and the sin is committed the more licentiously." It is hard to know the spots in our own faces, when we have no glass or beholder to acquaint us with them, Saith Chrysostome, " Solitude is velamen om- nium vitiorum — the cover of all vices." In company this cover is laid aside, and vice being more naked, is more ashamed. It is beholders that cause shame; which solitude is not acquainted with : and it is a piece of impe- nitency not to be ashamed of sin. 6. And we are for the most part so weak and sickly, that we are unable to subsist without the help of others. Sen. " Nemo est ex imprudentibu? qui relinqui sibi debet" — " unwise men (or in- fants, or sick-like men) must not be left to themselves." And God hath let some impo- s2 300 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. tency, insufficiency, and necessity upon all, that should keep men sociable, and make them acknowledge their need of others, and be thank- ful for assistance from them, and be ready to cfo good to others, as we would have others do to us. He that feeleth not the need of others, is so unhumbled as to have the greater need of them. 7. Pride will have great advantage in private, and repentance great disadvantage, while our sins seem to be all dead, because there is not a temptation to draw them out, or an observer to reprove them. " Tarn diu paiiens quisquam sibi ridetur &)' hnmilis, donee 7mllius hominum comortio commiscetur; ad naturam pristinam reversiinn (jiium interpellaverit cnjuslibet occ&sionis commotio,'* inquit Cnssianus — ** Many a man seems- to him- self patient and humble, while he keeps out of company ; who would return to his own nature if the commotion of any occasion did but pro- voke him." It is hard to know what sin or grace is in us, if we have not such trials as are not to be found in solitude^ 8. Flying from the observation and judgment of others, is a kind of self-accusation ; as if we con- fessed ourselves so bad as that we cannot stand the trial of the light. " 3ana conscientia turbatii advocat : mala in solitudine anxia est 8^ solUcita : si honest a sunt qua facis, omnes sciant: si turpia^ quid refert neminem scire: cum tu scias! O te miserum si contemnis hunc testem:" inquit Senecct;^ Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 30 i That is, '* A good conscience will call in the orowd" (or witnesses, not caring who seeth): *' a bad conscience is anxious and solicitous even in solitude: if they be things honest which thou dost, let all men know: if they be dishonest, what good doth it thee that no man else knoweth it, when thou knowest it thyself! O miserable man, if thou despise this witness !" Something is suspected to be amiss with those that are always in their chaai- bers, and are never seen. Tell not men that you cannot bear the light : it is he that doth evil that hateth the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 9. Solitude is too like to death, to be desira- ble: he liveth that doth good; and he is dead that is useless. " Fivit is qui multis usui est: vivit is qui sentitur: qui vera latitant S)' torpetit, mortem suam antecesseritd ," inquit Sen. — " He liveth that is profitable to many : he liveth that is observed or perceived; but they that lie hid and drowsy do anticipate their death." And it is the most culpable death, and therefore the worst, to have life and not to use it. 10. A life of holy communion is likest unto heaven, where none shall be solitary, but all as members of the heavenly Jerusalem, shall in har- mony love and praise their maker. These reasons seem to me sufficient to satisfy you that no man should choose a solitude with- out a special necessity or call : nor yet should it 302 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. be taken for a life of greater perfection, than a faithful serving of God in public, and doing good to more. I shall now come to the affirmative, and tell you for all this, that If God call us into soli- tude, or men forsake us, v^e may rejoice in this, that we are not alone, but the Father is with us. Fear not such solitude, but be ready to improve it, if you be cast upon it. If God be your God, reconciled to you in Christ, and his Spirit be in you, you are provided for solitude, and need not fear if all the world should cast you off. If you be banished, imprisoned, or left alone, it is but a relaxation from your greatest labors; which though you may not cast off yourselves, you may lawfully be sensible of your ease, if God take oS your burden. It is but a cessation from your sharpest conflicts, and removal from a multitude of great temptations. And though you may not cowardly retreat or shift yourselves from the fight and danger, yet if God will dispense with you, and let you live in greater peace and safety, you have no cause to murmur at his dealing. A fruit tree that groweth by the high-way side, doth seldom keep its fruit to ripeness, while so many passengers have each his stone or cudgel to cast at it : Seneca could say " Nunqiiam a turha mores quos extuli refero : aliqnid ex eo quod composui turhatur ; aliqnid ex his qua fugavi redit : inimica est midtorum coiiversatio." " I never bring bring home well from a crowd the manners which Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 303 I took out with me : something is disordered of that which I had set in order : something of that which I had banished doth return : the conversation of many I find an enemy to me." O how many vain and foolish words corrupt the minds of those that converse with an ungodly world, when your ears and minds who live in solitude, are free from such temptations! You live not in so corrupt an air as they ; you hear not the filthy ribald speeches, which fight against modesty and chastity, and are the bellows of lust : you hear not the discontented complain- ing words of the impatient; nor the passionate provoking words of the offended; nor the wrangling quarrelsome words of the contentious ; nor the censorious, or slanderous, or reproachful words of the malicious, who think it their inte- rest to have their brethren taken to be bad, and to have others hate them, because they them- selves hate them; and who are as zealous to quench the charity of others, when it is destroyed in themselves, as holy persons are zealous to provoke others to love, which dwelleth and ruleth in themselves. In your solitude with God, you shall not hear the lies and malicious revilings of the ungodly against the generation of the just: nor the subtle cheating words of heretics, who being themselves deceived, would deceive others of their faith, and corrupt their lives. You shall jiot there be distracted with the noise and cla- mours of contending uncharitable professors of 304 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. religion, endeavouring to make odious first the opinions, and then the persons of one another : one saying, here is the church, and another^ there is the church : one saying, this is the true church government, and another saying, nay, but that is it : one saying, God will be worship- ped thus, and another, not so, but thus or thus : you shall not there be drawn to side with one ri gainst another, nor to join with any faction, or be guilty of divisions : you shall not be troubled with the oaths and blasphemies of the wicked^ nor with the imprudent miscarriages of the weak ; with the persecutions of enemies, or the falling out of friends : you shall not see the cruelty of proud oppressors, that set up lies by armed violence, and care not what they say or do, nor how much other men are injured or suffer, so that themselves may tyrannise, and their wills and words may rule the world, when they do so unhappily rule themselves. In your soli- tude with God, you shall not see the prosperity of the wicked to move you to envy, nor the adversity of the just to be your grief: you shall see no worldly pomp and splendour to befool you, nor adorned beauty to entice you, nor wasting calamities to afflict you : you shall not hear the laughter of fools, nor the sick man's groans, nor the wronged man's complaints, nor the poor man's murmurings, nor the proud man's boastings, nor the angry man's abusive ragings., xVs you lose the help of your gracious friends, sq Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 305 you are freed from the fruits of their peevishness and passions ; of their differing opinions and ways and tempers ; of their inequality, unsuit- ableness, and contrariety of minds or interests; of their levity and inconstancy, and the powerful temptations of their friendship, to draw you to the errors or other sins which they are tainted with themselves. In a word, you are there half delivered from the vanity and vexation of the world; and were it not that you are yet un- delivered from yourselves, and that you take distempered corrupted hearts with you, O what a felicity vvould your solitude be ! But, alas, we cannot overrun our own diseases, we must carry with us the remnants of our corrupted nature ; our deadness, and dulness, our selfishness and earthly minds, our impatience and discontents ; and worst of all, our lamentable weakness of faith and love and heavenly-mindedness, and our strangeness to God, and backwardness to the matters of eternal life. O that I coald escape these, though I were in the hands of the cruellest enemies ! O that such a heart could be left behind ! How gladly would I overrun both house, and land, and honor, and all sensual de- lights, that I might but overrun it ! O where is the place where there is none of thjs darkness, nor disaffection, nor distance, nor estrangedness from God! O that I knew it ! O that I could find it ! O that I mi^rht there dwell ! thoucrh I should never more see the fa,ce of mortals- ; nor s 3 306 Of Conversing ivith God in Solitude. ever hear a human voice, nor ever taste of the delights of flesh I Alas, foolish soul ! such a place there is, that hath all this and more than this : but it is not in a wilderness, but in para- dise, not here on earth, but above with Christ ! And yet am I so loth to die ? yet am I no more desirous of the blessed day, when 1 shall be unclothed of flesh and sin ? O death, what an enemy art thou even to my soul ! By affrighting me from the presence of my Lord, and hindering my desires and willingness to be gone, thou wrongest me much more, than by laying my flesh to rot in darkness. Fain I would know God, and fain I would more love him and enjoy him : but O this hurtful love of life ! O this imreasonable fear of dying, detaineth my desires from pressing on to the happy place where all this may be had ! O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death ! this carnal unbelieving heart, that sometime can think more delightfully of a wilderness than of heaven ; that can go seek after God in desert solitude, among the birds and beasts and trees, and yet is so backward to be loosed from flesh that I may find him and enjoy him in the world of glory I Can I expect that heaven come down to earth ! and that the Lord of glory should remove his court, and either leave the retinue of his celestial courtiers, or bring them all down into this drossy world of flesh and sin, and this to satisfy my fleshly foolish mind ! Or cau f Of Conversing zoith God in Solitude. 307 expect the translation of Enoch or the chariot of Elias ? Is it not enough that my Lord hath ' conquered death, and sanctified the passage, and prepared the place of my perpetual abode ! Well! for all this, though a wilderness is not heaven, it shall be sweet and welcome for the sake of heaven, if thence I may but have a clearer prospect of it: and if by retiring from the crowd and noise of folly I may but be more composed and better disposed to con- verse above, and to use my faith (alas ! my too weak languid faith) until the beatifical vision and fruition come. If there may be but more of God, or readier access to him, or more heart* quickening flames of love, or more heart-com- forting intimations of his favour, in a wilderness than in a city, in a prison than in a palace, let. ' that wilderness be my city, and let that prison be my palace, while I must abide on earth. If in solitude I may have Enoch's walk with God, I shall in due season have such a translation as shall bring me to the same felicity which he enjoyeth; and in the mean time as well as after, it is no incommodity, if by mortal eyes I be seen no more. If the chariot of contemplation will in solitude raise me to more believing affec- tionate converse with heaven, than I could expect in tumults and temptations, it shall reconcile me unto solitude, and make it my paradise on earth, till angels instead of the chariot of Elias, shall convey me to the pre- 308 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. sence of my glorified Head, in the celestial paradise. Object. But it is grievous to one that hath been used to much company, to be alone. Anstv. Company may so use you, that it may be more grievous to you not to be alone. The society of wasps and serpents may be spared ; and bees themselves have such stings as make some that have felt them think they bought the honey dear. But can you say you are alone while you are with God ? Is his presence nothing to you ? Doth it not signify more than the company of all men in the world? saith Hierome, ** Sapiens nunquam solus esse potest: habet enim seeum ormies (jui sunt, 8f qui fuerunt boni — ^ si hominum sit inopia, loquitur cum Deo^* viz. ** A wise man cannot be alone: for he hath with him the good men that are or have been— and if there be a want of men, he speaks with God." He should rather have said. There can be no want of man, when we may speak with God : and were it not that God is here revealed to us as in a glass, and that we do converse with God in man, we should think human converse little worth. Object. O but solitude is disconsolate to a sociable mind. A71S10. But the most desirable society is no solitude: saith Hierome, " Jnjinita eremi vastitas te terret? sed tu paradihim mente deambula :, quotiescun^ue cogitatione ac mente illuc conscm^ Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 309 deris, toties in ererno non eris ;" that is, " Doth the infinite vastness of the wilderness terrify thee ? But do thou (ascend) in mind and walk in paradise : as oft as thou ascendest thither in thouoht and mind, so oft thou shalt not be in the wilderness." If God be nothing to thee, thou art not a christian but an atheist. If God be God to thee, he is all in all to thee ; and then should not his presence be instead of all? O that I might get one step nearer unto God, though I receded many from all the world ! that I could find that place on earth where a soul may have nearest access unto him, and fullest knowledge and enjoyment of him, though 1 never more saw the face of friends ! I should cheerfully say, with my blessed Saviour, " I am not alone, for the Father is with me." And I should say so for these reasons following. 1. If God be with me, the maker, and ruler, and disposer of all is with me : so that all things are virtually with me in him. I have that in gold and jewels which I seem to want in silver, lead and dross. I can want no friend if God vouchsafe to be my friend ; and I can enjoy no benefit by all my friends, if God be my enemy : I need not fear the greatest enemies, if God be reconciled to me. I shall not miss the light of the candle, if I have this blessed sun. The creature is nothing but what it is from God, and in God : and it is worth nothing, or good for nothing, but what it is worth in order unto Godj 310 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. as it declareth him, and helps the soul to know him, serve him, or draw nearer to him. As it is idolatry in the unhappy worldling, to thirst alter the creature with the neglect of God, and so to make the world his God ; so doth it savour of the same heinous sin to lament our loss of crea- tures more than the displeasure of God. If God be my enemy, or I am fallen under his indignation, I have then so much greater matters to lament than the loss, or absence, or frowns of man, as should almost make me forget that there is such a thing as man to be regarded : but if God be my Father, and my fi'iend in Christ, I have then so much to think of with delight, and to recreate and content my soul, as will proclaim it most incongruous and absurd to lament inor- dinately the absence of a worm, while I have his love and presence who is all in all. If God can^ not content me, and be not enough for me, how is he then my God ; or how shall he be my heaven and everlasting happiness? 2. If God be with me, he is with me to whom I am absolutely devoted. I am wholly his, and have acknowledged his interest in me, and long ago disclaimed all usurpers, and repented of alienations, and unreservedly resigned myself to him : and where should I dwell but with him that is my owner, and with whom I have made the solemnest covenant that ever I made ? I never gave myself to any other, but in subordi- pation to him, and with a salvo for his highest Of Conversing xvith God in Solitude. 311 inviolable right. Where should my goods be but in my own house ? With whom should a servant dwell but with his master; and a wife but with her husband ; and children but with their father ? I am nearlier related to my God and to my Saviour, than I am to any of my rela- tions in this world, I owe more to him than to all the world : 1 have renounced all the world, as they stand in any competition or comparison with him : and can I want their company then while I am with him ? How shall I hate father and mother, and wife and children, and brother and sister for his sake, if I cannot spare them, or be Vv'ithout them to enjoy him? To hate them is but to use them as men do hated things, that is, to cast them away with contempt as they would alienate me from Christ, and to cleave to him, and be satisfied in him alone. I am now married to Christ, and therefore must cheerfully leave father and mother, and my native place, and ail to cleave to him : and with whom should 1 now delight to dwell, but with him who hath taken me into so near relation, to be, as it were, one flesh with him ! O my dear Lord, hide not thou thy face from an unkind an unworthy sinner! Let me but dwell with thee and see thy face, and feel the gracious embracements of thy love, and then let me be cast off by all the world, if thou see it meetest for me ; or let all other friends be where they will, so that ray soul may lie \vith thee. I have agreed for thy sake tQ 312 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. forsake all, even the dearest that shall stand against thee ; and I resolve by thy grace to stand to this agreement. 3. If God be with me I am not alone, for he is with me that loveth me best. The love of all the friends on earth is nothing to his love. O Jiow plainly hath he declared that he loveth me, in the strange condescension, the sufferings, death, and intercession of his Son ! What love hath he declared in the communications of his Spirit, and the operations of his grace, and the near relations into which he brought me ! What love hath he declared in the course of his pro- vidences ; in many and wonderful preservations, and deliverances ; in the conduct of his wisdom, and in a life of mercies ! What love appearelh in his precious promises, and the glorious pro- visions he hath made for me with himself ta all eternity ! O my Lord, I am ashamed that thy love is sa much lost ; that it hath no better return from an unkind unthankful heart; that I am not more delighted in thoe, and swallowed up in the contemplation of thy love ! I can contentedly let go the society and converse of all others, for the converse of some one bosom friend, that is dearer to me than they all, as Jonathan to David ; and can I not much more be satisfied in thee alone, and let go all if I may continue with thee ? My very dog will glssdly forsake all the town, and all persons, iji. the world, to follow me alone ; and have I laot yet Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 3L3 found so much love and goodness in thee my dear and blessed God, as to be willing to con- verse alone with thee ? All men delight most in the company of those that love them best : they choose not to converse with the multitude when they look for solace and content, but with their dearest friends : and should any be so dear to me as God? O were not thy love unworthily neglected by an unthankful heart, I should never \ be so unsatisfied in thee, but should take up, or seek my comforts in thee : I should then say, whom have I in heaven but thee, and there is none on earth that I desire besides thee ! Though not only my friends, but my flesh and heart themselves should fail me, it is thou tliat wiJl still be the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever: it is good therefore for me to draw near to thee, how far soever I am from man : O let me there dwell where thou wilt not be strange, for thy loving kindness is better than life : instead of the multitude of my turmoiling thoughts, let me be taken up in the believing views of thy reconciled face, and in the glad attendance upon thy grace : or at least in the multitude of my thoughts within me, let thy celestial comforts delight my soul. Let me dv-/e\\ as in thy family ; and when I awake, let me be still with thee ! Let me go no whither but where I am still following thee : let me do nothing but thy work, nor serve any other but when I may truly cull it a serving thee : let nSQ 1^4 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. hear nothing but thy voice, and let me know thy voice by whatever instrument thou shalt speak; let me never see any thing but thyself and the glass that representeth thee, and the books in which I may read thy name : and let me never play with the outside, and gaze on words and letters as insignificant, and not observe thy name which is the sense. Whether it be in company or in solitude, let me be continually with thee : and do thou vouchsafe to hold me by my right hand : and guide me with thy counsel, and after- wards receive me unto thy glory. Ps. Ixxiii. 23,-28. Ps. Ixiii. 3. 4. If God be with me I am not alone ; for 1 shall be with him whose love is of greater use and benefit to me, than the love of all my friends in the world. Their love may perhaps be some little comfort, as it floweth from his : but it is iiis love by which and upon which I live. It is his love that gives me life and time, and health and food, and preservation ; that gives me books and giveth me understanding ; that giveth me provision, and saveth me from turning it to per- nicious fleshliness and excess ; that giveth me even my friends themselves, and saveth me from that abuse which might make them to me worse than enemies. The sun, the earth, the air is not so useful or needful to me as his love. The love of all my friends cannot make me well when I am sick : it cannot forgive the smallest of my sins ; nor yet assure me of God's forgiveness : Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 315 it cannot heal the maladies of my soul, nor give a sohd lasting peace to the conscience which is troubled : if all my friends stand about me when I am dying, they cannot take away the fears of death, nor secure my passage to everlasting life : death will be death still, and danger will be dan- ger, when all my friends have done their best. But my Almighty friend is all-sufficient: he can prevent my sickness, or rebuke and cure it, or make it so good to me, that I shall thank him for it : he can blot out my transgressions, and forgive all my sin ; and justify me when the world and ray conscience do condemn me : he can teach me to believe, to repent, to pray, to hope, to suffer, and to overcome : he can quiet my soul in the midst of trouble, and give me a well-grounded everlasting peace, and a joy which no man can take from me : he can deliver me from all the corruptions and distempers of my froward heart ; and ease me and secure me in the troublesome war which is daily managed in my breast : he can make it as easy a thing to die, as to lie down and take my rest when I am weary, or to undress me at night and go to bed : he can teach death to lay by its; terrible aspect, and to speak with a mild and comfortable voice, and to bring me the joyfullest tidings that ever came into my ears ; and to preach to me the last and sweetest sermon, even the same that our Saviour preached on the cross, Luke xxiii. 43, 316 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. " Verily I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with Christ in paradise." And is this the difference between the love of man and of God ? And yet do I lament the loss of man ! and yet am I so backward to converse with God, and to be satisfied in his love alone! Ah! my God, how justly mayest thou withhold that love which I thus under- value, and refuse that converse which I have first refused, and turn me over to man, to silly man, to sinful man, whose converse I so much desire, till I have learnt by dear experience the difference between man and God, and between an earthly and an heavenly friend ! Alas, have I not tried it oft enough, to have known it better before this day ! Have I not oft enough found what man is in a time of trial ! Have I not been told it over and over, and told it to the quick, by deceitful friends; by self-seeking friends; by mutable, erroneous, deceived, scandalous, back- sliding friends; by proud and self-conceited friends; by passionate, quarrelsome, vexatious friends; by self-grieving troubled friends, that have but brought me all their calamities and griefs to be additions to my own; by tempting friends, that have drawn me to sin more effectu- ally than enemies ; by tender, faithful, but unable friends, that have but fetched fire from my calamities and sorrows to kindle their own, not equally sharing, but each one taking all Of Conversing with God in Solilude. 317 my trouble entirely to himself; that have been willing, but insufficient to relieve me, and there- fore the ejreater was their love, the greater was their own and consequently mine affliction; that v.'ould have been with me, but could not; that would fain have eased my pain and strengthened my languishing body, but could not; that would fain have removed all my troubles and comforted my cast down mind, but could not. O how often have I found that human friendship is a sweet desired addition to our woe; a beloved calamity, and an affliction which nature will not be without ; not because it loveth evil, nor because it is wholly deceived in its choice, (for there is good in friendship, and delight in holy love) but because the good which is here accom- panied with so much evil, is the beginning of a more high and durable friendship, and pointeth us up to the blessed delightful society and con- verse which in the heavenly Jerusalem we shall have with Christ ! But O how much better have I found the friendship of the all-sufficient God ! His love hath not only pitied me, but relieved me : he hath not only been as it were afflicted with me in my afflictions, but he hath delivered me sea- sonably, and powerfully, and sweetly hath he delivered me: and when he had once told me that my afflictions were his own, I had no reason to doubt of a deliverance. My burdened mind hath been eased by his love, which was 318 Of Conversing with God in Solitude, but more burdened by the fruitless love of all my friends. Oft have I come to man for help, and ease, and comfort, and gone away as from au empty cistern, that had no water to cool my thirst; but God hath been a present help : could I but get near him, I was sure of light, how great soever was my former darkness : could I but get near him, I was sure of warming quickening life, how dead soever I had beea before : but all my misery was that I could not get near him ! My darkened, estranged, guilty soul, could not get quieting and satisfying acquaintance: my lumpish heart lay dead on earth, and would not stir, or quickly fell down again, if by any celestial force it began to be drawn up, and move a little towards him : my carnal mind was entangled in diverting vanities: and thus 1 have been kept from communion with my God. Kept, not by force or human tyranny, not by bars or bolts, or distance of place, or by the lowness of my condition ; nor by any misrepresentations or reproach of man; but, alas ! by myself, by the darkness, and deadness, and sluggishness, and earthliness, and fleshliness, and passions of a naughty heart. These have been my bars, and bolts, and jailers : these are they that have kept me from my God. Had it not been for these I might have got nearer to him; I might have walked with him, and dwelt with him ; yea, dwelt in him, and he in me : apd then I should Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 319 not have missed any friends, nor felt mine ene- mies. And is it my sinful distance from my God that hath been my h ss, my wilderness, my woe! And is it a nearer admittance to the presence of his love that must be my recovery and my joy, if ever I attain to joy! O then, my soul, lay hold on Christ the reconciler, and in him and by him draw near to God; and cease from man whose breath is in his nostrils ! Love God in his saints, and delightfully converse with Christ in them, while thou hast opportunity ; but remember thou livest not upon them, or on their love, but upon God : and therefore desire their company but for his: and if thou have his, be content if thou have not their's. He wants not man that enjoyeth God. Gather up all the love, and thoughts, and desires, which have been scattered and lost upon the creatures, and set them all on God himself, and press into his presence, and converse with him, and thou shalt find the mistake of thy present discontents, and sweet experience shall tell thee thou hast made a happy change. 5. If God be with me, I am not alone, because he is with me with whom my greatest business lieth: and what company should I desire, but their's with whom I have ray daily necessary work to do? I have more to do with God, than with all the world : yea, more and greater busi- ness with him in one day, than with all the world in all my life. I have business with man 320 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. about house, or lands, or food, or raiment, or labor, or journeying, or recreations ; about society and public peace; but what are these to my business with God ! Indeed, with holy men I have holy business; but that is but as they are messengers from God, and come to me on his business, and so they must be dearly welcome : but even then my business is much more with God than with them ; with him that sent them, than with the messenger. Indeed, my business with God is so great, that if I had not a mediator to encourage and assist me to do my work, and procure me acceptance, the thoughts of it would overwhelm my soul. O therefore, my soul, let man stand by : it is the eternal God that I have to do with ; and with wbom I am to transact in this little time the business of my endless life. I have to deal with God through Christ, for the pardon of my sins, of all my great and grievous sins ; and woe to me, if I speed not, that ever I was born : I have some hopes of pardon, but intermixed with many perplexing fears : I have evidences much blotted, and not easily understood : I want assurance that he is indeed my Father, and reconciled to me, and will receive me to himself when the world forsaketh me: I have many languishing graces to be strengthened; and alas, what radicated, obstinate, vexatious corruptions to be cured! Can I look into my heart, into such an unbelieving, dead, and earthly heart. Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 32 1 into such a proud, and peevish, and disordered heart, into such a trembhng, perplexed, self- accusing heart, and yet not understand how great my business is with God ? Can I peruse my sins, or feel my wants, and sink under my weaknesses, and yet not discern how great my business is with God? Can I look back upon all the time that I have lost, and all the grace that I unthankfully resisted, and all the mercies that I trod under foot, or fooled away, and can I look before me and see how near my time is to an end, and yet not understand how great my business is with God ? Can I think of the malice and diligence of Satan, the number, power and subtlety of mine enemies, the many snares and dangers that are still before me, the strensth and number of temptations, and my ignorance, unwatchfulness and weakness to resist, and yet not know that my greatest business is with God ? Can I feel my afflictions and lament them, and think my burden greater than I can bear, and find that man cannot relieve me ; can I go mourning in the heaviness of my soul, and water my bed with tears, and fill the air with my groans and lamentations, or feel my soul over- whelmed within me, so that my words are inter- cepted, and I am readier to break than speak, and yet not perceive that my greatest business is with God? Can I think of dying; can I draw near to judgment; can I think of ever- lasting joys in heaven, and of everlasting pains in VOL. II. T 322 Of Conversing zoith God in Solitude. hell, and yet not feel that my greatest business is with God? O then, my soul, the case is easily resolved, with whom it is that thou must most desirously and seriously converse. Where shouldst thou be but where thy business is, and so great business ! Alas, what have I to do with man 1 What can it do but make my head ache, to hear a deal of senseless chat, about preferments, lands and dionities ; about the words and thoughts of men, and a thousand toys that are utterly imper- tinent to my great employments, and signify nothing but that the dreaming v/orld is not awake ! What pleasure is it to see the bustles of a bedlam world ? What a stir they make to prove or make themselves unhappy ! How low and of how little weight, are the learned discourses about syllables and words, and names and notions, and mood and figure, yea or about the highest planets, when all are not referred unto God ! Were it not that some converse with men, doth further my converse with God ; and that God did transact much of his business by his messengers and servants, it were no matter whe- ther ever I more saw the face of man : were it not that my Master hath placed me in society, and appointed me much of my work for others, and with others, and much of his mercy is con- veyed by others, man might stand by, and soli- tude were better than the best society, and God alone should take me up. O nothing is so much my misery and shame, as that I am no more Of Convening with God in Solitude. 323 willing, nor better skilled in the management of my great important business \ that my work is with God, and my heart is no more with him! what might I do in holy meditation, or prayer one hour, if I were as ready for prayer, and as good at prayer, as one that hath so long oppor- tunity and so great necessity to converse with God, should be ! A prayerless heart, a heart that flieth away from God, is most inexcusable in such a one as I, that hath so much important business with him: it is work that must be done; and if well done, will never be repented of. I use not to return from the presence of God (when indeed I have drawn near him) as I do from the company of empty men, repenting that I have lost my time, and trembled that my mind is dis- composed or depressed by the vanity and earthly savour of their discourse : I oft repent that I have prayed to him so coldly, and conversed with him so negligently, and served him so remissly; but I never repent of the time, the care, the affections or the diligence employed in his holy work. Many a time I have repented that ever I spent so much time with man; and wished 1 had never seen the faces of some that are eminent in the world, whose favor and converse others are ambitious of: but it is my grief and shame that so small a part of all my life, hath been spent with God ; and that fervent prayer and heavenly contemplations, have been so sel- dom and so short. O that I had lived more with t2 324 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. Cod, though I had been less with the dearest of my friends ! How much more sweet then would my life have been ! How much more blameless, regular and pure ! How much more fruitful, and answerable to my obligations and professions !■ How much more comfortable to my review ! How many falls, and hurts, and wounds, and l^riefs, and groans might I have escaped ! O how much more pleasing is it now to nty remem- brance, to think of the hours in which I have lain at the feet of God, though it were in tears and groans, than to think of the time which I have spent in any common converse with the greatest, or the learnedst, or the dearest of my acquaintance ! And as my greatest business is with God, so my daily business is also with him : he purposely leaveth me under wants, and suffers necessities daily to return, and enemies to assault me, and affliction to surprise me, that I may be daily driven to him : he loveth to hear from me : he would have me be no stranger with him : I have business with him every hour: I need not want employment for all the faculties of my soul, if I know what it is to converse in heaven. Even ]n-ayer, and every holy thought of God, hath an object so great and excellent, as should wholly take me up. Nothing must be thought or spoken lightly about the Lord : his name must not be taken in vain: nothing that is common beseem- ctli his worshippers. He will be sanctified of Of Convening with God in Solitude. 325 ail that shall draw near hmi: he must be loved with all the heart and might : his servants need not be wearied for want of employment, nor through the lightness or unprofitableness of then- employment. If I had cities to build, or king- doms to govern, I might better complain for want of employment for the faculties of my soul, than I can when I am to converse in heaven. In other studies the delight abateth when I have reached my desire, and know all that I can know; but in God there is infinitely more to be known when I know the most. I am never satiated with the easiness of knowing, nor are my desires abated by any unusefulness or unwor- thiness in the object ; but I am drawn to it by its highest excellencies, and drawn on to desire more and more by the infiniteness of the light which I have not yet beheld, and the infiniteness of the good which yet I have not enjoyed. If I be idle, or seem to want employment when I am to contemplate all the attributes, relations, mercies, works, and revealed perfections of the Lord, it is sure for want of eyes to see, or a heart inclined to my business. If God be not enouo-h to employ my soul, then all the persons and things on earth are not enough. And when I have infinite goodness to delight in, where my soul may freely let out itself, and never need to fear excess of love, how sweet should this employment be ! As knowledge, so love is never stinted here, by the narrowness of 326 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. the object : we can never love him in any pvO" portion either to his goodness and amiablenesi* in himself, or to his love to us. What need have I then of any other company or business, when I have infinite o-oodness to deli populus pro inio : mihi satis est umts, satis est nullus." — " One is instead of all the people to me, and the people as one: one is enough for me, and none is enough." Thus being taken up with God, thou mightest live in prison as at liberty, and in a wilderness as in a city, and in a place of banishment as in thy native land : for the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof: and everywhere thou mayest find him, and converse with him, and lift up pure hands unto him. In every place thou art within the sight of home ; and heaven is in thine eye, and thou art conversing with that God, in whose converse the highest angels do place their highest felicity and delight. How little cause then have all the church's enemies to triumph, that can never shut up a true believer from the presence of his God, nov Of Convening with God in Solitude. 345 banish him into such a place where he cannot have his conversation in heaven ! The stones that were cast at holy Stephen, could not hinder him from seeing the heavens opened, and Christ sitting at the right hand of God. A Patmos allowed holy John communion with Christ, being there in the spirit on the Lord's day. Rev. i. 9. 10. Christ never so speedily and comfortably owneth his servants, as when the world disowneth them, and abuseth them for his sake, and hurls them up and down as the scorn and off-scouring of all. He quickly found the blind man that he had cured, when once the jews had cast him out. John ix. 35. Persecutors do but promote the blessedness and exceeding joy of sufferers for Christ. Matt. V. 11, 12. And how little reason then have christians, to shun such sufferings, by unlawful means, which turn to their so great advantage ; and to give so dear as the hazard of their souls by wilful sin, to escape the honor, and safety, and commodity of martyrdom ! And indeed we judge not, we love not, we live not as sanctified ones must do, if we judge not that the truest liberty, and love it not as the best condition, in which we may best converse with God. And O how much harder is it to walk with God, in a court, in the midst of sen- sual delights, than in a prison or wilderness where we have none to interrupt us, and nothing VOL. II. u 346 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. else to take us up ! It is our prepossessed minds, our earthly hearts, our carnal affections and concupiscence, and the pleasures of a prosperous state that are the prison and the jailors of our souls. Were it not for these, how free should we be, though our bodies were confined to the straightest room ! He is at liberty that can walk in heaven, and have access to God, and make use of all the creatures in the world, to the pro- moting of this his heavenly conversation : and he is the prisoner whose soul is chained to flesh and earth, and confined to his lands and houses, and feedeth on the dust of worldly riches, or walloweth in the dung and filth of gluttony, drunkenness and lust : that are far from God and desire not to be near him ; but say to him, depart from us, we would not have the know- ledge of thy ways : that love their prison and chains so well, that they would not be set free, but hate those with the cruellest hatred that endeavour their deliverance. Those are the poor prisoners of Satan, that have not liberty to believe, nor to love God, nor converse in heaven, nor seriously to mind or seek the things that are high and honorable : that have not liberty to meditate or pray, or seriously to speak of holy things, nor to love and converse with those that do so : that are tied so hard to the drudgery of sin, that they have not liberty one month, or week, or day, to leave it, and walk with God so much as for a recreation ! But he that liveth in Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 347 the family of God, and is employed in attending him, and doth converse with Christ, and the host of holy ones above, in reason should not much complain of his want of friends, or company or accommodations, nor yet be too impatient of any corporal confinement. Lastly, be sure then most narrowly to watch your hearts, that nothing have entertainment there, which is against your liberty of converse with God. Fill not those hearts with worldly trash, which are made and new-made to be the dwelling-place of God. Desire not the company which would diminish your heavenly acquaint- ance and correspondency. Be not unfriendly, nor conceited of a self-sufficiency ; but yet "beware lest under the honest ingenuous title of a friend, a special, faithful, prudent friend, you should entertain an idol, or an enemy to your love of God, or a corrival and competitor with your highest friend : for if you do, it is not the specious title of a friend that will save you from the thorns and briars of disquietment, and from greater troubles than ever you found from open enemies. O blessed be that high and everlasting friend, who is every way suited to the upright souls ! To their minds, their memories, their delight, their love, &c. by surest truth, by fullest good- ness, by clearest light, by dearest love, by firmest constancy, &c. O why hath my drowsy and dark-sighted soul been so seldom u 2 348 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. with him ! Why hath it so often, so strangely, and so unthankfully passed by, and not observed liim, nor hearkened to his kindest calls ! O what is all this trash and trouble that hath filled my memory, and employed my mind, and cheated and corrupted my affections, while my dearest Lord hath been days and nights so unworthily forgotten, so contemptuously neglected and disregarded, and loved as if I loved him not ! O that these drowsy and those waking nights, those loitered, lost, and empty hours had been spent in the humblest converse with him, which have been dreamed and doted away upon BOW I know not what ! O my God, how much wiser and happier had I been, had I rather chosen to mourn with thee, than to rejoice and sport with any other ! O that I had rather wept with thee, than laughed with the creature ! For the time to come let that be my friend, that most befriendeth my dark, and dull, and backward soul, in its undertaken progress, and heavenly conversation ! Or if there be none such upon earth, let me here take no one for my friend ! blot out every name from my corrupted heart, which hindereth the deeper engraving of thy name ! Ah ! Lord, what a stone, what a blind ungrateful thing, is a heart not touched with celestial love ! Yet shall I not run to thee, when 1 have none else that will know me ! Shall I not draw near thee, when all fly from me ! When daily experience crieth out so loud " none Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 349 BUT CHRIST: GOD OH N OTHING." Ah foolisll heart, that hast thought oft.— Where is that place, that cave or desert, where I might soonest find thee, and fullest enjoy thee ? Is it in the wilderness that thou walkest, or in the crowd : in the closet, or in the church ? Where is it that I might soonest meet with God? But alas, I now perceive, that I have a heart to fmd, before I am like to find my Lord ! O loveless, lifeless, stony heart ; that is dead to him that gave it life, and to none but him ! Could I not love, or think, or feel at all, raethinks I were less dead than now ! Less dead, if dead, than now I aui alive ! I had almost said— Loni, let me iiever love more till I can love thee ; nor think more on any thing till I can more willingly think of thee ! But I must suppress that wish ; for life will act : and the mercies and motions of nature are necessary to those of grace. And therefore in the hfe of nature, and in the glimmerings of thy light, I will wait for more of the celestial life. My God, thou hast my consenti It is here attested under my hand : separate me from whst and whom thou wilt so I may but be nearer thee ! Let me love thee more, and feel more of thy love, and then let me love or be beloved of the world, as little as thou wilt. I thought self-love had been a more predomi- nant thing : but now I find that repentance hat!i its anger, its hatred, and its revenge ! I am truly ano-ry with that heart that hath so oft ancl V 3 350 Of Conversing with God in Solitude'. foolishly offended tliee ! Methinlcs I hate that heart that is so cold and backward in thy love, and almost grudge it a dwelling in my breast ! Alas, when love should be the life of prayer, the life of holy meditation, the life of sermons anci of holy conference, and my soul in these should long to meet thee, and delight to mention thee, I straggle Lord, I know not whither; or I sit still and wish, but do not rise and run and follow thee; yea, I do not what I seem to do ! Ail is dead, all is dead, for want of love ! 1 often cry, O where is that place, where the quickening beams of heaven are warmest, that my frozen soul might seek it out! 13ut whither ever I go, to city or to solitude, alas, I find it is not place that makes the difference. I know that Christ is perfectly replenished with life and light and love divine; and I hear him as our head and treasure proclaimed and offered to us in the gospel ! This is thy record. That he that hath the Son hath life! O vvhy then is ray barren soul so empty ! I thought I had long ago consented to thy offer; and then according to thy cove- nant, both he and life in him are mine ! And yet must I still be dark and dead ! Ah ! dearest Lord, I say not that I have too long waited ; but if I continue thus to wait, wilt thou never find the time of love ; and come and own thy gasping worm? Wilt thou never dissi- ' pate these clouds, and shine upon this dead and darkened soul? Hath my night no day ? Thrust Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 351 me not from thee O my God : for that is a liell, to be thrust from God ! But sure the cause is ail at home, could I find it out, or rather could I cure it ! It is sure my face that is turned from God, when I say, his face is turned from me. But if my life must here be out of sight, and hidden in the root (with Christ in God,) and if all the rest be reserved for that better world, and I must here have but these small beginnings, O make me more to love and long for the blessed day of thine appearing, and not to fear the time of my deliverance, nor unbelievingly to linger in this Sodom, as one that had rather stay with sin, than come to thee ! Though sin hath made me backward to the fight, let it not make me backward to receive the crown : though it hath made me a loiterer in thy work, let it not make me backward to receive that wages, which thy love will give to our pardoned, poor, accepted Bervices. Though I have too oft drawn back, when I should have come unto thee, and walked with thee in thy ways of grace, yet heal that unbelief, and disaffection, which would make me to draw back, when thou callest me to possess thy glory. Though the sickness and lameness of my soul have hindered me in my iourney, yet let their painfulness help me to desire to be delivered from them and to be at home, where (without the interposing nights of thy displeasure) I shall fully feel thy fullest love, and walk with thy glorified ones in the 352 Of Conversing with God in Solitude. light of thy glory, triumphing in thy praise for evermore. Amen. But now I have given you these few directions for the improvement of your solitude for con- verse with God ; — lest I should occasion the hurt of those that are unfit for the lesson I have given, I must conclude with this caution (which I have formerly also published,) that it is not melancholy or weak-headed persons, who are not able to bear such exercises, for whom I have written these directions. Those that are not able to be much in serious solitary thoughtful- ness, without confusions and distracting sugges- tions, and hurrying vexatious thoughts, must set themselves for the most part to those duties which are to be done in company by the help of others; and must be very little in solitary duties : for to them whose natural faculties are so diseased or weak, it is no duty, as being no means to do them the desired good ; but while they strive to do that which they are naturally unable to endure, they will but confound and distract themselves, and make themselves unable for those other duties which yet they are not utterly unfit for. To such persons therefore instead of ordered, well digested meditations, and much time spent in secret thoughtfulness, it must suffice tliat they be brief in secret prayer. Of Conversing with God in Solitude. 353 and take up with such occasional abrupter medi- tations as they are capable of, and that they be the more in reading, hearing, conference, and praying and praising God with others : until their melancholy distempers are so far over- come, as that (by the direction of their spiritual guides) they may judge themselves fit for this improvement of their solitude. FINIS. Printed by T, Davis, 106, Minories. .1, ll, .1. " -^-rf^- .-• 4_"'*.,*>/ 't- 'i^ \^^ \ ■Mm -*' >^ m Si , J •^1 so ass PUBLISH ED "^^jl^D SOLD ;v ^. OWEN, 13, LITTtE BELL BACK OF THE DANK. £ S. 32 U 7 Baxter's Bivme Life, 2 vols, Saart on Prematura Interment, ! ^ .-. 8vo. 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