Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

prevail against the Spirit of Christ, and the workings of an enlightened mind, then what man could be saved? You deserve damnation, if you will run into it to avoid a mock, or the loss of any thing that man can take from you. You are unmeet for heaven, if you can part with it to save your purses. "Fear not them that can kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do; but fear him that can destroy both soul and body in hell." Obey God, though all the world forbid you. No power can save you from his justice: and none of them can deprive you of his reward. Though you lose your heads, you shall save your crowns; you no way save your lives so certainly, as by such losing them. "One thing is necessary f;" do that with speed, and care, and diligence, which must be done, or you are lost for ever. They that are now against your much and earnest praying, will shortly cry as loud themselves in vain. When it is too late, how fervently will they beg for mercy, that now deride you for valuing and seeking it in time! But "then they shall call upon God, but he will not answer; they shall seek him early, but shall not find him: for that they hated knowledge, and did not choose the fear of the Lord: they would none of his counsel, but despised all his reproof "."

Up therefore and work with all thy might. Let unbelievers trifle, that know not that the righteous God stands over them, and know not that they are now to work for everlasting, and know not that heaven or hell is at the end. Let them delay, and laugh, and play, and dream away their time, that are drunk with prosperity, and mad with fleshly lusts and pleasures, and have lost their reason in the cares, and delusions, and vainglory of the world. But shall it be so with thee whose eyes are opened, who seest the God, the heaven, the hell, which they do but hear of as unlikely things? Wilt thou live awake, as they that are asleep? Wilt thou do in the daylight, as they do in the dark? Shall freemen live as satan's slaves? Shall the living lie as still and useless as the dead? "Work then while it is day, for the night is coming when none can work "."

It is not the works of the Mosaical law, nor works that are conceited for their proper value to deserve any thing at Prov. i. 24 to the end. h John ix. 4.

e Matt. x. 28. f Matt. x. 39.

the hands of God, that I am all this while persuading you to: but it is the works prescribed you by Christ in the Gospel, according to which you shall be shortly judged to joy or misery, by Christ himself, that will call you to account. These must be done with all your might.

Object. But (you will say perhaps) alas, what might have we? We have no sufficiency of ourselves; without Christ we can do nothing! And this we find when it comes to the trial.'

Answ. 1. It is not a might that is originally thine own, that I am calling thee to exercise; but that which thou hast already received from God, and that which he is ready to bestow. Use well but all the might thou hast, and thou shalt find thy labour is not vain. Even the strength of nature, and of common grace, are talents which thou must improve.

2. Art thou willing to use the might thou hast, and to have more, and use it if thou hadst it? If thou art, thou hast then the strength of Christ: thou standest not, and workest not by thy own strength; his promise is engaged to thee, and his strength is sufficient for thee. But if thou art not willing, thou art without excuse; when thou hadst heaven and hell set open in the word of God to make thee willing, God will distinguish thy wilfulness from unwilling weakness.

3. There is more power in all of you than you use, or than you are well aware of. It wanteth but awakening to bring it into act. Do you not find in your repentings, that the change is more in your will than in your power? and in the awaking of your will and reason into act, than in the addition of mere abilities? and that therefore you befool yourselves for your sins and your neglects, and wonder that you had no more use of your understandings? Let but a storm at sea, or violent sickness, or approaching death, rouse up and waken the powers which you have, and you will find there was much more asleep in you than you used.

I shall therefore next endeavour to awaken your abilities, or tell you how you should awaken them.

When your souls are drowsy, and you are forgetting your God, and your latter end, and matters of eternity have little force and favour with you; when you grow lazy and

superficial, and religion seems a lifeless thing, and you do your duty as if it were in vain, or against your wills; when you can lose your time, and delay repentance; and friends, and profit, and reputation, and pleasure, can be heard against the word of God, and take you off; when you do all by the halves, and languish in your Christian course, as near to death; stir up your souls with the urgency of such questions as these?

[ocr errors]

Quest 1. Can I do no more than this for God? Who gave me all? Who deserveth all? Who seeth me in my duties and my sins? When he puts me purposely on the trial, what I can do for his sake and service, can I do no

more? Can I love him no more? And obey, and watch, and work no more? Quest. 2.

Can I do no more than this for Christ?' For him that did so much for me? that lived so exactly; obeyed so perfectly; walked so inoffensively and meekly; despising all the baits, and honours, and riches of the world? That loved me to the death; and offered me freely all his benefits, and would bring me to eternal glory? Are these careless, cold and dull endeavours my best return for all this mercy?

Quest. 3. ‘Can I do no more, when my salvation is the prize?' When heaven or hell depend much on it? When I know this beforehand, and may see in the glass of the Holy Scriptures what is prepared for the diligent and the negligent, and what work there is and will be for ever in heaven and hell on these accounts? Could I not do more, if my house were on fire, or my estate, or life, or friend in danger, than I do for my salvation?

Quest. 4. 'Can I do no more for the souls of men?' When they are undone for ever if they be not speedily delivered? Is this my love and compassion to my neighbour, my servant, friend or child?

[ocr errors]

Quest. 5. Can I do no more for the church of God?' For the public good? For the peace and welfare of the nation and our posterity? In suppressing sin? In praying for deliverance? Or in promoting works of public benefit?

Quest. 6. Can I do no more, that have loitered so long?' And go no faster, that have slept till the evening of my days, when diligence must be the discovery of my repentance?

[ocr errors]

Quest. 7. Can I do no more, that know not now but I am doing my last?' That see how fast my time makes haste, and know I must be quickly gone? That know it must be now or never; and that this is all the time I shall have, on which an endless life dependeth?

Quest. 8. Can I do no better, when I know beforehand, what different aspects diligence and negligence will have, to the awakened soul in the review?' What a comfort it will be at death and judgment, to be able to say, 'I did my best, or loitered not away the time I had?' And what a vexatious, and heart-disquieting thing it will then be, to look back on time as irrecoverably lost, and on a life of trial, as cast away upon impertinencies, while the work that we lived for lay undone? Shall I now by trifling prepare such griping and tormenting thoughts, for my awakened conscience?

[ocr errors]

Quest. 9. Can I do no more, when I am sure I cannot do too much, and am sure there is nothing else to be preferred?' And that it is this I live for; and that life is for action, and disposeth thereunto, (and holy life for holy action): and that it is better not live, than not attain the ends of living; when I have so many and unwearied enemies; when sloth is my danger, and the advantage of my enemy; when I know that resolution and vigorous diligence, is so necessary that all is lost without it? Will temptations be resisted, and self denied, and concupiscence mortified, and fleshly desires tamed and subdued, and sin cast out, and a holy communion with heaven maintained with idleness and sloth? Will families be well ordered, and church, or city, or countries be well governed? Will the careless sinners that I am bound to help, be converted and saved, with sitting still, and with some heartless, cold endeavours?

Quest. 10. Can I do no more that have so much help?' That have mercies of all sorts encouraging me, and creatures attending me; that have health to enable me, or affliction to remember and excite me, that have such a master, such a work, such a reward, as better cannot be desired; who is less excusable for neglect than I?

[ocr errors]

Quest. 11. Could I do no more, if I were sure, that my salvation lay on this one duty?' That according to this prayer, it should go with me for ever; or if the soul of my child, or servant, or neighbour must speed for ever, as my

endeavours speed with them now for their conversion? for aught I know it may be thus.

Quest. 12. Would I have God to come with the spur and rod?' How do I complain when affliction is upon me? And will I neither endure it, nor be quickened without it? Is it not better mend my pace and work, on easier terms?

I would not have distressed souls to use these considerations merely to disquiet themselves for their infirmities, and so live in heaviness and self-vexation, because they cannot be so good as they desire, or do as much and as well as they should do it is not despair that will mend the matter, but make it worse. But I would wish the lazy, slothful soul, to plead these Questions with itself, and try whether they have no quickening power, if closely urged, and seriously considered.

Believe it, sirs, it is the deceitfulness of prosperity that keeps up the reputation of a slothful life, and makes holy diligence seem unnecessary. When affliction comes, awakened reason is ashamed of this, and seeth it as an odious thing.

By this time you may see, what difference there is between the judgment of God, and of the world, and what to think of the understandings of those men (be they high or low, learned or unlearned) that hate or oppose this holy diligence. God bids us love, and seek, and serve him, with all our heart, and soul, and might: and these men call them Zealots, and Precisians, and Puritans, that endeavour it ; though, alas, they fall exceeding short, when they have done their best. It is one of the most wonderful monstrosities and deformities that ever befel the nature of man, that men, that learned men, that men that in other things are wise, should seriously think that the utmost diligence to obey the Lord and save our souls, is needless, and that ever they should take it for a crime, and make it a matter of reproach: that the serious, diligent obeying of God's laws, should be the matter of the common disdain and hatred of the world; that no men are more generally abhorred, and tossed up and down by impatient men; that great and small, the rulers and vulgar rabble, in most places of the earth cannot endure them. To think how the first man that ever was born into

« AnteriorContinua »