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And so the case lieth plain before you. 1. If it be not only your affections that are dull, but your will through sloth is unresolved; and this not only in a temptation to the abatement of some degrees, and the neglect of some particular duty, but against a holy life, and against the forsaking of your reigning sin; and this be not only through some bodily distemper, disabling your reason, but from this vicious habit of your wills; then is your sloth a mortal sign, and proves you in a graceless state; but if the sloth which complain of be only dulness of your affections, and the backwardness of your wills to some high degrees, or parti cular duties, and the effect of some bodily distemper, or the weakness of your spiritual life, while your wills are habitually resolved for God and a holy life, against a worldly, fleshly life: this is your infirmity, and a sin to be lamented, but not a mark of death and gracelessness.

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You will have a backward, slothful heart to strive with while you live; but bless God that you are offended with it, and would fain be delivered from it. This was Paul's evidence, Rom. vii. 24. You will have flesh, and flesh will plead for its interest, and will be striving against the Spirit ; but bless God that you have also the Spirit to strive against the flesh. Be thankful that you have life to feel your sickness, though you languish under it, and cannot work as healthful men; and that you are in the way to heaven, though you go not so fast as you should and would.

2. But yet though you have life, it is so grievous to be diseased and languish under such an infirmity as sloth, that I advise you to stir up yourselves to the utmost, and give not way to a lazy temper; and that you may serve the Lord with all your might, I recommend these few Directions to your observation.

Direct. 1. When you would be quickened up to serious→ ness and diligence, have ready at hand such quickening considerations as are here before propounded to you; and set them before you, and labour to work them upon your hearts. Powerful truths would have some power upon your souls, if you will but soberly apply your reason to them, and plead them with yourselves, as you would do with another in any of your reproofs or exhortations.

Direct. 2. Take heed lest any worldly design or interest, or any lusts or sensual delight, divert your minds from God and duty.' For all the powers of your soul will languish, when you should set them on work on spiritual things, and your hearts will be abroad, when you should be wholly taken up with God, if once they be entangled with worldly things. Watch therefore over them in your callings, lest the creature steal too deep into your affections: for if you be alive to the world, you will be in that measure dead to God.

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Direct. 3. If it be possible, live under a lively ministry, that when your hearts go cold and dull unto the assemblies, they may come warm and quickened home.' Life cherisheth life as fire kindleth fire. The word and ordinances of God" are quick, powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart';" and therefore it may do much to make you feel. Many a thousand hath it pricked at the heart, and sent them home alive, that before were deads. Much more may you expect, that it should excite the principle which you have already.

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Direct. 4. If it may be, converse with lively, active, stirring Christians :' but especially have one such for a bosom friend, that will warm you when you are cold, and help to awake you when you drop asleep, and will not comply with you in a declining, lazy and unprofitable course. "Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labour: for if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow; but woe to him that is alone when he falleth; for he hath not another to help him up. Again, if two lie together, then they have heat; but how can one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and a threefold cord is not quickly broken."

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Direct. 5. Put not away from you the day of death. Look not for long life.' It is the life to come that must be the life of all your duties here, and distant things do lose their force. Set death, and judgment, and eternal life continually as near at hand: live in a watchful expectation of your change: do all as dying men, and as passing to receive the recompence of endless joy or woe, and this will quicken

r Heb. iv. 12.

s Acts ii. 37.

Eccles. iv. 9-12.

you. To this end, go often to the house of mourning, and be not unseasonably or immoderately in the house of mirth. When you observe what is the end of all men, the heart will be made better by it". But excess of carnal mirth doth infatuate men, and destroy their wisdom, seriousness and sobriety. Keep always a sense of the brevity of life, and of the preciousness of time, and remember that it is posting on whether you work or play. Methinks if you forget any of the rest, this one consideration that we have in hand, should make you bestir you with your might, that it must be now

or never.

I shall only add two needful cautions, lest while we cure one disease, we cause another, (as knowing that corrupted nature is used to run from extreme into extreme).

1. Desire and labour more for an high estimation of things spiritual and eternal, and a fixed resolution, and an even and diligent endeavour, than for passionate feelings and affections. For these latter are more inconstant in the best, and depend much on the temper of the body, and are not of so great necessity as the former, though excellent in a just degree and season. (For it is possible that passion even about good things may be too much; when estimation, resolution, and regular endeavours cannot.)

2. Be suspicious when you have the warmest and liveliest affections, lest your judgments should be perverted by following, when they should lead. It is very common for zeal and strong affections, even to that which is good, to occasion the mistakes of the understanding, and make men look all on one side, and think they can never go far enough from some particular sins, till ignorantly they are carried into some perhaps as great on the other hand. Be warned by the sad experience of these times to suspect your judgments in the fervour of your affections.

And observing these cautions, let nothing abate your zeal and diligence; but whatever duty is set before you, do it with your might; for it must be now or never.

Though I know that the enmity to a holy, heavenly life is so radicated in corrupted nature, that all that I have said is necessary and too little; yet some I know will think it strange that I should intimate that any that preach the Gos

"Eccles. vii. 2-6.

pel are guilty of any measure of this sin, and will think that I intend by it to reflect upon some parties above the rest. But again I profess, that it is no party but the devil's party, and the ungodly party that I mean. And it is hard if you will not believe me concerning my own sense. Nor is it my desire that any of the odiousness of schism, sedition, rebellion, or disobedience to authority, should be so much as diminished by any man's profession of godliness. No, I beseech you, by how much the more godly you are, by so much the more you will detest all these; godliness tendeth to shame and condemn these odious sins, and not to be a cloak for them or any extenuation; nay, what can more aggravate them, than that they should be found in the professors of godliness? I again profess that I have no design but to plead for serious diligence in the religion which we are all agreed in, and to stop the mouths of those that wickedly speak against it.

But, alas, it is too evident that I have too many to speak to, that are not innocent; why else doth Scripture tell us that such there will be still to the end of the world? and that there are some that preach Christ of strife and envy, to add affliction to the bonds of the afflicted? and how came holy Mr. Bolton to find so much work for these rebukes so lately in his time, as in his books you find? And can we already forget what abundance of Antinomian teachers were among us, that turned out the very doctrine of practical diligence, and cried it down as a setting up ourselves and our own works, and as injurious to free grace, and under pretence of exalting Christ, did set up a heartless, lifeless doctrine, that tended to turn out the life of Christianity, and take men off their necessary diligence, as a legal, dangerous thing?

And what ordinance of God hath not been cast out by preachers themselves upon religious pretences, family-duties, catechising, singing of psalms, baptism, the Lord's supper, and which not? And if all these were down, wherein should the practice of religion consist? And what abundance of pamphlets had we that laboured to make the orthodox, faithful ministry a very scorn, and deride them for their faithful service of God, and their faithfulness to their superiors in opposition to their unrighteous ways? I am loath to blot my papers and trouble your ears with the names of the Mar

tin-mar-priests, and a multitude of such others, which I mean.

And let no Papist, or any enemy of our church, reproach us because such enemies to holiness are found among us. Can it be expected that our church should be better than the family of Adam, that had a Cain? Or of Noah, that had a Ham? Or of Christ, that had a Judas? And are there not far more enemies to serious godliness among the Papists themselves, than among us? One instance out of the life of Philip Nerius, the father of the Oratorians, I will put into the preface, because it is too long to be here inserted, There is no place, no rank of men in the world, where some of the enemies of a holy life are not to be found, even among those that profess the same religion in doctrinals, with those whom they oppose. Christ and the devil have their several armies; and if once the devil disband his soldiers, and have none to oppose a holy life, then tell me that it is a needless thing to defend it and to confute them. But I am listed under Christ, and will never give over pleading for him, till his adversaries give over pleading against him, and his cause, as long as he continueth my liberty and duty. And blessed be the Lord that if an hypocritical preacher be found among us, that secretly or openly disgraceth a diligent, holy life, there are more able, holy, faithful ones to confute him both by doctrine and by their lives, than are to be found in any other kingdom in the world proportionably, that ever I could hear of. And that the faithful disciples are so many and the Judases so few, how great a blessing is it to this land, and how great an honour to his majesty's government, and to the church in his dominions! The Lord teach this sinful nation to be thankful, and pardon their ingratitude, and never deprive them of this forfeited mercy. The Lord teach them to hearken to the friends, and not to the enemies, of holiness, and never to receive a wound at the heart of religion, however they hear their smaller differences about things circumstantial.

And now I should conclude, I am loath to end, for fear lest I have not yet prevailed with you. What are you now resolved to do, from this day forward? It is work that we have been speaking of, and necessary work of endless consequence, which must be done, and quickly done, and thoroughly done. Are you not convinced that it is so? that

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