think

the glory that he hath promised for a misery? If you that there is a heaven of such sensual pleasures as you desire, or that any shall be saved that only choose heaven as a less and more tolerable misery than hell, you will shortly find your expectations deceived.

Lay all these five Considerations together, and you may perceive what miserable souls those are, that can find pleasure in the perishing trifles of the world, and none in a holy heavenly life. Be assured of this whosoever thou art, that if God and heaven, and a holy life, be not a thousand times sweeter and more delightful to thee, than any thing that this world can afford to thy contentment, it is not for want of matter of superabundant delight to be found in God and in his holy ways; but it is for want of reason, or faith, or consideration, or a suitable heart in thee, which may make thee fit to know and taste the pleasures which now thou art unacquainted with. And is it not a pity that such infinite delights should be set before men, and they should lose them all for want of a heart and appetite to them? and should perish by choosing the lowest vanities before them?

I do therefore earnestly beseech thee that readest these words, if thou be one of these unhappy souls, that canst find no pleasure in God and holiness, that thou wouldst speedily observe and lament that blindness and wickedness of thy heart, that is the cause of this infatuation and corruption of thine apprehension and rational appetite; and that thou would presently apply thyself to Christ for the cure of it. To which end I advise thee to these following means.

Direct. 1. If you would taste the pleasure of a holy life, bethink you better of the necessity and excellency of it; and cast away your prejudice and false conceits, which have deceived you, and turned your minds against it. A child may be deluded to take his own father for his enemy, if he see him in an enemy's garb, or be persuaded by false suggestions that he hateth him. A man may be persuaded to hate his meat, if you can but make him believe that it is poison or to hate his clothes, if you can but make him believe they are infected with the plague. If you will suffer your understandings to be deluded, so far as to overlook the amiable nature of holiness, and to think the image of God is but a fancy, or that a heavenly life is nothing but hypocrisy, and that it is but pride that maketh men seek to be holier than

others, and that makes them they cannot go quietly to hell in despite of the commands and mercies of the Lord, as others do. I say, if the devil, the great deceiver, can possess you with such frantic thoughts as these, what wonder if you hate the very name of holiness? How can you find pleasure in the greatest good, while you take it for an evil? If you will believe all that the devil and his foolish malicious instruments say of God and of a holy life, you shall never love God, nor see any loveliness, or taste any sweetness in his service.

Direct. 2. Come near and search into the inwards of a holy life, and try it a little while yourselves, if you would taste the pleasure of it: and do not stand looking on it at a distance, where you see nothing but the outside; nor judge by bare hearsay which giveth you no taste or relish of it. The sweetness of honey, or wine, or meat is not known by looking on it, but by tasting it. Come near and try what it is to live in the love of God, and in the belief and hope of life eternal, and in universal obedience to the laws of Christ, and then tell us how these things do relish with you. You will never know the sweetness of them effectually, as long as you are but lookers on. It was the similitude which Peter Martyr used in a sermon which converted the noble Neapolitan Marquis of Vicum, Galeacius Caracciolus, who forsook wife, and children, and honours, and lands, and country, and all, for the liberty of the reformed religion of Geneva. Saith he, If you see the motion of dancers afar off, and hear not the music, you will think they are frantic. But when you come near and hear the music, and observe their harmonical, orderly motion, you will take delight in it, and desire to join with them.' So men that judge at a distance of the truth and holy ways of God, by the slanderous reports of malignant men, will think of the godly, as Festus of Paul, that they are beside themselves; but if they come among them, and search more impartially into the reasons of their course, and specially if they join with them in the inwards and vital actions of religion, they will then be quickly of another mind, and not go back for all the pleasures or profits of the world. In the works of nature (and sometimes of art) the outside is so far from shewing you the excellencies, that it is but a comely veil to hide them. Though you would have a handsome cover for your watch, yet doth it but hide the well-ordered frame, and useful motions that are within. You must open

it, and there observe the parts and motions if you would pass a right judgment of the work. You would have a comely cover for your books; but it is but to hide the well composed letters from your sight, in which the sense, and use, and excellency doth consist. You must open it, if you will read it and know the worth of it. A common spectator when he seeth a rose or other flower or fruit-tree, thinketh he hath seen all, or the chiefest part. But it is the secret, unsearchable motions and operations of the vegetative life and juice within, by which the beauteous flowers and sweet fruits are produced, and wonderfully differenced from each other that are the excellent part and mysteries in these natural works of God. Could you but see these secret inward causes and operations, it would incomparably more content you. He that passeth by and looketh on a beehive, and seeth but the cover, and the laborious creatures going in and out, doth see nothing of the admirable operations within, which God hath taught them. Did you there see how they make their wax and honey, and compose their combs, and by what laws, and in what order their commonwealth is governed, and their work carried on, you would know more than the outside of the hive can shew you. So it is about the life of godliness. If you saw the inward motions of the quickening spirit upon the soul, and the order and exercise of every grace, and by what laws the thoughts and affections are governed, and to whom they tend, you would then see more of the beauty of religion than you can see by the outward behaviour of our assemblies. The shell is not sweet, but serves to hide the sweeter part from those that will not storm those walls, that they may possess it as their prize. The kernel of religion is covered with a shell so hard that flesh and blood cannot break it. Hard sayings, and hard providences to the church, and to particular believers, are such as many cannot break through, and therefore never taste the sweetness. The most admired feature and beauty of any of your bodies (which fools think to be the most excellent part of the body) is indeed but the handsome, well-adorned case that God by nature doth cover his more excellent inward works with. Were you but able to see within that skin, and but once to observe the wonderful motions, heart, and brain, and the course of the blood in the veins and arteries, and the several fermentations, and the causes and nature of chylifications, and sanguifications,

and the spirits, and senses, and all their works: and if you saw the reason of every part and vessel in this wondrous frame, and the causes and nature of every disease; much more if you saw the excellent nature and operations of that rational soul, that is the glory of all, you would then say that you had seen a more excellent sight than the smooth and beauteous skin that covers it. The invisible soul is of greater excellency than all the visible beauties in the world. So also if you would know the excellencies of religion, you must not stand without the doors, or judge of it by the skin and shell, but you must come near, and look into the inward reasons of it, and think of the difference between the high employments of a saint, and the poor and sordid drudgery of the ungodly; between walking with God in desire and love, and in the spiritual use of his ordinances and creatures, and conversing only with sinful men, and transitory vanities; between the life of faith and hope, which is daily maintained by the foresight of everlasting glory, and a life of mere nature, and worldliness, and sensuality, and idle compliment and pomp, which are but the progenitors of sorrow, and end in endless desperation. Come near, and try the power of God's laws, and of the workings of his Spirit: and think in good sadness of the place where you must live for ever, and the glory you shall see, and the sweet enjoyment and employment you shall have in the presence of the eternal Majesty : and think well of all the sweet contrivances and discoveries of his love in Christ; and how freely they are offered to you; and how certainly they may be your own; peruse the promises, and sweet expressions of love and grace; and exercise your souls in serious meditation, prayer, thanksgiving, and praise; and withal remember, that none but these will be durable delights; and tell me whether a life of sport and pride, and worldliness, and flesh-pleasing, or a life of faith and holiness be the better, the sweeter, and more pleasant life.

Direct. 3. If you would taste the pleasures of a holy life, you must apply yourself to Christ in the use of his appointed means, for the renewing of your natures; that his Spirit may give you a new understanding and a new heart, to discern and relish spiritual things: for your old corrupted minds and hearts will never do it. They are unsuitable to the things of God, and therefore cannot receive them nor savour them, nor be subject to the holy laws; 1 Cor. ii. 14, 15,

Rom. viii. 5-8. The appetite and relish of every living creature is agreeable to its nature. A fish hath small pleasure in the dry land, nor a bird in the deeps of water; grass and water is sweeter to an ox than our most delicate meats and drinks, Corruption and custom have made you so vicious, that your natures are not such as God made them at the first, when he himself was man's desire and delight; but they are now inclined to sensual things, being captivated by the fleshly part, and have contracted a strangeness and enmity to God. And therefore those hearts will never relish the sweetnesses of a life of faith and holiness, till faith and holiness be planted in them, and they be born again by regenerating grace, For that "which is born of the flesh is flesh," (and but flesh; and therefore doth reach no higher than a fleshly inclination can move it:)" and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit;" and therefore will relish and love things spiritual.

Direct. 4. Lastly, if you would taste the pleasures of a holy life, you must forbear those sinful fleshly pleasures, which now you are so taken up with. For these are they that infatuate your understandings, and corrupt your appetites, and make the sweetest things seem loathsome to you. As the using of vain sports and filthy lusts abroad, doth make such persons weary of their own relations, and families, and business at home; so all the glutting of the mind with vanity, and using yourselves to sinful pleasures is it that turns your hearts from God, and maketh his word and ways unsavoury to you. You must first with the prodigal, Luke xv., be brought into a famine of your former pleasures, be denied the very husk, and then you will remember that the meanest servant in your Father's house, is in a far better case than you, having bread enough, while you perish through hunger. And hence it is that God doth so often promote the work of conversion by affliction; and by the same means carrieth on the work of grace in most that he will save. Cannot you tell how to leave your sensual pleasures? What will you do when sickness makes you weary of them? Weary of your meat, and drink, and bed? weary to hear talk of that which now doth seem so sweet; and to say, I have no pleasure in them? Cannot you spare your friends, your sports, your bravery, your wealth, and other carnal accom