science, hath reduced his wild affections within the lists of reason and sobriety, can from thence defy the world, and maintain his post against all its temptations. He loves its goods no better than they deserve, and consequently he loves them not so well as to part with his virtue, his innocence, and his soul for them. He dreads its evils no further than they are truly dreadful, and consequently is fully satisfied that to sin is much more dreadful than to suffer; and he hath found by often experience, that in the faithful discharge of his duty there is far more peace, more joy, and satisfaction, than in all the vain allurements of this world. He hath found another heaven upon earth, besides these temporary enjoyments; a heaven within his own breast composed of joyous hopes and blessed expectations; and in this heaven hath often found himself a thousand times more happy than among all the festivities of an earthly paradise, and therefore knows very well that he is bid to his loss whenever he is tempted to exchange the one for the other. He is throughly sensible, having already found it to his smart, that by sinning he shall sustain a much heavier loss, and expose himself to far more exquisite agonies of mind than any this world can threaten him withal; and therefore certainly reckons upon it, that whenever to avoid a sin he incurs a suffering, he wisely chooses of two evils the least. And while his soul stands thus affected, it is shot-proof against all temptations, and much more against those temptations which solicit him to renounce his religion, and in which he knows by experience there is far more good than the world can propose to him in exchange for it. He knows both how little the world, and how much true religion is worth; and having made a just estimate of both, to propose to him any worldly hope as a price for his faith, is the same thing as to offer a miser dross for his gold. His mind is fixed in this persuasion, that all the mischiefs this world can do him are inconsiderable to one who must live for ever in another unspeakably happy or miserable; and therefore to threaten him into apostasy with any worldly fear, is to attempt to blow up a rock of marble with a squib of wildfire. But when once a man hath taken off the restraints of his conscience from his wild affections, and let them loose to the world, they will aid and assist its temptations against him, and animate them with a thousand times more life and vigour than is in their own natures. For as for the goods of this world, they can never bewitch us as they do, did we not give a dress to them; we paint their faces, and varnish them over with an artificial beauty, and then fall in love with our own fucus; and so much as we value and affect them beyond their natural worth, so much power we give them to conquer and enslave us. When therefore, by leading a sensual and wicked life, a man has wholly devoted himself to the world, he hath put himself into the world's power to bé commanded and disposed of as it pleases. And now, if any worldly good beckons and invites him, his mad affection will presently hurry him after it, though it be through thick and thin, through the most flagitious and enormous courses. If any worldly evil threaten and alarm him, he must immediately fly, though it be from virtue and innocence, from God and heaven, and all that is sacred in religion. His affections have rendered him a mere lackey to the goods and evils that are without him, and whereever they send him he must go, wherever they lead him he must follow, let their vagaries be never so wild or wicked. If therefore, while his soul is thus enslaved to the world, he should be tempted by him to apostatize from his religion, what hath he to restrain or secure him? For, ever since he got loose from his conscience, he is wholly led by his affections; and these being chained and fastened to the world, hale him after it, which way soever it moves. So long as his religion and his worldly interest consist, and go hand in hand, he is very well content to own and follow it; but if ever a storm or persecution should part them, in all probability he will follow his interest, and, like the treacherous Orpha, give his religion a parting kiss and leave it. For his heart is now so wedded to the world, that he esteems nothing so good as its goods, and nothing so evil as its evils; and the one being his heaven, and the other his hell, all other considerations are overcome by them; and to obtain the one, and avoid the other, he must stick at nothing, no, not at renouncing his God and his religion, together with all his hopes of a future immortality. 6. And lastly, Living in any known course of sin provokes God to give us up to the power of delusion: for so long as men submit themselves to the guidance and direction of a good conscience, the Spirit of God, who is a Spirit of truth, abides with them, and not only directs their wills, but also informs their understandings, and enables them to discern the beauty and reality of those heavenly truths, which he hath revealed to us in the holy scriptures. For though, since he hath revealed already the whole will of God to us concerning our eternal salvation, we have no reason to expect that he will reveal new truths to us; yet seeing, so far forth as it is necessary, he hath promised and engaged that he will cooperate with us, to enable us as well to understand the will of God, as to perform it; we have the greatest reason in the world to depend upon it, that so long as we cherish his heavenly inspirations, by yielding to them our free and ready compliance, he will be so far an assisting genius to our understandings, as to suggest to us those truths which he hath already revealed, and set them before our eyes in so fair a light, as that we shall not fail more clearly to discern, and more distinctly to apprehend them, than otherwise we should or could have done. For when he writes his truth upon our minds, it is with such a victorious sunbeam, as will endure neither cloud nor shadow before it. Whenever he speaks, he speaks not to our ears, but to our minds, and represents things nakedly and immediately to our understandings. He converses with our spirits, as spirits do with spirits, without involving his sense in articulate sounds or material representations; but objects it to us in its own naked light, and characterizes it immediately on our understandings. And as he proposes the divine light to us, so he also illuminates our minds to discern and comprehend it: he raises and exalts our intellectual powers, and as a vital form to the light of our reason, invigorates and actuates it, and thereby renders its apprehension of things more quick, and piercing, and sagacious. Thus doth the Holy Spirit more or less assist us in the true understanding of divine things, as he finds us more or less compliant with his heavenly pleasure; and though he stands no more obliged to render our minds infallible, than our wills impeccable, yet so long as by our sincere obedience to his holy suggestions, we keep ourselves under his conduct and direction, we may depend upon it he will either preserve us from all dangerous errors, or if for just reasons he should permit us to fall into any such, they shall not prove dangerous to us, but either we shall be convinced of them while we live, or obtain pity and pardon for them when we die. But whilst we persist in any wilful course of sin, we do not only violate our own conscience, but also repel those good motions of the Spirit of God, whereby he strives to reduce and reclaim us; in doing which, we continually grieve him, and if we do not forbear, shall at length provoke him wholly to forsake and abandon us, to give us up to our own hearts' lusts as desperate wretches, with whom he hath hitherto strove and struggled in vain, and of whose future recovery there remains no further hope or prospect. And when he hath forsaken us, our mind will not only be left naked and destitute of all those helps and advantages for the understanding of divine truths, which it receives from him, but also be exposed to the cheats and fallacies of evil spirits, whose recreation it is to put tricks upon our minds; to banter and play upon our easy faith, to cast mists before our eyes, and therein to juggle away all true religion from us, and foist in the room of it the most fulsome errors and mistakes. For so the apostle tells us of antichrist, the great deceiver, that he should come with all the deceivableness of unrighteousness to them that perish; because they received not the love of truth, that they might be saved. And that for that cause, viz. their not receiving the truth in the |