strange if God call not home your thoughts, by sharp afflictions and methinks the improvement of them, and the removal of them should find some employment for your thoughts.' It is time then to "search and try your ways, and turn again unto the Lord." To find out the Achan that troubleth your peace, and know the voice of the rod, and what God is angry at, and what it is that he calleth you to mind! To know what root it is that beareth these bitter fruits and how they may be sanctified to make you conformable to Christ, and "partakers of his holiness"." Besides the exercise of holy patience and submission, there is a great deal of work to be done in sufferings; to exercise faith, to honour God, and the good cause of our suffering, and to humble ourselves for the evil cause, and to get the benefit. And if you will not meditate of the duty, you shall meditate of the pain, whether you will or not; and say as Lam. iii. 17-20. "I forgat prosperity: and I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall my soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me." Put not God to remember you by this spur, and help your meditations by so sharp a means! "Therefore did he consume their days in vanity, and their years in trouble: when he slew them, then they sought him, and they returned and inquired early after God: and they remembered that God was their rock, and the high God their Redeemer *."

Direct. XVIII. Be diligent in your callings, and spend no time in idleness, and perform your labours with holy minds, to the glory of God, and in obedience to his commands, and then your thoughts will have the less leisure and liberty for vanity or idleness.' Employments of the body will employ the thoughts: they that have much to do have much to think on; for they must do it prudently, and skilfully, and carefully, that they may do it successfully; and therefore must think how to do it. And the urgency and necessity of business will almost necessitate the thoughts, and so carry them on and find them work, (though some employments more than others.) And let none think that these thoughts are bad or vain because they are about worldly

t Lam. iii. 4.

" Heb. xii. 10.

x Psal. lxxviii. 33-35.

things; for if our labours themselves be not bad or vain, then neither are those thoughts which are needful to the welldoing of our work. Nor let any worldling please himself with this, and say, 'My thoughts are taken up about my calling for his calling itself is perverted by him, and made a carnal work to carnal ends, when it should be sanctified. That the thoughts about your labours may be good, 1. Your labours themselves must be good, performed in obedience to God, and for the good of others, and to his glory. 2. Your labours and thoughts must keep their bounds, and the higher things must be still preferred, and sought, and thought on in the first place. And your labours must so far employ your thoughts as is needful to the welldoing of them but better things must be thought on, in such labours as leave a vacancy to the thoughts. But diligence in your calling is a very great help to keep out sinful thoughts, and to furnish us with thoughts which in their place are good.

Direct. XIX. You have all God's spiritual helps and holy ordinances to feed your meditations, and to quicken them, which should be used when your minds grow dull or barren.' When your minds are empty, and you cannot pump up plentiful matter for holy thoughts, the reading of a seasonable book, or conference with a full 'experienced Christian, will furnish you with matter: so will the hearing of a profitable sermon: and sometimes prayer will do more than meditation. And weak-headed persons, of small knowledge and shallow memories, must fetch the matter of their meditations thus more frequently from reading and conference than others need to do: as they can hold but little at a time, so they must go the oftener: as he that goeth to the water with a spoon or a dish, must go oftener than they that go with a more capacious vessel. Others can carry a storehouse of meditation still about them; but persons of very small knowledge and memory, must have their meditations fed by others, as infants by the spoon. Therefore a little and often is the best way, both for their reading or hearing, and for their holy thoughts. How great a mercy is it, that weak Christians have such store of helps: that when their heads are empty, they have books and friends that are not empty, from whence they may fetch help as they want it:

and that their hearts are not empty of the love of God, which inclineth them to do more, than their parts enable them to do.

Direct. xx. If all these do not sufficiently furnish your meditations, look through the world, and see what a multitude of miserable souls do call for your compassion and daily prayers for their relief.' Think on the many nations that lie in the darkness of idolatry and infidelity! It is not past the sixth part of the world that are Christians of any sort. The other five parts are heathens, and Mahometans, and some few Jews. And of this sixth part, it is but a small part that are reformed from popery, and such corruptions as the Eastern and Southern Christians also are too much defiled with. And in the reformed churches, how common are profaneness and worldliness, and how few are acquainted with the power of godliness! What abundance of ignorant and ungodly persons are there, who hate the power and practice of that religion, which they profess themselves they hope to be saved by, (as if they hoped to be saved for hating, persecuting, and disobeying it). And among those that seem more serious and obedient, how many are hypocrites? And how many are possessed with pride and self-conceitedness, which break forth into unruliness, contentions, and uncharitableness, factions, and divisions in the church! How many Christians are ignorant, passionate, weak, unprofitable, and too many scandalous! And how few are judicious, prudent, heavenly, charitable, peaceable, humble, meek, laborious, and fruitful, who set themselves wholly to be good and to do good! And of these few, how few are there that are not exercised under heavy afflictions from God, or cruel persecutions from ungodly men! What tyranny is exercised by the Turk without, and the Pope within, upon the sincerest followers of Christ! Set all this together, and tell me, whether thy compassionate thoughts or thy prayers do need to go out for want of fuel or matter to feed upon from day to day?

Tit. 3. Directions how to make good Thoughts effectual: or, General Directions for Meditation.

Here some Directions are preparatory, and some about the work itself.

Direct. 1. Be sure that reason maintain its authority in the command and government of your thoughts; and that they be not left masterless to fancy, and passion, and objects, to carry them which way they please.' Diseased, melancholy, and crazed persons have almost no power over their own thoughts. They cannot command them to what they would have them exercised about, nor call them off from any thing that they run out upon; but they are like an unruly horse, that hath a weak rider, or hath cast the rider: or like a masterless dog, that will not go or come at your command. Whereas our thoughts should be at the direction of our reason, and the command of the will, to go and come off as soon as they are bid. As you see a student can rule his thoughts all day; he can appoint them what they shall meditate on, and in what order, and how long: so can a lawyer, a physician, and all sorts of men about the matters of their arts and callings. And so it should be with a Christian about the matters of his soul. All rules of direction are to little purpose with them, whose reason hath lost its power in governing their thoughts. If I tell a man that is deeply melancholy, Thus and thus you must order your thoughts,' he will tell me that he cannot; his thoughts are not in his power. If you would give never so much he is not able to forbear thinking of that which is his disturbance, nor to command his thoughts to that which you direct him, nor to think, but as he doth, even as his disease and trouble moveth him. And what good will precepts do to such? Grace, and doctrine, and exhortation work by reason and the commanding will. If a holy person could manage his practical, heart-raising meditations, but as orderly, and constantly, and easily as a carnal, covetous preacher can manage his thoughts in studying the same things, for carnal ends, (to make a gain of them or to win applause) how happily would our work go on! And is it not sad to think that carnal ends should do so much more than spiritual, about the same things?

Direct. 11. Carefully avoid the disease of melancholy : for that dethroneth reason, and disableth it to rule the thoughts.' Distraction wholly disableth; but melancholy disableth only in part, according to the measure of its valency and therefore leaveth some room for advice. :

pre

Direct. 111. Take heed of sloth and negligence of the will, whereby the directions of reason will be unexecuted, for want of resolution and command; and so every temptation will carry away the thoughts.' A lazy coachman will let the horses go which way they list, because he will not strive with them; and will break his neck to save his labour. If, when you feel unclean or worldly thoughts invade your minds, you will not give your wills the alarm, and rise up against them, and resolutely command them out; you will be like a lazy person that lieth in bed while he seeth thieves robbing his house, and will let all go rather than he will rise and make resistance, (a sign that he hath no great riches to lose, or else he would stir for it). And if you see your duty, on what your thoughts should be employed, and will not resolutely call them up, and command them to their work, you will be like a sluggard that will let all his servants lie in bed, as well as he, because he will not speak to call them. You see by daily experience, that a man's thoughts are much in the power of his will, and made to obey it. If money and honour, or the delight of knowing, can cause a wicked preacher to command his own thoughts on good things, as aforesaid; you may command yours to the same things, if you will but as resolutely exercise your authority over them.

Direct. Iv. Use not your thoughts to take their liberty and be ungoverned: for use will make them headstrong and not regard the voice of reason; and it will make reason careless and remiss.' Use and custom have great power on our minds where we use to go, our path is plain; but where there is no use, there is no way. Where the water useth to run there is a channel. It is hard ruling those that are used to be unruly. If use will do so much with the tongue, (as we find in some that use to curse, and swear, and speak vainly, and in others that use to speak soberly and religiously; in some that by use can speak well in conference, preaching or praying many hours together, when others that use it not can do almost nothing that way;) why may it not much prevail with the thoughts?

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Direct. v. Take heed lest the senses and appetite grow too strong, and master reason; for if they do, they will at once dispossess it of the government of the thoughts, and will brutishly usurp the power themselves.' As, when a