promises and threatenings, the apprehensions of temporal advantages, with fear and shame, and with reverence of friends and secular respects, with reputation and coercion of human laws; and at first, men snatch at the lesser and lower ends of virtue; and such rewards as are visible, and which God sometimes gives in hand, to entertain our weak and imperfect desires. The young philosophers were very forward to get the precepts of their sect, and the rules of severity, that they might discourse with kings, not that they might reform their own manners; and some men study to get the ears and tongues of the people, rather than to gain their souls to God; and they obey good laws for fear of punishment, or to preserve their own peace; and some are worse, they do good deeds out of spite, and "preach Christ out of envy," or to lessen the authority and fame of others. Some of these lessen the excellence of the act, others spoil it quite: it is in some imperfect, in others criminal; in some it is consistent with a beginning infant-grace, in others it is an argument of the state of sin and death; but, in all cases, the well-grown Christian, he that improves or goes forward in his way to heaven, brings virtue forth, not into discourses and panegyrics, but into his life and manners. Ilis virtue, although it serves many good ends accidentally, yet, by his intention, it only suppresses his inordinate passions, makes him temperate and chaste, casts out his devils of drunkenness and lust, pride and rage, malice and revenge; it makes him useful to his brother and a servant of God. And although these flowers cannot choose but please his eye and delight his smell, yet he chooses to gather honey, and licks up the dew of heaven, and feasts his spirit upon the manna, and dwells not in the collateral usages and accidental sweetnesses, which dwell at the gates of other senses; but, like a bee, loads his thighs with wax and his bag with honey, that is, with the useful parts of virtue, in order to holiness and felicity; of which the best signs and notices we can take, will be;—if we as earnestly pursue virtues which are acted in private, as those whose scene lies in public; if we pray in private, under the only eye of God and his ministering angels, as in churches; if we give our alms in secret rather than in public; if we take more pleasure in the just satisfaction of our consciences than securing our reputation; if we rather pursue innocence than seek an excuse; if we desire to please God, though we lose our fame with men; if we be just to the poorest servant as to the greatest prince; if we choose to be among the jewels of God, though we be the reginadaguára, the offscouring' of the world; if, when we are secure from witnesses and accusers, and not obnoxious to the notices of the law, we think ourselves obliged by conscience and practice, and live accordingly: then our services and intentions in virtue are right; then we are past the twilights of conversion, and the umbrages of the world, and walk in the light of God, of his word, and of his Spirit, of grace and reason, as becometh not babes, but men in Christ Jesus. In this progress of grace, I have not yet expressed, that perfect persons should serve God out of mere love of God and the Divine excellences, without the considerations of either heaven or hell; such a thing as that is talked of in mystical theology. And I doubt not but many good persons come to that growth of charity, that the goodness and excellence of God are more incumbent and actually pressing upon their spirit than any considerations of reward. But, then, I shall add this, that when persons come to that height of grace, or contemplation rather, and they love God for himself, and do their duties in order to the fruition of him and his pleasure; all that is but heaven in another sense, and under another name: just as the mystical theology is the highest duty, and the choicest part of obedience, under a new method. But in order to the present, that which I call a signification of our growth in grace is, a pursuance of virtue upon such reasons as are propounded to us as motives in Christianity (such as are to glorify God, and to enjoy his promises in the way and in our country, to avoid the displeasure of God, and to be united to his glories); and then to exercise virtue in such parts and to such purposes as are useful to good life, and profitable to our neighbours; not to such only where they serve reputation or secular ends. For though the great Physician of our souls hath mingled profits and pleasures with virtue, to make its chalice sweet and apt to be drunk off; yet, he that takes out the sweet ingredient, and feasts his palate with the less wholesome part, because it is delicious, serves a low end of sense or interest, but serves not God at all, and as little does benefit to his soul. Such a person is like Homer's bird, deplumes himself to feather all the naked callows that he sees, and holds a taper that may light others to heaven, while he burns his own fingers: but a well-grown person, out of habit and choice, out of love, and virtue, and just intention, goes on his journey in straight ways to heaven, even when the bridle and coercion of laws, or the spurs of interest or reputation, are laid aside; and desires witnesses of his actions, not that he may advance his fame, but for reverence and fear, and to make it still more necessary to do holy things. 8. Some men there are in the beginning of their holy walking with God, and while they are babes in Christ, who are presently busied in delights of prayers, and rejoice in public communion, and count all solemn assemblies. festival; but as they are pleased with them, so they can easily be without them. It is a sign of a common and vulgar love, only to be pleased with the company of a friend, and to be as well without him: "Amoris at morsum qui verè senserit,He that has felt the sting of a sharp and very dear affection," is impatient in the absence of his beloved object: the soul that is sick and swallowed up with holy fire, loves nothing else; all pleasures else seem unsavoury, company is troublesome, visitors are tedious, homilies of comfort are flat and useless. The pleasures of virtue to a good and perfect man, are not like the perfumes of nard pistic, which is very delightful when the box is newly broken, but the want of it is no trouble, we are well enough without it but virtue is like hunger and thirst, it must be satisfied or we die. And when we feel great longings after religion, and faintings for want of holy nutriment, when a famine of the word and sacraments is more intolerable, and we think ourselves really most miserable when the church-doors are shut against us, or like the Christians, in the persecution of the Vandals, who thought it worse than death that their bishops were taken from them: if we understand excommunication or churchcensures (abating the disreputation and secular appendages), in the sense of the Spirit, to be a misery next to hell itself; then we have made a good progress in the charity and grace of God: till then we are but pretenders, or infants, or imperfect, in the same degree in which our affections are cold and our desires remiss. For a constant and prudent zeal is the best testimony of our masculine and vigorous heats, and an hour of fervour is more pleasing to God than a month of lukewarmness and indifference. 9. But as some are active only in the presence of a good object, but remiss and careless for the want of it; so, on the other side, an infant grace is safe in the absence of a temptation, but falls easily when it is in presence. He, therefore, that would understand if he be grown in grace, may consider if his safety consists only in peace, or in the strength of the Spirit. It is good that we will not seek out opportunities to sin; but are not we too apprehensive of it when it is presented? or do we not sink under it when it presses us? Can we hold our tapers near the flames, and not suck it in greedily like naphtha or prepared nitre? or can we, like the children of the captivity, walk in the midst of flames, and not be scorched or consumed? Many men will not, like Judah, go into highways, and untie the girdles of harlots; but can you reject the importunity of a beauteous and an imperious lady, as Joseph did? We had need pray that we be not led into temptation:' that is, not only into the possession, but not into the allurements and neighbourhood of it, lest, by little and little, our strongest resolutions be untwist, and crack in sunder, like an easy cord severed into single threads; but if we, by the necessity of our lives and manner of living, dwell where a temptation will assault us, then to resist is the sign of a great grace; but such a sign, that without it the grace turns to wantonness, and the man into a beast, and an angel into a devil. R. Moses will not allow a man to be a true penitent until he hath left all his sin, and in all the like circumstances refuses those temptations, under which formerly he sinned and died; and indeed it may happen, that such a trial only can secure our judgment concerning ourselves. And although to be tried in all the same accidents be not safe, nor always contingent, and in such cases it is sufficient to resist all the temptations we have, and avoid the rest, and decree against all;-yet if it please God we are tempted, as David was by his eyes, or the martyrs by tortures, or Joseph by his wanton mistress, then to stand sure, and to ride upon the temptation like a ship upon a wave, or to stand like a rock in an impetuous storm, that is the sign of a great grace, and of a well-grown Christian. 10. No man is grown in grace but he that is ready for every work, that chooses not his employment, that refuses no imposition from God or his superior. A ready hand, an obedient heart, and a willing cheerful soul, in all the work of God, and in every office of religion, is a great index of a good proficient in the ways of godliness. The heart of a man is like a wounded hand or arm, which, if it be so cured that it can only move one way, and cannot turn to all postures and natural uses, it is but imperfect, and still half in health and half wounded: so is our spirit; if it be apt for prayer and close-fisted in alms, if it be sound in faith and dead in charity, if it be religious to God and unjust to our neighbour, there wants some integral part, or there is a lameness; and 'the deficiency in any one duty implies the guilt of all,' said St. James; and, "Bonum ex integra causa, malum ex qualibet particulari:" every fault spoils a grace, but one grace alone cannot make a good man. But as to be universal in our obedience is necessary to the being in the state of grace, so, readily to change employment from the better to the worse, from the honourable to the poor, from useful to seemingly unprofitable, is a good character of a well-grown Christian, if he takes the worst part with indifference, and a spirit equally choosing all the events of the Divine providence. Can you be content to descend from ruling of a province to the keeping of a herd, from the work of an apostle to be confined in a prison, from disputing before princes to a conversation with shepherds? Can you be willing to all that God is willing, and suffer all that he chooses, as willingly as if you had chosen your own fortune? In the same degree in which you can conform to God, in the same you have approached towards that perfection, whither we must, by degrees, arrive in our journey towards heaven. This is not to be expected of beginners; for they must be enticed with apt employments; and, it may be, their office and work so fits their spirits, that it makes them first in love with it, and then with God for giving it. And many a man goes to heaven in the days of peace, whose faith, and hope, and patience, would have been dashed in pieces, if he had fallen into a storm of persecution. "Oppression will make a wise man mad," saith Solomon: there are some usages that will put a sober person out of all patience, such which are besides the customs of this life, and contrary to all his hopes, |