meditation also is the soul very backward; that is, either to meditate on God, and the promised glory, or any spiritual subject, to this end that the heart may be thereby quickened and raised, and graces exercised (though to meditate on the same subject, only to know or dispute on it, the heart is nothing near so backward). Or else to meditate on the state of our own hearts, by way of self-examination, or selfjudging, or self-reprehension, or self-exciting. 3. Also to the duty of faithful dealing with each other's souls, in secret reproof and exhortation, plainly (though lovingly) to tell each other of our sins and danger, to this the heart is usually very backward; partly through a sinful bashfulness, partly for want of more believing, lively apprehensions of our duty, and our brother's danger, and partly because we are loath to displease men and lose their favour, it being grown so common for men to fall out with those (if not hate them) that deal plainly and faithfully with them. 4. Also to take a reproof, as well as to give it, the heart is very backward. Even godly men, through the sad remainders of their sinfulness, do too commonly frown, and snarl, and retort our reproofs, and study presently how to excuse themselves, and put it by, or how to charge us with something that may stop our mouths, and make the reprover seem as bad as themselves. Though they dare not tread our reproofs under feet, and turn again, and all to rent us, yet they oft shew the remnants of a dogged nature, though when they review their ways it costs them sorrow. We must sugar and butter our words, and make them liker to stroking than striking, liker an approving than a reproving them, liker a flattery than faithful dealing, and yet when we have all done, they go down very hardly, and that but half way, even with many godly people when they are under a temptation. 5. The like may be said of all those duties which do pinch upon our credit or profit, or tend to disgrace us, or impoverish us in the world; as the confessing of a disgraceful fault; the free giving to the poor or sacred uses, according to our estates; the parting with our own right or gain for peace; the patient suffering of wrong, and forgiving it heartily, and loving bitter, abusive enemies, especially the running upon the stream of men's displeasure, and incurring the danger of being utterly undone in our worldly state (especially if men be rich, who do therefore as hardly get to heaven as a

camel through a needle's eye). And above all, the laying down of our lives for Christ. It cannot be expected, that godly men should perform all these with perfect willingness; the flesh will play its part, in pleading its own cause, and will strive hard to maintain its own interests. O the shifts, the subtle arguments, or at least the clamorous and importunate contradictions that all these duties will meet with in the best, so far as they are renewed, and their graces weak! So that you may well hence conclude that you are a sinner, but you may not conclude that you are graceless, because of a backwardness, and some unwillingness to duty.

Yet your willingness must be greater than your unwillingness, and so Christ must have the prevailing part of your will; and from that the denomination is usually taken. So that Scripture useth to affirm God's people to be willing even when they fail in the execution. So Paul (Rom. vii. 18.) saith, "To will is present with me, when how to do or perform he found not;" that is, not to obey so perfectly as he would do; not to love God so intensely and fervently; not to subdue passions and lusts so thoroughly; not to watch our thoughts, and words, and ways so narrowly, and order them so exactly, as the bent of his will did consent to. And lest any Arminian should pretend (as they do) that Paul speaks here in the person of an unregenerate man, as under the convictions of the law, and not as a man regenerate; it is plain in the text that he speaks of himself in the state which he was then in, and that state was a regenerate state. He expressly saith, it is thus, and thus with me; "So then I myself with my mind do serve the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin;" ver. 25. And to put it out of doubt, the apostle speaks the like of all Christians, Gal. v., 17. "For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, and these are contrary the one to the other, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would." This is the plain exposition of Rom. vii. Here Scripture maketh the godly willing to do more than they do or can do, but yet it is not a perfect willingness, but it is the prevailing inclination and choice of the will, and that gives the name.

4. Observe further, that I add your actual performance of duty; because true hearty willingness will shew itself in actions and endeavours. It is but dissembling, if I should say I am willing to perform the strictest, holiest duties, and

yet do not perform them. To say I am willing to pray, and pray not; or to give to the poor, and yet give not; or to perform the most self-denying costly duties, and yet when it should come to the practice, I will not be persuaded or drawn to them. I will not confess a disgraceful sin, nor further a good cause to my danger, cost or trouble; nor reprove, nor submit to reproof, nor turn from the way of temptations or the like. Action must discover true willingness. The son that said to his father, "I go, Sir," but went not to labour in the vineyard, was not accepted or justified. If therefore you are in doubt whether your willingness be sincere, inquire into your practice, and performance. God commandeth you to pray, to instruct your family, to be merciful to the poor, to forgive those that wrong you, &c. The flesh and the devil persuade you from these. Do you perform them, or do you not? Though you may do it with backwardness and dulness, and weakness, yet do you do it? And desire you could do it better, and lament your misdoing it? And endeavour to do it better than you have formerly done? This shews then that the Spirit prevaileth, though the flesh do contradict it.

5. Yet here you must carefully distinguish of duties; for God hath made some to be secondary parts of the condition of the covenant, and so of flat necessity for the continuance or our justification, and for the attaining of glorification. Such are confessing Christ before men when we are called to it; confessing sin, praying, shewing mercy to the poor, forgiving wrongs, hearing and yielding to God's word, &c. still supposing that there be opportunity and necessities for the performance of these. But some duties there are that God hath not laid so great a stress or necessity on, though yet the wilful resolved omission in ordinary, of any known duty, is contrary to the nature of true obedience.

Also, the case may much differ with several persons, places and seasons, concerning duty; that may be a duty to one man, that is not to another; and at one place which is not at another, and at one season, which is not at another. And that may be a greater duty, and of indispensable necessity to one, which to another is not so great. It may stand with true grace, to omit that duty which men know not to be a duty, or not to be so to them (except where the duty is such, as is itself of absolute necessity to salvation);

but it cannot so stand with grace in those that know it, ordinarily to reject it.

6. Also you must understand, that when I say, that true willingness to be ruled by Christ, will shew itself in actual obedience; I do not mean it of every particular individual act which is our duty, as if you should judge yourself graceless for every particular omission of a duty; no, though you knew it to be a duty; and though you considered it to be a duty. For, 1. There may be a true habituated inclination and willingness to obey Christ rooted in the heart, when yet by the force of a temptation, the actual prevalency of it at that time, in that act, may be hindered and suppressed. 2. And at the same time, you do hold on in a course of obedience in other duties. 3. And when the temptation is overcome, and grace hath been roused up against the flesh, and you soberly recollect your thoughts, you will return to obedience in that duty also. Yea, how many days, or weeks, or months, a true Christian may possibly neglect a known duty, I will not dare to determine, (of which more anon). Yet such omissions as will not stand with a sincere resolution and willingness to obey Christ universally (I mean an habitual willingness) will not consist with the truth of grace.

7. I know the fourth mark, about forsaking all for Christ, may seem somewhat unseasonable and harsh to propound for the quieting of a troubled conscience. But yet, I durst not omit it, seeing Christ hath not omitted it; nay, seeing he hath so urged it, and laid such a stress on it in the Scripture as he hath done, I dare not daub, nor be unfaithful, for fear of troubling. Such skinning over the wound will but prepare for more trouble and a further cure. Christ thought it meet even to tell young beginners of the worst, (though it might possibly discourage them, and did turn some back) that they might not come to him upon mistaken expectations, and he requireth all that will be Christians, and be saved, to count their cost beforehand, and reckon what it will stand them in to be Christ's disciples; and if they cannot undergo his terms (that is, to deny themselves, take up their cross, forsake all and follow him) they cannot be his disciples. And Christ had rather they knew it beforehand, than to deceive themselves, or to turn back when they meet with what they never thought of, and then to

imagine that Christ had deceived them, and drawn them in, and done the wrong.

8. When I say in the fourth mark, that you must have a settled resolution, I mean the same thing as before I did by hearty willingness. But it is meeter here to call it resolution, because this is the proper name for that act of the will, which is a determination of itself upon deliberation, after any wavering, to the doing or submitting to any thing as commanded. I told you it must be the prevailing act of the will that must prove you sincere: every cold ineffectual wish will not serve turn. Christ seeks for your heart on one side, and the world with its pleasures, profits, and honours on the other side. The soul, which upon consideration of both, doth prefer Christ in his choice, and reject the world (as it is competitor with him) and this not doubtingly and with reservation for further deliberation or trial, but presently passeth his consent for better and worse, this is said to be a resolving. And I know no one word that more fitly expresseth the nature of that grace which differenceth a true Christian from all hypocrites, and by which a man may safely judge of his estate.

;

9. Yet I here add, that it must be a settled resolution and that to intimate, that it must be an habitual willingness or resolution. The prevalency of Christ's interest in the soul must be an habitual prevalency. If a man that is terrified by a rousing sermon, or that lieth in expectation of present death, should actually resolve to forsake sin, or perform duty, without any further change of mind, or habit, or fixedness of this resolution, it would be of no great value, and soon extinguished. Though yet I believe that no unsanctified man doth ever attain to that full resolution for Christ, which hath a complacency in Christ accompanying it, and which may be termed the prevailing part of the will. Those that seem resolved to day to be for Christ, and to deny the world and the flesh, and the next day are unresolved again, have cause to suspect that they were never truly resolved. Though the will of a godly man may lie under declinings in the degrees of resolution, yet Christ hath always his habitual resolutions, and usually his actual in a prevalent degree.

10. I add also the grounds (in the fourth mark) on which this resolution must be raised. For false grounds in the