or at the best, it is but some poor and erroneous | holy estate before the fall. It is expressly said, employment of the rational faculties which they that the new man which we put on, is renewed exercise, or some weak approaches towards that in knowledge after the image of him that created high and holy life, which is indeed the life which him. After God's image Adam was created. the rational nature was created for, and which is the right improvement of it. 4. Moreover, nothing is more beseeming the nature of man, than to aspire after the highest and noblest improvement of itself; and to live the most excellent life that it is capable of. For every nature tends to its own perfection. But it is most evident, that to walk with God in holiness, is a thing that human nature is capable of; and that is the highest life that we are capable of on earth: therefore it is the life most suitable to our natures. 5. What can be more rational and beseeming a created nature, than to live to those ends which our Creator intended in the very forming of our natures? It is his ends that are principally to be served. But the very composure of our faculties plainly proves, that his end was that we should be fitted for his service: he gave us no powers or capacity in vain: and therefore to serve him and walk with him, is most suitable to our natures. Object. That is natural which is first, and born with us but our enmity to holiness is first, and not our holiness. to us. 3. If it belong to the soundness and integrity of nature to be holy, that is, disposed and addicted to live to God, then it is rash and foolish, for men out of their own imagination, to feign, that God first made nature defective, and ther mended it by superadded grace. But if it belong not to the soundness and integrity of human nature to be holy, then why did God give him grace to make him so? Nay then, it would follow, that when God sanctified Adam, or any since, he made him specifically another thing, another creature, of another nature, and did not only cure the diseases of his nature. 4. It is yet apparent in the very nature of man's faculties, that their very usefulness and tendency is to live to God, and to enjoy him: that God should make a nature apt for such a use, and give it no disposedness to its proper use, is an unnatural conceit. We see to this day that it is but an unreasonable abuse of reason, when it is not used holily for God; and it is a disease of nature to be otherwise disposed. Therefore primitive nature had such a holy inclination. 5. The contrary opinion tends to infidelity, and to brutify human nature. For if no man can believe that he must be holy, live to God, and enjoy him hereafter in heaven, but he that also believes that primitive nature was never disposed or qualified for such a life; and that God must first make a man another creature of another nature, and consequently not a man, this is not only so improbable, but so contrary to scripture and reason, that few considerate persons would believe it. As if we must be Answ. It may be called natural indeed, because it is first, and born with us: in that respect we confess that sin, and not holiness, is natural But holiness is called natural to us, in a higher respect, because it was the primitive natural constitution of man, was before sin, | is the perfection or health of nature, the right employment and improvement of it, and tends to its happiness. A hereditary leprosy may be called natural, as it is first, and before health, in that person: but health and soundness is natural,lieve that God would turn brutes into men. as being the well being of nature, when the leprosy is unnatural, as being but its disease, and tending to its destruction. God heals, elevates, and perfects nature, but he doth not specifically change it, at least in this life. Object. But let it be granted that he gives no man specifically another nature, yet he may give him such higher gifts as may be like another nature. Object. But nature in its first constitution was not holy, but innocent only, and it was by a superadded gift of grace that it became holy, as some schoolmen think: and as others think, Adam had no holiness till his restoration. Answ. No doubt he may and doth give him Answ. These are popish improved fancies, and such gifts as actuate and perfect nature: but contrary to nature and the word of God. 1. They are no where written, nor have any evidence in nature, and therefore are the groundless dreams of men. 2. The work of our recovery to God is called in scripture a redemption, renovation, restoration, which imply that nature was once in that some disposition to our ultimate end is essential to our nature; and therefore to assign man another ultimate end, and to give a disposition to it, of which he had no seed, or part, or principle before, is to make him another creature. I confess that in lapsed man, the holy disposition is so far dead, as that the change makes a man a new creature in a moral sense, as he is a new | theology informs reason about the matters of man that changes his mind and manners: but God and our salvation: and the Spirit of God still nature hath its aptitude, as rational, to be makes his doctrine and revelation effectual. Make employed for its Maker; so that he is not a nature sound and reason clear, and then we will new creature in a natural sense. consent that all men be persuaded to live according to their nature and their reason. But if a madman will rave and tear himself and others, and say, This is according to my nature or my reason: it is fitter that chains and whips cure that nature and reason, than that he be allowed to live according to his madness. If a drunkard or whoremonger will say, My nature and reason incline me to please my appetite and lust: it is fit that the brutish nature be corrected, and the beast which rides and rules the man be taken down; and when indeed his nature is the nature of man, and fitted to the use and ends it was made for, then let him live accord An actual or habitual willingness to his holy employment, a promptitude to it, and a due understanding of it, is the new creature, morally so called, which is given in our regeneration: but the natural aptitude that is in our faculties as rational, to this holy life, is essential to us as men, or as rational; even to have the natural power which must yet have further help or moral life to actuate it. Adam had both these: the one he retained, or else he had not continued a man; the other he lost, or else he had not had need of renovation. If Adam's nature had not been disposed to of nature, to adhere to God, and obey and serve him, was not written in his heart: then it would not have been his duty to adhere to God, and to obey and serve him: which is so false, that even in lapsed, unrenewed nature, there is left so much aptitude hereto, as will prove him to be still under the obligations of this law of nature, even actually to adhere to God, and to obey him, which a dead man, a madman, or an infant, is not immediately. abuse or kill his neighbours, and say, This is according to my nature, let that nature be used as the nature of wolves and foxes, and other noxious creatures are. But let human nature be cured of its blindness, carnality and corruption, and then it will need no external testimony to convince it, that no employment is so natural and suitable to man, as to walk with God, in love and confidence, reverent worship, and cheerful obedience to his will. A worldly, fleshly, By all this you see, that though the blindness sensual life, will then appear to be below the raand disease of reason is contrary to faith and tional nature of a man, as it is below us to go holiness, yet reason itself is so much for it, as to grass with horses, or to live as mere companthat faith itself is but the act of elevated, well ions of brutes. It will then appear to be as nainformed reason; and supernatural revelation tural for us to love and live to our Creator and is but the means to inform our reason, about Redeemer, and to walk with God, as for a child things which have not a natural evidence, dis- to love his parents, and to live with them and cernible by us. Sanctification, actively taken, serve them. When I say that this is natural, I is but the healing of our reason and rational ap mean not that it is necessary by natural necespetite and holiness is but the health or sound-sity, or that grace doth operate as their rational ness of them. The error of reason must be renounced by believers, but not the use of reason: the sufficiency of reason and natural light, without supernatural light and help, we must all deny: but to set reason, as reason, in opposition to faith or holiness, or divine revelation, is as gross a piece of foolery, as to set the visive faculty in opposition to the light of the sun, or to its objects. It is the unreasonableness of sinners that is to be cured by illuminating grace. They are wise to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge.' Their reason is wounded, depraved and corrupted about the matters of God: they have reason to serve the flesh, but not to master it. God doth renew men by giving them wisdom, and bringing them to a sound mind: as logic helps reason in discourse and arguing, so 6 I motion is so called. There is a brutish or inanimate nature, and there is a rational, voluntary nature: grace works not according to the way of inanimate nature, in free agents. well say, that whatever is rational, is natural to a rational creature as such, so far as he discerns it. may Yea, and habits, though they affect not necessarily, but freely in a rational nature, yet they incline necessarily, as by the order of nature. They contain in their being a natural aptitude and propensity to action. Object. But thus you confound nature and grace, natural and supernatural operations, while you make grace natural. Answ. No such thing: though walking with God be called natural, as it is most agreeable to nature so far as it is found, and is the felicity and best employment of the rational nature as such: Yet, 1. Diseased nature doth abhor it, as a diseased stomach the most pleasant and most wholesome food, as I said before. 2. This disease of nature cannot be cured without divine, supernatural grace. So that as to the efficient cause, our holiness is supernatural. But it is unsound doctrine of those that affirm that Adam in his pure natural state of innocency, had no natural holiness, or aptitude and promptitude to walk with God in order to everlasting happiness; but say that all this was either wanting to him, and was a state specifically distinct, which he fell short of by his sin, or that it was given him by superadded grace, and was not in his entire nature. Yet we deny not but, as to degrees, Adam's nature was to grow up to more perfection: that his natural holiness contained not a sufficient, immediate aptitude and prompitude to every duty, which might afterwards be required of him but this was to be obtained in the exercise of that holiness which he had: even as a vine or other fruit tree, though it be natural to it to bear its proper fruit, yet hath it not an immediate sufficient aptitude hereto, whilst it is but appearing out of the seed, before it be grown up to maturity. Or as it is natural to a man to discourse and reason; but yet his nature in infancy, or untaught and unexercised, hath not a sufficient immediate aptitude and promptitude hereunto. Or as grace inclines a renewed soul to every holy truth and duty: yet such a soul in its infancy of grace, hath not a sufficient immediate aptitude or promptitude to the receiving of every holy truth, or the doing of every holy duty; but must grow up to it by degrees. But the addition of these degrees is no specific alteration of the nature of man, or of that grace which was before received. Having been so long upon this first consideration (that walking with God is most agreeable to human nature), I shall be more brief in the rest that follow. Sect. II. To walk with God, and live to him, is incomparably the highest and noblest life. To converse with men only, is to converse with worms: whether they be princes or poor men, they differ but as the larger from the lesser. If they be wise and good, their converse may be profitable and delightful, because they have a beam of excellency from the face of God. O how unspeakable is the distance between his wisdom and goodness, and theirs! But if they be foolish, ungodly and dishonest, how lothsome is their conversation! What impure breath is in their profane and filthy language! In their lies and slanders of the just! In their sneers and scorns of those that walk with God! which expose at once their folly and misery to the pity of all that are truly understanding. When they are gravely speaking evil of the things which they understand not, or with a fleering confidence deriding merrily the holy commands and ways of God, they are much more lamentably expressing their infatuation than any that are kept in chains in bedlam: though indeed, with the most, they escape the reputation which they deserve, because they are attended with persons of their own proportion of wisdom, that always reverence a silk coat, and judge them wise that wear gold lace, and have the greatest satisfaction of their wills and lusts, and are able to do most mischief in the world: because good men have learned to honour the worst of their superiors, and not to call them as they are. But God is bold to call them as they are, and give them in his word such names and characters by which they might come to know themselves. Is it not a higher, nobler life to walk with God, than to converse in bedlam or with intoxicated sensualists, that live in a constant delirium? Yea, worse than so: ungodly men are children of the devil, so called by Jesus Christ himself, because they have much of the nature of the devil, and the 'lusts of their father they will do ;' yea, they are taken captive by him at his will. They are the servants of sin, and do the drudgery that so vile a master sets them on. Certainly as the spirits of the just are so like to angels, that Christ saith we shall be as they, and equal to them; so the wicked are nearer kin to devils than they themselves will easily believe. They are as like him as children to their father: he is a liar, and so are they: he is a hater of God, of godliness, and of godly men, and so are they: he is a murderer, and would devour the holy seed; and such are they. He envies the progress of the gospel, the prosperity of the church, and the increase of holiness, and so do they. He hath a special malice against the most powerful and successful preachers of the word of God, and against the most zealous and eminent saints; and so have they. He cares not by what lies and fictions he disgraces them, nor how cruelly he uses them; no more do they, (or some of them at least :) he cherisheth licentiousness, sensuality and impiety: and so do they. If they seem better in their adversity and restraint, yet try them but with prosperity and power, and you shall see quickly how like they are to devils. Shall we delight more to converse with brutes and incarnate devils, than with God. Is it not a more high and excellent conversation to walk with God, and live to him, than to be companions of such degenerate men, that have almost commemorations of the things that were done forfeited the reputation of humanity? Alas, they are companions so deluded and ignorant, and yet so wilful; so miserable, and yet so confident and secure, that they are, to a believing eye, the most lamentable sight that the whole world can show us out of hell. How sad a life must it then needs be, to converse with such, were it not for the hope that we have of furthering their recovery and salvation? Christ. They hear by faith the heavenly concert, the high and harmonious songs of praise, the joyful triumphs of crowned saints, the sweet But to walk with God is a word so high, that I should have feared the guilt of arrogance in using it, if I had not found it in the holy scriptures. It is a word that imports so high and holy a frame of soul, and expresses such high and holy actions, that the naming of it strikes my heart with reverence, as if I had heard the voice to Moses, 'put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.' Methinks he that shall say to me, Come see a man that walks with God, doth call me to see one that is next unto an angel, or glorified soul! It is a far more reverend object in mine eye, than ten thousand lords or princes, considered only in their fleshly glory. It is a wiser action for people to run and crowd together, to see a man that walks with God, than to see the pompous train of princes, their entertainments, or their triumph. O happy man, that walks with God, though neglected and contemned by all about him! What blessed sights doth he daily see! What ravishing tidings, what pleasant melody doth he daily hear, unless it be in his swoons or sickness! what delectable food doth he daily taste! He sees by faith the God, the glory, which the blessed spirits see at hand by nearest intuition he sees that in a glass and darkly, which they behold with open face: he sees the glorious majesty of his Creator, the eternal King, the cause of causes, the composer, upholder, preserver, and governor of all worlds he beholds the wonderful methods of his providence: what he cannot reach to see, he admires, and waits for the time when that also shall be open to his view! He sees by faith the world of spirits, the hosts that attend the throne of God; their perfect righteousness, their full devotedness to God: their ardent love, their flaming zeal, their ready and cheerful obedience, their dignity and shining glory, in which the lowest of them exceeds that which the disciples saw on Moses and Elias when they appeared on the holy mount, and talked with and suffered on earth, with the praises of him that redeemed them by his blood, and made them kings and priests to God: herein he hath sometimes a sweet foretaste of the everlasting pleasures, which though it be but little, as Jonathan's honey on the end of his rod, or as the clusters of grapes which were brought from Canaan into the wilderness, yet are they more excellent than all the delights of sinners. In the beholding of this celestial glory, some beams penetrate his breast, and so irradiate his longing soul, that he is changed thereby into the same image, from glory to glory; the spirit of glory and of God doth rest upon him. O what an excellent holy frame doth this converse with God possess his soul of! How reverently doth he think of him! What life is there in every name and attribute of God which he hears or thinks on! The mention of his power, his wisdom, his goodness, his love, his holiness, his truth, how powerful and how pleasant are they to him! when to those that know him but by the hearing of the ear, all these are but like common names and notions; and even to the weaker sort of Christians, whose walking with God is more uneven and low, interrupted by their sins, doubts, and fears, this life and glory of a Christian course is less perceived. The sweet appropriating and applying works of faith, by which the soul can own his God, and finds itself owned by him, are exercised most easily and happily in these near approaches unto God. Our doubts are cherished by our darkness, and that is much caused by our distance: the nearer the soul approaches to God, the more distinctly it hears the voice of mercy, the sweet reconciling invitations of love; and the more clearly it discerns that goodness and amiableness in God which makes it easier to us to believe that he loves us, or is ready to embrace us; and banishes all those false and horrid apprehensions of him, which before were our discouragement, and made him seem to us more terrible than amiable. As the ministers and faithful servants of Christ, are ordinarily so misrepresented by the malignant devil, to those that knew them not, that they are ready to think them some silly fools, or false-hearted hypocrites, and to shun them as strange persons; but when they come to thorough acquaintance with them by a nearer and familiar converse, they see how much they were mistaken, and wronged by their prejudice and belief of slanderers' reports: even | plex themselves by their error, doth it follow that so a weak believer, who is under troubles, in the apprehension of his sin and danger, is apt to hearken to the enemy of God, that would show him nothing but his wrath, and represent God as an enemy to him: in this case it is exceedingly hard for a poor sinner to believe that God is reconciled to him, or loves him, or intends him good, but he is ready to dread and shun him as an enemy, or as he would fly from a wild beast or murderer, or from fire or water, that would destroy him and all these injurious thoughts of God are cherished by strangeness and disaffection. But as the soul doth fall into an understanding and serious converse with God, and having been often with him, doth find him more merciful than he was by Satan represented to him, his experience reconciles his mind to God, and makes it much easier to him to believe that God is reconciled unto him, when he hath found much better entertainment with God than he expected, and hath observed his benignity, and the treasures of his bounty laid up in Christ, and by him distributed to believers, and hath found him ready to hear and help, and found him the only full and suitable felicitating good; this banishes his former horrid thoughts, and makes him ashamed that ever he should think so suspiciously, injuriously, and dishonourably of his dearest God and Father. Yet I must confess that there are many upright, troubled souls, who are much in reading, prayer, and meditation, that still find it hard to be persuaded of the love of God, and that have much more disquietude and fear since they set themselves to think of God, than they had before: but yet for all this, we may well conclude, that to walk with God is the way to consolation, and tends to acquaint us with his love. As for those troubled souls, whose experience is objected against, some of them are such as are yet but in their return to God, from a life of former sin and misery, and are yet but like the needle in the compass that is shaken, in a trembling motion towards their rest, and not in any settled apprehensions of it. Some of them by the straying of their imaginations too high, and putting themselves upon more than their heads can bear, and by the violence of fears, or other passions, make themselves incapable of those sweet consolations which else they might find in their converse with God; as a lute, when the strings are broken with straining, is incapable of making any melody. All of them have false apprehensions of God, and therefore trouble themselves by their own mistakes. If some per therefore the truth is not comfortable? Is not a Father's presence consolatory, because some children are afraid of their fathers, who know them not because of some disguise? Some of God's children walk so unevenly and carelessly before him, that their sins provoke him to hide his face, and to seem to reject them and disown them, and so to trouble them that he may bring them home: but shall the comforts of our Father's love and family be judged of by the fears or smart of those whom he is scourging for their disobedience, or their trial? Seek God with understanding, as knowing his essential properties, and what he will be to them that sincerely and diligently seek him; and then you will quickly have experience that nothing so much tends to quiet, and settle a doubting, troubled, unstable soul, as faithfully to walk with God. But the soul that estranges itself from God, may indeed for a time have the quietness of security; but so far, it will be strange to the assurance of his love, and to true consolation. Expect not that God should follow you with his comforts in your sinfulness and negligence, and cast them into your hearts whilst you neither seek nor mind them: or that he will give you tne fruit of his ways in your own ways. Will he be your joy when you forget him; will he delight your souls with his goodness and amiableness, while you are taken up with other matters, and think not of him? Can you expect to find the comforts of his family among his enemies out of doors? The experience of all the world can tell you, that prodigals, while they are straggling from their Father's house, do never taste the comfort of his embraces. The strangers meddle not with his children's joys: they grow not in the way of ambition, covetousness, vain-glory, or sensuality; but in the way of holy obedience, and of believing contemplations of the divine, everlasting objects of delight. For lo, they that are far from him shall perish: he destroys them that go awhoring from him: but it is good for us to draw nigh to God.' Sect. III. Walking with God, is the only course that can prove and make men truly wise. It proves them wise that make so wise and good a choice, and are disposed and skilled in any measure for so high a work. Practical wisdom is the solid, useful, profitable, wisdom: practical wisdom is seen in our choice of good, and refusal of evil, as its most immediate and excellent effect. No choosing or refusing doth show the wisdom or folly of man so much as that which is about the greatest matters, and which |