works righteousness, that remembers him in his | thee if he once say as in Hos. ii. 2. she is not ways.' Say not, I have played abroad so long my wife, neither am I her husband.'

that I dare not now go home: I have sinned so greatly, that I dare not speak to him, or look him in the face. Come yet but with a penitent, returning heart, and thou mayest be accepted through the Prince of peace: prodigals find better entertainment than they did expect, when once they do but resolve for home. If he allow us to begin with our Father which art in heaven,' we may boldly proceed to ask forgiveness of our trespasses,' and whatever else is truly good for us. But, alas, as our iniquities seduce us away from God, so the guilt of them affrights some from returning to him, and the love of them corrupts the hearts of others, and makes them too indifferent as to their communion with him; so that too many of his children live as if they did not know their Father, or had forgotten him: we may say, but we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags, and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away: and there is none that calls upon thy name, that stirs up himself to take hold of thee; for thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us because of our iniquities; but now, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou our potter, and we are all the work of thy hand. Be not wroth very sore, O Lord, neither remember iniquity for ever: behold, see we beseech thee, we are all thy people.' O do not provoke your Father to disown you, or to withdraw his help, or hide his face, | or to send the rod to call you home! for if you do, you will wish you had known the privileges of his presence, and had kept nearer to him! Be not so unnatural, so unthankful, so unkind, as to be weary of your Father's presence, and such a Father too, and to take more delight in any other.

Moreover, you are related to God in Christ as a wife unto a husband, as to covenant union, and nearness and dearness of affection, and as to his tender care of you for your good is it seemly, is it wisely or gratefully done of you, to desire rather the company of others, and delight in creatures more than him? How affectionately doth thy Maker call himself the husband of his people? Can thy heart commit adultery, and forsake him my covenant they brake, though was an husband to them, saith the Lord.' put not God to exercise his jealousy. It is one of his terrible attributes, to be a jealous God. Can he be otherwise to thee, when thou lovest not his converse or company, and carest not how long thou art from him in the world? Woe to

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Nay, more than this, if you are Christians, you are members of the body of Christ.' Therefore how can you withdraw yourselves from him, and not feel the pain and torment of so sore a wound or dislocation? You cannot live without a constant dependence on him, and communication from him, I am the true vine, and my father is the husbandman: abide in me, and I in you. I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abides in me, and I in him, the same brings forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing. If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.'

So near are you to Christ, that he delights to acquaint you with his secrets: O how many mysteries doth he reveal to those that walk with him, which carnal strangers never know! Mysteries of wisdom! Mysteries of love and saving grace! Mysteries of scripture, and mysteries of providence! Mysteries felt by inward experience, and mysteries revealed, foreseen by faith! Not only the strangers that pass by the doors, but even the common servants of the family, are unacquainted with the secret operations of the Spirit, and entertainments of grace, and joy in believing, which those that walk with God either do or may possess. Therefore Christ calls you friends, as being more than servants. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knows not what his Lord doth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you.' It is true for all this, that every true Christian hath reason to complain of his darkness and distance from God. Alas, they know so little of him, and of the mysteries of his love and kingdom, that sometimes they are apt to think that they are indeed but utter strangers to him: but this is, because there is infinitely more still unknown to them than they know. What! can the silly shallow creature comprehend his infinite Creator? Or shall we know all that is to be known in heaven, before we enjoy all that is to be enjoyed in heaven? It is no more wonder to hear a believer pant and mourn after a fuller knowledge of God, and nearer access to him,

than to seek after heaven, where this will be his happiness. But yet, though his knowledge of God be small, compared with his ignorance, that little knowledge of God which he hath attained, is more mysterious, sublime and excellent, than all the learning of the greatest unsanctified

to the nearness of your relations to him, and you shall have this excellent knowledge of his mysteries, which no books or teachers alone can give. You shall be effectually touched at the heart with the truths which others do ineffectually hear: you shall be powerfully moved, when they are but ineffectually exhorted. When they only hear the voice without them, you shall hear the voice within you, and as it were behind you, saying, This is the way, walk in it. O that you could duly value such a friend, to watch over you, and for you, and dwell in you, and tell you faithfully of every danger, and of every duty, and teach you to know good and evil, and what to choose, and what to refuse; how closely and delightfully would you converse with such a blessed friend, if you rightly valued him.

scholars in the world. Walk with him according | yourself entirely and absolutely so God. Nay, did it not cost you the smart of some afflictions, before you would be made so wise? Did it not cost you many a gripe of conscience, and many a terrible thought of hell, and of the wrath of God, before you would be heartily engaged to him, in his covenant? Will you now live as strangely and neglectfully towards him, as if those days were quite forgotten; and as if you had never felt such things; and as if you had never been so convinced or resolved? O Christians, take heed of forgetting your former case! your former thoughts, your former convictions, complaints, and covenants! God did not work all that upon your hearts to be forgotten: he intended not only your present change, but your after remembrance of it, for your close adhering to him while you live; and for your quickening and constant perseverance to the end. The forgetting of their former miseries, and the workings of God upon their hearts in their conversion, is a great cause of mutability and revolting, and of unspeakable hurt to many a soul.

2. Moreover, you that are the servants of God, have by your covenant and profession, renounced and forsaken all things else, as they stand in any opposition to him, or competition with him, and have resigned yourselves wholly unto him alone: therefore with him must you converse, and be employed, unless you will forsake your covenant. You knew first that it was your interest to forsake the world and turn to God: you knew the world would not be instead of God to you, either in life, or at death: upon this knowledge it was that you changed your master, changed your minds, and changed your way, your work, your hopes do you dream now that you were mistaken? Do you begin to think that the world is fitter to be your God or happiness? If not, you must still confess that both your interest and your covenant oblige you to turn your hearts and minds from the things which you have renounced, and to walk with him that you have taken for your God, and to obey him whom you have taken for your king and judge, and to keep close to him with purest love, whom you have taken for your everlasting portion. Mark what you are minding all the day, while you are neglecting God: is it not something that you have renounced? Did you not renounce it upon sufficient cause? Was it not a work of your most serious deliberation; and of as great wisdom, as any that ever you performed; if it were, turn not back in your hearts again from God unto the renounced creature. You have had many a lightning from heaven in to your understandings, to bring you to see the difference between them: you have had many a teaching, and many a warning, and many a striving of the Spirit, before you were prevailed with to renounce the world, the flesh and the devil, and to give up

Nay, may you not remember also what sorrow you had in the day of your repentance, for your forsaking and neglecting God so long? Will you grow again negligent of him? Was it then so heinous a sin in your eyes; and is it now grown less? Could you then aggravate it so many ways, and now do you justify or extenuate it? Were you then ready to sink under the burden of it; and were so hardly persuaded that it would be forgiven you: and now do you make so small a matter of it? Did you then so much wonder at your folly, that could so long let out your thoughts and affections upon the creature, while you neglected God and heaven; and do you begin to look that way again? Do you now grow familiar with a life so like to that which was once your state of death; and bear that easily that once was the breaking of your heart? O Christians, turn not away from that God again, who once brought you home, with so much smart and so much grace; with such love and fatherly severity! Methinks when you remember how you were once awakened, you should not easily fall asleep again. When you remember the thoughts which then were in your hearts, and the tears that were in your eyes, and the earnest prayers which you then put up, that God would receive, and take you for his own, you should not now forget him, and live as if you could live without him. Remember that so far as you withdraw your hearts from God, and let them follow inferior things, so far you contradict his works upon your hearts; so far you violate your co

venant with him, or sin against it; so far you are revolters, and go against the principal part of your professed religion: yea, so far you are ungodly, as you thus withdraw your hearts from God. Cleave to him, and prosecute your cove nant, if you will have the saving benefits of his love and covenant.

I am sure that your own experience will bear witness, that since that time, in all your lives, it never was so well with you as when you walked most faithfully with God. If you have received any falls and hurts, it hath been when you have strayed from him: if ever you had safety, peace, or joy, it hath been when you have been near3. Moreover, the servants of God are doubly est to him: your wounds, grief, and death, obliged to walk with him, because they have had have been the fruit of your own ways, and of that experience of the goodness, the safety and your forsaking him: your recovery, health, and the sweetness of it, which strangers have not. life have been the fruit of his ways, and of your Do you not remember how glad you were, when adhering to him: many a time you have conyou first believed that he pardoned and accepted fessed this, and have said, It is good for me to you? How much you rejoiced in his love and draw near to God. He hath helped you when entertainments? How much better you found none else could help you and comforted you your Father's house, than ever you had found when none else could comfort you. How far your sinful state? How much sweeter his ser- are you above the worldling's happiness, when vice was, than you did before believe? It is you are nigh to God? One lively thought of likely you can remember something like that his greatness, and excellency, and of his love to which is described in the words of Luke: you in Jesus Christ, will make the name of 'And he arose, and came to his father: but when wealth, honour, favour, preferment, and sensual he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, pleasure, to seem to you as words of no signifiand had compassion, and ran and fell on his cation: how indifferent will you be, as to your neck and kissed him: and the son said unto prosperity in the world, when you feel what it is him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and to walk with God? If you are lively experiin thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called mental Christians, you have found this to be thy son but the father said to his servants, true: have you not found that it is the very bring forth the best robe and put it on him, and health, ease, and proper employment of your put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet, souls to walk with God, and keep close to him? and bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it, and that all goes well with you while you can do let us eat and be merry for this my son was thus, however the world doth esteem or use you? dead, and is alive again, he was lost, and is found.' that when you grow strange or disobedient to What would you have thought or said of this God, and forgetful of his goodness, his presence, prodigal, if after all this, he should have been and his authority, you are like the stomach that weary of his father's house and company, and is sick, and like a bone that is out of joint, that have taken more pleasure in his former company? can have no ease till it be healed, and restored Would you not have said, he was a forgetful to its proper place? No meats or drinks, no and unthankful man, and worthy never more to company nor recreation, no wealth or greatness be received? I do not speak to you now as to will serve to make a sick man well, or ease the apostates, that are turned ungodly, and have dislocated bones. Nothing will serve a faithful quite forsaken God and holiness: but I beseech holy soul but God; this is the cause of the soryou consider, what it is, after such experiences row of his heart, of the secret groans and comand obligations as these, so much as to abate plainings of his life, because in this life of disyour love, and grow remiss, unmindful, and in-tance and imperfection, he finds himself so far different, as if you were weary of God, and were inclined to neglect him, and look again to the world for your hope, satisfaction, and delight? As love your souls, and as you would avoid the sorrows which are greater than any that ever you felt, take heed of slighting the love that hath done such wonders for you, and of dealing so unthankfully with the everlasting God, and of turning thus away from him that hath received you! Remember whilst you live, the love of your espousals: was God so good to you at the first, and holiness so desirable? and is it not so still?

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from God; and when he hath done all that he can, he is still so dark, and strange, and cold in his affections! When persecution drives him from the ordinances and public worship, or when sin hath set him at a greater distance from his God, he bemoans his soul, as David in his banishment from the tabernacle, as the heart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God: my soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God? My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me,

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Where is thy God? It is no wonder if with his | back, or stop him in his course. The world and greatest joy, he be yet clouded with these sorrows, because he yet wants more of God than he enjoys his enjoying graces-love and joy-are yet imperfect. But when he hath attained his nearest approach to God, he will have fulness of delight in fulness of fruition.

O Christians! Do I need to tell you, that after all the trials you have made in the world, you have never found any state of life, that was worthy your desires, nor that gave you any true contentment, but only this living upon God? If you have not found such comfort here as others have done, yet at least you have seen it afar off, within your reach: as men that in the Indies, in the discovery of plantations, expect gold mines, when they find those golden sands that promise it. You have found a life which is certainly desirable, and leads to joy in the midst of sorrow it is no small joy to have a certain promise and prospect of everlasting joy. It is therefore more excusable in those that never tasted any better than the pleasures of the flesh, to neglect this sweeter heavenly life, than it is in you, that have been convinced by your own experience, that there is no life to be compared with it.

the flesh are the things behind us: we turned our backs upon them at our conversion, when we turned to God: it is these that would now call back our thoughts, and corrupt our affections, when we should run on, and reach forward to the heavenly prize: it is God and heaven, and the remaining duties of a holy life, that are the things before us! And shall we now look back; what, we that are running and striving for a crown of endless glory! we, that if we lose it, do lose our souls and hopes for ever! we that have loitered in the morning of our lives, and lost so much precious time as we have done; we, that have gone so far in our way, and held out through so many difficulties and assaults; shall we now grow weary of walking with God, and begin to look to the things behind us? Did he not tell us at the first, that father and mother, house, lands, life, and all things must be forsaken for Christ, if we will be his disciples? These are the things behind us, which we turned our back on when we consented to the covenant: and are they now grown better; or is God grown worse, that we turn our hearts from him to them; when we first begun our Christian race, it was upon supposition that it was for that immortal crown, which all the world is not to be compared to.

4. Your walking with God is the necessary prosecution of your choice and hopes of life eternal. It is your necessary preparation to your enjoying him in heaven. Have you fixed Have we not still the same consideration beon those hopes with so great reason and delibera-fore us, to move us to hold on till we attain it? tion, and will you now draw back and be slack Hold on, Christians, it is for heaven: is there in the prosecution of them? Have you gone not enough in that word to drive back all the so far in the way to heaven, and do you now be- cares and pleasures, that importune your minds gin to look behind you, as if you were about to to forget your God? Is there not enough in change your mind? Paul sets you a better ex- that word to quicken you up in your greatest ample: yea, doubtless, I count all things but dullness; and to call you home, when you are loss for the excellency of the knowledge of wandering from God: and to make you again Christ Jesus my Lord; for whom I have suffered fall out with all that would reduce you, or dithe loss of all things, and do count them but vert you, and call it vanity and vexation of dung, that I may win Christ, and be found in spirit? Methinks the fore-thought of that life him, if by any means I might attain to the re- and work which you hope to have with God for surrection of the dead: not as though I had al-ever, should make you earnestly desire to have ready attained, either were already perfect: but I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus: brethren, I count not myself to have apprehend-not beseeming a man that saith he is seeking for ed, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.' He compares himself to a runner in a race, that till he apprehend the prize or mark, doth still make forward with all his might, and will not so much as mind or look at any thing behind him, that would turn him

as much of the life on earth, as is here to be attained! If it will be your heaven and happiness then, it must needs be desirable now. It is

perfect communion with God in heaven, and that above all things,-as every Christian doth-to live in a daily neglect or forgetfulness of God on earth. Delightfully to draw near him, and exercise all our faculties upon him, or for him sometime in prayer and contemplation on himself, and always in works of obedience to him ; this is the life that beseems those that profess to seek eternal life. O therefore let us make it

disappointing providences; even to leave you no comfortable entertainment or converse but with himself, and with his servants, and with those means that lead you to himself. If you begin to desire to lodge abroad in strange habitations, he will uncover those houses, and will not leave you a room that is dry to put your head in; or he will throw open the doors, and leave all open to the lust of ravenous beasts and robbers. He will have thy heart, and he will have thy company, because thou art his child, and because he loves thee. He will allow thee neither thy carnal delights nor hopes.

our daily work, to keep our God and glory in our eye, and to spur on our dull affections, and in the diligent attendance and following the Captain of our salvation, to prosecute our expected end. 5. Lastly, consider that God doth purposely provide you hard entertainment in the world, and causes every creature to deny you the pleasure and satisfaction which you desire, that so you may have none to walk with but himself, with any heart-settling comfort and content. If you see not enough in him to allure you to himself, you shall feel enough in the world to drive you to him if his love and goodness will not serve you alone to make him your pleasure, and hold If he perceive thee either taking that pleasure you to him in the best, and most excellent, way in thy prosperity, which thou shouldst take in of love, at least the storms and troubles that are him alone, or hoping at least that the world may abroad shall show you the necessity of keeping hereafter prove more amiable and delightful to close to God; and the love of yourselves shall | thee ; the more he loves thee, the more his prohelp you to do that which was not done by the at-vidence shall conspire with his grace, to change traction of his love alone. If you will put him thy mind by depriving thee of thy unwholesome, to it, to send out his command to every crea- dangerous delights, and of all thy hopes of such ture to cross and vex you, and disappoint all | hereafter. expectations from it, that so he may force you to remember your Father and your home, deny not then but it is because of yourselves that you were not saved in an easier way. Would you wish God to make that condition pleasant to you, which he sees you take too much pleasure in already, or seek and desire it, at least; when as it is the pleasantness of the creature that is your danger, and which detains your thoughts and affections from himself? If you could but learn to walk with him, and to take up your pleasure in his love appearing to you in his creatures, and to make their sweetness the means to your apprehension of the sweetness of his favour, and of the everlasting joys, then you might say the creature doth you good; and then it is likely you might be permitted to possess and use it for such pleasure. The jealous God will watch your hearts, though you watch them not; and he will make you know that he sees which way they run out from him, and what creature it is that is minded and delighted in, while he is neglected, as if he were unsuitable, and scarcely desirable. You must never look that he should long permit you those prohibited delights, or let you alone in those idolatrous inclinations: if he love you, he will cure that carnal love, and recover your love to himself that hath deserved it. If he intended not your salvation, he may let you go, and try again whether the creature will prove better to you than himself: but you cannot think that he will thus let go his children that must live with him for ever. Have you not perceived that this is the design and meaning of his afflicting and

Use the world as a traveller, for the ends to which it was ordained, to the service of God, and the furtherance of thy salvation, and then thou shalt find that God will furnish thee with all that is necessary to these necessary ends: but if the world must have your love and care, and must be your chief business and delight, and your excuse for not attending upon God, murmur not, nor marvel not, if he dispose of it and you accordingly. If you are yet too healthful to think with seriousness of your eternal state: if you are too rich to part with all for Christ, or openly to own his cause: if you are too much esteemed in the world to own a scorned, slandered religion: if you are so busy for earth that you cannot have time to think of heaven; if you have so much delight in house or land, or in your employments, or recreations, or friends, that God and godliness can have little or none of your delight: marvel not then if God shake your health, or waste your riches, or turn your honour into contempt, and suffer men to slander and reproach you, and spit in your face, and make you of no reputation: marvel not if he turn you out of all, or turn all to your grief and trouble, and make the world a desert to you, and the inhabitants as wolves and bears. The great lesson that Christ hath undertaken to teach you, is the difference betwixt the Creator and the creature, and the difference betwixt heaven and earth. The great work that Christ hath undertaken to do upon you, is to recover your hearts from the world to God: this lesson he will teach you, and this work he will do upon you, whatever it cost you: for it must be done.