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service, and sometimes be refreshed with the | to receive him into their local communion, light of his countenance, and the communications though he repent: for as to local communion, I of his love. But of this more afterwards. IV. The advantages of solitude.

We see our example and our encouragements. Let us now, as followers of Christ, endeavour to imitate him in this, and to live upon God when men forsake us, and to know that while God is with us, we are not alone, nor indeed forsaken while he forsakes us not.

I shall, 1. Show you here, negatively, what you must not do. 2. Affirmatively, what you must do, for the performance of your duty in this imitation of Christ.

1. You must not make this your pretence for the undervaluing your useful friends, nor for your unthankfulness for so great a benefit as a godly friend: nor for the neglect of your duty in improving the company and help of your friends two is better than one: the communion of saints, and help of those that are wise and faithful, is a mercy highly to be esteemed. The undervaluing of it is at least a sign of a declining soul.

2. You must not hence fetch any pretence to slight your friends, and disoblige them, or neglect any duty that you owe them, or any means therein necessary to the continuation of their friendship.

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think such a case may be. 4. In case a man, through custom and ill company, be so captivated to some fleshly lust, as that he is not able to bear the temptations that are found in human converse but falls by them into frequent heinous sinning in this case the right hand or eye is rather to be parted with, than their salvation. Though a mere restraint by distance of temptations and opportunities of sinning, will not prove a man sanctified, nor save the soul that loves the sin, and fain would live in it : yet, 1. Grace may sometimes appear in the strength and selfdenial which is exercised in the very avoiding of temptations, when yet perhaps the person hath not strength enough to have stood against the temptations if they had not been avoided. 2. The distance of temptations, and opportunity of serious and frequent consideration, may be a means to help them to sincerity that want it. 5. In case a man by age or sickness find himself so near to death, as that he hath now a more special call to look after his present actual preparation, than to endeavour any more the good of others; and find withal, that solitude will help him in his preparations, his society being such as would but hinder him. In these five cases, I suppose it lawful to retire from human converse into solitude.

But when there is no such necessity or call, it usually proceeds from one of these vicious distempers : 1. From cowardice and fear of suffer

3. You must not causelessly withdraw from human society into solitude. A weariness of converse with men is often joined with a weariness of our duty : a retiring voluntarily into so- | litude, when God doth not call or drive us thi-ing, when the soldiers of Christ do hide their ther, is often but a retiring from the place and work which God hath appointed us: consequently a retiring rather from God, than to God. Like some idle servants that think they should not work so hard, because it is but worldly business, and think their masters deal not religiously by them, unless they let them neglect their labour, that they may spend more time in serving God: as if it were not serving God to be faithful in their master's service.

I deny not but very holy persons have lived in a state of retirement from human converse: in such cases as these, it may become a duty : 1. In case of such persecution as at present leaves us no opportunity of serving or honouring God so much in any other place or state. 2. In case that natural infirmity, or disability, or any other accident, shall make one less serviceable to God and his church in society, than he is in solitude. 3. In case he hath committed a sin so heinous, and of indelible scandal and reproach, as that it is not fit for the servants of Christ any more

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heads, instead of confessing him before men. 2. From a laziness of mind and weariness of duty: when slothful and unprofitable servants hide their talents, pretending their fear of the austerity of their Lord. It is easier to run away from our work than to do it: and to go out of the reach of ignorance, malice, contradiction and ungodliness, than to encounter them, and conquer them by truth and holy lives. So many persons as we converse with, so many are there to whom we owe some duty: this is not so easy as it is to over-run our work, and to hide ourselves in some wilderness or cell, whilst others are fighting the battles of the Lord. 3. Or it may proceed from mere impatience when men cannot bear the frown, scorns, and violence of the ungodly, they fly from sufferings, which by patience they should overcome. 4. Or it may come from humour and mutability of mind, and discontent with one's condition : many retire from human converse to please a discontented passionate mind; or expecting to find that in privacy, which

the most profitable to others. 'No man can live well, that looketh but to himself: thou must live to another, if thou wilt live to thyself.'

O the delight that there is in doing good to many! None knows it that hath not tried it: not upon any account of merit ; but as it pleases God, and as goodness itself is amiable and sweet; and as we receive by communicating; and as we are under promise; and as charity makes all the good that is done to another to be to us as our own!

in public they could not find, nor is any where to be found on earth. 5. Some do it in melancholy, merely to please a sick imagination, which is vexed in company, and a little eases itself in living as the possessed man among the tombs. 6. Sometimes it proceeds from self-ignorance, and an unhumbled state of soul: when men think much better of themselves than others, they think they can more comfortably converse with themselves than with others: whereas if they well understood that they are the worst or greatest enemies, or troubles to themselves, they would more fear their own company than other men's: they would then consider what proud, fleshly, worldly, selfish, and disordered hearts they are likely to carry with them into their soli-enemy's eye may be useful, though malicious; tude, and there to be annoyed with from day to day: that the nearest enemy is the worst, and the nearest trouble is the greatest.

5. We are dark, and partial, and heedless of ourselves, and hardly brought or kept in acquaintance with our hearts; and therefore have the more need of the eye of others even an

and may do us good, while he intends us evil. Saith Bernard, The evil that none seeth, none reproveth: and where the reprover is not feared, the tempter comes more boldly, and the sin is committed the more licentiously.' It is hard to know the spots in our own faces, when we have no glass or beholder to acquaint us with them. Saith Chrysostom, Solitude is the cover of all vices.' In company this cover is laid aside, and

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beholders that cause shame; which solitude is not acquainted with: and it is a piece of impenitency not to be ashamed of sin.

These vices or infirmities carry many into solitude; and if they live where popish vanity may seduce them, they will perhaps imagine, that they are serving God, and entering into perfection, when they are but sinfully obeying their corruptions and that they are advanced above others in degrees of grace, while they are pleas-vice being more naked, is more ashamed. It is ing a diseased fancy, and entering into a dangerous course of sin. No doubt but the duties of a public life are more in number, and greater in weight, and of more excellent consequence and tendency, even to the most public good, and greatest honour of God, than the duties of privacy or retirement. A good man is a common good. And,' saith Seneca, if every one have not some share or interest in them, how are they common?' Let me add these few considerations, to show you the evil of voluntary, unnecessary solitude.

1. You less contribute to the honour of your Redeemer, and less promote his kingdom in the world, and less subserve his death and office, while you do good but to few, and live but almost to yourselves.

2. You live in the poorest exercise of the grace of charity; and therefore in a low, undesirable condition.

3. You will want the communion of saints, and benefit of public ordinances, for I account not a college life a solitary life. You will want the help of the charity, graces and gifts of others, by which you might be benefited.

4. It will be a life of smaller comfort, as it is a life of smaller benefit to others. They that do but little good according to their ability, must expect but little comfort. They have usually most peace and comfort to themselves that are

6. We are for the most part so weak and sickly, that we are unable to subsist without the help of others. Unwise men, or infants, or such like men, must not be left to themselves.' God hath left some impotency, insufficiency and necessity upon all that should keep men sociable, and make them acknowledge their need of others, and be thankful for assistance from them, and be ready to do good to others, as we would have others to do to us. He that feels not the need of others, is so unhumbled as to have the greater need of them.

7. Pride will have great advantage in private, and repentance great disadvantage, while our sins seem to be all dead, because there is not a temptation to draw them out, or an observer to reprove them. Many a man seems to himself patient and humble, while he keeps out of company; who would return to his own nature, if the commotion of any occasion did but provoke him.' It is hard to know what sin or grace is in us, if we have not such trials as are not to be found in solitude.

8. Flying from the observation and judgment of others, is a kind of self-accusation; as if we confessed ourselves so bad as that we cannot stand the trial of the light. Seneca says, ' A good

conscience will call in the crowd (or witnesses, | had banished doth return: the conversation of not caring who seeth :) a bad conscience is anxious and solicitous even in solitude: if they be things honest which thou dost, let all men know: if they be dishonest, what good doth it thee that no man else knows it, when thou knowest it thyself? O miserable man, if thou despise this witness! Something is suspected to be amiss with those that are always in their chambers, and are never seen. Tell not men that you cannot bear the light; it is he that doth evil that hates the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.

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9. Solitude is too like death to be desirable: he lives that doth good, and he is dead that is useless. He lives that is profitable to many: he lives that is observed or perceived: but they that lie hid and drowsy, anticipate their death.' It is the most culpable death, and therefore the worst to have life, and not to use it.

10. A life of holy communion is likest unto heaven, where none shall be solitary, but all, as members of the heavenly Jerusalem, shall in harmony love and praise their Maker.

These reasons seem sufficient to me to satisfy you that no man should choose solitude without a special necessity or call: nor yet should it be taken for a life of greater perfection, than a faithful serving of God in public, and doing good to

more.

I shall now come to the affirmative, and tell you for all this, that if God call us into solitude, or men forsake us, we may rejoice in this, that we are not alone, but the Father is with us.' Fear not such solitude, but be ready to improve it, if you be cast upon it. If God be your God, reconciled to you in Christ, and his Spirit be in you, you are provided for solitude, and need not fear if all the world should cast you off. If you be banished, imprisoned, or left alone, it is but a relaxation from your greatest labours; which though you may not cast off yourselves, you may lawfully be sensible of your ease, if God take off your burden. It is but a cessation from your sharpest conflicts, and removal from a multitude of great temptations. Though you may not cowardly retreat or shift yourselves from the sight and danger, yet if God will dispense with you, and let you live in greater peace and safety, you have no cause to murinur at his dealing. A fruit-tree that grows by the highway side, doth seldom keep his fruit to ripeness, while so many passengers have each his stone to cast at it. Seneca could say, 'I never bring home well from a crowd the manners which I took out with me something is disordered of that which I had set in order: something of that which I

many, I find an enemy to me.' O how many vain and foolish words corrupt the minds of those that converse with an ungodly world, when your ears and minds who live in solitude, are free from such temptations! You live not in so corrupt an air as they you hear not the filthy speeches, which fight against modesty and chastity, and are the incitements of lust: you hear not the discontented, complaining words of the impatient; nor the passionate, provoking words of the offended; nor the wrangling, quarrelsome words of the contentious: nor the censorious, or slanderous, or reproachful words of the malicious, who think it their interest to have their brethren supposed to be bad, and to have others hate them, because they themselves hate them; and who are as zealous to quench the charity of others, when it is destroyed in themselves, as holy persons are zealous to provoke others to love, which dwells and rules in themselves. In your solitude with God, you shall not hear the lies and malicious revilings of the ungodly against the generation of the just nor the subtle, cheating words of heretics, who being themselves deceived, would deceive others of their faith, and corrupt their lives. You shall not there be distracted with the noise and clamours of contending uncharitable professors of religion, endeavouring to make odious first the opinions, and then the persons of one another; one saying here is the church, and another, there is the church: one saying, this is the true church-government, and another saying, nay, but that is it: one saying, God will be worshipped thus, another, not so, but thus, or thus. You shall not there be drawn to side with one against another, nor to join with any faction, or be guilty of divisions: you shall not be troubled with the oaths and blasphemies of the wicked, nor with the imprudent miscarriages of the weak; with the persecutions of enemies, or the falling out of friends: you shall not see the cruelty of proud oppressors, that set up lies by armed violence, and care not what they say, or do, nor how much other men are injured and suffer, so that themselves may tyrannize, and their wills and words may rule the world, when they do so unhappily rule themselves. In your solitude with God, you shall not see the prosperity of the wicked, to move you to envy; nor the adversity of the just, to be your grief; you shall see no worldly pomp and splendour to befool you, nor adorned beauty to entice you, nor wasting calamities to afflict you; you shall not hear the laughter of fools, nor the sick man's groans, nor the wronged man's complaints, nor the poor man's murmur

ings, nor the proud man's boastings, nor the angry and yet is so backward to be loosed from the man's abusive ragings.

flesh that I may find him and enjoy him in the world of glory! Can I expect that heaven should come down to earth; and that the Lord of glory should remove his court, and either leave the retinue of his celestial courtiers, or bring them all down into this drossy world of flesh and sin, and this to satisfy my fleshly, foolish mind! Or can I expect the translation of Enoch, or the chariot of Elias? Is it not enough that my Lord hath conquered death, and sanctified the passage, and prepared the place of my perpetual abode ?

If

As you lose the help of your gracious friends, so you are freed from the fruits of their peevishness and passions; of their differing opinions, ways, and tempers; of their inequality, unsuitableness and contrariety of minds or interests; of their levity and unconstancy, and the powerful temptations of their friendship, to draw you to the errors or other sins which they are tainted with themselves. In a word, you are there half delivered from the vanity and the vexation of the world; and were it not that you are yet undelivered from yourselves, and that you take dis- Well, for all this, though a wilderness is not tempered corrupted hearts with you, O what a heaven, it shall be sweet and welcome for the felicity would your solitude be! But alas, we sake of heaven, if thence I may but have a clearer cannot over-run our own diseases, we must carry prospect of it: and if by retiring from the crowd with us the remnants of our corrupted nature; and noise of folly, I may but be more composed our deadness and dulness, our selfishness and and better disposed to converse above, and to earthly minds, our impatience and discontents; use my faith, alas, my too weak, languid faith, and worst of all, our lamentable weakness of until the beatific vision and fruition come. faith, love, and heavenly-mindedness, and our there may be but more of God, or readier access strangeness to God, and backwardness to the to him, or more heart-quickening flames of love, matters of eternal life. O that I could escape or more heart-comforting intimations of his fathese, though I were in the hands of the most vour, in a wilderness than in a city, in a prison cruel enemies! O that such a heart could be left than in a palace, let that wilderness be my city, behind; how gladly would I over-run both house, and let that prison be my palace, while I must land, honour, and all sensual delights, that I abide on earth. If in solitude I may have Enoch's might over-run it! O where is the place where walk with God, I shall in due season have such there is none of this darkness, nor disaffection, a translation as shall bring me to the same fenor distance, nor estrangedness from God! Olicity which he enjoys; and in the mean time, as that I knew it! O that I could find it! O that I might there dwell, though I should never more see the face of mortals; nor ever hear a human voice, nor ever taste of the delights of flesh! Alas, foolish soul, such a place there is, that hath all this, and more than this: but it is not in a wilderness, but in paradise, not here on earth, but above with Christ; and yet am I so loth to die? yet am I no more desirous of the blessed day, when I shall be unclothed of flesh and sin? O death, what an enemy art thou even to my soul! by affrighting me from the presence of my Lord, and hindering my desires and willingness to be gone; thou wrongest me much more than by laying my flesh to rot in darkness. Fain would I know God, and fain would I more love him and enjoy him. But O this hurtful love of life! O this unreasonable fear of dying, detains my desires from pressing on to the happy place where all this may be had! O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death' this carnal, unbelieving heart, that sometimes can think more delightfully of a wilderness than of heaven; that can go seek after God in desert solitude, among the birds, and beasts, and trees,

well as after, it is no disadvantage, if by mortal eyes I be seen no more. If the chariot of contemplation will in solitude raise me to more believing, affectionate converse with heaven, than I could expect in tumults and temptations, it shall reconcile me unto solitude, and make it my paradise on earth, till angels, instead of the chariot of Elias, shall convey me to the presence of my glorified Head, in the celestial paradise.

Object. But it is grievous to one that hath been used to much company, to be alone.

Answ. Company may so use you, that it may be more grievous to you not to be alone. The society of wasps and serpents may be spared; and bees themselves have such stings as make some that have felt them think they bought the honey dear.

But can you say you are alone while you are with God? is his presence nothing to you? doth it not signify more than the company of all men in the world? Saith Hierom, A wise man cannot be alone : for he hath with him the good men that are or have been. And if there be a want of men, he speaks with God.' He should rather have said, there can be no want of man when

we may speak with God: and were it not that | tent me, and be not enough for me, how is he God is here revealed to us as in a glass, and then my God; or how shall he be my heaven that we converse with God in man, we should and everlasting happiness think human converse little worth.

2. If God be with me, he is with me to whom

Object. O but solitude is disconsolate to a I am absolutely devoted. I am wholly his, and sociable mind.

have acknowledged his interest in me, and long ago disclaimed all usurpers, and repented of alienations, and unreservedly resigned myself to him: where should I dwell but with him that is my owner, and with whom I have made the most solemn covenant that ever I made? I never gave myself to any other, but in subordination to him, and with a stipulation for his highest in

Answ. But the most desirable soicety is no solitude. Saith Hierom, Doth the infinite vastness of the wilderness terrify thee; but do thou ascend in mind and walk in paradise: as often as thou ascendest thither in thought and mind, so often thou shalt not be in the wilderness.' If God be nothing to thee, thou art not a Christian but an atheist. If God be God to thee, he is all inviolable right. Where should my goods be but all to thee; and then should not his presence be instead of all? O that I might get one step nearer unto God, though I receded many from all the world! O that I could find that place on earth, where a soul may have nearest access unto him, and fullest knowledge and enjoyment of him, though I never more saw the face of friends! I should cheerfully say with my blessed Saviour, 'I am not alone, for the Father is with me.' And should say so for these reasons following:

1. If God be with me, the Maker, Ruler, and Disposer of all is with me: so that all things are virtually with me in him. I have that in gold and jewels which I seem to want in silver, lead and dross. I can want no friend, if God vouchsafe to be my friend; and I can enjoy no benefit by all my friends, if God be my enemy: I need not fear the greatest enemies, if God be reconciled to me. I shall not miss the light of the candle, if I have this blessed sun. The creature is nothing but what it is from God and in God: it is worth nothing, or good for nothing, but what it is worth in order unto God, as it declares him, and helps the soul to know him, serve him, or draw nearer to him: as it is idolatry in the unhappy worldling, to thirst after the creature with the neglect of God, and so to make the world his God; so doth it savour of the same heinous sin to lament our loss of creatures more than the displeasure of God. If God be my enemy, or I am fallen under his indignation, I have then so much greater matters to lament than the loss, or absence, or frowns of man, as should almost make me forget that there is such a thing as man to be regarded. But if God be my Father and my friend in Christ, I have then so much to think of with delight, and to recreate and content my soul, as will proclaim it most incongruous and absurd to lament inordinately the absence of a worm, while I have his love and presence who is all in all. If God cannot con

in my own house; with whom should a servant
dwell but with his master; and a wife but with
her husband; and children but with their Father?
I am more nearly related to my God, and to my
Saviour, than I am to any of my relations in this
world. I owe more to him than to all the
world: I have renounced all the world, as they
stand in competition or comparison with him:
and can I want their company then, while I am
with him? How shall I hate father and mother,
wife, children, brother and sister for his sake,
if I cannot spare them, or be without them to en.
joy him? To hate them is but to use them as
men do hated things, that is, to cast them away
with contempt, as they would alienate me from
Christ, and to cleave to him, and be satisfied in
him alone. I am now married to Christ, and
therefore must cheerfully leave father and mother,
and my native place, and all to cleave to him:
with whom should I now delight to dwell, but
with him who hath taken me into so near rela-
tion, to be, as it were, one flesh with him! O my
dear Lord, hide not thou thy face from an un-
kind, an unworthy sinner! let me but dwell with
thee and see thy face, and feel the gracious em-
braces of thy love, and then let me be cast off
by all the world, if thou seest it meet for me;
or let all other friends be where they will, so that
my soul may
be with thee; I have agreed for
thy sake to forsake all, even the dearest that
shall stand against thee, and I resolve by thy
grace to stand to this agreement.

3. If God be with me, I am not alone, for he is with me that loves me best. The love of all the friends on earth is nothing to his love. O how plainly hath he declared that he loves me, in the strange condescension, the sufferings, death, and intercession of his Son? What love hath he declared in the communications of his Spirit, and the operations of his grace, and the near relations into which he brought me? What love hath he declared in the course of his pro

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