Heaven will not be made, to perfect spirits, the occasion of so many errors, controversies, and quarrels, as the scriptures are to us imperfect men on earth: yea, heaven is the more desirable, because there I shall better understand the scriptures than here I can ever hope to do. All the hard passages now misunderstood, will be there made plain, and all the seeming contradictions

my greatest duties; and for those parts of men's wresting them to their own destruction my obedience to my conscience and God, which cost me dearest and where I pleased my flesh least, I pleased the world least. At how cheap a rate to my flesh could I have got the applause of factious men, if that had been my end and business? Would I have conformed to their wills, and taken a bishopric, and the honours and riches of the world, how good a man had I been called by the diocesan party! O what | reconciled ; and, which is much more, that God, praise I should have with the Papists, could I that Christ, that new Jerusalem, that glory, and turn Papist! And all the backbitings and bitter that felicity of souls, which are now known but censures of the Antinomians, Anabaptists, and darkly and enigmatically in the glass, will then Separatists, had been turned into praise, could I be known intuitively as we see the face itself, have said as they, or not contradicted them. But whose image only the glass first showed us. To otherwise there is no escaping their accusations. leave my bible, and go to the God and the And is this tumultuous, militant, yea, malignant heaven that is revealed, will be no otherwise a world, a place that I should be loth to leave? loss to me, than to lay by my crutches or specAlas, our darkness, and weakness, and pas-tacles when I need them not, or to leave his sions, are such, that it is hard for a family or a image for the presence of my friend. few faithful friends, to live so evenly in the ex- Much less do I need to fear the loss of all ercise of love, as not to have often unpleasant other books, sermons, or other verbal informajars! What then is to be expected from stran - | tion. Much reading hath often been a weari

gers and from enemies? Ten thousand persons ness to my flesh; and the pleasure of my mind will judge of abundance of my words and actions, is much abated by the great imperfection of the who never knew the reasons of them : every one's | means. Many books must be partly read, that I conceptions are as the report and conveyance of the matter to them is and while they have a various light, and false reports, and defectiveness will make them false, what can be expected but false, injurious censures?

may know that they are scarcely worth the reading: and many must be read to enable us to satisfy other men's expectations, and to confute those who abuse the authority of the authors against the truth: and many good books must Though no outward thing on earth is more be read, that have little to add to what we have precious than the holy word, worship, and read in many others before; and many that are ordinances of God, yet even here I see that blotted with ensnaring errors: which, if we detect which points me up higher, and tells me it is not, we leave snares for such as see them not: much better to be with Christ. Shall I love the and if we detect them, ever so tenderly, if truly, name of heaven, better than heaven itself? The we are taken to be injurious to the honour of the holy scriptures are precious, because I have there learned, godly authors, and proudly to overvalue the promise of glory; but is not the possession our own conceits. So lamentable is the case of better than the promise? If a light and guide all mankind, by the imperfections of human thither through this wilderness be good, surely language, that those words which are invented the end must needs be better: and it hath pleased for the communication of conceptions, are so God that all things on earth, and therefore even little fitted to their use, as rather to occasion the sacred scriptures, should bear the marks of misunderstanding and contentions: there being our state of imperfection: imperfect persons were scarcely a word that hath not many significations, the penmen; and imperfect human language is and that needs not many more words to bring us the conveying, signal, organical part of the to the true notice of the speaker's mind. Every matter. The method and phrase, though true | word is a sign, that hath three relations, to and blameless, are far short of the heavenly per- the matter spoken of;-to the mind of the fection. Else so many commentators had not speaker, as signifying his conceptions of that found so hard a task of it to expound innumera-matter;-and to the mind of the hearer or reader ble difficulties, and reconcile so many seeming which is to be informed by it. Hence it is so contradictions; nor would infidels find matter of hard to find and use words that are fitted indeed so strong temptation, and so much cavil as they to all these uses, and to have store of such, and do; nor would Peter have told us of the diffi-mix no other, that few, if any, in the world were culties of Paul's epistles, and such occasions of ever so happy as to attain it. If words be not

fitted to the matter or things, they are false as | profound matter, or an accurate style, must into their first and proper use: and yet the penury commodate multitudes that are incapable of it. of apt words, and the redundancy of others, and Therefore such must be content with few approv. the authority of the masters of sciences impos- ers, and leave the applause of the multitude to ing arbitrary terms and notions on their disci- the more popular, unless he be one that can seaples, and the custom of the vulgar, who have the sonably suit himself to both. empire as to the sense of words, have all conspired to make words of very uncertain signification. So that when students have learned words by long and hard studies, they are often little the nearer the true knowledge of the things; and too often, by their ineptitude, misled to false conceptions. So their saying is too often true, that a great book is a great evil, while it contains so great a number of uncertain words, which become the matter of great contentions.

When the mind of the speaker or writer is no better informed by such notions, but his conceptions of things are some false, some confused and undigested, what wonder if his words do not otherwise express his mind to others, when even men of clearest understanding find it difficult to have words still ready to communicate their conceptions with truth and clearness. To form true sentiments of things into apt significant words, is a matter of mere art, and requires an apt teacher, a serious learner, and long use: too many take their art of speaking in prayer, conference, or preaching, to have more in it of wisdom and piety, than it hath ; and some too much condemn the unaccustomed that want it.

A man that resolves not to be deceived by ambiguous words, and makes it his first work in all his readings and disputings to distinguish between words, sense, and things, and strictly to examine each disputed term, till the speaker's meaning be distinctly known, will see the lamentable case of the church, and all mankind, and what shadows of knowledge deceive the world, and in what useless dreams the greatest part of men, yea, of learned men, do spend their days: much of that which some men unweariedly study, and take to be the honour of their understandings, and their lives, and much of that, in which multitudes place their piety and hopes of salvation, being a mere game at words, and useless notions, and as truly to be called vanity and vexation as is the rest of the vain-show that most men walk in. My sad and bitter thoughts of the heathen, infidel, mahometan world, and of the common corruptions of rulers and teachers, cities and countries, senates and councils, I will not here open to others, lest they offend; nor cry out as Seneca, 'We all are bad,'or,' Fools exist everywhere,' nor describe the furious spirits of the clergy, and their ignorance, and unrighteous calumnies and schisms, as Gregory Nazianzen and others do, nor voluminously lament the seeming hopeless case of earth, by the boldness, blindness, and fury of men that make use of such sad considerations, to loosen my love from such a world, and make me willing to be with Christ.

If we could fit our words well to the matter, and to our minds, with that double verity, yet still it is hard to fit them to the reader or hearer: for want of which they are lost as to him: his information being our end, they are therefore so far lost to us. That which is spoken most congruously to the matter, is seldom fitted to the If other men's word and writings are ble capacity of the receiver. Some readers or hear-mished with so much imperfection, why should ers, yea, almost all, are so used to unapt words I think that my own are blameless? I must and notions, obtruded on mankind by the master of words, that they cannot understand us if we change their terms and offer them fitter, and yet least understand those which they think that they best understand: all men must have long time to learn the art of words, before they can understand them, as well as before they can readily use them. The duller any man is, and of less understanding, the more words are necessary to make him understand: yet his memory is the less capable of retaining many. This is our difficulty, not only in catechising, but in all our writings and teaching, a short catechism, or a short style, the ignorant understand not; and a long one they remember not. He that will accommodate one judicious reader or hearer, with

for ever be thankful for the holy instructions and writings of others, notwithstanding human frailty, and contentious men's abuse of words: and so I must be thankful that God hath made any use of my own, for the good of souls, and his church's edification. But with how many drawbacks are such comforts here mixed: we are not the teachers of a well ruled school, where learners are ranked into seve ral forms, that every one may have the teaching which is agreeable to his capacity: but we must set open the door to all that will crowd in, and publish our writings to all sorts of readers: and there being as various degrees of capacity as there are men and women, and consequently great variety and contrariety of appre

hensions, it is easy to anticipate what various re- | preaching, which would please them; and on the ception we must expect: we cast out our doctrine almost as a foot-ball is turned out among boys in the street, in some congregations; few understand it, but every one censures it. Few come as learners, or teachable disciples, but most come to sit as judges on their teacher's words; and yet have not either the skill, or the patience, or the diligence, which is necessary in a just trial, to a righteous judgment. But as our words agree or disagree with the former conceptions of every hearer, so are they judged to be wise or foolish, sound or unsound, true or false, fit or unfit.

Few sermons that I preach, but one extols them, and wishes they were printed, and another accuses them of some heinous fault: some men are pleased with clearness and accurateness of doctrine; and others account it too high, and say we shoot over the hearers' heads, and like nothing but the fervent application of what they knew before: most hearers are displeased with that which they most need: if they err, they reproach that doctrine as erroneous that would cure them if they are guilty of any prevailing distemper and sin, they take that application to be injurious to them, which would convince them, and save them from that guilt. Most are much pleased with plain and zealous reproof of sin; but it must be other men's sins, and not their own. The poor love to hear of the evil of oppression and unmercifulness, of pride, fulness and idleness, and all the sins of the rich subjects love to hear of their rulers' faults, and say, O this man is no flatterer; he dares tell the greatest of their sins: but if they hear of their own, they take it for an injury. Rulers like a sermon for submission and obedience, but how few love to hear of the evil of injustice and oppression, or pride and sensuality, or to hear of the necessity of holiness, justice, temperance, of death, judgment, and the life to come? Every sectarian and dogmatist delights to have his own opinion cried up, and his party praised as the chief saints: but all that tends to the praise of those that he dissents from, and accounts adversaries to the truth, is distasteful to him, as a complying with iniquity, and a strengthening of the enemies of Christ and all that uncharitableness which he expects from us against others, is as much expected by others against him, and such as he.

This day, while I am writing these words, my pockets are full of letters sent me, on one side importunately charging it on me as my duty to conform to the oaths, declarations, covenants, and practices, now imposed, or else to give over]

other side vehemently censuring me as guilty of grievous sin, for declaring my judgment for so much of conformity as I have done; and charging me by predictions as guilty of the sufferings of all that are otherwise minded, for communicating in the sacrament, and the common prayers of the church; and others in the mid-way, persuading me equally to bear my testimony against unjust separation and persecution, and to endeavour still, if possible, to save a self-destroying people, from the tearing fury of these two extremes and how should I answer these contrary expectations, or escape the censures of such expectations?

It hath pleased God, who thirty years and more hath tried me by human applause, of late, in this city, where multitudes of persons of contrary minds are, like passengers in crowded streets still jostling and offending one another, to exercise me with men's daily backbitings and cavils: and so many have chosen me for the subject of their discourse, that I may say as Paul, 'We are made a spectacle (or theatre) to the world, and to angels, and to men: we are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ,' &c. Did I not live out of the noise in retirement, taken up with pain, and expectations of my change, what an annoyance to me would it be to hear religious persons, that have a God, a Christ, a heaven to talk of, to abuse their time and tongues in so much talking of one so inconsiderable, and that hath so little to do with them, or they with him; while with some overvaluing me, and others still quarrelling, I am the matter of their idle, sinful talk. The persecutors for divers years after first silencing, if not still, and the separatists for two or three years past, have been possessed with so strange a jealousy and quarrelsome a disposition against me, that they seem to take it for their interest to promote my defamation, and for much of their work to search what may afford them any matter of accusation in every sermon that I preach, and every book that I write. Though the fury of the persecutors be such as makes them incapable of such converse and sober consideration as is needful to their true information and satisfaction: yet most of the more religious cavillers are satisfied as soon as I have spoken with them: for want of accurateness and patience, they judge rashly before they understand, and when they understand confess their error; and yet many go on and take no warning after many times conviction of their mistake.

Even in books that are still before their eyes,

and worldly honour appeared to me as they are, as not rendering the world either lovely or desirable. But the love and concord of religious persons hath a more amiable aspect: there is so much holiness in these, that I was loth to call them vanity and vexation: but yet as flesh and blood would refer them to selfish ends, and any way value them as a carnal interest, I must so call them, and number them with the things that are loss and dung. Selfishness can serve itself upon things good and holy: and if good men, and good books, and good sermons, would make the world seem overlovely to us, it will be a mercy of God to abate the temptation: and if my soul, looking toward the heavenly Jerusalem, be hindered as Paul was, in his journey to Jerusalem, by the love of ancient friends and hearers, I must say, 'What mean you to weep and break my heart!' I am ready to leave the dearest friends on earth, and life, and all the pleasures of life, for the presence of far better friends with Christ, and the sweeter pleasures of a better life. That little amiableness which is in things below, is in godly men as life in the heart, which dies last: when that is all gone, when we are dead to the love of the godly themselves, and to learning, books, and mediate ordinances, so far as they serve a selfish interest, and tempt down our hearts from heavenly aspirings, the world is then crucified to us indeed, and we to it. I rejoice to tread in the footsteps of my Lord, who had some indeed weeping about his cross, but was forsaken by all his disciples, while in the hour of temptation they all fled! But my desertion is far less, for it is less that I am fit to bear. If God will justify, who shall condemn? If he be for me, who shall be against me? O may I not be put to that dreadful ease, to cry out, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? And may nothing separate me from his love!

as well as in transient words and sermons, they | sires to leave the world It is long since riches heedlessly leave out, or put in, or alter, and misreport plain words, and with confidence affirm those things to have been said that never were said, but perhaps the contrary. When all people will judge of the good or evil of our words, as they think we have reason to use them or forbear them, how can we satisfy men that are out of our hearing, and to whom we cannot tell our reasons? Most men are of private, narrow observation, and judge of the good or hurt that our words do, by those that they themselves converse with: and when I convince them that my decisions of many questions, which they are offended at, are true; they say, It is an unseasonable and a hurtful truth: and when I have called them to look further abroad in the world, and told them my reasons; they say, Had these been all set down, men would have been satisfied. On how hard terms do we instruct such persons, whose narrow understandings cannot know obvious reasons of what we say till they are particularly told them? So to tell men the reasons of all that such can quarrel with, will make every book to swell with commentaries to such a size as they can neither buy nor read: and they come not to us to know our reasons; nor have we leisure to open them to every single person: and thus suspicious men, when their understandings want the humbling acquaintance with their ignorance, and their consciences, that tenderness which should restrain them from rash judging, go on to accuse such needful truths of which they know not the use and reason. What man living hath the leisure and opportunity to acquaint all the ignorant persons in city and country, with all the reasons of all that he shall say, write, or do? Or who, that writes not a page instead of a sentence, can so write, that every unprepared reader shall understand him? What hopes hath that tutor or schoolmaster of preserving his reputation, who shall be accounted erroneous, and accused of unsound or injurious doctrine, by every scholar that understands not his words, and all the reasons of them?

But God in great mercy to me hath made this my lot, not causing, but permitting, the sins of the contentious, that I might before death be better weaned from all below: had my temptations from inordinate applause had no alloy, they might have been more dangerously strong. Even yet while church-dividers, on both extremes, do make me the object of their daily obloquy, the continued respects of the sober and peaceable, are so great, as to be a temptation strong enough, to so weak a person, to give a check to my de

Then were I forsaken of the sober and peaceable, as I am, in part, of some quarrelsome dividers, how tolerable a trial would it be? Man is as dust in the balance, that adds little to it, and signifies nothing when God is in the other end. But I suspect still that I make too much account of man, when this case hath taken up too much of my observation.

Of all things, surely a departing soul hath least cause to fear the losing of its notice of the affairs of the world; of peace, wars, church, or kingdoms. If the sun can send forth its material beams, and operate by motion, light, and heat. at such a distance as this earth, why should I think that blessed spirits are such local, confined

which I cannot spare? What is the daily tidings that I hear, but of bloody wars, the undone countries, the persecuted churches, the silenced, banished, or imprisoned preachers, of the best removed in judgment from an unworthy world by death, and worse succeeding in their rooms, of the renewed designs and endeavours of the

and impotent substances, as not to have notice | the rage and success of cruel tyrants; of the of the things of earth? Had I but bodily eyes, bloody wars of proud, unquiet, worldly men, of I could see more from the top of a tower or hill, the misery of the oppressed, desolate countries, than any one that is below can do. Shall I know the dissipated churches, the persecuted, innocent less of earth from heaven than I do now? It is Christians, are no such pleasing things as that unlike that my capacity will be so little if it we should be afraid to hear of such no more. To were, it is unlike that Christ and all the angels know or hear of the poor in famine, the rich in will be so strange to me, as to give me no notice folly, the church distracted, the kingdom disof things that so much concern my God and my contented, the godly scandalous by the effects of Redeemer, to whom I am united, and the holy their errors, imperfections, and divisions, the society of which I am a part, and myself as a wicked outrageous and waxing worse, the falsemember of Christ and that society! I do not ness or miscarriages, or sufferings of friends, the think that the communion of the celestial inhab-fury or success of enemies, is this an intelligence itants is so narrow and slow, as it is of walking clods of earth, and of souls that are confined to such dark lanthorns as this body is? Stars can shine one to another. We on earth can see them so far off in their heaven. Surely then, if they have a seeing faculty, each of them can see many of us; even the kingdoms of the world. Spirits are most active, and of powerful and quick com-church's enemies; the implacable rage of the munication. They need not send letters, or worldly and unquiet clergy, and the new diviwrite books to one another, nor lift up a voice sions of self-conceited sectaries, and the obloquy to make each other hear nor is there any un- and backbitings of each party against the other? kindness, division, or unsociable selfishness among How often hear I the sad tidings of this friend's them, which may cause them to conceal their sickness or death, and that friend's discontent, notices or their joys: but as activity, so unity, and of another's fall, and of many, very many's is greatest, where there is most perfection: they sufferings? My ears are daily filled with the will so be many, as yet to be one; and their cries of the poor whom I cannot relieve, with knowledge will be one knowledge, their love one the endless complaints of fearful, melancholy, love, and their joy one joy: not by so perfect a despairing persons: with the wranglings of the unity as in God himself, who is one and but ignorant and proud professors, and contentious one; but such as is suitable to created imper- divines, who censure most boldly where they fection, which participates of the perfection of are most erroneous or dark; or with the trouthe Creator, as the effect doth of the virtue of blesome discontents of those that I converse the cause, and therefore hath some participation with: should I be afraid of the ending of so sad of his unity. O foolish soul! If I shall fear this a tragedy, or of awaking out of such an unpleaunity with God, Christ, and all the holy spirits, sant dream? Have I not many times thought lest I should lose my present separate individu- of the privilege of the deaf, that hear not these ality, when perfection and unity are so near a- troublesome and provoking things; and of the kin. In a word, I have no cause to think that blind, that see not the vanities and temptations my celestial advancement will be a diminution of this world; it is one part of the benefit of of any desirable knowledge, even of things on solitude, or a private life and habitation, to free earth; but contrarily, that it will be inconceiv-me from many of these unpleasing objects; and ably increased. a great part of the benefit of sleep, that with my clothes I may lay by these troublesome thoughts.

But if indeed I shall know less of things below, it will be because that the knowledge of them is a part of vanity and vexation, which hath no place in heaven. So much knowledge of good and evil in lower matters, as came to us by sin, is unworthy of our fond tenaciousness, and fear of losing it? Surely the sad tidings which we have weekly in our news books, our lamentable notices of heathen and infidel kingdoms, of the over-spreading prevalency of barLarism, idolatry, ignorance, and infidelity; of

But other men tell me, the church cannot yet spare you: there is yet this and that necessary work to be done: there is this and that need, &c.

But is it we or God that must choose his servants, and cut out their work? Whose work am I doing? Is it my own, or his? If his, is it not he that must tell me what, and when, and how long? And will not his will and choice be best? If I believe not this, how do I take him for my