when they find that it is not done, they either despair, or turn to the next deceivers, and say, 'I tried the best of them and if such a man cannot do it, none of them can do it.' But, silly soul, do physicians use to charm men into health? Wilt thou go and talk an hour with the ablest physician, and say, that because his talk doth not cure thee, thou wilt never go to a physician more, but go to ignorant people that will kill thee? Thou hast then thy own deserving; even take the death that thou hast chosen, and drink as thou hast brewed. The work of a minister is not to cure thee always immediately, by comfortable words. (What words can cure an ignorant, melancholy, or uncapable soul!) But to direct thee in thy duty, and in the use of those means, which if thou wilt faithfully and patiently practise, thou shalt certainly be cured in due time: if thou wilt use the physic, diet and exercise, which thy physician doth prescribe thee, it is that which must restore thy health and comfort, and not the saying over a few words to thee. If thou lazily look that other men's words or prayers should cure and comfort thee without thy own endeavours, thou mayest thank thyself when thou art deceived.

Direct. 15. The principal means of comfort is to live in the exercise of comfortable duties.'

Faith, hope, and especially the love of God, are duties which are also man's felicity: and the exercise of these in praises and thanksgiving, are the proper pleasure of the soul. Give up thyself wholly to study the goodness and love of God in Jesus Christ, till thou feel thy heart inflamed with his love, and spend half thy godly conference in God's praises, and half thy daily prayers in that, and in thanksgiving; and this will comfort thee not only by the reasoning way of evidence; but as a feast pleaseth thy taste, and as a fire warmeth thee, or as the loving of thy friend delighteth thee, or as health itself is the pleasure of thy flesh.

As the sins themselves of not knowing God, nor loving him, nor delighting in him, are the greatest part of the penalty, or rather misery of the sinner (which hath its peculiar way of remission), so the knowledge, and love, and praise of God, and delighting in him, is instead of a reward unto itself, and a beginning of heaven to the heavenly believer.

Direct. 16. Dwell much in heaven, if thou would dwell

in comfort. Comfort yourselves and one another with these words, that we shall for ever be with the Lord.' Heaven is the place or state of our everlasting comfort; and all that we have here must come from thence: and faith, and hope, and love must fetch it. He that will have carnal joy, must go for it to pastime, or lusts and pleasure, to an alehouse, or a whore, or to a gaming-house, or a playhouse, or to his wealthy and worldly honours: but he that will have heavenly joy, must go for it by faith to heaven; and dwell there every day by faith, where he hopes to dwell for ever. Heaven will not comfort either them that believe it not, or them that remember it not; but them whose conversation and hearts are there; Phil. iii. 20, 21.

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Direct. 17. Set yourselves wholly to do good.' Resolve that you will be faithful to Christ, and do all the good that you can in the world, and let him do with you what he will: and in this way you shall quickly find, that the soundest consolation will come into your souls, before you could expect it. Though no works of our own can add any thing to God, nor must be trusted to at all, in a legal sense; and though blind libertines tell you, that all comfort is legal and unsound, which came by the thoughts of any thing in yourselves, or any of your own doings; yet God is no such enemy to godliness, but he that will hereafter judge you to heaven or hell according to your works, will now judge you to joy and sorrow of heart, usually according to your works: Well-doing shall afford you peace, and ill-doing shall disquiet you, when all is said.

Direct. 18. Lastly, Be sure, while you want the comforts of assurance, to hold fast those comforts which rationally belong to common grace, and to them that have the Gospel offers of salvation.' When the Gospel came to Samaria, (Acts viii.) "there was great joy in that city." It is glad tidings in itself for guilty souls to have Christ and pardon freely offered to them. Can you not say, I am sure that I am regenerate, justified, and adopted? For all that, if you be not infidels, you can say, 'I am sure that Christ, and pardon, and heaven, are freely offered me, and ministers are commissioned to entreat me to accept it; and nothing but my wilful and final refusal can deprive me of it, and shut me out.' This is certain; take but so much comfort as this much should rationally infer.

To which I might add, the comforts of your probability, when you are in some degree of hope, that your faith and repentance are sincere, though you are not certain: but this I have more largely spoken of (and the rest which is needful to be spoken on this subject) in the fore-named treatise long ago.

The ordinary and long troubles and unsettledness of honest Christians, are caused most, 1. By unskilful guides, who are most confident, where they are most ignorant, and revile those truths and methods which God hath appointed for the settling of men's peace: 2. And by their own lazy and unskilful course; who take up most with examining and complaining, instead of learning more understanding in God's methods, and diligent amending what is amiss, that the cause of their trouble might be taken away.

CHAPTER XXI.

How to live by Faith in the Public Worshipping of God.

I MAY not be so tedious (nor do that which is done elsewhere) as to direct you in the several parts of worship distinctly; but shall only give you some brief directions about public worship in general.

Direct. 1. Come not before God with Pharisaical conceits of the worthiness of yourselves, or worship, as if you offered him something which did oblige him: but come as humble receivers, that need him and his grace, who needeth not you; and as learners that hope to be wiser and better by drawing near to God.'

You know Christ's instance of the prayers of the Pharisee and the Publican: and remember that many a one's heart saith, "I thank thee Lord that I am not as other men, or as this Publican," whose tongue can spend an hour or more in sad confessions; yea, and that it is those very copious confessions of their badness, that puff them up as if they were so good,

Yea, many a one that in opinion is most vehement against all our works in our justification, or looking at any thing in ourselves at all, to make us acceptable with God, as being against free grace in Christ, do yet look so much at that

which is (or is conceited to be) in themselves, that few churches on earth are thought worthy of their communion.

Note also, that it is sacrificing which is commonly the hypocrite's worship in the Old Testament, and hearing and obeying which he neglecteth, and God calls him to: as you may see at large in Isa. i. throughout; and many other places: "Sacrifice and offering thou didst not require; mine ears hast thou opened," &c.; Psal. xl. 6. “I will not reprove thee for thy sacrifices and burnt-offerings, to have been continually before me; I will take no bullock out of thy house-For every beast of the forest is mine, &c. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee, for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof Offer to God thanksgiving, and pay thy vows to the Most High. And call upon me in the day of trouble-But to the wicked, saith God, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes, or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth, seeing thou hatest instruction, and castest my words behind thee—; Psal. 1. 8, 9, &c.

"Hath the Lord delight in burnt-offerings, and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken, than the fat of rams;" 1 Sam. xv. 22, 23.

'Know, that the Lord hath chosen the man that is godly for himself--Stand in awe and sin not- -Offer the sacrifices of righteousness;" Psal. iv. 3-5.

"The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit ;" Psal. li. 17. "Learn what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice" Matt. ix. 13. xii. 7.

"Keep thy foot when thou goest to the house of God, and be more ready to hear, than to offer the sacrifice of fools, for they know not that they do evil;" Eccles. v. 1.

All this telleth us, that fools and hypocrites, while they disobeyed God's law, do think to make up all with sacrifice, or to appease God with offering him something that is excellent: but the acceptable worshipper cometh to God as a penitent, a learner, resolving to obey; as a receiver of mercy, and not a meriter.

Direct. 2. Over-value not therefore the manner of your own worship, and over-vilify not other men's of a different mode:' And make not men believe that God is of your childish humour, and valueth or vilifieth words, and or

ders, and forms, and ceremonies, as much as self-conceited people do.

If one man hear another pray only from the habits of his mind, and present desires, he reproacheth him as a rash, presumptuous speaker, that talketh that to God which he never fore-considered. As if a beggar did rashly ask an alms, or a corrected child, or a malefactor did inconsiderately beg for pardon, unless they learn first the words by rote: or as if all men's converse, and the words of judges on the bench were all rash; or the counsel of a physician to his patient, because they use not books and forms, or set not down their words long before.

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And if another man hear a form of prayer, especially if it be read out of a book; and especially if it have any disorder or defect, he sticketh not to revile it, and call it false worship, and man's inventions, and perhaps idolatry, and to fly from it, and make the world believe, that it is an odious thing which God abhorreth. And why so? Are your words so much more excellent than the words of others? Or doth the book, or press, or pen, make them odious to God? Or are all words bad which are resolved on beforehand? Is the Lord's Prayer, and Psalms all odious, because they are book-forms? Or doth the command of other men make God hate them? Let parents take heed then of commanding their children prescribed words. (Nay, rather let them take heed lest they omit such prescripts:) Or, is it the disorder or defects that makes them odious? Such are not to be justified indeed wherever we find them: but woe to us all, if God will not pardon disorders and defects, and accept the prayers that are guilty of them.

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Many a time I have heard such forms of prayers, whose disorders and defects I have much lamented (and done my part to have cured), and yet I durst not so reproach them as to say, God will not accept and hear them or that it is unlawful to join in communion with them. And many a time I have heard as sad disorder in extemporate prayers; sometimes by wrong methods, or no method at all; sometimes by vain repetitions; sometimes by omitting the chiefest parts of prayer, and sometimes in the whole strain, by turning a prayer into a sermon to the hearers, or a mere talk or narrative to God, that had little of a prayer in it, save very good matter, and honest zeal. And though this prayer was