Volume 1 / Part 2 — CHAPTER II. (continued 3)

Not that man is absolutely to be contemned or disregarded.[78] No; under God, your superiors must be obeyed; you must do wrong to none, and do good to all, as far as in you lieth; you must avoid offence, and give good example, and, under God, have so much regard to men, as to become all things to all men for their salvation. But if once you set them above their rank, and turn yourselves to an inordinate dependence on them, and make too great a matter of their opinion or words concerning you, you are losing your godliness or divine disposition, and turning it into man-pleasing and hypocrisy. When man stands in competition with God, for your first and chief regard, or in opposition to him, or as a sharer in co-ordination with him, and not purely in subordination to him, he is to be numbered with things to be forsaken. Even good men, whom you must love and honour, and whose communion and help you must highly value, yet may be made the object of your sin, and may become your snare. Your honouring of them, or love to them, must not entice you to desire inordinately to be honoured by them, nor cause you to set too much by their approbation. If you do, you will find that while you are too much eyeing man, you are losing God, and corrupting your religion at the very heart. And you may fall among those, that, how holy soever, may have great mistakes in matters of religion, tending to much sin, and may be somewhat censorious against those that are not of their mind; and so the retaining of their esteem, and the avoiding of their censures, may become one of the greatest temptations of your lives. And you will find that man-pleasing is a very difficult and yet unprofitable task. Love Christ as he appeareth in any of his servants, and be followers of them as they are followers of Christ, and regard their approbation as it agreeth with Christ's: but O see that you are able to live upon the favour of God alone, and to be quieted in his acceptance, though man despise you; and to be pleased so far as God is pleased, though man be displeased with you; and to rejoice in his justification, though men condemn you with the odiousest slanders and the greatest infamy, and cast out your names as evil-doers. See that God be taken as enough for you, or else you take him not as your God; even as enough without man, and enough against man; that you may be able to say, "If God be for us, who can be against us? Who is he that condemneth? It is God that justifieth," Rom. viii. 31, 33, 34. "Do I seek to please men? For if I yet pleased men, I should not be a servant of Christ," Gal. i. 10. Jer. xvii. 5-8, "Thus saith the Lord; Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord. For he shall be like the heath in the desert, and shall not see when good cometh.[79]—Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. For he shall be as a tree planted by the waters, and that spreadeth out her roots by the river, and shall not see when heat cometh, but her leaf shall be green; and shall not be careful in the year of drought, neither shall cease from yielding fruit." Isa. ii. 22, "Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils: for wherein is he to be accounted of?"

Having given you these directions, I must tell you in the conclusion, that they are like food, that will not nourish you by standing on your table, or like physic, that will not cure you by standing in the box: they must be taken and digested, or you will find none of the benefit. It is not the reading of them that will serve the turn to so great use, as the safe proceeding and confirmation of beginners or novices in religion: it will require humility to perceive the need of them; and labour to learn, digest, and practise them. Those slothful souls, that will refuse the labour, must bear the sad effects of their negligence: there is not one of all these directions, as to the matter of them, which can be spared. Study them, understand them, and remember them, as things that must be done. If either a senselessness of your necessity, or a conceit that the spirit must do it without so much labour and diligence of your own, do prevail with you, to put off all these with a mere approbation, the consequent may be sadder than you can yet foresee. Though I suppose you to have some beginnings of grace, I must tell you, that it will be comparatively a sad kind of life, to be erroneous, and scandalous, and troublesome to the church, or full of doubts, and fears, and passions, and to be burdensome to others and yourselves! Yea, it is reason that you be very suspicious of your sincerity, if you desire not to increase in grace, and be not willing to use the means which are necessary to your increase. He is not sincere, that desireth not to be perfect; and he desireth not sincerely, who is not willing to be at the labour and cost, which is necessary to the obtaining of the thing desired. I beseech you, therefore, as you love the happiness of prudent, strong, and comfortable christians, and would escape the misery of those grievous diseases, which would turn your lives into languishing, unserviceableness, and pain; that you seriously study these directions, and get them into your minds, and memories, and hearts; and let the faithful practice of them be your greatest care, and the constant employment of your lives.