Volume 1 / Part 7 — CHAPTER VI.

DIRECTIONS FOR THE GOVERNMENT OF THE THOUGHTS.

I have showed you, in my "Treatise of Walking with God," how much man's thoughts are regarded by God, and should be regarded by himself; and what agents and instruments they are of very much good or evil: this therefore I shall suppose and not repeat; but only direct you in the governing of them. The work having three parts, they must have several directions. 1. For the avoiding of evil thoughts. 2. For the exercise of good thoughts. 3. For the improvement of good thoughts, that they may be effectual.

Tit. 1. Directions against Evil and Idle Thoughts.

Direct. I. Know which are evil thoughts, and retain such an odious character of them continually on your minds, as may provoke you still to meet them with abhorrence. Evil thoughts are such as these: All thoughts against the being, or attributes, or relations, or honour, or works of God: atheistical and blasphemous, idolatrous and unbelieving thoughts: all thoughts that tend to disobedience or opposition to the will or word of God; and all that savour of unthankfulness, or want of love to God; or of discontent and distrust, or want of the fear of God, or that tend to any of these: also sinful, selfish, covetous, proud studies; to make a mere trade of the ministry for gain; to be able to overtalk others; searching into unrevealed, forbidden things; inordinate curiosity, and hasty conceitedness of your own opinions about God's decrees, or obscure prophecies, prodigies, providence, mentioned before about pride of our understandings.

All thoughts against any particular word, or truth, or precept of God, or against any particular duty; against any part of the worship and ordinances of God; that tend to unreverent neglect of the name, or holy day of God: all impious thoughts against public duty, or family duty, or secret duty; and all that would hinder or mar any one duty: all thoughts of dishonour, contempt, neglect, or disobedience to the authority of higher powers set over us by God, either magistrates, pastors, parents, masters, or any other superiors. All thoughts of pride, self-exalting ambition, self-seeking covetousness: voluptuous, sensual thoughts, proceeding from or tending to the corrupt, inordinate pleasures of the flesh: thoughts which are unjust, and tend to the hurt and wrong of others: envious, malicious, reproachful, injurious, contemptuous, wrathful, revengeful thoughts: lustful, wanton, filthy thoughts: drunken, gluttonous, fleshly thoughts: inordinate, careful, fearful, anxious, vexatious, discomposing thoughts: presumptuous, and secure, despairing, and dejecting thoughts: slothful, delaying, negligent, and discouraging thoughts: uncharitable, cruel, false, censorious, unmerciful thoughts; and idle, unprofitable thoughts. Hate all these as the devil's spawn.

Direct. II. Be not insensible what a great deal of duty or sin are in the thoughts, and of how dangerous a signification and consequence a course of evil thoughts is to your souls. They show what a man is, as much as his words or actions do: "For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he," Prov. xxiii. 7. A good man or evil is denominated by the good or evil treasure of the heart, though known to men but by the fruits. Oh the vile and numerous sins that are committed in men's thoughts, and proceed from men's thoughts! O the precious time that is lost, in idle, and other sinful thoughts! Oh the good that is hindered hereby both in heart and life! But of this having spoken in the treatise afore-mentioned, I proceed.

Direct. III. Above all be sure that you cleanse the fountain, and destroy those sinful inclinations of the heart, from which your evil thoughts proceed. In vain else will you strive to stop the streams: or if you should stop them, that very heart itself will be loathsome in the eyes of God. Are your thoughts all upon the world, either coveting, or caring, or grieving for what you want, or pleasing yourselves with what you have or hope for? Get down your deceived estimation of the world; cast it under your feet, and out of your heart; and count all, with Paul, but as loss and dung, for the excellent knowledge of God in Christ: for till the world be dead in you, your worldly thoughts will not be dead; but all will stand still when once this poise is taken off: crucify it, and this breath and pulse will cease. So if your thoughts do run upon matter of preferment, or honour, disgrace, or contempt, or if you are pleased with your own pre-eminence or applause; mortify your pride, and beg of God a humble, self-denying, contrite heart. For till pride be dead, you will never be quiet for it; but it will stir up swarms of self-exalting and yet self-vexing thoughts, which make you hateful in the eyes of God. So if your thoughts be running out upon your back and belly, what you shall eat or drink, or how to please your appetite or sense; mortify the flesh, and subdue its desires, and master your appetite, and bring them into full obedience unto reason, and get a habit of temperance; or else your thoughts will be still upon your guts and throats: for they will obey the ruling power; and a violent passion and desire doth so powerfully move them, that it is hard for the reason and will to rule them. So if your thoughts are wanton and filthy, you must cleanse that unclean and lustful heart, and get Christ to cast out the unclean spirit, and become chaste within, before you will keep out your unchaste cogitations. So if you have confusion and vanity in your thoughts, you must get a well furnished and well composed mind and heart, before you will well cure the malady of your thoughts.

Direct. IV. Keep at a sufficient distance from those tempting objects, which are the fuel and incentives of your evil thoughts. Can you expect that the drunkard should rule his thoughts, whilst he is in the alehouse or tavern, and seeth the drink? or that the glutton should rule his thoughts, while the pleasing dish is in his sight? or that the lustful person should keep chaste his thoughts, in the presence of his enamouring toy? or that the wrathful person rule his thoughts, among contentious, passionate words? or that the proud person rule his thoughts, in the midst of honour and applause? Away with this fuel, fly from this infectious air, if you would be safe.

Direct. V. At least make a covenant with your senses, and keep them in obedience, if you will have obedient thoughts. For all know by experience how potently the senses move the thoughts. Job saith, "I made a covenant with my eyes, why then should I think upon a maid." Mark how the covenant with his eyes is made the means to rule his thoughts. Pray with David, "Turn away my eyes from beholding vanity," Psal. cxix. 37. Keep a guard upon your eyes, and ears, and taste, and touch, if you will keep a guard upon your thoughts. Let not that come into these outer parts, which you desire should go no further. Open not the door to them, if you would not let them in.

Direct. VI. Remember how near kin the thought is to the deed; and what a tendency it hath to it. Let Christ himself tell you, Matt. v. 22, 28, "But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment. I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her, hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." A malicious thought and a malicious deed are from the same spring, and have the same nature: only the deed is the riper serpent, and can sting another; when the thought is as the younger serpent, that hath only the venomous nature in itself. A lustful thought is from the same defiled puddle, as actual filthiness: and the thought is but the passage to the action: it is but the same sin in its minority, tending to maturity.

Direct. VII. Keep out, or quickly cast out, all inordinate passions: for passions do violently press the thoughts, and forcibly carry them away. If anger, or grief, or fear, or any carnal love, or joy, or pleasure be admitted, they will command your thoughts to run out upon their several objects. And when you rebuke your thoughts, and call them in, they will not hear you, till you get them out of the crowd and noise of passion. As in the heat of civil wars no government is well exercised in a kingdom; and as violent storms disable the mariners to govern the ship, and save it and themselves; so passions are too stormy a region for the thoughts to be well governed in. Till your souls be reduced to a calm condition, your thoughts will be tumultuating, and hurried that way that the tempests drive them. Till these wars be ended, your thoughts will be licentious, and partakers in the rebellion.

Direct. VIII. Keep your souls in a constant and careful obedience unto God. Observe his law; be continually sensible that you are under his government, and awed by his authority. Man judgeth not your thoughts: if you are subject to man only, your thoughts must be ungoverned: but the heart is the first object of God's government, and that which he principally regardeth. His laws extend to all your thoughts; and therefore if you know what obedience to God is, you must know what the obedience of your thoughts to him is; for he that obeyeth God as God, will obey him in one thing as well as another, and will obey him as the governor and judge of thoughts. The powerful, searching word of Christ is a "discerner of the thoughts and intentions of the heart, and as a two-edged sword is sharp and quick," and will "pierce" and "cut" as deep as the very "soul and spirit," Heb. iv. 12, 13. "It casteth down every imagination, and bringeth into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ," 2 Cor. x. 5. Therefore David saith to God, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting," Psal. cxxxix. 23, 24. And you find God's laws and reproofs extending to the thoughts: Isa. lix. 7, "Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity." The fool's heart-atheism is rebuked, Psal. xiv. 1. He reproveth a rebellious people, for "walking in a way that is not good, after their own thoughts," Isa. lxv. 2. See how Christ openeth the heart, Matt. xv. 9. He chargeth them, Deut. xv. 9, "to beware that there be not a thought in their wicked hearts," against the mercy which they must show to the poor. Psal. xlix. 11, he detecteth the "inward thought" of the worldling, that "their houses shall continue for ever." Prov. xxiv. 9, he saith, "The thought of foolishness is sin." The old world was condemned because the "imaginations of their hearts were only evil continually," Gen. vi. 5. And when God calleth a sinner to conversion, he saith, "Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him," Isa. lv. 6, 7. You see then if you are subject to God, your thoughts must be obedient.

Direct. IX. Remember God's continual presence; that all your thoughts are in his sight. He seeth every filthy thought, and every covetous, and proud, and ambitious thought, and every uncharitable, malicious thought. If you be not atheists, the remembrance of this will somewhat check and control your thoughts, that God beholdeth them. "He understandeth" your "thoughts afar off," Psal. cxxxix. 2. "Doth not he that pondereth the heart consider it," Prov. xxiv. 12. "Wherefore think ye evil in your hearts?" saith Christ, Matt. ix. 4.

Direct. X. Bethink you seriously what a government you would keep upon your thoughts, if they were but written on your foreheads, or seen by all that see you, yea, or but open to some person whom you reverence. Oh how ashamed would you then be, that men should see your filthy thoughts, your malicious thoughts, your covetous and deceiving thoughts! And is not the eye of God ten thousand times more to be reverenced and regarded? And is not man your god, if you are awed more by man than by God, and if the eye of man can do more to restrain you?

Direct. XI. Keep tender your consciences, that they may not be regardless or insensible of the smallest sin. A tender conscience feareth evil and idle thoughts; and will smart in the penitent review of thoughts; but a seared conscience feeleth nothing, except some grievous, crying sins. A tender conscience obeyeth that precept, Prov. xxx. 32, "If thou hast done foolishly in lifting up thyself, or if thou hast thought evil, lay thy hand upon thy mouth."

Direct. XII. Cast out vain and sinful thoughts in the beginning, before they settle themselves and make a dwelling of thy heart. They are easiliest and safeliest resisted in the entrance. Thy heart will give them rooting and grow familiar with them, if they make any stay. Besides, it shows the greater sin, because there is the less resistance, and the more consent. If the will were against them, it would not let them alone so long. Yea, and their continuance tendeth to your ruin; it is like the continuance of poison in your bowels, or fire in your thatch, or a spy in an army: as long as they stay they are working toward your greater mischief. If these flies stay long they will blow and multiply; they will make their nests, and breed their young, and you will quickly have a swarm of sins.

Direct. XIII. Take heed lest any practical error corrupt your understandings; or lest you be engaged in any ill design: for these will command your thoughts into a course of sinful attendance and service to their ends. He that erreth and thinks his sin is his virtue or his duty, will indulge the thoughts of it without control; yea, he will drive on his mind to such cogitations; and steal from the authority and word of God, the motives and incentives of his sin. As false prophets speak against God in the name of God, and against his word as by the pretended authority of his word; so an erring mind will fetch its arguments from God and from the Scripture, for those sinful thoughts which are against God and Scripture. And if evil thoughts will so hardly be kept out when we plead the authority of God and his word against them, and do the best we can to hinder them; how will they prevail when you plead the authority of God and the sacred Scriptures for them, and take it to be your duty to kindle and promote them! For instance; all the sinful thoughts by which the Romish clergy are contriving the support of their kingdom of darkness in the world, and the continuance of their tyranny in the church, are but the products of their error, which tells them that all this should be done, as pleasing to God, and profitable to the church. All the bloody thoughts of persecutors, against the church and holy ways of Christ, have been cherished by this erroneous thought. John xvi. 23, "The time cometh that whoever killeth you, will think that he doth God service; and these things they will do unto you, because they have not known the Father nor me." All Paul's bloody contrivances and practices against the church did come from this. Acts xxvi. 9, "I verily thought with myself, that I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth: which thing I also did." All the scornful and reproachful thoughts and speeches of many of the ungodly against a holy life, are hence: 1 Pet. iv. 4, "They think it strange that you run not with them to excess of riot, speaking evil of you." The vain babbling of hypocrites, who cheat their souls with idle lip-labour, instead of the spiritual service from the heart, and the sacrifice of fools, who offer God some outward thing, while they deny him their hearts and holy obedience, do proceed from this, that "they think to be heard for their much babbling," Matt. vi. 7, "and they consider not that they do evil," Eccl. v. 1. All the self-flattery and presumption of the ungodly, and consequently all their ungodly lives, are much from their erroneous thoughts: "He that thinketh he is something when he is nothing, deceiveth himself," Gal. vi. 3. O come into the light, and forsake your darkness! for sinful thoughts are like hobgoblins and hags, that fly from the light; and like worms and serpents, that creep into holes, and crawl and gender in the dark.

Direct. XIV. Remember what an opening of thoughts there will be, when you come into the light, either here by conviction, or at the furthest at the day of judgment. Then you will be ashamed to see what filth and vanity you entertained; and with what dross and rubbish you stuffed your minds. When the light comes in, what abundance of things will you see to your astonishment, in the dungeon of your hearts, which now you take no notice of! Remember, that all your hidden thoughts must one day be brought into the open light. Say not that this is a thing impossible, because they are so numerous: for God who seeth them all at once, and causeth his sun to illuminate so many millions at once, can make you see them all at once, and yet distinctly, and see the shame and filthiness of every one of them.

Direct. XV. When you find that some thoughts of sin and vanity are following you still, for all that you can do, you must not therefore plunge your souls into so much solicitousness, fear, and trouble, as may discourage and distract your mind; but wait on God in the complacential and obediential way of cure. It is the tempter's method to keep sinners utterly careless of their thoughts, and senseless of any sin that is in them, as long as he can; and when that hope faileth him, he will labour to make a humble, obedient soul so sensible of the sin of his thoughts, and so careful about them, as to confound him, and cast him into melancholy, discouragement, and despair; and then he will have no command of his thoughts at all; but they will be as much ungoverned another way, and feed continually upon terror. The end of this temptation is to distract you and confound you. The pretence of the tempter will be contrary to his end: for while he driveth you with terrors to think of nothing else but what you have been or are thinking on, and to make your own thoughts the only or principal matter of your thoughts, he will confound you, and make you undisposed to all good, and unable to govern your thoughts at all. But if you principally study the excellencies of God and godliness, and take the course which tends to make religion pleasant to you, and withal keep up an awful obedience to God, this complacential obedience will best prevail.

Direct. XVI. Therefore deliver up your hearts to Christ in love and duty, and consecrate your thoughts entirely to his service, and keep them still exercised on him, or in his work: and this will most effectually cure them of vanity and sin.[301] If you have a friend that you love entirely, you will not feed swine in the room that must entertain him; you will not leave it nasty and unclean; you will not leave it common to every dirty, unsuitable companion, to intrude at pleasure and disturb your friend. So love and pleasure will be readily and composedly careful, to keep clean the heart, and shut out vain and filthy thoughts, and say, This room is for a better guest; nothing shall come here which my Lord abhorreth: is he willing so wonderfully to condescend, as to take up so mean a habitation, and shall I straiten him, or offend him, by letting in his noisome enemies? Will he dwell in my heart, and shall I suffer thoughts of pride, or lust, or malice, to dwell with him, or to enter in? Are these fit companions for the Spirit of grace? Do I delight to grieve him? I know as soon as ever they come in, he will either resist them till he drive them out again, or he will go out himself. And shall I drive away so dear a Friend, for the love of a filthy, pernicious enemy? Or do I delight in war? Would I have a continual combat in my heart? Shall I put the Spirit of Christ to fight for his habitation, against such an ignominious foe? Indeed there is no true cure for sinful, vain, unprofitable thoughts, but by the contrary; by calling up the thoughts unto their proper work, and finding them more profitable employment: and this is by consecrating the heart and them entirely to the love and service of him, that hath by the wonders of his love, and by the strange design of his purchase and merits, so well deserved them. Let Christ come in, and deliver him the key, and pray him to keep thy heart as his own, and he will cast out buyers and sellers from his temple, and will not suffer his house of prayer to be a den of thieves. But if you receive Christ with reserves, and keep up designs for the world and flesh, marvel not if Christ will be no partners with them, but leave all to those guests, which you would not leave for him.

Tit. 2. Directions to furnish the Mind with Good Thoughts.[302]

To have the mind well furnished with matter for holy and profitable thoughts, is necessary to all that have the use of reason, though not to all alike. But I shall here present you only with such materials as are necessary to a holy life, and to be used in our daily walk with God; and not meddle with such as are proper to pastors, magistrates, or other special callings, though I may give some general directions also for students in the end of this.

Our own interest and end.

Direct. I. Understand well your own interest and great concernments, and be well resolved what you live for, and what is your true felicity and end; and then this will command your thoughts to serve it. The end is it that the means are all chosen for, and used for. A man's estimation directeth his intention and designs; and his intention and designs command his thoughts. These will certainly have the first and chiefest, the most serious, and practical, and effectual thoughts; though some by-thoughts may run out another way: as the miller will be sure to keep so much water as is necessary to grind his grist, though he may let that run by which he thinks he hath no need of; as you gather in all your corn and fruit for yourselves at harvest, though perhaps you will leave some scatterings which you do not value much, for any that will to gather; so whatever a man taketh for his ultimate end and true felicity, will have the store and stream of his cogitations, though he may scatter some few upon other things, when he thinks he may do it without any detriment to his main design. As a traveller's face is ordinarily towards his journey's end, though so far as he thinks it doth not stop him, he may look behind him, or on each side; so our main end will in the main carry on our thoughts. And therefore unholy souls, that know not practically any higher end than the prosperity and pleasure of the flesh, and the plenty and honour of the world, cannot possibly exercise any holy government over their thoughts; but their minds and consciences are defiled, and their thoughts made carnal as is their end. Nor is there any possibility of curing their vicious, wicked thoughts, and of ordering them acceptably to God, but by curing their worldly, carnal minds, and causing them to change their designs and ends. And this must be by understanding what is their interest. Know well but what it is that is most necessary for you, and best for you, and it will change your hearts, and save your souls. Know this, and your thoughts will never want matter to be employed on; nor will they be suffered to wander much abroad. Therefore it is that the expectation of death, and the thought of coming presently to judgment, do use more effectually to supply the mind with the wisest and most useful thoughts, than the learnedst book or ordinary means can. That which tells a man best what he hath to do, doth best tell him what he hath to think on. But the approach of death, and the appearance of eternity, doth best tell a dull and fleshly sinner what he hath to do; this tells, and tells him roundly, that he must presently search his heart and life, and judge himself as one that is going to the final judgment; and that it is high time for him to look out for the remedy for his sin and misery, &c.; and therefore it will command his thoughts this way. Ask any lawyer, physician, or tradesman, what commands his thoughts; and you will find that his interest, and his ends, and work command them. Know what it is to have an immortal soul, that must live in joy or woe for ever, and what it is to be always so near to the irreversible, determining sentence, and what it is to have this short uncertain time, and no more, to make our preparation in, and then it is easy to foretell which way your thoughts will go. A man that knoweth his house is on fire, will be thinking how to quench it; a man that knoweth he is entering into a mortal sickness, will be thinking how to cure it. There is no better way to have your thoughts both furnished and acted aright, than to know your interest, and right end.

God.

Direct. II. Know God aright, and behold him by the eye of an effectual faith, and you shall never want matter for holy thoughts. His greatness and continual presence with you may command your thoughts, and awe them, and keep them from masterless vagaries. His wisdom will find them continual employment, upon the various, excellent, and delectable subjects of his natural and supernatural revelation; but no where so much as upon himself. In God thou mayst find matter for thy cogitations and affections, most high and excellent, delighting the mind with a continual suavity, affording still fresh delights, though thou meditate on him a thousand years, or to all eternity. Thou mayst better say, that the ocean hath not water enough for thee to swim in, or that the earth hath not room enough for thee to tread upon, than that there is not matter enough in God, for thy longest meditations, and most delighting, satisfying thoughts. The blessed angels and saints in heaven, will find enough in God alone to employ their minds to all eternity. Oh horrid darkness and atheism that yet remaineth on our hearts! that we should want matter for our thoughts, to keep them from feeding upon air or filth! or want matter for our delight, to keep our minds from begging it at the creature's door, or hungering for the husks that feed the swine! when we have the infinite God, omnipotent, omniscient, most good and bountiful, our life, and hope, and happiness, to think on with delight.

The world to come.

Direct. III. If you have but an eye of faith, to see the things of the unseen world, as revealed in the sacred word, you cannot want matter to employ your thoughts. Scripture is the glass in which you may see the other world. There you may see the Ancient of Days, the Eternal Majesty shining in his glory, for the felicitating of holy, glorified spirits. There you may see the human nature advanced above angels, and enjoying the highest glory next to the uncreated Majesty; and Christ reigning as the King of all the world, and all the angels of God obeying, honouring, and worshipping him. You may see him sending his angels on his gracious messages, to the lowest members of his body, the little ones of his flock on earth; you may see him interceding for all his saints, and procuring their peace and entertainment with the Father; and preparing for their reception when they pass into those mansions, and welcoming them one by one as they pass hence. There you may see the glorious, celestial society attending, admiring, extolling, worshipping, the Great Creator, the Gracious Redeemer, and the Eternal Spirit, with uncessant, glorious, and harmonious praise; you may see them burning in the delicious flames of holy love, drawn out by the vision of the face of God, and by the streams of love which he continually poureth out upon them; you may see the magnetic attraction of the uncreated love, and the felicitating closure of the attracted love of holy spirits, thus united unto God by Christ, and feasting everlastingly upon him; you may see the ravishments of joy, and the unspeakable pleasures, which all these blessed spirits have in this transporting sight, and love, and praise. You may see the ecstasies of joy which possess the souls of those that are newly passed from the body, and escaped the sins and miseries of this world, and find there such sudden ravishing entertainment, unspeakable beyond their former expectations, conceivings, or belief. You may see there with what wonder, what pity, what loathing and detestation, those holy, glorified souls look down upon earth, on the negligence, contempt, sensuality, and profaneness of the dreaming and distracted world! You may see there what you shall be for ever, if you be the holy ones of Christ, and where you must dwell, and what you must do, and what you shall enjoy. All this you may so know by sound believing, as to be carried to it as sincerely as if your eyes had seen it, Heb. xi. 1; 2 Cor. v. 7. And yet can your thoughts be idle, or carnal, or worldly and sinful, for want of work? Are your meditations dry and barren for want of matter to employ them? Doth the fire of love or other holy affections go out for want of fuel to feed it? Are not heaven and eternity spacious enough for your minds to expatiate in? Is not such a world as that sufficient for you to study, with fresh and delectable variety of discoveries from day to day? or that which is more delightful than variety? Would you have more matter, or higher and more excellent matter, or sweeter and more pleasant matter, or matter which doth nearlier concern yourselves? Get that faith which all that shall be saved live by, which makes things absent as operative (in some measure) as if they were present, and that which will be as if it now were, and that which is unseen as if it were now open to your eyes; and then your thoughts will want neither matter to work upon, nor altogether an actuating excitation.

If this were not enough, I might tell you what faith can see also in hell, which is not unworthy of your serious thoughts.[303] What work is there? what direful complaints and lamentations? what self-tormentings, and what sense of God's displeasure, and for what? But I will wholly pass this by, that you may see there is delightful work enough for your thoughts, and that I set you no unpleasant task.

The work of love.

Direct. IV. Get but the love of God well kindled in your heart, and it will find employment, even the most high and sweet employment, for your thoughts. Yourselves shall be the judges, whether your love doth not for the most part rule your thoughts, assigning them their work, and directing them when, and how long to think on it. See but how a lustful lover is carried after a beloved, silly piece of flesh! Their thoughts will so easily and so constantly run after it, that they need no spur! Mark in what a stream it carrieth them! how it feedeth and quickeneth their invention, and elevateth an ordinary fancy into a poetical and passionate strain! What abundance of matter can a lover find, in the narrow compass of a dirty corpse, for his thoughts to work on night and day! And will not the love of God then much more fill and feast your thoughts? How easily can the love of money find matter for the thoughts of the worldling from one year to another? It is easy to think of any thing which you love. Oh what a happy spring of meditation, is a rooted, predominant love of God! Love him strongly, and you cannot forget him. You will then see him in every thing that meets you; and hear him in every one that speaketh to you: if you miss him, or have offended him, you will think on him with grief; if you taste of his love, you will think of him with delight; if you have but hope, you will think of him with desire, and your minds will be taken up in seeking him, and in understanding and using the means by which you may come to enjoy him. Love is ingenious, and full, and quick, and active, and resolute; it is valiant, and patient, and exceeding industrious, and delighteth to encounter difficulties, and to appear in labours, and to show itself in advantageous sufferings; and therefore it maketh the mind in which it reigneth exceeding busy, and findeth the thoughts a world of work. If God be not in all the thoughts of the ungodly, Psal. x. 4, it is because he is not in his heart. He may be "nigh their mouths," but he is "far from their reins," Jer. xii. 2. Do those men believe themselves, or would they be believed by any one that is wise, who say they love God above all, and yet neither think of him, nor love to think of him; but are unwearied in thinking of their wealth, and honours, and the pleasures of their flesh? "Consider this, ye that forget God, lest he tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver you," Psal. 1. 22.

Jesus Christ and all the work of redemption.

Direct. V. Soundly understand the wonderful mystery of man's redemption, and know Jesus Christ, and you need not want employment for your thoughts. For "in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," Col. ii. 3. "He is the power of God, and the wisdom of God," 1 Cor. i. 24. If the study of Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, and their numerous followers and commentators, can find work for the thoughts of men that would know the works of God, or would be accounted good philosophers, even for many years together, or a great part of their lives, what work then may a christian find for his thoughts in Jesus Christ, "who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption," 1 Cor. i. 30. "For it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell," Col. i. 19. And therefore in him there is fulness of matter for our meditations. As Paul "determined to know nothing" (or make ostentation of no other knowledge) "but Christ crucified," 1 Cor. ii. 2; so if your thoughts had nothing to work upon many years together, but Christ crucified, they need not stand still a moment for want of most suitable and delightful matter. The mystery of the incarnation alone, may find you work to search and admire many ages! But if thence you proceed to that world of wonderful matter which you may find in his doctrine, miracles, example, sufferings, temptations, victories, resurrection, ascension; and in his kingly, prophetical, and priestly offices; and in all the benefits which he hath purchased for his flock; oh, what full and pleasant work is here for the daily thoughts of a believer! The soul may dwell here with continual delight, till it say with Paul, Gal. ii. 20, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Therefore daily "bow your knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints, what is the breadth, and length, and depth; and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God," Eph. iii. 14-19.

The holy Scriptures.

Direct. VI. Search the holy Scriptures, and acquaint yourselves well with the oracles of God, which are able to make you wise unto salvation, and you will find abundant matter for your thoughts. If you cannot find work enough for your minds, among all those heights and depths, those excellencies and difficulties, it is because you never understood them, or never set your hearts to search them. What mysterious doctrines, how sublime and heavenly, are there for you to meditate on as long as you live! What a perfect law, a system of precepts most spiritual and pure! What terrible threatenings against offenders are there to be matter of your meditations. What wonderful histories of love and mercy! What holy examples! What a treasury of precious promises, on which lieth our hope of life eternal! What full and free expressions of grace! What a joyful act of pardon and oblivion to penitent, believing sinners! In a word, the character of our inheritance, and the law which we must be governed and judged by, are there before us for our daily meditation! David, that had much less of it than we, saith, "O how love I thy law! it is my meditation all the day," Psal. cxix. 97. And God said to Joshua, "This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayst observe to do according to all that is written therein," Josh. i. 8. And Moses commanded the Israelites, that "these words should be in their hearts, and that they teach them diligently to their children, and talk of them when they sat in their houses, and when they walked by the way, and when they lay down, and when they rose up, and to write them on the posts of their houses, and on their gates," &c. that they might be sure to remember them, Deut. vi. 7.

Ourselves as we are God's work.

Direct. VII. Know thyself well as thou art the work of God, and in thyself thou wilt find abundant matter for thy meditations. There thou hast the natural image of God to meditate on and admire; even the noble faculties of thy understanding and free will, and executive power. And thou hast his moral or spiritual image to meditate on, if thou be not unregenerate: even thy holy wisdom, will, and power, or thy holy light, and love, and power with promptitude for holy practice; and all in the unity of holy life.[304] And there thou hast his relative image to meditate on; even thy being, 1. The lord or owner. 2. The ruler. 3. The benefactor to the inferior creatures, and their end. Oh the world of mysteries which thou carriest continually about thee in that little room. What abundance of wonders are in thy body, which is fearfully and wonderfully made! And the greater wonders in thy soul. Thou art thyself the clearest glass that God is to be seen in under heaven, as thou art a man and a saint! And therefore the worthiest matter for thy own meditations (except that holy word, which is thy rule, and the holy church, which is but a coalition of many such). What a shame is it, that almost all men do live and die such strangers to themselves, as to be utterly unacquainted with the innumerable excellencies and mysteries, which God hath laid up in them; and yet to let their thoughts run out upon vanities and toys, and complain of their barrenness, and want of matter, to feed their better meditations.

Our sins and wants.

Direct. VIII. Be not a stranger to the many sins, and wants, and weaknesses of thy soul, and thou never needest to be empty of matter for thy meditations. And though these thoughts be not the sweetest, yet thy own folly hath made them necessary. If thou be dangerously sick, or but painfully sore, thou canst scarce forget it: if poverty afflict thee with pinching wants, thy thoughts are taken up with cares and trouble day and night. If another wrong thee, thou canst easily think on it. And hast thou so often wronged thy God and Saviour, and so unkindly vilified his mercy, and so unthankfully set light by saving grace, and so presumptuously and securely ventured on his wrath, and yet dost thou find a scarcity of matter for thy meditations? Hast thou all the sins of thy youth and ignorance to think on, and all the sins of thy rashness and sensuality, and of thy negligence and sloth, and of thy worldliness and selfishness, ambition and pride, thy passions and thy omissions, and all thy sinful thoughts and words, and yet art thou scanted of matter for thy thoughts? Dost thou carry about thee such a body of death? so much selfishness, pride, worldliness, and carnality; so much ignorance, unbelief, averseness to God, and backwardness to all that is spiritual and holy; so much passion, and readiness to sin; and yet dost thou not find enough to think on? Look over the sins of all thy life: see them in all their aggravations; as they have been committed against knowledge, or means and helps, against mercies and judgments, and thy own vows or promises; in prosperity and under affliction itself; in secret and with others; in thy general and particular calling, and in all thy relations; in every place, and time, and condition that thou hast lived in; thy sins against God directly, and thy injuries or neglects of man: sins against holy duties, and sins in holy duties; in prayer, hearing, reading, sacraments, meditation, conference, reproofs, and receiving of reproofs from others: thy negligent preparations for death and judgment; the strangeness of thy soul to God and heaven.[305]—Is not here work enough for thy meditations? certainly if thou think so, it is because thy heart never felt the bitterness of sin, nor was ever yet acquainted with true repentance; but the time is yet to come, that light must show thee what sin is, and what thou art, and what thou hast done, and how full thy heart is of the serpent's brood, and that thy sin must find thee out! Dost thou not know that thy sins are as the sands of the shore, or as the hairs upon thy head for number? and that every sin hath deadly poison in it, and malignant enmity to God and holiness; and yet are they not enough to keep thy thoughts from being idle? Judge by their language whether it be so with penitents: Psal. li. 2, 3, "Wash me throughly from my wickedness, and cleanse me from my sin; for I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me." Psal. xl. 12, "For innumerable evils have compassed me about; mine iniquities have taken hold upon me, so that I am not able to look up: they are more than the hairs of my head: therefore my heart faileth me." Psal. cxix. 57, "I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto thy testimonies." True repentance is thus described: Ezek. xxxvi. 31, "Then shall ye remember your own evil ways, and your doings that were not good, and shall loathe yourselves in your own sight, for your own iniquities, and for your abominations." Yea, God's forgiving and forgetting your sins, must not make you forget them. Ezek. xvi. 60-63, "I will establish to thee an everlasting covenant; then shalt thou remember thy ways and be ashamed. And I will establish my covenant with thee; that thou mayst remember, and be confounded, and never open thy mouth any more, because of thy shame, when I am pacified towards thee for all that thou hast done, saith the Lord God of hosts."

Satan's temptations.

Direct. IX. Be not a stranger to the methods, and subtleties, and diligence of Satan, in his temptations to undo thy soul, and thou wilt find matter enough to keep thy thoughts from idleness. He is thinking how to deceive thee and destroy thee; and doth it not concern thee to think how to defeat him and escape and save thyself? If the hare run not as fast as the dog, he is like to die for it. Oh that thy eyes were but opened to see the snares that are laid for thee in thy nature, in thy temperature and passions, in thy interests, thy relations, thy friends and acquaintance, and ordinary company; in thy businesses, and possessions, thy house, and goods, and lands, and cattle, and tenants, and servants, and all that thou tradest with, or hast to do with; in thine apparel and recreations; in thy meat and drink, and sleep, and ease, in prosperity and adversity; in men's good thoughts, or bad thoughts of thee; in their praise and dispraise; in their benefits and their wrongs; their favour and their falling out; in their pleasing or displeasing thee; in thy thinking and in thy speaking, and in every thing that thou hast to do with! Didst thou but see all these temptations, and also see to what they tend, and whither they would bring thee, thou wouldst find matter to cure the idleness or impertinences of thy thoughts.

The whole world.

Direct. X. The world and every creature in it, which thou daily seest, and which revealeth to thee the great Creator, might be enough to keep thy thoughts from idleness. If sun, and moon, and stars; if heaven and earth, and all therein, be not enough to employ thy thoughts, let thy idleness have some excuse. I know thou wilt say, that it is upon some of these things that thou dost employ them: yea, but dost thou not first destroy, and mortify, and make nonsense of that on which thou meditatest? Dost thou not first separate it from God, who is the life, and glory, and end, and meaning of every creature? Thou killest it, and turnest out the soul, and thinkest only on the corpse; or on the creature made another thing as food for thy sensual desires! As the kite thinketh on the birds and chickens, to devour them to satisfy her greedy appetite; thus you can think of all God's works, so far as they accommodate your flesh. But the world is God's book, which he set man at first to read; and every creature is a letter, or syllable, or word, or sentence, more or less, declaring the name and will of God. There you may behold his wonderful almightiness, his unsearchable wisdom, his unmeasurable goodness, mercy, and compassions; and his singular regard of the sons of men! Though the ungodly, proud, and carnal wits do but play with, and study the shape, and comeliness, and order of the letters, syllables, and words, without understanding the sense and end; yet those that with holy and illuminated minds come thither to behold the footsteps of the great, and wise, and bountiful Creator, may find not only matter to employ, but to profit and delight their thoughts; they may be rapt up by the things that are seen, into the sacred admirations, reverence, love, and praise of the glorious Maker of all, who is unseen: and thus to the sanctified all things will be sanctified; and the study of common things will be to them divine and holy.

Providence about the world.

Direct. XI. Be not a stranger to, or neglectful disregarder of, the wonders of providence in God's administrations in the world, and thou wilt find store of matter for thy thoughts. The dreadfulness of judgments, the delightfulness of mercies, the mysteriousness of all, will be matter of daily search and admiration to thee. Think of the strange preservations of the church; of a people hated by all the world! how such a flock of lambs is kept in safety, among so many ravenous wolves. Think of God's sharp afflictions of his offending people; of his severe consuming judgments exercised sometimes upon the wicked, when he means to set up here and there a monument of his justice, for the warning of presumptuous sinners. Go see how the wicked are deceived by befooling pleasures, and how the prosperity of fools destroyeth them, Prov. i. 32; how they flourish to-day as a green bay-tree, Psal. xxxvii. 35, or as the flower of the field; and then go into the sanctuary and see their end, how to-morrow they are cut down and withered, and the place of their abode doth know them no more. Go see how God delighteth to abase the proud, and to "scatter them in the imagination of their hearts; to put down the mighty from their seats, and to exalt them of low degree; to fill the hungry with good things, and to send the rich empty away," Luke i. 51-53. "How great are his signs! and how mighty are his wonders! His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom," Dan. iv. 3. "He ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will," ver. 26, 32. "For wisdom and might are his: and he changeth the times and the seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding. He revealeth the deep and secret things; he knoweth what is in darkness, and the light dwelleth with him," Dan. ii. 20-22. "The Lord is known by the judgment which he executeth; the wicked is snared in the work of his own hand," Psal. ix. 16. Mark how the upright are afflicted daily, and how the feet of violence trample on them; and yet how they rejoice, and adhere to that God who doth afflict them, and pity and pray for their miserable persecutors and oppressors; and how "all things do work together for their good," Rom. viii. 28. "Wonderful are all the works of God, sought out of them that have pleasure therein," Psal. cxi. 2. The histories of former ages, and the observation of the present, may show thee a world of matter for thy thought.[306]

God's image.

Direct. XII. Understand all the lineaments and beauty of God's image upon a holy soul, the excellency and use of every grace, and the harmony of all; and thou wilt have store of profitable matter for thy thoughts. Know the nature of every grace, and the place and order of it, and the office, use, and exercise of it; and the means and motives, the opposites, dangers, and preservatives of it: know it as God's image, and see and love thy Maker, and Redeemer, and Regenerator in it: know how God loveth it, and how useful it is to our serving and honouring him in the world; and how deformed and vile a thing the soul is, that is without it: know well what faith is; what wisdom and prudence are; what repentance, and humility, and mortification are; what hope, and fear, and desire, and obedience, and meekness, and temperance, and sobriety, and chastity, and contentation, and justice, and self-denial are; especially know the nature and force of love to God, and to his servants, and to neighbours, and to enemies: know what a holy resignation and devotedness to God are; and what are watchfulness, diligence, zeal, fortitude, and perseverance, patience, submission, and peace: know what the worth, and use, the helps, and hinderances of all these are, and then your thoughts will not be idle.

The daily motions of the Spirit.

Direct. XIII. If thou be not a stranger to the Spirit of grace, or a neglecter of his daily motions, and persuasions, and operations on thy heart, the attendance and improvement of them will keep thy thoughts from rusty idleness and a vagrant course. It is not a small matter to be daily entertaining so noble a guest, and daily observing the offers and motions of so great a Benefactor; and daily receiving the gifts of so bountiful a Lord, and daily accepting his necessary helps; and daily obeying the saving precepts of so great and beneficent a God. If you know how insufficient you are without him, to will or to do, to perform, or to think, or purpose any good, and that all your sufficiency is of him.[307] If you knew that it is the great skill and diligence requisite in all that will sail successively to the desired land of rest, to know the winds of the Spirit's helps, and to set all your sails to the right improvement of them, and to bestir you while such gales continue, you would find greater work than wandering for your thoughts.

All our duty to God and man.

Direct. XIV. Be not ignorant or neglective of that frame and course of holy duty to God and man, in which all your lives should be employed; and you cannot want matter to employ your thoughts upon. Your pulse, and breath, and natural motions, will hold on whether you think of them or not; but so will not moral, holy motion, for that must be rational and voluntary. You have all the powers of soul and body, to exercise either upon God or for God. You must know him, fear him, love him, obey him, trust him, worship him, pray to him, praise him, give thanks to him, bewail your sins, and hear his word, and reverently use his name and day. And is not the understanding and learning how to do all this, and the seasonable, serious practice of it all, sufficient to keep the thoughts from idleness? Oh what a deal of work doth a serious christian find for his thoughts, about some one of these! about praying aright, or hearing, or receiving the sacrament of Christ's body and blood aright! But besides all these, what a deal of duty have you to perform, to magistrates, pastors, parents, masters, and other superiors; to subjects, people, children, servants, and other inferiors; to every neighbour, for his soul, his body, his estate, and name; and to do to all as you would be done by. And besides all this, how much have you to do directly for yourselves; for your souls, and bodies, and families, and estates! against your ignorance, infidelity, pride, selfishness, sensuality, worldliness, passion, sloth, intemperance, cowardice, lust, uncharitableness, &c. Is not here matter for your thoughts?

All our particular mercies.

Direct. XV. Overlook not that life full of particular mercies, which God hath bestowed on yourselves, and you will find pleasant and profitable matter for your thoughts. To spare me the labour of repeating them, look back to chap. iii. direct. xiv. Think of that mercy which brought you into the world, and chose your parents, your place, and your condition; which brought you up, and bore with you patiently in all your sins, and closely warned you of every danger: which seasonably afflicted you, and seasonably delivered you, and heard your prayers in many a distress: which hath yet kept the worst of you from death and hell; and hath regenerated, justified, adopted, and sanctified those that he hath fitted for eternal life. How many sins he hath forgiven! How many he hath in part subdued! How many and suitable helps he hath vouchsafed you! From how many enemies he hath saved you! How oft he hath delighted you by his word and grace! What comforts you have had in his servants and ordinances, in your relations and callings! His mercies are innumerable, and yet do your meditations want matter to supply them? If I should but recite the words of David in many thankful psalms, you would think mercy found his thoughts employment.

The account at judgment.

Direct. XVI. Foresee that exact and righteous judgment, which shortly you have to undergo; and it will do much to find you employment for your thoughts. A man that must give an account to God of all that he hath done, both good and evil, and knoweth not how soon, for aught he knows before to-morrow, methinks should find himself something better than vanity to think on! Is it nothing to be ready for so great a day? To have your justification ready? your accounts made up? your consciences cleansed and quieted on good grounds? To know what answer to make for yourselves against the accuser? To be clear and sure that you are indeed regenerate, and have a part in Christ, and are washed in his blood, and reconciled to God, and shall not prove hypocrites and self-deceivers in that trying day! when it is a sentence that must finally decide the question, whether we shall be saved or damned; and must determine us to heaven or hell for ever; and you have so short and uncertain a time for your preparation: will not this administer matter to your thoughts? If you were going to a judgment for your lives, or all your estates, you would think it sufficient to provide you matter for your thoughts by the way. How much more this final, dreadful judgment!

Our afflictions.

Direct. XVII. If all this will not serve the turn, it is strange if God call not home your thoughts, by sharp afflictions: and methinks the improvement of them, and the removal of them, should find some employment for your thoughts. It is time then to "search and try your ways, and turn again unto the Lord," Lam. iii. 4. To find out the Achan that troubleth your peace, and know the voice of the rod, and what God is angry at, and what it is that he calleth you to mind! To know what root it is that beareth these bitter fruits; and how they may be sanctified to make you conformable to Christ, and "partakers of his holiness," Heb. xii. 10. Besides the exercise of holy patience and submission, there is a great deal of work to be done in sufferings; to exercise faith, to honour God, and the good cause of our suffering, and to humble ourselves for the evil cause, and to get the benefit. And if you will not meditate of the duty, you shall meditate of the pain, whether you will or not; and say, as Lam. iii. 17-20, "I forgat prosperity: and I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord: remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall: my soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me." Put not God to remember you by his spur, and help your meditations by so sharp a means! "Therefore did he consume their days in vanity, and their years in trouble: when he slew them, then they sought him, and they returned and inquired early after God: and they remembered that God was their rock, and the high God their Redeemer," Psal. lxxviii. 33-35.

The business of your callings.

Direct. XVIII. Be diligent in your callings, and spend no time in idleness, and perform your labours with holy minds, to the glory of God, and in obedience to his commands, and then your thoughts will have the less leisure and liberty for vanity or idleness. Employments of the body will employ the thoughts: they that have much to do have much to think on; for they must do it prudently, and skilfully, and carefully, that they may do it successfully; and therefore must think how to do it. And the urgency and necessity of business will almost necessitate the thoughts, and so carry them on and find them work (though some employments more than others). And let none think that these thoughts are bad or vain because they are about worldly things; for if our labours themselves be not bad or vain, then neither are those thoughts which are needful to the well-doing of our work. Nor let any worldling please himself with this, and say, My thoughts are taken up about my calling; for his calling itself is perverted by him, and made a carnal work to carnal ends, when it should be sanctified. That the thoughts about your labours may be good, 1. Your labours themselves must be good, performed in obedience to God, and for the good of others, and to his glory. 2. Your labours and thoughts must keep their bounds, and the higher things must be still preferred, and sought, and thought on in the first place. And your labours must so far employ your thoughts as is needful to the well-doing of them; but better things must be thought on, in such labours as leave a vacancy to the thoughts. But diligence in your calling is a very great help to keep out sinful thoughts, and to furnish us with thoughts which in their place are good.

All ordinances and means of grace.

Direct. XIX. You have all God's spiritual helps and holy ordinances to feed your meditations, and to quicken them, which should be used when your minds grow dull or barren. When your minds are empty, and you cannot pump up plentiful matter for holy thoughts, the reading of a seasonable book, or conference with a full experienced christian, will furnish you with matter: so will the hearing of a profitable sermon: and sometimes prayer will do more than meditation. And weak-headed persons, of small knowledge and shallow memories, must fetch the matter of their meditations thus more frequently from reading and conference than others need to do: as they can hold but little at a time, so they must go the ofter; as he that goeth to the water with a spoon or a dish, must go ofter than they that go with a more capacious vessel. Others can carry a storehouse of meditation still about them; but persons of very small knowledge and memory, must have their meditations fed by others, as infants by the spoon. Therefore a little and often is the best way, both for their reading or hearing, and for their holy thoughts. How great a mercy is it, that weak christians have such store of helps; that when their heads are empty, they have books and friends that are not empty, from whence they may fetch help as they want it; and that their hearts are not empty of the love of God, which inclineth them to do more, than their parts enable them to do.

The miserable sinful world.

Direct. XX. If all these do not sufficiently furnish your meditations, look through the world, and see what a multitude of miserable souls do call for your compassion and daily prayers for their relief. Think on the many nations that lie in the darkness of idolatry and infidelity! It is not past the sixth part of the world that are christians of any sort. The other five parts are heathens, and Mahometans, and some few Jews. And of this sixth part, it is but a small part that are reformed from popery, and such corruptions as the eastern and southern christians also are too much defiled with. And in the reformed churches, how common are profaneness and worldliness, and how few are acquainted with the power of godliness! What abundance of ignorant and ungodly persons are there, who hate the power and practice of that religion, which they profess themselves they hope to be saved by (as if they hoped to be saved for hating, persecuting, and disobeying it). And among those that seem more serious and obedient, how many are hypocrites! And how many are possessed with pride and self-conceitedness, which break forth into unruliness, contentions, and uncharitableness, factions, and divisions in the church! How many christians are ignorant, passionate, weak, unprofitable, and too many scandalous! And how few are judicious, prudent, heavenly, charitable, peaceable, humble, meek, laborious, and fruitful, who set themselves wholly to be good and to do good! And of these few, how few are there that are not exercised under heavy afflictions from God, or cruel persecutions from ungodly men! What tyranny is exercised by the Turk without, and the pope within, upon the sincerest followers of Christ! Set all this together, and tell me whether thy compassionate thoughts or thy prayers do need to go out for want of fuel or matter to feed upon from day to day?

Tit. 3. Directions how to make good Thoughts effectual: or, General Directions for Meditation.

Here some directions are preparatory, and some about the work itself.

Direct. I. Be sure that reason maintain its authority in the command and government of your thoughts; and that they be not left masterless to fancy, and passion, and objects, to carry them which way they please. Diseased, melancholy, and crazed persons have almost no power over their own thoughts. They cannot command them to what they would have them exercised about, nor call them off from any thing they run out upon; but they are like an unruly horse, that hath a weak rider, or hath cast the rider; or like a masterless dog, that will not go or come at your command. Whereas our thoughts should be at the direction of our reason, and the command of the will, to go and come off as soon as they are bid. As you see a student can rule his thoughts all day; he can appoint them what they shall meditate on, and in what order, and how long; so can a lawyer, a physician, and all sorts of men about the matters of their arts and callings. And so it should be with a christian about the matters of his soul. All rules of direction are to little purpose with them, whose reason hath lost its power in governing their thoughts. If I tell a man that is deeply melancholy, Thus and thus you must order your thoughts, he will tell me that he cannot; his thoughts are not in his power. If you would give never so much he is not able to forbear thinking of that which is his disturbance, nor to command his thoughts to that which you direct him, nor to think, but as he doth, even as his disease and trouble moveth him. And what good will precepts do to such? Grace, and doctrine, and exhortation work by reason and the commanding will. If a holy person could manage his practical, heart-raising meditations, but as orderly, and constantly, and easily as a carnal, covetous preacher can manage his thoughts in studying the same things, for carnal ends, (to make a gain of them or to win applause,) how happily would our work go on! And is it not sad to think that carnal ends should do so much more than spiritual, about the same things?

Direct. II. Carefully avoid the disease of melancholy; for that dethroneth reason, and disableth it to rule the thoughts. Distraction wholly disableth; but melancholy disableth only in part, according to the measure of its prevalency; and therefore leaveth some room for advice.

Direct. III. Take heed of sloth and negligence of the will, whereby the directions of reason will be unexecuted, for want of resolution and command; and so every temptation will carry away the thoughts. A lazy coachman will let the horses go which way they list, because he will not strive with them; and will break his neck to save his labour. If, when you feel unclean or worldly thoughts invade your minds, you will not give your wills the alarm, and rise up against them, and resolutely command them out; you will be like a lazy person that lieth in bed while he seeth thieves robbing his house, and will let all go rather than he will rise and make resistance (a sign that he hath no great riches to lose, or else he would stir for it). And if you see your duty, on what your thoughts should be employed, and will not resolutely call them up, and command them to their work, you will be like a sluggard that will let all his servants lie in bed, as well as he, because he will not speak to call them. You see by daily experience, that a man's thoughts are much in the power of his will, and made to obey it. If money and honour, or the delight of knowing, can cause a wicked preacher to command his own thoughts on good things, as aforesaid; you may command yours to the same things, if you will but as resolutely exercise your authority over them.

Direct. IV. Use not your thoughts to take their liberty and be ungoverned; for use will make them headstrong, and not regard the voice of reason; and it will make reason careless and remiss. Use and custom have great power on our minds; where we use to go, our path is plain; but where there is no use, there is no way. Where the water useth to run there is a channel. It is hard ruling those that are used to be unruly. If use will do so much with the tongue, (as we find in some that use to curse, and swear, and speak vainly, and in others that use to speak soberly and religiously; in some that by use can speak well in conference, preaching or praying many hours together, when others that use it not can do almost nothing that way,) why may it not much prevail with the thoughts?

Direct. V. Take heed lest the senses and appetite grow too strong, and master reason; for if they do, they will at once dispossess it of the government of the thoughts, and will brutishly usurp the power themselves. As, when a rebellious army deposeth a king, they do not only cast off the yoke of subjection themselves, but dissolve the government as to all other subjects, and usually usurp it themselves, and make themselves governors. If once you be servants to your fleshly appetites and sense, your thoughts will have other work to do, and another way to go, when you call them to holy and necessary things; especially when the enticing objects are at hand. You may as well expect a clod to ascend like fire, or a swine to delight in temperance, as a glutton, or drunkard, or fornicator, to delight in holy contemplation. Reason and flesh cannot both be the governors.

Direct. VI. Keep under passions, that they depose not reason from the government of your thoughts. I told you before how they cause evil thoughts; and as much will they hinder good. Four passions are especial enemies to meditation: 1. Anger. 2. Perplexing grief. 3. Disturbing fear. 4. But above all, excess of pleasure in any worldly, fleshly thing. Who can think that the mind is fit for holy contemplation, when it flames with wrath, or is distracted with grief and care, or trembleth with fear, or is drunk with pleasure? Grief and fear are the most harmless of the four; yet all hinder reason from governing the thoughts.

Direct. VII. Evil habits are another great hinderance of reason's command over our thoughts; labour therefore diligently for the cure of this disease. Though habits do not necessitate, they strongly incline; and when every good thought must go against a strong and constant inclination, it will weary reason to drive on the soul, and you can expect but small success.

Direct. VIII. Urgent and oppressing business doth almost necessitate the thoughts; therefore avoid as much as you can such urgencies, when you would be free for meditation. Let your thoughts have as little diverting matter as may be, at those times when you would have them entire and free for God.

Direct. IX. Crowds and ill company are no friends to meditation; choose therefore the quietness of solitude when you would do much in this. As it is ill studying in a crowd, and unseasonable before a multitude to be at secret prayer (except some short ejaculations); so is it as unmeet a season for holy meditation. The mind that is fixedly employed with God, or about things spiritual, had need of all possible freedom and peace, to retire into itself, and abstract itself from alien things, and seriously intend its greater work.

Direct. X. Above all, take heed of sinful interests and designs; for these are the garrison of Satan, and must be battered down before any holy cogitations can take place. He that is set upon a design of rising, or of growing rich, hath something else to do than to entertain those sober thoughts of things eternal, which are destructive of his carnal design.

Direct. XI. The impediments of reason's authority being thus removed, distinguish between your occasional and your stated, ordinary course of thoughts. And as your hands have their ordinary, stated course of labour, and every day hath its employment which you fore-expect, so let your thoughts know where is their proper channel, and their every day's work; and let holy prudence appoint out proportionable time and service for them. What a life will that man live, that hath no known course of labour, but only such as he is accidentally called to! His work must needs be uncertain, various, unprofitable, and uncomfortable, and next to none. And he that hath not a stated course of employment for his thoughts, will have them to do him little service. Consider first how much of the day is usually to be spent in common business; and then consider, whether it be such as taketh up your thoughts as well as your hands, or such as leaveth your thoughts at liberty: as a lawyer, a physician, a merchant, and most tradesmen, must employ their thoughts to the well-doing of their work; and these must be the more desirous of a seasonable, vacant hour for meditation, because their thoughts must be otherwise employed all the rest of the day. But a weaver, a tailor, and some other tradesmen, and day-labourers, may do their work well, and yet have their thoughts free for better things a great part of the day; these must contrive an ordinary way of employment for their thoughts, when their work doth not require them; and they need no other time for meditation. The rest must entertain some short, occasional meditations, intermixed with their business; but they cannot then have time for more solemn meditation (which differeth from the other, as a set prayer from a short ejaculation; or a sermon from an occasional short discourse). They that have more time for their thoughts, must beforehand prudently consider, how much time it is best to spend in meditation, for the increase of knowledge, and how much for the exercise of holy affections, and on what subject, and in what order; and so to know their ordinary work.

Direct. XII. Lay yourselves under the urgency of necessity, and the power of those motives which should most effectually engage your thoughts. In the aforesaid instance, what is it that makes a wicked preacher that he can study divine things orderly from year to year, but that he is still under the power of his carnal motives, profit and honour, and some delight? And if you will put yourselves habitually and statedly also under the sense and power of your far greater motives, as always perceiving how much it doth concern you, for yourselves, and others, and the honour of God; this would be a constant poise and spring, which being duly wound up, would keep the wheels in equal motion.

Direct. XIII. Thus you must make the service of your Master, and the saving of yourselves and others, your business in the world, which you follow daily as your ordinary calling, and then it will carry on your thoughts. Whereas he that serveth God but on the by, with some occasional service, will think on him or his work but on the by, with some occasional thoughts. A close and diligent course of holy living, is the best help to keep a constant, profitable course of holy thinking.

Direct. XIV. The chief point of skill and holy wisdom, for this and other religious duties, is, to take that course which tends to make religion pleasant, and to draw your souls to delight in God, and to take heed of that which would make all grievous to you. It will be easy and sweet to think of that which you take pleasure in. But if Satan can make all irksome and unpleasant to you, your thoughts will avoid it as you do a carrion when you stop your nose and haste away. Psal. civ. 34, saith the psalmist, "My meditation of him shall be sweet; I will be glad in the Lord."

Directions about the work itself.

Direct. I. As you must never be unfurnished of holy store, so you must prudently make choice of your particular subject. As the choice of a fit text is half a good sermon; so the choice of the fittest matter for you is much of a good meditation. Which requireth some good acquaintance both with the truth, and with yourselves.

The order of subjects to be meditated on, as to their excellency.

Direct. II. To this end you must know in their several degrees, what subjects are in themselves most excellent to be meditated on. As the first and highest is the most blessed God himself, and the glorious person of our Redeemer, and the New Jerusalem or heaven of glory, where he is revealed to his saints. And then, the blessed society which there enjoyeth him, and the holy vision, love, and joy, by which he is enjoyed. And next is the wonderful work of man's redemption, and the covenant of grace, and the sanctifying operations of the Holy Ghost, and all the graces that make up God's image on the soul. And then is the state and privileges of the church, which is the body of Christ, for whom all this is done and prepared. And next is the work of the gospel, by which this church is gathered, edified, and saved. And then, the matter of our own salvation, and our state of grace, and way to life. And then, the salvation of others. And then, the common, public good, in temporal respects. And then, our personal, bodily welfare. And next, the bodily welfare of our neighbours. And lastly, those things that do but remotely tend to these. This is the order of desirableness and worth, which will tell you what should have estimative precedency in your thoughts and prayers.

Direct. III. You must also know what subject is then most seasonable for your thoughts, and refuse even an unseasonable good. For good may be used by unseasonableness to do hurt. It may be thrust in by the tempter, on purpose to divert you from some greater good, or to mar some other duty in hand; so he will oft put in some good meditation to turn you from a better, or in the midst of sermon or prayer: or if he see you out of temper to perform a duty of meditation, or that you have no leisure, without neglecting your more proper work, he will then drive you on, that by the issue he may discourage and hurt you, and make the duty unprofitable and grievous to you, and make you more averse to it afterwards. Untimely duty may be no duty, but a sin, which is covered with the material good. As the Pharisees' sabbath-rest was, when mercy called them to violate it.

Direct. IV. Examine well, and determine of the end and use of your meditations, before you set upon them, and then labour to fit them to that special end. The end is first in the intention, and from the love of it the means are chosen and used. If it be knowledge that you are to increase, it is evidence of truth, with the matter to be known, in a convincing, scientifical way, that you must meditate on. If it be divine belief that is to be increased or exercised, it is divine revelations, both matter, and evidence of credibility, which you have to meditate on. If you would excite the fear of God, you have his greatness, and terribleness, his justice, and threatenings to meditate on. If you would excite the love of God, you have his goodness, mercy, Christ, and promises to meditate on. If you would prepare for death and judgment, you have your hearts to try, your lives to repent of, your graces to discover, and revive, and exercise, and your soul's diseases to feel, and the remedies to apply: so whenever you mean to make any thing of a set meditation, determine first of the end, and by it of the means.

Direct. V. Clear up the truth of things to your minds as you can, before you take much pains to work them on your affections, lest you find after that you did but misinform yourselves, and bestow all your labour in vain, to make deluding images on your minds, and bring your affections to bow before them. As many have done by espousing errors, who have laid out their zeal upon them many years together, and made them the reason of hatred, and contention, and bitter censurings of opposing brethren; and have made parties, and divisions, and disturbances in the church for them, and after so many years' zealous sinning, have found them to be but like Michal's image, a man of straw instead of David; and that they made all this filthy pudder but in a dream.

Direct. VI. Next labour to perceive the weight of every thing you think on, be it good or evil: and to that end be sure, that God and eternity be taken in, in every meditation, and all things judged of as they stand related to God, and to your eternal state; which only can give you the true estimate and sense of good and evil: there will still the life, and soul, and power be wanting in your most excellent meditations, further than God is in them, and they are divine. When you meditate on any Scripture truth, think of it as a beam from the Eternal Light, indited by the Holy Ghost, to lead men by obedience to felicity. Behold it with reverence, as a letter or message sent from heaven, and as a thing of grand importance to your souls. When you meditate of any grace, think on it as a part of the image of God, implanted and actuated by the Holy Ghost, to advance the soul into communion with God, and prepare it for him. When you meditate on any duty, remember who commandeth it, and whom you are chiefly to respect in your obedience; and what will be the end of obeying or disobeying. When you meditate on any sin, remember that it is the defacing or privation of God's image, and the rebel that riseth up against him in all his attributes, to depose him from the government of the soul and of the world; and foresee the end to which it tendeth. Take in God, if you would feel life and power in all that you meditate on.

Direct. VII. Let your ordinary meditations be on the great and necessary things; and think less frequently on the less necessary matters. Meditation is but a means to a further end: it is to work some good upon the soul: use therefore those subjects which are most powerful and fit to work it. Great truths will do great works upon the heart. They are usually the surest and most past controversy and doubt. There is more weight, and substance, and power in one article of the creed, or one petition of the Lord's prayer, or one commandment of the decalogue, to benefit the soul, than in abundance of the controverted opinions which men have troubled themselves and others with in all ages; as one purse of gold will buy more than a great quantity of farthings. Meditating on great and weighty truths, makes great and weighty christians. And meditating inordinately on light and controverted opinions, makes light, opinionative, contentious professors. Little things may have their time and place, but it must be but little time and the last place; except when God maketh any little thing to be the matter of our lawful calling and employment (as all the common matters of the world are little); and then they may have a larger proportion of our time, though still they must have the lowest place in our estimation and in our hearts.

Direct. VIII. Whenever you are called to meditate on any smaller truth or thing, see that you take it not as separated from the greater, but still behold it as connexed to them, and planted and growing in them, and receiving their life and beauty from them; so that you may still preserve the life and interest of the greatest matters in your hearts, and may not mortify the least, and turn it into a deceit or idol. We are to climb upwards, and not to descend downwards: and therefore we begin at the body of the tree, and so pass up to the few and greatest boughs; and thence to the smaller numerous branches, which as they are hard to be discerned, numbered, and remembered, so are they not all strong enough to bear us; but are fitted rather to be looked on, than trodden and rested on. But if you take them not as growing from the greater boughs, but cut them off, they lose their life, and beauty, and fruitfulness. If all the controversies in the church had been managed with due honour and preservation of holiness, charity, unity, peace, and greater truths; and if all the circumstantials in religion had been ordered with a salvo, and due regard, and just subserviency to the power and spirituality of holy worship, the christian world would have had more life, and strength, and fruitfulness, and less imagery, unholy, ludicrous compliment, and hypocrisy.

Direct. IX. Let the end and order of your meditations be first for the settling of your judgments, and next for the resolving and settling of your wills, and thirdly, for the reforming and bettering of your lives; and, but in the fourth place, after all these, for the raising of your holy passions or lively feeling; which must have but its proper room and place. But indeed where some of these are done already, they may be supposed, and we may proceed to that which is yet to do. As if you know what is sin and duty, but do it not, your meditation must be, not to make you know what you knew not, but first to consider well of what you know, and set the powerful truth before you; and then labour hereby to bring your wills to a fixed resolution of obedience. But if it be a truth whose principal use is on the will and affections, (as to draw up the heart to the love of God, by the meditating on his attractive excellencies,) then the most pains must there be taken. Of which see chap. iii. direct. xi.

Direct. X. Turn your cogitations often into soliloquies; methodically and earnestly preaching to your own hearts, as you would do on that subject to others if it were to save their souls.[308] As this will keep you in order, from rambling and running out, and will also find you continual matter, (for method is a wonderful help both to invention, memory, and delight,) so it will bring things soonest to your affections: and earnest pleading of convincing reasons with our own hearts, is a powerful way to make the fire burn, and to kindle desire, fear, love, hatred, repentings, shame, sorrow, joy, resolution, or any good effect. Convictions, upbraidings, expostulations, reprehensions, and self-persuasions may be very powerful; when a dull way of bare thinking is but like a dull way of preaching, without any lively application, which little stirs the hearers. Learn purposely of the liveliest books you read, and of the best and liveliest preachers you hear, to preach to your hearts, and use it orderly, and you will find it a most powerful way of meditating.

Direct. XI. Turn your meditations often into ejaculatory prayers and addresses unto God; for that will keep you reverent, serious, and awake, and make all the more powerful, because the more divine. When you meditate on sin, turn sometimes to God, by penitent lamentation, and say, Lord, what a wretch and rebel was I to entertain such an enemy of thine in my heart! and for nothing to offend thee and violate thy laws! O pardon, O cleanse me, O strengthen me! Conquer and cast out this odious enemy of thee and me. So when you are seeking to excite or exercise any grace, send up a fervent request to God to show his love and power upon thy dead and sluggish heart, and to be the principal agent in a work which is so much his own. Prayer is a most holy duty, in which the sold hath so nearly to do with God, that if there be any holy seriousness in the heart, it will be thus excited: a dull and wandering mind will bear some reverence to God; and therefore interest him in all.

Direct. XII. Let every meditation be undertaken in a humble sense of thy own insufficiency, with a believing dependence on thy Head and Saviour, to guide and quicken thee by his Holy Spirit, and to cover the infirmities of thy holiest thoughts. Whatever good is written upon our hearts, must be "written by the Spirit of the living God:" and this "trust we must have through Christ to God-ward: not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God," 2 Cor. iii. 3-5. How heavily will all go on, or rather how certainly shall we labour in vain, and cast off all, if Christ cast us off, and leave us to ourselves! Think not that your life and strength are radically in yourselves: go to him by renewed acts of faith, by whom you must be quickened.

Direct. XIII. Let not your holy thoughts be so seldom as to keep you strange to the matter of your meditations, nor so short as to be gone before you have made any thing of it. Now and then a cursory thought will not acquaint the soul with God, nor bring it to a habit and temperament of holiness. Whereas that which you think on frequently and seriously, as your business and delight, will become the nutriment and nature of your souls; as the air which we daily breathe in, and the food which we daily live upon, do to our bodies. And you will find that as use will breed skill and strength, so it will cause such acquaintance and familiarity, as will very much tend to the fruit and comfort of the work. Whereas they that only cast now and then a look at God and holiness, or are seldom and short in holy thoughts, do lose so quickly the little which they get, that it makes no great alteration on them.

Direct. XIV. Yet do not overdo in point of violence or length; but carry on the work sincerely according to the abilities of your minds and bodies; lest going beyond your strength, you craze your brains, and discompose your minds, and disable yourselves to do any thing at all. Though we cannot estimatively love God too much, yet is it possible to think of him with too much passion, or too long at once; because it may be more than the spirits and brain can bear; and if once they be overstrained, if they break not, like a lute-string screwed too high, they will be like a leg that is out of joint, that can pain you, but not bear you. While the soul rideth on so lame or dull a horse as the body is, it must not go the pace which it desireth, but which the body can bear; or else it may quickly be dismounted, or like one that rideth on a tired horse. It is not the horse that goeth at first with chafing heat and violence, which will travel best; but you must put on in the pace that you are able to hold out. You little know how lamentable and distressed a case you will be in, or how great an advantage the tempter hath, if once he do but tire you by overdoing!

Direct. XV. Choose not unnecessarily or ordinarily the bitterest or most unpleasant subjects for your meditation, lest you make it grow a burden to you; but dwell most on the sweet, delightful thoughts of the infinite love of God revealed by Christ, and the eternal glory purchased by him, and the wonderful helps and mercies in the way. As it is the gospel which Christ's ministers must preach to others, so it is the gospel which in your meditations you must preach most to yourselves. It is love and pleasure which you must principally endeavour to excite: and you must do it by contemplating amiableness and felicity, the objects of love and pleasure. For the thoughts of terror, and wrath, and misery, are unfit to stir up these: though to the unconverted, dull, secure, presumptuous, or sensual sinner, such thoughts are very necessary to awake him, and prepare him for the thoughts of love and peace. It is the principal part of this art, to keep off loathing and averseness, and to keep up readiness and delight.

Direct. XVI. When you are in company, let out the fruit of your secret meditations, in holy, edifying discourse. Gather not for yourselves only, but that you may communicate to others. The "good scribe instructed to the kingdom of God," must "bring forth out of his treasure things new and old," Matt. xiii. 52. That is good which doth good. God is communicative; and the best men are likest to him: nay, a fluent discourse sometimes is a great instructor to ourselves, and bringeth those things into our minds with clearness, which long meditation would not have done. For one thing leadeth in another; and in a warm discourse the spirits are excited, and the understanding and memory are engaged to a close attention; so that just in the speaking, we have oftentimes such a sudden appearance of some truth, which before we took no notice of, that we find it is no small addition to our knowledge, which comes in this way. As some find that vocal prayer doth more excite them, and keep the mind from wandering, than mere mental prayer doth; so free discourse is but a vocal meditation. And what man's thoughts are not more guilty of disorder, vagaries, and interruptions, than his discourse is?