What have I left that I should stay and groan; My thoughts and joys are all pack'd up and gone, Or take me up to thee. Come, dearest Lord, pass not this holy season; And even my verse, when by the rhyme and reason O show thyself to me, Or take me up to thee. AN ADDITION ΤΟ THE ELEVENTH CHAPTER OF THE THIRD PART OF THE SAINT'S REST. IT hath seemed meet to Mr. K. to second Mr. Crandon, by an impetuous opposition of my poor labours; and having in his first volume against Mr. G. assaulted my Aphorisms; in the second, to fall upon my 'Method for Peace of Conscience,' and my book of 'Rest;' against the twelfth chapter (misprinted the eleventh) of the Third Part, he hath a copious digression, which I will now not characterise, either as to the intellectuals or morals, the judgment or honesty appearing in it; having reserved that to a second and plain admonition to himself. But because I intended these writings for ordinary capacities, I would have nothing remain in them which may be an occasion of their stumbling for the sake therefore of such readers as would neither err, nor be puzzled with contentious janglings about mere words, I shall give them this brief advertisement following. It is so far from my desire to teach men to build the peace of their consciences upon any nice philosophical controversies, much less on any errors or singular opinions of mine, that I desire nothing more than to lead them to, and leave them on, the plain, infallible word of God. My own judgment concerning that sincere, saving grace, which we may safely try our estates by, I have as plainly as I could laid down in that chapter, and my 'Directions for Peace;' and in sect. 39, to sect. 53, of my 'Reply to Mr. Blake :' from whence I must desire the reader to fetch it, and not from the interpretations of Mr. K., which so seldom hath the hap to be acquainted with the truth, and who professeth himself that he doth not understand me: whether it be long of me or himself I determine not. To these I shall now add only these few words. : The everlasting enjoyment of God in glory by perfected man, is the felicity which all should desire and seek. This is propounded to us by God in his word, and the necessary mean thereto prescribed; even Jesus Christ, and faith in him, and obedience to him, and to God in and by him. The distempered, sensual appetite, and depraved will of man, do incline to inferior sénsual delights. God hath resolved that these shall not be their felicity, and that they shall never be happy in the enjoyment of him, except they take him for their chief good, and so far forsake inferior good which would draw the heart from him and except also they give up themselves to his Son Jesus Christ, and to his Spirit, to be recovered unto him. Though all men by nature desire to be happy; yet all do not desire God as their happiness. Nor do the regenerate themselves yet perfectly desire him, or perfectly forsake that inferior good; which was their supposed happiness before they were renewed, The understanding is commonly acknowledged to have three kinds of acts: 1. A simple apprehension of the mere entity of a thing, or of a simple term; 2. Judgment, or the conception of a complex term; 3. Discourse. The first alone moves not the will, because it concludes not of the goodness or evil of the thing apprehended. The second, judgment, is either about the end or the means: and either absolute or comparative. Several things are commonly called man's end, how properly I now inquire not. 1. Felicity in general; 2. Himself the subject, commonly called the finis cui; 3. The natural and moral perfection of his person; 4. The act of fruition, or perfect complacency in the blessed object upon a full vision; commonly called, our formal felicity: 5. The object itself, that is, the blessed God, commonly called our objective felicity, and our finis qui, or cujus, whether fitly, we shall better know hereafter. The two first nature hath tied us to ; but not to the object, nor to the perfection of the soul in a spiritual suitableness thereto. The first absolute judgment produceth in the will a simple complacency or displacency; this is the first motion of the will. The comparative judgment, where it is necessary, produceth intention and election, or else refusal, and resolves the fluctuating will. Where there is but one good propounded, either one ob jective end, or one means of absolute necessity, or wherever there is omnimoda ratio boni, nothing but good apparent in the object, there is no work for consultation, or the comparative act of judgment, and consequently for election: but the absolute judgment would proceed to the practical, and carry out the will to intention and prosecution: were not man's soul blinded and depraved, there should be no deliberation about his end, and so no choosing of God as our end, but an absolute intending him, as having no competitor: and it cannot be without great sin for the judgment to make any question or comparison, and so to deliberate, Whether God or the creature be our felicity; and, Whether God or our carnal selves should be our end? But seeing our depraved judgment and will, and vitiated senses, and the tempter's setting the creature in competition with God, do necessitate a comparative judgment and deliberation, even about our end itself; therefore there is a kind of election of God as before the creature, or a consent or resolution so to prefer him, that is necessary, before or with a right intention and prosecution of that end besides, the election of the new means, that is necessary; seeing Satan and our flesh are so ready to propound wrong means, in competition with the means of God's prescribing. All this being so, I further add, that the same will that hath a complacency in a thing as judged simply good, may yet reject and nill it, or refuse to seek or receive it, if it be judged either a lesser good inconsistent with a greater, or any way to have more evil in it than good and as the understanding doth at once apprehend it as good absolutely, or in some respect; and evil in other respects, and comparatively less good; so doth the will at once continue to love or will it so far as it is apprehended as good; and to nill and reject it as inconsistent with a greater good, or a hinderer of it. But if it fall out that the inconsistency of these is not discerned or believed, or but imperfectly, then may the will, by a practical volition, will them both. To apply this. The understanding of the ungenerate may know that God is good, and good to them, and that in very many and weighty respects he is desirable. They may know that worldly things will shortly leave them, and then if they have not God's favour they shall perish. But if they have, they shall attain both perfection of body, (which they may desire,) and perfection of mind, (which they do desire in general, and may submit to in the particular way of holiness, as more tolerable than hell,) besides some imperfect ineffectual knowledge of a beauty and desirableness in holiness itself, accompa nied with an answerable motion of the will: but every unrenewed man hath more prevalent apprehensions of the goodness of the creature, partly by unmastered sense, and partly by perverted reason, and therefore apprehendeth God as evil to him; so far as he would hinder his enjoyment thereof, or would punish him for a sinful adhering to it. So that, 1. His highest practical estimation is of the creature, yet not without some esteem of God: 2. and his prevailing will is to the creature, but not without some will to God. And, ordinarily, such men are so fully convinced of the impossibility of enjoying the creature for ever, and being happy any other way than in God, that, though they could wish an everlasting fulness of the creature, yet, seeing none but fools do intend an end which they know impossible to be attained, they do therefore compound a felicity in their own fancies, of the world for a time, and heaven for everlasting: one part standing in the enjoyment of the delights of the flesh, while they live here, and the other in the deliverance from hell and blessedness in heaven hereafter: hoping that these are not inconsistent, but they may have heaven when they can enjoy the world no longer; because they see that many saints possess abundance of earthly blessings, and persecution is not now so common as it hath been, therefore they suppose they may possess the like: upon which expectation they enjoy what the godly do but use, and so give it the pre-eminence in their hearts: or if they be convinced of the inconsistency of a carnal mind, (in a prevalent degree,) with an interest in the happiness of the life to come, they will either persuade themselves that they are not carnally-minded when they are, or, one way or other, will underprop their hopes of enjoying both but still their fleshly mind is predominant, and therefore they will cast their salvation upon the adventure of such hopes as have nothing but their own delusions to support them. On the other side, the regenerate being here imperfect in all their graces, are imperfectly taken off those carnal ends which they intended in their unsanctified state, and imperfectly inclined to God as their end: so are they also, both in discerning and choosing the fittest means, even Christ himself and obedience to him, so that the best are carnally-minded, in some degree, but not in a prevalent degree, for then they should die. The flesh and world have still some interest in the saints, but not the strongest. As God and the Redeemer may have some |