convey the truths of God to pofterity: but fince the facred truth hath been configned to writing no fuch tradition (except fully confentient with that written word) is to be received as authentic; but the truths therein delivered to the faints, are, by verbal declarations, open confons, and conftant fufferings, to be preferved and delivered from age to age. This was the conftant care of the whole cloud of witneffes, both ancient and modern, who have kept the word of God's patience, and would not accept their own lives, liberties, or estates, no, nor the whole world in exchange for that invaluable treasure of truth: they have carefully practifed Solomon's counfel, Prov. xxiii. 23. Buy the truth, but fell it not ;" they would not alienate that fair inheritance for all the inheritances on earth. Upon the fame reasons that you refuse to part with, or imbezzle your eftates, Chriftians alfo refufe to part with the truth of God.

1. You will not waste or alienate your inheritance, because it is precious, and of great value in your eyes; but much more precious are God's truths to his people. Luther profeffed, he would not take the whole world for one leaf of his Bible. Though fome profane perfons may say with Pilate, What is truth? Yet know, that any one truth of the gospel is more worth than all the inheritances upon earth; they are the great things of God's law; and he that fells them for the greatest things in this world, makes a foul-undoing bargain.

2. You will not waste or part with your inheritance, because you know your pofterity will be much wronged by it. They that daffle or drink away an estate, drink the tears of their fad widows, and the very blood of their impoverished children. The people of God do alfo confider, how much the generations to come are concerned in the confervation of the truths of God for them: It cuts them to the heart, but to think that their children fhould be brought up to worship dumb idols, and fall down before a wooden and breaden God. The very birds and beafts will expofe their own bodies to apparent danger of death, to preferve their young. Religion doth much more tender the hearts and bowels than nature doth.

3. You reckon it a foul difgrace to fell your eftates, and become bankrupts; it is a word that bears ill among you: and a Christian accounts it the highest reproach in the world, to be a traitor to, or an apoftate from the truths of God. When the primitive faints were strictly required to deliver up their Bibles, thofe that did so, were justly branded, and hiffed out of their company, under the odious title of traditores, or deliverers.

4. You are fo loth to part with your estates, because you know it is hard recovering an estate again when once you have lost it. Chrif tians do alfo know how difficult it will be for the people of God, in times to come, to recover the light of the gofpel again, if once it be extinguished. There is no truth of God recovered out of Antichrift's hands, without great wrestlings and much blood. The church may call every point of reformed doctrine and difcipline fo

recovered, her Naphtalies; for with great wrestlings the hath wreftled for them; "earneftly contending for the faith once delivered to "them," Jude 3.

5. To conclude; rather than you will part with your eftates, you will choose to fuffer many wants and hardships all your lives; you will fare hard, and go bare, to preserve what you have for your pofterity: but the people of God have put themselves upon far greater hardthips than thefe to preferve truth; they have chofen to fuffer reproaches, poverty, prifons, death, and the moft cruel torments, rather than the lofs of God's truth, all the martyrologies will inform you what their fufferings have been, to keep the word of God's patience; they have boldly told their enemies, that they might pluck their hearts out of their bodies, but should never pluck the truth out of their hearts.

Areflection for cowardly and faintbearted profeffors.

A reflection for fuch as fuffer for truth.

REFLECTIONS.

1. Base unbelieving heart! How have I flinched and funk from truth, when it hath been in danger? I have rather chofen to leave it than my life, liberty, or eftate, as a prey to the enemy. I have left truth, and juft it is that the God of truth should leave me. Cowardly foul! that durft not make a ftand for the truth: yea, rather bold and daring foul! that would rather venture to look a wrathful God, than an angry man in the face. I would not own and preserve the truth, and the God of truth will not own me; 2 Tim. ii. 12. "If we deny him, he will deny us." 2. Lord! unto me haft thou committed the precious treasure and truft of truth; and as I received it, fo do I defire to deliver it to the generations to come, that the people which are yet unborn may praise the Lord. God forbid I should ever part with such a fair inheritance, and thereby beggar my own, and thousands of fouls! Thou haft given me thy truth, and the world hates me; I well know that it is the ground of the quarrel. Would I but throw truth over the walls, how foon would a retreat be founded to all perfecutors? But, Lord, thy truth is invaluably precious. What a vile thing is my blood, compared with the leaft of all thy truths? Thou haft charged me not to fell it; and, in thy ftrength, I refolve never to pafs a fine, and cut off that golden line whereby thy truths are entailed upon thy people from generation to generation my friends may go, my liberty may go, my blood may go; but as for thee, precious truth, thou fhalt never go. 3. How dear hath this inheritance of truth coft fome Chriftians? How little hath it coft us? We are entered into their labours; we reap in peace what they fowed in tears, yea, in blood. O the grievous fufferings that they chose to endure! Rather than to deprive us of fuch an inheritance, those noble

A reflection for fuch as are in quiet poffeffion of truth.

fouls, heated with the love of Chrift, and care for our fouls, made many bold and brave adventures for it; and yet at what a low rate do we value what coft them fo dear? Like young heirs that never knew the getting of an estate, we spend it freely. Lord, help us thankfully and diligently to improve thy truths, while we are in quiet poffeffion of them. Such intervals of peace and rest are ufually of no long continuance with thy people.

A

THE POEM.

PUBLIC fpirit fcorns to plant no root

But fuch from which himself may gather fruit,

For thus he reasons, If I reap the gains

Of laborious predeceffors pains,

How equal is it, that pofterity,

Should reap the fruits of prefent industry?
Should ev'ry age but serve its turn, and take
No thought for future times, it foon will make
A bankrupt world, and fo entail a curfe
From age to age, as it grows worfe and worse.
Our Christian predeceffors careful thus
Have been to leave an heritage to us.
Chrift's precious truth conferved in their blood,
For no lefs price those truths our fathers stood.
They have tranfmitted, would not alienate
From us, their children, fuch a fair eftate.
We eat what they did fet: and shall truth fail
In our days? Shall we cut off th' entail,
Or end the line of honour? Nay, what's worse,
Give future ages caufe to hate, and curfe
Our memories? Like Naboth, may this age
Part with their blood fooner than heritage.
Let pity move us, let us think upon
Our children's fouls, when we are dead and gone:
Shall they, poor fouls, in darkness grope, when we
Put out the light, by which they elfe might fee
The way to glory? Yea, what's worse, fhall it
Be faid in time to come, Chrift did commit
A precious treasure, purchas'd by his blood,
To us, for ours, and for our children's good!
But we, like cowards, falfe, perfidious men,
For carnal ease loft it, ourselves, and them.
O let us leave, to after ages, more
Than we receiv'd from all that went before!
That those to come may bleis the Lord, and keep
Our names alive, when we in duft fhall fleep.

CHAP. VI.

Upon the Husbandman's Care to prove and profive his Deeds.

Deeds for our lands you prove, and keep with care';
O that for heaven you but as careful were!

OBSERVATION.

generally find men are not more careful in trying gold, or

WE in keeping it, than they are in examining their deeds, and

preferving them; thefe are virtually their whole eftate, and therefore it concerns them to be careful of them: if they fufpect a flaw in their leafe or deed, they repair to the ableft counfel, fubmit it to his judgment, make the worst of their caufe, and query about all the fuppofeable danger with him. If he tell them their cafe is fufpicious and hazardous, how much are they perplexed and troubled? They can neither eat, drink, nor fleep in peace, till they have a good fettlement; and willing they are to be at much coft and pains to obtain it.

TH

APPLICATION.

HESE cares and fears with which you are perplexed in fuch cafes, may give you a little glimpfe of thofe troubles of foul, with which the people of God are perplexed about their eternal condition; which, perhaps, you have been hitherto unacquainted with, and therefore flighted them, as fancies and whimfies: I fay, your own fears and troubles, if ever you were engaged by a cunning and powerful adverfary in a law-fuit for your eftate, may give you a little glimpse of fpiritual troubles; and indeed it is no more but a glimpfe of them: for, as the lofs of an earthly, though fair, inheritance, is but a trifle to the lofs of God and the foul to eternity; fo you cannot but imagine, that the cares, fears, and folicitudes of fouls about these things, are much, very much beyond yours. Let us compare the cafes, and fee how they answer to each other.

1. You have evidences for your eftates, and by them you hold what you have in the world: They also have evidences for their eftate in Chrift, and glory to come; they hold all in capite, by virtue of their intermarriage with Jefus Chrift; they come to be inftated in that glorious inheritance contained in the covenant of grace. You have their tenure in that fcripture, 1 Cor. iii. 22, 23. “All is yours, for ye "Chrift's, and Chrift is God's." Faith unites them to him, and after they believe, they are fealed by the Spirit of promife, Eph. i. 13. They can lay claim to no promife upon any other ground; this is their title to all that they own as theirs.

are

2. It often falls out. that after the fealing and executing of your deeds, or leafes, an adverfary finds fome dubious claufe in them, and thereupon commences a fuit at law with you. Thus it frequently

falls out with the people of God, who after their believing and fealing time, have doubts and fcruples raised in them about their title. Nothing is more common, than for the devil, and their own unbelief, to fiart controverfies, and raise strong objections against their intereft in Chrift, and the covenant of promifes. Thefe are cunning and potent adverfaries, and do maintain long debates with the gracious foul, and reafon fo cunningly and fophiftically with it, that it can by no means extricate and fatisfy itfelf; always alledging, that their title is worth nothing, which they, poor fouls, are but too ap: to fufpect.

3. All the while that a fuit of law is depending about your title, you have but little comfort or benefit from your eftate; you cannot look upon it as your own, nor lay out monies in building or dreffing for fear you fhould lofe all at laft. Juft thus ftands the cafe with doubting Chriftians; they have little comfort from the most comfortable promises, little benefit from the sweetest duties and ordinances : They put off their own comforts, and fay, if we were sure that all this were ours, we would then rejoice in them. But, alas! our title is dubious Chrift is a precious Chrift; the promises are comfortable things; but what, if they be none of ours? Ah! how little doth the doubting Chriftian make of his large and rich inheritance?

4. You dare not trust your own judgments in fuch cases, but state your cafe to fuch as are learned in the laws, and are willing to get the ableft counsel you can to advise you. So are poor doubting Chriftians; they carry their cafes from Chriftian to Chriftian, and from minister to minister, with fuch requests as thefe: Pray tell me, what do you think of my condition? Deal plainly and faithfully with me; thefe be my grounds of doubting, and thefe my grounds of hope. O hide nothing from me! And if they all agree that the cafe is good, yet they cannot be fatisfied till God fay fo too, and confirm the word of his fervants; and therefore they carry the cafe often before him in fuch words as thofe, Pfalm cxxxix. 23, 24. "Search "me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts, "and fee if there be any wicked way in me."

5. You have little quiet in your fpirits, till the cafe be refolved; your meat and drink doth you little good; you cannot fleep in the night, because these troubled thoughts are ever returning upon you; what if I fhould be turned out of all at laft? So it is with gracious fouls; their eyes are held waking in the night, by reafon of the troubles of their hearts, Pfalm Ixxvii. 4. Such fears as thefe are frequently returning upon their hearts, what if I fhould be found a felf-deceiver at laft? What if I but hug a phantafm inftead of Chrift? How can this, or that, confift with grace? Their meat and drink doth them little good; their bodies are often macerated by the troubles of their fouls.

6. You will not make the best of your condition, when you state your cafe to a faithful counsellor; neither will they, but oftentimes VOL. V.

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