neglect or refusal of offered Choose Christ as Christ, and

ourselves by wilful and final grace and mercy we are safe. God as God; choose grace and glory before all the vanities of the world, and before all the pleasures of sin for a season, and stand to this choice unto the end, expressing it in faithful victorious endeavours, and then neither men nor devils, life or death, shall take your chosen treasure from you.

Object. I can easily keep up a resolved choice of God, and holiness, and heaven, but I cannot so constantly keep up the rejection of fleshly pleasures, and profit, and honour, which would be for the time preferred.'

Answ. The worst man would have God and heaven so far as to give him the desires of his flesh, and keep him from all pain and misery; but is it not a plain contradiction to say in proper speech, 'I would have God as God, that is, as best, but I would have pleasant vanity as better? I can easily love my wife as a wife, but I cannot forbear loving harlots better. I can resolve for temperance, but I cannot resolve against gluttony and drunkenness. I am resolved for truth, but not against lying?' Just such is that, to resolve for God and holiness, but not against the pleasures of sin, which alienate the heart from God.

Object. But how doth a man choose God and holiness in the hour of his sin, when he is choosing forbidden pleasure?' Answ. The act of sin is not a choosing God and holiness, but somewhat that is contrary; but every act of the will which is against God and holiness is not a rejecting of them, or a retracting of our choice, nor inconsistent with it; but perhaps only an interruption of the exercise, and an abatement of the degree. Play-fellows may draw a child to disobey a father for love of play, and them, when yet he doth not forsake his father, nor love them better; but only forgets him, or abateth desire through the diversion of the sport. Quest. What is it that is our duty in order to the unchangeableness of our own wills and choice?'

Answ. 1. Trust not yourselves too far: the will goeth not against the mind's apprehensions; and a man's mind is a very dark, weak, mutable thing: what a temptation, or a subtle wrangler or argument, or a new thought may do upon us, we do not well know. Presumption seldom escapeth danger. A wise man feareth, and departeth from evil: con

fidence in your own understanding, goodness and stability, is the prognostic of backsliding.

2. Away from the temptations which do most strongly allure the flesh: to be overpleased with things temporal and sensible, turneth the heart from things spiritual and eternal. To desire a more pleasing condition to the flesh, is to desire stronger temptations, and greater danger to the soul.

3. Think much and seriously on the great and certain things which first converted and resolved your wills: they are the same, and as good now as they were then, and you should know them better. A man that loveth and chooseth rationally, knoweth why he doth it: and the fixing and renewing of your knowledge and belief, is it that must fix your love and choice. The greatest things forgotten do not

affect us.

4. Flatter not yourselves with the hope of living long on earth, and look not at death and the following life as a great way off. The power of tempting vanities lieth in men's hopes of long enjoying them to a man under the sentence of present death they have little power. And the best things that seem far off, do not much and powerfully affect us. Live therefore as dying men, and you will have the mind and choice of dying men.

5. See that your meditations and belief be practical, and brought close to the heart and take not bare thinking of God and heaven as enough, but know that holy thoughts fall short of their use and end, if they come not to the heart and life. It is not the speculative disputing Christian that hath the fixed will and choice, unless he be also a hearty practising, experienced Christian. He that hath a heavenly heart and conversation, and hath felt the power and sweetness of things spiritual, will hold them fast, when bare hearsay and opinion will let them go.

6. Depend in the constant exercise of faith and prayer upon the love of the Father, the grace of the Son, and the communion of the Holy Spirit, and seek to please God as your greatest pleasure, and so live by the faith of the Son of God, that you may say, "it is Christ that liveth in you;" Gal. ii. 19, 20. And then none can take you out of his hands, nor separate you from the love of God, (Rom. viii. 38, 39.) nor take your chosen portion from you.

In a word, that your choice may be unchangeable, you must firmly trust to the unchangeable promise of the unchangeable God, for the unchangeable kingdom, as purchased by Christ, and our title sealed by his Spirit. The world and the flesh must be crucified, dead and buried to you by the virtue of his cross believed, and you must be risen with him to a heavenly mind, and hope, and conversation every weight must be laid by, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, (Heb. xii. 1.); and we must not look back to the forsaken world behind us, but press forward for the prize unto the mark (Phil. iii.), looking still to Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, and despised the shame, * and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. We must consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners, lest we be weary and faint. We must count nothing dear to us that we may finish our course with joy; and must know by faith that "our labour is not in vain in the Lord," if we would be "stedfast and unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord;" 1 Cor. xv. 58. We must serve God acceptably, with reverence and godly fear, as for a kingdom which cannot be moved; and all this in dependance on the grace of Christ; Heb. xii. 28. Considerate men know by grace and experience that this world is vanity and vexation: if we know also by a living constant faith, that a better world of holy joy is the near and certain portion of the faithful, it will fix the will in a resolved choice, and we shall not be like profane Esau, that sold his birthright for one morsel; and the living eternal God will be eternally our Life and Joy, to whom all the blessed with Christ shall give glory and praise for ever. Amen.

END OF THE ONE THING NECESSARY.

CAIN AND ABEL MALIGNITY,

THAT IS

ENMITY TO SERIOUS GODLINESS;

THAT IS,

TO A HOLY AND HEAVENLY STATE OF HEART AND LIFE :

LAMENTED, DESCRIBED, DETECTED, AND UNANSWERABLY PROVED TO BE THE DEVILISH NATURE, AND THE MILITIA OF THE DEVIL AGAINST GOD, AND CHRIST, AND THE CHURCH AND KINGDOMS, AND THE SUREST SIGN OF A STATE OF

DAMNATION.