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abrupt intercourses with God: for so, no length can oppress your tenderness and sickliness of spirit; and by often praying in such manner and in all circumstances, we shall habituate our souls to prayer, by making it the business of many lesser portions of our time and by thrusting it in between all our other employments, it will make every thing relish of religion, and by degrees turn all into its nature.

4. Learn to abstract your thoughts and desires from pleasures and things of the world. For nothing is a direct cure to this evil, but cutting off all other loves and adherences. Order your affairs so, that religion may be propounded to you as a reward, and prayer as your defence, and holy actions as your security, and charity and good works as your treasure. Consider that all things else are satisfactions but to the brutish part of a man, and that these are the refreshments and relishes of that noble part of us, by which we are better than beasts: and whatsoever other instrument, exercise or consideration is of use to take our loves from the world, the same is apt to place them upon God.

5. Do not seek for deliciousness and sensible consolations in the actions of religion, but only regard the duty and the conscience of it. For although in the beginning of religion most frequently, and at some other times irregularly, God complies with our infirmity, and encourages our duty with little overflowings of spiritual joy, and sensible pleasure, and delicacies in prayer, so as we seem to feel some little beam of heaven, and great refreshments from the spirit of consolation; yet this is not always safe for us to have, neither safe for us to expect and look for: and when we do, it is apt to make us cool in our enquiries and waitings upon Christ when we want them: it is a running after him, not for the miracles, but for the loaves; not for the wonderful things of God, and the desire of pleasing him, but for the pleasure of pleasing ourselves. And as we must not judge our devo

tion to be barren or unfruitful, when we want the overflowings of joy running over: so neither must we cease for want of them. If our spirits can serve God choosingly and greedily out of pure conscience of our duty, it is better in itself, and more safe to us.

6. Let him use to soften his spirit with frequent meditation upon sad and dolorous objects, as of death, the terrors of the day of judgment, fearful judgments upon sinners, strange horrid accidents, fear of God's wrath, the pains of hell, the unspeakable amazements of the damned, the intolerable load of a sad eternity. For whatsoever creates fear, or makes the spirit to dwell in a religious sadness, is apt to entender the spirit, and make it devout and pliant to any part of duty. For a great fear, when it is ill managed, is the parent of superstition: but a discreet and well-guided fear produces religion.

7. Pray often, and you shall pray oftener; and when you are accustomed to a frequent devotion, it will so insensibly unite to your nature and affections, that it will become trouble to omit your usual or appointed prayers: and what you obtain at first by doing violence to your inclinations, at last will not be left without as great unwillingness, as that by which at first it entered. This rule relies not only upon reason derived from the nature of habits, which turn into a second nature, and make their actions easy, frequent and delightful: but it relies upon a reason depending upon the nature and constitution of grace, whose productions are of the same nature with the parent, and increases itself, naturally growing from grains to huge trees, from minutes to vast proportions, and from moments to eternity. But be sure not to omit your usual prayers without great reason, though without sin it may be done; because after you have omitted something, in a little while you will be passed the scruple of that, and begin to be tempted to leave out more. Keep yourself up to your usual forms you may enlarge when you will; but do not

contract or lessen them without a very probable

reason.

8. Let a man frequently and seriously by imagination place himself upon his death-bed, and consider what great joys he shall have for the remembrance of every day well spent, and what then he would give, that he had so spent all his days. He may guess at it by proportions: for it is certain, he shall have a joyful and prosperous night, who hath spent his day holily; and he resigns his soul with peace into the hands of God, who hath lived in the peace of God and the works of religion in his life-time. This consideration is of a real event, it is of a thing that will certainly come to pass. 'It is appointed for all men once to die, and after death comes judgment;" the apprehension of which is dreadful, and the presence of it is intolerable, unless by religion and sanctity we are disposed for so venerable an appearance.

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9. To this may be useful, that we consider the easiness of Christ's yoke, the excellences and sweetnesses that are in religion, the peace of conscience, the joy of the Holy Ghost, the rejoicing in God, the simplicity and pleasure of virtue, the intricacy, trouble and business of sin; the blessings and health and reward of that: the curses, the sicknesses and sad consequences of this; and that if we are weary of the labours of religion, we must eternally sit still and do nothing for whatsoever we do contrary to it, is infinitely more full of labour, care, difficulty, and

:

vexation.

10. Consider this also, that tediousness of spirit is the beginning of the most dangerous condition and estate in the whole world. For it is a great disposi

tion to the sin against the Holy Ghost: it is apt to bring a man to back-sliding and the state of unregeneration, to make him return to his vomit and his sink, and either to make the man impatient, or his condition scrupulous, unsatisfied, irksome and desperate: and "it is better that he had never known the

way of godliness, than after the knowledge of it, that he should fall away." There is not in the world a greater sign that the spirit of reprobation is beginning upon a man, than when he is habitually and constantly, or very frequently, weary, and slights or loathes holy offices.

11. The last remedy that preserves the hope of such a man, and can reduce him to the state of zeal and the love of God, is a pungent, sad, and a heavy affliction; not desperate, but recreated with some intervals of kindness, or little comforts, or entertained with hopes of deliverance: which condition if a man shall fall into, by the grace of God he is likely to recover; but if this help him not, it is infinite odds but he will quench the Spirit."

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SECTION VIII.

Of Alms.

LOVE is communicative as fire, as busy and as active, and it hath four twin-daughters, extreme like each other; and but that the doctors of the school have done something to distinguish them, it would be very hard to call them asunder. Their names are, 1. Mercy, 2. Beneficence, or well-doing, 3. Liberality, and 4. Alms; which by a special privilege hath obtained to be called after the mother's name, and is commonly called Charity. The first or eldest is seated in the affection, and it is that which all the other must attend. For mercy without alms is acceptable, when the person is disabled to express outwardly, what he heartily desires. But alms without mercy are like prayers without devotion, or religion without humility. 2. Beneficence, or well-doing, is a promptness and nobleness of mind, making us to do offices of courtesy and humanity to all sorts of persons in their

need, or out of their need. 3. Liberality is a disposition of mind opposite to covetousness, and consists in the despite and neglect of money upon just occasions, and relates to our friends, children, kindred, servants, and other relatives. 4. But alms is a relieving the poor and needy. The first and the last only are duties of Christianity. The second and third are circumstances and adjuncts of these duties: for liberality increases the degree of alms, making our gift greater; and beneficence extends it to more persons and orders of men, spreading it wider. The former makes us sometimes to give more than we are able; and the latter gives to more than need by the necessity of beggars, and serves the needs and conveniences of persons, and supplies circumstances: whereas properly, alms are doles and largesses to the necessitous and calamitous people, supplying the necessities of nature, and giving remedies to their miseries.

Mercy and alms are the body and soul of that charity, which we must pay to our neighbour's need: and it is a precept, which God therefore enjoined to the world, that the great inequality, which he was pleased to suffer in the possessions and accidents of men, might be reduced to some temper and evenness; and the most miserable person might be reconciled to some sense and participation of felicity.

Works of Mercy, or the several kinds of corporal Alms.

The works of mercy are so many, as the affections of mercy have objects, or as the world hath kinds of misery. Men want meat, or drink, or clothes, or a house, or liberty, or attendance, or a grave. In proportion to these, seven works are usually assigned to mercy, and there are seven kinds of corporal alms reckoned. 1. To feed the hungry1. 2. To give drink to the thirsty. 3. Or clothes to the naked.

1 Matt. 25. 35.

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