Directions and Persuasions to a Sound Conversion, Direction 6
DIRECT. VI. The next Direction which I would give you for a through Conversion is this; See that the flesh be throughly mortified, and your hearts be throughly taken off the world, and all its pleasures, and profits, and honours, and that the Roote of your fleshly Interest prevaile not at the heart, and that you think not of reconciling God, and the world, as if you might secure your Interest in both.
This is a very common cause of the deceit, and destruction, of such as verily think they are converted. It is the very Nature, and business of true Conversion, to turn mens hearts from the flesh, and from the world to God, and from an earthly and seeming happiness, to a Heavenly Real Everlasting Happiness▪ And when men are affrighted into som kind of Religiousness, and yet never learnt to deny themselves, and never mortified their fleshly mind, but the love of this world, is still the chiefest principle at their hearts; and so go on in Profession of godliness, with a secret reserve, that they will look as well as they can to their outward prosperity, whatever become of their Religion, and they will have no more to do with the matters of another world, then may stand with their bodily safety in this world; these are the miserable deluded Hypocrites, whose hopes will prove, as the giving up of the ghost; whom Christ will disown in their greatest extremities, after all their seeming Religiousness. O Sirs, look to this as ever you would be happy. Its an easie, its a common, its a most dangerous thing, to set upon a course of outward Piety, and yet keep the world next your hearts, and take it still as a great part of your felicity, and secretly▪ to love your former lusts, while you seem to be converted. The heart is so deceitfull, that you have great cause to watch it narrowly in this point: It will closely cherish the love of the world, and your fleshly pleasures, when it seems to renounce them, and when your tongue can speak contemptuously of them. It was not for nothing that Christ would have the first fruits of his Gospel-Church (who were to be the Example of their successours) to sell all, and lay it down at the feet of his Apostles: And it is his standing Rule, that Whoever he be, that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be his Disciple, Luke 14. 33. In estimation, affection, and resolution, it must be forsaken by all that will be saved; and also in practice, when ever God calls us to it. You can have but one Happiness: If you will needs have it in this world, in the contenting of your flesh, there is no hope of having it also in another world, in the fruition of God. If you think not God and Heaven enough for you, and cannot let go the Prosperity of the flesh for them, you must let go all your hopes of them. God will not halve it with the world in your hearts, nor part stakes with the flesh; much less will he be below them, and take their leavings: Heaven will not be theirs, that set not by it more then Earth. God will not call that Love to him Sincere, which is not a Superlative Love, and able to make you even hate all those things, that would draw away your affections, and obedience from him; Luke 14. 26, 27. There's no talk of serving God, and Mammon▪ and compounding you a Happiness of Earth. and Heaven. Do therefore as Christ bids you, Luke 14. 28, 29, 30.
Sit down, and count what it must cost you, if you will be saved; and on what rates it is, that you must follow Christ. Can you voluntarily, for the love of him, and the hope of Glory, take up your Cross, and follow him in poverty, in losses, in reproaches; though scornes, and scourgings, and prisons and death? Do you value his loving kindness better then life, Psal. 63. 3? Can you deny your eyes, and your appetites their desires? Can you consent to be vile in the eyes of men, and to tame your own flesh, and keep it in subjection, and live a flesh-displeasing life, that h…ving suffered with Christ, you may also be glorified with him, Rom. 8. 17. If you cannot consent to these terms, you cannot be Christians, nor you cannot be Saved. If you must needs be rich, or must be honourable, yea, if you must needs save your estates, or liberties, or lives, it's past all question, you must needs let go Christ, and Glory: If you must needs have the world, you must needs lose your Souls. If you must have your good things here, you must not have them hereafter too, but be tormented, when Christ's sufferers are comforted, Luke 16. 25. These hopes of purveying for the flesh, as long as they can; and then of being saved, when they can stay here no longer, is it that hath deceived many a thousand, to their undoing. It's a strang thing to see how the world doth blind very knowing men, and how unacquainted these Hypocrites are with their own hearts. What a confident profession of down-right godliness many of them will make, yea of some extraordinary height in Religion, when nothing is so dear to to them, as their present prosperity, and God hath not neer so much interest in them as the flesh? What contrivances some of them make for riches, or rising in the world? And how tender others are of their honour with men; and how tenacious they are of their Mammon of unrighteousness; and how much money, and great men can do with them: And most of them pamper their flesh, and serve it in a cleanlier way of Religiousness, even as much, though not so disgracefully, and grossly, as drunkards, and whoremongers do, in a more discernable sensuality. If the times do but change, and countenance any errour, how smal an Argument will make their judgments bend with the times: If truth or duty must cost them deer: O how they will shift, and stretch, and wriggle, to prove Truth to be no Truth, and duty to be no duty; and no Argument is strong enough to satisfie them, when the flesh doth but say, Its bitter, its dangerous! it may be my undoing.
Its none of my meaning, that any should needlesly runne into suffering, or cross their governours, and themselves, through a spirit of pride, singularity, and contradiction: But that men should think themselves truly Religious, that keep such reserves for their fleshly interest, and shew by the very drift of their lives, that they are worldlings, and never felt what it was to be crucified to the world, and deny themselves, but are Religious on this supposition only, that it may stand with their worldly ends, or at least not undo them in the world; this is a lamentable hypocritical self-deceit. When God hath so plainly said, Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world: If any man love the world, the Love of the Father is not in him, 1 Joh. 2. 15. Nay that the neighbourhood, and all the Country that know them, should ring of the worldlyness of some, that think themselves good Christians; and yet they will not see it themselves. What a cheating, blinding thing is the world?
Well Sirs; if you will be Christians, count what it must cost you? And if you will be Heirs of Heaven, away with the world: Cast it out of your hearts: and if your hands must yet trade in it, yet trade not for it: Use it for God, but enjoy it not for it self. Take your selves as strangers here; and look on the world as a desolate wilderness; through which, in the Communion of the militant Saints, you may safely travail on to Heaven; but do not make it your home, nor take it for the smallest part of your felicity. To be Sanctified without Mortification, is a palpable contradiction. Be at a point with all things below, if you will groundedly hope for the Heavenly Inheritance. But I shall purposely forbear to enlarge this any further, because I have preached, and written a Treatise on this Subject, which I desire you to peruse.