Discourse of Mental Errors, Part · Section 10
The Remedies.
How necessary and desirable are some effectual Rules and Remedies in this Case! O what a mercy would it be to the Professors of these days, to have their Minds fixed, and their Judgments setled in the Truths of Christ! Happy is that man whose Judgment is so guarded, that no dangerous Error or Heresie can commit a Rape upon it. To this end I shall here commend the four following Rules to prevent this vertigenous malady in the heads of Christians.
Rule I.
Look warily to it that you get a real inward implantation into Christ, and lay the foundation deep and firm in a due and serious deliberation of Religion whenever you engage in the publick profession of it.
To this sense sound the Apostle's words, Col. 2. 6, 7. As you have therefore received Christ Iesus the Lord, so walk ye in him, rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as you have been taught. Fertility and stability in Christ, a pair of inestimable Blessings, depend upon a good rooting of the Soul in him at first. He that thrusts a dead stick into the ground, may easily pull it up again, but so he cannot do by a well-rooted Tree. A colour raised by violent action, or a great fire, soon dies away; but that which is natural or constitutional will hold. Every thing is as its foundation is. 'Twas want of a good root and due depth of earth which soon turned the green Corn into dry stubble, Matt. 13. 21.
Rule II.
Labour after an inward experimental taste of all those Truths which you profess.
This will preserve your minds from wavering and hesitation about the certainty and reality of them. We will not easily part with those Truths, which have sensibly shed down their sweet influences upon our hearts, Heb. 10. 34. No Sophister can easily perswade a man that hath ta…ted the sweetness of Honey, that it is a bitter and unpleasant thing: Non est disputandum de gustu: you cannot easily perswade a man out of his Senses.
Rule III.
Study hard and pray earnestly for satisfaction in the present Truths; 2 Pet. 1. 12. That you may be established foreign, in the truth that now is under opposition and controversie. Be not ignorant of the Truths that lie in present hazard.
Antiquated Opinions that are more abstracted from our present Interest, are no tryals of the soundness of our Judgments, and integrity of our Hearts, as the controversies and conflicts of the present Times are. Every Truth hath its time to come upon the stage, and enter the lists; some in one Age, and some in another; but Providence seems to have cast the lot of your Nativity for the honour and defence of those Truths, with which Error is struggling and conflicting in your time.
Rule IV.
Lastly, Be throughly sensible of the benefit and good of establishment, and of the evil and danger of a wavering Mind and Judgment.
Be not carried about with divers and strange Doctrines (saith the Apostle) for it is a good thing that the heart be established, &c. Heb. 13. 9. Established Souls are the honour of Truth. It was the honour of Religion in the primitive days, that when the Heathens would proverbially express an Impossibility, they used to say, You may as soon turn a Christian from Christ, as do it.
The Fickleness of Professors is a stumbling-block to the World. They'l say as Cato of the Civil Wars betwixt Caesar and Pompey, quem fugiam, video, quem sequar, non video: they know whom to avoid, but not whom to follow. And as the honour of Truth, so the flourishing of your own Souls depends on it. A Tree often removed from one Soil to another, can never be expected to be fruitful, 'tis well if it make a shift to live.