CHAPTER XXV – 8. Pleasing accommodations: houses, gardens, horses, etc.
know they cannot: God saith, "If you live after the flesh, ye shall die"
(Rom. 8:13.); and if these men say (as the devil to Eve) "You shall not die," are they able, think you, to make it good? What! can they overcome the God of heaven? O sirs, away, as you love your souls, from such mad and miserable company as this.
CHAPTER XXV
Pleasing Accommodations, Buildings, Gardens, Houses, &c.
ANOTHER sensual delight to be denied, is, pleasing accommodations, in buildings, rooms, walks, gardens, grounds, cattle, and such like. It is lawful to be thus accommodated, and lawful to desire and use such accommodations, with such cautions as I gave before about recreations, 1. If you do not with Ahab desire to be accommodated by that which is another man's, coveting your neighbour's possessions, or unlawfully procuring it. 2. If you be not at too much cost upon such things, expending that upon them that should be laid out upon greater and better things. 3. But especially, if you desire such accommodations for right ends, sincerely referring all to God's honour, and desiring them, not principally to please your own fancy, and carnal mind, but for the enabling you the better and more cheerfully to serve God. Nothing but God may be loved for itself. When the pleasing of the flesh and fancy is the utmost thing we look at in any of our desires, they are wicked and idolatrous. Our houses therefore must be fitted to necessary uses, and not to inordinate delights. Our gardens, orchards, walks, and such like, must be first suited to necessity, and then so much delight as is useful to us for the promoting of our holiness; but not to any useless tempting delight.
But worldlings and sensual persons will not be tied to these Christian rules. Alas, it is the farthest matter from their minds, to make heaven the end of all their earthly possessions and accommodations. They may hypocritically talk of God, and of serving him by their estates; but really it is the pleasing of a fleshly mind that is the thing which they intend. They have more delight in their houses, and gardens, and lands, and cattle, than in God and the hopes of life everlasting.
They desire fair houses that they may be thought to be no mean persons in the world, and that they may please their humours that run after creatures for felicity and content. I would desire such men to consider these things.
1. All these are but the baits of satan to delight you and entangle your desires, and find you work in seeking after them, while you neglect far greater matters. Can you have while to look so much after superfluities and delights in the world, when you have necessaries yet to look after for your souls? Have you not greater things to mind than these, which these occasion you to neglect?
2. Do you really find that they conduce to your main end, even to make you more holy, or more serviceable to God? Nay, do not your own consciences tell you, that they hinder you, and cross those ends?
And yet will you go against your experience?
3. If you are humble, conscionable Christians, you feel cause enough already to lament, that your love to God and delight in him, is no more; and yet are you preparing snares for your souls, to steal away that little remnant of your affections, which you seemed to reserve for God?
4. If you have any spark of grace in you, you know that the flesh and the world are your most dangerous enemies; and you know that the way that the world doth undo men, is by enticing them to over-value it and over-love it; and that those that love it most, are deepest in a state of condemnation; and the less men love it, the less they are hurt or endangered by it. And do you not know that you are liker to overlove a sumptuous house, with gardens, orchards, and such accommodations, than a mean habitation? Why should you be such enemies to your own salvation, as to make temptations for yourselves? Have you not temptations enough already? Do you deal with those you have so well, and overcome them so easily and so constantly, as that you have reason to desire more? If Christ your general send you upon a hotter service, you may go on with courage, and expect his help; but if you will so glory in your own strength, as to run into the hotter battle, and call for more and stronger enemies, it is easy to conjecture, how you will come off. If you are Christians, know yourselves; you know that in the meanest state, you are too prone to over-love the world, and that under God's medicinal afflictions, you cannot be so weaned from it as you ought! Are you not daily constrained to groan and complain to God under the burden of too much love of the world, and too much delight in worldly things? If this be not your case, I see not how you can have any sincerity of saving grace. And if it be your case, will you be so sottish, and hypocritical, as to complain daily to God of your sin, and in the mean time to love and cherish it? to groan under your disease, and wilfully eat and drink that which you know doth increase it?
What will you think of a man that will pray to God to save him from uncleanness, and yet will dwell no where but in a brothel-house?
What do you better, that must needs have the world in the loveliest
garb, and must needs have house, and grounds, and all things in that plight, as are fittest to entice the heart; and then will complain to God, that you over-love the world, and love him too little? To your shame you may speak it, when you do it so wilfully, and cherish the sin which you thus complain of. If God call you into a state of fulness and temptations, watch the more narrowly over your affections, and your practices; and use no more of the creatures for yourself, if you have ten thousand pounds a-year, than if you had but a hundred; but do not seek and long for temptations: wish not for danger, unless you were better able to pass through it.
5. Remember when your fancies desire such things, not only that it is an enemy that desireth them, and to please your enemy is not safe for you; but also that it is the way that most have perished by, to have the world before them in too pleasing and lovely a condition.
Remember Nebuchadnezzar's case (Dan. 4:30.), that for glorying in his pompous buildings, was turned as a madman among the beasts.
Remember the rich man's sad example, Luke 12:20. and 16 and think whether it be safe to imitate them. If men must perish for loving the creature more than God, methinks you should long most for that condition, in which the creature appeareth least lovely, or is least likely to steal your love from God, and in which you may love him and enjoy him most.
6. And bethink you how unsuitable it is to your condition, to desire sumptuous buildings, and enticing accommodations to your flesh.
Have you not taken God for your portion, and heaven for your home?
And are you not strangers and pilgrims here? And is not God and everlasting glory sufficient for you? You profess all this, if you profess to be Christians; and if you be not, you should not profess
that you are. And what! do you begin to repent of your choice? Must you yet turn to the pomp and vanity of the world again? And will you quit your hopes of God and glory? Ah, poor souls! what little need have you of such great matters on earth? You have but a little to do with them! and but a little while to stay with them! And will not a mean habitation, and shorter accommodations serve you for so short a time? Stay but a while, and your souls shall have house-room enough in heaven or hell, and a narrow grave of seven feet long will serve your bodies till the resurrection. And cannot you make shift with an ordinary habitation, and with small and common things till then? Naked you came into the world, and naked you must go out: make not then so great a stir in dressing, and undressing, and feathering a nest, that will be so soon pulled down.
7. And it is a dangerous sign that your time on earth is short, when you have most content in outward things. I have told you once in another discourse (which I have since seen more of) that people that much set their hearts upon any earthly thing, do use to be snatched away by death just when they have attained it, before they can have the comfort of possessing it. Just when their houses are built; just when their debts are paid, and their estates cleared and settled; just when they have such and such a thing which they earnestly desired, then they are gone; as the fool in Luke 12:20. "This night shall thy soul be required of thee; then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?"
8. And you do but prepare for a double sorrow, when you must leave all these. Do you think that the more you love or delight in any thing below, you will not be the more loath to leave it? Do not think only of the present content, but ask your hearts, 'Shall I be more willing to