CHAPTER LI – Q.1: Does self-denial consist in renouncing property?
12. Lastly, Consider that if honour be good for you, it is better attained by minding your duty for the honour of God, and denying your own honour, than by seeking it; for honour is the shadow that will follow you if you fly from it, and fly from you if you follow it.
What Christ here saith of life, is true of honour: he that seeketh and saveth it shall lose it, and he that loseth it for Christ shall find it. The greatest honour is to deny ourselves, and our own honour, and to do most for the honour of God; and to be contented to be nothing, that God may be all. For you have his promise, that them that honour him he will honour, but they that dispise him shall be lightly esteemed.
Though I have endeavoured by a right limitation and exposition of the foregoing parts of self-denial, to prevent mistakes, and give you those grounds by which objections may be answered, yet the stir that is made in the world about this point, by Papists and many other mistaking sects, doth persuade me to give a more distinct resolution of some of the principal doubts that are before us, and therein to shew you that self-denial consisteth not in all things that by some are pretended to be parts of it; but that there is a great deal of sin that goes under the name of self-denial among many of these sorts of mistaken persons.
CHAPTER LI
Whether Self-denial lie in renouncing Propriety?
Quest. 1. 'WHETHER doth self-denial require us to renounce propriety, and to know nothing as our own' as the monks among the Papists swear to do, as part of their state of perfection; and a book called, "The Way to the Sabbath of Rest," doth teach us?
Answ. 1. That there shall be no propriety in goods, or estate among men, is contrary to the will of God, who hath made men his stewards, and trusted several persons with several talents, and forbidden stealing, and commanded men to labour that they may have to give to him that needeth; and he that hath this world's goods and seeth his brother have need, must not shut up the bowels of his compassion. It is a standing duty to give to the poor; and we shall therefore have the poor always with us for this exercise of our charity. And he that hath nothing, can give nothing, nor use it for God. Why did Paul require them to give to the distressed saints, and maintain the ministry, and gather for such uses every first day of the week, if he would have men have nothing to give? This therefore is a conceit which needs nothing but reason, and the reading and belief of Scripture to confute it.
2. But as no man is a proprietary, or hath any thing of his own, in the strict and absolute sense, because all is God's, and we are but stewards; so no man may retain his human analogical propriety, when God calleth him to give it up. No man may retain any thing from God's use and service which he hath a propriety in. We have so much propriety as that no man must rob us; and so much as our works of charity are rewardable, though it be but giving a cup of cold water, which could not be without propriety; for who will reward him that gives that which is none of his own? yea, it is made the matter of the last judgment; "I was hungry, and ye fed me; I was naked, and ye clothed me," &c. Which they could not have done if they had not had food and clothing to bestow. So that the denial of propriety would destroy all exercise of charity in such kinds, and destroy all societies and orderly converse and industry in the world.