CHAPTER LXV – 3. It is contrary to the state of holiness and happiness
the sins of your lives are the fruits of your selfishness; kill them at the heart and root, if you would go the nearest way to work. What abundance of sin doth self-denial kill at once? Indeed it is the sum of mortification. And therefore be sure that you deny yourselves.
CHAPTER LXV
Contrary to the State of Holiness and Happiness 3. MOREOVER, selfishness is contrary to the state of holiness and happiness; contrary to every grace, and contrary to the life of glory.
For it is the use of all grace to recover the soul from selfishness to God; that God may be loved, and self-love may be overcome; that God may be trusted, and pleased, and his service may be our care and business, when before our care was to please ourselves.
And the very felicity of the soul consisteth in a closing and communion with God. The soul that will be happy, must be conscious of self-insufficiency, and must go out of itself, and seek after life in God; it must forsake itself, and apply itself to him. Men lose their labour till they deny themselves, by going to a broken, empty cistern, and forsaking the fountain of the living waters. The nearer men are to God, and the more fully they are conformed to him, and close with him, and know him, and love him, the happier they are. Glory itself is but the nearest and fullest intuition and fruition of God. And he that hath most of him here in his soul, and in the creatures, providences, and ordinances, is the happiest man on earth, and likeliest to the glorified. And there is no approach to God but by departing from carnal self. I know self-seeking men do think of finding most peace and comfort in that way; but they are always
deceived of their hopes: it is self-denial that is the way to peace and comfort. While we rest on ourselves, or are taken up with anxious caring for ourselves, we are but tossed up and down as on a tempestuous sea; and are seeking rest but never find it: but when we retire from ourselves to God, we are presently at the harbour, and find that peace which before we sought in vain. I confess, in the too little experience that I have myself of the way of peace and quiet to the soul, I must needs say, there is none but this. Never can I step out, but self meets with somewhat that is vexatious and displeasing to it: this business goes cross, and that business is troublesome: this person is troublesome, and that person is abusive and injurious: one is false and treacherous, or slanderous; and another is imprudent and weak, and burdensome: what between the baits of prosperity, and the troubles of affliction, the perverseness of adversaries, and the weakness of friends, and the changes that all states and persons are liable to; the multitudes that would be pleased, and the labour and the cost that it will stand us in to please them, and the multitudes that will be displeased when we have done our best; and the murmurings, reproaches, and false accusations that we shall be sure of from the displeased; and which is the worst of all, the burdensome weaknesses and corruptions of our own souls, and the sins of our lives, and the daily vexation that our dark and shattered condition doth occasion to ourselves; I say, between all these disquieting perplexities, enough to rack and tear in pieces the heart of man, I have no way but to shut up the eyes of sense, and forget all self-interest, and withdraw from the creature, as if there were no self or creature for it in the world, and to retire into God, and satisfy my soul with his goodness and all-sufficiency, and faithfulness, and immutability. And in him is nothing to disquiet or discontent, unless