CHAPTER LXVI – 4. Self-seeking is self-losing; self-denial is our safety
you will call his enmity to our own diseases and unhappiness a discontenting thing. And this is not my own experience alone, but all that know what Christian peace and comfort is, do know that they lose it, and are torn in pieces while they are caring and contriving for themselves; and that retiring into God, and casting all their care on him, and satisfying themselves with him alone, though all the creatures should turn against them, is the way to their content and quietness of mind. The example of David is exceedingly observable; 1
Sam. 30:6. When besides the distressed estate that he was before in, the city where he left his family and the families of his followers, was taken and burnt down, and their wives and children carried away, and all gone, so that David and the people that were with him, "lift up their voice and wept, until they had no more power to weep;" and to make up his calamity, the soldiers that were with him talked of stoning him because of the loss of their wives and children; in this desolate condition, saith the text, "But David encouraged (or comforted) himself in the Lord his God." And it is good for us sometime to have nothing in this world left us that will afford us comfort, that we may be driven to God for it: until the house be as on fire over our heads, and we are as it were fired out of every room of it, we will hardly be gone, and partake ourselves to God our only rest.
Try it, Christians, when you will, and you shall find it true, that selfish contents do but tice you to straggle away from your true comfort; and when you have done all, it is in returning unto God that you must find the comfort which you lost by seeking it abroad. It is only in the God of peace that your souls will find peace, and therefore away from self and creatures, and retire into God.
CHAPTER LXVI
Self-seeking is Self-losing: Self-denying our Safety 4. MOREOVER, consider that self-seeking is self-destroying, and self-denial is the only way to our safety. We were well when we were in the hands of God, and had no need to care for ourselves. But we were lost as soon as we left him and turned to ourselves. If God care for you, Infinite Wisdom cares for you; whom no enemy is able to overwit or circumvent; who can foresee all your dangers, and is acquainted with all the ways of your enemies, and with all that is necessary to your preservation. But if you be at your own care, you are at the care of fools, and shortwitted people, that are not acquainted with the depths of satan, the subtleties of men, nor the way of your escape, but may easily be over-reached to your undoing.
If you are in your own hands, you are in the hands of bad men, that though they have self-love, yet are so blinded by impiety that they will live like self-haters; and this experience fully manifesteth, in that all sinners are self-destroyers: no enemy could do so much against us as the best of us doth against himself: did a man hate himself as bad as the devil hateth him he could shew it by no worse a way than sin; nor do himself a greater mischief than by neglecting God, and the life to come, and undoing his own soul, as the ungodly do. Should you sit down of purpose, to study how to do all the hurt to yourselves that you can and to play the part of your deadliest enemies, I know not what you could do more than is ordinary with ungodly men to do, except to go a little further in the same way. Nothing but sin could alienate you from God, or make you liable to his heavy wrath; and this no man else could make you guilty of, if you did not voluntarily choose to be evil. If you could ask any man that is this day in hell, or that will ever be there, what brought him thither, and who it was long of that he came to such a miserable end, he must needs tell you it was
himself. If you come to any in earthly misery, and ask them, who brought this upon them? If they speak truly they must say, it was themselves. And this will be a great aggravation of their misery, and the fuel that will feed the unquenchable fire, to think that all this was their own doing, and that they had not been deprived of the heavenly glory but for their own refusal or neglect. It will fill the soul with an everlasting indignation against itself, to consider that it hath cast itself wilfully into such misery! that, when satan could not, and men could not, and God would not, if he had not done it himself, he should be so witless and graceless as to be the chooser of sin, the refuser of holiness, and his own undoer. So that the experience of all the world telleth you, how unsafe man is in his own hands; the experiences of those in hell may tell us, whither it is that self would lead us, if we follow its conduct. Whither did self lead Adam when he hearkened to it, but to sin and death? What work hath it made over all the earth! Do we not see a whole world of people, not one excepted, wounded, and slain; and brought into so low and sad a state, and all this by themselves! and yet shall we go on in selfishness still? Of all the enemies you have in the world, pray God to save you from yourselves; escape yourselves and you escape all. You will never miscarry by any other hands. The devil and wicked men will do their worst; but without you they can do nothing. Never will you come to hell if you run not yourselves this their: never will you be shut out of heaven if you run not from it by your own neglect, and prefer not the prosperity of the world before it. And therefore you see that we are nowhere more unsafe than in our own hands. God's will is good, and would make a good choice for us; but our wills are bad, and will make a bad choice for themselves. God is unchangeable, and the same for ever; but we are giddy and uncertain, and if we are in a
good mind to day, are in danger of being in a bad to-morrow. God is able to secure us against all the subtlety, and rage, and power of earth or hell; but we are silly, impotent worms, and unable to defend ourselves, or to accomplish our own desires. So that our safety consisteth in forsaking ourselves and cleaving to the Lord. The more of your happiness lieth on your own hands, the greater is your danger; and the more of it is on the hands of God, the greater is your safety. Fly therefore from yourselves to God, as you would fly out of a torn or sinking vessel into the strongest ship; or as you would haste away from a tottering house that is ready to fall upon your heads: so haste away from self to God. Study his love, and fall in love with him; and that will be more gainful to you, than studying and carnally loving yourselves. Forget yourselves, and remember him; and he will remember you to your greater advantage than if you had remembered yourselves. When any interest of your own, riseth up against the interest or will of God, care not then for yourselves or for your own; set as light by it as if it were nothing worth; and say as the three witnesses of God in Dan. 3:16, 17. when they were ready to be cast into a flaming furnace, "We are not careful to answer thee in this matter: if it be so, the God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thy hand, O
King: but if not, be it known unto thee, O King, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up." Care you for your duty, and God will care for your safety better than you can do: you are safer under God's care, in the midst of a flaming fire, than under your own care in the greatest prosperity, or honour in the world. While Abraham and Isaac depended upon God, they were safe, though in the midst of dangers: but when they fell upon carnal shifting for themselves, to say their wives were their sisters, they
brought themselves but into a snare and double danger; when you have cared, and contrived, and shifted for yourselves as long as you can, it is God that must do the deed, and defend and deliver you, and provide for you when all is done. Is it wise, or safe, or profitable for your child to be casting for provision of meat, and drink, and clothes for itself? Cannot you do it better? and is it not your work? and had you not rather your child would trust you with it, and meddle with his own business, and be careful to please you, and then to depend on your care and love? What good will it do a simple patient, to know the ingredients of every medicine compunded for him, and given by his physician? or to acquainted with his physic himself, that so he may be tampering with his own body, and have the doing of the business himself, till by his unskilfulness he hath undone himself, when he had a wise and faithful physician that he might have trusted to! O that men knew how ready a way it is to their undoing, when they must be satisfied of all the reasons of the ways of God! and when they must have their own wills and ways, and must see a ground of safety in the creature! and must take that course that self tells them is the best! when they are resolved to look to their estates, and honours, and lives, and dare not cast them on the wisdom, and care, and will of God! O that men knew how sure and near a way it is to their felicity, to be contented to be nothing, that God may be all; and then they would be more in God than they could have been in themselves: and to be contented to die, that they may live in God; and to lose their lives, that they may find them in him. Let go your reputation with men, and you will find it made up a thousandfold in the approbation of God. Let men condemn you, so that God may but justify you! Let riches go, and see whether you will not find more in God, than you could possibly lose for him. Can any man be a loser by