The Introduction
would save them in this hour of temptation, that they may be approved in this trial, and not be found light when God shall weigh them: and that he would acquaint them with the daily serious exercise of this most precious, spiritual, soul-exalting work of heavenly meditation, and that when the Lord shall come, he may find them so doing.
THE INTRODUCTION
IN the former part, I have chiefly pressed those duties which must be used for the attainment of this everlasting rest. In this I shall chiefly handle those which are necessary to raise the heart to God, and to a heavenly and comfortable life on earth. It is a truth too evident, which an inconsiderate zealot reprehended in Master Culverwell as an error, that many of God's children do not enjoy that sweet life and blessed estate in this world, which God their Father hath provided for them; that is, which he offereth them in his promises, and chargeth upon them as their duty in his precepts, and bringeth even to their hands in all his means and mercies. God hath set open heaven to us in his word, and told every humble, sincere Christian that they shall shortly there live with himself in inconceivable glory; and yet, where is the person that is affected with this promise; whose heart leaps for joy at the hearing of the news; or that is willing, in hopes of heaven, to leave this world? But even the godly have as strange unsavoury thoughts of it, as if God did but delude us, and there were no such glory; and are almost as loth to die as men without hope. The consideration of this strange disagreement between our professions and affections, caused me to suspect that there was some secret, lurking unbelief in all our hearts; and therefore I wrote those arguments in the second part, for the divine authority of the Scripture: and because I find another cause to be, the
carelessness, forgetfulness, and idleness of the soul, and not keeping in action that faith which we have, I have here attempted the removal of that cause, by prescribing a course for the daily acting of those graces which must fetch in the celestial delights into the heart. Oh! the princely, joyful, blessed life, that the godly lose through mere idleness! As the papists have wronged the merits of Christ by their ascribing too much to our own works, so it is almost incredible, how much they, on the other extreme, have wronged the safety and consolation of men's souls, by telling them that their own endeavours are only for obedience and gratitude, but are not so much as conditions of their salvation, or means of their increased sanctification or consolation. And while some tell them that they must look at nothing in themselves, for acceptation with God, or comfort, and so make that acceptance and comfort to be equally belonging to a Christian and a Turk; and others tell them that they must look at nothing in themselves, but only as signs of their good estates; this hath caused some to expect only enthusiastic consolation, and others to spend their days in inquiring after signs of their sincerity. Had these poor souls well understood that God's way to persuade their wills, and to excite and actuate their affections, is by the discourse, reasoning, or consideration of their understandings, upon the nature and qualifications of the objects which are presented to them: and had they bestowed but that time in exercising holy affections, and in serious thoughts of the promised happiness, which they have spent in inquiring only after signs, I am confident, according to the ordinary working of God, they would have been better provided, both with assurance and with joys. How should the heir of a kingdom have the comfort of his title, but by fore-thinking on it? It is true, God must give us our comforts by his
Spirit: but how? By quickening up our souls to believe, and consider of the promised glory; and not by comforting us, we know not how, nor why: or by giving men the foretastes of heaven, when they never think of it.
I have here prescribed thee, reader, the delightfulest task to the spirit, and the most tedious to the flesh, that ever men on earth were