Chapter II
That ice may know what ue make our chiefest good, let us inquire in what
things ive take most pleasure and delight.
Let us all narrowly inquire in what good things our treasury doth lie, which will be the great inquest at the latter day. Hell, you see, gets those
that do make the good things of this life their good things. It is that which stops the mouth of one in hell : Thou receivedst thy good things in thy life. And at the latter day, when men shall see what a good and
glorious God they have neglected, for the desires of, or pursuit after these low vanities, all men s mouths will be stopped, and have nothing to say.
CHAP. II.] IN OUE SALVATION. 465
That therefore which I put to the question is, in what dost thou place thy treasure ? I examine not the particulars ; let thy conscience do that. But
deal impartially ; to what world doth it belong ? Wherein lies it, and what is it your hearts do trade for ? Every man is a merchantman. Rome s customers are termed merchants upon earth, Rev. xviii. 11. And of the commodities they traffic for, you have the bill of trade in the 12th and 13th verses : The merchandise of gold, and silver, and precious
stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple, and silk, and scarlet, and all thyine wood, and all manner of vessels of ivory, and all manner of
vessels of most precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, and
cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men. The other are termed, on the contrary, merchants for heaven ; and the commodities of that kingdom you have, Mat. xiii. 45 :
* The kingdom of heaven is like a merchantman who sought out good pearls. And I may say, the pearls of that kingdom are good; as
it was said of the gold in the land of Havilah, Gen. ii. 12. Now Christ
tells us it is the heart that lays up this treasure. And the heart is deep, and of all things else treasures are the most hidden things in the heart. Men seek to hide them ; God is said to have hid his in the field, and so do men. Ps. xvii., their treasure is called the hid treasure. Yet the heart knows where it is, and what it is, for they are buried there. As there
fore searchers into mines have long borers or wimbles, which, put down
into the bowels of the earth, do bring up some of the ore with them, and
discover what mine is there ; so there is a virgula divina will go down
into the bottom of your hearts. Two ways I shall now proceed in it, accord
ing to the differing language of these texts. 1. The real naked question, What are thy good things ? 2. The metaphorical one, What is thy treasure ?
1. For the real part of this question, I shall propound two trials.
(1.) What things doth thy soul favour and relish most ? The things of
this world, or God, and the things of the other world ? The truth of this
sign is evident ; for whatever is good and convenient to any creature, it hath a suitableness thereto. And if it be a sensitive or natural creature,
it hath a favouring or relishing thereof; for omnis vita gustu ducitur, is maintained by a drawing in unto itself, and by a pleasing tasting of what
is that good thing is appointed for it. As thou hast a soul (which is of
itself a mere empty stomach), so that soul hath a palate to savour and
relish what is good for itself; which is fitted to take in the sweetness of some good thing or other. And as that palate is affected or possessed with its native soundness of taste, or with a vitiated humour (as we see in
sickness), accordingly it doth savour and relish things, in the like difference with which men in health or sickness use to do. Now, upon that which
is the palate of the soul of man, there is by the fall contracted vitiated humour, which maketh sin and the good things of this world only pleasing to it : Job xx. 12, wickedness is said to be sweet in his mouth. I might
give you this difference out of Rom. viii. 5, For they that are after the
flesh do mind the things of the flesh ; but they that are after the Spirit the
things of the Spirit. They do mind, or savour, or relish, as the word is
translated, Mark viii. 33. Those two scriptures are sufficient, the one
spoken of carnal professors, 2 Tim. iii. 4, Lovers of pleasure more than God ; of pleasure, namely, in other things than in God, that are besides God. The other scripture speaks of every babe in Christ. Let a man be but a Christian of a day s standing, and a new palate is given him, clean VOL. VI. G g
4G6 THE WORK OF THE HOLY GHOST [BOOK X.
: 1 Pet. ii. 2, 3, As new-born babes, desire
altered to the taste of things
the sincere milk of the word ; if so be that ye have tasted that the Lord is
gracious. I take the connection thus ; I cannot say it is a mere exegesis,
that is, explaining the same thing in new words._ Nor is it yet a new
argument drawn from a further experiment. As if he should first urge,
if you be babes, then, 2, if afterwards in process of God s dealings with
you, you have further tasted, &c. (thus most carry it.) But it is a most
vehement indigitation of what is the true ground and reason why, if
^ they were but even new-born babes, they must needs desire the sincere milk of
the word, drawn from what is the first and essential property accompany
ing that new estate, even to taste how good the Lord is ; and is as if we
should say, As you are a man ; and add, If you so be, you have reason in
you, which is proper to a man as a man ; so urging them with what is
most immediate and essential to them. So as Peter s scope is, that they must renounce their being so much as babes, if they have not found some
thing of this faculty and act of tasting in them. Lawyers give this evidence
of a child that is new born, its being alive, that it cries. Peter here_ gives
another as characteristical of this new birth, that it hath a taste to discern how good the Lord is. And whereas here in Peter it is that the Lord is
gracious, there is therein an allusion unto that of David : Ps. xxxiv. 8,
< taste and see how good the Lord is. The Septuagint renders it
Xgwrog, gracious, but the Hebrew tob, how good ; and because to a soul
new bom that part of God s goodness which allures his heart to him is his
free grace, and lets in all his goodness into the soul, and so it is as that
pap or dug the soul sucks his goodness by and through, therefore Peter
chooseth rather to say, If ye have tasted how gracious the Lord is ; and
so, as new-born babes, have this desire in you. For taste, we know, is the
foundation of the most eager desires and imports ; that look, as a child
come new out of the womb, though there it never had occasion to exercise
the faculty of taste, for it took its nourishment at the navel, yet being come into the world, it instantly seeks after milk, and tastes it, and in it
the mother s blood, which argues the constitution thereof so framed as it
hath such a faculty of tasting congenite, whereof it had before no use whilst
in the womb. Now, thus constituted, says Peter, is the new creature to
wards God. There is such a faculty of taste in every new-born babe, framed
to things of the other world by its new birth, unto which world it is on
purpose now new brought. And one of the first spiritual senses it exer-
ciseth is a tasting how good the Lord is. Are the pleasures of sin yet more
to thee, and so have been hitherto all thy days, more than all that good
ness that is in God (who is a sea of honey), whereof yet thou sayest, as
Solomon of his old man doth, I have no pleasure in them ? It is an
evident sign thou retainest wholly still the old man, and hast nothing of
the new babe in thee. Or as Barzillai, 2 Sam. xix. 32, thou sayest, Can
I taste what I hear in sermons or prayers, or read in the word ? Yea,
perhaps thou hast no more taste of these things than thou findest, as Job
speaks, in the white of an egg, Job vi. 6. Thou art not yet so much as a babe.
But now whilst I make this so great a difference between a regenerate and
unregenerate man, the objection will be, that regenerate men find a sweet
ness in the good things of this life ; yea, often in the pleasures of sin. And
unregenerate men, that fall away, do taste of the powers of the world_to come.
I shall endeavour to answer this objection by parts.
1. For a regenerate man s tasting the pleasures of sin. There are indeed
fits and paroxysms, in which, as in a man s body that isjn an ague (and the
CHAP. II.] IN oun SALVATION. 467
state of the most regenerate is but made up of such a mixture), corrupt humours overflow and prevail, and vitiate and distemper this renewed
palate ; which when they do, no wonder if God and spiritual things be out of taste with him, and he relisheth things worldly, yea, simple.* It may strike, and yet withal comfort, the hearts of the best here to hear Christ our Lord and Saviour speak of Peter, that holy apostle (as to that present prevailing frame of his spirit), such sharp and strange language as once upon occasion he utters of him, such as worse could not be given an un-
regenerate man : Mat. xvi. 23, Get thee behind me, Satan. For Satan then possessed his soul, and suggested that wicked speech ho tempted Christ withal, as the devil could not have uttered a worse. Neither doth Christ lay all the fault on Satan (as we should not), for Peter s own heart was in a prevailing distemper, overflown with the gall or jaundice ; so as
it follows, Thou savourest not the things of God, but those that are of men. At present his palate was in savouring these rendered as carnal as an unregenerate man s. It was so to Christ that knew his heart, and therefore might be so to his own sense. Yea, a man in an ague or fever thinks he shall never relish his meat again. Here is the very distinction I have put
: 1. The things of God ; 2. The things of man, that is, which are suited to the corrupt nature of man, which is nothing but flesh (and there fore to be carnal, and to walk as man, is made all one, 1 Cor. iii. 3). But
this was but a fit, a paroxysm for the present ; Peter s taste came to him
* Whither shall we go ? thou hast the words of eternal
: John vi. 68,
again
life. The foot of his soul was here taken off from all other between, and knew not where else to rest itself. So then this is but as the fit of a man that is of a sound constitution.
2. The delight he takes in sin is but a broken delight, for the principle isbroken and wounded. And lasa principia habent Iccsas operationes, as a man that walks with a bone out of joint, he cloth it lamely. If he chews the bread of wickedness, or as the psalmist,
* the dainties of the wicked, Ps. cxli. 4 ; Yet, 1, it is as with a broken tooth.
Or, 2, not so as to swallow it down (as they, Prov. xix. 28, the mouth of the wicked, is said to devour iniquity), not so as to return to a greedi ness, as Eph. iv. 19, but though he tastes, he soon spits it out again, as
they did that broth of which they cried, There is death in the pot. Or, 3, if he takes it down for a fit, he comes not to take that pleasure in
it for the future as to retain it as a sweet bit, which of a wicked man is said that he rolls it under his tongue, to the end to protract his pleasure in it
all his life (as children will do sugar-candy all day long) ; which also he
hides, and forsakes not, as Job xx. 12 ; but this man soon casts it out again with the deepest detestation.
4. The heart is never wholly overcome with it, as Peter s phrase is, 2 Pet. ii. 20. Overcome he may be to an act the grossest, and in the hour of temptation the major part of his will must needs be for it, or he would not act ; but so as to make it his rest, to sit down in it as the swine, to wallow in the mire, which is Peter s character of one so overcome in his
sense, to centre in it as the chief pleasure of his life, he can never come to do it any more. The impressions he hath had of God and Christ, which are indelible in his soul, and the remembrance from whence he is fallen or
falling, as Rev. ii. 5, brings his heart off and about again. He still says the old wine is better, as Christ speaks, or as Hosea ii. 7, I will return to my first husband, for it was better with me then than now.
* Qu. sinful ? ED.
468 THE WORK OF THE HOLY GHOST [BOOK X.
For the second part of the objection, that unregenerate men taste of the
powers of the world to come. The only answer I shall now give is, That a right and true parallel between a godly man in tasting the pleasures of sin after regeneration, there remaining a radical constitution of soundness
in him, and an unregenerate man s tasting the powers of the other world, doth help to clear this, and indeed each one doth illustrate the other. To make forth which I express myself thus. The palate of such an unregene rate man remains in the inward constitution and temper of it still wholly
corrupt, namely, in respect of this radical corruption of it, wherein the bottom of man s corruption doth consist, and that is self ; whatever object
it relisheth and pitcheth upon, it is only such as is suited unto self. Now
in the things revealed in the gospel there are two sorts or kinds of good ness ; the one is the essential, substantial goodness of things themselves, the other is an accidental goodness cleaving hereunto, over and above the
substantial goodness of them ; and this latter suiteth self-love that is in every man s heart. The promise of heaven, taken in under the notion of a
happiness to a man s self, is in that respect an object suited to self in a man ; and any man, in respect of self-love in him, is thereby capable to be
inveigled with it, and struck with the news of it as to listen after it, to taste and relish, to be taken with what can be said of it, so far as it may suit
that principle. Though, take heaven substantially, as it is the enjoyment of God himself, heirs with Christ of God, as the apostle says, Rom. viii. ;
for God himself is Christ s inheritance, as avowedly himself speaks, Ps. xvi. ;
so conceived it is suited only to a heart regenerate. The Holy Ghost may set on the former, as he did on Balaam, and give or convey unto self in
a man a taste of a supernatural sweetness ; to toil on and entice the
creature to himself, when yet that taste and sweetness is not of God him
self as pitched upon alone as our happiness. I might make the like dis
tinction of Christ as a Saviour only, and Christ as in himself, as I have done of heaven.
So then, in such a heart, the competition betwixt the taste which self
merely hath had of that accidental goodness in the things of the other world,
so far as it is capable thereof, and the same self in a man as it is still
naturally rooted and set in this world, and hath tasted the pleasures of this
world, and is suited unto them. Now mark it, the things of the other world (take them in their own nature, and own proper notion), these no
ways suit a man s heart at all, but all within him is enmity and averseness
to the things themselves. And it is nothing else, for he is in his root and
conjugal constitution as a man of this world. And so look, as it is only accidental goodness which is in the things which he tasteth, so his own
natural and radical disposition verging wholly another way, these his motions and elevations towards them are in like manner but accidental to his spirit ; that is, only as he is set in such and such circumstances of distress of con
science or fear of wrath, and is influenced by such apprehensions as comes
upon him for the present ; all which are but foreign and extrinsecal to his
genial constitution or inward nature. And thus self in him is but forcedly raised up to that joy he hath in the things of the other world, even as they come so to be set home, as to amuse self a while with the strange news of
happiness, as in another country to be had. But his joy in things in this world is natural, congenial. Now that which is natural, and agrees with
the whole inward constitution of anything, must needs be stronger, and so
eat out what is but forced and extrinsecal. For what is good naturally to
a man is always so, and is so per se. What is good accidentally holds only in
CHAP. IT.] IN OUE SALVATION. 469
such a distress, in such a case or circumstance, or apprehension as man is
in, and so wears off, as colours laid on use to do. The stony ground received the word with joy (namely, in this sense as hath been explained), but their defect is noted to be the same that I have said, that they wanted root in themselves, Mat. xiii. 20, 21; that is, a congenial, natural principle suited to things heavenly. Self was taken a while with the hearsay of them ; but the root of their hearts and natures remained still fixed in the things of this world, in earth. And the root went on to bring forth according to its
kind, and to draw the juice of the earth it was fixed in to itself, which dried up that moisture that fed those plants which were adventitious, and set in made earth for a while. So likewise of the thorny ground, it is said
(ver. 22 compared with Mark iv. 19), The cares of this world, and the lusts of other things entering again (which are and were natural to the heart and the soil of it),
* choke the word that was superficially cast in ; for why, the heart is wholly a stepmother to the one, and a natural mother to the other ; and so the heart in the end returns to itself. But now in
regeneration we affirm, that a man receives a heavenly nature, which is a noble plant of the Lord s planting, naturally rooted in heaven and things heavenly, as in its proper soil it is to grow up and thrive in. And although there is another root, that is seated on earth, that remains still in the
heart, yet it is a-dying, and that heavenly plant is that which is deepest in and nearest the heart, as the inner man, and the other but as the outward.
Hence then the parallel runs clear between these two, in an opposite way, (though I acknowledge a difference in one respect) ; that look, as an unre-
generate man may taste (as hath been explained) of the accidental goodness that is in things heavenly, yet all that while his inward natural constitution in him remaining wholly disposed to things in this world of itself, and to them for themselves ; hence, let him have what tastes he so remaining is
capable of concerning things heavenly, that you can or will suppose, yet he
is overcome again of what is natural to him. For it is certain that actiones
sequuntur animi constitutionem, and the remembrance of former pleasures entering in, do wither and shale off again all accidental joy and sweetness in things heavenly, which are to him also and to his radical constitution but accidental.
The contrary falls out in a regenerate man, that though he hath that
corruption in him which may make the pleasures of sin sweet to him, and he may again taste of their dainties, yet he having a new divine nature, which God upholds, and will bring forth to victory, as Christ speaks, as being ordained for eternity, and which is now become a man s self, and is as health is in a temper made sound, that hath yet some humour remaining,
and the things of the other world (which it is now rooted in, and is naturally suited unto) being of such a greatness and glory in themselves, they still leave those impressions behind them upon his heart, that upon the least
reviving of them by the Spirit the heart is fetched off from the pleasures of
sin, as the other is by his sin drawn off from tasting the powers of the world to come. I may say, as Christ says, John iv. 13, Whoever drinketh and tasteth of heavenly things (but only as unregenerate men have been said to do), he will thirst again after earthly, and be overcome of them ; and this I speak by way of allusion; but what follows, ver. 14, is really true and intended by Christ of a man regenerate,
* Whosoever drinketh of the water Christ shall give him, he shall never thirst ; that is, never come to have that impetuousness of full desire, and so not that pleasure or delight
470 THE WOEK OF THE HOLY GHOST [BOOK X.
in other things carnal and outward (which Christ resembles the water of
that well to) as he formerly had. He shall never add drunkenness to
thirst (as Moses speaks)
: his thirst thereto will be, by the taste of this
water Christ gives him, allayed ; that that vehemency and greediness he
formerly had is for ever taken off and abated, and this because the water which Christ gives him becomes a well of water, springing up in him to
eternal life ; so it follows in the same verse ; it is not adventitious, as
water in a cistern, but as in a spring, and it continually aspires to things above. And though it may be dammed up with that earth that environs it,
yet it works out that earth, and overflows in the heart again. To the third part of the objection, concerning a godly man s finding com
fort in things outward that are lawful.
The answer is, and it is a great invitement to religion, that he may (and
it is his own fault if he does not) find more comfort even in them than
carnal men use to do : Ps. xxxvii. 16, A little that the righteous hath is
better than the riches of many wicked. He opposeth, 1, a little unto
riches and abundance ; and 2, the little of one man to the riches of many men, whereof each are rich. So as if one man alone had the riches that many great rich men have, yet a righteous man, that hath but a little, hath more comfort in it than he, yea, than all those rich men have, put their com
* godliness is said, with contentment, to be .
forts all together. Therefore
great gain, for it alone brings contentment. For though the creature is
(taken in itself alone) more vain to a godly man than to another, and so if he should go about to seek his contentment from it, as carnal men do, I may then invert it that the little which a wicked man hath is more to him than all abundance would be ;to the other. Solomon that pursued this,
being a godly man, could best write of the vanity of these things ; but yet when the heart is set a-work to seek God, and hath the scent of him, as I may so say, mingled with the outward things he doth enjoy, or if it have
the light of his countenance, it puts a fulness into the creature. A dinner
of herbs, sauced with his love and served up by him, is more than the
greatest feast. And surely God traineth up his children one way or other unto this. The more a man truly godly will seek to find comfort in the-
creatures, the more thorns he shall find in his way, Hosea ii. 6, 7, the more
comfortless they will be to him than to another, because his soul is used to
better fare. His faculties have been widened and extended by having tasted, or by having had impressions of the sweetness and goodness that is in the Lord. And so the creature in itself is more emptiness and vexation than
to another man. And therefore a godly man, if he will live, and but keep up the comfort of his life, and not fall lower in this respect, nor live at a lower rate than he did in his natural condition, he must necessarily (even for his daily comfort) seek after God, and hold up intercourse and com munion with him ; so to fill up that chasm a that is otherwise made, the
creature is rendered more vain to him than afore.