XII. The cross of Christ is of another nature; it truly overcomes the world, and leads a life of purity in the face of its allurements; they that bear it are not thus chained up, for fear they should bite; nor locked up, lest they should be stolen away: no, they receive power from Christ their captain, to resist the evil, and do that which is good in the sight of God; to despise the world, and love its reproach above its praise; and not only not to offend others, but love those that offend them: though not for offending them. What a world should we have if every body, for fear of transgressing, should mew himself up within four walls! No such matter; the perfection of the Christian life extends to every honest labour or traffic used among men. This severity is not the effect of Christ's free spirit, but a voluntary, fleshly humility: mere trammels of their own making and putting on, without prescription or reason. In all which it is plain they are their own lawgivers, and set their own rule, mulct, and ransom: a constrained harshness, out of joint to the rest of the creation; for society is one great end of it, and not to be destroyed for fear of evil; but sin that spoils it, banished by a steady reproof, and a conspicuous example of tried virtue. True godliness does not turn men out of the world, but enables them to live better in it, and excites their endeavours to mend it; not to hide their candle under a bushel, but to set it upon a table in a candlestick. Besides, it is a selfish invention; and that can never be the way of taking up the cross, which the true cross is therefore taken up to subject. But again, this humour runs away by itself, and leaves the world behind to be lost; Christians should keep the helm, and guide the vessel to its port; not meanly steal out at the stern of the world, and leave those that are in it without a pilot, to be driven by the fury of evil times, upon the rock or sand of ruin. In fine, this sort of life, if taken up by young people, is commonly to cover idleness, or to pay portions, to save the lazy from the pain of punishment, or quality from the disgrace of poverty; one will not work, and the other scorns it; if aged, a long life of guilt sometimes flies to superstition for a refuge, and after having had its own will in other things, would finish it in a wilful religion to make God amends.
XIII. But taking up the cross of Jesus is a more interior exercise: it is the circumspection and discipline of the soul in conformity to the divine mind therein revealed. Does not the body follow the soul, not the soul the body? Do not such consider, that no outward cell can shut up the soul from lust, the mind from an infinity of unrighteous imaginations? The thoughts of man's heart are evil, and that continually. Evil comes from within, and not from without: how then can an external application remove an internal cause; or a restraint upon the body, work a confinement of the mind? which is much less than without doors, for where there is least of action, there is most time to think; and if those thoughts are not guided by a higher principle, convents are more mischievous to the world than exchanges. And yet retirement is both an excellent and needful thing; crowds and throngs were not much frequented by the ancient holy pilgrims.
XIV. But then examine, O man, thy foundation, what it is, and who placed thee there; lest in the end it should appear thou hast put an eternal cheat upon thy own soul. I must confess I am jealous of the salvation of my own kind, having found mercy with my heavenly Father. I would have none to deceive themselves to perdition, especially about religion, where people are most apt to take all for granted, and lose infinitely by their own flatteries and neglect. The inward, steady righteousness of Jesus is another thing than all the contrived devotion of poor superstitious man; and to stand approved in the sight of God, excels that bodily exercise in religion, resulting from the invention of men. And the soul that is awakened and preserved by his holy power and spirit, lives to Him in the way of his own institution, and worships Him in his own spirit, that is, in the holy sense, life, and leadings of it: which indeed is the evangelical worship. Not that I would be thought to slight a true retirement: for I do not only acknowledge but admire solitude. Christ himself was an example of it: He loved and chose to frequent mountains, gardens, and sea-sides. It is requisite to the growth of piety, and I reverence the virtue that seeks and uses it; wishing there were more of it in the world: but then it should be free, not constrained. What benefit to the mind, to have it for a punishment, and not for a pleasure? Nay, I have long thought it an error among all sorts, that use not monastic lives, that they have no retreats for the afflicted, the tempted, the solitary, and the devout, where they might undisturbedly wait upon God, pass through their religious exercises, and, being thereby strengthened, may, with more power over their own spirits, enter into the business of the world again: though the less the better, to be sure. For divine pleasures are found in a free solitude.
CHAPTER VI.
1. But men of more refined belief and practice are yet concerned in this unlawful self about religion.—2. It is the rise of the performance of worship God regards.—3. True worship is only from a heart prepared by God's Spirit.—4. The soul of man is dead without the divine breath of life, and so not capable of worshipping the living God.—5. We are not to study what to pray for. How Christians should pray. The aid they have from God.—6. The way of obtaining this preparation: it is by waiting, as David and others did of old, in holy silence, that their wants and supplies are best seen.—7. The whole and the full think they need not this waiting, and so use it not; but the poor in spirit are of another mind, wherefore the Lord hears, and fills them with his good things.—8. If there were not this preparation, the Jewish times would have been more holy and spiritual than the gospel; for even then it was required; much more now.—9. As sin, so formality, cannot worship God: thus David, Isaiah, &c.—10. God's own forms and institutions hateful to Him, unless his own Spirit use them; much more those of man's contriving.—11. God's children ever met God in his way, not their own; and in his way they always found help and comfort. In Jeremiah's time it was the same; his goodness was manifested to his children that waited truly upon him: it was an inward sense and enjoyment of him they thirsted after. Christ charged his disciples also to wait for the Spirit.—12. This doctrine of waiting further opened, and ended with an allusion to the pool of Bethesda; a lively figure of inward waiting and its blessed effects.—13. Four things necessary to worship; the sanctification of the worshipper, and the consecration of the offering, and the thing to be prayed for, and lastly, faith to pray in: and all must be right, that is, of God's giving.—14. The great power of faith in prayer; witness the importunate woman. The wicked and formal ask, and receive not; the reason why. But Jacob and his true offspring, the followers of his faith, prevail.—15. This shows why Christ upbraided his disciples with their little faith. The necessity of faith. Christ works no good on men without it.—16. This faith is not only possible now but necessary.—17. What it is, further unfolded.—18. Who the heirs of this faith are; and what were the noble works of it in the former ages of the just.
I. But there be others of a more refined speculation, and reformed practice, who dare not use, and less adore, a piece of wood or stone, an image of silver and gold; nor yet allow of that Jewish, or rather Pagan pomp in worship, practised by others, as if Christ's worship were of this world, though his kingdom be of the other, but are doctrinally averse to such superstition, and yet refrain not to bow to their own religious duties, and esteem their formal performance of several parts of worship that go against the grain of their fleshly ease, and a preciseness therein, no small cross unto them; and that if they abstain from gross and scandalous sins, or if the act be not committed, though the thoughts of it are embraced, and that it has a full career in the mind, they hold themselves safe enough within the pale of discipleship and walls of Christianity. But this also is too mean a character of the discipline of Christ's cross: and those that flatter themselves with such a sort of taking it up, will in the end be deceived with a sandy foundation, and a midnight cry. For said Christ, "But I say unto you, that every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give an account thereof in the day of judgment." (Matt. xii. 36.)
II. For first, it is not performing duties of religion, but the rise of the performance that God looks at. Men may, and some do, cross their own wills in their