come evil or prejudicial to this or at person, doth now | such things in their own nature have with them. This actually become so, and is the matter of an absolute pro- makes the righteous man's little better, than the great remise, now claimable by such a person, what would follow? venues of many wicked. That an evil is now the actual matter of a promise! than which what can be said or supposed more absurd? when nothing can further or otherwise be the matter of a promise, than as it is good. Wherefore that promise would, in the supposed case, degenerate, (as the matter of it is by the present circumstances varied,) and turn into a threatening. Wherefore when that condition or proviso is not expressly added to a promise concerning a temporal good, the very nature of the thing implies, and requires it to be understood. For it is not otherwise than as qualified by that condition, any way a promise. Now he that is in the present exercise of delight in God, hath his heart so set upon God and alienated from earthly things, as that the present temper of it bears proportion to the natural tenor of such promises; and is not, otherwise than by the cessation of this delight, liable to the torture of unsatisfied desire in reference to these lower things: Although the fig-ternal objects that now fail, turns inward, and as an insatree shal. not blossom-yet I will rejoice in the Lord,i &c. And as delight in God doth thus reduce and moderate desires in reference to any inferior good; so that, if it be withheld, they admit a satisfaction without it, and the want of it is easily tolerable; so,

Secondly, If it be granted, delight in God adds a satisfying sweetness to the enjoyment. A lover of God hath another taste and relish, even of earthly good things, than an earthly-minded man can have. He hath that sweet savour of the love of God upon his spirit, that imparts a sweetness to all the enjoyments of this world, beyond what

Upon the whole thereof this is, if duly weighed, a mighty and most persuasive argument to delight in God. For it imports thus much, which I add for a close to this discourse. If you place your delight here; you are most certainly delivered from the vexation and torment of unsatisfied desire. The motions of your souls are sure to end in a pleasant rest. Your lesser desires will be swallowed up in greater, and all in the Divine fulness; so that you will now say, Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none on earth I desire besides thee. If you take no delight in God, your own souls will be a present hell to you. And it may be it is not enough considered, how much the future hell stands also in unsatisfied desire; which desire (all suitable objects being for ever cut off from it) turns wholly to despair, rage, and torture. And that ravenous appetite, which would be preying upon extiable vulture, gnaws everlastingly the wretched soul itself. And the beginnings of this hell you will now have within you, while you refuse to delight in God. The sapless, earthly vanities upon which your hearts are set, give you some present content, which allays your misery for a little while, and renders it less sensible to you: but they have nothing in them to answer the vast desires of a reasonable, immortal spirit. Whereby you certainly doom yourselves to perpetual disrest. For in these false, vanishing shadows of goodness, you cannot have satisfaction, and in the blessed God you will not.

1 Psal. lxxiii. 25.

SELF-DEDICATION

DISCOURSED IN THE ANNIVERSARY THANKSGIVING OF A PERSON OF HONOUR

FOR A GREAT DELIVERANCE.

1

TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

JOHN, EARL OF KILDARE, BARON OF OPHALIA,

FIRST OF HIS ORDER IN THE KINGDOM OF IRELAND.

My Lord,

I LITTLE thought when, in so private a way, I lately offered much of the following discourse to your Lordship's ear, I should receive the command (which I am not now, so far as it proves to me a possible one, to disobey or further to dispute) of exposing it thus to the view of the world, or so much as to present it to your Lordship's own eye. It was indeed impossible to me to give an exact account of what was then discoursed, from a memory that was so treacherous, as to let slip many things that were prepared and intended to have been said that day; and that could much less (being assisted but by very imperfect memorials) recollect every thing that was said, several days after. Yet I account, upon the whole, it is much more varied by enlargement, than by diminution; whereby, I hope, it will be nothing less capable of serving the end of this enjoined publication of it. And I cannot doubt but the injunction proceeded from the same pious gratitude to the God of your life, which hath prompted, for several years past, to the observation of that domestic annual solemnity, in memory of your great preservation from so near a death. That the remembrance of so great a mercy might be the more deeply impressed with yourself, and improved also (so far as this means could signify for that purpose) to the instruction of many others.

Your Lordship was pleased to allow an hour to the hearing of that discourse. What was proposed to you in it, is to be the business of your life. And what is to be done continually, is once to be thoroughly done. The impression ought to be very inward, and strong, which must be so lasting as to govern a man's life. And were it as fully done as mortality can admit, it needs be more solemnly renewed at set times for that purpose. And indeed, that such a day should not pass you without a fall, nor that fall be without a hurt, and that hurt proceed unto a wound, and that wound not to be mortal, but even next to it, looks like an artifice and contrivance of Providence to show you how near it could go without cutting through that slender thread of life, that it might endear to you its accurate superintendency over your life, that there might here be a remarkable juncture in that thread, and that whensoever such a day should revolve in the circle of your year, it might come again, and again, with a note upon it under your eye, and appear ever to you as another birth-day, or as an earlier day of resurrection.

Whereupon, my honoured Lord, the further design of that providence is to be thoroughly studied, and pondered deeply. For it shows itself to be, at once, both merciful and wise, and as upon the one account it belonged to it to design kindly to you, so, upon the other, to form its design aptly, and so as that its means and method might fitly both serve and signify its end. If therefore your Lordship shall be induced to reckon the counsel acceptable which hath been given you upon this occasion, and to think the offering yourself to God, a living sacrifice, under the endearing obligation of so great a mercy is, indeed, a reasonable service; your life by that dedication acquires a sacredness, becomes a holy, divine life. And so by one and the same means is not only renewed and prolonged in the same kind of natural life, but is also heightened and improved to a nobler and far more excellent kind. And thus, ont of that umbrage only and shadow of death, which sat upon one day of your time, springs a double birth and resurrection to you. Whereby (as our apostle speaks in another place of this epistle) you come to yield yourself to God as one alive from the dead.

So your new year (which shortly after begins) will always be to you a fresh setting forth in that new and holy course of life, which shall at length (and God grant it to be, after the revolution of many fruitful years, wherein you may continue a public blessing in this wretched world) end, and be perfected in a state of life not measured by time, wherein you are to be ever with the Lord. Which will answer the design of that merciful providence towards you; and of this performance (how mean soever) of Your Honour's most obedient,

SELF-DEDICATION.

ROM. XII. 1.

I BESEECH YOU THEREFORE, BRETHREN, BY THE MERCIES OF GOD, THAT YE PRESENT YOUR BODIES A LIVING SACRIFICE, HOLY, ACCEPTABLE UNTO GOD, WHICH IS YOUR REASONABLE SERVICE.

Present, that is, dedicate, devote yourselves, set your- | is not sufficient, yet being the means he works by, is most selves before God, as they sistere ad altare-present at the altar the destined sacrifice, make them stand ready for immolation. You are so to make a tender of yourselves as if you would say, "Lord, here I am, wholly thine. I come to surrender myself, my whole life and being, to be entirely and always at thy dispose, and for thy use. Accept a devoted, self-resigning soul!" Thus we are brought to the thing itself. Which now,

2. In the next place (with less regard to the allusive terms) we come more distinctly to open and explain. It is briefly but the dedicating of ourselves; or, as it is 2 Cor. viii: 5. the giving our ownselves to the Lord. So those Macedonian converts are said to have done. And there is a special notice to be taken therein of the word first, which puts a remarkableness upon that passage. The apostle is commending their liberal charity towards indigent, necessitous Christians: and shows how their charity was begun in piety. They did not only most freely give away their substance for the relief of such as were in want, but first they gave their ownselves to the Lord.

But that we may not misconceive the nature of this act, of giving ourselves, we must know it is not donation in the strict and proper sense, such as confers a right upon the donee, or to him to whom a thing is said to be given. We cannot be said to collate, or transfer a right to him who is before Dominus absolutus; the only Proprietor and Supreme Lord of all. It is more properly but a tradition, a surrender or delivery of ourselves, upon the supposal and acknowledgment of his former right; or the putting ourselves into his possession, for his appointed uses and services, out of which we had injuriously kept ourselves before. 'Tis but giving him his own, (1 Chron. xxix. 14.) "All things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee." It is only a consent, and obedience to his most rightful claim, and demand of us, or a yielding ourselves to him, as it is significantly expressed in the mentioned vi. to the Rom. 13. Though there the word is the same with that in the text, which here we read present.

And now that we may more distinctly open the nature of this self-dedication, we shall show what ought to accompany and qualify it, that we may be a suitable and grateful present to him, in evangelical acceptation, worthy of God, such as he requires and will accept.

necessary to our becoming Christians, i. e. if we speak of becoming so, not by fate or by chance, as too many only are, but by our own choice and design: which is the same thing with dedicating ourselves to God through Christ, whereof we are discoursing. For upon our having thus considered and comprehended the whole compass of the case in our thoughts, either the temper of our hearts would be such that we would hereupon dedicate ourselves or we would not; if we would, it is because we should judge the arguments for it more weighty than the objections, which, without such pondering of both, we are not likely to apprehend, and so, for want of this consideration, are never likely to become Christians at all. Or, if we would not, it is because to the more carnal temper of our hearts, the objections would outweigh. And then, if we do seem to consent, it is because what is to be objected came not in view: and so we should be Christians to no purpose. Our contract with the Redeemer were void in the making, we should only seem pleased with the terms of Christianity, because we have not digested them in our thoughts. So our act undoes itself in the very doing. It carries an implicit, virtual repentance in it, of what is done. We enter ourselves Christians, upon surprise or mistake. And if we had considered what we are, consequently, to do, what to forbear, what to forego, what to endure, would not have done it. And therefore when we do come distinctly to apprehend all this, are like actually to repent and revolt. As they, John vi. who, while they understood not what it was to be a Christian, seemed very forward followers of Christ. But when they did more fully understand it, upon his telling them plainly, went back and walked no more with him. And he lets them go; q. d. “Mend yourselves if you can; see where you can get a better master."

3. With a determinate judgment, at length, that this ought to be done. There are two extremes in this matter. Some will not consider at all, and so not do this thing; and some will consider always, and so never do it. Stand, Shall I? Shall I? Halt between two opinions. These are both of them very vicious and faulty extremes in reference to the management even of secular affairs, both of them contrary to that prudence which should govern our actions, i. e. when men will never consider what is neces1. It must be done with knowledge and understanding. sary to be done, and so neglect their most important conIt cannot but be an intelligent act. Tis an act of religion cernments; or, when they will never have done considerand worship, as it is called in the text. Service we reading, which is the same thing, as if they had never taken it, which is much more general, but the word is larpcía-up any thought of the matter at all. Indeed, in the preworship. 'Tis indeed the first and fundamental act of sent case, 'tis a reproach to the blessed God to consider worship. And it is required to be a rational act. Your longer, than till we have well digested the state of the case. reasonable service. Religion cannot move blindfold. And As if it were difficult to determine the matter between though knowledge and reason are not throughout words of him and the devil, which were the better or more rightful the same signification and latitude; yet the former is Lord! We must at last be at a point, and come to a judipartly presupposed upon the latter, and partly improved cious determination of the question, as those sincerely by it, nor can therefore be severed from it. In the present resolved Christians had done, (John vi. 68, 69.) who also case it is especially necessary we distinctly know and express the reasons that had (before that time no doubt) apprehend the state of things between God and us: that determined them: "Lord, whither shall we go? Thou we understand ourselves to have been (with the rest of hast the words of eternal life. And we believe, and are men) in an apostacy, and revolt from God, that we are re-sure, that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God." called unto him, that a Mediator is appointed on purpose through whom we are to approach him, and render ourselves back unto him: that so this may be our sense in our return, "Lord, I have here brought thee back a stray, a wandering creature, mine ownself. I have heard what the Redeemer, of thy own constituting, hath done and suffered for the reconciling and reducing of such, and, against thy known design, I can no longer withhold myself." 2. With serious consideration. It must be a deliberate act. How many understand matters of greatest importance, which they never consider, and perish by not considering what they know! Consideration is nothing else but the revolving of what we knew before: the actuating the habitual knowledge we have of things: a more distinct reviewing of our former notices belonging to any case, a ❘ recollecting and gathering them up, a comparing them together: and, for such as appear more momentous, a repeating, and inculcating them upon ourselves, that we may be urged on to suitable action. And this, though of itself without the power and influence of the Divine Spirit, ο παρίςημι, οι παριξανω.

4. With liberty of spirit, having thrown off all former bonds, and quite disengaged ourselves from other masters. As they speak, Isa. xxvi. 13. "Other lords besides thee have had dominion over us, but by thee only will we make mention of thy name." For our Saviour expressly tells, "No man can serve two masters," Matt. vi. 24. When those Dedititii, the people of Collatia, were about the business of capitulating in order to the surrender of themselves, the question put, on the Romans' part, was, Estne populus Collatinus in sua potestate-Are the Collatine people in their own power? Wherein satisfaction being given, the matter is concluded. In the present case of yielding ourselves to God, the question cannot be concerning any previous tie in the point of right, or that could urge conscience. There cannot be so much as a plausible pretender against him. But there must be a liberty, in opposition to pre-engaged inclinations and affections. And this must be the sense of the sincere soul, entreating the matter of its self-surrender, and dedication, with the great God, to be able to say to the question, Art

f Livius, l. 1.