THE

PREFACE.

READERS,

I HERE present to your serious consideration, a subject of such necessity and consequence, that the peace and safety of churches, nations, families and souls do lie upon it. The eternal God was the beginning and the end, the interest, the attractive, the confidence, the desire, the delight, the all of man in his upright uncorrupted state. Though the Creator planted in man's nature the principle of natural self-love, as the spring of his endeavours for self-preservation, and a notable part of the engine of the engine by which he governeth the world, yet were the parts subservient to the whole, and the whole to God; and self-love did subserve the love of the universe and of God; and man desired his own preservation for these higher ends. When sin stepped in it broke this order; and taking advantage from the natural innocent principles of self-love, it turned man from the love of God, and much abated his love to his neighbour and the public good, and turned him to himself by an inordinate self-love which terminateth in himself, and principally in his carnal self, instead of God and the common good; so that self is become all to corrupted nature, as God was all to nature in its integrity. Selfishness is the soul's idolatry and adultery, the sum of its original and increased pravity, the beginning and end, the life and strength of actual sin, even as the love of God is the rectitude and fidelity of the soul, and the sum of all our special grace, and the heart of the new creature, and the life and strength of actual holiness. Selfishness in one word expresseth all our aversion positively, as the want of the love of God expresseth it privatively; and all our sin is summarily in these two, even as all our holiness is summarily

in the love of God and in self-denial. It is the work of the Holy Ghost by sanctifying grace to bring off the soul again from self to God. Self-denial therefore is half the essence of sanctification. No man hath any more holiness than he hath self-denial. And therefore the law (which the sanctifying Spirit writeth on the heart) doth set up God in the first table, and our neighbour in the second, against the usurpation and encroachment of this self. It saith nothing of our love and duty to ourselves, as such, expressly. In seeking the honour and pleasing of God, and the good of our neighbour, we shall most certainly find our own felicity, which nature teacheth us to desire. So that all the law is fulfilled in love, which includeth self-denial, as light includeth the expulsion of darkness, or rather as loyalty includeth a cessation of rebellion and a rejection of the leaders of it, and as conjugal fidelity includeth the rejection of harlots. The very meaning of the first commandment is, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," &c., which is the sum of the first table, and the commandment that animateth all the rest. The very meaning of the last commandment is, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself;" which is the summary of the second table, and in general forbiddeth all particular injuries to others, not enumerated in the foregoing precepts, and secondarily animateth the four antecedent precepts. The fifth commandment looking to both tables and conjoining them, commandeth us to honour our superiors in authority, both as they are the officers of God, and so participatively divine, and as they are the heads of human societies, and our subjection necessary to common good: so that self-denial is principally required in the first commandment, that is, the denying of self as opposite to God and his interest; and self-denial is required in the last commandment, that is, the denying of self, as it is an enemy to our neighbour's right and welfare, and would draw from him unto ourselves. Selflove and self-seeking as opposite to our neighbour's good, is the thing forbidden in that commandment; and charity, loving our neighbour as ourselves and desiring his welfare as our own, is the thing commanded. Self-denial is required in the fifth commandment in a double respect, according to the double respect of the commandment: 1. In respect to God, whose governing authority is exercised by governors,

their power being a beam of his majesty, the fifth commandment requiring us to deny ourselves by due subjection, and by honouring our superiors; that is, to deny our own aspiring desires, and our refractory minds and disobedient selfwilledness, and to take heed that we suffer not within us any proud or rebellious dispositions or thoughts that would lift us up above our rulers, or exempt us from subjection to them. 2. In respect to human societies, for whose good authority and government is appointed; the fifth commandment obligeth us to deny our private interest, and in all competitions to prefer the public good, and maketh a promise of temporal peace and welfare in a special manner to those that in obedience to this law do prefer the honour of government and the public peace and welfare before their own. Thus charity as opposed to selfishness and including selfdenial, is the very sum and fulfilling of the law; and selfishness is the radical comprehensive sin (containing uncharitableness) which breaks it all.

And as the law, so also the Redeemer, in his example and his doctrine doth teach us, and that more plainly and urgently, this lesson of self-denial. The life of Christ is the pattern which the church must labour to imitate; and love and self-denial were the summary of his life: though yet he had no sinful self to deny, but only natural self. He denied himself in avoiding sin; but we must deny ourselves in returning from it. He loved not his life in comparison of his love to his Father, and to his church. He appeared without desirable form or comeliness." He was despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief. He bore our griefs, and carried our sorrows, and was esteemed stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was laid upon him. The Lord laid upon him the iniquity of us all. He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. He was taken from prison and from judgment. He was cut off out of the land of the living; for the transgressions of his people was he stricken. It pleased the Lord to bruise him. He put him to grief;" Isa. liii. What was his whole life but the exercise of love and self-denial? He denied himself in love to

his Father, obeying him to the death, and pleasing him in all things. He denied himself in love to mankind, in bearing our transgressions, and redeeming us from the curse, by being made a curse for us; Gal.iii. 13. "He made himself of

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no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men, and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross;" Phil.ii. 6-8. And this he did to teach us by his example, to deny ourselves, to "be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind, that nothing be done through strife or vainglory, but in lowliness of mind, that each esteem the others better than themselves: looking not every man after his own matters, but every man also after the things of others; and thus the same mind should be in us that was in Christ Jesus;' Phil. ii. 3—5. He denied himself also in obedient submission to governors. He was subject to Joseph and Mary; Luke v. 51. He paid tribute to Cæsar, and wrought a miracle for money rather than it should be unpaid; Matt. xvii. 24-26. He disowned a personal worldly kingdom (John xviii. 36.); when the people would have made him a king, he avoided it (John vi. 15.) as being not a receiver but a giver of kingdoms. He would not so much as once play the part of a judge or a divider of inheritances, teaching men that they must be justly made such, before they do the work of magistrates; Luke xii. 14. And his Spirit in his apostles teacheth us the same doctrine; Rom. xiii. 1 Pet.ii. 13-17. Ephes. vi. 1. 5. And they seconded his example by their own that we might be followers of them, as they were of Christ. What else was the life of holy Paul and the rest of the apostles, but a constant exercise of love and self-denial? Labouring and travelling night and day, enduring the basest usage from the world, and undergoing indignities and manifold sufferings from unthankful men, that they might please the Lord, and edify and save the souls of men; and living in poverty, that they might help the world to the everlasting riches. In a word, as love is the fulfilling of the whole law as to the positive part, so is selfishness the evil that stands in contrariety thereto, even self-conceitedness, self-willedness, self-love and self-seeking; and thus far self-denial is the sum of our obedience as to the terminus à quo :' and Christ hath peremptorily determined in his Gospel, that “if

any man will come after him, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow him :" and that whosoever will put in a reserve, but for the saving of his life, shall lose it; “and whosoever will lose his life for his sake, shall find it;” Matt, xvi. 24, 25. And that he that doth not follow him, bearing his cross, and that "forsaketh not all he hath for him, cannot be his disciple;" Luke xiv. 27. 33.

According to the nature of these holy rules and examples, is the nature of the workings of the Spirit of Christ upon the soul. He usually beginneth in shewing man his sin and misery, his utter insufficiency to help himself, his alienation from God, and enmity to him, his blindness and deadness, his emptiness and nothingness, and then he brings him from himself to Christ, and sheweth him his fulness and sufficiency, and by Christ he cometh to the Father, and God doth receive his own again. It is one half of the work of sanctification, to cast ourselves from our understandings, our wills, our affections, and our conversations; to subdue self-conceitedness, self-willedness, self-love and self-seeking to mortify our carnal wisdom, and our pride, and our concupiscence, and our earthly members. And the other (and chiefest part) consisteth in setting up God where self did rule; that his wisdom may be our guide; his will our law, his goodness the chiefest object of our love, and his service the work and business of our lives. The Spirit doth convince us that we are not our own, and have no power at all to dispose of ourselves or any thing we have, but under God as he commands us. It convinceth us that God is our Owner and absolute Lord, and that as we are wholly his, so we must wholly be devoted to him, and prefer his interest before our own, and have no interest of our own but what is his, as derived from him, and subservient to him. Fear doth begin this work of self-denial; but it is love that brings us up to sincerity.

The first state of corrupted man is a state of selfishness and servitude to his own concupiscence; where pride and sensuality bear rule, and have no more resistance than now and then some frightening, ineffectual check.

When God is calling men out of this corrupted, selfish state, he usually (or oft at least,) doth call them into a state of fear; awakening them to see their lost condition, and terrifying them by the belief of his threatenings, and the