Caution 4: Against Neglect of Conscience

IN the next place, I shall make bold to expostulate a little with your Conscience concerning the precious mercies you have received, and the solemn promises you have bound your selves withal for the obtaining of those mercies. I fear God has many bankrupt debtors among you, that have dealt slipperily and unfaithfully with him, that have not rendered to the Lord according to the great things he has done for them, nor according to those good things they have vowed to the Mighty God of Jacob: But truely, if you be a despiser of mercy, you shalt be a pattern of wrath; God will remember them in fury, who forget him is his favors. I will tell you what a grave and eminent Minister once told his people (dealing with them about this sin of unthankfulness for mercy) and I pray God it may affect you duely: Let us all mourn (says he) and take on;we are all behindhand with God: The Christian world is become bankrupt, quite broke, makes no return to God for his love. He is issuing out process to seize upon body, goods, and life, and will be put off no longer: Bloody Bayliffs are abroad for bad debtors all the[•] world over. Christians are broke, and make no return, and God is breaking all. He cannot have what he would have, what he should have; he will take what he can get: for money, he will take goods, limbs, arms, legs; he will have his own out of your skin, out of your blood, out of your bodies and souls. He is setting the Christian world as light and as low as they have set his love. Ah Lord! what a time do we live in? Long-suffering is at an end, Mercy will be righted in Iustice, Iustice will have all behind, it will be paid to the utmost farthing; 'twill set abroach your blood, but 'twill have all behind, &c.

Do you hear, Souls? Is not this sad news to some of you, who have received vast sums of mercy, and given God your bond for the repayment of him in praise and answerable fruit, and yet forfeited all, and lost your credit with God? Oh how can you look God in the face, with whom you have dealt so perfidiously? I am now come in the Name of God to demand his due of you; to call to remembrance the former receipts of mercy which you mind not, but God does, and there is a witness in your bosome that does, and will one day witness to your faces, that you have dealt perfidiously with your God; your souls have been the graves of mercy, which should have been as so many gardens where they should have lived and flourished. I am come now to open those graves, and view those mercies that your unthankfulness has killed and buried, to lay them before your eyes, and see whether your ungreatful hearts will bleed upon them. Buried mercies are not lost for ever; they shall as certainly have a day of Resurrection as your self: It were better for you they should have a Resurrection now in your heart, than to rise as witnesses against you, when you shalt rise out of the dust that will be a terrible Resurrection indeed, when they shall come to plead against your Soul: nothing pleads more dreadfully against a Soul▪ than abused mercy does. But I shall come to the particulars upon which I interrogate your Consciences, and I pray deal truly and ingenuously in answering these Queries.

Quer. 1. And first I shall demand of you, Whether you never had experience of the power and goodness of God, in restoring you to Health from dangerous Sickness and Diseases? Have you not sometimes had the sentence of Death in your selves? and that possibly when you have been in remote parts far from your Friends and Relations, and destitute of all means and accommodations. Did you not say in that condition, as Hezekiah did in a like case? Isai. 38. 10, 11, 12. I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave, I am deprived of the residue of my years. I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord in the land of the living; I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world. Remember your self, man, canst not you call to mind the day when the Arrows of death came whisking by you, and it may be hit those next you; took away those that were as lively and as lusty as your self, when you began your Voyage, and yet they were cast for death, you for life, and that when there was but an hairs breadth between you and the grave? Tell me, Soul, What friend was that stood by you then, when you were forsaken of all friends? When it may be your Companions stood ready to throw you over-board, Who was it that pitied and remembred you in your low estate? Who was it that rebuked your disease? of (as one very aptly expresses it) restrained the humours of your body,from overflowing and drowning your life? for when they are let out in a sickness, they would overflow and drown it, as the Waters would the earth, if God should not say to them, Stay you proud waves. Who was it, man, that when your body was brought low and weak, and like a crazy rotten Ship in a storm, took in water on all sides, so that all the Physitians in the World could not have stopt those Leaks; consider, what hand was that which quieted and calmed the tempestuous Sea, careened and mended your crazy Body, and launched you into the World again, as whole, as sound, as strong as ever? Was it not the Lord, that has done all this for you? Did not he keep back your Soul from the Pit, and your Life from perishing? Indeed, when you were chastened with pain upon your Bed (as Elihu speaks) Job 33. 19, 20, 21. and the multitude of your bones with strong pains, so that your life abhorred bread, and your Soul dainty meat; your flesh consumed away that it could not be seen, and your bones that were not seen stuck out: yet then, as it is, vers. 28. he delivered your Soul from going down into the Pit, and caused your Life to see the Light. Had the Lamp of life been then extinguisht, you had gone into endless Darkness; Hell had shut her mouth upon you. Now tell me, Soul, What hast you done with this precious mercy? Hast you walked before the Lord in a deep sense thereof, and answered his end therein, which was, to lead you to Repentance? Or has your stupid or disingenious heart forgotten it, and lost all sense of it, so that God's end is frustrated, and your Salvation not a jot furthered thereby? O▪ If it be so, wo to you; for the blood of this Mercy, which your Ingratitude has murther'd, like the blood of Abel, cries to God against you. What a Wretch are you thus to requite the Lord for such a Mercy! He saw your Tears, and heard your groans, and said within himself, He shall not die, but live; Alas, poor Creature, if I cut him off now, he is eternally lost: I will send him back a few years more into the World; I will try him once more, it may be he will bear some fruits to me from this deliverance; and if so, well; if not, I will cut him down hereafter: He shall be set at liberty upon his Good Behavior a little longer. And is all this nothing in your eyes? Wretch that you are, Dost you forget and flight such a favor as this? Is it worth no more in your eyes? Well, it would be worth something in the eyes of the poor Damned Souls, if they might have so many years cut out of their Eternity, for a meer intermission of their Torments, much more as a time of patience and mercy. O consider, what pity and goodness you hast abused.

Quer. 2. Were you never cast upon miserable streights and extremities, wherein the good Providence of God relieved and supplied you? How many of you have been beaten so long at Sea, by reason of contrary winds, and other accidents, till your Provisions have been even exhausted and spent? To how short allowance have you been kept? And what a mercy would you have esteemed it, if you could but have satisfied Nature with a full draught of Water? Certainly, this has been the case of many of you. Oh what a price and vallue did you then set upon those common Mercies, which at other times have been slightly over-look'd! and when you have seen no hopes of relief, Have you not looked sadly one upon another? and it may be said as that Widow of Zarephtah did to the Prophet, 1 King. 17. 12. And she said, As the Lord your God lives, I have not a cake, but a handful of meal in a barrel, and a little oyl in a cruse: aud behold, I am gathering two sticks that I may go in and dress it for me and my son, that we may eat it, and die. Even such has been your case; yet has that God, whose Mercies are over all his Works, heard your sorrows, and provided Relief for you▪ either by some Ship, which Providence sent to relieve you in that distress; or by altering the Winds, and sending you safe to the Land, before all your Provisions have been spent. And hast you kept no Records of these gracious Providences? indeed, Dost you abuse the Creature, when you are brought again to the full enjoyment of it? and possibly receivest the Creatures (whose worth you so lately hast seen in the want of them) without thanksgiving, or a sensible acknowledgment of the goodness of God in them? I say, dost you thus answer the expectations of God? Well, beware lest God teach such an unworthy Creature, by woful experience, that the opening of his hand to give you a Mercy, is worth the opening your Lips to bless him for it. Beware lest that unthankful Mouth, that will not bless the Lord for Bread and Water, have neither the one or the other to bless him for. I can give you a sad instance in the case, and I have found it in the Writing of an eminent Divine, who says he had it from an eye and ear-witness of the truth of it. A young Man lying upon his Sick-bed, was always calling for meat, but when the meat he called for was brought to him, he shook and trembled dreadfully at the sight of it, and that in every part of his body; and so continued, until his food was carried away. And thus he did, as often as any food was brought into his presence; and not being able to eat one bit, pined away: but before his death, he freely acknowledged the Justice of God in this punishment; For, said he, in the time of my Health, I ordinarily received my meat without thanksgiving. O! Let the abusers and despisers of such Mercies, fear and tremble.

Quer. 3. Have you not been eminently protected and saved by the Lord, in the greatest dangers and hazards of life; in fights at Sea, when men have dropt down at your right hand and at your left, and yet the Lord has cover'd your heads in the day of battle? And though you have been equally obnoxious to Death and Danger with others, yet your name was not found among theirs in the list of the dead? Or in Shipwracks, ah, how narrowly have some of you escaped! A plank has been cast in, you know not how, to save you, when your Companions, for want of it, have gone down to the bottome; or you have been enabled to swim to the Shore, when others have fainted in the way, and perished. In what a variety of strange and astonishing Providences has God walked towards some of you, and what returns have you made to God for it? Oh Sirs, I beseech you, consider but these two or three things, that I shall now lay before you to consider of.

Consid. 1. An Heathen will do more for a dung-hil-Deity, than you, that callest your self a Christian, will do for the true God, that made Heaven and Earth, Daniel 5:4. They praised the Gods of Silver, and of Gold, and of Brass, of Iron, Wood, and Stone. When the Philistines were delivered from the hand of Sampson, the Text says, Iudg. 16. 24. They praised their God, &c. Then Dagon must be extolled. Oh let shame cover they face!

Consid. 2. That the abuse of Mercy and Love, is a sin that goes near to the heart of God. O! he cannot bear it. It is not the giving out of mercy that troubles him, for that he does with delight; but the recoyling of his mercies upon him by the creatures ingratitude, this wounds. Be astonished, O you heavens, at this, and be you horribly afraid. And again, Hear O heavens, and give ear O earth, Isaiah 1:2. q. d. O you innocent Creatures which inviolably observe the law of your Creation, be you all astonished and cloathed in black, to see Nature cast by sin so far below it self; and that in a Creature so much superiour to you as Man, who in the very womb, was crown'd a King, and admitted into the highest Order of Creatures, and set as Lord and Master over you; yet does he act not onely below himself, but below the very beasts. The Ox knoweth his owner, (i. e.) There is a kind of gratitude in the beasts, by which they acknowledge their benefactors that feed and preserve them. Oh! What a pathetical exclamation is that, Deuteronomy 32:6. Do you thus requite the Lord, O foolish people, and unwise?

Consid. 3. It is a sin that kindles the wrath of God, and will make it burn dreadfully against you unthankful sinner; it stirs up the anger of God, in whomever it be found, though in the person of a Saint, 2 Chron. 32. 25. But Hezekiah rendered not again according to the benefit done to him: for his heart was lifted up: therefore there was wrath upon him, and upon Ierusalem. And so you read, Rom. 1. That the Heathen, because they were not thankful, were given up to vile affections; the [•]orest Plague in the world. It is a sin that the God of Mercy scarce knows how to pardon, Ier. 5. 7. How shall I pardon you for this? This forgetting of the God that saves us in our extremities, is a sin that brings desolation and ruine, the effects of God's high displeasure, upon all our temporal enjoyments. See that remarkable Scripture, Isaiah 17:10, 11. Because you hast [forgotten] the God of [your salvation] and hast not been [mindful] of the rock of [your strength▪] Therefore shalt you plant pleasant plants, and shalt set it with strange slips; in the day shalt you make your plant to grow, and in the morning shalt you make your seed to flourish, but the Harvest shall be an heap in the day of grief and desperate sorrow. The meaning is, that God will blast and curse all your employments, and you shalt be under desperate sorrow, by reason of the disappointments of your hopes.

Consid. 4. It's a sin that cuts off Mercy from you in future straits: if you thus requite the Lord for former mercies, never expect the like in future distresses. God is not weary of his blessings, to cast them away upon such Souls that are but graves to them. Mark what a reply God made to the Israelites, when they cryed to him for help, being invaded by the Amorites, Judges 10:11, 12, 13. Did not I deliver you from the Egyptians, and from the Amorites, from the Children of Ammon, and from the Philistines? The Zidonians also, and the Amalekites, and you cryed to me, and I delivered you out of their hands; yet you have forsaken me, and served other Gods; therefore I will deliver you no more. O sad word! It is (as if the Lord had said) I have tryed what mercy and deliverance will do with you, and I see you are never the better for it; deliverance is but seed sown upon the Rocks: I will cast away no more favors upon you; now look to your selves, shift for your selves for time to come, wade through your troubles as well as you can. O brethren, there is nothing more quickly works the ruine of a People, than the abuse of mercy. O methinks this Text should strike terrour into your hearts. How often has God delivered you? Remember your eminent deliverance at such a time, in such a Country, out of such a deep distress: God was gracious to your cry then; you hast forgotten and abused this mercy; what now, if God should say, as in the Text▪ Therefore I will deliver you no more. Ah poor Soul! What would'st you do then, or to whom will you turn? It may be you will cry to the Creatures for help and pity; but alas, to what purpose? they will give as cold and as comfortless an answer, as Samuel gave to Saul, 1 Samuel 28:15, 16. And Samuel said to Saul, Vvherefore hast [•]hou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by Prophets, nor by Dreams; therefore have I called you &c. Then said Samuel, Therefore then do you ask of me, seeing the Lord is departed from you, and become your enemy? O! you will be a poor shiftless creature, if once by abusing mercy you make it your Enemy.

Secondly. For the breach of Vows made in distress to obtain these mercies, and easily forgotten and violated by you when you hast obtained your desire: A word or two to convince you what a further evil lies in this, and how by this consideration your sins come to be boyed up to a greater height, and aggravation of finfulness; and then I have done with this Head.

A Vow, is a promise made to God, in the things of God. The Obligation of it is by Casuists judged to be as great as that of an Oath. It is a sacred and solemn bond, wherein a Soul binds it self to God in lawful things: and being once bound by it, it is a most heinous evil to violate it. It is an high piece of dishonesty to fail in what we have promised to men, says Dr. Hall; but to disappoint God in our Vows, is no less than Sacriledge. The act is free and voluntary; but if once a just and lawful vow or promise has past your lips (says he) you may not be false to God in keeping it. It is with us for our vows, as it was with Ananias and Saphirah, for their substance: Vvhilst it remained (says Peter) was it not your own? He needed not to sell and give it; but if he will give, he may not reserve; it is death to save some: he lies to the Holy Ghost, that defalks from that which he engaged himself to bestow. If you have vowed to the mighty God of Jacob, look to it that you be faithful in your performance, for he is a great and jealous God, and will not be mocked.

Now I am confident, there be many among you, that in your former distresses have solemnly engaged your Souls thus to God; that if he would deliver you out of those dangers, and spare your lives, you would walk more strictly, and live more holy lives than ever you did. You have, it may be, engaged your Souls to the Lord against those sins, as Drunkenness, Lying, Swearing, Uncleanness, or whatever evil it was that your Conscience then smote you for: the vows of God (I say) are upon many of you. But have you performed those vows that your lips have uttered? Have you dealt truly with God? or have you mocked him, and lyed to him with your lips, and omitted those very duties you promised to perform, and return'd to the self-same evils you promised to forsake. I only put the question, let your Consciences answer it. But if it be so indeed, that you are a person that makest light of your engagements to God, as indeed Seamens Vows, and Sick mens Promises are, for the most part, deceitful and slippery things, being extorted from them by fear of Death, and not from any deep resentment of the necessity and weight of those Duties to which they bind their Souls: I say, if this sin lie upon any of your Souls, I advise you to go to God speedily, and bewail it; humble your self greatly before him, admire his patience in forbearing you, and pay to him what your lips have promised. And to move you thereunto, let these Considerations, among many other, be laid to heart.

Consid. 1. Think seriously upon the greatness of that Majesty whom you hast wronged, by lying to him, and falsifying your engagements. Oh think sadly on this: It is not man whom you hast abused, but God; even that God in whose hand your life and breath is. For although (as one truly observes) there be not in every vow a formal invocation of God, (God being the proper Correlate, and as it were a party to every vow, and therefore not formally to be invoked for the contestatio[•] of it) yet there is in every vow an implicite calling God to witness; so that certainly the Obligation of a Vow is not one jot beneath that of an Oath. Now if God be as a party to whom you hast past your promise, and its obligation on that ground be so great, oh what hast you done? for a poor worm to mock with the most glorious majesty of Heaven, and break Faith with God, what a dreadful thing is that? If it were but to your fellow-creature, though the sin would be great yet not like to this. Let me say to you, as the Prophet Isai. 7. 13. It is a small thing for you to weary men, but you will weary my God also? If you dare to deceive and abuse men, dare you do so by God also? Oh if the exceeding villanies of the sin do not affect you, yet methinks the danger of provoking so dreadful a Majesty against you should. And therefore consider,

Consid. 2. Secondly, That the Lord will most certainly be avenged upon you for these things, except you repent. O read and tremble at the word of God, Ecclesiastes 5:4. When you vowest a vow to God, defer not to pay it: for he has no pleasure in fools; pay that which you hast vowed. But better it is that you shouldest not vow, than that you shouldest vow and not not pay. Suffer not your mouth to cause your flesh to sin, neithey say you before the Angel, that it was an errour; therefore [should God be angry] at your vice, and [destroy] the works of your hands? Mark, God will be angry, and in that anger he will destroy the Work of your hand, (i. e.) says Diodate, Bring you and all your actions to nought, by reason af your perjury. Now the anger of God, which your breach of promise kindles, as appears by this Text, is a dreadful fire. Oh what Creature can stand before it! as Asaph speaks, Psalm 76:7. You, even you are to be feared: and who may stand in your sight when once you are angry?

Consid. 3. Consider, thirdly, that all this while you sinnest against knowledge and Conviction: for did not your Conscience plainly convince you, when imminent danger open'd its mouth, that the matter of your neglected vow was a most necessary duty; If not, why didst you bind your Soul to forsake such practises, and to perform such duties? You didst so look upon them then; by which it appears, your Conscience is convinced of your duty, but Lust masters and over-rules: And it so, poor sinner, what a case are you in, to go on from day today sinning against Light and Knowledge? Is not this a fearful rate of sinning? And will not such sinners be plunged deeper into Hell than the poor Indians that never saw the evil of their ways, as you do▪ Ponder but two or three Scriptures in your thoughts, and see what a dreadful way of sinning this is: Romans 2:9. 'Tribtlation, anguish and wrath to every Soul of man that does evil, to the [Iew first] and also to the Gentile. To the Jew first (i. e.) to the Jew especially and principally; he had a precedency in means and light, and so let him have in punishment. So Iam. 4. 17. To him thrt knoweth to do good, and does it not, to him it is sin (i. e.) Sin with a witness, horrid sin, sin that surpasses the deeds of the wicked. So Luke 12. 47. And that servant that knew his Lords will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. Which is a plain allusion to the Custom of the Iews in punishing an offender who being convicted, the Judge was to see him bound fast to a Pillar, his cloaths stript off, and an Executioner with a Scourge to beat him with so many stripes: But now those stripes came but from the arm of a Creature; these that the Text speaks of, are set on by the omnipotent arm of God. Of the former there was a determinate number set down in their law, as forty stripes, and sometimes they would remit one of that number too, in mercy to the offender, as you see in the example of Paul, 2 Corinthians 11:24. Of the [•]ews I received forty stripes save one; but in Hell no mitigation at all, nor allay of mercy. The arm of his power supports the Creature in its being, while the arm of his justice lays on eternally. Soul, consider these things; do you not persist any longer then in such a desperate way of sinning, against the clear conviction of your own Conscience, which in this case must needs give testimony against you.

Well then; go to God with the words of David. Psalm 66:13, 14. and say to him, I will pay you my vows which my lips have uttered, and my tongue has spoken when I was in trouble. Pay it, Soul, and pay it speedily to God, else he will recover it by Justice, and fetch it out of your bones in Hell. O trifle not any longer with God, and that in such serious matters as these are.

And now I have done my endeavor to give your former Mercies and Promises a Resurrection in your Consciences; Oh that you would sit down and pause s[•] while upon these things, and then reflect upon the past Mercies of your lives, and on what has past between God and your Souls, in your former straights and trou[•]bles! Let not these plain words work upon your spleen[•] and make you say, as the Widow of Sarephta did to th[•] Prophet Elijah, 2 Kings 17. 18. What have I to do wit[•] you, O you man of God? Are you come to call my sin to remembrance? But rather let it work kindly on your heart, and make you say as David to Abigail, 1 Samuel 25:32. 33. Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, which sent you this day to meet me, and blessed be your advice.