Chapter 8: Showing the Reason Why There Are So Few Good Christians

It gives us a true account why there are so few good Christians in the world, namely, Use 1, because there are so few meditating Christians: we have many that have aures bibulas, they are swift to hear, but slow to meditate. This duty is grown almost out of fashion, people are so much in the Shop, that they are seldom on the Mount with God. Where is the meditating Christian? Diogenes, in a full market, was seeking up and down, and being asked what he sought for, said, hominem quaero. I seek for a man, that was to say, a wise man, a philosopher; among the crowd of professors, I might search for a Christian, namely, A Meditating Christian. Where is he that meditates on sin, hell, eternity, the recompense of reward, that takes a prospect of heaven every day? Where is the meditating Christian? It is to be bewailed in our times that so many who go under the name of professors, have banished good discourse from their tables, and meditation from their closets. Surely, The hand of Joab is in this.

The Devil is an enemy to meditation, he cares not how much people read and hear, nor how little they meditate. He knows that meditation is a means to compose the heart and bring it into a gracious frame. Now the Devil is against that. Satan is content that you should be hearing and praying Christians, so that you are not meditating Christians. He can stand your small shot, provided you do not put in this bullet.