113. Solomon saith, " The thoughts of the
righteous are right." Prov. xii. 5. Paul saith
that charity thinketh not evil. 1 Cor. xiii. 5.
2. Thouo-hts are the issue of a rational soul.
And if its operations be contemptible, its essence
is contemptible : if its essence be noble, its ope-
rations are considerable. If the soul be more
excellent than the body, its operations must be
more excellent. To neglect our thoughts, and
not employ them upon God, and for God, is to
vilify our noblest faculties, and deny God, who
is a Spirit, that spiritual service which he re-
quireth.
3. Our thoughts are commonly our most cor-
dial voluntary acts, and shew the temper and
118 Walking luith God.
inclination of the heart : and therefore are re-
gardable to God that searcheth the heart, and
calleth fiFst for the service of the heart.
4. Our thoughts are radical and instrumental
acts : such as they are, such are the actions of
our lives. Christ telleth us that out of the heart
proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, for-
nications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies,
which defile the man. Matt. xv. 19.
5. Our thoughts are under a law, as well as
words and deeds. Prov. xxiv. 9. " The thought
of foolishness is sin." And Matt. v. 28, &c.
Christ extendeth the law even to the thoughts
and desires of the heart. And under the law it
is said, Deut. xv. 9. " Beware that there be
not a thought in thy wicked heart," &c. viz. of
unmercifulness towards thy brother,
6. Thoughts can reach higher much than
sense, and may be employed upon the most
excellent and invisible objects, and therefore are
lit instruments to elevate the soul that would
converse with God. Though God be infinitely
above us, our thoughts may be exercised on
him : our persons never were in heaven, and yet
our conversation must be in heaven, Phil. iii. 20.
And how is that but by your thoughts ? Though
we see not Christ, yet by the exercise of be-
lieving thoughts on him, we love him and rejoice
with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Though
God be invisible, yet our meditation of him may
be sweet, and we may delight in the Lord. Pb.
Walking with God. 119
civ. 34. Say not that all this is but fantastical
and delusory, as long as thoughts of things
unseen are meeter to actuate and elevate the
love, desires and delights of the soul, and to
move and guide us in a regular and holy life,
than the sense of lesser present good. The
thoughts are not vain or delusory, unless the
object of them be false and vain and delusory.
Where the object is great, and sure and excel-
lent, the thoughts of such things are excellent
operations of the soul. If thoughts of vain glory,
wealth and pleasure, can delight the ambitious,
covetous and sensual ; no wonder if the thoughts
•of God and life eternal afford us solid high
delights,
7. The thoughts are not so liable to be coun-
terfeit and hypocritical as are the words and
outward deeds : and therefore they shew more
what the man is, and what is in his heart. For
as Solomon saith, Prov. xxiii. 7. '* As he thinketh
in his heart, so is he."
8. Our thoughts may exercise the highest
graces of God in man ; and also shew those
graces, as being their effects. How is our faith,
and love, and desire, and trust, and joy, and
hope to be exercised but by our cogitations?
If grace were not necessary and excellent, it
would not be wrought by the Spirit of God, and
called the divine nature, and the image of God :
and if grace be excellent, the use and exercise
of it is excellent : and therefore our thoughts
120 Walking xoith God.
by which it is exei'cised must needs have their
excellency too.
9. Our thoughts must be the instruments of
our improving all holy truth in scripture, and
all the mercies which we receive, and all the
afSictions which we undergo. What good will
reading a chapter in the Bible do to any one
that never thinketh on it? Our delight in the
law of God must engage us to meditate in it day
and night. Ps. i. 2. What good shall he get by
hearing a sermon that exerciseth not his thoughts
for the receiving and. digesting it. Our consi-
dering what is said, is the way in which we may
expect that God should give us understanding
in all thinos. 2 Tim. ii. 7. What the better will
he be for any of the merciful providences of
God, who never bethinks him whence they
come, or what is the use and end that they are
given for? what good will he get by any afflic-
tion, that never bethinks him who it is that
chastiseth him, and for what, and how he must
get them removed and sanctified to his good ?
A man is but like one of the pillars in the
church, or like the corpse which he treadeth on,
or at best but like the dog that folio weth him
thither for company, if he use not his thoughts
about the work which he hath in hand, and
cannot say, as Ps. xlviii. 9, " We have thought
of thy loving kindness O God in the midst of
thy temple." He that biddeth you hear, dotJi
also bid you take heed how you hear, Luke
Walking with God. 121
vlii. 18. And you are commanded to lay up the
Avord in your heart and soul. Deut. xi. 18, 19.
" And to set your hearts to all the words which
are testified among you: for it is not a vain
thing for you, because it is your life."
10. Our thoughts are so considerable a part
of God's service, that they are oft put for the
whole. Mai. iii. 16. "A book of remembrance
was written for them that feared the Lord and
that thought upon his name." Our believing
and loving God, and trusting in him, and desir-
ing him and his grace, are the principal parts of
his service, which are exercised immediately by
our thoughts: and in praise and prayer it is this
inward part that is the soul and life of all. He
is a foolish hypocrite that thinks to be heard for
his much babbling. Matt. vi. 7.
And on the contrary the thoughts are named
as the sum of all iniquity: Isa. lix. 7. " Their
thoughts are thoughts of iniquity." Isa. Ixv. 2-
" I have spread out my hands all the day long
unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way
that was not good, after their own thoughts."
Jar. iv. 14. " O Jerusalem, wash thy heart from
wickedness that thou mayest be saved : how
long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee! "
Ps. xiv. 1. "The fool hatii said in his heart,
there is no God."
11. A man's thoughts are the appointed
orderly way for the conversion of a sinner, and
the preventing of his sin and misery. David
122 Walking with God.
saith, Ps. cxix. 59, " I thought on my ways, and
turned my feet unto thy testimonies." The pro-
digal (Luke XV. 17, 18) came to himself and
returned to his father, by the success of his own
consideration. " Thus saith the Lord of hosts,
Consider your ways," Hag. i. 5, is a voice that
every sinner should hear. Ezek. xviii. 14. It is
he that considereth and doth not according to
his father's sins, that shall not die. Therefore it
is God's desire, — O that they were wise and
understood this, and that they would consider
their latter end. Deut. xxxii. 29. It is either
men's inconsiderateness, or the error of their
thoughts that is the cause of all their wicked-
ness. Isa. i. 3. " My people doth not consider."
Paul verily thought that he ought to do many
things against the name of Jesus. Acts xxvi. 9.
Many deceive themselves by thinking themselves
something when they are nothing. Gal. vi. 3.
They think it strange that we run not with them
to excess of riot; and therefore they speak evil
of us. 1 Pet. iv. 4. Disobedient formalists con-
sider not that they do evil, when they think they
are offering acceptable sacrifices to God. Eccles.
V. 1, 2. The very murder of God's holy ones
hath proceeded from these erroneous thoughts :
they that kill you shall think they do God
service. John xvi. 2. All the ambition, and
covetousness, and injustice, and cruelty foUow-
ino; thereupon, which troubleth the world, and
ruineth men's souls, is, from their erroneous
IValkhfg with God. 123
thoughts, overvaluing these deceitful things. Ps.
xiix. 11. "Their inward thought is that their
houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling
places to all generations." The presumptuous
and impenitent are surprised by destruction, for
want of thinking of it to prevent it: " In such an
hour as you think not, the Son of Man cometh."
12. Lastly, the thoughts are the most con-
stant actions of a man, and therefore most of
the man is in them. We are not always reading,
or hearing, or praying, or working; but we are
always thinking: and therefore it doth especially
concern us to see that this constant breath of
the soul be sweet, and that this constant stream
be pure and run in the right channel. Well,
therefore, did David make this his request, Ps.
cxxxix. 23, 24. " Search me O God and know
my heart : try me and know my thoughts ; and
see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead
me in the way everlasting." I say, therefore, to
those that insist on this irrational objection, that
these very thoughts of tbeir's, concerning the
inconsiderabieness of thoughts, are so foolish
and ungodly, that when they understand the evil
even of these, they will know that thoughts were
more to be regarded. " If therefore thou hast
done foolishly in lifting up thyself, or if thou
hast thought evil, lay thy hand upon thy
mouth."
And though, after all this, I still confess that it
is so exceeding hard a matter to keep the thoughts
124 Walking with God.
in holy exercise and order, that even the best
do daily and hourly sin, in the omissions, the
disorder, or the vanity of their thoughts ; yet for
all that we must heeds conclude that the incli-
nation and design of our thoughts must be
principally for God, and that the thoughts are
principal instruments of the soul, in acting it in
his service, and mo vino; it towards him, and in
all this holy woik of our walking with God :
and therefore to imagine that thoughts are incon-
siderable and of little use, is to unman us and
unchristen us. The labour of the mind is neces-
sary for the attaining the felicity of the mind,
as the labour of the body is necessary for the
things that belong vinto the body. As bodily
idleness bringeth unto beggary, when the dili-
gent hand makes rich ; so the idleness of the
soul doth impoverish the soul, when the labo-
rious christian liveth plentifully and comfortably
through the blessing of God upon his industry
and labour. You cannot expect that God
appear to you in a bodily shape, that you may
have immediate converse with him in the body :
the corporal eating of him in transubstantiate
bread, supposed common to men and mice or
dogs, we leave to papists, who have made them-
selves a singular new religion, in despite of the
common sense and reason of mankind, as well
as of the scriptures and the judgment of the
church. It is in the spirit that you must con-
verse with God who is a Spirit. The mind seeth
Walking with God. 1'25
him by faith, who is invisible to the bodily eyes.
Nay, if you will have a true and saving know-
ledge of God, you must not liken him to any
thing that is visible, nor have any corporal con-
ceivings of him : earthly things may be the
glass in which we may behold him, while we are
here in the flesh, but our conceivings of him
must be spiritual ; and minds that are immersed
in flesh and earth, are unmeet to hold commu-
nion with him: the natural man knoweth him
not, and the carnal mind is enmity to him, and
they that are in the flesh cannot please him.
Rom. viii. It is the pure, abstracted, elevated
soul, that understandeth by experience what it
is to walk with God.
CHAPTER VI.
§ 1 . Having in the foregoing uses reproved
the atheism and contempt of God, which ungodly
men are continually guilty of, and endeavoured
to convince them of the necessity and desirable-
ness of walking with God, and in particular of
improving our thoughts for holy converse with
him, and answered the objections of the impious
and atheists; 1 shall next endeavour to cure the
remnants of this disease, in those that are sin-
cerely holy, who live too strangely to God their
father in the world. In the performance of this,
VOL. II. II
126 Walking with God.
I shall first shew you what are the benefits of
this holy life which should make it appear desi-
rable and delightful. 2. I shall shew you why
believers should addict themselves to it as
doubly obliged, and how it appeareth that their
neglect of it is a sin of special aggravations.
This is the remainder of my task.
§ 2. I. To walk with God in a holy and
heavenly conversation, is the employment most
suitable to human nature: not to its corrupt dis-
position, nor to the carnal interest and appetite ;
but to nature as nature, to man as man. It is
the very work that he was made for : the facul-
ties and frame of soul and body were composed
for it by the wise Creator : they are restored
for it by the gracious Redeemer. Though in
corrupted nature where sensuality is predomi-
nant, there is an estrangedness from God, and
an enmity and hatred of him, so that the wicked
are more averse to all serious holy converse with
him (in prayer, contemplation, and a heavenly
life) than they are to a worldly sinful life; yet
all this is but the disease of nature, corrupting
its appetite, and turning it against that proper
food, which is most suitable to its sound desires,
and necessary to its health and happiness.
Though sinful habits are become as it were a
second nature to the ungodly, so depraving
their judgments and desires, that they verily
think the business and pleasures of the flesh
are most suitable to them; yet these are as
Walking with God. 127
contrary to nature as nature, (that is, to the
primitive tendencies of all our faculties, and the
proper use to which they were fitted by our
Creator, and to that true felicity which is the
end of all our parts and powers) even as madness
is contrary to the rational nature, though it were
hereditary.
1. What can be more agreeable to the nature
of man, than to be rational and wise, and to live
in the purest exercise of reason? And certainly
there is nothing more rational than that we
should live to God, and gladly accept of all
that communion with him which our natures on
earth are capable of. Nothing can be more
reasonable than for the reasonable soul to be
entirely addicted to him that did create it, that
doth preserve it, and by whom it doth subsist
and act. Nothing is more reasonable than that
the absolute Lord of nature be honored and
served wholly by his own. Nothing is more
reasonable than that the reasonable creature do
live in the truest dependence upon, and subor-
dination to the highest reason; and that derived,
imperfect, defectible wisdom be subservient to
and guided by the primitive, perfect, indefectible
wisdom.. It is most reasonable that the children
depend upon the father, and the foolish be ruled
by the most wise, and that the subjects be
governed by the universal king, and that tliey
honor him and obey him ; and that the indigent
apply themselves to him that is all-sufficient,
H 2
128 Walking with God.
and is most able and ready to supply their
wants; and that the impotent rest upon him
that is omnipotent.
2. Nothing can be more reasonable, than that
the reasonable nature should intend its end, and
seek after its true and chief felicity : and that
it should love good as good, and therefore
prefer the chiefest good before that which is
transitory and insufficient. Reason comraandeth
the reasonable creature to avoid its own delusion
and destruction, and to rest upon him that can
everlastingly support us, and not upon the crea-
ture that will deceive us and undo us : and to
prefer the highest and noblest converse before
that which is inferior, unprofitable and base;
and that we rejoice more in the highest, purest,
and most durable delights, than in those that
are sordid, and of short continuance. And who
knoweth not that God is the chiefest good, and
true felicity of man, the everlasting rock, the
durable delight, and to be preferred before his
creatures? And who might not find, that would
use his reason, that all things below are vanity
and vexation ?
3. Nothing can be more rational and agree-
able to man's nature, than that the superior
faculties should govern the inferior; that the
brutish part be subject to the rational ; and that
the ends and objects of this higher faculty be
preferred before the objects of the lower, that
the objects of sense be made subservient to the
Walkh^ ivith God. J 29
o\)jects of reason. If this be not natural and
rational, then it is natural to man to be no man,
but a beast, and reasonable to be unreasonable.
Now it is evident that a holy living unto God, is
but the improvement of true reason, and its
employment for and upon its noblest object,
and its ultimate end ; and that a sensual life is
the exercise of the inferior brutish faculties, in
predominancy above and before the rational :
and therefore to question whether God or the
creature should be first sought, and loved, and
principally desired, and delighted in, and served,
is but to question whether we should live like
men or like beasts, and whether dogs or wise
men be fitter companions for us; and whether
the rider or the horse should have the rule :
whether the rational or sensitive powers be
superior and proper to the nature of a man.
Object. But there is a middle state of life,
betwixt the sensual and the divine or holy life
which sober philosophers did live, and tliis is
the most natural life, and most properly so
called.
Amtv. I deny this: there is no middle state
of life, if you denominate the several states of
life from the several ends, or the several powers.
I grant that the very sensitive powers in man,
especially the imagination, is much advanced by
the conjunction of reason, above that of a
brute: and I grant that the delights of the
fantasy may be preferred before the immediate
130 Walking with God.
pleasure of the senses : and I grant that some
little distant knowledge of God, and things
divine, and hopes of attaining them, may affect
an unsanctified man with an answerable plea-
sure. But all this is nothing to prove that there
is a third sort of end, or of powers, and so a
third or middle state of life, specifically distinct
from the sensitive and the holy life. Besides,
the vegetative man hath no other life or facul-
ties, than the sensitive and the rational; and
therefore one of these must be in predominancy
or rule: and therefore he can have no middle
sort or end, and therefore no middle state of
life, that can be said to be agreeable to his
nature. Those that seek and take up their chief
felicity in riches and plenty, and provisions for
the flesh, though not in present pleasing of the
sense, do live but the life of sensuality. A fox
or dog takes pleasure when he hath eaten his
belly full, to hide and lay up the rest; and so
doth the bee to fill the hive, and make provision
for the winter. The proud that delight in honour
and applcLuse, and making others subject to their
iusts, do live but the life of sensuality : a dog,
a horse, and other brutes, have something of the
same. They that are grave through melancholy,
or because they can reach no great matter in the
world, and because their old or duller spirits are
not much pleased with juvenile delights, and so
live retiredly, and seek no higher pleasure or
fehcity, but only sit down with the weeping or
Walking with God. 131
the laughing philosopher, lamenting or deriding
the vanity of the world, do yet live no other
than a sensual life : as an old dog that hath no
pleasure in hunting or playfulness, as he had
when he was a whelp ; only he is less deluded
and less vain, than other sensualists that find
more pleasure in their course.
All the doubt is concerning those that place
their felicity in knowledge, and those that de-
light in moral virtues, or that delight in studying
of God, though they are no christians.
The point is weighty, and hath oft unhappily
fallen into injudicious hands. I shall endeavour
to resolve it as truly, clearly and impartially
as I can. 1. It is a great error against the
nature of man, to say, that knowledge, as such,
is fit to be any man's chief and ultimate end :
it may be that act which is next the enjoying
act of the will, which is it that indeed is next
the end, objectively considered ; but it is not
that act which we call ultimate ultimm. And
this is plain 1. Because the object of the under-
standing, which is truth, is not formally the
nearest object or matter of full felicity or
delight : it is goodness that is the nearest object.
2. And therefore the office of the intellect is but
introductive and subservient to the office of the
will, to apprehend the verity of good, and pre-
sent it to the will to be prosecuted or embraced,
or delighted in. There are many truths that are
ungrateful and vexatious, and which men would
132 Walking with God.
wish to be no truths ; and there is a knowledge
which is troublesome, useless, undesirable and
tormenting, which even a wise man would fain
avoid if he knew how. Morality is but prepara-
tively in the intellect ; and therefore intellectual
acts, as such, are not morally good, or evil, but
only participatively, as subject to the will. .And
therefore knowledge, as such, being not a moral
good, can be no other than such a natural good
as is bonum alicui, only so far as it tendeth to
some welfare or happiness, or pleasure of the
possessor or some other : and this welfare or
pleasure is either that which is suited to the
sensitive powers, or to the rational (which is to
be found in the love of God alone.)
2. I add therefore that even those men that
seem to take up their felicity in common know-
ledge, indeed do but make their knowledge
subservient to something else which they take
for, their felicity ; for knowledge of evil may
torment them : it is only to know something
which they take to be good, that is their delight ;
and it is the complacency or love of that good
at the heart, which sets them on work, and
causeth the delight of knowing. If you will
say that common knowledge as knowledge doth
immediately delight, yet will it be found but
such a pleasing of the fantasy, as an ape hath
in spying marvels, which if it have no end that
is higher, is still but a sensitive delight; but if it
be referred to a higher delight (in God) it doth
Walking with God. 133
participate of the nature of it. Delight in gene-
ral is the common end of men and brutes : but
in specie they are distinguished as sensual cr
rational.
3. If you suppose a philosopher to be
delighted in studying mathematics, or any of
the works of God, either he hath herein an end,
or no end beyond the knowledge of the crea-
ture : either he terminateth his desires and
delights in the creature, or else useth it as a
means to raise him to the Creator. If he study
and delight in the creature ultimately, this is
indeed the act of a rational creature, and an act
of reason, as to the faculty it proceeds from (and
so is a rational contrivance for sensual ends and
pleasures :) but it is but the error of reason, and
is no more agreeable to the rational nature, than
the deceit of the senses is to the sensitive : nor
is it finally to be numbered with the operations
felicitating human nature, any more tlian an
erroneous dream of pleasure, or than that man
is to be numbered with the lovers of learning,
who taketh pleasure in the binding, leaves or
letters of the book, while he understandeth
nothing of the sense. But if this philosopher
seek to know the Creator in and by the creatures,
and take delight in the maker's power, wisdom
and goodness, which appeareth in them, then
this is truly a rational delight, in itself consi-
dered, and beseeming a man. And if he reach
go far in itp as to make God his highest desire
h3
134 Walking with God.
and delight, overpowering the desires and
delights of sensuality, he shall be happy, as
being led by the Son unto the Father : but if he
make but some little approaches towards it, and
drown all such desires in the sensual desires
and delights, he is then but an unhappy sen-
sualist, and liveth brutishly in the tenor of his
life, though in some acts in part he operate
rationally as a man.
The like I may say of them that are said to
place their delight in moral virtues. Indeed
nothing is properly a moral good (or virtue) but
that which is exercised upon God as our end, or
upon the creature as a means to this end. To
study and know mere notions of God, or what