(6.) If the person of Christ be not exceeding precious to your souls, and always kept in the eye of your faith and in the arms of your love, you have not a due sense of your own state and actions : Cant. i. 13, • A bundle of myrrh is my beloved.' The children of God always keep up an esteem for Christ in their hearts, and strive to keep in the fire of love to their dearest Lord. Paul groans fearfully under the relics of sin, Rom. vii. 22 , but saith he, ' Blessed be God for Jesus Christ : ' Your iiearts will be breaking out in thanksgiving if you have a due sense of the nothingness of your own works.
[4.] For the helps and remedies to take you off from depending up- on your own i-ighteousness.
(1.) Meditate much upon the nature of God; it is such that his children are ashamed to a[)pear in his presence. Job saith, chap. xlii. 5, 6, ' I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now mine eye seetli thee ; wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.' Oh ! consider, you have to do with a holy God, that can en- dure no imperfection because of the holiness of his nature, and that will not release his law because of the severity of his justice : Ps. cxL 3, ' In thy sight shall no flesh living be justified.' Alas ! we can scarce keep up a fair show before men ; a discerning man may soon look through the veil of our profession. How shall we do to appear before the holy God ? We need to have a better robe than our own if we vv'ould be comely in God's sight, for our ' righteousness is but as filthy- rags.'
(2.) Extenuate no sin, for that will lessen your esteem of Jesus Christ. Have true and proper thoughts of the least sin. See how God hath been displeased with the lesser sins of his people : one pas- sionate fit of anger kept Moses out of Canaan ; Adam was thrown out of Paradise for eating an apple ; and the angels of heaven for a thought,
214 A TREATISE OF SELF-DENIAL. [BoOK I.
aspiring to God's greatness and majesty. Therefore extenuate no sin, and this will make Christ exceeding precious,
(3.) Consider the greatness of God's love, and the infiniteness of the reward Uiat he hath provided for us. If we did oftener think of this we sliould be ashamed of our weak requital, and should run to the merit of Christ.
(4.) Remember that we have all from God, Whenever we have done anytiiing with which the heart is apt to be tickled, remember liow many considerations there are to humble you In every holy service, if there be anything that is good in it, it is from God — ' Of thine own, 0 Jjord, have we given thee.' Shall we be proud because we have received more from God than others ? A servant that trades with his master's money doth but his duty, and deserves nothing All we do in holy things, it is upon the expense and cost of divine grace.
(5.) Consider how much evil and weakness is in every service. Certainly that cannot merit glory that needs pardon itself. Though whatever we do in holy things be by divine grace, yet all that passes through our hands receives some soil and filth from our hearts like pure water that runs through a dirty channel.
(6.) Whatever we can do for God, it is due to him, so that the pay- ment of new debts will not quit old scores.
Secondly, I come to work you ofi" from dependence upon your own wisdom, a matter necessarily to be regarded in this argument. Chri.st had foretold his sufferings, and Peter, out of carnal wisdom, dissuadeth him from the cross, and suffering himself to be so used ; and upon this occasion Christ saith, ' If any man will come after me, he must deny himself,' that is, he must not, with Peter, follow his own carnal reason and understanding, as if such kind of counsel and advice were best. Thereupon, in the 25tli verse, as a help to self-denial, our Lord lays down a conclusion that is quite contradictory to the judgment of carnal sense — ' He that will save his life must lose it ; ' implying that we must have other thoughts, we are not to be guided by the judgment of our own sense and reason, but by maxims and principles of faith. Therefore we have that dissuasive, Prov, iii. 5, ' Trust in the Lord with all thy heart, and lean not to thine own understanding ; ' where Solomon shows that dependence upon our own understanding and wis- dom is wholly inconsistent with a trust in God.
In the managing of this argument —
1. I shall state the matter, how far we are to deny our own wisdom.
2. Show how hard and difficult a matter it is to bring men ofi" from leaning upon their own understanding.
3. The signs whereby leaning to our own wisdom is discovered.
4. Dissuasives or reasons to take us off from such a dependence. .5. The directions that are proper in this case.