(5.) Get this advantage of thy failing, that thoumayest be the more out of love with thyself. Oh, what odious creatures should we appear, if we did but keep a catalogue and roll of every day's miscarriage — if all the errors of our life were but drawn up together ! Now whenever you put yom-selves in the balance, graces in the one scale, sins in the other, your evils will much overweigh — ' Few and evil are the days of my pilgrimage,' saitli Jacob. We have but a few days in the world, a short life, yet it is long enough for thousands of sins and evils. Our sins are more than our graces, because in every act of grace there is some fleshly adherence. We think well of ourselves. Why ? because we only take notice of our worth and excellency, and not of our defects, as if the reflexive light were nothing else but to see the good that. is in
266 A TREATISE OF SELF-DENIAL. [BoOK I.
US. Consider, conscience was made to censure the evil as well as to approve the good : Eom. ii. 15, ' Their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing, or else excusing, one another.' It should be translated thus, accusing and excusing by turns ; accusing must take its turn. You are bound not only to know your knowledge, but your ignorance ;; not only to reflect upon your graces, but your sin. It is an easy matter to know our graces, but it requires a great deal of grace to get a humble sense of our continual failui^^.
Secondly, I come now to the second kind of self-love, and that is self-love to our interests and enjoyments.
There is a lawful respect to the safety and convenience of our lives. As we are bound to love ourselves, so we are bound to love our interests and our relations. The service of Christ requires no violation of the laws of God and nature, but still the great interest must be preserved. We are bound to love ourselves, but we must love God more than our- selves. He is a true disciple that doth not seek himself, but the honour of his master. Now the place of scripture for this, is Luke xiv. 26, ' If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother, wife and children, or brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life, he cannot be my disciple.' To all these relations the scripture enforceth a dear and tender love ; and yet in such cases where such love is incompatible with the love of Christ, we should rather hate than love. Hatred there is the same with denial in this scripture ; hate, that is, to deny his own life ; all must be renounced for Christ's sake, because there is a higher obligation. We are more obliged to our Creator than to our parents, and we owe more service to our Redeemer than to our greatest friends and benefactors in the world. Let him not ' love father and mother above me,' for so it is Mat. x. 37. And pray, mark again, all these relations are mentioned because one time or other they may prove a snare. The frowns of a father or mother, it is an ordinary temptation. When a child takes to religion, he exposeth himself to the displeasure and brow-beating of a carnal father and mother. And so the insinu- ation of a wife, of one that lies in the bosom, it is a great snare ; so provision for our children and family ; so brothers and sisters ; loss of familiarity between them, when we are to lose our commerce, it is a great temptation. Then love to our own lives. Life, it is the great possession of the creature, by which we hold other things ; these are known temptations. Well then, it is a faulty self-love when we love anything that is ours, and prefer it before the conscience of our duty to God ; when we are loath to part with our lives, with our relations, anything that is ours, for Christ's* sake, or the just reasons of religion.
Concerning this self-love, I shall observe —
1. That we mistake our own identity, and think self to lie more in the conveniences of the body than of the soul. A man hath a body and a soul too, and he is to seek the welfare of both. Now we love the body, and seek the conveniences of the body ; that is the reason why so often in scripture self is expressed by the body : Eph. v. 25, ' So ought husbands to love their wives, even as their own body,' be- cause naturally our love runs out that way. Man loves this life rather than the next, and his body rather than his soul, and pleasure more
Book I.] a treatise of self-denial. 267
than the body ; they waste and harass the body in huntinjj after riches, pleasure, and honour, and profit, and such-like appurtenances of the outward life ; now these are mere mistakes. The self we are to pre- serve and maintain is soul and body, in a convenient state and consti- tution, to perform duty to God, and to attain to true happiness. Now when we love the body, we do not love that which is properly ourselves. The body hath more affinity with the beasts, as our souls have with the angels ; our souls are ourselves — ' What shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul ? ' In another evangelist it is, 'If he shall lose himself.' Our souls were chiefly regarded by Christ ; in the work of redemption he poured out ' his soul to death' for our souls ; therefore in denying thy self this must be distinguished. Whatever thou dost with the body, or the conveniences of the body, do nothing to prejudice the soul and eternal happiness. I ground this observation upon this very context. Christ had spoken something of his bodily sufferings ; and saith Peter unto his master ; ' Favour thy- self,' Mat. xvi. 23 : and then Christ giveth this lesson in the text. ' Deny thyself,' and take up thy cross — ' If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me ; for whosoever will save his life .shall lose it. and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it ; ' and then explains it, ver. 26, ' For what is a man profited, if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul ? ' We lose by saving the body. He that makes his body himself, and the appur- tenances and conveniences of the temporal life himself, he will deny Christ, but will never deny himself. You must reckon upon and dis- cern this first, what is yourself.