To search a little deeper, do hut compare your courses toward these good things of heaven with your courses toivards the world. If there be hope of preferment, the doors of great men are sure to suffer violence with favourites. The courts of justice suffer violence to have our right in earthly things. The stages and such places are thi-onged, and suffer violence. If a man could but overlook the courses of men abroad in the city, he should see one violent for his pleasures, running to the house of the harlot ' as a fool
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to the stocks,' Prov. vii. 22; another to the exchange, to increase his estate ; another to the phice of justice, to detract his neighbour, or to get his own right, perhaps neglecting his title to heaven in the mean time ; another to the court, to get favour to rise to some place of preferment. These places sutler violence. But what violence doth the poor gospel endure ? Alas ! it is slighted ; and men will regard that when they can spare time, &c. It is not regarded according to the worth and value of it. If ever we look to have good by the gospel, our dispositions must be violent, in some proportion answerable to the excellency of it.
Alas ! we may justly turn the complaint on ourselves, that whilst we spend our strength in violence about the base and mean things of this life, the kingdom of heaven it offereth 'violence to us, and yet we will none of it. How doth God beseech us in the ministry ! * We beseech you to be reconciled,' 2 Cor. v. 20 ; and ' Why will ye die, 0 house of Israel?' Ezek. xviii. 31. As if the gospel and grace were commodities that God were weary of, he comes and puts them upon us whether we will or no, and yet we refuse them. We are so far from offering violence to the gospel and to grace, that God offers violence to us, as if we should do him a favour to receive the gospel, and to do good to our own souls ; and yet the vile, proud, base heart of man will not regard and receive these heavenly things. How will it justify God's sentence at the day of judgment, when he shall allege there was a discovery of such things unto you, and instead of violence in seeking them, you slighted and neglected them? Nay, there is a worse sort of men than these, those that oppose the ' kingdom- of heaven ' in the means of it, in the persons of it ; what kind of men are these, think you ?
Again, We see here that there is a blessed violence that may stand with judgment. A man cannot be violent and wise in the things of this world, because the things are mean ; and eagerness is above the proportion of them. A man cannot be violent after honour or riches, and be as he should be. These are things that he must leave behind him, and they are worse than himself. Much less after filthy pleasures can a man be violent and ■wise ; a man * must become a fool in this respect,' as the Scripture saith, 1 Cor. iii. 18. But in respect of heavenly things, a man may be violent and wise ; for there is such a degree of excellency in the things that no violence can be too much. Men talk of being too strict and too holy. Can there be too much of that which we can never have enough of in this world ? I speak it the rather to confound the base judgment that the world hath of a holy disposition, which is carried with a sweet, eager violence to these things. They are thought to be frantic, to be out of their wits, as they thought St Paul was ; but he answers, ' If we be out of our wits, beside ourselves, it is to God,' 2 Cor. v. 13. Chi'ist himself was sometimes laid hands on, as if he had been out of himself, John x. 20 ; and as Festus told blessed St Paul, ' that much learning had made him mad,' Acts xxvi. 24, when he saw him eager in the cause of Christ, so many, when they see a man earnest in the matters of God, they think surely these men have lost then* discretion. No ; it is the highest discretion in the world to be eager and violent for things that are invaluable ; and if men bo not eager for these, they are fools. They know not how to prize things. The most judicious men here are most violent. So that it be violence that hath eyes in its head, violence guided with judgment, from the knowledge of the excellency of the good things of the gospel, I speak of such a violence as that.
Away, then, with base reproaches ! Let us not be afirighted with the ill
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reports of idle brains and rotten hearts of people, that know not the things that belong to the ' kingdom of heaven.' Alas ! they know not what they say ; they are to be pitied, and not censured. Is there anything that a man should be earnest for if not for these things ? Were our souls made to pursue things that are earthly and base, worse than ourselves ? AVerc our wits made only to plod in our temporal, and to neglect our heavenly, calling ? If anything may challenge the best of our endeavours, the man-ow of our labours, the utmost of our spirits and wits, certainly it is these : grace and glory, that will stand by us when all things will fail us. Therefore let not your own hearts besot you, nor the vain speeches of others afiright you. It will be acknowledged by every one ere long that there is nothing worth a man's eagerness but these things. The worldling is violent and eager ; he troubleth himself and his house about ' a vain shadow,' Eccles. vi. 12, for pleasures and profit, &c. ; and what comes of all his violence ? He is turned naked into his grave, and thence into hell ; and there is an end of all the violence about all other things besides these.