[1.] Bij placing our comforts and joys in other things, and not being filled with joy in the Holy Ghost. When we make creatures or creature comforts — any thing whatever but what we receive by the Spirit of Christ — to be our joy and our delight, we are false with Christ. So was it with Demas,^ who loved the present world. When the ways of the Sphit of God are grievous and burdensome to us, — when we say, " When will the Sabbath be past, that we may exact all our labom-s?" — when our delight and refi'eshment lies in earthly things, — we are unsuitable to Christ. May not his Spirit say, " Why do I still abide with these jioor souls? I provide them joys unspeakable and glorious; but they refuse them, for peiishing things. I provide them spiritual, eternal, abiding consolations, and it is all rejected for a thing of nought." This Christ cannot bear; wherefore, believers are ' 1 Thess. V. 19. - 2 Tim. iv. 10.
150 OF COMMUNION WITH THE SON JESUS CHRIST.
exceeding careful in this, not to place their joy and consolation in any thing but what is administered by the Spiiit. Their daily work is, to get their hearts crucified to the world and the things of it, and the world to their hearts ; that they may not have living affections to dying things: they would fain look on the world as a crucified, dead thing, that hath neither form nor beauty ; and if at any times they have been entangled with creatures and inferior contentment, and have lost their better joys, they cry out to Christ, " O restore to us the joys of thy Spirit ! "
[2.] He is grieved when, through darkness and unbelief, we will not, do not, receive those consolations which he tenders to us, and which he is abundantly willing that we should receive. But of this I shall have occasion to speak afterward, in handling our communion with the Holy Ghost.
3. In [kee2nng'\ his institutions, or matter and manner of his worshij). Christ marrying his church to himself, taking it to that relation, still expresseth the main of their chaste and choice affections to him to lie in their' keeping his institutions and his worship according to his appointment. The breach of this he calls "adulteiy" everywhere, and " whoredom." He is a "jealous God ;■" and he gives himself that title only in respect of his institutions. And the whole apostasy of the Christian church unto false worship is called ^"fornication;" and the church that leads the others to false worship, the "mother of harlots." On this account, those believers who really attend to com- munion with Jesus Christ, do labour to keep their hearts chaste to him in his ordinances, institutions, and worship; and that two ways : —
(1.) They ivill receive nothing, p)ractise nothing, otun nothing, in his worship, but what is of his appointment. They know that from the foundation of the world he never did allow, nor ever will, that in any thing the will of the creatuies should be the measure of his honour or the principle of his worship, either as to matter or manner. It was a witty and true sense that one gave of the second command- ment: "Non imago, non simulachrum prohibetur; sed non facies tibi;" — it is a making to ourselves, an inventing, a finding out, ways of worship, or means of honouring God, not by him appointed, that is so severely foi-bidden. Believers know what entertamment all will- worship finds with God: "Who hath required these things at your hand?" and, "In vain do you worship me, teaching for doctrines the traditions of men," — is the best it meets with. I shall take leave to say what is upon my lieart, and wliat (the Lord assisting) I shall willingly endeavour to make good against all the world, — namely, that that principle, that the cJnirch hath poiver to institute and ap-
' Rev. xvii. 5.
OF COMMUNION WITH THE SON JESUS CHRIST. 151
point any thing or ceremony belonging to the tvorship of God, either as to matter or to manner, beyond the orderly observance of such circunxstances as necessarily attend such ordinances as Christ himself hath instituted, lies at the bottom of all the horrible superstition and idolatry, of all the confusion, blood, persecution, and wars, that have for so long a season spread themselves over the face of the Christian world ; and that it is the design of a great part of the Revelation to make a discovery of this truth. And I doubt not })ut that the gi-eat controversy which God hath had with this nation for so many years, and which he hath pursued with so much anger and indignation, was upon this account: — that, contrary to that glorious light of the gospel which shone among us, the wills and fancies of men, under the name of order, decency, and the authority of the church (a chimera that none knew what it was, nor wherein the power of it did consist, nor in whom reside), were imposed on men in the ways and worship of God. Neither was all that pretence of glory, beauty, comeliness, and conformity, that then was pleaded, any thing more or less than what God doth so describe in the church of Israel, Ezek. xvi. 25, and for- wards. Hence was the Spirit of God in prayer derided; heace was the powerful preaching of the gospel despised; hence was the Sab- bath decried; hence was holiness stigmatized and persecuted; — to what end? That Jesus Christ might be deposed from the sole privi- lege and power of law-making in his church ; that the true husband might be thrust aside, and adulterers of his spouse embraced; that taskmasters might be appointed in and over his house, which he never gave to his church, Eph. iv. 11; that a ceremonious, pompous, out- ward show worship, drawn from Pagan, Judaical, and Antichristian observations, might be introduced ; — of all which there is not one word, tittle, or iota, in the whole book of God. This, then, they who hold communion with Christ are careful of: — they will admit of nothing, practise nothing, in the worship of God, private or public, but what they have his warrant for ; unless it comes in his name, -with " Thus saith the Lord Jesus," they will, not hear an angel from heaven." They know the apostles themselves were to teach the saints only what Christ commanded them. Matt, xxviii. 20. You know how many in this very nation, in the days not long since past, yea, how many thousands, left their native soil, and went into a vast and howling wilderness in the utmost parts of the world, to keep their souls unde- filed and chaste to their dear Lord Jesus, as to this of his worship and institutions.