CHAP. X.] RULES FOR ABIDING IN THOUGHTS OF GOD. 393
do know by former experience what is to be attained by it, if we dig and search for it as for a treasure.
If you shall think that the right discharge of this duty may be otherwise attained, if you suppose that it deserves not all this cost and charge about it, judge by what is past whether it be not advis- able to give it over and let it alone. As good lie quietly on the ground as continually attempt to rise and never once effect it. Remember how many successless attempts you have made upon it, and all have come to nothing, or that which is as bad as nothing. I cannot say that in this way you shall always succeed; but I fear you will never have success in this duty without such things as are of the same nature and use with it.
When, after this preparation, you find yourselves yet perplexed and entangled, not able comfortably to persist in spiritual thoughts unto your refreshment, take these two directions for your relief:—
1. Ory and sigh to God for help and relief. Bewail the darkness, weakness, and instability of your minds, so as to groan within your- selves for deliverance. And if your designed meditations do issue only in a renewed gracious sense of your own weakness and insuffi- ciency, with application unto God for supplies of strength, they are by no means lost as unto a spiritual account. The thoughts of Hezekiah in his meditations did not seem to have any great order or consistency when he so expressed them: “ Like a crane or a swallow, so did I chatter: I did mourn as a dove: mine eyes fail with looking upward: O Lorp, I am oppressed ; undertake for me,” Isa. xxxviil. 14. When the soul labours sincerely for communion with God, but sinks into broken, confused thoughts under the weight of its own weakness, yet if he look to God for relief, his chattering and mourning will be accepted with God and profitable unto himself.
2. Supply the brokenness of your thoughts with ejaculatory prayers, according as either the matter of them or your defect in the management of them doth require. So was it with Hezekiah in the instance before mentioned. When his own meditations were weak and broken, he cries out in the midst of them, “O Lorp, Iam oppressed; undertake for me.” And meditation is properly a mixture of spiritual apprehension of God and heavenly things in the thoughts and conceptions of the mind, with desires and supplications thereon.
Tt is good and profitable to have some special designed subject of meditation in our thoughts. I have at large declared before what things are the proper objects of the thoughts of them that are spiri- tually minded; but they may be more peculiarly considered as the matter of designed meditation. And they may be taken out of some especial spiritual experience that we have lately had, or some warn- ings we have received of God, or something wherewith we have been
394 OF SPIRITUAL MINDEDNESS. [PART II.
peculiarly affected in the reading or preaching of the word, or what we find the present posture and frame of our minds and souls to re- quire, or that which supplies all most frequently,—the person and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. If any thing of this nature be peculiarly designed antecedently unto this duty, and a season be sought for it with respect thereunto, the mind will be fixed and kept from wandering after a variety of subjects, wherein it is apt to lose itself and bring nothing to perfection.
Lastly, Be not discouraged with an apprehension that all you can attain unto in the discharge of this duty is so little, so contemptible, as that tt is to no purpose to persist in it; nor be wearied with the difficulties you meet withal in its performance. You have to do with Him only in this matter who “will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax,” whose will it is that none should “ de- spise the day of small things.” And “if there be” in this duty “a ready mind, it is accepted according to what a man hath, and not accord- ing to what he hath not.” He that can bring into this treasury only the mites of broken desires and ejaculatory prayers, so they be his best, shall not come behind them who cast into it out of their greater abundance in ability and skill. To faint and give out because we cannot rise unto such a height as we aim at is a fruit of pride and unbelief. He who finds himself to gain nothing by continual en- deavours after holy, fixed meditations, but only a living, active sense of his own vileness and unworthiness, is a sufficient gainer by all his — pains, cost, and charge. But ordinarily it shall not be so; constancy in the duty will give ability for it. Those who conscientiously abide in its performance shall increase in light, wisdom, and experience, until they are able to manage it with great success.
These few plain directions.may possibly be of some use unto the weaker sort of Christians, when they find a disability in themselves unto the discharge of this duty, wherein those who are spiritually