4. But may not this very consideration make it reasonable to enquire, If so much has been said and wrote on the subject already, what need is there to say or write any more? I answer, there are no inconsiderable numbers, even of people fearing God, who have not had the opportunity either of hearing what has been spoke, or reading what has been wrote upon it. And perhaps if they had read much of what has been written, they would not have been much profited. Many who have wrote, (some of them large volumes) do by no means appear to have understood the subject. Either they had imperfect views of the very nature of it (and then they could never explain it to others) or they were unacquainted with the due extent of it; they did not see how _exceeding broad_ this command is: or they were not sensible of the absolute, the indispensable necessity of it. Others speak of it in so dark, so perplext, so intricate, so mystical a manner, as if they designed rather to conceal it from the vulgar, than to explain it to common readers. Others speak admirably well, with great clearness and strength, on the necessity of self-denial; but then they deal in generals only, without coming to particular instances, and so are of little use to the bulk of mankind, to men of ordinary capacity and education. And if some of them do descend to particulars, it is to those particulars only, which do not affect the generality of men, since they seldom, if ever, occur in common life: such as the enduring imprisonment or tortures: the giving up, in a literal sense, their houses or lands, their husbands or wives, children, or life itself: to none of which we are called, nor are likely to be, unless God should permit times of public persecution to return. In the mean time, I know of no writer in the _English_ tongue, who has described the nature of self-denial, in plain and intelligible terms, such as lie level with common understandings, and applied it to those little particulars, which daily occur in common life. A discourse of this kind is wanted still: and it is wanted the more, because in every stage of the spiritual life, altho’ there is a variety of particular hindrances, of our attaining grace or growing therein, yet are all resolvible into these general ones, either we do not deny ourselves, or we do not take up our cross.
In order to supply this defect in some degree, I shall endeavour to shew, first, What it is for a man to deny himself, and what to take up his cross: and secondly, That if a man be not fully Christ’s disciple, it is always owing to the want of this.