A Christian Directory

§. 4. Direct. 2. Remember how much your carnal Desires do aggravate the weakness of your spiritual ¹Desires, and make the sin more odious and unexcusable. Are you so eager for a Husband, a Wife, a Child, for wealth, for preferment or such things, while you are so cold and indifferent in your Desires after God and grace and glory? Your desires after these are not so earnest! They make you not so importunate and restless: They take not up your thoughts both day and night: They set you not so much on contrivances and endeavours: You can live as quietly without more grace or assurance of salvation or communion with God, as if you were indifferent in the business: But you must needs have that which you desire in the world, or there is no quiet with you. Do you consider what a horrible contempt of God and grace and Heaven is manifested by this? Either you are Regenerate or unregenerate. If you are Regenerate, all your instructions, and all your experiences of the worth of spiritual things, and the vanity of things temporal, do make it a heinous sin in you to be now so eager for those things which you have so often called vanity, while you are so cold towards God, whose Goodness you have had so great experience of. Do you know no better yet the difference between the creature and the Creator? Do you yet no better understand your necessities and interest, and what it is that you live upon and must trust to, for your everlasting blessedness and content. If you are unregenerate (as all are that Love any thing better than God) what a ⟨p. 333⟩madness is it for one that is condemned in Law to endless torments, and shall be quickly there, if he be not regenerate and justified by Christ, to be thirsting so eagerly for this or that thing or person upon earth, when he should presently bestir him with all his might to save his soul from endless misery▪ How incongruous are these Desires to the good and bad?

§. 4. Direct. 2. Remember how much your carnal Desires do aggravate the weakness of your spiritual ¹Desires, and make the sin more odious and unexcusable. Are you so eager for a Husband, a Wife, a Child, for wealth, for preferment or such things, while you are so cold and indifferent in your Desires after God and grace and glory? Your desires after these are not so earnest! They make you not so importunate and restless: They take not up your thoughts both day and night: They set you not so much on contrivances and endeavours: You can live as quietly without more grace or assurance of salvation or communion with God, as if you were indifferent in the business: But you must needs have that which you desire in the world, or there is no quiet with you. Do you consider what a horrible contempt of God and grace and Heaven is manifested by this? Either you are Regenerate or unregenerate. If you are Regenerate, all your instructions, and all your experiences of the worth of spiritual things, and the vanity of things temporal, do make it a heynous sin in you to be now so eager for those things which you have so often called vanity, while you are so cold towards God, whose Goodness you have had so great experience of. Do you know no better yet the difference between the creature and the Creator? Do you yet no better understand your necessities and interest, and what it is that you live upon and must trust to, for your everlasting blessedness and content. If you are unregenerate (as all are that Love any thing better than God) what a