Directions and persuasions to a sound conversion for prevention of that deceit and damnation…Directions and perswasions to a sound conversion for prevention of that deceit and damnation…

This is a very common cause of the deceit, and destruction, of such as verily think they are converted. It is the ⟨p. 300⟩very Nature, and business of true Conversion, to turn mens hearts from the flesh, and from the world to God, and from an earthly and seeming happiness, to a Heavenly Real Everlasting Happiness▪ And when men are affrighted into some kind of Religiousness, and yet never learnt to deny themselves, and never mortified their fleshly mind, but the love of this world, is still the chiefest principle at their hearts; and so go on in Profession of godliness, with a secret reserve, that they will look as well as they can to their outward prosperity, whatever become of their Religion, and they will have no more to do with the matters of another world, then may stand with their bodily safety in this world; these are the miserable deluded Hypocrites, whose hopes will prove, as the giving up of the ghost; whom Christ will disown in their greatest extremities, after all their seeming Religiousness. O Sirs, look to this as ever you would be happy. Its an easy, its a common, its a most dangerous thing, to set upon a course of outward Piety, and yet keep the world next your hearts, and take it still as a great part of your felicity, and secretly▪ to ⟨p. 301⟩love your former lusts, while you seem to be converted. The heart is so deceitful, that you have great cause to watch it narrowly in this point: It will closely cherish the love of the world, and your fleshly pleasures, when it seems to renounce them, and when your tongue can speak contemptuously of them. It was not for nothing that Christ would have the first fruits of his Gospel-Church (who were to be the Example of their successors) to sell all, and lay it down at the feet of his Apostles: And it is his standing Rule, that Whoever he be, that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be his Disciple, Luke 14. 33. In estimation, affection, and resolution, it must be forsaken by all that will be saved; and also in practice, when ever God calls us to it. You can have but one Happiness: If you will needs have it in this world, in the contenting of your flesh, there is no hope of having it also in another world, in the fruition of God. If you think not God and Heaven enough for you, and cannot let go the Prosperity of the flesh for them, you must let go all your hopes of them.