The divine life in three treatises

TO THE READER.

THE Embryo of this Book was but one Sermon, preached a little before the ending of my public Ministry, upon the Text of the third Treatise, (upon the occasion intimated in the Epistle to that truly Honour able Lady) Being obliged to communicate the Notes, and unavoidably guilty of some delays, I made a compensation by enlargement; and (having reasons for the publication of them, with which I shall not trouble you) to make them more suitable to the designed end, I prefixed the two former Treatises: The first I had preached to my ancient flock: Of the second I had preached but one Sermon: If many of the materials in the second be the same as in the first, you must understand that my design required that it should be so: They being the same Attributes of God, which the first Part endeavoureth to imprint upon the mind; and which the second and third endeavour to improve into a constant course of holy affection and conversation: As it is the same food which the first concoction chylifieth, which the perfecting concoctions do work over again, and turn into blood and spirits and flesh: so far am I in such points from gratifying thy sickly desire of variety, and avoiding the displeasing of thee by the rehearsals of the same, that it ⟨image 9⟩is my very business with thee to persuade thee, to live continually upon these same Attributes and Relations of God, as upon thy daily air and bread; and to forsake that lean consuming company, who feed on the shells of hard and barren controversies, or on the froth of complements and affected shows, and run after novelty instead of substantial solid nutriment: And to tell thee, that the primitive, pure, simple Christianity, consisted in the daily serious use of the great materials of the Creed; Lords Prayer, and ten Commandments, contracted in the words of our Baptismal Covenant. Do thus, and thou will be like those examples of the succeeding Church, in uprightness, purity, simplicity, charity, peaceableness and holy communion with God, when the pretended subtleties and sublimities of wanton, uncharitable, contentious wits, will serve but to strangle or delude their souls.