The divine life in three treatises

2. Moreover, you that are the servants of God, have by your Covenant and Profession, renounced and forsaken all things else (as they stand in any opposition to him, or competition with him) and have resigned your selves wholly unto him alone: And therefore with him must you converse, and be employed, unless you will forsake your Covenant. You knew first that it was your interest to forsake the world and turn to God: You knew the world would not serve your turn, nor be instead of God to you either in life, or at death: And upon this Knowledge it was that you changed your Master, and changed your minds, and changed your way, your work, your hopes: And do you dream now that you were mistaken? Do you begin to think that the world is fitter to be your God or Happiness? if not, you must still confess that both your Interest and your Covenant do oblige you to turn your hearts and minds from the things which you have renounced, and to walk with him that you have taken for your God, and to obey him whom you have taken for your King and Judge, and to keep close to him with purest Love, whom you have taken for your everlasting portion. Mark what you are minding all the day, while you are neglecting God: Is it not something that you have renounced? And did you not renounce it upon sufficient cause? Was it not a work of your most serious deliberation? and of as great wisdom, as any that ever you performed? if it were, turn not back in your hearts again from God unto the renounced Creature. You have had many a lightning from Heaven into your understandings, to bring you to see the difference between them: You have had many a teaching, and many a warning, and many a striving of the spirit, before you were prevailed with to renounce the world, the flesh and the devil, and to ⟨p. 282⟩give up your self entirely and absolutely to God. Nay, did it not cost you the smart of some afflictions, before you would be made so wise? And did it not cost you many a gripe of conscience, and many a terrible thought of Hell, and of the wrath of God, before you would be heartily engaged to him, in his Covenant? And will you now live as strangely and neglectfully towards him, as if those days were quite forgotten? and as if you had never felt such things? and as if you had never been so convinced, or resolved? O Christians, take heed of forgetting your former case! your former thoughts!