The right method for a settled peace of conscience, and spiritual comfort in 32…

To the Poor in Spirit.

MY dearly Beloved Fellow-Christians, whose souls are taken up with the careful thoughts of attaining and maintaining Peace with God: who are vile in your own eyes, and value the Blood and Spirit and Word of your Redeemer, and the Hope of the Saints in their approaching Blessedness, before all the Pomp and Vanities of this world, and Resolve to give up your selves to his Conduct, who is become the Author of Eternal Salvation to all them that obey him: For You do I Publish these following Directions: and to You it is that I direct this Preface. The only Glorious and Infinite God, who made the Worlds, ⟨image 10⟩and upholdeth them by his Word, who is attended with Millions of his Glorious Angels, and Praised continually by his Heavenly hosts: who pulleth down the Mighty from their seats, and scattereth the Proud in the Imaginations of their hearts, and maketh his Enemies lick the dust: to whom the Kings and Conquerors of the Earth are as the silliest worms, and the whole world is Nothing, and lighter then Vanity, which he will shortly turn into flames before your eyes: This God hath sent me to you, with that Joyful Message, which needs no more but your believing entertainment, to make it sufficient to raise you from the dust, and banish those terrors and troubles from your hearts, and help you to live like the Sons of God. He commandeth me to tell you, that he takes notice of your sorrows: he stands by when you see him not and say He hath forsaken you: he minds you with greatest tenderness when you say He hath forgotten you: He numbereth your sighs: he bottles up your tears: the groans of your hearts do reach his own. He takes ⟨image 10⟩it unkindly, that you are so suspicious of him: and that all that he hath done for you in the work of Redemption, and all the gracious workings of his Spirit on your souls, and all your own peculiar experiences of his Goodness, can raise you to no higher apprehensions of his Love! Shall not Love be acknowledged to be Love, when its grown to a Miracle? when it surpasseth Comprehension! Must the Lord set up Love and Mercy in the work of Redemption, to be equally admired with his Omnipotency manifested in the Creation? and call forth the World to this sweet employment, that in Secret and in Public it might be the business of our lives? and yet shall it be so overlooked or questioned, as if you lived without Love and Mercy in the World?