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

If the Everlasting Joys were more in your believing thoughts, Spiritual Joys would more abound at present in your hearts. It's no more wonder that you are Comfortless when Heaven is forgotten, or doubtingly remembered, then that you are faint when you eat not, or cold when you stir not, or when you have not fire or clothes.

If the Everlasting Joys were more in your believing thoughts, Spiritual Joys would more abound at present in your hearts. It's no more wonder that you are Comfortless when Heaven is forgotten, or doubtingly remembred, then that you are faint when you eat not, or cold when you stir not, or when you have not fire or clothes.

But when Christians do not only let fall their expectations of the things Unseen, but also heighten their expectations from the Creature: then do they most infallibly prepare for their fears, and troubles, and estrangedness from God, and with both hands draw calamities on their ⟨image 14⟩souls. Who ever meets with a distressed complaining soul, where one or both of these is not apparent? their Low expectations from God hereafter, or their high expectations from the Creature now? What doth keep us under such trouble and disquietness, but that we will not Expect what God hath Promised, or we will needs Expect what he Promised not? And then we complain when we miss of those Expectations which we foolishly and ungroundedly raised to our selves! We are grieved for Crosses, for Losses, for wrongs from our Enemies, for unkind or unfaithful dealings of our Friends, for sickness, for contempt and dis-esteem in the World! But who bid you look for any better? Was it Prosperity, and Riches, and Credit, and Friends, that God called you to Believe for? or that you became Christians for, or that you had an absolute promise of in the Word? If you will make Promises to your self, and then your own Promises deceive you, whom should you blame for that? Nay do we not, as it were, necessitate God hereby, to embitter ⟨image 15⟩all our Comforts below, and to make every Creature as a Scorpion to us, because we will needs make them our petty Deities? We have less Comfort in them then else we might have, because we must needs have more then we should have. You might have more faithfulness from your Friends, more Reputation in the World, more sweetness in all your present enjoyments, if you looked for Less. Why is it that you can scarce name a Creature near you, that is not a scourge to you, but because you can scarce name one that is not your Idol? or, at least, which you do not expect more from, then you ought? Nay (which is one of the saddest Considerations of this kind that can be imagined) God is fain to scourge us most even by the highest Professors of Religion, because we have most Idolized them, and had such excessive pectations from them.