In the first place,1 Learn to Examine your Hearts from this, what your Life is: Examine in this thing, what is your Life? Whether you can say as the Apostle here did, To me to live is Christ? What do you account your Lives to be? It would be a very near Point, if God would but help you to understand it, and seriously to weigh it. I say, What do you account your Lives to consist in? Why some Men think, O for me to live, it's to get an Estate, that's my Life. Another thinks, to me to live, why it is, to have Company, to be Merry, to Eat and Drink, that is Life to me. Another, to live, why it's to be great in the World, to be accounted some Body, ⟨p. 111⟩to get Honour, to get Places: The Lives of Men consist in such things as these are, Most Men account it to be their Lives, to enjoy the Contentments of the World; so be it they can have so much coming in as they may please the Flesh, and satisfy the Lusts of the Flesh; there's a brave Life. Who do you account to be the Men that live the brave Lives in the World? O that you would Answer as in the Presence of God now: Whether do you account the Men that have all the Contentives to the Flesh, that possibly may be, as Honour, Repute, and Esteem, and live at Ease, and can Ride up and down, and have Attendance about them, and brave in their Clothes, to live the brave Lives? Or whether those Men that are serviceable to the Great Ends of God, in setting forth the Honour of Jesus Christ? Which are the Men that God accounts most Happy? Would you account a Man that were very Mean and Low in the World, and Despised by the World, yet if he be Serviceable to Christ in the World, and enjoy Christ himself in the World, to be a more Happy man in this Life? Not only that he should be a more Happy man in the Life to come, but in this Life, then he that lives the bravest Life, in all the Jollity and Contentment here in this World? Certainly, the disposition of your Hearts in this thing, doth much discover what they are in reference unto God. That's the First.
In the first place,1 Learn to Examine your Hearts from this, what your Life is: Examine in this thing, what is your Life? Whether you can say as the Apostle here did, To me to live is Christ? What do you account your Lives to be? It would be a very near Point, if God would but help you to understand it, and seriously to weigh it. I say, What do you account your Lives to consist in? Why some Men think, O for me to live, it's to get an Estate, that's my Life. Another thinks, to me to live, why it is, to have Company, to be Merry, to Eat and Drink, that is Life to me. Another, to live, why it's to be great in the World, to be accounted some Body, ⟨p. 111⟩to get Honour, to get Places: The Lives of Men consist in such things as these are, Most Men account it to be their Lives, to enjoy the Contentments of the World; so be it they can have so much coming in as they may please the Flesh, and satisfie the Lusts of the Flesh; there's a brave Life. Who do you account to be the Men that live the brave Lives in the World? O that you would Answer as in the Presence of God now: Whether do you account the Men that have all the Contentives to the Flesh, that possibly may be, as Honour, Repute, and Esteem, and live at Ease, and can Ride up and down, and have Attendance about them, and brave in their Clothes, to live the brave Lives? Or whether those Men that are serviceable to the Great Ends of God, in setting forth the Honour of Jesus Christ? Which are the Men that God accounts most Happy? Would you account a Man that were very Mean and Low in the World, and Despised by the World, yet if he be Serviceable to Christ in the World, and enjoy Christ himself in the World, to be a more Happy man in this Life? Not only that he should be a more Happy man in the Life to come, but in this Life, then he that lives the bravest Life, in all the Jollity and Contentment here in this World? Certainly, the disposition of your Hearts in this thing, doth much discover what they are in reference unto God. That's the First.
- 1Appl.
