Moses his choice with his eye fixed upon Heaven, discovering the happy condition of…

Now if you have any conviction at all, tell me, ⟨p. 164⟩Are you willing to enter into the ways of God? Do you think them worthy of regard, if it were not for trouble and affliction? Then so it stands, if you were not to suffer affliction, you would embrace them; and what an ignoble spirit is this, unbeseeming a Christian, whose spirit should have true Nobility and Magnanimity, and you come off thus basely, If you should never suffer, if have no trouble! Truly God is much beholden to you (as we may speak with holy reverence;) you would have God choose you, notwithstanding all your sins that are grievous to him: Why will not you choose God and his ways, notwithstanding the afflictions and sufferings that are grievous to you? Do you think the sufferings you are like to meet withal in Gods ways, are more grievous to you, then your sins are to him? Yet notwithstanding your sins, he chooses you; Why notwithstanding the sufferings you may meet with, should not you choose him? Suppose Christ had stood upon these terms, and said, It is true, I see poor wretched sinful man ready to perish, and must lie under the wrath of an infinite God, and it pities me to see his misery, and I could be content to redeem him, but I must suffer so much, be in the form of a servant, and be despised, and persecuted, and suffer a cursed death, and therefore let him rather perish: If Christ had stood at this, what had become of you? Yet you stand at this. Gods ways are good, my ways are evil; I could be content to embrace Gods ways; but I must suffer: If Christ did not make a stand at this, when he saw thy misery, but was content to redeem thee, and brake through all sufferings; Why should not you be content to ⟨p. 156⟩embrace him in his ways through all sufferings? Why should not your hearts be convinced by that which hath so much reason in it?

It is reported of one Marinus a Soldier, when it fell to him to be preferred in some place, he was like to lose it because he was a Christian, and he began to stagger, and to have thoughts rather to leave off Religion, then to lose his place: Then came one Theodistus, and brings him into the Temple, and laid by him the Sword and the Testament, the Gospel, and bade him take his choice: Here is the Sword, which is an emblem of thy place, and here is the Gospel, choose the one, you must have but one: Then his heart gave in, and so left the Sword, and chose the Gospel. The wisdom of God this day hath stood, and still stands before you, pleading with you, crying to you to come in and embrace her, to make a happy choice for thy soul; folly likewise hath her pleadings, and persuasions to draw thee to the lusts of the flesh, both make their offers unto thee; as they say of Hercules when he was young, he saw virtue and vice in the likeness of two Virgins wooing him, vice like a painted Harlot, and virtue like a sober chaste Virgin, both presenting themselves with wooing offers unto him.