A fourth volume containing one hundred and fifty sermons on several texts of Scripture…

2. In your moral Actions; Ephes. 6. where all moral Duties are reciprocally set down, as Duties of Husbands and Wives, Masters and Servants, Parents and Children: the Apostle presseth them to do all as in and to the Lord, not merely that they may live together in Contentment and Peace▪ but they must walk in their Relations, ⟨p. 40⟩so as God may have Honour. A Christian by an excellent Art turns his second Table-Duties into first Table-Duties; and makes his civil Commerce a kind of Religious Worship.

3. So in all spiritual Acts: The whole Ordination of the spiritual Life must be to God; I through the Law am dead to the Law, that I might live unto God, Gal. 2.19. All the Motions and Tendencies of the Soul are to advance God, and glorify God. In the very spiritual internal Actions and Reachings forth of the Soul after God, why do I desire to have Grace and Pardon? That God may be glorified, that must be the last End. Our Desires can never be regular in asking Grace, till they suit with God's End in giving Grace. Now what are God's Ends in giving Grace? Eph. 1.6. To the Praise of the Glory of his Grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the Beloved. All that God aims at, is to make Grace glorious; and that Grace may carry away all the Praise. So in your Desires of Pardon, Heaven and Salvation, you are to desire them, that God may be glorified in your Salvation, and in the Pardon of your Sins. So in our external Actions, Prayer, Worship, Preaching, whatever we do. In sacred things it is dangerous to look asquint, and to serve our selves, our own Lusts, our Covetousness or Pride upon the Worship of God; this is to put Dung in God's own Cup. It were a mighty Affront to a King to fill his Cup full of Excrements. Nothing alienates the Heart from God so much as Self-respect. God hath given us many things, but he hath reserved the Glory of all to himself; as Pharaoh said to Joseph,