Meditations and discourses concerning the glory of Christ applied unto unconverted sinners, and saints…Meditations and discourses concerning the glory of Christ applyed unto unconverted sinners, and saints…

1. THAT no Duties of Mortification be prescribed unto this end, as a Means of Recovery from Spiritual Decays, but what for Matter and Manner are of Divine Institution and Command. All others are laid under a severe Interdict, under what pretence soever they may be used, Who hath required these things at your hands? Want hereof, is that whereby a pretended Design to advance Religion in the Papacy, hath ruined it. They have under the name and pretence of the means of Mortification, or the Duties of it, invented and enjoined, like the Pharisees, a number of Works, Ways, Duties, so called, which God never appointed, nor approved, nor will accept, nor shall they ever do good unto the Souls of Men. Such are their Confessions, Disciplines, Pilgrimages, Fastings, Abstinence, framed Prayers to ⟨p. 65⟩be repeated in stated Canonical hours, in such a length and number. In the bodily Labour of these things, they exercise themselves to no Spiritual Advantage.

1. THAT no Duties of Mortification be prescribed unto this end, as a Means of Recovery from Spiritual Decays, but what for Matter and Manner are of Divine Institution and Command. All others are laid under a severe Interdict, under what pretence soever they may be used, Who hath required these things at your hands? Want hereof, is that whereby a pretended Design to advance Religion in the Papacy, hath ruined it. They have under the name and pretence of the means of Mortification, or the Duties of it, invented and enjoyned, like the Pharisees, a number of Works, Ways, Duties, so called, which God never appointed, nor approved, nor will accept, nor shall they ever do good unto the Souls of Men. Such are their Confessions, Disciplines, Pilgrimages, Fastings, Abstinence, framed Prayers to ⟨p. 65⟩be repeated in stated Canonical hours, in such a length and number. In the bodily Labour of these things, they exercise themselves to no Spiritual Advantage.

BUT it is Natural to all Men to divert to such Reliefs in this case. Those who are throughly convinced of Spiritual Decays, are therewithal pressed with a sense of the Guilt of Sin; for it is Sin which hath brought them into that Condition. Hereon in the first place they set their Contrivance at work, how they may atone Divine Displeasure, and obtain Acceptance with God: And if they are not under the actual Conduct of Evangelical Light, two things immediately offer themselves unto them. First, Some extraordinary course in Duties, which God hath not commanded. This is the way which they betake themselves unto in the Papacy, and which Guilt in the Darkness of corrupted Nature vehemently calls for. Secondly, An extraordinary multiplication of such Duties, as for the substance of them are required of us. An instance in both kinds we have