The covenant of life opened, or, A treatise of the covenant of grace

Ans. No actings. 2. Slow actings and lent. 3. Actings indifferent. 4. Closing with contrary providences, reproaches, work not on mortification to fire the man. Psal. 35.12. They speak mischievous things. 13. But I as a deaf man, heard not. David feared to be the reproach of the foolish: Such a case, though from God, would raise a cry in a child of this world. Psal. 39.9. I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because thou did it. A mortified man is dead to the voice of men-singers and women-singers, and musical instruments of all sorts, Eccles. 2.8. and houses, gardens,¹ vineyards, orchards, great possessions, cattle, treasures, gold, silver, are all as music to a dead man: and repenting Solomon now mortified, looks on them as a wise man upon experienced vanity and vexation of spirit. Will he sing and dance at a shadow? Except a mad man, none will do that. 2. If any thing, without a child of God, work upon him, they move him not much: Psal. 131.2. Surely I have behaved and quieted my self, as a child that is weaned of his mother, my soul is even as a weaned child. Acts 20.24. None of these things move me: I make not much reckoning of bands. Peter, ²1 Pet. 4.12. will have the saints not to think burning quick, strange, graces motions are quiet, slow, modest, there is not much fire in the spirit of a weaned child: A mortified soul is as a sea that hath no winds, nor low ebbings, nor high spring tides. Grace stirs leisurely and lentely toward all things, except to God: were there ten Paradises offered to it, it cries not, a dying mans pulse beats weakly. Grace shouts at nothing,³ wonders at, and admires nothing; weeps slowly, laughs slowly, sings weakly, eats slowly, drinks not wantonly, feasts, and yet trembles and fears, whether it be the outward or the inward man. David says it well