The true Christians love of the unseen Christ, or, A discourse chiefly tending to…

And if you have hesitated, they have told you that it was very disputable, whether the confines of duty did not reach beyond the place which they would bring you unto, propounding the example of others of the same Religious Profession, that have frequently gone so far, and why should you scruple: or if it were a transgression it was but a little transgression, they would not desire you to go far, and who is there that lives and doth not transgress those bounds? and you might easily repent and find mercy if God were offended; you might quickly retire and return into your former limits; then whilst you have been parleying with temptations, the silken cords have been fastened about you, and ere you have been aware you have been drawn along, partly willing and partly unwilling, and enticed unto some kind of sins, and complied with some kind of lusts, indulging your selves to give them satisfaction, whereby you have been beguiled, and befooled, whereby you have been secretly wounded and inwardly defiled; and thus your evidences for Heaven have been miserably blotted, so that now you are not able to read them. Time hath been when worldly Affections seemed to be mortified within you, to ⟨p. 198⟩be dead and buried, many a sore thrust and wound you had given unto them, and how did they bleed and faint, and grew so weak that they seemed to be giving up the Ghost, and you have thought sure•y they would never ••ir much in you any more; and then your love to Christ was strong and active, it did burn and flame within you▪ and O the zeal which you then had for your Masters honour, and you seemed to have no interest to carry on in the world but the interest of Christ, and you minded not your own things upon your own account, but all your interests were swallowed up in the interest of Jesus Christ, which you chiefly minded and cared for, and made every thing else to truckle under it, and to be subservient unto it; but now your affections to Christ are strangely cooled; if there be the fire of love to Christ still within you, it is not fire in burning coals, or in a vehement flame, but it is a fire in a few scattered sparks, and those raked over that they give neither light nor heat, and are hardly, if at all, discernible by you; and your worldly Affections which seemed to be dead, they have gotten Spirit and Life and Vigour, and Strength: