Some select cases resolved. Specially, tending to the right ordering of the heart, that…

3. God's Spirit sets a man on work in due season: For let the duty be commanded and rightly directed, yet if it be not done in season, it is not from God's Spirit: Hence Psal. 1. The righteous bring forth fruit in its season: and hence Solomon speaks of words spoken in season, are as apples of Gold: and hence we read in Ecclesiastes, of a time and season for every thing under the Sun. And therefore when there is a season of God's appointing for civil things or business; it is not season now to be molested or perplexed in it, by the injection and evocation of those thoughts which we think to proceed from the Spirit of GOD. I know indeed, that the Spirit of God doth enable a man to do whatever good he doth; but as Grace makes Nature sometimes to serve, so sinful ⟨p. 7⟩Nature brings Grace into captivity, (which Paul complains of, Rom. 7.) and makes Grace to serve it. To exhort and reprove another for sin, is from God's spirit that it is done; but to reprove at an unseasonable time, its from sinful corruption, abusing God's grace, and making Sampson to grind. Its from the excellency of a knife to cut well; but to cut my finger with it when I should be cutting my meat with it ariseth not from the end of the knife, nor from the intention of him that made it; so to think of good things, it is from the spirit, I grant; but to think of them in such a season that God sets you a work to mind and follow other occasions, its from the enemy of God's spirit, and your own peace. For as it is a sin to nourish worldly thoughts when God sets you a work in spiritual heavenly employments; so it is, in some respects, as great a sin to suffer your self to be distracted by spiritual thoughts, when God sets you on work in civil, yet lawful, employments: such thoughts, I conceive, are but the leaven of Monkish holiness, if they divert you from your lawful affairs, when the Lord calls you to follow them. For the Lord never calls you to two divers employments at the same time, unless you make the one to be a means to further the good of the other; which such pious thoughts in some civil employments do; it being no piece of Christian wisdom or honesty to turn round in worldly employments so long till by giddiness we fall down, but by secret ⟨p. 8⟩steps, ever and anon to look up to heaven and to behold the face of God, to whom only therein we are to approve our selves.