The saints everlasting rest

And thus doing, thou shalt see thy heart will submit; its resistance will be brought under; and its backwardness will be turned to compliance.

2. When thou hast got thy heart to the work, beware lest it delude thee by a loitering formality; lest it say, I go, and go not; lest it trifle out the time, while it should be effectually meditating. When thou hast perhaps but an hour's time for meditation, the time will be spent before thy heart will be serious. This doing of duty, as if we did it not, doth undo as many as the flat omission of it. To rub out the hour in a ba•e lazy th•nking of heaven, is but to lose that hour, and delude thyself. What is to be done in this case? Why, do here also as you do by a loitering servant; keep thine eye always upon thy heart; look not so much to the time it spendeth in the duty, as to the work that i• done: you can tell by his work, whether your servant hath been painful: ask, what affections have yet been acted? How much am I yet got nearer heaven? Verily many a man's heart must be followed as close in this duty of meditation, as an ox at the plough, that will go no longer than you are calling or scourging; if you cease driving but a moment, the heart will stand still.

I would not have thee of the judgment of those who think that while they are so backward, it is better let it alone; and that if mere love will not bring them to the duty, the service is worse than the omission: these men understand not, First, that this argument would certainly cashier all spiritual obedience; nor do they understand well the corruptness of their own ⟨p. 372⟩natures; nor that their sinful undisposedness will not suspend the commands of God; not one sin excuse another; especially they little know the way of GOD to excite their affections; and that the love which should compel them, must itself be first compelled, in the same sense as it is said to compel: love I know is a most precious grace, and should have the chief interest in all our duties; but there are means appointed by GOD to procure this love; and shall I not use those means, till I can use them from love? that were to neglect the means, till I have the end. Must I not seek to procure love, till I have it already? There are means also for the increasing of love where it is begun, and means for exciting it where it lieth dull; and must I not use these means, till it is increased and excited? Fall upon the work, till thou art constrained to love; and then love will constrain thee to further duty.