do aggravate the weakness of your spiritual desires, and make the sin more odious and unexcusable.' Are you so eager for a husband, a wife, a child, for wealth, for preferment, or such things, while you are so cold and indifferent in your desires after God, and grace, and glory? Your desires after these are not so earnest ! They make you not so importunate and restless: they take not up your thoughts both day and night: they set you not so much on contrivances and endeavours: you can live as quietly without more grace, or assurance of salvation, or communion with God, as if you were indifferent in the business: but you must needs have that which you desire in the world, or there is no quiet with you. Do you consider what a horrible contempt of God, and grace, and heaven, is manifested by this? Either you are regenerate or unregenerate. If you are regenerate, all your instructions, and all your experience of the worth of spiritual things, and the vanity of things temporal, do make it a heinous sin in you to be now so eager for those things which you have so often called vanity, while you are so cold towards God whose goodness you have had so great experience of. Do you know no better yet the difference between the creature and the Creator? Do you yet no better understand your necessities and interest, and what it is that you live upon and must trust to, for your everlasting blessedness and content? If you are unregenerate (as all are that love any thing better than God) what a madness is it for one that is condemned in law to endless torments, and shall be quickly there, if he be not regenerate and justified by Christ, to be thirsting so eagerly for this or that thing, or person, upon earth, when he should presently bestir him with all his might to save his soul from endless misery! How incongruous are these desires to the good and bad?

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Direct. III. Let every sinful desire humble you, for the worldliness and fleshliness which it discovereth to be yet unmortified in you; and turn your desires to the mortifying of that flesh and concupiscence which is the cause.' If you did not yet love the world, and the things that are in the world, you would not be so eager for them. If you were not too carnal, and did not mind too much the things of the flesh, you would not be so earnest for them as you

are. It should be a grievous thing to your hearts to consider what wordliness and fleshliness this sheweth to be yet there. That you should set so much by the creature, as to be unable to bear the want of it: is this renouncing the world and flesh? The thing you need is not that which you so much desire; but a better heart, to know the vanity of the creature, to be dead to the world, and to be able to bear the want or loss of any thing in it; and a fuller mortification of the flesh: mortifying and not satisfying it, is your work.

Direct. IV. Ask your hearts seriously whether God in Christ be enough for them, or not? If they say no; they renounce him and all their hope of heaven: for no man takes God for his God that takes him not for his portion, and as enough for him: if they say yea; then you have enough to stop the mouth of your fleshly desires, while your hearts confess that they have enough in God.' Should that soul that hath a filial interest in God, and an inheritance in eternal life, be eager for any conveniences and contentments to the flesh? If God be not enough for you, you will never have enough. Turn to him more, and know him better, if you would have a satisfied mind.

Direct. v. Remember that every sinful desire is a rebelling of your wills against the will of God; and that it is his will that must govern and dispose of all, and your wills must be conformed to his; yea, that you must take pleasure and rest in the will of God.' Reason the case with your hearts, and say, "Who is it that is the governor of the world? and who is to rule me and dispose of my affairs? Is it I or God? Whose will is it that must lead, and whose must follow? Whose will is better guided, God's or mine? Either it is his will that I shall have what I desire, or not: if it be, I need not be so eager, for I shall have it in his time and way: if it be not his will, is it fit for me to mur mur and strive against him?' Remember that your discontents and carnal desires are so many accusations brought in against God: as if you said, thou hast not dealt well or wisely, or mercifully by me: I must have it better: I will not stand to thy will and government: I must have it as I will, and have the disposal of myself.

Direct. VI. Observe how your eager desires are con

demned by yourselves in your daily prayers, or else they make your prayers themselves condemnable. If you pray that the will of God may be done, why do your wills rebel against it, and your desires contradict your prayers? And if you ask no more than your daily bread, why thirst you after more? But if you pray as you desire, Lord let my will be done, and my selfish, carnal desire be fulfilled, for I must needs have this or that;' then what an abominable prayer is this? Desire as you must pray.

Direct. VII. " Remember what covenant you have made with God; that you renounced the world and the flesh, and took him for your Lord, and King, and Father, and yielded up yourselves as his own, as his subject, and as his child, to be disposed of, ruled, and provided for by him: and this covenant is essential not only to your Christianity, but to your taking him for your God.' And do you repent of it? or will you break it, and forfeit all the benefits of the covenant? If you will needs have the disposal of yourselves, you discharge God of his covenant and fatherly care for you: and then what will become of you, if he so forsake you?

Direct. VIII. Bethink you how unmeet you are to be the choosers of your own condition.' You foresee not what that person, or thing, or place will prove to you, which you so eagerly desire: for ought you know it may be your undoing, or the greatest misery that ever befell you. Many an one hath cried with Rachel, "Give me children or else I die "," that have died by the wickedness and unkindness of their children. Many an one hath been violent in their desires of a husband or a wife, that afterwards have broken their hearts, or proved a greater affliction to them than any enemy they had in the world. Many an one hath been eager for riches, and prosperity, and preferment that hath been ensnared by them, to the damnation of his soul. Many an one hath been earnest for some office, dignity, or place of trust, which hath made it a great increaser of his sin and misery. And it is flesh and self that is the eager desirer of things that are against the will of God, and nothing is so blind and partial as self and flesh. You think not your child a competent judge of what is best for him, and make not his desires, but your own understanding the guide and

a Gen. xxx. 1.

rule of your dealings with him, or disposals of him. And are you more fit choosers for yourselves in comparison of God, than your child is in comparison of you? Either you take God for your Father, or you do not. If you do not, call him not Father, and hope not for mercy and salvation from him if you do, is he not wise and good enough to dispose of you, and to determine what is best for you, and to choose for you?

Direct. 1x. Remember that it is one of the greatest plagues on this side hell, to be given up to our own desires, and that by your eagerness and discontents you provoke God thus to give you up.' "So I gave them up to their own heart's lust, and they walked in their own counsels : O that my people had hearkened to me! &c." "Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, through the lusts of their own hearts, &c." "For this cause God gave them up to vile affections "." "And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient." God may give you that which you so eagerly desire, as he gave "Israel a king, even in his anger." Or as he gave the Israelites "their own desire, even flesh which he rained upon them as dust, and feathered fowls as the sand of the sea, they were not estranged from their lusts: but while their meat was yet in their mouths, the wrath of God came upon them, and slew the fattest of them "." "They lusted exceedingly in the wilderness, and tempted God in the desert, and he gave them their request, but sent leanness into their souls b." God may say, 'Follow your own lust, and if you are so eager, take that which you desire; take that person, that thing, that dignity which are so earnest for; but take my curse and vengeance with it:

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never let it do you good, but be a snare and torment to you. "Let a fire come out of the bramble and devour you i."

Direct. x. Take heed lest concupiscence and partiality entice you to justify your sinful desires and take them to be lawful. For if you do so, you will not repent of them, you will not confess them to God, nor beg pardon of them, nor beg help against them, nor use the means to extinguish them;

but will cherish them, and be angry with all that are against them, and love those tempters best that encourage them : and how dangerous a case is this? And yet nothing is more ordinary among sinners, than to be blinded by their own affections, and think that they have sufficient reason to desire that which they do desire. And affection maketh them very witty and resolute to deceive themselves. It setteth them on studying all that can be said to defend their enemy, and put a deceitful gloss upon their cause. Try your desires well, (as I before directed you.) Q. 1. Is the thing that you desire a thing that God hath bid you desire, or promised in his Word to give you, (as grace, Christ, and heaven?) Ifit be so, then desire it, and spare not; but if not so, Q. 2. Why then are you so eager for it when you should at most have but a submissive, conditional desire after it? Q. 3. Nay is it not something which you are forbidden to desire? If so, dare you excuse it?

Direct. XI. Remember that concupiscence or sinful desire is the beginning of all sin of commission, and leadeth directly to the act.' Theft, adultery, murder, fraud, contention, and all such mischiefs begin in inordinate desires. For" every one is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust and enticed: then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin; and sin when it is finished bringeth forth death." By lust' is meant, any fleshly desire or will; therefore when the apostle forbiddeth gluttony and drunkenness, chambering and wantonness, strife and envying," he strikes at the root of all in this one word, "make no provision for the flesh to satisfy its lusts" (or wills).

Direct. XII. Pull off the deceiving vizor, and see that which you so eagerly desire, as it is.' What will it be to you at the last? it is now in its spring or summer: but see it in fall and winter? It is now in its youth: but see it withered to skin and bone in its decrepid age; it is now in its clean and curious ornaments, but see it in its uncleanness and its homely dress: cure your deceit, and your desire is cured.

Direct. x111. Promise not yourselves long life, but live as dying men, with your grave and winding sheet always in your eye; and it will cure your thirst after the creature when you are sensible how short a time you must enjoy it, and especially how near you are unto eternity.' This is the apos