four winds," and they shall be one in Christ for everd. Great reason therefore have the saints to make out after more of that, which their perfection doth so much consist in.

Other men may have some delight in the company and assembly of Christians for bye-respects; but to love the communion of the saints, as such, and delight in them as the body of Christ employed in his praises, this is the proper disposition of a saint. And this is another thing that conversion doth turn their hearts unto.

4. Having spoken of the third part of the Conversion of the Heart, which consisteth in the right choice of the means to salvation; I proceed to the fourth, which consisteth in the thorough resolving of the yet wavering and unsettled soul. I make not this a part in itself different from all that are beforementioned, but the very life and perfection of them, especially of the two last. Some kind of willingness and unsound consent there may be in the half-converted, and many times it is long after the beginning of this change before it reach to a sound resolution; but it is never a saving work of special grace indeed, and proper to the saints till then. Men may have many convictions, and be brought to engage themselves in covenant to God, and yet for want of this true resolution, their hearts may not be right with God, nor they be stedfast in his covenante. We are suitors for Christ to a backward and obstinate generation of men; we are long persuading them before they will yield, and when they seem to yield, they are long in the beginning, deliberating and wavering before they will resolve. Sometimes God turneth the heart more suddenly at a sermon; but ordinarily, for aught I can find, men stick long under conviction and half purposes, before they are thus converted. When they see that all is not well with them, and that they are not in a safe condition to appear before God at judgment, in that they have not taken the right course that Christian wisdom required them to take, they feel then within them many persuadings of the Spirit of God, and their conscience reasoning the case with them, and saying, This life will not serve thy turn long, if death find thee in this condition, thou art an undone man: away then with thy negligence and idle company and courses, and set thyself to seek after

e Psal. lxxviii. 37.

Christ before it be too late;' and under these persuasions the mind is sometimes purposed to do it. But these purposes are either for the time to come, that hereafter they will be new men; or else they are but half purposes, that reach not to a resolution: and therefore if at present they make some kind of change, it is but by the halves; and they usually turn back again: this is the case of the best men ordinarily before conversion.

But when conversion comes, it turns over the mind unfeignedly to God; it brings the soul beyond its former waverings; it shews men that there is no other remedy, the thing is of necessity, and that all is but vanity that can be said against it; and no good reason can be given to take any wise man off from the work of repentance and a heavenly life, and therefore he is resolved that this shall be his way. He hath considered and found for certain that there is no true felicity but in the favour of God; and that his love and promised glory are everlasting, and all things else are vain and transitory; and therefore he is resolved that God should be his portion, and nothing but God; heaven shall be the end of his desire and labour, and nothing but heaven. He hath also considered that there is no pardon of sin, but by the blood of Christ, and no hope of salvation, but by cleaving to him, and yielding to his renewing Spirit; and therefore he is now resolved that Christ shall have his heart, and his Spirit shall do its work, and that the word of God hereafter shall be his rule. He is now determined to know nothing but Christ crucified f. Before he was like a man that was weighing somewhat in the scales, and the other end was the heavier, or the scales stood as it were even: but now the Holy Ghost hath brought in those arguments, and set them home on the conscience, with that life that hath turned the scales. Before he was like a man that had lost his way, and standeth still, considering whether he shall turn back or not, or whether he shall go this way or that; but now he is resolved, and he stands no longer considering, but turns without any more ado. And this resolution is not rash or ungrounded, but having considered what can be said for God and for the world, for sin and for repentance; and considering what he may meet with in the

f 1 Cor. ii. 2,

way to heaven, he resolveth whatever it cost him, repent he will, return he will, for saved he must be. Though he meet with hard dealing from the world, there is no remedy, he will go through it; though he may suffer much in the flesh, yet that shall not take him off; though he knows he must leave. his former pleasure and wicked company, and live that life that the flesh doth abhor, yet all this shall not take him off. O what a pleading and reasoning there is commonly between the flesh and the Spirit, before the heart will be thus resolved. As it was with Carraciolus, the marquis of Vicum, when his conscience bid him leave his land, and friends, and all for Christ, to forsake Popery, and betake himself to these countries, where he might enjoy the Gospel; his house and lands then came in his eyes; 'What must I leave all these for mere conscience, and live I know not how?' His wife hangs upon him, his children with tears do cry after him, 'O father, leave us not!' And many a sob and sigh it costs his heart before he could resolve to get away and as it was with many of the martyrs when they were to die for Christ and for his truth; wife, and children, and friends follow them to the fire, crying out, ‘O turn, turn, and do not undo yourselves and us;' so that they had almost as much ado to overcome that temptation, as to bear the flames: so is it with a sinner in the work of conversion; when he looks to Christ and everlasting glory, and considereth withal that these cannot be obtained without the loss of earthly, sinful pleasure; and when he thinketh of his old merry company and course, his ease and fleshly pleasure that he must leave; when he thinks of the strangeness of the way that he must now turn to, and how unacquainted he is with it, and how many bitter scorns, and worse, he is like to meet with, and how much care and pains it must cost him to be saved; this keepeth him sometimes at a stand, and breedeth in him many troublous thoughts, so that he scarce knows which way to turn him, or what to do. If he repent and turn to God, he must deny his flesh, and forsake all this world, and for aught he knows, have scarce any more of that kind of pleasure that he lived upon before; and if he do not this, he must forsake God, and all hope of everlasting glory, and give up himself to eternal misery. This seemeth a very sad straight to one at the first; because he yet hath had no ex

perience of the joy of the Holy Ghost, and the higher comforts of a Christian life, nor of the help which God will afford him in his way: and therefore we cannot marvel if many a poor soul do here stick in the birth; and if it be long before they resolve for God; and if others turn back and perish for ever; and grace, and only grace will resolve them; when Christ opens their eyes effectually and to the purpose, he lets them see, that between heaven and earth, God and the world, grace and sin, there is no comparison. They see then, it is not a matter to doubt of, or to stick at: God must be pleased, but there is no necessity that the world or the flesh be pleased. God's favour must be had, but we may live without the favour of the world; death and judgment must be provided for, but it is needless to provide for the desires of the flesh: an hundred considerations come in upon his soul, which make him say, Away with all these worldly vanities, and welcome Christ and a holy life. Now he "casteth off that weight that hangeth on him, and that sin that did so easily beset him, that he may run with patience the race that is before him, looking to Jesus the Author and Finisher of his faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despised the shame, and is sat down at the right hand of God." In a word, he is now thoroughly convinced that one thing is necessary, and therefore he hath chosen the better part, which shall not be taken from him". O sirs, you are never truly converted till this resolution of the soul; whatever good purposes you may have for the time to come, if you be not presently resolved presently to return; I say, presently without delay, you are not yet truly converted to Christ, though you may verily think that the life of faith and holiness is the best life, and may have some mind to it, and purpose one of these days to return; nay, though you may have some present purposes that are cold and faint, and come not up to the height of resolution; and though you make some trial hereafter, and change some of your company and your courses, all this is well, but it will not serve the turn without this resolution. Many a man that is lost for ever, hath had many a good wish and purpose, and made some essay to mend his life, and made some half reformation, and yet, be

ing not resolved for Christ, they have perished. The very principal part of the work of saving grace in the soul doth lie in this resolution. O that the wavering, and the loitering, and the delaying soul would lay this well to heart. O that they understood this, who are convinced that they must return and be new men, and yet cannot be brought to present resolution, but linger in their sins, as being loath to come away; as Lot did in Sodom, till God being merciful to him, caused the angel to carry him out. Well this is the next work of converting grace. If ever you be converted, you will be resolved for Christ.

5. The fifth part of the work of Conversion in the heart, consisteth in the change that is made upon the Affections. Though these are not so evident and certain always to try a man's state by; and therefore I would have Christians try especially by the former, yet it is certain that conversion changeth these also; and because they are many, and I have been long in the description of this work already, I will the more briefly run them over.

(1.) The first of the affections that appeareth in this change, are, love and hatred. Before conversion, the heart loveth not spiritual things and ways: there is an opposition to them, and enmity against them. It loveth not inward holiness, nor a holy life; it loveth not the people that are holy; nay, it loveth not God himself as he is just and holy; yea, it hath an inward loathing of him, and of his image and way; though yet it be so deceitful as perhaps not to know thus much by itself. But on the contrary, it loveth fleshly pleasure, and earthly profit, aad vain-glory, and ease, and honour of the world; for it only savoureth these kind of things. But conversion turneth a man's love and hatred, and maketh him love the holy God, and those holy people and ways that he could not heartily love before, and it maketh him loathe those sins, that before he loved; that this is so, in all that are converted, is evident from many texts of Scripture. "He that loveth father or mother 1, &c." "His delight is in the law of the Lord, and in his law doth he meditate day and night "." a vile person is contemned; but he honoureth

"In his eyes them that

1 Matt. x. 37.