had those hideous thoughts in your dreams, which you have when you are awake, would you think them unpardoned sins, or rather unavoidable infirmities? why your distemper makes them to be to you but almost as dreams.

Direct. XVIII. Be sure that you keep yourself constantly employed (as far as your strength will bear) in the diligent labours of a lawful calling; and spend none of your precious time in idleness.' Idleness is the tidetime of the tempter: when you are idle, you invite the devil to come and vex you. Then you can have while to hearken to him, and think on all that he will put into your minds, and then to think over all those thoughts again! When you have nothing else to do, the devil will find you such work. Then you must sit still and muse; and your thoughts must be stirring in the mud of your own distempers, as children lie paddling in the dirt. And idleness is a sin, which God will not favour. He hath commanded you to "labour six days, and in the sweat of your brows to eat your bread; and he that will not labour is unworthy to eat." Remember that time is precious, and doth haste away, and God hath given you none in vain. Therefore, as you are troubled for other sins, make conscience of this sin, and waste not one quarter of an hour's time, in your idle, unprofitable musings. It is just with God to make your sin itself to be your punishment, and your own idle thoughts to chastise you daily, when you will not get up and go about your lawful business. Nor will pretences of prayer, or any devotion excuse your idleness: for it is against the law of God. Above all that I have said to you, let me entreat you therefore to obey this one Direction. I have known despairing, melancholy persons cured by setting themselves resolutely and diligently about their callings, (and changing air and company, and riding abroad.) If you will sit musing in a corner, and sin against God by idleness and loss of time, and increase your own miseries withal, rather than you will rouse up yourself, and ply your business, your calamity is just. Say not, that you have little or nothing to do: for God hath made it the duty of all, be they never so rich, to labour in such employment as is suitable to their place and strength.

Direct. XIX. Do but mark well how much the devil gets by keeping you in sad, despondent thoughts; and then

you may easily see that it cannot be your duty, nor best for you, which is so gainful and pleasing to the devil.' By keeping you in these self-perplexing doubts and fears, he robs God of the thanks and praise which you owe him for all his mercies. These highest duties you cast aside, as if they did not belong to you. You give not God the honour of his most miraculous mercy, in our redemption; nor do you study or relish, or admire, or magnify the riches of grace in Jesus Christ! you have poor, low thoughts of the infinite love of God, and are unfit to judge of it or perceive it, being like a choleric stomach which puts a continual bitterness in the mouth, which hinders it from tasting any sweetness in their meat. It hereby unfitteth you for the love of God, and more inclineth you to hate him, or fly from him as an enemy, while the devil representeth him to you as one that hateth you: it loseth your time: it depriveth you of all your willingness to duty, and delight in duty, and maketh all God's service a burden and vexation to you. It is very contrary to the spirit of adoption, and to the whole frame of evangelical worship and obedience. And will you, under pretence of being more humbled, and sorrowful, and sensible, thus gratify satan, and wrong God and yourselves?

you

Direct. xx. Trust not to your own judgment, in your melancholy state, either as to the condition of your souls, or the choice and conduct of your thoughts or ways; but commit yourselves to the judgment and direction of some experienced, faithful guide.' You are no fit judges of your own condition, nor of the way of your duty, in this dark, distempered condition that you are in either your mind and imagination is well or ill: if it be well, why complain of all those disturbances, and confusions, and disability to meditate and pray? If it be ill, why will you be so selfconceited as to think yourselves able to judge of yourselves, with such a distempered fantasy of mind. It is one of the worst things in melancholy persons, that commonly they are most wise in their own eyes, and stiff in their own conceits, when their brains are sickest, and their understanding weakest; and that they are confident, and unruly, and unpersuadable, as if they were proud of those pitiful understandings; and thought nobody knows so well as they.

O, say they, you know not my case? Am not I liker to know your case, who have seen so many score in that case, than you are that never knew any in it but yourself? A man that stands by may better know the case of a man that is in a dream, than he can know his own. You say that others feel not what you feel! no more doth the physician feel what a man in a fever, or falling-sickness, or distraction feeleth; and yet by the report of what you say you feel, and by what he seeth, he far better knoweth your disease, the nature and the cure of it, than you that feel it. Therefore as a wise man, when he is sick, will trust himself, under God, to the direction of his physician and the help of his friends about him, and not lie wrangling against their help and counsel, and wilfully refuse it, because they advise him contrary to his feeling; so will you do, if you are wise; trust yourself with some fit director; and despise not his judgment either about your state, or about your duty. You think you are lost and there is no hope: hear what he saith that is now fitter to judge. Set not your weak wit too wilfully against him. Do you think he is so foolish as to mistake? should not humility make you rather think so of yourself? Be advised by him about the matter of your thoughts, the manner and length of your secret duties, and all your scruples that you need advice in. Will you answer me this one question? Do you know any body that is wiser than yourself? and fitter to judge of your condition and advise you? If you say, no; how proud are you of such a crazed wit! If you say, yea; then believe and trust that person, and resolve to follow his direction. And I would ask you, were you once of another judgment concerning yourself? If so, then were you not as sound and able to judge, and liker to be in the right than you are

now.

Direct. xxI. My last advice is, 'to look out for the cure of your disease, and commit yourself to the care of your physician, and obey him: and do not as most melancholy persons do, that will not believe that physic will do them good; but that it is only their soul that is afflicted: for it is the spirits, imagination, and passions, that are diseased, and so the soul is like an eye that looketh through a coloured glass, and thinks all things are of the same colour as

the glass is.' I have seen abundance cured by physic: and till the body be cured, the mind will hardly ever be cured, but the clearest reasons will be all in vain.

Tit. 6. Directions for young Students, for the most profitable ordering of their studying Thoughts.

Direct. 1. Let it be your first and most serious study to make sure, that you are regenerate, and sanctified by the Holy Ghost, and justified by faith in Christ, and love God above all, as 'your reconciled Father, and so have right to the heavenly inheritance.'

For 1. You are nearest to yourselves, and your everlasting happiness is your nearest and your highest interest: what will it profit you to know all the world, and to lose. your own souls? To know as much as devils, and be for ever miserable with devils.

2. It is a most doleful employment to be all day at work in satan's chains! To sit studying God and the holy Scriptures, while you are in the power of the devil, and have hearts that are at enmity to the holiness of that God and that Scripture which you are studying. It is a most preposterous and incongruous course of study, if you first study not your own deliverance. And if you knew your case, and saw your chains, your trembling would disturb your studies.

3. Till you are renewed you study in the dark, and without that internal sight and sense, by which the life, and spirit, and kernel of all that you study, must be known. All that the Scripture saith of the darkness of a state of sin, and of the illumination of the Spirit, and of the marvellous light of regenerate souls, and of the natural man's not receiving the things of the Spirit, and of the carnal mind that is enmity against God, and is not subject to his law, nor can be; all these and such other passages are not insignificant, but most considerable truths from the Spirit of Truth. You have only that light that will shew you the shell, and the dead letter, but not the soul, and quickening sense, of any practical holy truth. As the eye knoweth meat which we never tasted, or as a mere grammarian, or logician, readeth a law book or physic book, (who gather nothing

out of them that will save a man's estate or life) so will prosecute all your studies.

you

4. You are like to have but ill-success in your studies, when the devil is your master, who hateth both you, and the holy things which you are studying. He will blind you, and pervert you, and possess your minds with false conceits, and put diverting, sensual thoughts into you, and will keep your own souls from being ever the better for it all.

5. You will want the true end of all right studies; and set up wrong ends: and therefore whatever be the matter of your studies, you are still out of your way, and know nothing rightly, because you know it not as a means to the true end. (But of this anon.)

Direct. 11. When you have first laid this foundation, and have the true principle and end of all right studies, be sure that you intend this end in all, (even the everlasting sight and love of God, and the promoting his glory, and pleasing his holy will:) and that you never meddle with any studies separated from this end, but as a means thereto, and as animated thereby.

If every step in your journey is but loss of time and labour, which is not directed to your journey's end; and if all that you have to mind or do in the world, be only about your end or the means; and all creatures and actions can have no other moral goodness, than to be the means of God your ultimate end; then you may easily see, that whenever you leave out God as the end of any of your studies, you are but sinning, or doting: for in those studies there can be no moral good, though they may tend to your knowledge of natural good and evil. And when you think you grow wise and learned men, and can dispute and talk of many things, which make to your renown, while your" wills consent not to the wholesome words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the doctrine which is according to godliness; you are proud, knowing nothing, but doting about questions and strifes of words, whereof cometh envy, strife, railing, evil surmisings, perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, supposing that gain is godliness: from such turn away"." As there is no knowledge but from God,

h1 Tim. vi. 3—6.