The Middle Class

 2. The middle class.

I would apply myself to those that possess a greater measure of this world’s goods, and are in higher circumstances in the world.

If you are more regarded than some of your neighbours and have greater respect shewn you, if your words are looked upon as of greater weight than theirs, yet if you are in a natural state, you are contemptible in God’s eyes... If you have more land than some of your neighbours, a larger stock, and more comfortable and plentiful accommodations, yet none of those things can make you any other than a miserable creature if you are not of Christ... If you had the favour of God with your worldly enjoyments, they might well be sweet to you, you might eat your meal with gladness; but instead of that, you eat and drink under the wrath of God, you lie down and rise up under His wrath. When you look upon your buildings, your cattle, your stores that you have laid up, you may consider that brimstone is scattered upon them all.

When you sit down at a full table, yet there is God’s bow bent, His arrows ready, the dart pointing at your heart all the while you are satisfying your appetite. You eat and drink, and sleep and walk, and march over this part of hell, in slippery places. The ground you are upon is not solid ground, but is as it were hollow ground, and there is the dreadful pit of hell underneath. The covering is very thin and weak, men are continually dropping through into the pit, and lost irrecoverably; but one in many escapes, and you are in danger every moment.

Men are apt to rely much on their worldly possessions and advantages, and to be much pleased to be themselves so much higher in the world than others, and to be greatly taken with it that they have so much more than they... Men’s worldly possessions and worldly honour with which they are so taken very commonly prove their undoing; setting their hearts so much upon them occasions them to neglect God, and so they have their portion in this life, and then they have enjoyed all that comfort that they have to enjoy in those things, they have ruined their soul’s salvation, there remains nothing else for them.

If you continue in a Christless condition, all that you have in the world will prove only to have fatted you for the slaughter, and ripened you for the wine press... And though now you sit forward in the meeting house, and have a higher seat than your poor, inferiour neighbours, yet hereafter you shall be set in a lower place in hell than those wicked men ho now sit behind you in the meeting house. Therefore now hearken to the calls brought you from God, do not let your worldly possessions be a weight to hinder you.

Therefore do not make excuse, and go away, one to his farm and another to his merchandize; but go and sell all that you have, and buy the pearl of great price... As to the world, you have already a considerable measure of it; but as to the good things of another, if you that are in a Christless condition have nothing of them, you have no part in the good of God’s chosen in the inheritance of Gods children. How many earthly things soever you have, you have not Christ, and so are aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenant of promise, having no hope, and are without God in the world, and therefore are miserably poor, and have nothing of your precious an immortal souls.

Now God is opening His grand treasure among us, His treasure of spiritual blessings; He has been letting open a fountain for the supply of the wants of poor souls. Therefore now improve your time, and put in for a share that you may not continue famishing, and perish in the midst of plenty.

Sermon

Liberty to speak

 AUTHOR'S PREFACE

IN the ensuing treatise, I condemn ministers' assuming, or taking too much upon them, and appearing as though they supposed that they were the persons to whom it especially belonged to dictate, direct and determine; but perhaps shall be thought to be very guilty of it myself: and some when they read this treatise, may be ready to say that I condemn this in others, that I may have the monopoly of it. 

I confess that I have taken a great deal of liberty freely to express my thoughts, concerning almost everything appertaining to the wonderful work of God that has of late been carried on in the land, and to declare what has appeared to me to be the mind of God, concerning the duty and obligations of all sorts of persons, and even those that are my superiors and fathers, ministers of the Gospel, and civil rulers: but yet I hope the liberty I have taken is not greater than can be justified. 

In a free nation, such liberty of the press is allowed, that every author takes leave without offense, freely to speak his opinion concerning the management of public affairs, and the duty of the legislature, and those that are at the head of the administration, though vastly his superiors. As now at this day, private subjects offer their sentiments to the public from the press, concerning the management of the war with Spain; freely declaring what they think to be the duty of the Parliament, and the principal ministers of state, etc.1 

We in New England are at this day engaged in a more important war: and I'm sure, if we consider the sad jangling and confusion that has attended it, we shall confess that it is highly requisite that somebody should speak his mind concerning the way in which it ought to be managed: and that not only a few of the many particulars, that are the matter of strife in the land, should be debated on the one side and the other, in pamphlets (as has of late been done, with heat

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and fierceness enough); which don't tend to bring the contention in general to an end, but rather to inflame it, and increase the uproar: but that something should be published, to bring the affair in general, and the many things that attend it, that are the subjects of debate, under a particular consideration. And certainly it is high time that this was done.

If private persons may speak their minds without arrogance; much more may a minister of the kingdom of Christ speak freely about things of this nature, which do so nearly concern the interest of the kingdom of his Lord and Master, at so important a juncture. 

If some elder minister had undertaken this, I acknowledge it would have been more proper; but I have heard of no such thing a doing, or like to be done. I hope therefore I shall be excused for undertaking such a piece of work. 

I think that nothing that I have said can justly be interpreted as though I would impose my thoughts upon any, or did not suppose that others have equal right to think for themselves, with myself. 

We are not accountable one to another for our thoughts; but we must all give an account to him who searches our hearts, and has doubtless his eye especially upon us at such an extraordinary season as this. 

If I have well confirmed my opinion concerning this work, and the way in which it should be acknowledged and promoted, with Scripture and reason, I hope others that read it will receive it as a manifestation of the mind and will of God. 

If others would hold forth further light to me in any of these particulars, I hope I should thankfully receive it. 

I think I have been made in some measure sensible, and much more of late than formerly, of my need of more wisdom than I have. 

I make it my rule to lay hold of light and embrace it, wherever I see it, though held forth by a child or an enemy. 

If I have assumed too much in the following discourse, and have spoken in a manner that savors of a spirit of pride, no wonder that others can better discern it than I myself. If it be so, I ask pardon, and beg the prayers of every Christian reader, that I may have more light, humility and zeal; and that I may be favored with such measures of the Divine Spirit, as a minister of the Gospel stands in need of, at such an extraordinary season.

Mansions in Heaven

You may be encouraged from what has been said, earnestly to seek heaven; for there are many mansions there. There is room enough there. Let your case be what it will, there is suitable provision there for you. Or if you come to Christ, you need not fear but that he will prepare a place for you. 

He'll see to it that you shall be well accommodated in heaven. 

But secondly, I would improve this doctrine in a twofold exhortation.

First. Let all be hence exhorted, earnestly to seek that they may be admitted to a mansion in heaven. You have heard that this is God's house: it is his temple. If David, when he was in the wilderness of Judah, and in the land of Jeshua, and of the Philistines, so longed that he might again return into the land of Israel, that he might have a place in the house God here on earth, and prized a place there so much, though it was but

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that of a doorkeeper;6 then how great in happiness will it be to have a place in this heavenly temple of God. If they are looked upon as enjoying an high privilege that have a seat appointed there in kings' courts, or an apartment in kings' palaces, especially those that have an abode there in the quality of the king's children; then how great a privilege will it be to have an apartment or mansion assigned us in God's heavenly palace, and to have a place there as his children. 

How great is their glory and honor that are admitted to be of the household of God.

And seeing there are many mansions, there are mansions enough for us all. Our folly will be the greater, if [we] neglect to seek a place in heaven, having our minds foolishly taken up about the worthless, fading things of this world. 

Here consider three things.

1. How little a while you can have any mansion or place of abode in this world. Now you have a dwelling amongst the living. You have an house or mansion of your own, or at least one that is at present for your use; and now you have a seat in the house of God. 

But how little a while will this continue? 

In a very little while the place that now knows you in this world, will have you no more. The habitation you have here, will be empty of you. You will be carried dead out of it, or shall die at a distance from it, and never enter into it any more, or into any other abode in this world.

Your mansion or place of abode in this world, however convenient and commodious it may be, it is but as a seat that shall soon be taken down, but "a lodge in a garden of cucumbers." 

You stay as it were but for a night. Your being itself is but a house of clay, which will quickly molder, and tumble down. And you shall have no other habitation here in this world but the grave.

Thus God in his providence is putting you in mind by the repeated instances of death that have been in the town within the two weeks past, [that] hath in one house in which death has shown his dominion over old and young. The son was taken away first before the father, being in his full strength and flower of his days; and the father, who was then well and having no appearance of approaching death, followed in a few days. And their habitation, and their seat in the house of God in this world, will know them no more.

Take warning by these warnings of providence to improve your time, that you may have a mansion in heaven. We have a house of worship newly erected amongst us, which now you have a seat in, and probably are

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pleased with the ornaments of it; and though you have a place among others in so comely an house, you know7 not how little a while you shall have a place in this house of God. Here are a couple snatched away by death that had met in it but a few times, that have been snatched out of it before it was fully finished, and never will have any more a seat in it. You know not how soon you may follow. And then of great importance will it be to you to have a seat in God's house above.

Both the persons lately deceased, were much in their deathbeds in warning others to improve their precious time.

The first of them was much in expressing his sense of the vast importance of an interest in Christ, as I was a witness; and was earnest in calling on others to improve their time, to be thorough to get an interest in Christ; and seemed very desirous that young people might receive counsel and warning from him, as the words of a dying man, to do their utmost to make sure of conversion; and a little before he died, left a request to me that I would warn the young people in his name. God has been warning of you in his death, and the death of his father that so soon followed, which may well be the more set home by his dying warnings. 

The words of dying persons should be of special weight with us; for then they are in circumstances wherein they are most capable to look on things as they are, and to judge aright of 'em. {They are} between both worlds as it were {this world and the next}, [a] state that we must all be in.

Let our young people therefore take warning from hence, and don't [act] such fools as to neglect seeking a place and mansion in heaven. Young persons are especially apt to be taken with the pleasing things of this world. You are now, it may be, much pleased with hopes of your future circumstances in this world, {much} pleased with the ornaments of that house of worship that you with others have a place in. But, alas, do you not too little consider how soon you may be taken away from all these things, and no more forever have any part in any mansion, or house, or enjoyment, or business under the sun. 

Therefore let it be your main care to secure an everlasting habitation for hereafter.

Profitable Hearers of the Word

 Profitable Hearers of the Word

Matthew 13:23.1 But he that received seed into the good ground is he that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth fruit, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.

This parable of the sower and the seed is one of the most notable of Christ's parables that we have account of; and it being so, 'twill not be improper in this place a little to inquire into the reasons why Christ so commonly taught in this way. 

The following reasons may be given:

In the first place, 'tis an engaging way of instructing. It engages the attention of the hearers, when any doctrine is taught in an allegory and by way of story. It is a most familiar way, as a parent would instruct a child. Christ condescended to the weakness and childishness of the people, and instructed by easy and familiar comparisons and similitudes.

And then it is a very instructive way. The reason of the thing many times will presently be seen by an apt comparison, that otherwise is difficultly explained.

And another reason why we are so often instructed in Scriptures in an allegorical way, in Christ's parables and elsewhere, is that we might have some exercise for our understandings to find out the truth contained in them. Our understandings were given us to be used, and above all to be exercised, in divine things. Therefore God teaches us in such a way that we shall have some exercise of meditation and study. God gives us the gold, but he gives it to us in a mine that we might dig for it and get in a way of our own industry.

And then, when the truth is found out, it makes a greater impression, is much more pleasing. If truth was revealed in such a way that we could understand it as well without study or diligence as with, and fools could understand as much as wise men, truth would be despised.

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If gold were thrown plentifully before every man's face, and everyone could have it without any labor or industry, it would not be prized as now it is. But God gives it to us in mines; we must dig for it, if we get it, and that makes it precious. So God gives us divine truth as it were in mines—in allegories and parables and types—where we must dig for it to come at it.

'Tis for the same reasons that abundance of the Scripture is obscure and difficult to be understood. 

The prophecies were delivered in dark similitudes. It was not Jesus Christ in the flesh that first brought in this way of teaching. God always used it, and especially under the old testament, where all things are in types and shadows; and these types were not only for the Jews' sakes, but also for the church to the end of the world. 

This is not only God's method in Scripture, but his method in nature also. The works of God are hard to be understood, that they might be "sought out of all them that have pleasure in them" (Psalms 111:2).

For the same reason, the prophets were often appointed to do such and such things for a sign.

This reason also may be given that Christ spoke so much in parable: that many of that people were not capable of receiving gospel truths plainly declared. It would be like putting new wine into old bottles. For the same reason also, the gospel was preached to the Jews under a veil; they were not able to look upon Moses' face except there was a veil put over it.

But the principle reason seems to be that which Christ himself gives to his disciples when they asked him, beginning with the tenth verse, "And the disciples came, [and said] to him, Why speakest thou unto them in parables? He answered and said unto them, Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given. For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance: but whosoever hath not, from him shall be taken away even that he hath. Therefore speak I to them in parables: because they seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand." 

It was that those that had honest hearts and had pleasure in the truth and sought it out might understand it, but that others might not understand it. Those that had a love to divine truth would be likely to know, but others would be ignorant. 

Therefore we may observe that Christ seldom speaks to his own disciples in parables, and seldom speaks to the multitude without a parable. This may serve something to enlighten us with respect to the reason of Christ's using so many parables.