rules and directions, in all probability our hasty purposes will end in a leisurely repentance. So that unless we intend to take a great deal of pains in religion to no purpose, to weave a Penelope's web, and do and undo as long as we live, and only to dance round in an eternal circle of sinning and resolving against it, resolving and sinning again, without ever making a step forward, but still wheeling about to the same point; let us now at last resolve to begin in that prudent method which God hath prescribed

us.

IV. Consider that when once we have begun it well, we have conquered the main difficulty of this our spiritual warfare. For though it be an easy matter to begin ill, to resolve against our sins in a sudden pet or transient heat of passion; yet it must be confessed, that to resolve well and wisely, that is, with that firm belief and through consideration of things, with that shame and sorrow, and those earnest cries to heaven for aid and assistance, which are necessary to the founding of a strong and lasting resolution, is not so easy a matter. For in all those preparatory exercises, we have a roving mind, a hard heart, and a perverse nature to contend with; and we shall find it a very hard matter to call in our wandering thoughts, and unite them together into a fixed and steady consideration of the evidences of the truth of religion, and of the duties and motives and difficulties of it. And whilst we are entertaining them with this unwonted argument, there are a thousand objects with which they are better acquainted that will be calling them away; so that without a great deal of violence to ourselves we shall never be able to keep them together so long, as

But

is necessary to the forming a firm assent to the truth, and the passing a true and impartial judgment upon the proposals of religion. And when we have fixed our thoughts into a serious consideration of the evidences of religion, we shall find that our lusts will object much more against them than our reason; that they will be casting mists before our eyes, and bribing and biassing our understanding the other way; and that thereupon it will be more difficult than we are aware, to convince ourselves throughly of the truth of a religion that is so diametrically opposite to our vicious inclinations. when this is done, and we proceed to consider the duties of religion, and to balance the motives with the difficulties of them, in order to the obtaining of ourselves a full and free consent to them; here again we shall find ourselves at a mighty plunge. For though the motives to our duty are, at first view, infinitely greater and more considerable than the difficulties of it; though it be unspeakably more intolerable to lose the joys of heaven, and incur the pains of hell, than to endure the sharpest brunts of this spiritual warfare; yet these being present and sensible, have a more immediate access to us, and consequently are apter to move us than either of those motives which are both of them future and invisible. So that unless we do earnestly press and urge ourselves with those motives, and imprint them upon our minds in the most lively and real characters, we shall find ourselves overruled in despite of them, by these present and sensible difficulties that are before us. But when we have effectually convinced ourselves that those difficulties of our duty are much less considerable than the motives to them,

we shall find it a hard task to persuade our wills into a free and explicit consent to all the particulars of it. For now we shall find a strong aversation in our natures to sundry of those duties that call for our approbation, and there will be a mighty counterstriving between our reason and inclinations. Our darling lusts, those bosom orators within us, will now employ all their rhetoric to dissuade us from parting with them; they will clasp about our souls, like departing lovers, and use all their charms and allurements to hold us fast, and reconcile themselves to us; and under these circumstances, though we have all the reason in the world on our side, we shall find it will be no such easy matter effectually to dispose our wills to close with so many offensive duties, and part with so many beloved sins. But when this is done, which to be sure will cost us many a violent struggle and contention with ourselves, there are other difficulties to be mastered. For now we must reflect upon our past ill life, and expose it to our own eyes in all its natural horror, turpitude, and infamy, and never leave reproaching ourselves with the foulness and disingenuity, the madness and folly of it, till we find our hearts affected with shame and sorrow for, and indignation against it. And for us that have been so long used to coax and flatter ourselves, to paint and varnish our deformities, and crown our brows with forced and undeserved applauses; for us to condemn and upbraid ourselves, to strip our actions of all their artificial beauty, and set ourselves before our own eyes in all our naked, undisguised ugliness, and not look off till we have looked ourselves into shame and horror and hatred of ourselves, will be, at first espe

cially, a very ungrateful employment; and yet it may be a good while, perhaps, before our hard and unmalleable hearts will yield to the impressions of godly sorrow and remorse. But when this difficulty is conquered, our work is not yet totally finished. For now we must come off from ourselves, and all our presumptuous dependences upon our own ability and power, and in a deep sense of our own most wretched weakness and impotency throw ourselves wholly upon God, and with earnest and importunate outcries implore his gracious aid and assistance. And let me tell ye, to men that have been all along inured to such glorious conceits of themselves, such mighty confidences in their own abilities; that have promised themselves from time to time, that at such and such a time they would repent and amend, as if without God's help it were in their power to repent when they pleased; for such men as these, I say, to come out of themselves and their own self-confidences, and wholly cast themselves upon a foreign help; so sensibly to feel, and ingenuously to own their own inability, as to fly to God and confess themselves lost and undone without him, is a much harder matter than we can well imagine, till we come to make the experiment. And yet this, all this must be done, before we can be well prepared to resolve upon the Christian warfare.

This I have the longer insisted on, because I would deal plainly with you, and shew you the worst of things. For whether you are told of it or no, you will find it, if ever you make the experiment, that all your good resolutions, without these preparations, will soon unravel in the execution; and that after you have resolved a thousand times over, you will

be just where you are, and not one step farther in religion. But for your encouragement know, that when with these necessary preparations you have solemnized your resolution, you have won the main and toughest victory in all your spiritual warfare; a victory by which you have pulled down your sin from its throne, and broken and disarrayed its power and forces; so that now you are upon the pursuit of a flying enemy, and if you do but diligently follow your blow, and pursue your brave resolution through all temptations to the contrary, and do not suffer your vanquished enemy to rally and reinforce himself against ye, you will sensibly perceive his strength decay; and those lusts which seemed at first invincible will languish away by degrees from weak to weaker, till at last they expire into the habits of their contrary virtues; and so proportionably those virtues, which through our vicious aversations to them seemed at first impossible, will grow on by degrees from possible to easy, and from easy to necessary; and then the sins will be more impossible to us than the virtues.

Now what a mighty encouragement is this to make a good beginning of the Christian warfare, that in so doing we are sure to conquer the main difficulty of it; that when we have broke through all those oppositions that lie in the way to a wise and good resolution, we are past the frontiers of religion, and having gotten over those steep alps at its entrance, shall be sure to find the religion round about a plain and easy campaign, in which the further we go the smoother it will be, and so smoother and smoother, till at last it will be all sweet and delightful, like the flowery walks of paradise. Let us