From all this therefore it appears, that your kindness for your children is so far from being a good reason why you should so carefully labour to leave them rich, and in the enjoyment of the state and shew of the world; that if you die in a spirit of piety, if you love them as Christ loved his disciples, your kindness will oblige you to exhort them to renounce all such enjoyment of riches, as is contrary to those holy tempers and that heavenly affection which you now find to be the only good and happiness of human nature.
CHAP. III.
CHRISTIANITY calleth all men to a state of self-denial and mortification.
I. It would be strange to suppose, that mankind were redeemed by the sufferings of the Son of God, to live in ease and softness themselves, without any suffering or cross at all!
Are we not all to die? Does God then unmake and dash our very form into pieces; and can we think that a life of pleasure and self-indulgence can become us under such a sentence?
II. *If any man will come after me, saith Christ, let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me.
To shew that this belongs to all Christians, St. Luke saith, He said unto them All: St. Mark hath it thus; and when he had called the people unto him, with his disciples also, he said unto them.
Let us now suppose that Christian churches are full of fine, gay people, who spend their time in all the pleasures and indulgences which the spirit of the world can invent.
Can it be said of such, that they are denying themselves, and taking up their cross daily? May they not with as much regard to truth be said, to live in sackcloth and ashes? Or can they who live in all the scenes of pleasure be said, to be working out their salvation with fear and trembling? May they not as justly be said, to be walking bare-foot to Jerusalem?