Direct. XVI. Labour by self-examination, deliberately managed under the direction of an able spiritual guide, to settle your souls in the well-grounded persuasion of your special interest in God and heaven; and then suffer not Satan, by his troublesome importunity, to renew your doubts, or molest your peace.—An orderly, well-guided, diligent self-examination, may quickly do much to show you your condition; and if you are convinced that the truth of grace is in you, let not fears and suspicion go for reason, and cause you to deny that which you cannot, without the gainsaying of your consciences, deny. You see not the design of the devil in all this: his business is, by making you fear that you have no interest in God, to destroy your delight in him and in his service: and next that, to make you through weariness forsake him; and either despair, or turn to sensual delights. Foresee and prevent these designs of Satan, and suffer him not at his pleasure to raise new storms of fears and troubles, and draw you to deny your Father's mercies, or to suspect his proved love.
Direct. XVII. Damp not your delights by wilful sin.—If you grieve your Comforter he will grieve you, or leave you to grieve yourselves: in that measure that any known sin is cherished, delight in God will certainly decay.
Direct. XVIII. Improve your observation of wicked men's sensual delights, to provoke your souls to delight in God.—Think with yourselves: Shall hawks, and hounds, and pride, and filthiness, and cards, and dice, and plays, and sports, and luxury, and idleness, and foolish talk, or worldly honours, be so delightful to these deluded sinners? and shall not my God and Saviour, his love and promises, and the hopes of heaven, be more delightful to me? Is there any comparison between the matter of my delights and theirs?
Direct. XIX. Labour to overcome those fears of death, which would damp your joys in the foresight of everlasting joys.—As nothing more feedeth holy delights than the forethoughts of heaven; so there is scarce any thing that more hindereth our delight in those forethoughts, than the fear of interposing death. See what I have written against this fear, in my "Treatise of Self-denial," and "Saints' Rest," and in my "Treatise of Death, as the last Enemy," and in my "Last Work of a Believer."
Direct. XX. Pretend not any other religious duties against your delights in God and holiness; but use them all in their proper subservience to this.—Penitent sorrow is only a purge to cast out those corruptions which hinder you from relishing your spiritual delights. Use it therefore as physic, only when there is need; and not for itself, but only to this end; and turn it not into your ordinary food. Delight in God is the health of your souls: say not you cannot have while to be healthful, because you must take physic, or that you take physic against health, or instead of health, but for your health. So take up no sorrow against your delight in God, or instead of it, but for it, and so much as promoteth it. See the directions for love beforegoing.
By this time you may see, that holy delight adjoined to love, is the principal part of our religion, and that they mistake it which place it in any thing else. And therefore how inexcusable are all the ungodly enemies or neglecters of a holy life. If it had been a life of grief and toil, they had had some pretence; but to fly from pleasure, and refuse delight, and such delight, is inexcusable. Be it known to you, sinners, God calleth you not to forsake delight, but to accept it; to change your delight in sin and vanity, for delight in him. You dare not say but this is better: you cannot have your houses and lands for ever, nor your lust and luxury for ever; but you may have God for ever. And do you hope to live for ever with him, and have you no delight in him? Men deal with Christ as the papists with the reformed churches: because we reject their formalities and ceremonious toys, they say we take down all religion. So because we would call men from their brutish pleasures, they say we would let them have no pleasure; for the epicure thinks, when his luxury, lust, and sport is gone, all is gone. Call a sluggard from his bed, or a glutton from his feast, to receive a kingdom, and he will grudge, if he observe only what you would take from him, and not what you give him in its stead. When earthly pleasures end in misery, then who would not wish they had preferred the holy, durable delights?
For a life of thankfulness.
Grand Direct. XIV. Let thankfulness to God thy Creator, Redeemer, and Regenerator, be the very temperament of thy soul, and faithfully expressed by thy tongue and life.
Though our thankfulness is no benefit to God, yet he is pleased with it, as that which is suitable to our condition, and showeth the ingenuity and honesty of the heart. An unthankful person is but a devourer of mercies, and a grave to bury them in, and one that hath not the wit and honesty to know and acknowledge the hand that giveth them; but the thankful looketh above himself, and returneth all, as he is able, to him from whom they flow.