Tempt. II. The poor will also be tempted to over-much care about their wants and worldly matters;[105] they will think that necessity requireth it in them, and will excuse them. So much care is your duty, as is needful to the right doing of your work. Take care how to discharge your own duties; but be not too careful about the event, which belongs to God. If you will care what you should be and do, God will care sufficiently what you shall have.[106] And so be it you faithfully do your business, your other care will add nothing to the success, nor make you any richer, but only vex and disquiet your minds. It is the poor as well as the rich, that God hath commanded to be careful for nothing, and to cast all their care on him.
Tempt. III. Poverty also will tempt you to repining, impatience, and discontent, and to fall out with others; which because it is one of the chief temptations, I will speak to by itself anon.
Tempt. IV. Also you will be tempted to be coveting after more:[107] Satan maketh poverty a snare to draw many needy creatures to greater covetousness than many of the rich are guilty of; none thirst more eagerly after more; and yet their poverty blindeth them, so that they cannot see that they are covetous, or else excuse it as a justifiable thing. They think that they desire no more but necessaries, and that it is not covetousness, if they desire not superfluities. But do you not covet more than God allotteth you? and are you not discontent with his allowance? And doth not he know best what is necessary for you, and what superfluous? What then is covetousness, if this be not?
Tempt. V. Also you will be tempted to envy the rich, and to censure them in matters where you are incompetent judges. It is usual with the poor to speak of the rich with envy and censoriousness; they call them covetous, merely because they are rich, especially if they give them nothing; when they know not what ways of necessary expense they have, nor know how many others they are liberal to, that they are unacquainted with. Till you see their accounts you are unfit to censure them.
Tempt. VI. The poor also will be tempted to use unlawful means to supply their wants.[108] How many by the temptation of necessity have been tempted to comply with sinners, and wound their consciences, and lie and flatter for favour or preferment, or to cheat, or steal, or over-reach! A dear price! to buy the food that perisheth, with the loss or hazard of everlasting life; and lose their souls to provide for their flesh!
Tempt. VII. Also you will be tempted to neglect your souls, and omit your spiritual duties, and, as Martha, to be troubled about many things, while the one thing needful is forgotten; and you will think that necessity will excuse all this; yea, some think to be saved because they are poor, and say, God will not punish them in this life and another too. But alas, you are more unexcusable than the rich, if you are ungodly and mindless of the life to come. For he that will love a life of poverty and misery better than heaven, deserveth indeed to go without it, much more than he that preferreth a life of plenty and prosperity before it. God hath taught you by his providence to know, that you must either be happy in heaven, or no where;—if you would be worldlings, and part with heaven for your part on earth, how poor a bargain are you like to make! To love rags, and toil, and want, and sorrow, better than eternal joy and happiness, is the most unreasonable kind of ungodliness in the world. It is true, that you are not called to spend so many hours of the week days in reading and meditation, as some that have greater leisure are; but you have reason to seek heaven, and set your hearts upon it, as much as they; and you must think of it when you are about your labour, and take those opportunities for your spiritual duties which are allowed you. Poverty will excuse ungodliness in none! Nothing is so necessary as the service of God and your salvation; and therefore no necessity can excuse you from it. Read the case of Mary and Martha, Luke x. 41, 42. One would think that your hearts should be wholly set upon heaven, who have nothing else but it to trust to. The poor have fewer hinderances than the rich, in the way to life eternal! And God will save no man because he is poor; but condemn poor and rich that are ungodly.
Tempt. VIII. Another great temptation of the poor, is to neglect the holy education of their children; so that in most places, there are none so ignorant, and rude, and heathenish, and unwilling to learn, as the poorest people and their children: they never teach them to read, nor teach them any thing for the saving of their souls; and they think that their poverty will be an excuse for all; when reason telleth them, that none should be more careful to help their children to heaven, than they that can give them nothing upon earth.
Direct. IX. Be acquainted with the special duties of the poor; and carefully perform them. They are these:
1. Let your sufferings teach you to contemn the world; it will be a happy poverty if it do but help to wean your affections from all things below; that you set as little by the world as it deserveth.
2. Be eminently heavenly-minded; the less you have or hope for in this life, the more fervently seek a better.[109] You are at least as capable of the heavenly treasures as the greatest princes; God purposely straiteneth your condition in the world, that he may force up your hearts unto himself, and teach you to seek first for that which indeed is worth your seeking, Matt. vi. 33, 19-21.