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your redemption draweth nigh. Where this hope is often acted, it will grow strong, as all habits do; and where it is strong, it will work much, and delight to act often, and will controul both the doubtings, and the other many impertinent thoughts of the mind, and force them to yield the place to it. Certainly they that long much for that coming of Christ, will look often out to it; we are usually hoping after other things, that do but offer themselves to draw us after them, and to scorn us. What are the breasts of most of us, but so many nests of foolish hopes and fears intermixed, that entertain us day and night, and steal away our precious hours from us, that might be laid out so gainfully upon the wise and sweet thoughts of eternity, and upon the blessed and assured hope of the coming of our beloved Saviour?

The other words of exhortation here used are subservient to this end, that this hope may be the more perfect and firm; and a similar exhortation is much after the same manner joined by our Saviour', with the expectance and waiting for his coming; and in this posture the Israelites eating the passover, were expecting their deliverance, so we our full and final freedom.

If you would have much of this, call off your affections from other things that they may be capable of much of it. The same eye cannot both look up to Heaven, and down to earth at the same time; the more your affections are trussed up, and disentangled from the world, the more expedite and active will they be in this hope; the more sober they are, the less will they fill themselves with the coarse delights of earth, the more room will there be in them, and the more they shall be filled with this hope. It is great folly in our spiritual warfare, to charge ourselves superfluously. All fulness of one thing hinders the receiving and admittance of any other, especially of things so opposite, as these fulnesses are. Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess, but be

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ye filled with the Holy Ghost, saith the Apostle", that is a brutish fulness, makes a man no man; this divine fulness makes him more than a man: It were happy to be so filled with this, as that it might be called a kind of drunkenness, as it was with the Apostles*.

Be sober.] Or watch, the same word signifies both, and with good reason; for you know the unsober cannot watch. Now though one main part of sobriety, and that which more properly and particularly bears this name, viz. temperance in meat and drink, is here intended: and though against the opposite to this (not only the purity and spirituality of religion,) but even moral virtue inveighs as its special enemy; yea nature itself, and they that only naturally consider the body, and its interest of life and health, find reason enough to cry down this base intemperance, which is so hateful by its own deformity, and withal carries its punishment along with it. Although (I say) this sobriety is indeed most necessary for the preservation of grace and spiritual temper of the soul, and is here intended; yet I conceive it is not all that is here meant, the word is more general, for the moderate and sober use of all things worldly, as he says, Gird up the loins of your mind, so it is to be understood; let your minds be sober, all your affections inwardly attempered to your spiritual condition, not glutting yourselves with fleshly and perishing delights of any kind; for the more you take in of these, the less you shall have of spiritual comfort and of this perfect hope. They that pour out themselves upon present delights look not. like strangers, and hopeful expectants of another life, and better pleasures.

And certainly the captain of our salvation will not own them for his followers, that lie down to drink of these waters, but only such as in passing take of them with their hand. As excessive eating or drinking makes the body sickly and lazy, fit for nothing but sleep; and besots the mind, as it cloys up with " Eph. v. 18.

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x Act. ii.

filthy crudities the way through which the spirits should pass, bemiring them, and making them move heavily as a coach in a deep way: thus doth all immoderate use of the world, and its delights, wrong the soul in its spiritual condition, makes it sickly and feeble, full of spiritual distempers, and inactivity; benumbs the graces of the spirit, and fills the soul with sleepy vapours, makes it grow secure and heavy in spiritual exercises, and obstructs the way and motion of the Spirit of God in the soul; therefore, if you would be spiritual, healthful and vigorous, and enjoy much of the consolations of Heaven, be sparing, and sober in those of the earth, and what you abate of the one shall be certainly made up in the other. Health, and a good constitution of body, is a more constant remaining pleasure, than that of excess and momentary pleasing of the palate: thus the comfort of this hope is a more refined and more abiding contentment, than any that is to be found in the passing enjoyments of this world; and it is a foolish bargain, to exchange a drachm of the one for many pounds of the other. Consider how pressingly the Apostle St. Paul reasons". And take withal our Saviour's exhortation, Be sober and watch, for ye know not at what hour your Lord will come".

The double minded man (says St. James) is unstable in all his ways, although the word signifies usually deceitfulness and dissimulation of mind, answering to the Hebrew phrase of a heart and a heart: yet here I conceive it hath another sense, agreeable to the Apostle's present discourse and scope; it is doubtfulness, and unsettled wavering of mind.

It is impossible that the course of life can be any other but uneven and incomposed, if the spring of it, the heart, whence are the issues of life, be so. A man that is not agreed within, not of one mind with himself, although there were nothing to trouble, nor alter him from without, that inward com

1 Cor. ix. 25. 2 Matth. xxv. 13. a Jam. i. 8. b Prov. iv. 23.

motion is a sufficient principle and cause of inconstancy: how much more then must he waver, when he is assaulted, and beat upon by outward opposi→ tions? he is like the waves of the sea, of himself ever fluctuating to and fro, according to the natural instability of that element; and at the same time exposed to the tossings of all the waves that arise.'

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It is therefore in religion a main thing to have the heart established, and fixed in the belief and hope of the great things we look for; this will beget strength of resolution, and constancy in action, and in suffering too. And this is here our Apostle's great intent to ballast the souls of his brethren with this firm belief, that they might sail even, and steady in those seas of trouble. Wherefore, (says he) if these things we have spoken be thus, if there is indeed truth in them, and you believe it so, what remains then, but to resolve for it upon any terms, to fit for the journey whatsoever be the difficulties, and in them all, to keep up the soul by that certain hope that will not disappoint us.

What he hath said before, is as it were showing them some fruits, some clusters of grapes of that promised land; and this exhortation is answerable to Caleb's word there, Seeing it is so good a land, let us go up and possess it. Though there be fleshly objects, sons of Anak, giants of temptations and afflictions, and sins to be overcome ere it be ours; yet it is well worth all our labour, and our God hath ascertained us of the victory, and given us, by his own word, undoubted hope of possessing it

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That which he principally exhorts unto in this verse, is the right placing and firm continuing of our hope. When we consider how much of our life is taken up this way, in hoping for things, we have not, and that even they who have most of what others are desiring and pursuing, yet are still hoping for somewhat further, and when men have attained one thing, though it be something they promised them

Numb. xiii. 30.

selves to rest contented withal, yet presently upon obtaining it, hope begins to find out some new matter for itself. I say, considering the incessant working of this passion throughout our life, it is of very much concernment for us to give it a right object, and not still to be living in vanity and uncertainty. Here is then that for our hope to apply itself to, after which it needs not change, nor can change without the greatest loss. Hope for the grace that is coming at the revelation of Jesus Christ; bestow all your hope on this, and recal it not. Hope perfectly, and to the end.

The other part of the exhortation relates to this as the main end, and in the original runs in this form, Wherefore girding up the loins of your mind, being sober, hope and to the end hope may be the more perfect and endure to the end, and more like itself, i. e. heavenly, your minds must be freed from the earth, that they may set for Heaven; and this is expressed in two several words, but both meaning much the same thing: that temper of sobriety, and posture of being girt, are no other but the same removal of earthly mindedness, and incumbring cares and desires of earthly things.

Gird up the loins.] The custom of those countries was, that wearing long garments, they trussed them up for work or journey. Chastity is indeed a christian grace, and a great part of the soul's freedom and spiritualness, and fits it much for divine things, yet I think it is not so particularly and entirely intended in this expression, as St. Jerom and others take it; for though the girding of the loins seemed to them to favour that sense, it is only in allusion to the manner of girding up that was then used: and besides, the Apostle here makes it clear he meant somewhat else; for he says, The loins of your minds. Gather up your affections, that they hang not down to hinder you in your race, and so in your hopes of obtaining; and do not only gather them up, but tie them up, that they fall not down again, or if they do, be sure to gird them straiter

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