tears (though I more value humility, and refuse not needful humiliation); but my conscience now looketh at love and delight in God, and praising him, as the top of all my religious duties, for which it is that I value and use the rest.

I was once wont to meditate most on my own heart, and to dwell all at home, and look little higher: I was still poring either on my sins or wants, or examining my sincerity: but now, though I am greatly convinced of the need of heart-acquaintance and employment, yet I see more need of a higher work; and that I should look oftener upon Christ, and God, and Heaven, than upon my own heart. At home, I can find distempers to trouble me, and some evidences of my peace: but it is above that I must find matter of delight and joy, and love and peace itself. Therefore I would have one thought at home upon myself and sins, and many thoughts above upon the high and amiable and beautifying objects.

I am much more apprehensive than long ago of the odiousness and danger of the sin of pride: scarce any sin appeareth more odious to me. Having daily more acquaintance with the lamentable naughtiness and frailty of man, and of the mischiefs of that sin, and especially in matters spiritual and ecclesiastical, I think, so far as any man is proud, he is kin to the devil, and utterly a stranger to God and to himself. It is a wonder that it should be a possible sin, to men that still carry about with them, in soul and body, such humbling matter of remedy as we all do.

I am more solicitous than I have been about my duty to God, and less solicitous about his dealings with me: as being assured that he will do all things well; and as acknowledging the goodness of all the declarations of his holiness, even in the punishment of man; and as knowing that there is no rest, but in the will and goodness of God.

I am much more sensible of the evil of schism and of the separating humour, and of gathering parties and making several sects in the Church, than I was heretofore. For the effects have showed' us more of the mischiefs.

I am much more sensible how prone many young professors are to spiritual pride and self-conceitedness, and unruliness and division; and so to prove the grief of their teachers, and firebrands in the Church: and how much of a Minister's work lieth in preventing this, and humbling and confirming such young inexperienced professors, and keeping them in order, in their progress in religion.

I am much more sensible than heretofore, of the breadth, and length, and depth of the radical, universal, odious sin of selfishness, and therefore have written so much against it; and of the excellency and necessity of self-denial, and of a public mind, and of loving our neighbour as ourselves.

I am farther than ever from expecting great matters of unity, splendor, or prosperity to the Church on earth; or that saints should dream of a kingdom of this world, or flatter themselves with the hopes of a

golden age, or reigning over the ungodly (till there be a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness). And, on the contrary, I am more apprehensive that sufferings must be the Church's most ordinary lot, and Christians indeed must be selfdenying cross-bearers, even where there are none but formal nominal Christians to be the cross-makers : and though, ordinarily, God would have vicissitudes of summer and winter, day and night, that the Church may grow extensively in the summer of prosperity, and intensively and radically in the winter of adversity; yet, usually, their night is longer than their day, and that day itself hath its storms and tempests. For the prognostics are evident, in their causes :— 1. The Church will be still imperfect and sinful, and will have those diseases which need this bitter remedy. 2. Rich men will be the rulers of the world: and rich men will be generally so far from true godliness, that they must come to heaven as by human impossibilities; as a camel through a needle's eye. 3. The ungodly will ever have an enmity against the image of God; and he that is born of the flesh will persecute him that was born after the Spirit; and brotherhood will not keep a Cain from killing an Abel, who offereth a more acceptable sacrifice than himself: and the guilty will still hate the light, and make a prey to their pride and malice of a conscionable reprover. 4. The pastors will be still troubling the Church, with their pride, and avarice, and contentions; and the worst will be seeking to be the greatest, and they

that seek it are likeliest to attain it. 5. He that is highest will be still imposing his conceits upon those under him, and lording it over God's heritage; and, with Diotrephes, casting out the brethren, and ruling them by constraint, and not as volunteers. 6. Those that are truly judicious will still comparatively be few, and consequently the troublers and dividers will be the multitude; and a judicious peace-maker and reconciler will be neglected, slighted, or hated, by both extremes. 7. The tenor of the gospel predictions, precepts, promises, and threatenings, are fitted to a people in a suffering state. 8. And the graces of God in a believer are mostly suited to a state of suffering. 9. Christians must imitate Christ, and suffer with him, before they reign with him; and His kingdom was not of this world. 10. The observation of God's dealing hitherto with the Church, in every age, confirmeth me; and his befooling them that have dreamed of glorious times. It was such dreams that transported the Munster Anabaptists, and the followers of David George in the Low Countries, and Campanella, and the Illuminati among the Papists, and our English Anabaptists, and other fanatics here, both in the army and the city and country. When they think the golden age is come, they show their dreams in their extravagant actions; and, as our Fifth-monarchy men, they are presently upon some unquiet rebellious attempt to set up Christ in his kingdom, whether he will or not. I remember how Abraham Scultetus, in Curriculo Vitæ suæ, confesseth the common vanity of himself and other

Protestants in Germany, who, seeing the Princes in England, France, Bohemia, and many other countries, to be all at once both great and wise, and friends to reformation, did presently expect the golden age; but, within one year, either death, or ruins of war, or backslidings, had exposed all their expectations to scorn, and laid them lower than before.

My soul is much more afflicted with the thoughts of the miserable world, and more drawn out in desire of their conversion, than heretofore. I was wont to look but little farther than England in my prayers, as not considering the state of the rest of the world; or, if I prayed for the conversion of the Jews, that was almost all. But now, as I better understand the case of the world, and the method of the Lord's Prayer, so there is nothing in the world that lieth so heavy upon my heart as the thought of the miserable nations of the earth. It is the most astonishing part of all God's providence to me, that he so far forsaketh almost all the world, and confineth his special favour to so few ;— that so small a part of the world hath the profession of Christianity, in comparison of Heathens, Mahometans, and other infidels;-and that, among professed Christians, there are so few that are saved from gross delusions, and have but any competent knowledge; and that, among those, there are so few that are seriously religious, and truly set their hearts on heaven. I cannot be affected so much with the calamities of my own relations, or the land of my nativity, as with the case of the Heathen, Mahometan, and ignorant nations

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