your own: and in seeking your safety, liberty, wealth and glory, you shall lose them all, and fall into misery, slavery and disdain. Deny yourselves, or save yourselves, if you can. God is not engaged to take care of you, or preserve you, if you will be your own, and will be reserving or saving yourselves from him. And though you may seem to prosper in self-seeking ways, they will end, yea,' shortly end in your confusion. You have seen of late years in this land, the glory of self-seekers turned to shame; but it is greater shame that is out of sight. The word and works of God have warned you. If yet the cause and church of God shall be neglected, and yourselves and your own affairs preferred, and men that shall not be tolerated to abuse you, shall be tolerated to abuse the souls of men, and the Lord that made them; and if God must be denied because you will not deny yourselves, you shall be denied by Christ in your great extremity, when the remembrance of these things shall be your torment. Hearken and amend, or prepare your answer; for behold the Judge is at the door.

A

TREATISE OF SELF-DENIAL.

LUKE IX. 23, 24.

And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me : for whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it.

CHAPTER I.

What Selfishness and Self-denial are, at the root.

I HAVE already spoken of Conversion in a foregoing discourse, both opening to you the true nature of it, and the reasons of its necessity, and persuading men thereunto. But lest so great a work should miscarry with any for want of a more particular explication, I should next open the three great parts of the work distinctly and in order: that is, I. From what it is that we must turn. II. To whom we must

turn. III. And by whom we must turn. For though I touched all these in the foregoing Directions, and through the discourse, yet I am afraid lest so brief a touch should be ineffectual.

The first of these I shall handle at this time from this text, meddling with no more but what is necessary to our present business.

You may easily see that the doctrine which Christ here proclaimeth to all that have thoughts of being his followers, is this, that,' All that will be Christians must deny themselves, and take up their cross and follow Christ, and not

reserve so much as their very lives, but resolve to resign up all for him.'

Self-denial is one part of true conversion; for the opening of this I must shew you,

1. What is meant by self.

II. And what by denying this self.

III. And the grounds and reasons of the point.
And iv. I shall briefly apply it.

I. 1. Self is sometimes taken for the very person, consisting of the soul and body simply considered; and this is called natural or personal self. 2. Self is taken for this person considered in its capacity of earthly comforts, and in relation to the present blessings of this world, that tend to the prosperity of man as in the flesh; and this may be called earthly self (yet in an innocent sense). 3. Self is taken for the person as corrupted by inordinate sinful sensuality; which may be called carnal self. 4. Self may be taken for the person in his sanctified estate; which is spiritual self. 5. And self may be taken for the person in his naturals and spirituals conjunct, as he is capable of a life of everlasting felicity; which is the immortal self.

II. By denying self, is meant disclaiming, renouncing, disowning and forsaking it. Self is here partly as a party disjunct from Christ, and withdrawn from its due subordination to God, and partly as his competitor and opposite; and accordingly it is to be denied, partly by a neglect, and partly by an opposition.

Before I come to tell you how far self must be denied, I must tell you wherein the disease of selfishness doth consist; and for brevity we shall dispatch them both together.

And on the negative, 1. To be a natural individual person distinct from God our Creator, is none of our disease, but the state we were created in; and therefore no man must under pretence of self-denial either destroy himself, or yet with some heretics aspire to be essentially and personally one with God, so that their individual personality should be drowned in him as a drop is in the ocean.

2. The disease of selfishness lieth not in having a body that is capable of tasting sweetness in the creature, or in having the objects of our sense in which we be delighted, nor yet in all actual sweetness and delight in them; nor in a simple love of life itself; for all these are the effects of the

Creator's will. And therefore this self-denial doth not consist in a hatred or disregard of our own lives, or in a destruction of our appetites or senses, or an absolute refusal to please them in the use of the creatures which God hath given us.

3. Yea, though our natures are corrupted by sin, selfdenial requireth not that we should kill ourselves, and destroy our human natures that we may thereby destroy the sin. Self-murder is a most heinous sin, which God condemneth.

4. Our spiritual self, or self as sanctified, must not be so denied as to deny ourselves to be what we are, or have what we have, or do what we do. We may not deny God's graces, nor deny that they are in us as the subject, nor may we restrain the holy desires which God exciteth in us, or deny to fulfil them, or bring them towards fruition when opportunity is offered us.

5. We may not deny to accept of any mercy which God shall offer us, though but a common creature: nor to use any talent for his service if he choose us for his stewards; much less may we refuse any spiritual mercy that may further our salvation. It is not the self-denial required by Christ, that we deny to be Christians, or to be sanctified by the Spirit, or to be delivered from our sins and enemies; or that we deny to use the means and helps offered us, or to accept of the privileges purchased by Christ; much less to deny our salvation itself, and to undo our own souls. In a word, it is not any thing that is really and finally to our hurt and loss.

But (as to the affirmative) I shall shew you what the disease of selfishness indeed is, and so what self-denial is.

1. When God had created man in his own image, he gave him a holy disposition of soul, which might incline him to his Maker as his only felicity and ultimate end. He made him to be blessed in the sight of his glory, and in the everlasting love of God, and delight in him, and praises of him. This excellent employment and glory did God both fit him for, and set before him.

But the first temptation did entice him to adhere to an inferior good, for the pleasing of his flesh and the advancement of himself to a carnal kind of felicity in himself, that he might be as God, knowing good and evil. And thus man was suddenly taken with the creature as a means to the