A Christian Directory, Part 2: Christian Economics

Direct. XIII. Keep up a high esteem of time; and be every day more careful that you lose none of your time, than you are that you lose none of your gold or silver; and if vain recreations, dressings, feastings, idle talk, unprofitable company, or sleep, be any of them temptations to rob you of any of your time, accordingly heighten your watchfulness and firm resolutions against them. Be not more careful to escape thieves and robbers, than to escape that person, or action, or course of life, that would rob you of any of your time. And for the redeeming of time, especially see, not only that you be never idle, but also that you be doing the greatest good that you can do, and prefer not a less before a greater.

Direct. XIV. Eat and drink with temperance and thankfulness; for health, and not for unprofitable pleasure. For quantity, most carefully avoid excess; for many exceed, for one that taketh too little. Never please your appetite in meat or drink, when it tendeth to the detriment of your health. Prov. xxxi. 4, 6, "It is not for kings to drink wine, nor for princes strong drink. – Give strong drink to him that is ready to perish, and wine to those that be of heavy hearts." Eccles. x. 16, 17, "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child, and thy princes eat in the morning! Blessed art thou, O land, when thy king is the son of nobles, and thy princes eat in due season, for strength and not for drunkenness!" Then must poorer men also take heed of intemperance and excess. Let your diet incline rather to the coarser than the finer sort, and to the cheaper than the costly sort, and to sparing abstinence than to fulness. I would advise rich men especially, to write in great letters on the walls of their dining-rooms or parlours these two sentences: Ezek. xvi. 49, "BEHOLD, THIS WAS THE INIQUITY OF SODOM, PRIDE, FULNESS OF BREAD, AND ABUNDANCE OF IDLENESS WAS IN HER, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy." Luke xvi. 19, 25, "There was a certain rich man which was CLOTHED IN PURPLE AND SILK, AND FARED SUMPTUOUSLY every day. – Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things." Paul wept when he mentioned them, "whose end is destruction, whose god is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things, being enemies to the cross," Phil. iii. 18, 19.42 O live not after the flesh, lest ye die, Rom. viii. 13; Gal. vi. 8; v. 21, 23, 24.

Direct. XV. If any temptation prevail against you, and you fall into any sins besides common infirmities, presently lament it, and confess not only to God, but to men, when confession conduceth more to good than harm; and rise by a true and thorough repentance, immediately without delay. Spare not the flesh, and daub not over the breach, and do not by excuses palliate the sore, but speedily rise, whatever it cost; for it will certainly cost you more to go on or to remain impenitent. And for your ordinary infirmities, make not too light of them, but confess them, and daily strive against them; and examine what strength you get against them, and do not aggravate them by impenitence and contempt.

Direct. XVI. Every day look to the special duties of your several relations: whether you are husbands, wives, parents, children, masters, servants, pastors, people, magistrates, subjects, remember that every relation hath its special duty, and its advantage for the doing of some good; and that God requireth your faithfulness in these, as well as in any other duty. And that in these a man's sincerity or hypocrisy is usually more tried, than in any other parts of our lives.

Direct. XVII. In the evening return to the worshipping of God, in the family and in secret, as was directed for the morning. And do all with seriousness, as in the sight of God, and in the sense of your necessities; and make it your delight to receive instructions from the holy Scripture, and praise God, and call upon his name through Christ.

Direct. XVIII. If you have any extraordinary impediments one day to hinder you in your duty to God and man, make it up by diligence the next; and if you have any extraordinary helps, make use of them, and let them not overslip you. As, if it be a lecture-day, or a funeral sermon, or you have opportunity of converse with men of extraordinary worth; or if it be a day of humiliation or thanksgiving; it may be expected that you gather a double measure of strength by such extraordinary helps.

Direct. XIX. Before you betake yourselves to sleep, it is ordinarily a safe and needful course, to take a review of the actions and mercies of the past day; that you may be specially thankful for all special mercies, and humbled for your sins, and may renew your repentance and resolutions for obedience, and may examine yourselves, whether your souls grow better or worse, and whether sin go down and grace increase, and whether you are any better prepared for sufferings and death. But yet waste not too much time in the ordinary accounts of your life, as those that neglect their duty while they are examining themselves how they perform it, and perplexing themselves with the long perusal of their ordinary infirmities. But by a general (yet sincere) repentance, bewail your unavoidable daily failings, and have recourse to Christ for a daily pardon and renewed grace; and in case of extraordinary sins or mercies, be sure to be extraordinarily humbled or thankful. Some think it best to keep a daily catalogue or diurnal of their sins and mercies. If you do so, be not too particular in the enumeration of those that are the matter of every day's return; for it will be but a temptation to waste your time, and neglect greater duty, and to make you grow customary and senseless of such sins and mercies, when the same come to be recited over and over from day to day. But let the common mercies be more generally recorded, and the common sins generally confessed (yet neither of them therefore slighted); and let the extraordinary mercies, and greater sins, have a more particular observation. And yet remember, that sins and mercies, which it is not fit that others be acquainted with, are safelier committed to memory than to writing: and methinks, a well humbled and a thankful heart should not easily let the memory of them slip.

Direct. XX. When you compose yourselves to sleep, again commit yourselves to God through Christ, and crave his protection, and close up the day with some holy exercise of faith and love. And if you are persons that must needs lie waking in the night, let your meditations be holy, and exercised upon that subject that is profitablest to your souls. But I cannot give this as an ordinary direction, because that the body must have sleep, or else it will be unfit for labour, and all thoughts of holy things must be serious; and all serious thoughts will hinder sleep, and those that wake in the night, do wake unwillingly, and would not put themselves out of hopes of sleep; which such serious meditations would do. Nor can I advise you (ordinarily) to rise in the night to prayer, as the papists' votaries do. For this is but to serve God with irrational and hurtful ceremony; and it is a wonder how far such men will go in ceremony, that will not be drawn to a life of love and spiritual worship. Unless men did irrationally place the service of God in praying this hour rather than another, they might see how improvidently and sinfully they lose their time, in twice dressing and undressing, and in the intervals of their sleep, when they might spare all that time, by sitting up the longer, or rising the earlier, for the same employment. Besides what tendency it hath to the destruction of health, by cold and interruption of necessary rest; when God approveth not of the disabling of the body, or destroying our health, or shortening life (no more than of murder or cruelty to others); but only calleth us to deny our unnecessary, sensual delights, and use the body so as it may be most serviceable to the soul and him.

I have briefly laid together these twenty directions for the right spending of every day, that those that need them, and cannot remember the larger more particular directions, may at least get these few engraven on their minds, and make them the daily practice of their lives; which if you will sincerely do, you cannot conceive how much it will conduce to the holiness, fruitfulness, and quietness of your lives, and to your peaceful and comfortable death.

CHAPTER XVIII.

DIRECTIONS FOR THE ORDER OF HOLY DUTIES

Tit. 1. Directions for the holy spending of the Lord's Day in Families

Direct. I. Be well resolved against the cavils of those carnal men, that would make you believe that the holy spending of the Lord's day is a needless thing.43 For the name, whether it shall be called the christian sabbath, is not much worth contending about: undoubtedly the name of The Lord's Day, is that which was given it by the Spirit of God, Rev. i. 10, and the ancient christians, who sometimes called it, The Sabbath, by allusion, as they used the names, sacrifice, and altar: the question is not so much of the name as the thing; whether we ought to spend the day in holy exercises, without unnecessary divertisements? And to settle your consciences in this, you have all these evidences at hand.

1. By the confession of all, you have the law of nature to tell you, that God must be openly worshipped, and that some set time should be appointed for his worship. And, whether the fourth commandment be formally in force or abrogated, yet it is commonly agreed on that the parity of reason, and general equity of it, serveth to acquaint us, that it is the will of God, that one day in seven be the least that we destinate to this use: this being then judged a meet proportion by God himself, (even from the creation, and on the account of commemorating the creation,) and christians being no less obliged to take as large a space of time, who have both the creation and redemption to commemorate, and a more excellent manner of worship to perform.

2. It is confessed by all christians that Christ rose on the first day of the week, and appeared to his congregated disciples on that day, and poured out the Holy Ghost upon them on that day; and that the apostles appointed, and the christian churches observed, their assemblies and communion ordinarily on that day; and that these apostles were filled with the extraordinary gifts of the Holy Ghost, that they might infallibly acquaint the church with the doctrine and will of Jesus Christ, and leave it on record for succeeding ages;44 and so were intrusted by office, and enabled by gifts, to settle the orders of the gospel church, as Moses did the matters of the tabernacle and worship then; and so that their laws or orders thus settled, were the laws or orders of the Holy Ghost, John xx. 1, 19, 26; Acts ii. 1; xx. 7; 1 Cor. xvi. 1, 2; Rev. i. 10; Matt. xxviii. 19, 20; John xvi. 13-15; Rom. xvi. 16; 2 Thess. ii. 15.

3. It is also confessed, that the universal church, from the days of the apostles down till now, hath constantly kept holy the Lord's day in the memorial of Christ's resurrection, and that as by the will of Christ delivered to them by or from the apostles; insomuch that I remember not either any orthodox christian, or heretic, that ever opposed, questioned, or scrupled it, till of late ages. And as an historical discovery of the matter of fact, this is a good evidence that indeed it was settled by the apostles; and consequently by Christ, who gave them their commission, and inspired them by the Holy Ghost.

4. It is confessed, that it is still the practice of the universal church; and those that take it to be but of ecclesiastical appointment, some of them mean it of such extraordinary ecclesiastics as inspired apostles, and all of them take the appointment as obligatory to all the members of the church.

5. The laws of the land where we live command it, and the king by proclamation urgeth the execution: and the canons, and homilies, and liturgy show that the holy observation of the Lord's day, is the judgment and will of the governors of the church. Read the homilies for the time and place of worship. Yea, they require the people to say when the fourth commandment is read, "Lord, have mercy upon us, and incline our hearts to keep this law." And the command of authority is not a contemptible obligation.

6. It is granted by all, that more than this is due to God; and the life that is in every christian telleth him, that it is a very great mercy to us, not only to servants, but even to all men, that one day in seven they may disburden themselves of all the cares and business of the world, which may hinder their holy communion with God and one another, and wholly apply themselves to learn the will of God. And nature teacheth us to accept of mercy when it is offered to us, and not dispute against our happiness.

7. Common experience telleth us, that where the Lord's day is more holily and carefully observed, knowledge and religion prosper best; and that more souls are converted on those days, than on all the other days besides; and that the people are accordingly more edified; and that wherever the Lord's day is ordinarily neglected or mispent, religion and civility decay, and there is a visible, lamentable difference between those places and families, and the other.

8. Reason and experience tell us, that if men were left to themselves, what time they should appoint for God's public worship, in most places it would be so little, and disordered, and uncertain, that religion would be for the most part banished out of the now christian world. Therefore there being need of a universal law for it, it is probable that such a law there is; and if so, it can be by none but God, the Creator, Redeemer, and Holy Ghost, there being no other universal governor and lawgiver to impose it.

9. All must confess, that it is more desirable for unity and concord sake, that all christians hold their holy assemblies on one and the same day, and that all at once, through all the world, do worship God and seek his grace, than that they do it some on one day and some on another.

10. And all that ever I have conversed with, confess that if the holy spending of the Lord's day be not necessary it is lawful; and therefore when there is so much to be said for the necessity of it too, to keep it holy is the safest way, seeing this cannot be a sin, but the contrary may; and licence is encouragement enough to accept so great a mercy. All this set together will satisfy a man, that hath any spiritual sense of the concernments of his own and others' souls.

Object. But you will say, That besides the name, it is yet a controversy whether the whole day should be spent in holy exercises, or only so much as is meet for the public communion, it being not found in antiquity, that the churches used any further to observe it.

Answ. No sober man denieth that works of necessity for the preservation of our own or other men's lives, or health, or goods, may be done on the Lord's day: so that when we say, that the whole day is to be spent holily, we exclude not eating, and sleeping, nor the necessary actions about worship; as the priests in the temple are said to break the sabbath, (that is, the external rest,) and to be blameless. But otherwise, that it is the whole day, is evident in the arguments produced: the ancient histories and canons of the church speak not of one part of the day only, but the whole: all confess, that when labour or sinful sports are forbidden, it is on the whole day, and not only on a part. And for what is alleged of the custom of the ancient church, I answer, 1. The ancientest churches spent almost all the day in public worship and communion: they begun in the morning, and continued without parting till the evening. The first part of the day being spent in teaching the catechumens, they were then dismissed, and the church continued together in preaching and praying, but especially in those laudatory, eucharistical offices, which accompany the celebration of the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. They did not then (as gluttons do now) account it fasting to forbear a dinner, when they supped, yea, feasted at night; it being not usual among the Romans to eat any dinners at all. And they that spent all the day together in public worship and communion, you may be sure spent not part of it in dancing, nor stage-plays, nor worldly businesses. 2. And church history giveth us but little account what particular persons did in private, nor can it be expected. 3. Who hath brought us any proof that ever the church approved of spending any part of the day in sports, or idleness, or unnecessary, worldly business? or that any churches (or persons regardable) did actually so spend it? 4. Unless their proof be from those many canons of our own and other churches, that command the holy observation of it, and forbid these plays and labours on it; which I confess doth intimate, that some there were that needed laws to restrain them from the violation of it. 5. Again I say, that seeing few men will have the face to say that plays and games, or idleness, are a duty on that day, it will suffice a holy, thankful christian, if he have but leave to spend all the day for the good of his soul and those about him; and if he may be reading and meditating on the word of God, and praying and praising him, and instructing his family, while others waste that time in vanity; especially to servants and poor men, that have but little other leisure all the year, to seek for knowledge, or use any such helps for their salvation. As to a poor man that is kept hungry all the week, a bare liberty of feasting with his landlord on the Lord's day, would satisfy him without a law to constrain him to it; so is it here with a hungry soul.

Direct. II. Remember that the work of the day is, in general, to keep up knowledge and religion in the world, and to own and honour our Creator, Redeemer, and Regenerator openly before all; and to have communion with God through Christ in the Spirit, by receiving and exercising his grace, in order to our communion with him in glory. Let these therefore (well understood) be your ends, and in these be you exercised all the day, and stick not hypocritically in bodily rest and outward duties. Remember that it is a day for heart work, as well as for the exercise of the tongue, and ear, and knees; and that your principal business is with heaven; follow your hearts therefore all the day, and see that they be not idle while your bodies are exercised: nothing is done if the heart do nothing.

Direct. III. Remember that the special work of the day is to celebrate the memorial of Christ's resurrection, and of the whole work of man's redemption by him. Labour therefore with all diligence in the sense of your natural sin and misery, to stir up the lively sense of the wonderful love of God and our Redeemer, and to spend all the day in the special exercises of faith and love. And seeing it is the christian weekly festival, or day of thanksgiving for the greatest mercy in the world, spend it as a day of thanksgiving should be spent, especially in joyful praises of our Lord; and let the humbling and instructing exercises of the day, be all subordinate to these laudatory exercises. I know that much time must be spent in teaching and warning the ignorant and ungodly, because their poverty and labours hinder them from other such opportunities, and we must speak to them then or not at all. But if it were not for their mere necessity, and if we could as well speak to them other days of the week, the churches should spend all the Lord's day in such praises and thanksgivings as are suitable to the ends of the institution. But seeing that cannot be expected, methinks it is desirable that the ancient custom of the churches were more imitated, and the morning sermon being suited to the state of the more ignorant and unconverted, that the rest of the day were spent in the exercises of thanksgiving to the joy and encouragement of believers, and in doctrine suited to their state. And yet I must add, that a skilful preacher will do both together, and so declare the love and grace of our Redeemer, as by a meet application may both draw in the ungodly, and comfort those that are already sanctified, and raise their hearts in praise to God.

Direct. IV. Remember that the Lord's day is appointed specially for public worship and personal communion of the churches therein: see therefore that you spend as much of the day as you can in this public worship and church communion; especially in the celebration of that sacrament which is appointed for the memorial of the death of Christ until his coming, 1 Cor. xi. 25, 26. This sacrament in the primitive church was celebrated every Lord's day; yea, and oftener, even ordinarily on every other day of the week when the churches assembled for communion. And it might be so now without any hinderance to preaching or prayer, if all things were ordered as they should be; for those prayers, and instructions, and exhortations which are most suited to this eucharistical action, would be the most suitable prayers and sermons for the church on the Lord's days. In the mean time see that so much of the day as is spent in church communion and public worship, be accordingly improved by you; and be not at that time about your secret or family services, but take only those hours for such private duties, in which the church is not assembled; and remember how much the love of saints is to be exercised in this communion, and therefore labour to keep alive that love, without which no man can celebrate the Lord's day according to the end of the institution.

Direct. V. Understand how great a mercy it is, that you have leave thus to wait upon God for the receiving and exercise of grace, and to cast off the distracting thoughts and businesses of the world, and what an opportunity is put into your hand, to get more in one day, than this world can afford you all your lives. And therefore come with gladness as to the receiving of so great a mercy, and with desire after it, and with hope to speed, and not with unwillingness, as to an unpleasant task, as carnal hearts that love not God, or his grace or service, and are weary of all they do, and glad when it is done, as the ox that is unyoked. Isa. lviii. 13, 14, "If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on my holy day, and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words, then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord." The affection that you have to the Lord's day, much showeth the temper of the heart: a holy person is glad when it cometh, as loving it for the holy exercises of the day; a wicked, carnal heart is glad of it only for his carnal ease, but weary of the spiritual duties.

Direct. VI. Avoid both the extremes of profaneness and superstition in the point of your external rest: and to that end observe, 1. That the work is not for the day, but the day for the holy work; as Christ saith, Mark ii. 27, "The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath." It is appointed for our good, and not for our hurt. 2. The outward rest is not appointed for itself, but as a means to the freedom of the mind for inward and spiritual employments; and therefore all those outward and common labours and discourses are unlawful, which any way distract the mind, and hinder either our outward or inward attendance upon God, and our edification. 3. And (whatever it was to the Jews) no common words or actions are unlawful, which are no hinderance to this communion and worship and spiritual edification. 4. Yea, those things that are necessary to the support of nature, and the saving of the life or health, or estate and goods of ourselves or our neighbours, are needful duties on that day: not all those works which are truly charitable, (for it may be a work of mercy to build hospitals, or make garments for the poor, or till their ground,) but such works of mercy as cannot be put off to another day, and such as hinder not the duties of the day. 5. The same word or action on the Lord's day which is unlawful to one man, may be lawful to another; as being no hinderance, yea, a duty to him: as Christ saith, "The priests in the temple break or profane the sabbath, (that is, the outward rest, but not the command,) and are blameless," Matt. xii. 15. And the cook may lawfully be employed in dressing meat, when it were a sin in another to do it voluntarily without need. 6. The Lord's day being to be kept as a day of thanksgiving, the dressing of such meat as is fit for a day of thanksgiving is not to be scrupled: the primitive christians in the apostles' time, had their love-feasts constantly (with the Lord's supper or after) on the evening of the day; and they could not feast without dressing meat. 7. Yet that which is lawful in itself, must be so done as consisteth with care and compassion of the souls of servants that are employed about it, that they may be deprived of no more of their spiritual benefit than needs. 8. Also that which is lawful must sometimes be forborne, when it may by scandal tempt others that are loose or weak to do that which is unlawful: not that the mere displeasing of the erroneous should put us out of the right way, but the scandal which is spoken against in Scripture, is the laying a temptation before men that are weak to make them sin. 9. Take heed of that hypocritical and censorious temper which turneth the holy observation of the day into a ceremonious abstinence from lawful things; and censureth those as ungodly that are not of the same mind, and forbear not such things as well as they. Mark the difference between Christ and the Pharisees in this point: much of their contention with him was about the outward observation of the sabbath; because his disciples rubbed out corn to eat on the sabbath day, and because he healed on the sabbath, and bid the healed man "take up his bed and walk: " and they said, "There are six days in which men ought to work; they might come and be healed on them," Luke vi. 1, 5, 6; xiii. 12, 14-16; John v. 17, 18; Mark i. 21, 24; ii. 23-28; iii. 2, 3, 5; vi. 2, 5; Luke xiv. 1, 3, 5, 6; John v. 9, 10, 16; vii. 22-24; ix. 14, 16. And a man that is of their spirit will think that the Pharisees were in the right. No doubt Christ might have chosen another day to heal on; but he knew that the works which most declared the power of God, and honoured him before all, and confirmed the gospel, were fittest for the sabbath day. Take heed therefore of the Pharisees' ceremoniousness and censoriousness. If you see a man walking abroad on the Lord's day, censure him not till you know that he doth it from profaneness or negligence: you know not but it may be necessary to his health, and he may improve it in holy meditation? If you hear some speak a word more than you think needful, of common things, or do more about meat and clothing than you think meet, censure them not till you hear their reason. A scrupulousness about such outward observances, when the holy duties of the day are no whit hindered by that thing; and a censoriousness towards those that are not as scrupulous, is too pharisaical and ceremonious a religion for spiritual, charitable christians. And the extremes of some godly people in this kind, have occasioned the quakers and seekers to take and use all days alike, and the profane to contemn the sanctifying of the Lord's day.