66 permit us to spend the remainder of our days un"der thy happy government. We know thy yoke " is easy, and thy burden is light; and therefore suf"fer us now at last, we beseech thee, to come unto thee, that in thee we may find rest for our souls, "who have sought it in vain in every thing but "thee." And having thus surrendered up ourselves to him, let us, by our constant perseverance in welldoing, endeavour to subdue ourselves more and more to his will, in this full assurance, that from our hearty and punctual conformity thereunto, we shall reap, not only peace and tranquillity here, but also immortal glory and happiness hereafter. Which we beseech thee to grant us all, of thy infinite mercy, O blessed Jesu: to whom, with thy great Father, and eternal Spirit, be ascribed of us and all the world, all honour, and glory, and praise, from this time forth and for evermore. Amen. DISCOURSE XI. UPON JAMES I. 8. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways. By a double minded man here, we are to understand (as is plain from the context) an insincere man; one who pretends to religion, and hath a good inclination towards it, but is not arrived to a firm and prevailing resolution of adhering to it, maugre all temptations to the contrary; that bears some faint and ineffectual regard to the rules of his duty and the dictates of his conscience, but not such as hath the superiority over him, and doth command and govern his life and conversation; not such as hath that prevailing influence upon him, as to hinder him from being ordinarily counterswayed by his appetites or passions, or secular interests, to the commission of unlawful and irregular actions. So that the singleminded man is one, who hath no other prevailing purpose and resolution, but to adhere to God in the profession and practice of true religion; and upon every emergency is ready fixed to perform what God demands of him, by the voice of revelation and right reason; and, in a word, that lives under no other commanding principle but this, I will always do what God will have me: and so on the contrary, the double minded man is one that fluctuates between two minds and wills; a will for God, and a will for the world; and is governed sometimes by one, and some " times by another, but is never true or constant to either. In short, he is one who, being yet unsubdued to the commanding power and influence of religion, hath no fixed, no determined mind or resolution; but is not only of several minds upon several occasions, but also of contrary minds upon contrary occasions. For his heart is so divided between his God and his interest, his duty and his lust, that, like a needle between two loadstones, he is always wavering to and again, and pointing alternately to both, but is never fixed to either. And of this man the apostle tells us, that he is unstable in all his ways. Where by ways, according to the Hebrew phraseology, he means actions; he is unstable in all his actions; that is, he always acts with an anxious, doubtful, and misgiving mind; he knows not where to find himself, nor many times which way to turn himself; he leads a very uncertain, insecure, and unquiet life; being all along perplexed and entangled in the whole course of his actions. The words thus explained may be resolved into this proposition: That whilst men's minds are divided between God and their lusts, and are not entirely subdued to his will, they must necessarily lead very anxious, insecure, unstable lives; that till such time as we act from an entire submission of our souls to God, we can never act steadily and securely; but must be always fluctuating in great anxiety and uncertainty. "The Wise Man tells us, that he that walketh uprightly walketh surely, Prov. x. 9. he goes on in a direct, secure, and even course of action, wherein there is no perplexity or entanglement: whereas the life of a double minded hypocrite, whose heart is divided between God and the world, is a perpetual maze and labyrinth; wherein the farther he goes, the more he is lost and confounded. And this will evidently appear upon the following considerations: 1. That he acts upon no fixed or certain principles. 2. That the way and course of his actions is all obscure and intricate. 3. That he is always fain to live in a disguise, and is therein insecure of concealment. 4. That he is always at odds with himself, and in perpetual variance with his own reason. 5. That he is at a miserable uncertainty as to the present events and issues of his own actions. 6. That he hath a most dismal prospect before him of the final issue and event of all. 1. The double minded man acts upon no fixed or certain principles. For the principles he proceeds upon are such as have no foundation in the nature of things; but, like castles in the air, are built upon mere dreams and delusions, which, whenever his reason awakes, will sink and disappear. For either he lives upon no principles at all, but acts, like the beasts that perish, upon blind instincts, and the unaccountable impulses of his brutal sense: or upon such principles as these; that there is no such Being in the world as an eternal, and invisible, almighty power; or that if there be, he lives retired from us, and takes no notice of what we do; or that if he doth, it is as an unconcerned spectator, to whom it is purely indifferent whether we do good or evil; or that if he be at all pleased with our good deeds, and displeased with our bad, yet it is not to any such degree, as to entail any future rewards upon the one, or punishments on the other; or that if there be any such rewards and punishments prepared by him, they are so slight and inconsiderable, that the loss of the one and sufferance of the other are abundantly compensated by the present pleasure of a sinful life; or, in fine, that if neither the one nor the other prove true, yet we may securely enjoy these pleasures while we are able; and by repenting at last, when we are old or dying, and are able to enjoy them no longer, may entitle ourselves to those rewards, whatsoever they are, and secure ourselves from those punishments. This is the chain of principles upon which bad men live and act, if they act upon any at all; and which are all of them grounded upon such doubtful presumptions, such thin pretences, and unsatisfactory reasonings, as no man in his wits can ever be throughly secure of. For besides that they contradict the best and wisest part of the world, the current sense of human nature, and the common consent of all mankind, which are such prejudices against them as must necessarily render them very doubtful at least; besides all this, I say, they have so strong a current of evidence against them, and are overpowered with such a force of arguments from all the quarters of reason and religion; and the contrary principles are so much more agreeable to all the appearances of things, to the sacred oracles, to human society, and to the very frame of human nature ; and, in a word, have every way so vast an overweight of reason on their side, that it is impossible for any man in a cold mind to be confident that they are true, how much soever it may be his interest to wish them so. So that whereas the sincere and upright man, living, as he doth, upon well-tried principles, that for their truth have been always found most |