Second Direction. Be sure to keep thine eye on the right rule thou art to walk by. Every calling hath a rule to go by, peculiar to itself, which requires some study to get an insight into, without which a man will but bungle in his work. No calling hath such a sure rule and perfect law to go by, as the Christian’s. Therefore, in earthly professions and worldly callings, men vary in their way and method, though of some trade, because there is no such perfect rule, but another may superadd to it. But the Christian hath one standing rule, the word of God, able to make the man of God perfect. Now, he that would excel in the power of holiness must study this. The physician consults with his Galen, the lawyer with his Littleton, and the philosopher with his Aristotle—the masters of these arts; how much more should the Christian consult with the word, so as to be determined by that, and drawn by that more than by a whole team of arguments from men! ‘We can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth,’ II Cor. 13:8. O Christian! when credit votes this way, friends and relatives that way; when profit bids thee do this, and pleasure that; say, as Jehoshaphat concerning Micaiah, ‘Is there not here a prophet of the Lord besides, that we might enquire of him?’ I Kings 22:7. Is there not the word of God, that I may be concluded by it, rather than by any of these lying prophets? Now there are three ways that men go contrary to this direction—all of them destructive to the power of holiness. Some walk by no rule; some by a false rule; and some by the true rule, but partially. The first is the antinomist and libertine, the second is the superstitious zealot, the third is the hypocrite. Beware of all these, except thou meanest to lay the knife to the throat of holiness.
First. Take heed thou dost not take away the rule God sets before thee, with the antinomist and libertine, who say the law is not a rule to the Christian. These must needs make crooked lines in their lives that live by rote and not by rule. I had thought Christ had baptized the law and gospellized it, both by preaching it as a rule of holiness in his sermons, Matt 5:27, and by walking in his life by the rule of it, I Peter 2:21, 22. That principle therefore may be indicted for a murderer of a righteous and holy life, which takes away the rule by which it should be led. This is a subtle way indeed of Satan to surprise the poor creature. If he make the Christian traveller weary of his guide, and once send him away, then it will not be long before he wander out of heaven way and fall into hell roads. The apostle tells us of a generation of men who, ‘While they promise themselves liberty, they themselves are the servants of corruption,’ II Peter 2:19. Truly these, methinks, look like the men who slip off the yoke of the command under a pretence of liberty, that soon have a worse yoke on in its room, even the yoke of sin.
Second. Take heed thou walkest not by a false rule. There is but one true rule—the word of God —and therefore we may know which is false. ‘To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them,’ Isa. 8:20. Pretend not to more strictness than the word will vouch. This is to be ‘righteous overmuch’ indeed, Ecc. 7:16. Excess makes a monster as well as a defect; not only he that hath but one hand, but he that hath three, is one. There is a curse scored up for him that ‘adds to,’ as well as for him that ‘takes from the words of this book,’ Rev. 22:18. The devil hath had of old a design to undermine scriptural holiness, by crying up an apocryphal holiness. He knows too well that, as the pot by seething over puts out the fire, and so comes in a while not to seethe at all; thus, by making men’s zeal to boil over into a false pretended holiness, he is sure to quench all true holiness, and bring them at last to have no zeal, but prove key-cold atheists. The Pharisee must eke out the commands of God with the traditions of men; the Papist, his true son and heir, hath his unwritten verities, holy orders, and rules for a more austere life than ever came into God’s heart to require; and of late the Quakers have borrowed many of their shreds from both, with which they are very busy to patch up a ridiculous kind of religion, which a man cannot possibly take up, till he hath first fore-done his own understanding, and renounced all subjection to the word of God. O beware of a will-holiness and a will-worship. It is a heavy charge God puts in against Israel, ‘Israel hath forgotten his Maker, and buildeth temples!’ Hosea 8:14. This may seem strange—to forget God, and yet be so devout as to build temples! Yes, she built them without warrant from God. God counts himself forgotten when we forget his word, and keep not close to that. It is laid at Jeroboam's door as a great sin, that ‘he offered upon the altar which he had made in Bethel...in the month which he had devised of his heart,’ I Kings 12:33. He took counsel of his own heart, not of God, when and where to offer. A holiness which is the device of our heart, is not the holiness after God’s heart. The curse which falls upon such bold men, is, that while they seek to establish holiness of their own, they submit not to the true holiness which God requires in his word. God justly gives them over to real unholiness, for pretending to a further holiness than they should. Witness those sinks and common-shores of all abominations—religious houses, I mean, as they are called by the Papists —which being the institutions of men, for want of the salt of a divine warrant to keep them sweet, have run into filthiness and corruption. God will not endure that his creature should be a self-mover. It is a greater sin to do what we are not commanded, than not to do what we are commanded by God; as it is in a subject to presume to make laws of his own head, than not to obey the law his prince enacts. By setting up a holiness of our own, we take God’s mint as it were out of his hand, to whom alone it belongs to stamp what is holy and what not.
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