A Goodly Heritage

That which we do know and believe , makes an impression on us only as it is improved by our thoughts , as it is considered , or not considered . A great many things lie asleep in our souls , and signify nothing to us , for want of actual thought . At certain times and seasons , therefore we should say to ourselves , " Well , I now go on purpose , and sit down and meditate upon God . This shall be the business of the present hour . " For nothing can with higher rights lay claim to our entire thoughts than the Author of all. John Howe

It is too plain and sad truth that men have unhappily learned to diminish God to themselves , and make everything of Him seem little . But when he represents his love himself ( for who but God can represent the love of God ? He only can tell the story of his own love) that evil is provided against . He shall manifest it so as it shall be understood ; and set it off to the best advantage . He will make it known how great a thing it is to be beloved of  him . And when he gives that blessed salutation " Hail , thou that art highly favoured ! O thou that art greatly beloved !" he will withal bespeak and procure a suitable knowledge of it .................John Howe

It is a matter full of danger , and upon tremendous consequences depend , to go on in any practice , or in any neglect , against a conviction of judgement and conscience . For your own heart and conscience must condemn you if you consider , and it betrays you if you consider not . How fearful for a man it is to carry his own doom in his own bosom ! to go up and down the world with a self-condemning heart , if it be awake , and which , if it be not , yet cannot sleep always , and must awake with a greater terror at length . And in so plain a case it is most certainly God's deputy, and speaks his mind ; " If our hearts condemn us , God is greater than our hearts,"&c. 1 John 3:20.

There is certainly one thing in which adversity yields gain to godly men , since it calls away their affections from the earth and from earthly things , or even wrests them off while pertinaciously adhering to them . " It is expedient , doubtless , that they should experience hardships here , lest they should like this poor lodging as if it were their own home ." They should as if they are 'strangers and pilgrims upon earth ' , that they may more frequently and with more ardent longing , sigh for their fatherland , and very often repeat it , Home ! Dear Home ! Best Home ! For the sons and heirs of the kingdom must be weaned by this wormwood , lest , allured by the blandishments of the flesh , and the poisoned sweetness of the world , they barter away those true and pure joys of their blessed hope for these false , and foul and fatal joys ; and lest the heavenly soul , being subjugated should give way to pleasures and be overmastered by the flesh , the pernicious root

Love in the creature ever presupposeth some good , true or apparent in the thing loved , by which that affection of union is drawn . But the love of God on the contrary , causeth all good to be produced in the creature . He first loveth us in the free purpose of His Will , and thence worketh good for us and in us . And hence come the unchangeableness of God's love towards us , because it is founded in Himself , and in the stableness of the good pleasure of His own Will . And although we may be comforted as we observe our love to Him ; yet it is far greater comfort drawn from the consideration of His love to us ; as being not only the ground of the other , but in Him also infinite , and unchangeable . And , hereupon , it was that the sisters of Lazarus seeking help for their sick brother sent Christ word , not that he who loved Him , but that " he whom He loved was sick "  John Robinson

The Psalmist's advice is , Commune with your own heart , speak to yourselves , which few certainly do , for you will the most of men in no place so rarely as in company with themselves . But it is my desire that you should be on terms of closest intimacy with your own selves , and , as becomes students , stay at home , dwell with and speak often with yourselves . Seriously consider , To what purpose do I live ? Whither am I going ? Ask thyself " Hast thou any end or purpose thou pursuest , and in what direction the bow is aimed ?"These things which I have embraced for the Christian faith , and so often heard , about a future world , about eternal life and death , whether they are true or false ? If they be true , as we all undoubtedly profess to believe they are , then certainly , the greatest affairs of this world are vain , and lighter even than vanity itself ; our pleasures bitter , and our honour vile and dishonourable . O, how ignorant men covetous of glory are , as

Most mens faith is but opionative , and many men's never reaches  so high as to a rational opinion ; that proceeds upon having balanced considerations on both sides , and inclines to that part on which there seems to be the most weighty ; whereas the faith ( as they call it ) of too many is no other thing than a merely blind and sequacious humour , grounded on nothing but a willingness to be in fashion ; or the apprehension of disgrace , with other inconveniences , if where that is the common profession one should profess to be anything but a Christian ; or a lazy indifferency easily determinable to that part which is next at hand to be chosen ; or it may be , they never having heard of any other profession - which precludes any choice at all .   John Howe.(1630-1705)

Into how profound an abyss is a man cast at the thought of it ! How doth it overwhelm and swallow up his mind and his whole soul ! With what satisfaction and delight must he see himself comprehended of what he finds he can never comprehend ! For contemplating the self - existing Being , he finds it eternally , necessarily , never not existing !  He can have no thought of the self existing Being , as such , but as always existing , as having existed always , as always certain to exist . Inquiring into the spring and source of this Being's existence , Whence is it that it doth exist ? His own notion of a self existing Being , which is not arbitrarily taken up , but which the reason of things hath imposed upon him , gives him his answer , and it can be no other , in that it is a self existing Being ; it hath it of itself , that it doth exist . It is an eternal , everlasting , Spring and Fountain of perpetually existent being to itself. What a glorious excellency of being is this ! Wh