Church discipline

"Even in worldly matters you will venture upon 'the greatest cost and pains for the things that you see not and never saw. The merchant will sail a thousand miles for a commodity that he never saw. Must the husbandman see his harvest before he plough his land and sow his seed? Must the sick man feel that he has health before he use the means to get it? Must the soldier see that he hath the victory before he fights? Hath God made man for any end? No reason can expect that he should see his end before he begin to travel towards it. When children first go to school, they do not see or enjoy the wisdom and learning which by time and labor they must attain. To look that sight, which is fruition, should go before a holy life, is to expect the end before we will use the necessary means. Shall no man be restrained from felony or murder, but he that sees the assizes or the gallows? It is enough that he foresees them, as made known by the laws. "Till the light appear to your darkened souls, you cannot see the reasons of a holy, heavenly life; and therefore you think it pride, hypocrisy, fancy, or imagination, or the foolishness of crack-brained, self-conceited men. If you saw a man do reverence to a prince, and the prince himself were invisible to you, would you not take him for a madman, and say that he cringed to the chairs, or bowed to a post, or complimented his shadow? If you saw a man's actions in eating and drinking, and saw not the meat and drink, would you not think him mad? If you heard men laugh, and hear not so much as the voice of him that gives the jest, would you not imagine them to be brain-sick? If you see men dance, and hear not the music; if you see a laborer threshing, or reaping, or mowing, and see no corn or grass before him; if you see a soldier fighting for his life, and see no enemy that he spends his strokes upon, will you not take all these for men distracted? Why, this is the case between you and the true believer. "Do you fetch your joys from earth, or heaven? From things unseen, or seen? Things future, or present? Things hoped for, or things possessed? What garden yieldeth you your sweetest flowers? Whence is the food that your hopes and comforts live upon? Whence are the cordials that revive you, when a frowning world doth cast you into a swoon? Where is it that you repose your soul for rest, when sin or sufferings have made you weary? Deal truly; is it in heaven or earth? Which world do you take for your pilgrimage, and which for your home? I do not ask where you are, but where you dwell? Not where are your persons, but where are your hearts? In a word, are you in good earnest when you say you believe a heaven and hell? And do you speak and think, and pray and live, as those that do indeed believe these things? Do you spend your time, and choose your condition of life, and dispose of your affairs, as a man that is serious in his belief? Speak out: do you live the life of faith on things unseen, or the life of sense on the things you behold? Deal truly, for your endless joy or sorrow doth much depend upon it. The life of faith is the certain passage to the life of glory; the life of sense on things here seen, is the certain way to endless misery. "Can you forget that death is ready to undress you, and tell you that your sport and mirth are done, and that now you have had all the world can do for them that secure it and take it for their portion? How quickly can a fever, or one of a hundred messengers of death, bereave you of all that earth afforded you, and turn your sweetest pleasures into gall, and turn a lord into a lump of clay? It is but as a wink, an inch of time, till you must quit the stage, and speak and breathe, and see the face of man no more. If you foresee this, O live as one that does foresee it. "I never heard of any that stole his winding-sheet, or fought for a coffin, or went to law for a grave. And if you did but see how near your honors and wealth and pleasures do stand to eternity, as well as your coffin and winding-sheet, you would then desire and value them as you do these. Oh, what a fading flower is your strength! How will all your gallantry shrink into the shell! 'If these things are yours,' saith Bernard, 'take them with you.' It is awful for persons of renown and honor to change their palaces for graves, and turn to noisome rottenness and dirt; to change their power and authority for impotency, unable to rebuke the poorest worm that feedeth on their hearts or faces. "Princes and nobles, you are not the rulers of the immovable kingdom, but of a boat that is in a rapid stream, or a ship under sail, that will speed both pilot and passengers to the shore. 'I am a worm, and no man,' said a great king. You are the greater worms, and we the little worms, but we must all say with Job, 'The grave is our house.' "The greater are your advantages, the wiser and better should you be, and therefore should better perceive the difference between things temporal and eternal. It is always dark where these glowworms shine, and where a rotten post doth seem a fire. "Write upon your palaces and your goods that sentence, 'Seeing all these things must be dissolved, what manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God?' "