An Answer to Them That Say God Regardeth Not Thoughts but Deeds
Object. But it may be the objector will be ready to think, that — If it be indeed our duty to walk with God, yet thoughts are no considerable part of it: what more uncertain or mutable than our thoughts? It is deeds and not thoughts that God regardeth: to do no harm to any, but to dop good to all, this is indeed to walk with God!. You set a man upon a troublesome and impossible work, while you set him upon so strict a guard and so much exercise of his thoughts! What cares the Almighty for my thoughts?
Ansio. 1. If God know better than you, and be to be believed, then thoughts are not so inconsiderable as you suppose. Doth he not say, that the thoughts of the wicked are an abomination to the Lord? “Prov. xv. 26. It is the work of the gospel by its power to pull down strong holds, casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. 2 Cor. X. 4, 5. The unrighteous man’s forsaking his thoughts, is part of his necessary conversion. Isa. Iv. 7. It was the description of the deplorate state of the old world. Gen. vi. 5, 6, “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually; and it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.” Judge by this whether thoughts be so little regarded by God as you imagine. David saith of himself **’ 1 hate vain thoughts.” Ps. cxix. 113. Solomon saith, ‘* The thoughts of the righteous are right.” Prov. xii. 5. Paul saith that charity thinketh not evil. 1 Cor. xiii. 5.
2. Thoughts are the issue of a rational soul. And if its operations be contemptible, its essence is contemptible: if its essence be noble, its operations are considerable. If the soul be more excellent than the body, its operations must be more excellent. To neglect our thoughts, and not employ them upon God, and for God, is to vilify our noblest faculties, and deny God, who is a Spirit, that spiritual service which he requireth.
3. Our thoughts are commonly our most cordial voluntary acts, and shew the temper and inclination of the heart: and therefore are re* gardable to God that searcheth the heart, a«d calleth first for the service of the heart.
4. Our thou2:hts are radical and instrumental acts: such as they are, such are the actions of our lives, Christ telleth us that out of the heart proceed eli thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies, which defile the man. Matt. xv. 19.
5. Our thoughts are under a law, as well as words and deeds. Prov. xxiv. 9. “The thought of foolishness is sin.” And Matt. v. 28, &c. Christ extendeth the law even to the thought* and desires of the h«art. And under the law it is said, Deut. xv. 9. “Beware that there be not a thought in thy wicked heart,” &c. viz. of unmercifulness towards thy brother.
6. Thoughts can reach higher much than sense, and may be employed upon the most excellent and invisible objects, and therefore are fit instruments to elevate the soul that would converse with God. Though God be infinitely above us, our thoughts may be exercised on him: our persons never were in heaven, and yet our conversation must be in heaven, Phil. iii. 20. And how is that but by your thoughts? Though we see not Christ, yet by the exercise of believing thoughts on him, we love him and rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. Though God be invisible, yet our meditation of him may be sweet, and we may delight in the Lord. Psi.
tiv. 34. Say not that all this is but fantastical and delusory, as long as thoughts of things unseen are nieeter to actuate and elevate the love, desires and delights of the soul, and to move and guide us in a regular and holy life, than the sense of lesser present good. The thoughts are not vain or delusory, unless the object of them be false and vain and delusory. Where the object is great, and sure and excellentj the thoughts of such things are excellent operations of the soul. If thoughts of vain glory, wealth and pleasure, can delight the ambitious, covetous and sensual; no wonder if the thoughts of God and life eternal afford us solid high delights,
7. The thoughts are not so liable to be counterfeit and hypocritical as are the words and outward deeds: and therefore they shew more what the man is, and what is in his heart. For as Solomon saith, Prov. xxiii. 7. “As he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”
8. Our thoughts may exercise the highest graces of God in man; and also shew those graces, as being their effects. How is our faith, and love, and desire, and trust, and joy, and hope to be exercised but by our cogitations? If grace were not necessary and excellent, it would not be wrought by the Spirit of God, and called the divine nature, and the image of God: and if grace be excellent, the use and exercise of it is excellent: and therefore our tlioiights by which it is exercised must needs have their excellency too.
9. Our thoughts must be the instruments of our improving all holy truth in scripture, and all the mercies which we receive, and all the afflictions which we undergo. What good will reading a chapter in the Bible do to any one that never thinketh on it? Our delight in the law of God must engage us to meditate in it day and night. Ps. i. 2. What good shall he get by hearing a sermon that exerciseth not his thoughts for the receiving and digesting it. Our considering what is said, is the way in which we may expect that God should give us understanding in all things. 2 Tim. ii. 7. What the better will he be for any of the merciful providences, of God, who never bethinks him whence they come, or what is the use and end that they are given for? what good will he get by any affliction, that never bethinks him who it is that chastiseth him, and for what, and how he must get them removed and sanctified to his good? A man is but like one of the pillars in the church, or like the corpse which he treadeth on, or at best but like the dog that followeth him thither for company, if he use not his thoughts about the work which he hath in hand, and cannot say, as Ps. xlviii. 9, “We have thought of thy loving kindness O God in the midst of thy temple.” He that biddeth you hear, doth also bid you take heed how you hear, Luke o
viii. 18. And you are commanded to lay up the word in your heart and soul. Deut. xi, 18, 19. “And to set your hearts to all the words which are testified among you: for it is not a vain thing for you, because it is your life.”
10. Our thoughts are so considerable a part of God’s service, that they are oft put for the whole. Mai. iii. 16. “A book of remembrance was written for them that feared the Lord and that thought upon his name.” Our believing and loving God, and trusting in him, and desiring him and his grace, are the principal parts of his service, which are exercised immediately by our thoughts: and in praise and prayer it is this inward part that is the soul and life of all. He is a foolish hypocrite that thinks to be heard for his much babbling. Matt. vi. 7.
And on the contrary the thoughts are named as the sum of ail iniquity: Isa. lix. 7. “Their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity.” Isa. lxv. 2. “I have spread out my hands all the day long unto a rebellious people, which walketh in a way that was not good, after their own thoughts.” Jer. iv. 14. O Jerusalem, wash thy heart from wickedness that thou mayest be saved: how long shall thy vain thoughts lodge within thee I “Ps. xiv. 1. ‘’The fool hath said in his heart, there is no God.”
11. A man’s thoughts are the appointed orderly way for the conversion of a sinner, and the preventing of his sin and misery. David o
saith, Ps. cxix. 59, “I thought on my ways, and turned my feet unto thy testimonies.” The prodigal (Luke XV. 17, 18) came to himself and returned to his father, by the success of his own consideration. “Thus saith the Lord of hosts, Consider your ways,” Hag. i. 5, is a voice that every sinner should hear. Ezek. xviii. 14. It is he that considereth and doth not according to his father’s sins, that shall not die. Therefore it is God’s desire, — O that they were wise and understood this, and that they would consider their latter end. Deut. xxxii. 29. It is either men’s inconsiderateness, or the error of their thoughts that is the cause of all their wickedness. Isa. i. 3. “My people doth not consider.” Paul verily thought that he ought to do many things against the name of Jesus. Acts xxvi. 9. Many deceive themselves by thinking themselves something when they are nothing. Gal. vi. 3. They think it strange that we run not with them to excess of riot; and therefore they speak evil of us. 1 Pet. iv. 4. Disobedient formalists consider not that they do evil, when they think they zne offering acceptable sacrifices to God. Eccles. V. 1,2. The very murder of God’s holy ones hath proceeded from these erroneous thoughts; they that kill you shall think they do God service. John xvi. 2. All the ambition, and covetousness, and injustice, and cruelty following thereupon, which troubleth the world, and. ruineth men’s souls, is, from their erroneous
Walklns with God, 12:5 thoughts, overvaluing these deceitful things. Ps. slix. 11. “Their inward thought is that their houses shall continue for ever, and their dwelling places to all generations.” The presumptuous and impenitent are surprised by destruction, for want of thinking of it to prevent it: “In such an hour as you think not, the Son of Man cometh.”^
12. Lastly, the thoughts are the most constant actions of a man, and therefore most of the man is in them. We are not always reading, or hearing, or praying, or working; but we are always thinking: and therefore it doth especially concern us to see that this constant breath of the soul be sweet, and that this constant stream be pure and run in the right channel. Well therefore, did David make this his request, Ps. cxxxix. 23, 24. “Search me O God and know my heart: try me and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.” I say, therefore, to those that insist on this irrational objection, that these very thoughts of their’s, concerning the inconsiderableness of thoughts, are so foolish and ungodly, that when they understand the evil even of these, they will know that thoughts were more to be regarded. “If therefore thou hast done foolishly in lifting up thyself, or if thou hast thought evil, lay thy hand upon thy mouth.”
And though, after all this, I still confess that it is so exceeding hard a matter to keep the thoughts “124 Walking whh God.
in holy exercise and order, that even the best do daily and hourly sin, in the omissions, the disorder, or the vanity of their thoughts; yet for all that we must needs conclude that the inclination and design of our thoughts must be principally for God, and that the thoughts are principal instruments of the soul, in acting it in his service, and moving it towards him, and in all this holy work of our walking with God: and therefore to imagine that thoughts are inconsiderable and of little use, is to unman us and unchristen us. The labour of the mind is necessary for the attaining the felicity of the mind, as the labour of the body is necessary for the things that belong unto the body. As bodily idleness bringeth unto beggary, when the diligent hand makes rich; so the idleness of the soul doth impoverish the soul, when the laborious christian liveth plentifully and comfortably through the blessing of God upon his industry and labour. You cannot expect that God appear to you in a bodily shape, that you may have immediate converse with him in the body: the corporal eating of him in transubstantiate bread, supposed common to men and mice or dogs, we leave to papists, who have made themselves a singular new religion, in despite of the common sense and reason of mankind, as well as of the scriptures and the judgment of the church. It is in the spirit that you must converse with God who is a Spirit. The mind seeth him by faith, who is invisible to the bodily eyes. Nay, if you will have a true and saving knowledge of God, you must not liken him to any thing that is visible, nor have any corporal conceivings of him: earthly things may be the glass in which we may behold him, while we are here in the flesh, but our conceivings of him must be spiritual; and minds that are immersed in flesh and earth, are unmeet to hold communion with him: the natural man knoweth him not, and the carnal mind is enmity to hira, and they that are in the flesh cannot please him. Rom. viii. It is the pure, abstracted, elevated soul, that understandeth by experience what it is to walk with God.