about the matter; for what is that but
to increase your labour, and vexation, and add to your heavy burden? It
will be so far from giving you any ease in the result of it, that it will
rather make your wounds more incurable, and your burdens more intolerable,
which is both opposite to the intention of the gospel and the nature of
believing. Here then is your rest, here is your refreshing rest. Here it
is in quiet yielding to his gracious offers, and silent submitting to the
gospel, not in bawling or contending with it, which is truly a contending
against ourselves. Isa. xxviii. 12. This is the rest, wherewith you may
cause the weary to rest. It is nowhere else, not in heaven or earth, for
there is no back that will take on this burden or can carry it away from
us. There is no disburdening of a sinner of guilt and wrath, in any other
port or haven, but in Christ, who is the city of refuge. Wheresoever you
think to exoner yourselves besides this, you will find no refreshing, but
a multiplication of burdens and cares. Your burden shall be rolled over
upon you again with double weight. Therefore, my beloved, if you will not
hear this, consider what follows, viz. you shall refuse this rest and
refreshing and restlessly seek another rest. You may go and be doing, but
you shall fall backward, and be broken and snared. Your burden shall fall
back upon you, and you shall fall and be broken under it. That which the
Lord said to Israel when they would flee to Egypt, is most true in this
case. "In returning, and in rest ye shall be saved, in quietness and
confidence shall be your strength;" but alas! they would not, that is a
sad close.

Sermon VII.

Matt. xi. 20.--"Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me," &c.

Self love is generally esteemed infamous and contemptible among men. It is
of a bad report every where, and indeed as it is taken commonly, there is
good reason for it, that it should be hissed out of all societies, if
reproaching and speaking evil of it would do it. But to speak the truth,
the name is not so fit to express the thing, for that which men call self
love, may rather be called self hatred. Nothing is more pernicious to a
man's self, or pestilent to the societies of men than this, for if it may
be called love, certainly it is not self love, but the love of some baser
and lower thing than self, to our eternal prejudice. For what is
ourselves, but our souls? Matt. xvi. 26, Luke ix. 25. For our Lord t