Matthew Mead
Mead (1629-1699) was an English Puritan, author of The Almost Christian Discovered.
How do you treat the blessed Jesus? Where do you lay Him? In the inn or in the outhouse? I mean thus: Do you receive Him into your hearts and affections? Or do you take him only into the outhouse of an empty profession? Truly a lifeless, graceless profession of Christ is only laying Him in the outhouse; but a hearty embracing of, and a holy affection to, Christ is taking Him into the inn. Now when God, by any providence, embitters created things to us, this makes us remove Christ out of the manger into the inn – out of a lifeless profession into our hearts and affections.
Question. Now you will say, How may I know whether my soul is weaned by God from the world or not?
Answer. I shall lay you down some rules to try yourselves by:
1. To have heavenly affections amidst earthly possessions; this is a sign of a weaned heart.
2. To reckon our happiness, our riches, rather from divine fruition than from any worldly source; this is a sign of a heart under the weanings of God. David was a king, a great man; but he did not reckon this his happiness; no, but his interest in God. “The Lord is the portion of my inheritance, and of my cup: Thou maintainest my lot” (Ps 16:5,6). And what then? “The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage”.
3. What do we most desire, most hunger after? This shows whether we are weaned or not.
The sucking child cries for the breast; whatever you offer it or put into its hand, nothing can quiet it until it is laid to the breast. Now what is it that quiets our minds, that satisfies our desires soonest? If it is worldly pleasures, worldly comforts, worldly honours etc, then our hearts are not weaned.
4. To bear worldly evils, worldly troubles, worldly losses with a holy quietness and satisfaction of spirit; this is a sign of a weaned heart (Heb 10:34). “Ye took joyfully the spoiling of your goods, knowing in yourselves that ye have in heaven a better and an enduring substance.”
5. To choose holiness with affliction and loss, rather than sin with pleasure and preferment; this is a sign of a weaned heart. Thus did Moses: “By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. For he had respect unto the recompense of the reward” (Heb 11:24-26).
The whore, in Revelation 17:4, is said to have “a golden cup in her hand full of abomination, and wine of her fornication”; that is, full of abominable doctrines and adulterated worship, denying God’s ordinances, and bringing into the Church ordinances of her own. Her cup is full of these; yet the inhabitants of the earth are said to be made “drunk with the wine of her fornication” (v 2). How so? Merely because it comes out of a golden cup. The whore gives it in a cup of gold; it leads to honours and preferments in the Church and in the world, and therefore the inhabitants of the earth cannot be weaned from this cup.