The seventh direction:  In the next place be not daunted tho thou meetest with never so many discouragements in thy journey thither.  That man that is resolved for heaven, if Satan can not win him by flatteries, he will endeavor to weaken him by discouragements; saying, Thou art a sinner, thou hath broken God’s law, thou art not elected, thou cometh too late, the day of grace is passed, God doth not care for thee, thy heart is naught, thou art lazy, with a hundred other discouraging suggestions.  And thus it was with David where he saith, “I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the loving-kindness of the Lord in the land of the living.”  As if he should say, the devil did so rage, and my heart was so base, that had I judged according to my own sense and feeling, I had been absolutely distracted; but I trusted to Christ in the promise, and looked that God would be as good as his promise, in having mercy upon me, an unworthy sinner; and this is that which encouraged me, and kept me from fainting.  And thus must thou do when Satan or the law, or thy own conscience, do go about to dishearten thee, either by the greatness of thy sins, the wickedness of thy heart, the tediousness of the way, the loss of outward enjoyments, the hatred that thou wilt procure from the world or the like; then thou must encourage thyself with the freeness of the promises, the tender-heartedness of Christ, the merits of His blood, the freeness of His invitations to come in, the greatness of the sin of others that have been pardoned, and that the same God, through the same Christ, holdeth forth the same grace as free as ever.  If these be not thy meditations, thou wilt draw very heavily in the way of heaven, if thou do not give up all for lost, and so knock off from following any farther; therefore, I say, take heart in thy journey, and say to them that seek thy destruction, “Rejoice not against me, O my enemy, for when I fall I shall arise, when I sit in darkness the Lord shall be a light unto me.”  So run.

The eighth direction:  Take heed of being offended at the cross that thou must go by before thou come to heaven.  You must understand (as I have already touched) that there is no man that goeth to heaven but he must go by the cross.  The cross is the standing way-mark by which all they that go to glory must pass.

“We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of heaven.”  “Yea, and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.”  If thou art in thy way to the kingdom, my life for thine thou wilt come at the cross shortly (the Lord grant thou dost not shrink at it, so as to turn thee back again).