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TRYAL & TRIVMPH OF F A I T H: OR An Exposition of the History of Christs dispossessing of the daughter of the woman of Canaan. Delivered in SERMONS; In which are opened, The Victory of Faith;
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R E V E L. 2. 28. And I will give to him (that overcometh) the morning star. Published by Authority. L O N D O N:
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THE LADY JANE CAMPBELL,
VISCOUNTESS OF KENMURE; SISTER TO THE RIGHT NOBLE AND
POTENT, THE MARQUIS OF ARGYLE,
GRACE AND PEACE.
MADAM,I SHOULD complain of these much-disputing and over-writing times, if I were not thought to be as deep in the fault as those whom I accuse: but the truth is, while we endeavour to gain a grain-weight of truth, it is much if we lose not a talent-weight of goodness and Christian love. But, I am sure, though so much knowledge and light may conduce for our safe walking, in discerning the certain borders of divine truths from every false way; and suppose that searching into questions of the time were a useful and necessary evil only; yet the declining temper of the world's worst time, the old age of time, eternity now so near approaching, calleth for more necessary good things at our hands. It is unhappy, if, in the nick of the first breaking of the morning sky, the night-watch fall fast asleep, when he hath watched all the night. It is now near the morning-dawning of the resurrection. Oh, how blessed are we, if we shall care for our one necessary thing!
It is worthy our thoughts, that an angel, (never created, as I conceive) standing in his own land, "his right foot upon the sea, and his left foot on the earth," hath determined by oath, a controversy moved by scoffers, (2 Peter 3:3;) "yea, and with his hand lifted up to heaven, sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that are therein, and the earth, and things that therein are, and the sea, and things that are therein, that there should be time no longer." (Rev. 10:5,6.) If eternity be concluded judicially by the oath of God, as a thing near to us, at the door, now about sixteen hundred years ago, it is high time to think of it; what we shall do, when the clay house of this tabernacle, which is but our summer house, that can have us but the fourth part of a year, shall be dissolved. Time is but a short trance [a narrow covered passage]; we are carried quickly through it: our rose withereth, ere it come to its vigour: our piece of this short-breathing shadow, the inch, the half-cubit, the poor span-length of time, fleeth away as swiftly as a weaver's shuttle, (Job 7:6,) which leapeth over a thousand threads in a moment. How many hundred hours in one summer doth our breathing clay-post skip over, passing away as "the ships of desire, and as the eagle that hasteth to the prey." (Job 9:25,26.) If death were as far from our knowledge, as graves and coffins (which to our eyes preach death) are near to our senses, even casting the smell of death upon our breath, so as we cannot but rub skins with corruption; we should not believe either prophets or apostles, when they say, "All flesh is grass," and, "It is appointed for all to die." Eternity is a great word, but the thing itself is greater: death, the point of our short line, teacheth us what we are, and what we shall be.
Should Christ, the condition of affairs we are now in, the excellency of free grace, be seen in all their own lustre and dye, we should learn much wisdom from these three. Christ speedeth little in conquering of lovers: because we have not "seen his shape at any time," we look not upon Christ, but upon the accidents that are beside Christ; and therefore, few esteem Christ a rich pennyworth. But there is not a rose out of heaven, but there is a blot and thorn growing out of it, except that one only rose of Sharon, which blossometh out glory. Every leaf of the rose is a heaven, and serveth "for the healing of the nations;" every white and red in it, is incomparable glory; every act of breathing out its smell, from everlasting to everlasting, is spotless and unmixed happiness. Christ is the outset, the master-flower, the uncreated garland of heaven, the love and joy of men and angels. But the fountain-love, the fountain-delight, the fountain-joy of men and angels is more; for out of it floweth all the seas, springs, rivers, and floods of love, delight, and joy. Imagine all the rain and dew, seas, fountains, and floods, since the creation, were in one cloud, and these multiplied in measures, for number to many millions of millions, and then divided in drops of showers to an answerable number of men and angels;—this should be a created shower, and end in a certain period of time; and this huge cloud of so many rivers and drops, should dry up, and rain no more. But we cannot conceive so of Christ: for if we should imagine millions of men and angels to have a coeternal dependent existence with Christ, and they eternally in the act of "receiving grace for grace out of his fullness," the flux and issue of grace should be eternal, as Christ is. For Christ cannot tire or weary from eternity to be Christ; and so, he must not, he cannot but be an infinite and eternal flowing sea, to diffuse and let out streams and floods of boundless grace. Say that the rose were eternal; the sweet smell, the loveliness of greenness and colour must be eternal.
Oh, what a happiness, for a soul to lose its excellency in His transcendent glory! What a blessedness for the creature, to cast in his little all, in Christ's matchless all-sufficiency! Could all the streams retire into the fountain and first spring, they should be kept in a more sweet and firm possession of their being, in the bosom of their first cause, than in their borrowed channels that they now move in. Our neighbourhood, and retiring in, to dwell forever and ever in the fountain-blessedness, Jesus Christ, with our borrowed goodness, is the firm and solid fruition of our eternal happy being. Christ is the sphere, the connatural first spring and element of borrowed drops, and small pieces of created grace. The rose is surest in being, in beauty, on its own stalk and root: let life and sap be eternally in the stalk and root, and the rose keep its first union with the root, and it shall never wither, never cast its blossom nor greenness of beauty. It is violence for a gracious soul to be out of his stalk and root; union here is life and happiness; therefore the Church's last prayer in canonic Scripture is for union, (Rev. 22:20.) "Amen: Even so, come, Lord Jesus." It shall not be well till the Father, and Christ the prime heir, and all the weeping children, be under one roof in the palace royal. It is a sort of mystical lameness, that the head wanteth an arm or a finger; and it is a violent and forced condition, for arm and finger to be separated from the head. The saints are little pieces of mystical Christ, sick of love for union. The wife of youth, that wants her husband some years, and expects he shall return to her from oversea lands, is
often on the shore; every ship coming near shore is her new joy; her heart loves the wind that shall bring him home. She asks at every passenger news: "Oh! saw ye my husband? What is he doing? When shall he come? Is he shipped for a return?" Every ship that carrieth not her husband, is the breaking of her heart. What desires hath the Spirit and Bride to hear, when the husband Christ shall say to the mighty angels, "Make you ready for the journey; let us go down and divide the skies, and bow the heaven: I will gather my prisoners of hope unto me; I can want my Rachel and her weeping children no longer. Behold, I come quickly to judge the nations." The bride, the Lamb's wife, blesseth the feet of the messengers that preach such tidings, "Rejoice, O Zion, put on thy beautiful garments; thy King is coming." Yea, she loveth that quarter of the sky, that being rent asunder and cloven, shall yield to her Husband, when he shall put through his glorious hand, and shall come riding on the rainbow and clouds to receive her to himself.
The condition of the people of God in the three kingdoms calleth for this, that we now wisely consider what the Lord is doing. There is a language of the Lord's "fire in Zion," and "his furnace in Jerusalem," if we could understand the voice of the crying rod. The arrows of God flee beyond us, and beside us, but we see little of God in them: we sail, but we see not shore; we fight, but we have no victory. The efficacy of second causes is the whole burden of the business, and this burden we lay upon creatures, (and it is more than they can bear,) and not upon the Lord. God is crying lameness on creatures and multitude, that his eminency of working may be more seen. (2.) Many are friends to the success of reformation, not to reformation. Men's faith goes along with the promises, until providence seem to them to belie the promise. Through light at a key-hole many see God in these confusions in the three kingdoms; but they fall away, because their joining with the cause, was violent kindness to Christ. It is not a friend's visit, to be driven to a friend's house to be dry in a shower, and then occasionally to visit wife and children. Christ hath too many occasional friends; but the ground of all is this, "I love Jesus Christ, but I have not the gift of burning quick for Christ." Oh, how securely should faith land us out of the gun-shot of the prevailing power of a black hour of darkness! Faith can make us able to be willing, for Christ, to go through a quarter of hell's pain. Lord, give us not leave to be mad with worldly wisdom. (3.) When the temptation sleepeth, the madman is wise, the harlot is chaste; but when the vessel is pierced, out cometh that which is within, either wine or water: yet, if we should attentively lay our ears to hypocrites, we should hear, that their lute-strings do miserably jar; for hypocrisy is intelligible, and may be found out.
Would Parliaments begin at Christ, we should not fear that which certainly we have cause to fear; "One woe is past, and another woe cometh." The prophets in the three kingdoms have not repented of the superstition, will-worship, idolatry, persecution, profanity, formality, which made them "vile before the people;" and the judges and princes, who "turned judgment into gall and wormwood," are not humbled, because they were "a snare on Mizpah, and a net spread upon Tabor." No man repenteth, and "turneth from his evil way;" no man "smiteth on his thigh, saying, what have I done?" It is but black Popery (the name being changed, not the thing), to think the bypast sins of the land are bypast, and a sort of reformation for time to come is satisfactory to God ex opere operato [by the deed done.] Yea, the divisions in the church are a heavier plague than the raging sword. These same sins against the first and second Table; the reconciling of us and Babylon, pride, bribing, extortion, filthiness and intemperance unpunished, blood touching blood and not revenged, vanity of apparel, the professed way of salvation by all kinds of religions whatsoever; are now acted in another stage, by other persons, but they are the same sins. If that Headship that flattering prelates took from Jesus Christ, and gave to the king, be yet taken from Christ, and given to men;—if Christ's crown be pulled off his head, no matter whose head it warm; it is taken from Christ both ways. I shall pray, that the fatness of the "flesh of Jacob, for this, do not wax lean," (Isa. 17:4,) and that the warfare of Britain be accomplished. But if the faithful watchmen know what hour of the night it is now, there is but small appearance, that it is near to the dawning of Britain's deliverance, or that our sky shall clear in haste. Would God the year 1645 were with child, to bring forth the salvation of Britain! It was once as incredible that the enemy should have entered "within the gates of Jerusalem." (Lam. 4:12,) as it is now, that they can enter within the ports of London, Edinburgh, Dublin. I speak not this to encourage Cavaliers [Royalists, who persecuted the Presbyterians], for certainly, God watcheth over them for vengeance; but that we go not on further to break with Christ. The weakness of new heads, devising new religions, and multiplying gods: (for two sundry and contrary religions, argue interpretatively two sundry gods,) "according to the number of our cities," must come from rottenness of our hearts. Oh, if we could be instructed "before the decree," that is with child, of plagues to the sinners in "Zion, bring forth a man-child; and before the long shadows of the evening be stretched out on us!"
But of this theme no more. Grace is the proposition of this following treatise. When either grace is turned into painted, but rotten nature, as Arminians do, or into wantonness, as others do, the error to me is of a far other and higher elevation, than opinions touching church government. Tenacious adhering to Antinomian errors, with an obstinate and final persistence in them, both as touching faith to, and suitable practice of them, I shall think, cannot be fathered upon any of the regenerated; for it is an opinion not in the margin and borders, but in the page and body, and too near the centre and vital parts of the gospel. If any are offended, I desire to anger them with good will to grace; I shall strive and study the revenge only of love and compassion to their souls.
If some of these sermons came once to your Honour's ears; and now, to your eyes, it may be, with more English language, I having staid possibly till the last grapes were somewhat riper; I hope it shall be pardoned, that I am bold to borrow your name; which truly I should not have done, if I had not known of your practical knowledge of this noble and excellent theme, the Free Grace of God. I could add more of this; but I had rather commend grace, than gracious persons. I know that Jesus Christ, who perfumeth and flowereth heaven with his royal presence, and streweth the heaven of heavens to its utmost borders with glory, is commended that he was full of grace, a vessel filled to the lip. (Psalm 45:2; John 1:16.) Yea, grace hath bought both our person and our service, (1 Pet. 2:24,25,) even as he that buyeth a captive, gives money not only for his person, but for all the motion, toil, and labour of his body, legs, and arms. And redeeming grace is so perfect, that Satan hath power possibly to bid, but not to buy any of the redeemed, no more than a merchant can buy another man's bought goods without his consent. All our happiness that groweth here on the banks of Time, is but thin sown, as very strawberries on the sea-sands. What good parts of nature we have without grace, are like a fair lily, but there is a worm at the root of it; it withereth from the root to the top. Gifts wither apace without grace: gifts neither break nor humble; grace can do both. Grace is so much the more precious and sweet, that though it be the result of sin, in the act of pardoning and curing sinful lameness; yet it hath no spring, but the bowels of God stirred and rolled within him only by spotless and holy goodness. Grace is of the king's house from heaven only; the matter, subject, or person it dwelleth in, contributed nothing for the creation of so noble a branch. Christ, for this cause especially, left the bosom of God, and was clothed with flesh and our nature, that he might be a mass, a sea, and boundless river of visible, living, and breathing grace, swelling up to the highest banks of not only the habitable world, but the sides also of the heaven of heavens, to over-water men and angels. So that Christ was, as it were, grace speaking, (Psalm 45:2; Luke 4:22;) grace sighing, weeping, crying out of horror, dying, withering for sinners, living again, (Heb. 2:9; John 3:16; Rom. 8:32,33;) and is now glorified grace, dropping down, raining floods of grace on his members, (Eph. 4:11-16; John 14:7,13,16,17). Christ now interceding for us at the right hand of God, is these sixteen hundred years the great apple tree dropping down apples of life; for there hath been harvest ever since Christ's ascension to heaven, and the grapes of heaven are ripe; all that falleth from the tree, leaves, apples, shadows, smell, blossoms, are but pieces of grace fallen down from Him who is the fullness of all, and hath filled all things. We shall never be blessed perfectly, till we all sit in an immediate union under the apple tree. This is a rare piece, by way of participation, of the divine nature. Christ passed an incomparable act of rich grace on the cross; and doth now act, and advocate for grace, and the applying of the grace of propitiation, in heaven, (1 John 2:1,2); and by an act of grace, hath all the elect and ransomed ones engraven as a seal on his heart: and Christ being the fellow of God, (Zech. 13:7,) the man that standeth straight opposite to his eye, the first opening of the eye-lids of God is terminated upon the breast of Christ, and on the engravening of free grace. All the glory of the glorified is, that they are both in the lower and higher house, even when they are the Estates and Peers of heaven, the everlasting tenants and freeholders of grace; so that a soul can desire no fairer inheritance, than the patrimony, lot, and heritage of free grace. Now, to this grace commending your spirit, as an heir of grace, I rest,—Your Honour's at all obliged respectiveness in the grace of God.
S.R.
TABLE OF CONTENTS.
THE scope, order, and contents of the text, Page 23. Matthew and Mark reconciled, 24. Properties of Christ's love, 25. What woman this was, 25. The art of the wise contexture of Divine Providence in black and white, fair and foul, mixed in one, for beauty's sake, 26. Two sides of Providence, 27. We err in looking on God's ways by halves, especially on the black and sad side only, 28.
Christ took a human will, that he might stoop to God in all things, 29. The strength of corrupt will, 30. Two things in the will: 1. The frame of it—2. The quality and goodness of it—There is a necessity of renewing the will, 30. The dispensation of God, not Scripture, nor a rule of faith, 33. We trust possession of Christ by faith, more than we do right and law, through faith, 33.
How Christ and his grace cannot be hid, in six particulars, 34. 1st, In his cause, 34. 2nd, In the good and evil condition spiritual of the soul, 35. 3rd, In the joy of Christ's presence, 36. 4th, In a sincere profession, 36. 5th, In the bearing down the stirrings of a renewed conscience, 37. 6th, In desertions, 37. We are to be obsequious and yielding to the breathings of the Spirit, 38. Our hearts are to be variously suitable to the various operations of the Spirit, from four reasons, 38. Grace falleth on few, 40. Grace, how rare and choice a piece, in four particulars, 40. Grace not universal and common to all, 41. Nine objections of the Arminian and natural man, Answered, 41.
Grace falleth often on the most graceless, 44. Grace maketh a great change; three reasons thereof, 44. There is a like reason for grace on our Lord's part, to the vilest of men, as to Moses, Daniel, Paul, 45. The same free grace that we have here, we have it in heaven in the state of glory, 46. In heaven we reign by grace, as by the same we war here, 46. The justified in Christ are corrected for sin, 47. The furnace of affliction, the work-house of the grace of Christ; four grounds thereof, 47. Mr. Towne's assertion of grace, 50. How Antinomians judge sins to be corrected in the justified, 48. How Papists judge sins to be punished in the justified, 49. That God punisheth pardoned sins; proved by seven arguments, 50. Rules to be observed in affliction, 55. A land or a nation must be longer in the fire than one particular person, 57.
Satan worketh as a natural agent without moderation, 58. Spiritual evils chase few men to Christ; three grounds thereof, 59. How men naturally love the devil, 59. Satan, how an unclean spirit, 60. It is true wisdom to know God savingly, 61. What hearing bringeth souls to Christ, 62. Four defects in hearing, 63. Hell coming to our senses in this life, should not cause us believe without effectual grace, 64. It is good to border near to Christ, 65.
Crying in prayer necessary, 66. Five grounds thereof, 66. Prayer sometimes wanteth words, so as groaning goeth for prayer, 68. How many other expressions beside vocal praying, go under the lieu of praying in God's account, 68. Eight objections removed, 68. Some affections greater than tears, 68. Looking up to heaven, praying, 69. Breathing, praying, 70. That wherein the least of prayer consisteth, 70. Broken prayers are prayers, 71. The Lord know-eth nonsense in a broken spirit to be good sense, 72.
Why Christ is called frequently the Son of David; not so, the Son of Adam, of Abraham, 73. Christ a King by covenant, 74. What things be in the covenant of grace, 75. The parties of the covenant, 75. Christ hath a sevenfold relation to the covenant. 1st, He is the Covenant itself. 2nd, The Messenger. 3rd, The witness. 4th, The Surety. 5th, The Mediator. 6th, The Testator. 7th, The principal party contractor, 76. Christ the Covenant itself, 76. Christ a Messenger of the Covenant in four particulars, 77. A Witness in four things, 78. A Surety in three, 79. A Mediator in three things. 1st, A Friend. 2nd, A Reconciler. 3rd, A Servant, 80. Christ a servant of God, and our servant, 80. Christ confirmed and sealed the Testament, 81. Christ the principal confederate party, 81. The covenant made with Christ personally, not mystically, proved from Gal. 3:16. The contrary reasons answered, 81. A covenant between the Father and the Son proved, 82. Of the promises of the covenant, 84. Two sorts of promises, 84. Christ took a new covenant-right to God, 85. Five sorts of promises made to Christ, and by proportion to us, 85.
The condition of the covenant, 87. Libertines deny all conditions of the covenant, 87. The new covenant hath conditions to be performed by us, 88. Six objections removed, 87. A twofold dominion of gracious and supernatural acts, 87. We are not justified before we believe, proved by six arguments, 90. A condition taken in a threefold notion, 92. It is not a proper condition by way of strict wage and work, when we are said to be justified, and saved upon condition of faith, 92. 1st, The Freedom; 2nd, Eternity; 3rd, Well-ordering of the covenant,—the three properties thereof, 92. The freedom of the covenant is seen, in regard, 1st, Of persons. 2nd, Of causes. 3rd, Of time. 4th, Of manner of dispensation, 94. Uses of the doctrine of the covenant, 96.
Christ God and man, and our comfort therein, 98. Christ immediate in the act of redeeming us, and so sweeter, 99. Christ incomparable, 99. Four other necessary uses, 99. To believers all temporal favours are spiritualized, and watered with mercy. Four grounds thereof, 103. By what reason our Father, as a father, giveth us spiritual things, by that same he giveth us all things, 104. Mercy originally in Christ, and how, 104.
Parents' affection, their spiritual duty to children, 107. Thirteen practical rules in observing passages of Divine Providence, 108. 1st, We are neither to lead, nor to stint Providence, 108. 2nd, But to observe God in his ways, and not to look to by-ways of providence, 108. 3rd, Omnipotency not laid down in pawn in any means, 109. 4th, God walketh not in the way that we imagine, 109. 5th, Providence in its concatenation of decrees, actions, events, is one continued contexture, going along from Creation to the day of Christ's second coming, without one broken thread, 109. 6th, The spirit is to be in an indifferency in all casts of providence, 111. 7th, Low desires best, 111. 8th, We are to lie under providence submissively in all, 111. 9th, Providence is a mystery, 112. 10th, Walketh in uncertainties toward us, 112. 11th, Silence is better than disputing, 112. 12th, It is good to consider both what is inflicted, and who, 112. 13th, God always ascendeth, even when second causes descend, 112.
Every temptation hath its taking power from the seeming goodness in it, 113. Reasons why this was a temptation to the woman, 114. The scope of the temptation to make the tempted believe there is none like him, 115. The non-answering of Christ, is an answering, 115. Five reasons of the Lord's not hearing of prayer, 116. Seven ways prayers are answered, 117. Praying in faith always heard, even when the particular which we suit in prayer is denied, 117. Faith in one and the same prayer, seeketh and knocketh, and answer-eth, and openeth to itself, 117. The light of saving faith, and the prophetical light of the pen-men of the word of God, differ not in space and nature, 118. The dearest not admitted unto God at the first knock, 119.
Natural men, and even the renewed in spirit, in so far as there remaineth some flesh in them, are ignorant of the mystery of an afflicted spirit, 120. Peace of conscience is a work of creation, 121. A reason why it is so hard to convince the deserted, 12l. Christ sweeter to the deserted than all the world, 122. Difference between God's trying and the creature's tempting, in three positions, 123. A creature cannot put a fellow-creature to act sin upon an intention of trying him, 123. In the actions of creatures we must know, 1st, Quis; 2nd, Quid; 3rd, Quare. 1st, Who commandeth. 2nd, What. 3rd, And for what end. In God's actions, it is enough to know, Quis, Who, that it is Jehovah, 125. Four doubts of the tempted, 125. In the sending of "Christ to the lost sheep of the house of Israel," there be three things considerable: 1st, His designation; 2nd, Qualification; 3rd, Commission, 127. The Son most fit to be Mediator, 127. How Christ is qualified, 128. His commission, 129. It is not properly grace that we are born, it is grace that Christ is born, 129. God's hidden decree, and his revealed will opened, 129. A twofold intention in the promises, 130. How, and who are to believe the decree of reprobation concerning themselves, 131.
It is a privilege of mercy that Christ is sent to the Jews first, 132. Nine privileges of the Jews, 132. The honour and privileges of Britain, 133. The redeemed called sheep upon four grounds, 134. How passive the redeemed are in the way to heaven, in five particulars, 134. The saints most dependent creatures, 135. How We know the Scripture to be the Word of God; two grounds, one in the subject, another in the object, 136. Fancy leadeth not the saints, but faith, 137. How the Saints need a fresh supply of grace from Christ, though they have a habit and stock of grace within them; proved by six reasons, 137. Grace and glory but one continued thread, 139. Three considerations we are to have of God's work, in leading us to heaven, 139. Faith is both active and passive, 139. Desertions have real advancing in the way to heaven, in eleven particulars, 139. We are not freed from law directions, 140. Actual condemnation may be, and is separated from the law, 140. Two objections removed, 140. How works of holiness conduce to salvation, three things herein to be distinguished, 141. We are to do good works, both from the principle of law and love, 142. Other three objections removed, 143. Of the letter both of law and gospel; divers errors of libertines touching the point, 143. The Scriptures are not to be condemned, because they profit not without the teaching of the Spirit, proved by three reasons, 145. Repentance different from faith, proved against libertines, 145. Repentance the same in the Old and New Testament, 145.
In what sense Christ came to save the lost, 147. A twofold preparation for Christ to be considered, 148. Conversion is done by foregoing preparations, and successively proved by four reasons, 149. Sense of poverty fitteth for Christ, 150. The objections of Dr. Crispe removed. Sinners as sinners not fit to receive Christ, 151. How Christ belongeth to sinners under the notion of sinners, 152. How the Spirit acts most in the saints, when they endeavour least, 153. The marrow of libertinism to neglect sanctification, and to wallow in fleshly lusts, 153. Christ's death maketh us active in duties of holiness, proved from three grounds, 154. How Christ keepeth us from sin, 154.
Eight necessary duties required of a believer under desertion: 1st, Patience. 2nd, Faith, etc., 156. Hope prophesieth glad tidings at midnight, 156. It is a blessed mark, when temptations chase not a soul from duties, illustrated in three cases, 160. It argueth three good things, to go on in duties under a temptation, 162. Antinomians take men off duties, 163. Christ tempted cannot sin; the saints tempted dare not sin, 164. Faith trafficketh with heaven in the saddest storms, 165.
National sins may occur to the conscience of the child of God, in his approach to God, 166. A subtle humble pride the disease of weak ones, who dare not apply the promises, 168. Sense of free-grace humbleth exceedingly, 169. How far forth conscience of wretchedness hindereth any to come to Christ, 169. Whoever doubteth if God will save him, doubteth also if God can save him, 171. Sin keepeth not the door of Christ to hold out the sinner, 172. Sense of sin, and sense of the grace of Christ, may consist, 173. Holy walking and Christ's excellency may both be felt by the believer. Holy walking considered, as, 1st, A duty. 2nd, A mean. 3rd, A thing promised in the covenant of grace, 173. How we may collect our state and condition from holy walking, 175. The error of Dr. Crispe and Antinomians herein, 175. Christ a great householder, 176. The privilege of the children of the house, 177. Christ the bread of life, 178. Communion between the children and the first heir, Christ, in five particulars, 177. The spirit of an heir and of a servant, 177. There is a seed of hope and comfort in the hardest desertions of the saints, in three particulars illustrated, 178.
Grace maketh quickness and wittiness of heavenly reasoning, 180. Faith contradicteth Christ tempting, but humbly and modestly, 181. The saints may dispute their state with Christ, when they dare not dispute their actions, 181. We are to accept, humbly, and with patience, of a wakened conscience, but not to seek a storming conscience, 182. True humility and its way, in seven particulars.—See the place, 182. How we are to esteem every man better than ourselves, 185. The proud man known afar off, 185. Grace's lowliness in taking notice of sinners, 186. Causes of unthankfulness, 187. A justified soul is to confess sin, proved by three arguments, 188. And to mourn for sin by divers reasons, 190. If we be not to mourn for sin committed, because it is pardoned, neither should our will be averse from the committing of it; because before it be committed, it is also pardoned, as Antinomians teach, 192. Libertines conspire with Papists, in the doctrine of justification, 194.
How sins are removed in justification, how not, 195. There remaineth sin formally in the justified, proved by six arguments, 195. How sin dwelleth in us after we are justified, 197. A twofold removal of sin, one moral or legal in justification, another physical in our sanctification, 200. The difference between the removal of sin in justification, and its removal in sanctification, 201. Seven grounds why sin dwelleth still in the justified person, 202. How sins past, present, and to come, are pardoned in justification, 209. There is a twofold consideration of justification, but not two justifications, 209. Sins in three divers respects are taken away, according to Scripture, 210. Christ's satisfaction performed on the cross for sin, is not formally justification, but only causatively, fundamentally, or meritoriously, 210. There is a change in justification, 211. How sins not committed are remitted, 21l. There is but one justification of a believer, illustrated by a comparison, 213. There is a difference between pardon of sin, the justification of the person, and the repeated sense of the pardon, 214. Justifying faith is some other thing, than the sense of justification, 215. How fear, or hope, or reward of glory has influence in our holy walking, 215. Objections removed, 216.
The Lord Jesus is [not] so made the sinner in suffering for sin, as there remaineth no sin in the sinner once pardoned, as Antinomians teach, especially Doctor Crispe, 218. Sin so laid on Christ as that it leaveth not off to be our sin, 220. The guilt of sin, and sin itself, are not one and the same thing, 222. An inherent blot in sin, and the guilt and debt of sin, 222. Two things in debt, as in sin, 223. The blot of sin, two ways considered, 228. A twofold guilt in sin, one intrinsical, and of the fault; another of the punishment, and extrinsical, 225. Reasons why sin, and the guilt of sin cannot be the same, 226. Christ not intrinsically the sinner, 229. Imputation of sin, no imagination, no lie, 230. Reasons proving that Christ was not intrinsically and formally the sinner, 232. What righteousness of Christ is made ours, 235. The believer how righteous, and Christ how not, 235. Christ's bearing of our sins, by a frequent Hebraism in Scripture, is to bear the punishment due to our sins, and not to bear the intrinsical blot of our sins, 239. How Christ is in our place, 241. How the debtor and the surety be one in law, and not intrinsically one, 243. A perplexed conscience in a good sense is lawfully consistent with a justified sinner's condition, 245. A conditional fear of eternal wrath required in the justified, but not an absolute fear, and yet trouble of mind for the indwelling of sin is required, 246.
The conscience, in Christ, is freed from sin, that is, from actual condemnation, but not from incurring God's displeasure by the breach of a law, if the believer sin, 248. I am to believe the remission of these same very sins, which I am to confess with sorrow, 251. How the conscience is freed from condemnation, and yet not from God's displeasure for sin, 251. Eight cases of conscience resolved from the former doctrine, 251. To be justified is a state of happiness, most desirable, illustrated from the eternity of the debt of sin, 254. The smallest and worst things of Christ are incomparably above the most excellent things on earth, illustrated in six particulars, 257. What must Christ himself be, when the worst things of Christ are so desirable? 261. The excellency of Christ further illustrated, and the foulness of our choice evidenced, 262. How to esteem Christ, illustrated, in four grounds, 263. Degrees of persons younger and older in grace, in our Lord's house, 265. Christ's family is a growing family, 267. God bringeth great and heavenly works out of the day of small things, 268. We are to deal tenderly with weak ones, upon six considerations, 271.
The prevalency of instant prayer put forth upon God in eight acts, 272. Prayer moveth and stirreth all wheels in heaven and earth, 272. Five things concerning faith, 278. There is a preparation going before faith, 278. There is no necessary connection between preparations going before faith, and faith, 279. Affections going before faith, and following after, differ specifically, and not gradually only, 279. All are alike unfit for conversion, 280. Some nearer conversion than others, 281. Three grounds or motives of believing, 28l. Glory, and Christ, the hope of glory, strong motives of believing, 282. Faith's object the marrow of God's attributes, to speak so, 283. Faith a catholic grace required in all our actions natural and civil, as well as spiritual, 284. Christianity how an operous work, 285. The six ingredients of faith, 286. Faith turneth all our acts which are terminated on the creature, into half non-acts, 288. Faith hath five notes of difference in closing with the promise, 293. Literal knowledge worketh as a natural agent, 296. Warrant of applying set down in five positions, 299. Eight ingredients of a counterfeit faith, 308.
Thirteen works, or ingredients of a strong faith, and how to discern a weak faith, 306. Strong praying a note of strong faith, 306. 2nd, Instant pleading a note also, 307. Strength of grace required in believing, 307. Christ rewardeth grace with grace, 308. How grace beginneth all supernatural acts, 308. There is a promising of bowing and predeterminating grace made to supernatural acts, yet so as God reserveth his own liberty: 1st, How, 2nd, When, 3rd, In what measure he doth co-operate with the believer in these acts, 308. Four reasons why grace in the work of faith must begin, and so begin as we are guilty in not following, 311. Grace is on the saints, and to them, but, glory is on them, but not to them, 312. Grace to an angel necessary to prevent possible sins, 313. 3rd, Note of a strong faith, Not to be broken with temptations, 314. 4th, Faith staying on God without light of comfort a strong faith, 315. The fewer externals that faith needeth, the stronger it is within, 315. Comforts are externals to faith, 317. Some cautions in this, that some believe strongly without the help of comforts, 317. Reasons why divers of God's children die without comfort, 317.
The more of the word and the less of reason the stronger faith is, 318. 6th, A faith that can forego much for Christ is a strong faith. 320. 7th, It is a strong faith to pray and believe when God seemeth to forbid praying, 321. 8th, Great boldness argueth great faith, 371. 9th, To rejoice in tribulation, 322. 10th, to wait on with long patience, 322. 11th, A humble faith is a strong faith, 324. 12th, a strong desire of a communion with Christ, 324. 13th, Strength of working by love, argueth a strong faith, 325. A great faith is not free of doubtings, 327. Divers sorts of doubting opposite to faith. 327. Some doubting a bad thing in itself, yet per accidens, and in regard of the person, and concomitants, a good sign, and argueth sound grace, 328. Of a weak faith, 329. Negative adherence to Christ not sufficient to saving faith, 329. A suffering faith a strong faith, 331. Faith in regard of intention weak, may be strong in regard of extension, in three relations, 332. The lowest ebb of a fainting faith, 333. What of Christ remaineth in the lowest ebb of a fainting faith, 334.
A stock of grace is within the saints: our grace is not all, and wholly in Christ though it be all from Christ, 337. The powers of the soul remain whole in conversion, 338. The stock of grace is to be warily kept, 338. Four things are to be done, to keep the stock without a craze, 339. The tenderness of, Christ's heart, and strength of love toward sinners, 341. Christ strong in moral acts, and strongly moderate in natural acts: the contrary is in natural men, 341. Christ's motion of tender mercy, as it were natural, 343. How mercy worketh eternally, and secretly, and underground even under a bloody dispensation, 344. Judgment on the two kingdoms except they repent, 345. A rough dispensation consistent with tenderness of love in our Lord, 346. Free love goeth before our redemption, 348. Christ loveth the persons of the elect, but hateth their sins, 348 A twofold love of God, one of good will to the person, another of complacency to his own image in the person, 349. No new love in God, 350. Objections of Mr. Denne the Antinomian answered, 350. What it is to be under the law, 352. How God loveth us before time, and how he now loveth us in time, 354. By faith and conversion our state is truly changed before God, 356. To be justified by faith, is not barely to come to the knowledge that we are justified before we believe, 359. Justification not eternal, 360. Faith is not only given for our joy and consolation; but also for our justification, both in our own soul and before God, 363. There is no warrant in Scripture for two reconciliations; one of man's reconciliation to God, and another of God's reconciliation to man, 366. Christ's merits, no cause, but an effect of God's eternal love, 366. What reconciliation is, 366. Joy without all sorrow for sin, no fruit of the kingdom of God, 367. The seeing of God, Heb. 12:14, and the kingdom, 1 Cor. 6; John 3:3, not the kingdom of grace, but of glory, 368. All acts of blood and rough dealing in God to his own acts of mercy, 368.
Omnipotency hath influence, on, 1st, Satan. 2nd, Diseases. 3rd, Stark death. 4th, On life itself. 5th, Mother-nothing. 6th, On all creatures, 371. Obediential power in the creation, what it is, 372. Omnipotency is (as it were) a servant to faith, 374. We worship a dependent God, 375. We have need of the Devil and other temptations for our humiliation. 377. Immediate mercies, are the sweetest mercies; cleared, 1st, In Christ. 2nd, Grace. 3rd, Glory. 4th, Comfort. 5th, The rarest of God's works, 378. The deceitfulness of our confidence, when God and the creature are joined in one work, 385.
Christ in four relations hath dominion over devils, 389. Satan goeth nowhere without a pass, 390. We often sign Satan's conditional pass, 391. A renewed will is a renewed man, 393. Eight positions concerning the will and affections, 393. A civil will is not a sanctified will, 393. The yielding of the soul to God, and to his light, a special note of a renewed will, 393. Affections sanctified, especially desires, 395. The less mixture in the affections, the stronger are their operations, 395. Mind and affections do reciprocally vitiate one another, 396. Spiritual desires seek natural things, spiritually: Carnal desires seek spiritual things, naturally, 396. God submitteth his liberality of grace, to the measure of a sanctified will, in four considerations, 397. Our affections, in their acts and comprehension, are far below spiritual objects, Christ and heaven, 397. More in Christ and heaven, than our faith can reach in this life, 398.
Satan not cast out of a land or a person, but by violence, both to Satan and the party; amplified in four considerations, 400. False peace known, 402. A roaring and a raging devil, is better than a calm and a sleeping devil, 402. God's way of hardening, as it is mysterious, so is it silent and invisible, 404.
THETRIAL AND TRIUMPH OF FAITH.
SERMON I.1
"And from thence he arose, and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon, and went into an house, and would that no man should know it: but he could not be hid."—MARK 7:24.THIS text being with child of free grace, holdeth forth to us a miracle of note: and because Christ is in the work in an eminent manner; and there is here also much of Christ's new creation, and a flower planted and watered by Christ's own hand, a strong faith in a tried woman; it requireth the bending of our heart to attention: for, to any seeking Jesus Christ, this text crieth, "Come and see." The words for their scope, drive at the wakening of believers in praying (when an answer is not given at the first,) to a fixed and resolved lying and dying at Christ's door, by continuing in prayer till the King come out and open, and answer the desire of the hungry and poor. 2. For the subject, they are a history of a rare miracle wrought by Christ, in casting forth a devil out of the daughter of a woman of Canaan: and for Christ to throw the devil out of a Canaanite, was very like the white banner of Christ's love displayed to the nations, and the King's royal standard set up to gather in the heathen under his colours. The parts of the miracle are,"Then Jesus went from thence, and came into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. And behold a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David, for my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil."—MATTHEW 15:21,22.
"For a certain woman whose young (little) daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of him, and came, and fell at his feet: (The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation; and she besought him, that he would cast forth the devil out of her daughter."—MARK 7:25,26.
I. The place where it was wrought. (Matt. 15:21.)
II. The parties on whom; the mother and the possessed daughter: she is described by her nation.
III. The impulsive cause: she hearing, came, and prayed to Jesus for her little daughter: in which, there is a dialogue between Christ and the woman, containing,
Firstly, Christ's trying of her, 1st, with no answer; 2nd, with a refusal; 3rd, with the reproach of a dog.
Secondly, Her instancy of faith, 1st, in crying till the disciples interposed themselves; 2nd, her going on in adoring; 3rd, praying; 4th, arguing, by faith, with Christ, that she had some interest in Christ, though amongst the dogs; yet withal, (as grace hath no evil eye) not envying, because the morning market of Christ, and the high table, was the Jews' due, as the King's children, so she might be amongst the dogs, to eat the crumbs under Christ's table; knowing, that the very refuse of Christ, is more excellent than ten worlds.
IV. The miracle itself, wrought by the woman's faith: in which, we have, (1.) Christ's heightening of her faith; (2.) The granting of her desire; (3.) The measure of Christ's bounty, "As thou wilt;" (4.) The healing of her daughter.
Mark saith, that the woman came to Christ in a house. Matthew seemeth to say, that she came to him in the way, as these words do make good, "Send her away, for she crieth after us." Augustine thinketh, that the woman first came to Christ while he was in the house, and desired to be hid, either because he did not (for offending the Jews) openly offer himself to the Gentiles, having forbidden his disciples to go to the Samaritans; or, because he would have his glory hid for a time; or rather, of purpose he did hide himself from the woman that her faith might find him out: and then refusing to answer the woman in the house, she still followeth him in the way, and crieth after him, as Matthew saith. For, (1.) Christ's love is liberal, but yet it must be sued; and Christ, though he sell not his love for the penny-worth of our sweating and pains, yet we must dig low, for such a gold mine as Christ. (2.) Christ's love is wise: He holdeth us knocking, till our desire be love-sick for him, and knoweth that delays raise and heighten the market and rate of Christ. We under-rate anything that is at our elbow. Should Christ throw himself in our bosom and lap, while we are in a morning sleep, he should not have the marrow and flower of our esteem. It is good there be some fire in us meeting with water, while we seek after Christ. (3.) His love must not only lead the heart, but also draw. Violence in love is most taking, and delay of enjoying so lovely a thing as Christ, breedeth violence in our affections; and suspension of presence oileth the wheels of love, desire, joy: want of Christ is a wing to the soul.
Interpreters ask, what woman she was? Matthew saith, a Canaanite, not of any gracious blood; a Syrophenician; for Syrophenicia was in the border between Palestine and Syria, and it was now inhabited by the relics of the Canaanites; a Greek; not by birth, but because of the Greek tongue, and rites brought thither by Alexander, and the succeeding kings of Syria. All the Gentiles go under the name of Greeks in Scripture language, as, Rom. 1:14; Gal. 3:28; 1 Cor. 1:22,24: not because they are all Greeks by nation and blood; but, because conquest, language, and customs, stand for blood and birth. However, it standeth as no blemish in Christ's account-book, who was your father, whether an Amorite, or an Hittite, so ye come to him: he asketh not whose you are, so you be his; nor who is your father, so you will be his brother, and be of his house.
"And from thence he arose, and went into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon." Mark 7:24. Christ wearied of Judea, had been grieved in spirit with the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, and the provocation of that stiff-necked people. He was chased away to the profane Pagans. The hardening of the Jews, maketh way to Christ's first and young love laid upon the Gentiles. Christ doth but draw aside a lap of the curtain of separation, and look through to one believing heathen: the King openeth one little window, and holdeth out his face, in one glimpse, to the woman of Canaan. So, Christ's works of deep Providence, are free mercy and pure justice interwoven, making one web. He departeth from the Jews, and setteth his face and heart on the Gentiles.
Consider the art of Providence here: 1st, The devil sometimes shapeth, and our wise Lord seweth; Babylon killeth, God maketh alive; sin, hell, and death, are made a chariot to carry on the Lord's excellent work. 2nd, The Providence of God hath two sides; one black and sad, another white and joyful. Heresy taketh strength, and is green before the sun; God's clearing of necessary and seasonable truths, is a fair side of that same providence. Adam's first sin, was the devil and hell digging a hole through the comely and beautiful frame of the creation of God; and that is the dark side of Providence: but the flower of Jesse springing up, to take away sin, and to paint out to men and angels the glory of a heaven, and a new world of free grace—that is a lightsome side of Providence. Christ scourged; Christ in a case, that he cannot command a cup of water; Christ dying, shamed, forsaken, is black: but Christ, in that same work redeeming the captives of hell, opening to sinners forfeited paradise, that is fair and white. Joseph, weeping in the prison for no fault, is foul and sad; but Joseph brought out to reign as half a king, to keep alive the Church of God in great famine, is joyful and glorious. The apostles whipped, imprisoned, killed all the day long, are sad and heavy: but sewed with this, that God causeth them always to triumph, and show the savour of the knowledge of Christ; and Paul triumphing in his iron chains, and exalting Christ in the gospel, through the court of bloody Nero,—maketh up a fair and comely contexture of divine Providence. 3rd, God, in all his works, now, when he raineth from heaven a sad shower of blood on the three kingdoms, hath his one foot on justice, that wrath may fill to the brim the cup of malignants, prelates, and papists; and his other foot on mercy, "to wash away the filth of the daughter of Zion, and to purge the blood of Jerusalem in the midst thereof, by the spirit of judgment, and by the spirit of burning." [Isa. 4:4.] And this is God's way and ordinary path-road, (Psalm 25:10.) And in one and the same motion, God can walk both to the east and to the west, and to the north and the south.
USE.—It is our fault, that we look upon God's ways and works by halves and pieces; and so, we see often nothing but the black side, and the dark part of the moon. We mistake all, when we look upon men's works by parts; a house in the building, lying in an hundred pieces; here timber, here a rafter, there a spar, there a stone; in another place, half a window, in another place, the side of a door: there is no beauty, no face of a house here. Have patience a little, and see them all by art compacted together in order, and you will see a fair building. When a painter draweth the half of a man; the one side of his head, one eye, the left arm, shoulder, and leg, and hath not drawn the other side, nor filled up with colours all the members, parts, limbs, in its full proportion, it is not like a man. So do we look on God's works by halves or parts; and we see him bleeding his people, scattering parliaments, chasing away nobles and prelates, as not willing they should have a finger in laying one stone of his house: yet do we not see, that in this dispensation, the other half of God's work makes it a fair piece. God is washing away the blood and filth of his church, removing those from the work who would cross it. In bloody wars, malignant soldiers ripping up women with child, waste, spoil, kill; yet are they but purging Zion's tin, brass, and lead, and such reprobate metal as themselves. Jesuits and false teachers are but God's snuffers, to occasion the clearing and snuffing of the lamps of the tabernacle, and make truth more naked and obvious.
THETRIAL AND TRIUMPH OF FAITH.
SERMON II.
"And he went into a house, and would that no man should know it."
THIS will, according to which, it is said, "he would that no man should know it," was his human will, according to which, the Lord Jesus was a man as we are, yet without sin; which was not always fulfilled. For his divine will, being backed with omnipotency, can never be resisted; it overcometh all, and can be resisted by none.
Consider what a Christ we have; one who as God, hath a standing will that cannot fail. (Isa. 14:24.) "He doth all his pleasure." His pleasure and his work are commensurable. (Isa. 46:10,11; Psalm 135:6; Psalm 115:3.) Yet this Lord did stoop so low, as to take to himself man's will, to submit to God and law. And see how Christ, for our instruction, is content that God should break his will, and lay it below providence, (Matt. 26:39.) Oh! so little and low as great Jesus Christ is! All is come to this, "O my Father, remove the cup; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." Christ and his Father have but one will between them both: "I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father that sent me." (John 5:30.) "For even Christ pleased not himself." (Rom. 15:3.) It is a sign of conformity with Christ, when we have a will so mortified, as it doth lie level with God's providence. Aaron's sons are killed, and that by God immediately from heaven with fire, a judgment very hell-like; (Lev. 10:3,) and Aaron held his peace. A will lying in the dust under God's feet, so as I can say, "Let his will, whose I am, enact to throw me in hell, he shall have my vote," is very like the mother-rule of all sanctified wills, even like Christ's pliable will. There is no iron sinew in Christ's will, it was easily broken; the tip of God's finger, with one touch, broke Christ's will: "Lo, I come to do thy will, O God." (Heb. 10:9.)
Oh, but there is a hard stone in our will: the stony heart is the stony will; hell cannot break the rock and the adamant, and the flint in our will: (1 Sam. 8:19,) "Nay, but we will have a king," whether God will or no. God's will standeth in the people's way, bidding them return. They answer, "There is no hope, but we will walk after our own devices." (Jer. 18:12.) Hell, vengeance, omnipotency, crossed Pharaoh's will, but it would neither bow nor break. "But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he would not let the people go." (Exod. 9:27.)
There be two things in our will, (1.) The natural frame and constitution of it. (2.) The goodness of it. The will of angels and of sinless Adam is not essentially good, for then, angels could never have turned devils; therefore, the constitution of the will needeth supervenient goodness, and confirming grace, even when will is at its best. Grace, grace now is the only oil to our wheels. Christ hath taken the castle, both in-works and out-works, when he hath taken the will, the proudest enemy that Christ hath out of hell. When Saul renders his will, he renders his weapon. This is mortification, when Christ runneth away with your will; as Christ was like a man that had not a man's will. So Saul, (Acts 9:6,) "trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" It is good when the Lord trampleth upon Ephraim's fair neck. (Hosea 10:11.)
There is no goodness in our will now, but what it hath from grace; and to turn the will from evil to good, is no more nature's work, than we can turn the wind from the east to the west. When the wheels of the clock are broken and rusted, it cannot go. When the bird's wing is broken, it cannot fly. When there is a stone in the sprent and in-work of the lock, the key cannot open the door. Christ must oil the wheels of misordered will, and heal them, and remove the stone, and infuse grace (which is wings to the bird): if not, the motions of will are all hell-ward.
"But he could not be hid, for a certain woman," etc. Christ sometimes would be hid, because he hath a spirit above the people's windy air, and their hosanna. It is a spirit of straw, naughty and base, that is burnt up with that which hindered Themistocles to sleep.2 "Honour me before the people," was cold comfort to Saul, when the prophet told him God had rejected him. But Christ desired not to be hid from this woman; he was seeking her, and yet he flieth from her. Christ, in this, is such a flier as would gladly have a pursuer.
2. Faith findeth Christ out when he is hid. "Verily thou art a God that hidest thyself;" (Isa. 45:15.) But faith seeth God under his mask, and through the cloud; and, therefore, faith addeth, "O God of Israel, the Saviour!" Thou hidest thyself, O God, from Israel, but Israel findeth thee, (ver. 17,) "Israel shall be saved in the Lord, with an everlasting salvation." God casteth a cloud of anger about himself, he maketh darkness his pavilion, and will not look out; yet Job seeth God, and findeth him out many hundred miles, (chap. 19:26,) "Yet in my flesh shall I see God."
3. Reason, sense, nay, angels, seeing Christ between two thieves dying, and going out of this world, bleeding to death, naked, forsaken of friend and lover, they may wonder and say, "O Lord, what dost thou here?" Yet the faith of the thief found him there, as a king, who had the keys of Paradise; and he said in faith, "Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom." (Luke 23:42.)
4. Faith seeth him as a witness, and a record in heaven, as Job, (16:19,20,) even when God cleaveth his reins asunder, and poureth out his gall upon the ground, ver. 13. Believe then, that Christ gloometh, that he may kiss; that he cuts, that he may cure; that he maketh the living believer's grave before his eyes, and hath no mind to bury him alive. He breatheth the smoke and the heat of the furnace of hell on the soul, when peace, grace, and heaven is in his heart. He breaketh the hollow of Jacob's thigh, so as he must go halting all his days, and it is his purpose to bless him. Whereas we should walk by faith, we walk much, even in our spiritual walk, by feeling and sense; we have these errors in our faith, we make not the word of promise the rule of our faith, but only God's dispensation.
Now, God's dispensation is spotless, and innocent, and white, yet it is not Scripture to me; nor all that dispensation and providence seemeth to speak, the word of God. Ram-horns speak no taking of towns in an ordinary providence, as spear and shield and a host of fighting men do. "Killed all the day long, and estimated as sheep for the slaughter," speaketh not to me, that God's people are "more than conquerors through him that loved us." (Rom. 8:36,37.)
Our faith, in reference to dispensation, is to do two things: 1st, To believe in general, though dispensation be rough, stormy, black, yet Christ is fair, sweet, gracious; and, that hell and death are servants to God's dispensation toward the children of God. Abraham must kill Isaac; yet in Isaac, as in the promised seed, all the nations of the earth are blessed. Israel is foiled, and falleth before the men of Ai; yet Israel shall be saved by the Lord. Judah shall go into captivity, but the dead bones shall live again. Read the promise in general, engraved upon the dispensation of God. Garments are rolled in blood in Scotland and England. The wheels of Christ's chariot, in this reformation, go with a slow pace: the prince is averse to peace, many worthies are killed, a foreign nation cometh against us; yet all worketh for the best to those that love God. (2.) Hope biddeth us to await the Lord's event. We see God's work, it cometh to our senses; but the event that God bringeth out of his work lieth under ground. Dispensation is as a woman travailing in birth, and crying out for pain; but she shall be delivered of two men-children,—Mercy to the people of God, Justice to Babylon. Wait on till the woman bring forth, though you see not the children.
2. We trust possession in our part, more than law, and the fidelity of the promise on God's part. Feeling is of more credit to us than faith; sense is surer to us than the word of faith. Many weak ones believe not life eternal, because they feel it not: heaven is a thing unseen, and they find no consolation and comfort, and so, are disquieted. If we knew that believing is a bargaining and a buying, we should see the weakness of many. Should any buy a field of land, and refuse to tell down the money, except the party should lay all the ridges, acres, meadows, and mountains on the buyer's shoulders, that he might carry them home to his house, he should be incredulously unjust. If any should buy a ship, and think it no bargain at all, except he might carry away the ship on his back, should not this make him a ridiculous merchant? God's law of faith, Christ's concluded atonement, is better and surer than your feeling. All that sense and comfort saith, is not canonic Scripture; it is adultery to seek a sign, because we cannot rest on our husband's word.
THETRIAL AND TRIUMPH OF FAITH.
SERMON III.
QUESTION. But cannot Christ be hid? Answer. Not of himself. It is hard to hide a great fire, or to cast a covering upon sweet odours, that they smell not. Christ's name is as a sweet ointment poured out: he is a mountain of spices, and he is a strong savour of heaven, and of the higher paradise. You may hide the man, that he shall not see the sun: but you cannot cast a garment over the body of the sun, and hide day-light.
From which it appeareth, that Christ cannot be hid,
1. In his cause and truth. The gospel is scourged and imprisoned, when the apostles are so served; yet it cometh to light, and filleth Jerusalem, and filleth all the world. What was done to hide Christ? When he and his gospel are buried under a great stone, yet his fame goeth abroad. Death is no covering to Christ. Papists burn all the books of Protestants; they kill and slay the witnesses. Antiochus and the persecuting emperors throw all the Bibles in the fire; but this truth cannot be hid, it triumpheth. As soon pull down Jesus from his royal seat at the right hand of God, as Babylon, prelates, papists, malignants, in these three kingdoms, can extinguish the people and truth of Christ.
2. Believers cannot hide and dissemble a good or an ill condition in the soul; the well-beloved is away, and the church's bed cannot keep her: all the watchmen, all the streets, all the daughters of Jerusalem, yea, heaven and Christ must hear of it: (Cant. 3:1-3; 5:6-8.) Mary Magdalene's bed, and a morning sleep, and the company of angels and apostles, cannot dry her cheeks. "Woman, what ails thee?" saith the angel. "Oh," she weepeth, "Oh, what aileth me? They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him. O apostles! where is he? O Sir, angel, tell me if you saw him? O grave! O death! Show me, is my Lord with you?" The love of Christ is no hypocrite. I grant, some can for a time put a fair face on it, when Christ is absent; but most of the saints look as a bird fallen from the raven; as a lamb fallen out of the lion's mouth; as one too soon out of bed in the morning. Oh, sick of love! Oh, show him! I charge you tell him, watchmen, daughters of Jerusalem, that I am sick of love. Love is a paining, feverous, tormenting sickness: grace cannot put on a laughing mask, when sweet Jesus is hidden; love hath no art to conceal sorrow. The countenance of David, (Psalm 42:5,) is sick; there is death in his face, when God is not the light of his countenance.
3. The joy of his presence cannot be hid: she cannot but tell and cry out, O fair, O white day! He is come again: "It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loved." (Cant. 3:4.) She numbered all the miles she had traveled while her Lord was absent: Joy will speak, it is not dumb: "The roof of thy mouth [is] like the best wine for my beloved, that goeth down sweetly, causing the lips of those that are asleep to speak." (Cant. 7:9,) "Can the children of the bed-chamber mourn, as long as the bridegroom is with them?" (Matt. 9:15.) i.e. They cannot choose but rejoice.
4. Grace in a sincere professor, and Christ, cannot be hid. There came a good fair breath, with a blast of a sweet west-wind of heaven, on Joseph of Arimathea: the time was ill, Christ was dead; and he can dissemble no longer. (Mark 15:43.) With much daring and boldness, he went unto Pilate with a petition: "I beseech you, my Lord Governor, let me but have this Jesus his dead body:" There was some fire of heaven in this bold profession. What would this be thought of, to see a noble and honourable Lord-Judge, with a dead and crucified man's body in his arms? But faith knoweth no blushing; grace cannot be ashamed. There was a strait charge laid on the apostles, "Preach no more in the name of Jesus." (Acts. 4:18.) Peter and John boldly say, "We cannot but speak the things we have heard and seen." Lay as heavy weights as death, burning quick [alive], sawing asunder, on the sincerity of faith in the martyrs, it must up the mountain. David's grace was kept in, as with a muzzle put upon the mouths of beasts: (Psalm 39:) it was as coals of fire in his heart, and he behoved to speak even before the wicked: "I believed, therefore I spake." (Psalm 116:10.)
5. When Jeremiah layeth unlawful bands on himself, to speak no more in the name of the Lord, there is a spirit of prophecy lying on him—he is not lord of his own choice. "But his word was in my heart, as a burning fire shut up in my bones; and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay." (Jer. 20:9.) There is a majesty of grace on the conscience of the child of God, that must break out in holy duties: though temptation should hide Christ in his grace, tempted Joseph is overawed with this, "How can I then do this great wickedness, and sin against God?" (Gen. 39:9.) This awful majesty of the grace of God's fear, causeth Joseph see nothing in harlotry, but pure, unmixed guiltiness against God. There is an overmastering apprehension of Christ's love, (2 Cor. 5:14) that constraineth Paul to own the love of Christ, in dedicating himself to the service of the gospel. Though Paul would not have preached, yet he had a sum to pay; "I am debtor both to the Greeks and the Barbarians, both to the wise and the unwise." (Rom. 1:14.) Grace awed him, as a debt layeth fetters on an ingenuous mind; he cannot but relieve his free and honest mind in paying what he oweth.
6. God's desertion cannot so hide and over-cloud Christ, but against sense, the child of God must believe; yea, and pray in faith, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? O my God, I cry by day." (Psalm 22:1,2.) Though sin over-cloud Christ, and David fall in adultery and blood, there is a seed of Christ that must cast out blossoms; he cannot but repent and sorrow. God's decree of grace in the execution of it, may be broken in a link by some great sin; but Christ cannot but solder the chain, and raise the fallen sinner.
It shall be useful then for the saints, when the Spirit cometh in his stirrings and impetuous acts, to co-operate with him, and to answer his wind-blowing. It is good to hoist up sail, and make out, when a fair wind and a strong tide calleth. Sometimes grace maketh the heart as a hot iron; it is good then to smite with the hammer. When your spirit is docile, and there cometh a gale of Christ's sweet west-wind, and rusheth in with a warmness of heart, in a praying disposition to retire to a corner, and pour out the soul before the Lord; as we are to take Christ at his word, so are we to take Christ's Spirit at his work. He knocketh; knock thou with him. His fingers make a stirring upon the handles of the bar, and drop down pure myrrh;—let thy heart make a stirring with his fingers also. I grant, wind maketh sailing, and all the powers on earth cannot make wind; yet when God maketh wind, the seamen may draw sails, and launch forth. God preventeth in all these. The spirit beateth fire out of our flint, we are to lay to a match and receive; reach in the heart, under the stirrings of free grace; obey dispositions of grace, as God himself. When the sun riseth, the birds may sing, but their singing is no cause of the sun rising.
It is no truth of God that some teach, that the justified in Christ are of duty always tied to one and the same constant act of rejoicing, without any mixture of sadness and sorrow. For so they cannot, (1.) Obey and follow the various impressions of the Lord's absence and presence of Christ's sea-ebbing and flowing, of his shining and smiling, and his lowring and frowning. (2.) The faith of a justified condition doth not root out all affections; nay, not love, faith, desire, and joy: if there be sin remaining in the justified, there is place of sadness, for fear, for sorrow; for the scum of affections is removed by Christ, not the affections themselves. (3.) Christ for mere trial sometimes, for sin at other times, doth cover himself with a cloud and withdraw the sense of his favour; and it is a cursed joy that is on foot, when the Lord hideth his face. The love of Christ must be sick and sad; I mean, the lover, when the beloved is under a cloud. It is not the new world with the regenerate man here; nor a land where there is nothing but all summer, all sun, neither night nor clouds, nor rain nor storm: that is the condition of the second Paradise, of the better Adam. (4.) It is a just and an innocent sorrow, to be grieved at that which grieveth the Holy Spirit; and when the lion roareth, all the beasts of the field are afraid. Grace maketh not Job a stock, nor Christ a man who cannot weep.
"And behold, a woman of Canaan:" and "A certain woman." (Matt. 15, Mark 7.) Of the woman: (1.) But one person of all Tyrus and Sidon came to him. (2.) She was a Syrophenician by nation. (3.) Her condition, She had a daughter vexed with a devil. (4.) With an unclean devil. (5.) The nearer occasion, She heard of him. (6.) She adored. (7.) She prayed: and so, way is made to the conference between Christ and her; and to the trial and miracle.
A CERTAIN WOMAN.—There is but one of all Tyrus and Sidon who came to Christ. (1.) It beseemeth the mercy of the good Shepherd, to "leave ninety and nine sheep in the wilderness, and go after one which is lost." (Luke 15:4.) And when all is done, alas! he hath but one of a whole hundred. Christ hath not the tithe of mankind. He maketh a journey, till he is wearied and thirsty, through Samaria; yea, and wanteth his dinner, for one woman at that draught of his net, and thinketh he dineth like a king, and above, if he save one. (John 4:33,34.) Oh, sweet husband's word! "I am married to you, and I will take you, one of a city, and two of a tribe, and I will bring you to Zion." (Jer. 3:14.) Christ taketh sinners, not by dozens, not by thousands, (it is but once in all the word, (Acts 2) that three thousand are converted at once;) but by ones and twos. "Though Israel be as the sand of the sea, yet a remnant shall but be saved;" (Rom. 9:27; Isa. 10:22;) the relics and refuse shall be saved only. (2.) Common love scarce amounteth to grace, because grace is separative and singleth out one of many; all graced persons are privileged persons; heaven is a house of chosen and privileged ones; there are no common stones in the New Jerusalem, but all precious stones; the "foundations sapphires, the windows agates and carbuncles, all the borders of pleasant stones." (Isa. 54:11,12.) (3.) Christ's way lieth so, of two grinding at a mill, of two in the field together, of two in one bed, Christ will have but one: Christ often will not have both husband and wife, both father and son; but the one brother, Jacob, not Esau. Of a whole house, Christ cometh to the devil's fireside, and chooseth one, and draweth him out, and leaveth all the family to the devil. (4.) Christ knoweth them well whom he chooseth: grace is a rare piece of the choice and the flower of the love of heaven: there be many common stones; not many pearls, not many diamonds and sapphires. The multitude be all Arminians from the womb; every heresy is a piece of the old Adam's wanton wit; thousands go to hell, black heretics and heterodox, as touching the doctrine of themselves; every man hath grace if you believe himself; every man taketh heaven for his home and heritage; dogs think to rest in Christ's bosom. Men naturally believe, though they be but up and down with Christ, yet Christ doth so bear them at good will, as to give grace and glory.
Objection 1. God's love is not infinite, if it be limited to a few. Answer. This should conclude, that there be an infinite number of men and angels, to whom God's love to salvation is betrothed in affection: but his love is infinite in its act, not in its object; the way of carrying on his love is infinite.
Objection 2. To ascribe God's not loving of men to God's disposition, heart, will, and pleasure, and not to our defects, is blasphemy. Answer. The Lord ascribeth his having mercy, and his hardening, to his own free-will, (Rom. 9:18; Exod. 33:19;) and his love is as free as his mercy; and by this means, God's first love to us should arise from our love preventing [leading] his, contrary to his own word, (Deut. 7:7; Eph. 2:4,5; Titus 3:3; 2 Tim. 1:9,) and man should be the first lover of the two. The creature then putteth the Lord in his debt, and giveth first to God, and God cannot but recompense. (Isa. 40:13,14; Rom. 11:34,35.) Now, it is no shame for us to live and die in the debt of Christ; the heaven of angels and men is an house of the debtors of Christ, eternally engaged to him, and shall stand in his debt-book ages without end.
Objection 3. Infinite goodness may as soon cease to be, as not be good to all, or withhold mercy from any. Answer. Every being of reprobate men and devils, is a fruit of God's goodness, but of free goodness; else God should cease to be, if he should turn his creatures to nothing; for he should cease to be good to things without himself, if these were all turned to their poor mother-nothing. (2.) Mercy floweth not from God essentially, especially the mercy of conversion, remission of sins, eternal life, but of mere grace; for then God could not be God, and deny these favours to reprobates. Freedom of mercy and salvation is as infinitely sweet and admirable in God, as mercy and salvation itself.
Objection 4. But God is so essentially good to all, as he must communicate his goodness by way of justice, in order to free obedience; and that is life eternal, to those who freely believe and obey. Answer. But the great enemy of grace, Arminius, teaches us, that all the freedom of grace, (Rom. 9,) is resolved into the free pleasure of God, in which he freely, and without hire, purposed to reward faith, not the works of the law, with life eternal; whereas it was free to him to keep another order, if so it should seem good to him; and by this means, God is yet freely, and by an act of pure grace, not essentially good to all, even in communicating his goodness by way of justice: for what God doth by necessity of his nature and essence, that he cannot but do. But sure it is, by no necessity of nature doth the Lord reward one's faith, or any obedience in us, with the crown of life eternal: he may give heaven freely without one's obedience at all, as he giveth the first grace freely, (Ezek. 16:6-8; Rom. 5:10; Eph. 2:3,4.) But this is surer, the fewer have grace, grace is the more grace, and the more like itself and free.
Objection 5. But I have a good heart to God. Answer. A quiet heart sleeping in a false peace, is a bad heart: most of sinners give their souls to the devil by theft; they think they are sailing to heaven, and know nothing till they shore, sleeping in the land of death. (Matt. 7:21-23; Luke 16:27,28.)
Objection 6. Why, but God hath bestowed on me many favours and riches in this world. Answer. God's grace is not graven on gold. It should be but the logic of a beast, if the slaughter ox should say, "The master favoureth me more than any ox in the stall; I am free of the yoke that is upon the neck of others, and my pasture is fatter than their's."
Objection 7. The saints love me. Answer. The saints can mis-father their love, and love where God loveth not.
Objection 8. All the world loveth me. Answer. You are the liker to be a step-child of Jerusalem and of heaven; for, "The world loveth its own." (John 15:19.) Better it were to have the world a step-mother, than to be no other, but to lie in such a womb, and suck such breasts.
Objection 9. I believe life eternal. Answer. That faith is with child of heaven; but see it be not a false birth. Few or none come to age, and none clothed in white and crowned, but they were jealous of their faith, and feared their own ways. Natural men stand aloof from hell and wrath.
THETRIAL AND TRIUMPH OF FAITH.
SERMON IV.
"The woman was a Greek, a Syrophenician by nation."
MUCH woe is denounced by the prophets against Tyrus and Sidon; yet sweet Jesus draweth aside the curtain, and openeth a window of the partition, and saveth this woman. Lo, here Christ "planting in the wilderness the cedar, the shittah tree, the myrtle, the oil tree," (Isa. 41:19;) and here, Isa. 55:13, is fulfilled, "And instead of the thorn (what better are Sidonians than thorns?) shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar, shall come up the myrtle tree; (and no praise to the ground, but to the good Husbandman:) and it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign, that shall not be cut off." Christ, then, can make and frame a fair heaven out of an ugly hell, and out of the knottiest timber he can make vessels of mercy, for service in the high palace of glory.
1. What are they all, who are now glorified? The fairest face that standeth before the throne of redeemed ones, was once inked and blackened with sin. You should not know Paul now, with a crown of a king on his head: he looketh not now like a "blasphemer, a persecutor, an injurious person." The woman that had once seven devils in her, is a Mary Magdalene far changed, and grace made the change.
2. Grace is a new world. (Heb. 2:5.) The land of grace hath two summers in one year. "The inhabitants shall not say, I am sick; the people that dwell therein, shall be forgiven their iniquity." (Isa. 33:24.) "Whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die." (John 11:26.) They are not mortal men that are in grace; there is neither sickness nor death in that land.
3. We say of such a physician, He hath cured diseases that never man could; he cured stark death; then you may commit your body to him, he is a tried physician. Christ hath made a rare copy, a curious sampler of mercy, of the apostle Paul; for in him he hath shown all "long-suffering, for a pattern to them that should hereafter believe in him to life eternal." (1 Tim. 1:16.) Heaven is a house full of miracles; yea, of spectacles and images of free grace. You may entrust your soul, with all its diseases, to Christ; he hath given many rare proofs of his tried art of grace; he hath made many black limbs of hell fair saints in heaven: such a man, such an artificer, threw down an old dungeon of clay, and made it up a fair palace of gold.
Objection. But what am I, a lump of unrepenting guiltiness and sin, to such a vessel of mercy, as holy Paul, and repenting Mary Magdalene? Answer. Grace, as it is in God, and fitness to receive grace in us, is just alike to all. There was no more reason why Paul should obtain mercy, than why thou, or any other sinner like thee, should obtain mercy. There is a like reason for me to have noble and broad thoughts of the rich grace of Christ, as for Abraham, Moses, David, all the prophets and apostles to believe. There was no greater ransom given by Christ to buy faith and free grace for Noah, Job, and Daniel, to Moses and Samuel, than to poor and sinful me: it is one cause, one ransom, one free love. If there had a nobler and worthier Redeemer died for Moses and Paul, than for you and me; and another heaven, and a freer grace purchased to them, than to me, I should have been discouraged: grace is grace to thee, as to meek Moses: Christ is Christ to thee, as to believing Abraham. And further, The same grace that is here, is in heaven. (1.) As faith that is freely given us, is the conquest of the new heir, Jesus Christ, (John 6:44; Phil. 1:29; Eph. 1:3,) so are all Christ's bracelets about our neck in heaven, and the garland of glory, the free grace of God. It is the same day-light when the sun breaketh forth out of the east, and at noon-day in the highest meridian. Though we change places when we die, we change not husbands. (2.) We stand here by free grace. (Rom. 5:2.) Repentance and remission of sins are freely given here to Israel, by the exalted Prince Christ Jesus. (Acts 5:31.) Our tears are bought with that common ransom; so the high inns of the royal court of heaven is a free and open house, and no bill put upon the inhabitants; neither fine, nor stent, nor excise, nor assessment, nor taxation; all is upon the royal charges of the Prince of the kings of the earth. There is no more hire, merit, wages, or fees there than here; the income of glory for eternity, and the life-rent of ages of blessedness, is all the goodwill of Him who sitteth on the throne. Every apple of the tree of life is grace; every sip, every drop of the sea and river of life, is the purchase of the blood of the Lamb that is in the midst of them. (3.) They be as poor without Christ who are there, as we are. Glory is grace, and their dependency for ages of ages is, that the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne, does feed them, and lead them unto living fountains of waters, and God wipeth away all tears from their eyes. (Rev. 7:17.) Then they cannot walk there alone, but as the Lamb leadeth them; and if Christ were not there, or if he should take grace, glory, and all his own jewels and ornaments from Moses and Enoch, there should remain no more there but poor nature. As good angels do therefore not fall, because in Christ, the Head of angels, they are confirmed, (and if they lacked this confirming grace, they might yet fall, and become apostate devils,) so the glorified in heaven do therefore stand, and are confirmed in the inheritance, not by free-will there, more than here; but by immediate dependence of grace on the Lamb, whom they follow whithersoever he goeth. Grace, then, for kind, is as good as heaven. Glory, glory to our ransom-payer!
3. Her little daughter was vexed (Kakos daimonizetai, she is exceedingly devilled,) she saith, or grievously tormented with a devil. Then observe, that common punishments of sin, and sad afflictions do follow justified persons, as well as the wicked; for it was a sad burden to the mother, that the devil had such a dominion over her daughter; yet the text cleareth, that she was a justified person, as her instancy of praying, adoring, and great faith, even prevailing over Christ, under sad trials, do manifestly evidence. And we see the reasons that the Scripture allegeth, (1.) That the gold of precious faith, and the upright metal therein, may be seen. (1 Pet. 1:7.) Afflictions are the servants and pursuivants of the accusing law, sent out to cause us lay hold, by faith, on peace made, and pardon purchased in Christ. The hot furnace is the workhouse of Christ; in that fire he taketh away the scum, the dross, the refuse of the true metal, that faith may be found unto praise, and honour, and glory, at the appearance of Jesus Christ. (2.) Afflictions drive us to seek God, they being God's firemen; and his hired labourers, sent to break the clods, and to plough Christ's land, that he may sow heaven there; but Christ must bring new earth to the soil. In prosperity we come to God, but in a common way; as the grave man came to the theatre, only that he might go out again. But in trouble, the saints do more than come; they make a friendly visit when they come. Also, the prayers of the saints in prosperity, are but summer prayers, slow, lazy, and alas! too formal. In trouble, they rain out prayers, or cast them out in co-natural violence, as a fountain doth cast out waters. Both these are in one well expressed by the prophet: "Lord, in trouble they have visited thee; they pour out a prayer when thy chastening hand is on them."3 (Isa. 26:16.) (3.) We must be made like Christ, in the cross and the crown, (2 Tim. 2:12,) and conform to him. (Rom. 8:29.) Christ the corner-stone: though there was no sin in him, yet before he was made the chief corner-stone, he was by death hammered. (Acts 4:10-12.) And much more, the strokes and smiting of the cross must knock down all the superfluity of naughtiness, and every height, till by smoothing and chipping, the child of God be made a stone, in breadth, length, proportion, smoothness, some way conform to the first copy, and to Christ the sampler-stone. There is a 4th reason, but it is a controverted one: The justified person may be afflicted for sin. Some teach that this is Popery, to affirm, that the justified bear the punishment of their sin; because, Christ only was wounded for our iniquity, and did bear, in his own body, our sins on the tree: therefore (say they) respect seemeth to be had (as one speaketh) to sin, not principally, but secondarily and occasionally; not as it offendeth God, who by that one sacrifice is for ever pacified, (Heb. 10:14; Matt. 3,) but as it offendeth and diseaseth the minds of the faithful: not that afflictions simply, properly, and immediately do ease, quiet, and cure the conscience, (for their natural effect is to deject and terrify, as appendices of the law;) but that they awaken and stir up our dullness, to a lively apprehension of Christ's righteousness. And so, while God, as a father, correcteth for sin, sin hath not properly with God the nature of sin, which is an offence of Divine justice, but is considered as a disease troubling his child; which in love, and in pity, he seeketh to make riddance of, in manner aforesaid, and not in anger and displeasure.
It is true, Papists hold, that when God forgiveth sin in David, he forgiveth not the punishment; for David is punished with the sword on his house for that same sin: but it is known, that this doctrine is a too-fall and pillar, to underprop the chamber in hell, which they call Purgatory: and that their meaning is, that punishment inflicted on a justified person, is a punishment satisfactory to the justice of God; that so, they may make the merits of the saints suffering, to ride up, as a collateral sharer with the high and noble blood of the killed Lamb of God, who only satisfactorily taketh away the sins of the world. This we disclaim; but, on the other hand, we hold, that there is another justice in God, than that legal and sin-revenging justice, which Christ's sufferings have expiated and fully satisfied, both in regard of God's acceptation, and of the intrinsical worth of the death of him who was God, the Prince of life. And this other justice, is also the justice of an offended father, correcting, though in mercy, (and so it is a mixed justice,) the sins of the saints as sins:
1. Because the sins of the saints are not only the offending of divine revenging justice, but also, a wrong done against this mixed justice, and against the mercy and kindness of God, (2 Sam. 12:7-9; Exod. 20:1,2; Psalm 81:6,7,10,11; and 78:11-13,42,53-56; Deut.32:11-18; Amos 3:2.) And therefore God doth punish, in his own, sins as sins.
2. Those who are not to perish with the world, are, for this cause, (because they eat and drink unworthily), sick, and punished with death. (1 Cor. 11:30,32,33.) It is clearly against the text, that Mr. Towne saith, That a justified person, having the least measure of faith, cannot eat and drink unworthily; the smallest faith maketh them worthy; and so those who, in that text, did eat unworthily, did but dally with the gospel, and never actually put on Christ. But faith doth no more hinder a justified person to receive the Lord's supper unworthily, than it doth hinder him to commit adultery, or incest, or to kill; and whosoever should come to the Lord's table under these sins, without repenting, should eat and drink unworthily; and such a sin may a believer according to God's heart (as David was) commit. And there is great odds between being unworthy, and eating unworthily. All believers, of themselves, are unworthy of Christ and salvation, but being in Christ by faith, they are counted worthy; and yet they may eat and drink unworthily. But Mr. Towne's sense seemeth to carry, that a justified person cannot sin, nor eat and drink unworthily, because faith maketh him worthy: and if so, the way of grace is a wanton merry way; the justified are freed from the law, and from any danger of sinning.
3. Nothing is more evident, than that David was punished according to the rule of that mixed and fatherly justice, which keeps a due proportion between the sin and the punishment. His sin was, to cut off Uriah's house out of Israel; God sendeth the sword against his house, all his days. He took another man's wife secretly, and did commit filthiness with her; the Lord took his wives, before the sun, and gave them to Absalom, who defiled his bed. (2 Sam. 12.) Here is justice, though, I grant, mixed with mercy; sword for sword, bed for bed. Eli honoured his sons more than God, and suffered them to profane priesthood and sacrifices; justice rooted out his sons from priesthood and sacrifice. Hezekiah, out of his pride, showed all his treasures, and all that was in his house, to the king of Babylon's messengers; and justice measured out the like to him: all that was in his house, and all his treasures, were carried away as a spoil to Babylon.
4. "Slay old and young—begin at my sanctuary." (Ezek. 9:6.) "And behold thou shalt be dumb—because thou believest not my word." (Luke 1:20.) The church of God, in terminis, saith so much: "The Lord is righteous, for I have rebelled against his commandment." (Lamen. 1:18,) "The yoke of my transgression is bound by his hand; they are wreathed, and come up upon my neck." (verse 14.) "Wherefore doth a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sin?" (chap. 3:39.) "Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord." (verse 40.) "Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? Did not the Lord, against whom we have sinned?" (Isa. 42:24.) "I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned." (Micah 7:9.) "For through the anger of the Lord it came to pass in Jerusalem, and Judah, until he had cast them out from his presence, that Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon." (2 Kings 24.20.) It is not of weight that is brought, to take off the force of these pregnant scriptures. The church, consisting of mixed persons, good and bad, elect and reprobate, (say they,) is, according to the wicked party, punished in justice, but not the believing party. But I answer, all Judah, good and ill, Jeremiah, Daniel, and all the holy seed, were involved with the perverse and obstinate idolaters, in the same common calamity of a sad captivity. And it was not the ill figs, and stiff-necked idolaters, that did confess the Lord's righteousness, and their own rebellion against the Lord; nor did the wicked party enter into a trial of their ways, and acknowledge, that the unregenerate man only suffereth for his sins; nor did any of that side, with patience, hope, and silence, bear the indignation of the Lord: it was the true church, God's Jacob, the meek of the earth, that did thus stoop to God's correction; and yet these same were punished for their sins, as they acknowledge. (Lam. 1:18; Mic. 7:9.)
5. This is also against the covenant, and threatenings thereof: "And if ye walk contrary to me, and will not hearken to me, I will bring seven times more plagues on you," etc. (Lev. 26:21-40.) "If then (in their heavy afflictions) their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity," (verse 41,) "Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob." (verse 42.) "If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments,'' etc. (Psalm 89:30,) "Then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes." (verse 32.) "Nevertheless, my loving-kindness will I not utterly take from him," etc. (verse 33.) Nothing is more evident, than that those who are in the covenant of grace, from whom God cannot remove the sure mercies of David, are visited for their iniquities, with temporal rods.
6. It is against God's anger and displeasure at the sins of his own children; for God is really angry at his own children's sins; and why then doth he not punish them for their sins? "The anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses." (Exod. 4:14.) "Also the Lord was angry with me for your sake." (Deut. 1:37.) And the story showeth, because Moses sanctified not the Lord at the waters of Meribah, God would not suffer him to set his foot in the holy land. "God was angry with Solomon." (2 Chron. 11:9.) "The Lord was very angry with Aaron." (Deut. 1:20.) The prophet Jehu said to Jehoshaphat, that good king, "There is wrath upon thee from the Lord." (2 Chron. 19:2.) "For in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour I have had mercy upon thee." (Isa. 60:10.)
7. The contrary error is founded upon two other errors, That all afflictions are subservient officers and sergeants to the law; and so, they are signs of God's wrath, as is the law: And as believers are freed from the ruling power of the law, so also, from the rod. But this is false; for God's rod, of itself, is neither a sign of revenging justice, nor of free mercy; but it taketh its nature and specification from the intention and mind of God: all these externals fall alike to elect and reprobate. The repenting thief, and the blaspheming thief are under the same rod of God; both die a violent death. Wicked Ahab, and good Josiah are both killed in war. The botches and agues threatened in the law, (Deut. 28:60,) are upon Job, (chap. 2:7) What maketh the same rod, to be a work of revenging justice, in the reprobate, and of justice mixed and tempered with mercy and fatherly kindness, in the other? Certainly, God's pleasure and wise intention, punishing for different ends, varieth the nature of the rods; so as an intention to take satisfactory vengeance on the reprobate, specifieth his rod, and maketh it punishment of black wrath, of salt and unmixed justice on him. And this intention, is an essential ingredient in satisfactory punishment. God writeth and engraveth upon the toothache of a reprobate, a parcel of hell; and he stampeth upon burning quick, racking and torturing, the engraving of heaven, of mercy and loving-kindness, in the believer. Bastard crosses, and lawfully begotten afflictions have the same father, but not the same mother, (2.) If the patrons of this error could make God's rod as arbitrary, as they fancy the duties of the teaching and ruling law of God to be, they should cry down all crosses, and send all the justified persons to heaven with a pass, securing them from all affliction in the way to heaven; and so, Christ should bring his many children to glory, with dry faces and whole skins. Whereas Christ himself passed to heaven with the tear in his eye, and a bruised soul. The other error is, That Christ hath made a full atonement for sin, and fully satisfied justice for all that are justified in his blood; and therefore, they cannot be punished for sin themselves. But, (1.) There is more in the conclusion than in the premises; ergo, the justified cannot suffer satisfactory punishment for sin, either in whole or in part. This is most true; no man's garments were ever dyed with one drop of red satisfactory vengeance for sin; Christ hath alone trode this winepress, and of all the nations, there were none with him. But yet it no ways followeth, that the regenerate do not suffer punishment for sin, according to the rule of another mixed and tempered justice. (2.) If this argument from Christ's suffering have nerves, it shall conclude, that the elect, before they be justified, are never punished for sin, more than believing saints are; yea, that God is not displeased with Abraham's idolatry before his conversion, nor with Manasseh's blood, nor with Saul's persecution; because Christ paid justice for sins of elect persons committed before justification, as for sins committed after justification.
USE. 1. We can fetch no conclusion of a bad condition from affliction. It is a part of tenderness of conscience in the regenerate, to be too applicatory of the law and of wrath: "I am afflicted above all others, therefore God is angry with me, and I am cast off by God." It is a bad consequence. There be some rules to be observed in affliction: (1.) We are not either to over-argue or to under-argue, neither to faint nor despise. (Heb. 12.) Conscience is too quick-sighted after illumination, and too dull-sighted before. The reasons why we argue from afflictions to God's hatred are, [1.] There is a conscience of a conscience in the believer; that is, even in an enlightened conscience, there is some ill conscience to deem ill of God. "For I said in my haste, I am cut off from before thine eyes." (Psalm 31:22.) This is a hasty conscience; as we say, Such a one is a hasty man, and soon saddled, easily provoked to anger. This is a conscience soon provoked to anger. [2.] We have not that love and charity to God, that we have to some friend. We have such a love to some dear friend, that all his blacks are white; his seeming injuries to us do not provoke us. We say, I can believe no evil of such a man; and we over-shoot ourselves in an over-charge and surfeit of charity, which proceedeth from an over-plus and dominion of love, to a creature. We are in the other extremity to God and Jesus Christ. Sense of affliction cooleth our love, and we cannot extend charity so far to our Lord, as when we see he dealeth hardly with us, to keep the other ear without prejudice, free from the report that affliction, and the sense of affliction, maketh. [3.] The flesh joineth with affliction against God: affliction whispereth wrath, justice, sin, and the flesh saith, That is very true; for flesh hateth God, and so, must slander his dispensation. Ahab could not but slander Micaiah: "He never prophesieth good (saith he) to me." Is not God's truth good? Surely, every word of prophecy is like gold seven times tried. The reason of the slander is given by himself—"I hate him." The other extremity is, that we under-argue in affliction; as [1.] we say, It is not the Lord. The Philistines doubted whether God had sent the emerods on them, for keeping the ark captive, or if chance had done it. It is grace to father the cross right. [2.] We look seldom spiritually on the cross: a carnal eye upon a cross is a plague. "God's anger set him on fire round about, and he knew it not; and it burned him, and he laid it not to heart." (Isa. 42:25.) It is strange, that God's fire should burn a man, and yet, he neither seeth nor feeleth fire. Why? There is something of God in the cross, that the carnal eye cannot see; because, as Zophar saith, "A fire not blown shall consume him." (Job 20:26.) Some make it (and not without reason) a fire that hath no noise of bellows or wind, to make it take fire, and to flame up. Some are burnt, and they neither hear nor see. There is a white powder, that burneth, and maketh no noise or sound. A dumb rod is twice a rod. We scarcely see what God is doing in this war; we are smitten of God in the dark. And so, wicked men never do come lawfully out of affliction; they see not God nor sin; and for that come they not out of prison by the king's keys, but they break the jail, and leap out of a window, the land is to see all the circumstances of this bloody war in these three kingdoms.
USE 2. We are to put a difference between God's afflicting one man, and a whole church. Now, God hath his fire in our Zion, and we wonder that wars have lain on Germany twenty-six years, and that for divers years the sword has been on us in these kingdoms. (1.) There be many vessels to be melted: a fire for an afternoon, or a war for a morning of a day, or a week, cannot do it. Seven days' sickness of a dying child, putteth David to go softly and in sackcloth. Years are little enough to humble proud Scotland and England. God humbled Israel four hundred years and above, in Egypt, and kept them forty years in the wilderness; and Judah must lie smoking in the furnace seventy years. (2.) One temple was forty-six years in building: God hath taken eighty years to reform England, and many years to reform Scotland, and the temple is not built yet: give to our Lord, time; hope, and wait on. (3.) Babylon is a great cedar that cannot fall at the first stroke; it is not a work of one day or a year, to bring that princess, the lady of nations, from her throne of glory, to sit in the dust, and take the millstones and grind meal.
THETRIAL AND TRIUMPH OF FAITH.
SERMON V.
"VEXED with a devil;" she is devilled, that is, fully possessed. The malice of the devil is a natural agent, and worketh as intently and bently as he can. As the fire putteth forth all its strength in burning; the sun heateth and enlighteneth as vehemently as it can; a millstone fallen from the sphere of the moon down to the earth, useth no moderation or abatement in its motion, the malice of hell being let loose, it worketh mischief by nature, not by will. Satan's possession is full: Peter saith to Ananias, "Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie against the Holy Ghost?" (Acts 5:3.) As there is a fullness of God, (Eph. 3:19,) so there is a fullness of the devil, "being filled with all unrighteousness." (Rom. 1:29.) It is no wonder that cavaliers and malignants work as their father: the nature of the father is in the son; the manner of working is suitable to the nature of the worker; hell works like hell. "Behold thou hast spoken, and done evil as thou couldst." (Jer. 3:5.) "They drew sin and iniquity, not with a rush or a thread, but with cords of vanity and with a cart rope." (Isa. 5:18.) "They do evil with both hands earnestly." (Mic. 7:3.) All that malice and hell could do of cruelty to young and old, to women and sucking infants, hath been done in Ireland and England: the devil in his element is twice a devil; he is in his own when he formeth and actuateth bloody instruments, and he aboundeth in his own sphere. Satan's malice, by itself, is great, and a sinner's wrath is heavier than stones and sand; but when they are conjoined (as united force is stronger) who can stand before them? Christ's lambs have been preserved amidst devils and men since the creation, amongst wolves, by no human power and strength.
Observe, that all that came to Christ, have been forced through some one necessity or other; either a leprous body, blind eyes, a palsy, a bloody issue, a withered arm, or a dying son; and that some have been brought to Christ, at least, their parents or friends have come to Christ, through reason of bodily possession by the devil: but we read of none who came through reason of the devil's spiritual possessing of them, either by themselves or others. (1.) There is much flesh and much nature in us, and so much sense and little spirit, and little of God: a blind eye will chase thee to Christ, a soul under the prince of darkness will not. (2.) We are all body, and life, and time; but we are not all soul, and spirit, and eternity: heaven is far from being the master element in us. (3.) Misplaced love is much. "Ye are of your father the devil," saith Christ to the Jews, (John 8:44.) Every child loveth the father. Why? And men love not the devil: doth not every wretch through nature's instinct abhor the devil? Is not this the mother-devotion of any wretch that knoweth nothing of God from the womb? "God save me from the devil and all his works; I have nothing to do with that foul spirit." It is true, there is a physical hatred of the devil, as he is a spirit, an angel, and a pursuivant of divine justice, inflicting evil of punishment on all men naturally; but there is in all men an inbred moral love of the devil, as he is a fallen spirit, tempting to sin: here every prisoner loveth this keeper; like loveth like; broken men and bankrupts flee together to woods and mountains; an outlaw loveth an outlaw; fowls of a feather flock together. The devil and sinful men are both broken men, and outlaws of heaven, and of one blood; wicked men are the "children of the devil," (1 John 3:10); they have that natural relation of father and son; there is of the devil's seed in sinners. There is a spiritual concupiscence in devils to lust against God's image and glory; and Satan findeth his own seed in us by nature, to wit, concupiscence, a stem, a sprouting and child of the house of hell. It were good we knew our own misery: the man resolveth a prisoner has a sweet life, who loveth his own chains, because made of gold, and hateth them not because chains; and falleth to paint the walls of his dungeon, and to put up hangings in his prison, and will but over-gild with gold his iron fetters. Oh! are we not in love with our own dungeon of sin? And do we not bear a kind love to our father, the devil? We bring in provision for the flesh, and nourish the old man, as old as since Adam first sinned. Alas! we never saw our father in the face: we love the devil, as the devil fallen in sin; but we see him not as a devil, but only under the embroideries of golden and silken temptations: we sow to the flesh; we bring in our crop to the devil, but we know not our landlord; and because sense and flesh are nearer to us than God, we desire more the liberties of state, free commerce, and peace with the king, than Christ's liberties, the power and purity of the gospel, that we may negotiate with Heaven and have peace with God.
"Unclean spirit."—This is the quality of this devil: an unclean devil. Now, whether he be called so, because he tempted the maid to some prodigious acts of uncleanness, or because, in general, he tempteth to uncleanness of sins; so as uncleanness is but a general epithet of all the devils, I profess my ignorance. However, all devils have this general name, "unclean spirits," because of their spiritual uncleanness. It is certain, devils are, (1.) Black now, they being fallen in a smoky hell, and kept under the power and chains of darkness, and they are but lumps of black hell and darkness; whereas they were created fair angels. Truth is the fairest thing that is; obedience to God is truth. (John 3:21.) Sin is the most ugly and deformed thing in the world; and therefore sinners can have no communion with God, until they be washed. (2.) Devils were once pure and clean spirits; their understandings were made clear to see God and his beauty; now, these fair spirits are darkened; for their fellow angels who sinned not, are yet seraphim and lamps of light; and these angels (saith Christ,) "Do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven." (Matth. 18:10.)
Then, the more grace of Christ, the more clearness of saving knowledge and sound reason; grace maketh more solid wisdom than art or learning; by this, David excelled all his teachers, and the ancient ones. In Satan's fools the right principle of wisdom is extinguished. The prophet spoke it of statesmen, or rather state-fools, "Lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them?" (Jer. 8:9.) As there be pollutions of the flesh, so are there pollutions of the mind and spirit, (2 Tim. 3:8.) Men of corrupt minds are men of rotten minds; false opinions of God are rottenness in the understanding. "The spirit of a sound mind." (1 Tim. 1:7.) "Hold fast the form of sound words." (verse 13.) There are some words that come from a sick mind, as Titus 1:13. The apostle holdeth forth, that there be some sick of the faith, as there be some sound of the faith, (Prov. 10:7.) The Lord giveth sound wisdom its essence and being. Wisdom and the law of God is an abiding and a living thing that endureth to eternity; whereas indeed human wisdom, and false opinions of God, are passing away things; the lie liveth not a long age. Wisdom is a tree of life. "Let my heart be sound in thy statutes," (Psalm 119:80,) perfect, wanting nothing. A fool wanteth the best part of his heart. State wisdom, not lying level to Christ's ends, but commensurate with carnal projects, is but folly.
"Hearing of him."—What had she heard?
I. That Jesus was the Son of God, the Messiah of Israel, and could, and was willing to heal her daughter. Two things are here observable: (1.) hearing of Christ, drew her to Christ. (2.) It is good to border with Christ, and to be near-hand to him. There is a necessity that we hear of Christ, before we come to him. This is God's way: "Faith cometh by hearing." (Rom. 10.) Christ is not in us from the womb; faith is not a flower that groweth out of such a sour and cold ground as nature; it is a stem and a birth of heaven.
II. None can come to Christ, except they hear a good report of him. How shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? Those who come aright to Christ, must have noble, high, long, deep, and broad thoughts of Jesus, and know the gospel. Now, what is the gospel? nothing but a good report of Christ. You must hear a gospel-report of Christ, ere you come to him: ill principled thoughts of Christ keep many from him. "Strangers shall hear of thy great name, and of thy strong hand." (1 Kings 8:42.) Christ was to be heard by the deaf Gentiles: "In that day shall the deaf hear the words of the book." (Isa. 29:18.) We hear, and we hear not, because the Lord wakeneth not the ear, morning by morning, that we may hear as the learned. Many hear, but they have not the learned ear, nor the ear of such as have heard and learned of the Father. Many hear of Christ, a voice, and no more but a voice; they know not that prophecy, "Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it." (Isa. 30:21,) There is another voice in our hearing; men do not hear, that they may hear. "Hear, ye deaf, and behold, ye blind, that ye may see:" (Isa. 42:18,) that is, hear that ye may hear, see that ye may see. The Lord giveth grace that he may give grace, and we are to receive grace that we may receive grace; grace is the only reward of grace.
III. We hear and we hear not; we see, but we have no reflex act upon our seeing. Many open their ears to Christ, but they hear not; they want a spiritual faculty of observing. "Seeing many things, but thou observest not; opening the ear, but he heareth not." (Isa. 42:22.)
IV. Many put Christ in an ear without a bottom, or in an ear with a hole in its bottom; we hear of Christ, (Heb. 2,) but we are as leaking and running out vessels. "Who among you will give ear to this, and hear for the time to come?" (Isa. 42:23.) Physicians give their three causes of deafness. (1.) When there is carnosity on the ear-drum. This is extrinsical: the world is another lover, and the care of it; and that hindereth hearing. (2.) When the organ of hearing is hurt and distempered, as a lame hand that cannot apprehend: now, when there be false fancies, and principles contrary to the gospel in the heart, the ear cannot hear. (3.) When there is abundance of humours in the brain, and they raise a noise and tumult in the drum, and hinder sounds to be heard. When pride, and principles of sensuality and vain pleasures make a noise within, that neither Christ knocking, nor his voice without can be heard, men are deaf.
But why do we not hear and see Christ revealing himself in his ways and works? Reason would say, if hell and judgment were before our eyes, we should hear, and come to Christ. Suppose we saw with our eyes, for twenty or thirty years together, a great furnace of fire, of the quantity of the whole earth, and saw there, Cain, Judas, Ahithophel, Saul, and all the damned, as lumps of red fire, and they boiling, and leaping for pain, in a dungeon of everlasting brimstone; and the black and terrible devils, with long and sharp toothed whips of scorpions, lashing out scourges on them: and if we saw there our neighbours, brethren, sisters, yea, our dear children, wives, fathers and mothers, swimming and sinking in that black lake; and heard the yelling, shouting, crying of our young ones and fathers, blaspheming the spotless justice of God:—if we saw this, while we are living here on earth, we should not dare to offend the majesty of God; but should hear, come to Christ, and believe, and be saved. But the truth is, if we believe not Moses and the Prophets, neither should we believe for this; because we see with our eyes, and hear with our ears, even while we are in this life, daily, pieces and little parcels of hell; for we see and hear daily, some tumbling in their blood, thousands cut down of our brethren, children, fathers; malefactors hanged and quartered, death in every house. These, these be little hells, and little coals and sparkles of the great fire of hell, and certain documents to us, that there is a hell; yet we neither hear, nor come to Christ. Nay, suppose a preacher came from hell to the rich glutton's five brethren, (Luke 16,) and should bring with him all the lashes, and print of the whips of Satan's scorpions, on back and side, on thighs, arms, and legs; and though he should bring up to us, out of hell, ten thousand damned; and bring with him the fire, the red coals of the fury of God, every coal as great as a mountain, and offer them all to our eyes, and ears, and senses;—such is the power of our deafness and blindness, that we should not believe; for when many little hells work so little by length of time, this one great hell should never bring us to hear, and come to Christ. See how little we are affected with the blood of so many thousands of our own flesh in the three kingdoms!4 Alas! our senses are confined within time.
The other thing observable is, that it is good to be near the place where Christ is. It was an advantage, that the woman dwelt upon the borders of the land where Christ was. It is good for the poor to be a neighbour beside the rich; and for the thirsty to take up house, and dwell at the fountain; and for the sick to border with the physician. Oh! love the ground that Christ walketh on. To be born in Sion is an honour, because there the Lord dwelleth. (Psalm 87:6.) It is a blessing to hear and see Christ, (Matt. 13:16.) We do not weigh, nor duly esteem what a favour it is, that Christ walketh in the midst of the golden candlesticks; that the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. It is ours, to build him a palace of silver.
For the sixth article, which is, her adoring of Christ, it shall be spoken of in another place. I hasten, therefore, to her prayer.
THETRIAL AND TRIUMPH OF FAITH.
SERMON VI.
IN her prayer, as it is expressed by Matthew, we have, 1st, The manner of it: "she cried." 2nd, The compellation, or party to whom she prayeth: "O, Lord, thou Son of David." 3rd, The petition: "have mercy upon me." 4th, The reason: "for my daughter is vexed with a devil."
"She cried." The poor woman prayed (as we say) with good will, with a bent of affection. Why is crying used in praying? Had it not been more modesty to speak to this soul-redeeming Saviour, who heareth sometimes before we pray, than to cry out and shout?—for the disciples do after complain, that "she crieth so after them." Was Christ so difficult to be entreated? The reasons of crying are, 1st, Want cannot blush. The pinching necessity of the saints is not tied to the law of modesty. Hunger cannot be ashamed. "I mourn in my complaint, and make a noise," saith David, (Psalm 55:2;) and Hezekiah, "Like a crane, or a swallow, so did I chatter; I did mourn as a dove," (Isa. 38:14). "I went mourning without the sun; I stood up, and I cried in the congregation." (Job 30:28.) 2nd, Though God hear prayer, only as prayer offered in Christ, not, because very fervent; yet fervour is a heavenly ingredient in prayer. An arrow drawn with full strength hath a speedier issue; therefore, the prayers of the saints are expressed by crying in Scripture. "O my God, I cry by day, and thou hearest not." (Psalm 22:2.) "At noon will I pray, and cry aloud." (Psalm 55:17,) "In my distress I cried to the Lord." (Psalm 18:6.) "Unto thee have I cried, O Lord." (Psalm 88:13.) "Out of the depths have I cried." (Psalm 130:1.) "Out of the belly of hell I cried." (Jonah 2:2.) "Unto thee will I cry, O Lord, my rock." (Psalm 28:1.) Yea, it goeth to somewhat more than crying: "I cry out of wrong, but am not heard." (Job 19:7.) "Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer." (Lam. 3:8.) He who may teach us all to pray, sweet Jesus, "In the days of his flesh offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears," (Heb. 5:7;) he prayed with war-shouts. 3rd, And these prayers are so prevalent, that God answereth them: "This poor man cried, and the Lord heard, and saved him from all his fears." (Psalm 34:6) "My cry came before him, even to his ears." (Psalm 18:6.) The cry addeth wings to the prayer, as a speedy post sent to court upon life and death: "Our fathers cried unto thee, and were delivered." (Psalm 22:5.) "The righteous cry, and the Lord heareth." Psalm