Christ Dying, and Drawing Sinners to Himself

John 12:27. Now is my soul troubled: and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: But for this cause came I to this hour. 28. Father, glorify your Name.

It is a question whether these words of our Savior's soul-trouble be nothing but the same words and prayer which Matthew chapter 26 and Luke 22 relate, to wit, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me, when his soul was troubled in the garden, in his agony: Some think them the same, others not. It is like they are words of the same matter; for first, when Christ uttered these words, he was near his sufferings, and on the brink of that hideous and dark sea of his most extreme pain, and drew up against hell, and the armies of darkness; as the story shows. But that the Lord uttered these same words in the garden, and not before, is not apparent; because upon this prayer it is said, Then came there a voice from heaven, etc. A voice speaks to him from heaven: now, Matthew 26, Luke 22, no voice is like to have come from heaven; for when he prayed in his agony, there were no people with him, as here, because of the voice the people being present, Some said it thundered, others said, an Angel spoke from heaven: there being now with Christ in the garden, when he prayed, O my Father, etc. none save Peter, James, and John, the three famous witnesses of his extreme suffering, and of his young heaven, of his transfiguration on the Mount, when he acted the prelude and the image and representation of heaven before them, as is clear (Matthew 26:37). And he was removed from them also (Matthew 26:39; Luke 22:41) and they were sleeping, in his agony (Matthew 26:40, 43, 45). But now there is a waking people with Christ, who heard this voice. But I deny not but it is the same prayer in sense: even as suppose it were revealed to a godly man, that he were to suffer an extreme, violent, and painful death; and withal, some fearful soul-desertion, as an image of the second death; it should much affright him to remember this, and he might pray that the Lord would either save him from that sad hour, or then give him grace with faith and courage, in the Lord, to endure it. So here; Christ, God and man, knowing that he was to bear the terrors of the first and second death, does act over beforehand (the time being near) the sorrow and anguish of heart that he was to suffer in his extreme sufferings: as it were good, before the cross come, to act it in our mind, and take an essay and a lift of Christ's cross, before we bear it, to try how handsomely we would set back and shoulders under the Lord's cross. I do not intend that we are to imitate the Martyr who put his hand in the fire, the night before he suffered, to try how he could endure burning-quick; but that we are to lay the supposition, what if it so fall out; (as Christ being persuaded his suffering was to come, acted sorrow, trouble of soul and prayer beforehand;) and to resolve the saddest, and antedate the cross, and say with our own hearts, Let the worst come; or to suffer our fear to prophesy, as Job did (Job 3:25). Yet suppose the hardest befall me, I know what to do; as the unjust steward resolves on a way, beforehand, how to swim through his necessities (Luke 16:4). The Lord acts judgment and what they shall pray in the time of their extremity, who now spit at all praying and religion; they shall be religious in their kind, when they shall cry (Revelation 6:16), Mountains and rocks, fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. You cannot believe that a Lamb shall chase the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and every bond-man, and every free-man, into the dens and the rocks of the mountains, to hide themselves. But the Lord acts wrath and judgment, before your eyes. Men will not suppose the real story of hell. Say but with yourself, Oh! shall I weep, and gnaw my tongue for pain, in a sea of fire and brimstone? Do but fore-fancy, I pray you, how you shall look on it, what thoughts you will have, what you shall do, when you shall (2 Thessalonians 1:9) be punished with everlasting destruction, from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power. 1. Foreseen sorrows have not so sad an impression on the spirit. 2. Grace is a well-advised and resolute thing, and has the eyes of providence to say in possible events, What if my scarlet embrace the dunghill, and providence turn the tables. 3. It is like wisdom (grace is wise to see afar off) to fore-act faith, and resolve to lie under God's feet, and intend humble yielding to God; as (2 Samuel 15:25-26).

In the complaint we have 1. the subject matter of it, the Lord's troubled soul. 2. The time; Now, is my soul troubled. 3. Christ's anxiety wrought on him by this trouble; What shall I say? or, which is the sense, What shall I do? 4. And a shore is seen at hand in the storm, a present rock in the raging sea: What will you say? Lord Jesus, what will you do? Pray: and he prays, Father, save me from this hour. 5. There is a sort of correction, or rather a limitation; But for this cause came I to this hour. The Lord forgetting his pain, embraces this evil hour. 6. Going on in his resolution to embrace this sad hour, he prays, verse 28. Father, glorify your Name.

Touching the first, the soul-trouble of Christ, we are to consider, 1. How it can consist with peace. 2. How with the personal union. 3. What cause there was. 4. What love and mercy in Jesus to be troubled for us. 5. What use we must make of this.

1. This holy soul thus troubled, was like the earth before the fall, out of which grew roses without thorns, or thistles, before it was cursed. Christ's anger, his sorrow, were flowers that smelled of heaven, and not of sin: all his affections of fear, sorrow, sadness, hope, joy, love, desire, were like a fountain of liquid and melted silver; of which the banks, the headspring, are all as clear from dross, as pure crystal: such a fountain can cast out no clay, no mud, no dirt. When his affections did rise and swell in their acts, every drop of the fountain was sinless, perfumed and adorned with grace; so as the more you stir or trouble a well of rose-water, or some precious liquor, the more sweet a smell it casts out: Or, as when a summer soft wind blows on a field of sweet roses, it diffuses precious and delicious smells through the air. There is such mud and dregs in the bottom and banks of our affections, that when our anger, sorrow, sadness, fear, does arise in their acts, our fountain casts out sin. We cannot love, but we lust; nor fear, but we despair; nor rejoice, but we are wanton and vain and gaudy; nor believe, but we presume: we rise up, we breathe out sin, we cast out a smell of hell, when the wind blows on our field of weeds and thistles; our soul is all but a plot of wild corn, the imaginations of our heart being only evil from our youth. O that Christ would plant some of his flowers in our soul, and bless the soil, that they might grow kindly there, being warmed and nourished with his grace: if grace be within, in sad pressures it comes out: a saint is a saint in affliction; as a hypocrite is a hypocrite: and every man is himself, and casts a smell like himself, when he is in the furnace. Troubled Christ prays. Tempted Job believes (Job 19:25). The scourged apostles rejoice (Acts 5:41). Drowned Jonah looks to the holy temple (Jonah 2:4).

2. Christ's affections were rational; reason starts up before fear: reason and affection did not outrun one another. In John 11:33, when Christ sees his friends weep, he weeps with them: and that which is expressed in our text by a passive verb, [illegible], "My soul is troubled;" is there expressed by an active verb, [illegible], and he troubled himself: he called upon his affections, and grace and light was lord and master of his affections. There was in Christ three things which are not in us: First, the Godhead personally united with a man, and a man's soul had an immediate influence on his affections. This was Christ's personal privilege; and to lack this, is not our sin: to have it, was Christ's glory: but the nearer any is to God, the more heavenly are the affections. Secondly, when God framed the human nature and human soul of Christ, he created a more noble and carefully-made piece than was the first Adam: it is true, he was like us in all things, except sin, and essentially a man; but in his generation there was a cut of the art of heaven in Christ more than in the forming of Adam, or than in the generation of men, suppose man had never sinned; as in Luke 1:35, "The power of the Most High shall overshadow you:", never man was thus to be born. From this, give me leave to think, that there was more of God in the human nature of Christ, as nature is a vessel coming out of the potter's house, than ever was in Adam, or living man; though man had never sinned: and so, that he had a human soul of a more noble structure and fabric, in which the Holy Spirit, in the act of sanctification, had a higher hand, than when Adam was created, according to the image of God; though he was a man like us in all things, sin excepted.

3. Undeniably, grace did so accompany nature, that he could not fear more than the object required. Had all the strength of men and angels been massed and commingled in one, they should have been in a higher measure troubled than Christ was: so how much trouble was in Christ's affections, as much there was of reason, perfumed and lustred with grace. He was not as man in his intellect, wise, or desirous to be wise (as Adam and Eve, and men now are taken with the disease of curiosity) above what was fit: so neither were his affections above banks; he saw the blackest and darkest hour that ever any saw; suppose all the sufferings of the damned, for eternity, were before them in one sight, or came on them at once, it should annihilate all that are now, or shall be in hell. Christ now saw, or foresaw, as great sufferings, and yet 1. believed, 2. prayed, 3. hoped, 4. was encouraged under it, 5. suffered them to the bottom with all patience, 6. rejoiced in hope (Psalm 16:9). Now our affections rise and swell before reason: 1. They are often imaginary, and are on horseback and in arms at the stirring of a straw. 2. They lack that clearness and serenity of grace that Christ had, through habitual grace following nature from the womb. 3. We can raise our affections, but cannot allay them: as some magicians can raise the devil, but cannot conjure, or command him: or, some can make war, and cannot create peace. It is a calumny of Papists, that say, that Calvin did teach there was despair, or any distemper of reason in Christ; when as Calvin says, he still believed with full assurance. And this extremity of soul-trouble was most rational, coming from the infallible apprehension of the most pressing cause of soul-trouble that ever living man was under.

4. Position. Christ had now and always moral peace, or the grace of peace, as peace is opposed to culpable raging of conscience. First, He never could want faith, which is a serenity, quietness, and silence of the soul and assurance of the love of God. Secondly, He could have no doubting, or sinful disturbance of mind; because he could have no conscience of guilt, which could overcloud the love and tenderest favor of his Father to him. But as peace is opposed to pain, and sense of wrath and punishment, for the guilt of our sins, so he wanted physical peace, and was now under penal disturbance and disquietness of soul. So we see some have peace, but not pardon; as the secure sinners (1 Thessalonians 5:3). Secondly, some have pardon, but not peace; as David (Psalm 38:3), who had broken bones; and complains (verse 8), I am feeble and sore broken, I have roared by reason of the disquietness of my heart. And the troubled Church (Psalm 77:1-4). Some have both peace and pardon; as some, like Stephen, that are so near to the crown, as they are above any challenges of conscience: it is likely Satan gives over, and despairs of these, whom he cannot overtake, being so near the end of the race. When the sun rises first, the beams over-gild the tops of green mountains that look toward the East, and the world cannot hinder the sun to rise: some are so near heaven, that the everlasting Sun has begun to make an everlasting day of glory on them; the rays that come from his face that sits on the throne, so over-gilds the soul, that there is no possibility of clouding peace, or of hindering daylight in the souls of such. Some have neither peace nor pardon; as those in whose soul hell has taken fire. Christ never needed pardon, he was able to pay all he was owing; he needed never the grace of forgiveness, nor grace to be spared; God spared him not. God could exact no less blood of him, than he shed; but he received an acquittance of justification, never a pardon of grace (1 Timothy 3:16): Justified in the Spirit.

The third point is, how a troubled soul can stand with a personal union. Can God, can the soul of God be troubled? I shall show, first, how this must be: secondly, how this can be. It must be, first, because the loss of heaven is the greatest loss. To ransom a King requires more millions, than pence to ransom slaves. When we were cast and forfeited, more than a hundred and forty-four thousand kings (in the Lord's decree they were kings) were cast out of heaven: where was there gold on earth to buy heaven, and so many kings? And yet justice must have payment; a God-troubled Savior, and a soul-troubled God was little enough. Oh, says love to infinite justice, What will you give for me? Will you buy me? My dear children, the heirs of eternal grace? A price below the worth of so many kings, justice cannot hear of; equal it must be, or more.

Secondly, law cannot sleep satisfied with a man's soul-trouble; for as sin troubles an infinite God's soul, so far as our darts can fly up against the sun, so must the soul-trouble of him who is God, expiate sin.

Thirdly, heaven is not only a transcendent jewel, dear in itself, but our Father would present rebels with a sonship and a kingdom, which is dear in our legal esteem. What stands my crown to God? Why it could not possibly be dearer; the soul of God was weighed for it: that not only freedom, but the dearest of prices might commend and cry up, above all heavens, Christ's love.

Fourthly, if my soul, or your souls, O redeemed of the Lord, could be valued every one of them worth ten thousand millions of souls, and as many heavens, they could not outweigh the soul of God; the soul that lodges in a glorious union with God: and the loss of heaven to the troubled soul of this noble, and high and lofty one, though but for a time, was more, and infinitely greater than my loss of heaven, and the loss of all the elect for eternity.

Fifthly, I love not to dispute here, but God, if we speak of his absolute power, without respect to his free decree, could have pardoned sin without a ransom, and gifted all mankind and fallen angels with heaven, without any satisfaction of either the sinner, or his Surety; for he neither punishes sin, nor offers heaven to men or angels by necessity of nature, as the fire casts out heat, and the sun light; but freely: only supposing that frame of providence, and decrees of punishing, and redeeming sinners, that now is, the Lord could not but be steady in his decrees; yet this is but necessity conditional, and at the second hand. But here was the business: God, in the depth of his eternal wisdom, did so frame and draw the design and plot of saving lost man, as salvation was to run in no other channel, but such a one, the bank of which was the freest grace and tenderest love that can enter in the heart of men or angels; for he drew the lines of our heaven through grace, all the way.

Secondly, grace hardly can work but by choice and voluntary arbitration: choice and election is suitable to grace. Hence grace casts lots on man, not fallen angels; and the eternal lot of transcendent mercy must fall on the bosom of Jacob, and some others, not on Esau and others. And our Lord contrived this splendid way, to pour out his grace on us.

Thirdly, and he would not have love to lodge for eternity within his own bowels, but must find out a way how to put boundless mercy to the exchange or bank, that he might traffic with love and mercy, for no gain to himself; and therefore freely our Lord came under bail, and lovely necessity, to strain himself to issue out love, in giving his one Son (he had not another) to die for man: he framed a supernatural providence of richest grace and love, to buy the refuse of creatures, foul sinners, with an unparalleled sampler of tender love, to give the Blood-Royal of heaven, the eternal Branch of the Princely and Kingly Godhead a ransom to Justice. You sin (says the Love of loves) and I suffer: You did the wrong, I make the amends: You sin and sing in your carnal joys, I sigh, I weep for your joy. The fairest face that ever was, was foul with weeping for your sinful rejoicing. It was fitting that free-love, in the bowels of Christ, should contrive the way to heaven through free-love: we should never in heaven, cast down our Crowns at the feet of him that sits on the throne, with such sense and admiration, if we had come to the Crown by law-doing, and not by Gospel-confiding on a rich Ransom-payer. O that eternal banquet of the honeycomb of the Love-debt of the Lamb that redeemed us, for nothing, all the shoulders in heaven are for eternity on an act of lifting-up, and heightening Christ's free-love, who has redeemed them, with so free a redemption; but they are not all able, though Angels help them, to lift it up high enough: its so weighty a Crown that is upon the head of the Prince-Redeemer, that, in a manner, it wearies them, and they cannot over-extol it.

Now, this must be a mystery; for though the essence of God, and more of God than can be in a creature, were in Christ, and in the most noble manner of union, which is personal; yet, as our soul united to a vegetative body, which does grow, sleep, eat, drink, does not grow, sleep, or eat; and, as fire is mixed or united with a hot iron, in which is density and weight, and yet there is neither density nor weight in the fire; so here, though the Godhead, in its fullness, was united, in a most strict union, with a troubled and perplexed soul, and the suffering nature of man, yet is the Godhead still free of suffering, or any penal infirmities of the soul. The vigour and colour of a fair rose may suffer by the extreme heat of the sun, when yet the sweet smell does not suffer, but is rather enlarged by exhalation. Yet is there great halting in these comparisons; because, though the soul cannot be sick when the body is distempered, for there is nothing of the elementary nature, nor any tempering of physical humors in it, because of a more sublime and pure constitution; yet there is such alliance and entire society between the soul and the body, that the soul, through concomitancy and sympathy, does suffer; as the indweller is put to the worse, if the house be rainy and dropping. The soul finds smoke and leakings of pain, in that it is pinned in a lodging of sick clay, and so put to wish a hole in the wall, or to escape out at door or window; as often our spirits are over-swayed so with distaste of life, because of the four accidents that do convey it, that they think the gain of life not so sweet, as it can quit the cost. But the blessed Godhead, united to the Manhood, cannot so much as for company's cause be sick, pained, or suffer; nor can the Godhead be weary of a union with a troubled soul. We conceive, in the grave and death, that glorious fellowship was never dissolved.

Secondly, many things may suffer by invasion of contraries; as, shoot an arrow against a wall of brass, some impression may remain in the wall, to witness the violence that has been there; and we know that, They shall fight against you, but they shall not prevail. But the blessed Godhead in Christ is incapable of an arrow, or of repercussion; there is no action against God; he is here not so much as a coast, a bank or bulwark, capable of receiving one spitting or drop of a sea-wave; only the Man Christ, the Rose of heaven, had in his bosom, at his root, a fountain, Oh how deep and refreshing, that kept the flower green, under death and the grave! When it was plucked up, it was fair, vigorous, green before the sun; and thus plucked up, and above earth, blossomed fair!

Thirdly, not only the influence and effects of the glorious Godhead did water the flower, and keep strength in Christ, (so, I think, God can keep a damned man in the doubled torments of everlasting wrath, with strength of grace, courage, faith, the love of Christ for ever, as he could not be overcome by hell and devils;) but there was the personal fullness of the Godhead, that immediately sustained the Man Christ; it was not a delegated comfort, nor sent help, nor a message of created love, nor a borrowed flowing of a sea of sweetness of consolation; but God in proper person, infinite subsistence, the personality of the Son of God bottomed all his sufferings; the Manhood was imped and stocked in the subsistence of the tree of life. It is true, God is a present help to his Saints in trouble; but his helping is in his operation and working; but he is not personally united to the soul. It is abominable that some [reconstructed: Familists] teach, that as Christ was once made flesh, so he is now first made flesh in us, before we be carried to perfection. Because, not any Saint on earth can be so united personally to God, as the Son of Man; for he being made of a woman, of the seed of David, the Son of Man, he, and not any but he, is the eternal Son of God, God blessed for ever. The Child born to us, is the mighty God, the Father of ages, the Prince of peace (Isaiah 9:6; Romans 9:5; Galatians 4:4). There is a wide difference between him the second Adam, and all men, even the first Adam in his perfection (1 Corinthians 15:47). If Christ suffered without dissolving of the union, God keeping the tent of clay, and taking it to heaven with him, in a personal union, then God can in the lowest desertion dwell in his Saints. We complain in our soul-trouble, of Christ's departure from us, but he is not gone; our sense is not our Bible, nor a good rule; there is an error in this compass.

The third particular was the cause: What cause was there? Papists say there was no reason of Christ's soul-suffering, except for sympathy with the body. We believe, that Christ becoming surety for us, not his body only, but his soul especially came under that necessity, that his soul was in our souls' stead; and so what was due to our souls forever, our surety of justice had to suffer the same. (Isaiah 53:10) He made his soul an offering for sin. Sure for our sin. Nor must we restrict the soul to the body and temporary life, seeing he expresses it in his own language, And now is my soul troubled.

Secondly, There was no reason of Christ's bodily sufferings, when, in the garden, he did sweat blood for us; nor had any man at that time laid hands on him; and all that agony he was in, came from his soul only.

Thirdly, Nor can it be more inconsistent with his blessed person, being God and Man, and the Son of God, that he suffered in his soul the wrath of God for our sins, than that his soul was troubled, and exceeding sorrowful, heavy to the death in an agony; and that he complained, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And the cause of this soul-trouble was for sinners; this was surety-suffering. The choicest and most stately piece that ever God created, and dearest to God, being the second to God-man, was the princely soul of Christ, it was a king's soul; yet death, by reason of sin, passes upon it; and not a common death, but that which is the marrow of death; the first-born and the strongest of deaths, the wrath of God, the innocent pain of hell, void of despair and hatred of God. If I had any hell on me, I should choose an innocent hell, like Christ's: Better suffer ill a thousand times, than sin: Suffering is rather to be chosen, than sin. It was pain, and nothing but pain: Damned men, and reprobate devils, are not capable of a godly and innocent hell, they cannot choose to suffer hell, and not spit on fair and spotless justice; because Christ's blood was to wash away sin, he could not both fully pay, and contract debt also. But if it be so, that death finding so precious a surety as Christ's princely and sinless soul, did make him obey the law of the land, before he escaped out of that land, what wonder that we die, who are born in the land of death? No creature but it travels in pain, with death in its bosom, or an inclination to Mother-Nothing, from where it came. God only goes between the mightiest angel in heaven, and Nothing: All things under the moon must be sick of vanity and death, when the heir of all things, coming in among dying creatures, out of dispensation, by law must die. If the Lord's soul, and the soul of such a Lord die and suffer wrath, then let the fair face of the world, the heavens, look like the face of an old man, full of trembling, white hairs, and wrinkles, (Psalm 102:26). Then let man make for his long home; let time itself wax old and gray-haired. Why should I desire to stay here, when Christ could not but pass away?

And if this spotless soul that never sinned was troubled, what wonder then many troubles be to the sinner? Our Saviour, who promises soul-rest to others, cannot have soul-rest himself: his soul is now on a wheel sore tossed, and all the creatures are upon a wheel, and in motion; there is not a creature since Adam sinned, sleeps sound. Weariness and motion is laid on moon and sun, and all creatures on this side of the moon. Seas ebb and flow, and that's trouble; winds blow, rivers move heavens and stars these five thousand years, except one time, have not had six minutes rest; living creatures walk apace toward death; kingdoms, cities, are on the wheel of changes, up, and down; mankind run, and the disease of body-trouble, and soul-trouble on them, they are motion-sick, going on their feet, and kings cannot have beds to rest in. The six days' creation has been traveling and shouting for pain, and the child is not born yet, (Romans 8:22). This poor woman has been groaning under the bondage of vanity, and shall not be brought to bed, while Jesus come the second time to be midwife to the birth. The great all of heaven and earth, since God laid the first stone of this wide hall, has been groaning, and weeping, for the liberty of the sons of God, (Romans 8:21). The figure of the passing-away world, (1 Corinthians 7:31), is like an old man's face, full of wrinkles, and foul with weeping: we are waiting, when Jesus shall be revealed from heaven, and shall come and wipe the old man's face. Every creature here is on its feet, none of them can sit or lie. Christ's soul now is above trouble, and rests sweetly in the bosom of God. Troubled souls, rejoice in hope. Soft and childish saints take it not well that they are not every day feasted with Christ's love, that they lie not all the night between the Redeemer's breasts, and are not dandled on his knee; but when the daintiest piece of the Man Jesus, his precious soul was thus sick of soul-trouble, and the noble and celebrious head-heir of all, the first of his kingly house, was put to deep groans that pierced skies and heaven, and rent the rocks, why but sinners should be submissive, when Christ is pleased to set children down to walk on foot, and hide himself from them? But they forget the difference between the inns of clay, and the home of glory. Our fields here are sown with tears, grief grows in every furrow of this low-land. You shall lay soul and head down in the bosom, and between the breasts of Jesus Christ; that bed must be soft and delicious, its perfumed with uncreated glory. The thoughts of all your now soul-troubles, shall be as shadows that passed away ten thousand years ago, when Christ shall circle his glorious arm about your head, and you rest in an infinite compass of surpassing glory; or when glory, or ripened grace, shall be within you, and without you, above, and below, when feet of clay shall walk upon pure surpassing glory: The street of the city was pure gold: There is no gold there, but glory only; gold is but a shadow to all that is there.

It were possibly no less edifying to speak a little of the fourth, What love and tender mercy it was in Christ, to be so troubled in soul for us.

1. First position: Self is precious, when free of sin, and withal self-happy. Christ was both free of sin, and self-happy; what then could have made him stir his foot out of heaven, so excellent a land, and come under the pain of a troubled soul, except free, strong and vehement love, that was a bottomless river impatient of banks? Infinite goodness makes love to swell without itself (John 15:13). Goodness is much moved with righteousness and innocency; but we had a bad cause, because sinners: but goodness (for every man that has a good cause, is not a good man) is moved with goodness: we were neither righteous, nor good; yet Christ, though neither righteousness was in us, nor goodness, would dare to die for us (Romans 5:7-8). Goodness and grace (which is goodness for no deserving) is bold, daring, and venturous. Love, which could not flow within its own channel, but that Christ's love might be out of measure love, and out of measure loving, would outrun wickedness in man.

2. Second position: Had Christ seen, when he was to engage his soul in the pains of the second death, that the expense in giving out should be great, and the income small, and no more than he had before, we might value his love more: but Christ had leisure from eternity, and wisdom enough to cast up his accounts, and knew what he was to give out, and what to receive in; so he might have repented and given up the bargain. He knew that his blood, and his one noble soul, that dwelt in a personal union with God, was a greater sum, incomparably, than all his redeemed ones. He should have in little, he should but gain lost sinners; he should empty out (in a manner) a fair Godhead, and kill the Lord of glory, and get in a black bride. But there's no lack in love; the love of Christ was not private, nor mercenary. Christ the buyer, commended the wares before he bargained (Song of Solomon 4:7): "You are all fair, my love, there's not a spot in you." Christ judged he had gotten a noble prize, and made a heaven's market, when he got his wife that he served for, in his arms (Isaiah 53:11). He saw the travail of his soul, and was satisfied: he was filled with delight, as a full banqueter. If that ransom he gave had been little, he would have given more.

3. Third position: It is much that nothing without Christ moved him to this engagement. There was a sad and bloody war between divine justice and sinners; love, love pressed Christ to the war, to come and serve the great King, and the state of lost mankind, and to do it freely. This makes it two favors. It is a conquering notion to think, that the sinner's heaven bred first in Christ's heart from eternity; and that love, freest love was the blossom, and the seed, and the only contriver of our eternal glory: that free grace drove on from the beginning of the age of God — from everlasting, the saving plot and sweet design of redemption of souls. This innocent and soul-rejoicing policy of Christ's taking on him the seed of Abraham, not of angels, and to come down in the shape of a servant, to the land of his enemies, without a pass, in regard of his sufferings, speaks and cries the deep wisdom of infinite love. Was not this the wit of free grace to find out such a mysterious and profound dispensation, as that God and man personally should both do and suffer, so as justice should want nothing, mercy be satisfied, peace should kiss righteousness, and war go on, in justice, against a sinless Redeemer? Angels bowing and stooping down to behold the bottom of this depth (1 Peter 1:12), cannot read the perfect sense of the infinite turnings and foldings of this mysterious love. O love of heaven, and fairest of beloveds, the flower of angels, why did you come so low down, as to be-spot and underrate the spotless love of all loves, with coming [reconstructed: nigh] to black sinners? Who could have believed that lumps of hell and sin could be capable of the warmings and sparkles of so high and princely a love? Or that there could be place in the breast of the High and Lofty One, for forlorn and guilty clay. But we may know in whose breast this bred; sure none but only the eternal love and delight of the Father could have outed so much love: had another done it, the wonder had been more. But of this more elsewhere.

We may hence chide our soft nature; the Lord Jesus his soul was troubled in our business, we start at a troubled body, at a scratch in a penny-broad of our hide. First, there is in nature a silent impatience, if we be not carried in a chariot of love, in Christ's bosom, to heaven; and if we walk not upon scarlet, and purple under our feet, we flinch and murmur.

Secondly, we would either have a silken, a soft, a perfumed cross, sugared and honeyed with the consolations of Christ, or we faint; and providence must either brew a cup of gall and wormwood mastered in the mixing with joy and songs, else we cannot be disciples. But Christ's Cross did not smile on him, his Cross was a cross, and his ship sailed in blood, and his blessed soul was sea-sick, and heavy even to death.

Thirdly, we love to sail in fresh waters, within a step to the shore, we consider not that our Lord, though he afflicts not, and crushes not, [illegible] from his heart (Lamentations 3:33), yet he afflicts not in sport: punishing of sin is in God a serious, grave, and real work: no reason the cross should be a play; neither Stoics nor Christians can laugh it over; the Cross cast a sad gloom upon Christ.

Fourthly, we forget that bloody and sad mercies are good for us: the peace that the Lord brings out of the womb of war, is better than the rotten peace that we had in the superstitious days of Prelates. What a sweet life, what a heaven, what a salvation is it, we have in Christ? And we know the death, the grave, the soul-trouble of the Lord Jesus, travailed in pain to bring forth these to us. Heaven is the more heaven, that to Christ it was a purchase of blood. The Cross to all the saints must have a bloody bit, and lion's teeth, it was like itself to Christ, galling and sour, it must be so to us. We cannot have a paper cross, except we would take on us to make a golden providence, and put the creation in a new frame, and take the world, and make it a great leaden vessel, melt it in the fire, and cast a new mold of it.

Fifthly, the more of God in the Cross, the sweeter: as that free grace does bud out of the black rod of God, to the soul that sees not, and yet believes, and loves; the Cross of Christ drops honey, and sweetest consolations. We sigh under strokes, and we believe. The first Adam killed us, and buried us in two deaths, and sealed our grave in one piece of an hour; he concluded all under wrath. Now how much of Christ is in this? Omnipotence, infinite wisdom, (when Angels gave us over, and stood aloof at our misery, as changed lovers) free grace, boundless love, deepest and richest mercy in Jesus Christ opened our graves, and raised the dead. Christ died and rose again, and brought again from the dead all his buried brethren.

Sixthly, we can wrestle with the Almighty as if we could discipline and govern ourselves, better than God can do; murmuring flies up against a dispensation of an infinite wisdom, because it is God's dispensation, not our own, as if God had done the fault, but the murmuring man only can make amends, and right the slips of infinite wisdom. Why is it thus with me, Lord? (says the wrestler.) Why do you misjudge Christ? He who finds fault with what the Creator does, let him be man or Angel, undo it, and do better himself, and carry it with him.

Seventhly, we judge God with sense, with the humor of reason, not with reason; the oar that God rolls his vessel with, is broken (say we) because the end of the oar is in the water: Providence halts (say we) but what if sense and humor say, a straight line is a circle? The world judged God in person a Samaritan, one that had a devil, if we misjudge his person, we may misjudge his providence and ways. Suspend your sense of God's ways, while you see his ends that are under ground, and instead of judging, wonder and adore, or then believe implicitly that the way of God is equal, or do both, and submit, and be silent. Heart-dialogues, and heart-speeches against God, that arise as smoke in the chimney, are challenges and summons against our highest landlord, for his own house and land.

Secondly, if Christ gave a soul for us, he had no more precious thing: the Father had no nobler and dearer gift, than his only begotten Son; the Son had no thing dearer than himself, the man Christ had nothing of value comparable to his soul, and that must run a hazard for man. The Father, the Son, the man Christ, gave the choicest thing that was theirs, for us. In this giving and taking world, we are hence obliged to give the best and choicest thing we have for Christ. Should we make a table of Christ's acts of love, and free grace to us, and of our sins and acts of unthankfulness to him, this would be more evident; as there was (1.) before time in the breast of Christ an eternal coal of burning love to the sinner; this fire of heaven is everlasting, and the flames as hot today as ever; our coal of love to him in time, has scarce any fire or warmness, all fire is hot: Oh, we cannot warm Christ with our love, but his love to us is hotter than death, or as the flames of God: We were enemies in our minds to him, by wicked works (Colossians 1:21). Heirs of wrath by nature. Christ began with love to us, we begin with hatred to him.

2. The Father gave his only begotten Son for us; how many fathers, and Elis will not let fall one tough word to all the sons and daughters they have, for the Lord? God spared not his Son, but gave him to the death for us all. Earthly fathers spare, coddle their sons, servants, friends; magistrates, flattering pastors, their people in their blasphemies for him.

3. Christ gave his soul to trouble, and to the horror of the second death for you; consult with your heart, if you have given up one lust for him. Christ laid aside his heaven for you; his whole heaven, his whole glory for you, and his Father's house; are you willing to part with an acre of earth, or house, and inheritance for him.

4. In calling us out of the state of sin, to grace and glory; oh I must make this sad reckoning with Jesus Christ. Oh, Christ turns his smiling face to me, in calling, inviting, imploring, praying, that I would be reconciled to God, I turn my back to him; he opens his breast and heart to us, and says, Friends, Doves, come in and dwell in the holes of this rock; and we lift our heel against him. O what guilt is here to scratch Christ's breast? When he wills you to come, and lay head and heart on his breast; this unkindness to Christ's troubled soul, is more than sin: sin is but a transgression of the Law. I grant it is an infinite But. But it's a transgression of both Law and Love, to spurn against the warm bowels of Love, to spit on grace, on tenderness of infinite Love. The white and ruddy, the fairest of heaven, offers to kiss Black Moors on earth, they will not come near to him. It's a heart of Flint and [reconstructed: Adamant], that spits at Evangelic love: Law-love is Love; Evangelic love is more than love, it's the Gold, the flower of Christ's wheat, and of his finest Love. Song of Solomon 5:6 — I rose up to open to my beloved, but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone, my soul passed away when he spoke. There be two words here considerable, to prove how wounding are sins against the love of Christ. 1. My beloved has withdrawn himself; the Text is, ⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩ and my beloved had turned about. Arias Montanus: [reconstructed: circumiverat], Pagninus in the margin, verterat se, the old Version, declinaverat. Christ being unwilling to remove, and wholly go away, he only turned aside, as (Jeremiah 31:22): How long will you go about, ⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩ O you backsliding daughter. This intimates so much, as Christ takes not a direct journey to go away, and leave his own children, only he goes a little aside from the door of the soul, to testify he would gladly, with his soul, come in. Now what ingratitude is it to shut him violently away? 2. My soul was gone, the old Version is, My soul melted, at his speaking ⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩ my soul passed over, or went away; to remember his ravishing words, it broke my life and made me die: (so is the word elsewhere used) that I remembered a world of love in him, when he knocked, saying Open to me my sister, my love, my dove; to sin against so great a bond as Grace, must be the sin of sins, and among highest sins, as is clear, in these that sin against the Holy Ghost; then it must be impossible to give Grace anything, we but pay our debts to grace; we cannot give the debt of Grace to Grace in the whole sum.

It cannot then be a sin intrinsically and of itself to be troubled in soul, if Christ was under soul-trouble, for sins imputed to him.

Hence let me stay a little on these two; First, what a troubled conscience is: Secondly, what course the troubled in soul are to take in imitation of Christ. A soul troubled for sin must either be a soul feared and perplexed, for the penal displeasure, wrath, and indignation of God, or the eternal punishment of sin, as these come under the apprehension of the evil of punishment; or, for sin as it fails against the love of God, or for both. In any of these three respects, it is no sin to be soul-troubled for sin, upon these conditions: 1. That the soul be free of faithless doubting of God's love. Now Christ was free of this, he could not but have a fixed, entire, and never broken confidence of his Father's eternal love. If we have any sin in our soul-trouble for sin, it's from unbelief, not from soul-trouble; if there be mud and clay in the streams, it is from the banks, not from the fountain. Or, 2. if the soul fears the ill of punishment, as the greatest ill, and as a greater than the ill of sin, there is more passion, than sound light in the fear, this could not be in Christ; the aversion of the Lord's heart, from the party in whom there is sin, either by real inherence, or by free imputation, and the in-drawing of rays, and irradiations, and out-flowings of divine love is a high-evil in a soul that has anything of the nature of a son in him; now there was as much of a son in Christ, as a man's nature could be capable of: and the more of God that was in Christ, as the fullness, the boundless infinite Sea of the Godhead, overflowed Christ over all the banks, then for Christ to be under a cloud, in regard of the out-breathings of eternal love, was in a sort, most violent to Christ, as if he had been torn from himself, and therefore it behooved to be an extreme soul-trouble; Christ being deprived, in a manner, of himself, and of his only soul's substantial delight and Paradise. And this could not be a sin, but an act of gracious soul-sorrow, that sin and hell intervened between the Moon and the Sun; the soul of Christ, and his Lord; the more of Heaven in the soul, and the more of God: the want of God and of Heaven is the greater Hell. Suppose we that the whole light in the body of the Sun were utterly extinct, and that the Sun were turned in a body as dark as the outside of a cauldron, that should be a greater loss, than if a half-penny candle were deprived of light. Christ had more to lose, than a world of millions of Angels; Imagine a creature of as much Angelic capacity, as ten thousand times, ten thousand thousand of Angels, all combined in one, if this glorious Angel were filled, according to his capacity, with the highest, and most pure and refined glory of heaven; and again were immediately stripped naked of all this glory, and then plunged into the depth and heart of [reconstructed: Hell], and of a lake of more than Hell's ordinary temper, of fire and brimstone; or suppose, God should add millions of degrees of more pure and unmixed wrath and curses, this Angel's soul must be more troubled, than we can easily apprehend; yet this is but a comparison below the thing; but the Lord Jesus in whole person, heaven in the highest degree was carried about with him, being thrown down from the top of so high a glory, to a sad and fearful condition, an agony, and [reconstructed: sweating] of blood, (God knows the cause) that shouting and tears of this low condition, drew out that saddest complaint, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? His loss must be incomparably more than all we can say in these shadows.

This shows the cause, why there is not among troubles any so grievous, as the want of the presence of God, to a soul fattened, and feasted with the continual marrow and fatness of the Lord's house. No such complaints read you, so bitter, so pathetic, and coming from deeper sense, than the want of the sense of Christ's love. It's broken bones, and a dried up body to David; it's bitter weeping and crying, like the chattering of a Crane to Hezekiah; it's more than strangling, and brings Job to pray he had been buried in the womb of his mother, or that he had never been born, or his mother had been always great with him; it is swooning, and the soul's departure out of the body, sickness and death to the Spouse (Song of Solomon 5:6, 8); it's Hell and distraction to Heman (Psalm 88:15). It is to Jeremiah the cursing of the Messenger that brought tidings to his Father, that a man-child was born, and a wishing that he never had being, nor life; it's death to part the lover from the beloved, and the stronger love be, the death is the more death.

But in all that we yet have said, Christ's greatest Soul trouble as a Son (for that he was essentially) was in that his holy soul was saddened and made heavy even to death, for sin, as sin, and as contrary to his Father's love. The elect sinned against the Lord, not looking to him, as either Lord, or Father: but Christ paid full dear for sin; eying God as Lord, as Father. We look neither to Lord, to Law, nor to Love, when we sin; Christ looked to all three, when he satisfied for sin. Christ did more than pay our debts; it was a sum above price that he gave for us; it is a great question, indeed out of all question, if all mankind redeemed came near to the worth, to the goodly price given for us.

So according to the sense of any happiness, so must the Soul-trouble for the loss of that happiness be, in due proportion. First, as we love, so is sorrow for the loss of what we love. Jacob would not have mourned so, for the loss of a servant, as of his Son Joseph. Now no man enjoying God, could have a more quick and vigorous sense of the enjoyed Godhead, than Christ — so his apprehension and vision of God must have been strong. Second, because the union with the Godhead, and communion of fullness of Grace from the womb, must add to his natural faculties, a great edge of sense; his soul and the faculties thereof were never blunted with sin; and the larger the vessel be, the fullness must be the greater. What, or who, of the highest Seraphim, or Dominions, or Principalities, among Angels, had so large and capacious a spirit to contain the fullness of God, as Christ had? When Solomon's heart was larger than the sand in the seashore; and he was but a shadow of such a soul, as was to dwell personally with the fullness of the Godhead bodily; O how capacious and wide must the heart of the true Solomon be? It being to contain many Seas, and Rivers of Wisdom, Love, Joy, Goodness, mercy, above millions of Sands, in millions of seashores. What bowels of compassion and love, of [reconstructed: meekness], gentleness, of free grace must be in him? Since all thousands of elected souls sat in these bowels, and were in his heart, to die and live with him, and moreover, since in his heart was the love of God in the highest. Love must make a strong impression in the heart of Christ, and the stronger, purer, and more vigorous that Christ's intellectual faculties are, the deeper his holy thoughts and pure apprehensions were, and more steeled with fullness of Grace; his fruition, sense, joy, and love of God, must be the more elevated above what Angels and Men are capable of. Hence it must follow, that Christ was plunged in an uncouth, and new world of extreme sorrow, even to the death, when this strong love was eclipsed. Imagine that for one Spring and Summer season, that all the light, heat, motion, vigor, influence of life, should retire into the body of the Sun, and remain there, what darkness, deadness, withering, should be upon flowers, herbs, trees, mountains, valleys, beasts, birds, and all things living and moving on the earth? Then what wonder, that Christ's Soul was extremely troubled, his blessed Sun was now down, his Spring and Summer gone; his Father a forsaking God, was a new World to him, and I shall not believe that his complaint came from any error of judgment, or mistakes, or ungrounded jealousies of the love of God: as his Father could not at any time hate him; so neither could he at this time, actu secundo, let out the sweet fruits of his love — the cause of the former is the nature of God, as the ground of the latter is a dispensation above the capacity of the reason of Men or Angels. We may then conclude, that Jesus Christ's Soul-trouble, as it was rational, and extremely penal; so also it was sinless, and innocent, seldom have we Soul-trouble sinless — but it is by accident of the way. For our passions can hardly rise in their extremity, (except when God is their only object) but they go over score, yet Soul-trouble intrinsically is not a sin.

Then to be troubled for sin, though the person be fully persuaded of pardon, is neither sin, nor inconsistent with the state of a justified person, nor is it any act of unbelief, as Antinomians falsely suppose. For (1.) to be in soul-trouble for sin which cannot, to the perfect knowledge of the person troubled, eternally condemn, was in Jesus Christ; in whom there was no spot of sin. And Antinomians say, sin remaining sin essentially, must have a condemnatory power: so as it is impossible to separate the condemnatory power of the Law, from the mandatory and commanding power of the Law. (2.) Because as to abstain from sin as it offends against the love of God showing mercy, rather than the Law of God inflicting wrath, is spiritual obedience; so also to be troubled in soul for sin, committed by a justified person against so many sweet bonds of free love and grace, is a sanctified and gracious sorrow and trouble of soul. (3.) To be troubled for sin, as offensive to our heavenly Father, and against the sweetness of free grace and tender love, includes no act of unbelief, nor that the justified and pardoned sinner thus troubled is not pardoned, or that he fears eternal wrath, (as Antinomians imagine) no more than a son's grief of mind for offending a tender-hearted father can infer, that this grief does conclude this son under a condition of doubting of his state of sonship or filiation, or a fearing he be disinherited. We may fear the Lord and his goodness (Hosea 3:5) as well as we fear his eternal displeasure. (4.) Sanctified soul-trouble is a son-like commotion and agony of spirit, for trampling under feet tender love, spurning and kicking against the lovely warmness of the flowings of the blood of atonement; checks and love-terrors or love-fevers that Christ's princely head was wet with the night-rain, while he was kept out of his own house, and suffered to lodge in the streets; and fear that the Beloved withdraw himself, and go seek his lodging elsewhere, as (Song of Solomon 5:4-5; Psalm 5:9-10) and that the Lord cover himself with a cloud, and return to his place, and the influence of the rays and beams of love be suspended; are sweet expressions of filial bowels, and tenderness of love to Christ.

Libertines imagine, if the hazard and fear of hell be removed, there is no more place for fear, soul-trouble, or confession: therefore they teach, that there is no assurance true and right, unless it be without fear and doubting. (2.) That to call in question whether God be my dear Father, after, or upon the commission of some heinous sins, (as murder, incest, etc.) does prove a man to be under the covenant of works. (3.) That a man must be so far from being troubled for sin, that he must take no notice of his sin, nor of his repentance. Indeed, Doctor Crisp, volume 3, Sermon 1, pages 20, 21, 22, says, there was no cause why Paul (Romans 7) should fear sin, or a body of death; because in that place Paul does (says he) personate a scrupulous spirit, and does not speak out of his own present case, as it was at this time, when he speaks it; but speaks in the person of another, yet a believer: and my reason is, Paul in respect of his own person, what became of his sin, was already resolved, Chapter 8:1. There is now no condemnation, etc. he knew his sins were pardoned, and that they could not hurt him.

Answer. Observe that Arminius, as also of old, Pelagius, expounded Romans 7 of a half-renewed man, in whom sense, which inclines to venial sins, fights with reason; that so the full and perfectly renewed man might seem to be able to keep the law, and be free of all mortal sin. And Crisp does here manifestly free the justified man of all sin: why? because he is pardoned. So then there is no battle between the flesh and the Spirit in the justified man, by the Antinomian way to heaven, which on the flesh's part, that lusts against the Spirit, deserves the name of sin, or a breach of the law: Only its Asinus meus qui peccat, non ego; as the old Libertines in Calvin's time said, The flesh does the sin, not the man; for the man is under no law, and so cannot sin. But that Paul, Romans 7, speaks in the person of a scrupulous and troubled conscience, not as it is the common case of all the regenerate, in whom sin dwells, is a foul and fleshly untruth. (1.) To be carnal in part, as verse 14, to do which we allow not, to do what we would not, and what we hate, to do, is the common case, not peculiar to a troubled conscience only, but to all the saints (Galatians 5:17). (2.) Paul speaks not of believing, as he must do, if he speaks only of a scrupulous and doubting conscience; but he speaks of [illegible Greek text], of working, verse 15, doing, verses 17-18, willing, verses 15, 19, not of believing only, or doubting: Now it is not like the Apostle does personate a scrupulous soul, of whom he insinuates no such thing. (3.) A scrupulous and troubled conscience will never yield, so long as he is in that condition, that he does any good, or that he belongs to God; as is clear (Psalm 88; Psalm 38; Psalm 77:1-4), etc.; but Paul in this case yields, he does good, hates evil, delights in the law of the Lord in the inner man; has a desire to do good, has a law in his mind that resists the motions of the flesh. (4.) Indeed, the Apostle then had no cause to fear the body of sin, or to judge himself wretched; this was his unbelief, and there was no ground of his fear; because he was pardoned, he knew that he was freed from condemnation. It was then Paul's sin, and is the sinful scrupulosity of unbelievers to say, being once justified, Sin dwells in me, and there is a law in my members, rebelling against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin; and I am carnal, and sold under sin; and I do evil, even that which I hate; for all these are lies, and speeches of unbelief: The justified man does not sin, his heart is clean, he does nothing against a law. But I well remember that our divines, and particularly, Chemnitius, Calvin, Beza, prove against Papists, that concupiscence is sin after baptism, even in the regenerate; and it is called eleven or twelve times with the name of sin (Romans chapters 6, 7, and 8); and they teach that of Augustine as a truth, Inest non ut non sit, sed ut non imputetur. So we may use all these arguments against Libertines, to prove we are, even being justified, such as can sin, and do transgress the law; and therefore ought to confess these sins, be troubled in conscience for them, complain and sigh in our fetters, though we know that we are justified and freed from the guilt of sin, and the obligation to eternal wrath. But sin is one thing, and the obligation to eternal wrath is another thing: Antinomians confound them, and so mistake grossly the nature of sin, and of the law, and of justification. Some imprudently go so far on, that they teach, That believers are to be troubled in heart for nothing that befalls them, either in sin, or in affliction. If their meaning were, that they should not doubtingly, and from the principle of unbelief call in question their once sealed justification, we should not oppose such a tenet; but their reasons do conclude, That we should no more be shaken in mind with sin, than with afflictions, and the punishments of sin; and that notwithstanding of the highest provocation we are guilty of, we are always to rejoice, to feast on the consolations of Christ. 1. Because trouble for sin arises from ignorance, or unbelief, that believers understand not the work of God for them, in the three Persons; the Father's everlasting decree about them; the Son's union with them, and headship to them, his merits, and intercession; the Holy Spirit's inhabitation in them, and his office toward them, to work all their works for them, till he makes them meet for glory. 2. Because such trouble is troublesome to God's heart, as a friend's trouble is to his friends; but especially, because the Spirit of bondage never returns again to the justified (Romans 8:15). But I crave leave to clear our doctrine, touching soul-trouble for sin, in the justified person.

Assertion 1. No doubting, no perplexity of unbelief, de jure, ought to perplex the soul once justified, and pardoned. 1. Because the patent and writs of an unchangeable purpose to save the elect, and the subscribed and resolved upon act of atonement and free redemption, in Christ, stands uncancelled and firm, being once received by faith; the justified soul ought not so to be troubled for sin, as to misjudge the Lord's past work of saving grace. 1. Because the believer, once justified, is to believe remission of sins, and a paid ransom: If now he should believe the writs once signed, were cancelled again, he were obliged to believe things contradictory. 2. To believe that the Lord is changed, and off and on, in his free love and eternal purposes, is a great slandering of the Almighty. 3. The Church (Psalm 77) acknowledges such misjudging of God, to be the soul's infirmity (Psalm 77:10): I said, This is my infirmity.

Assertion 2. Yet, de facto, David a man according to God's heart (1 Samuel 12:12-13), fell in an old fever, a fit of the disease of the spirit of bondage (Psalm 32:3). When I kept silence, my bones waxed old, through my roaring all the day long. Verse 4: For day and night your hand was heavy upon me, my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. So the Church in Asaph's words (Psalm 77:2): My sore ran in the night, and ceased not — either his hand was bedewed with tears in the night, as the Hebrew bears; or a boil of unbelief broke upon me in the night, and slacked not. Verse 7: Will the Lord cast off forever? Will he be merciful no more? Then faith and doubting both may as well be in the soul, with the life of God, as health and sickness in one body, at sundry times; and it is no argument at all of no spiritual assurance, and of a soul under the law or covenant of works, to doubt: as sickness argues life, no dead corpse is capable of sickness, or blindness; these are infirmities that neighbor with life: so doubting with sorrow, because the poor soul cannot, in that exigence, believe, is of kin to the life of God: the life of Jesus has infirmities, kindly to it, as some diseases are hereditary to such a family. 2. The habit or state of unbelief is one thing, and doubtings and love-jealousies is another thing. Our love to Christ is sickly, crazy, and full of jealousies and suspicions. Temptations make false reports of Christ, and we easily believe them. Jealousies argue love, and the strongest of loves, even marriage-love. 3. By this, all acts of unbelief in souls once justified, and sanctified, should be impossible. Why, then the Lord's disciples had no faith, when Christ said to them, Why doubt you, O you of little faith? It may perhaps be answered, that the disciples (Matthew 8) doubted not of their son-ship, but of the Lord's particular care in bringing them to shore, in a great sea-storm. To which I answer, it is most true, they then feared bodily, not, directly, soul-ship-wreck; but if it was sinful doubting, of Christ's care of them, Master, do you not care for us? — the point is concluded, that doubting of Christ's care and love may well infer, a soul is not utterly void of faith, that is in a doubting condition. 4. The morning dawning of light, is light; the first springing of the child in the belly, is a motion of life; the least warmings of Christ's breathings, is the heat of life: when the pulse of Christ new framed in the soul moves most weakly, the new birth is not dead; the very swonings of the love of Christ cannot be incident to a buried man. 5. When Christ rebukes little faith and doubting, he supposes faith: he who is but sinking, and cries to Christ, is not drowned as yet. 6. The disciples' prayer, Lord increase our faith; Christ's praying that the faith of the saints, when they are winnowed, may not fail; the exhortation to be strong in the Lord, and in the power of his might, prove, the saints' faith may be at a stand, and may stagger and slide. 7. The various condition of the saints; now it is full moon, again no moonlight at all, but a dark eclipse; evidences this truth. The believer has flowings of strong acts of faith, joy, love; supernatural passions of grace arising to a high spring-tide, above the banks and ordinary coasts; and again, a low-ground ebb. The condition in ebbings and flowings, in full manifestations and divine raptures of another world, when the wind blows right from heaven, and the breath of Jesus Christ's mouth, and of sad absence, runs through the Song of Solomon, the book of Psalms, the book of Job, as threads through a web of silk, and veins that are the strings and spouts carrying blood through all the body, less or more.

Assertion 3. The justified soul once pardoned, receives never the spirit of bondage (Romans 8:15) to fear again, eternal wrath; that is, this spirit in the intensity of the habit, such as was at the first conversion, when there was not a grain of faith; does never return, nor is it consistent with the spirit of adoption. Yet perhaps it may be a question, if a convert brought in with much sweetness, and quietness of spirit, shall fall in some heinous sin, like the adultery and murder of David, whether he would not have greater vexation of spirit than at his first conversion, but more supernatural.

But yet this must stand as a condemned error, which Libertines do hold, that frequency, or length of holy duties, or trouble of conscience for neglect thereof, are all signs of one under a covenant of works. And that which another of that way says in a dangerous medicine for wounded souls: Where there is no law, (as there is none in, or over the justified soul) there is no transgression, and where there is no transgression, there is no trouble for sin, all trouble arising from the obligation of the law, which demands a satisfaction of the soul, for the breach of it, and such satisfaction as the soul knows it cannot give, and thereby remains unquiet; like a debtor that has nothing to pay, and the law too, being naturally in the soul, as the apostle says, the conscience accusing, or else excusing. It is no marvel, that such souls should be troubled for sin, and unpacified, the law having such a party, and engagement already within them; which holding an agreement with the law, in tables and letters of stone, must needs work strongly upon the spirits of such as are but faintly and weakly enlightened, and are not furnished with gospel enough to answer the indictments, the convictions, the terrors, the curses which the law brings. And a third: And indeed, God's people (says he) need more joys after sins, than after afflictions, because they are more cast down by them; and therefore God uses sins, as means by which he leads in his joys into them in this world, and also in the world to come, their sins yield them great joys. Indeed, in some respects, they shall joy most at the last day, who have sinned least; but in other respects, they have most joy, who have sinned most; (for sin they little or much, they all shall enter into joy at last,) etc.

Now all this is but a turning of faith into wantonness, whereas faith of all graces moves with lowest sails; for faith is not a lofty and crying, but a soft moving and humble grace. For then David's being moved, and his heart smiting him at the renting of King Saul's garment, should be under a covenant of works, and so not a man according to God's own heart, for a smitten heart is a troubled soul. David, Abraham (Romans 4), and all the fathers under the law, were justified by the imputed righteousness of Christ, apprehended by faith, as we are (Romans 4:23). Now it was not written for Abraham's sake only, that it was imputed to him (Romans 4:24), but for us also, etc. David ought not to have been troubled in soul for sin, for his sins were then pardoned; nor could the Spirit of the Lord so highly commend Josiah's heart-melting trouble at the reading and hearing of the law; nor Christ own the tears and soul-trouble of the woman, as coming from no other spring but much love to Christ, because many sins were pardoned — if this soul-trouble for sin had argued these to be under the law, and not in Christ. Nor can it be said that the saints of old were more under the law than now under the gospel, in the sense we have now in hand: that is, that we are to be less troubled for sin than they, because our justification is more perfect, and the blood of Christ had less power to purge the conscience and to satisfy the demands of the law before it was shed, than now when it is shed. Or that more of the law was naturally in the hearts of David, Josiah, and the saints of old, and so, more naturally, unbelief must be in them than is in us, by nature, under gospel manifestations of Christ. Indeed, the law was a severer teacher to awe the saints, in regard of the outward dispensation of ceremonies and legal strictness, keeping men as criminals in close prison until Christ should come. But imputation of Christ's righteousness, and blessedness in the pardon of sin, and so freedom from soul-trouble for eternal wrath — and the law's demanding the conscience to pay what debts none were able to pay but the surety only — was one and the same to them and to us, as (Psalm 32:1-2) compared with (Romans 4:1-6), and (Psalm 14) with (Romans 3:9-14, 19-20), and (Genesis 17:9; Genesis 22:18; Deuteronomy 27:26) with (Galatians 3:10-14; Hebrews 6:13-20). Who dares say that the believing Jews died under the curse of the law (Deuteronomy 27:26)? For so they must perish eternally. (Galatians 3:10) For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse. Then there must be none redeemed under the Old Testament, nor any justified, contrary to express Scriptures: (Psalm 32:1-2; Romans 4:1-6; Galatians 3:14; Acts 15:11; Acts 11:16-17; Romans 10:1-3). Now (Acts 15:11): We believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus, we shall be saved as well as they. And as they were blessed, in that their transgression was forgiven, and their sin covered, and that the Lord imputed no iniquity to them (Psalm 32:1-2), our blessedness is the same (Romans 4:6-8). And Christ, as he was made a curse for them, so for us; that (Galatians 3:14) the blessing of Abraham might come on us the Gentiles, through Jesus Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. And God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, for the Jews who as heirs were under tutors, as we are under the moral law by nature, that we might be redeemed by him — that we, who are under the law, might receive the adoption of sons (Galatians 4:1-4). And God gave the like gift to the Gentiles that he gave to the Jews, even repentance to life (Acts 11:16-17). Then the law could crave them no harder than us, and they were no more justified by works than we are. Indeed, following righteousness, they attained it not, because they sought it not by faith, but as it were by the works of the law; for they stumbled at the stumbling stone that was laid in Zion (Romans 9:31-33). And they, being ignorant of God's righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves to the righteousness of God (Romans 10:1-3), and so came short of justification by grace, as do we. If then to the justified Jews there was no law, no transgression, and so no trouble for sin — all trouble of conscience arising from the obligation of the law — as it must be, because they were freed from the curse of the law and justified in Jesus Christ by his grace, as we are; then were they under no smiting of heart, nor wounding of conscience, more than we are, which is manifestly false in David, and in Josiah, and many of the saints under the Old Testament. Hence, what was sinful and unbelieving soul-trouble for sin to them must be sinful soul-trouble to us in the same kind. The law did urge the Jews harder than us in regard of the Mosaic burden of ceremonies and bloody sacrifices, that pointed out their guiltiness, except they should flee to Christ. Second, in regard of God's dispensation of the severer punishing of law-transgression, and that with temporal punishments, and rewarding obedience with external prosperity. Third, in urging this doctrine more hardly upon the people, to cause them not to rest on the letter of the law, but seek to the promised Messiah, in whom only was their righteousness — as young heirs and minors are kept under tutors while their minority expires. But, first, who dares say that the saints under the Old Testament, who lived and died in the case of remission of sins, of salvation, and of peace with God (Genesis 49:18; Psalm 37:37; Psalm 73:25; Proverbs 14:32; Isaiah 57:1-2; Hebrews 11:13; Psalm 32:1-2; Micah 7:18-19; Isaiah 43:25; Jeremiah 50:20; Psalm 31:5), and were undoubtedly blessed in Christ as we are (Psalm 119:1-2; Psalm 65:4; Psalm 1:1-3; Psalm 144:14-15; Psalm 146:5; Job 5:17; Psalm 84:4-5), died not under the curse of God, or were in no capacity to be delivered by Christ after this life from the wrath to come and the curse of the law? Second, that they were to trust to the merit of their own works, or seek righteousness in themselves, more than we? Third, or that they believed not, or that their faith was not counted to them for righteousness, as it is with us (Genesis 15:5-6; Romans 4:3-8; Psalm 32:1-2)? Fourth, indeed, they believing in the Messiah to come were no more under the law and the dominion of sin than we are (Romans 6:6-9; Romans 7:1-7; Romans 8:1-2; Micah 7:18-19; Isaiah 43:25; Jeremiah 50:20; Psalm 32:1-2), but under grace, and pardoned, and saved by faith as we are (Hebrews 11:1-13; Galatians 3:10, 13; Acts 11:16-17; Romans 9:31-33). Fifth, indeed, the law was no less a letter of condemnation to them than to us (Romans 8:3; Romans 10:3; Deuteronomy 27:26; Galatians 3:10, 13; 2 Corinthians 3:7-8, 13-15). Sixth, they drank of the same spiritual rock with us, and the rock was Christ (1 Corinthians 10:1-4; Hebrews 13:8), and were saved by grace as well as we (Acts 15:11).

It's true, Josiah's tenderness of heart, David's smiting of heart, the Woman's weeping, even to the washing of Christ's feet with tears, Peter's weeping bitterly for the denying of his Lord, as they were woundings, and Gospel-affections, and commotions of love issuing from the Spirit of adoption, of love, grace, and nothing but the Turtle's love-sorrow; so it is, most false, that they were no soul-trouble for sin, as if these had been freed from all Law of God, and these soul-commotions were not from any sense of the curse, or the Law, or any demands of Law, to pay what justice may demand of the self-condemned sinner; yet were they acts of soul-trouble for sin, as sin: and it shall never follow, that the parties were under no transgression, and no law, because under no obligation to eternal wrath; for such an obligation to eternal wrath, is no chain which can tie the sons of adoption, who are washed, justified, pardoned; and yet if the justified and pardoned say, they have no sin, and so no reason to complain under their fetters, and sigh as captives in prison, as Paul does (Romans 7:24), nor cause to mourn for indwelling of sin, they are liars and strangers to their own heart, and do sleep in deep security; as if sin were so fully removed both in guilt and blot, as if tears for sin as sin should argue the mourning party to be in the condition of those who weep in hell, or that they were no more obliged to weep; indeed, by the contrary, to exercise no such affection, but joy, comfort, and perpetuated acts of solace and rejoicing; as if Christ had, in the threshold of glory, with his own hand wiped all tears from their eyes already.

Nor do I see any reason why any should affirm, that the Law is naturally as a party in the soul, of either the regenerate and justified, or of those who are out of Christ. (1.) For the Law's indwelling, as a party engaging, by accusing and condemning, is not naturally in any son of Adam; because there is a sleeping conscience, both dumb and silent naturally in the soul: and if there be any challenging and accusing in the Gentile-conscience (Romans 2), as stirring is opposed to a silent and dumb conscience that speaks nothing, so the Law-accusing is not naturally in the soul; a spirit above nature (I do not mean the Spirit of regeneration) must work with the Law, else both the Law and sin lie dead in the soul: the very law of nature lies as a dead letter, and stirs not, except some wind blow more or less on the soul (Romans 7:8-9). (2.) That the Law awakens any sinner, and makes the drunken and mad sinner see himself in the sea, and sailing down the river to the chambers of death, that he may but be occasioned to cast an eye on shore, on Jesus Christ, and wish a landing on Christ, is a mercy that no man can father on nature, or on himself. (3.) All sense of a sinful condition, to any purpose, is a work above nature; though it be not ever a fruit of regeneration. (4.) It's true, Christ teaches a man's soul, through the shining of Gospel-light, to answer all the indictments of the Law, in regard that Christ the ransomer stops the Law's mouth with blood, else the sinner can make but a poor and faint advocacy for himself; yet this cannot be made in the conscience without some soul-trouble for sin. (5.) It's strange that God's people need more joy after sin, than after affliction; and that in some respect, they have most joy, who have sinned most: Sure, this is accidental to sin, this joy is not for sin; but it's a joy of loving much, because much is forgiven. Forgiveness is an act of free grace, sin is no work of grace: sin grieves the heart of God; as a friend's trouble is trouble to a friend: the believer is made the friend of God (John 15:15), and it must be cursed joy that lay in the womb of that which is most against the heart of Christ; such as all sin is. Indeed, to be more troubled in soul for sins, than for afflictions, smells of a heart that keeps correspondence with the heart and bowels of Christ, who wept more for Jerusalem's sins, than for his own afflictions and cross. As some ounces of everlasting wrath in the Law, with a talent weight of free Gospel-mercy would be contempered together to cure the sinner; so is there no rational way to raise and heighten the price and worth of the soul-Redeemer of sinners, and the weight of infinite love so much, as to make the sinner know how deep a hell he was plunged in, when the bone aches exceedingly: for that the Gospel-tongue of the Physician Christ should lick the rotten blood of the soul's wound, speaks more than imaginable free-love. Nor do we say, that Gospel-mourning is wrought by the Law's threatenings, then it were servile sorrow; but it's wrought by the doctrine of the Law, discovering the foulness and sinfulness of sin, and by the doctrine of the Gospel; the Spirit of the Gospel shining on both: Otherwise, sounds, breathings, letters of either Law or Gospel, except the breathings of heaven shine on them and animate them, can do no good.

Assertion 4. Sins of youth already pardoned as touching the obligation to eternal wrath, may so rise against the child of God, as he has need to ask the forgiveness of them, as touching the removing of present wrath, sense of the want of God's presence, of the influence of his love, the cloud of sadness and deadness, through the want of the joy of the Holy Ghost, and ancient consolations of the days of old. Psalm 90:7. We are consumed in your wrath, and by your hot displeasure we are terrified. Verse 8. You have set our iniquities before you, and our secret sin in the light of your face. This was not a motion of the flesh in Moses the man of God. Antinomians may so dream; the fury of the Lord waxed hot against his people: so says the Spirit of God: nor is this conceit of theirs to be credited against the text, that Moses speaks in regard of the reprobate party; Moses by immediate inspiration does not pray for the beauty and glory of the Lord, in the sense of his love to be manifested on a reprobate party. Antinomian preachers in our times confess sins in public, but it is the sins of the reprobate and carnal multitude, that are in the society mixed with the godly; they think it a work of the flesh to confess their own sins: this is to steal the word of the Lord from his people. So David, Psalm 25:7. Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions. The sins of his youth, as touching obligation to eternal wrath, were pardoned, I question it not; but in regard, God was turned from him in the flamings of love, and his sins sealed up in a bag in regard of innumerable evils that lay on him: he prays, Verse 16. Turn to me. Hebrew: Set your countenance on me. God's favor in the sense of it, was turned away; and Verse 18. Look upon my affliction and pain, and forgive all my sins; the word [in non-Latin alphabet] with a point in the left side of [in non-Latin alphabet], is to carry away. Jerome: take away all my sins (Isaiah 53:4). He carried, or did bear as a burden our iniquities. Vatablus: carried. Pagnin: spare, pardon — spare or pardon all my sins: then sin here is pardoned only according to the present pain and grief of body and soul that was on David, Psalm 38:4. For my iniquities are gone over my head: as a heavy burden, they are too heavy for me. We have no reason to believe that David thought himself already a condemned man, and now in hell, though some sparks of hell's wrath and fire, not in any sort as satisfactory to divine justice, or as a fruit of God's hatred and enmity, can fall on the children of God; yet it is not imaginary, but real anger. God was really angry with Moses at the waters of strife. The thing that David did against Uriah displeased the Lord: not in David's opinion only. And though the hell for a time in the soul of God's children, and the hell of the reprobate, differ in essence and nature, in that the hell of the reprobate is a satisfactory pain, 2. and that it flows from the hatred of God; but the hell of the godly not so: yet in this materially they are of the same size; that the one as well as the other, are coals and flames of the same furnace; and neither are imaginary. Then again, sins of youth long ago pardoned, though sometimes dearly beloved, are like the ghost of a dear friend some years ago dead and buried, that re-appears to a man, as dead Samuel did to Saul; look how loving and dear they were alive, they are now as terrible and dreadful, when they appear to us living out from the land of death: so are sins of youth, when they rise from the dead, and were pardoned in Christ long ago, they appear again to David, and Job, and the saints, with the veil and mask or hue of hell, and sealed with temporary wrath. Psalm 99:8. You were a God that pardoned, or forgave them, though you took vengeance of their inventions. The same word [in non-Latin alphabet] is given to God, when he takes vengeance on his enemies, (Numbers 31:2; Isaiah 1:24). I will be avenged of my enemies. (2 Kings 9:7). That I may avenge the blood of my servants the prophets. So is the word [in non-Latin alphabet] — vengeance — used, (Deuteronomy 32:43). He will render vengeance to his adversaries. And if one and the same temporary judgment in the two thieves that were crucified with Christ, be so differenced, that mercy is stamped on the same death to the one, and wrath to the other; we may well say there is a temporary vengeance and wrath, that befalls both the saints and the reprobate in this life; and the difference is in the mind and intention of God, in both. And that God pardons sin, when he removes temporary wrath: so (2 Samuel 12:13). Nathan says to David, The Lord also has caused your sin to pass away, why? You shall not die. This is meant of temporal death especially; as the context makes clear, Verse 10. The sword shall not depart from your house. And Verse 14. The child born to you shall surely die. Then the Lord's putting away of David's sin, was in loosing him from the sword, in his own person, not in his house and children; for by proportion of divine justice, (though tempered with mercy) the sword was punished with the sword. I do not exclude relaxation from eternal punishment, but remission going for relaxation of punishment. Then as there be two sorts of punishments, one temporary, and another the eternal wrath to come; so there are in Scripture two sorts of remissions, one from the temporary, another from eternal punishment. Therefore sin is put for punishment, (Genesis 4:13). My iniquity (says Cain) is more than I can bear; or, My punishment is more than I can bear. (Leviticus 24:15). He that curses his God, shall bear his sin. (Ezekiel 23:49). And you shall bear the sins of your idols. (Numbers 9:13). The man that is clean — and forbears to eat the Passover — that man shall bear his sin. So when God lays sin to the charge of the sinner, in punishing it, he is said to lay a burden on the sinner, (2 Kings 9:25). And to remove this burden, is to pardon the sin. (2 Chronicles 7:14). If my people humble themselves, then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land; by removing the locusts and the pestilence. See, the pardoning of their sin is expounded to be the removing of the locusts and pestilence. And to call sins to remembrance, is to punish sin: the Shunammite says, (1 Kings 17:18). Are you come to me (O man of God) to call my sin to remembrance, and to slay my son? Job complains, (Job 13:26). You make me to possess the iniquities of my youth. Now though out of unbelief he might apprehend, that he was cast off of God, and a man rejected of God, and that his sins were never pardoned, and he himself never delivered from the wrath to come; these legal thoughts might keep Job in a distance from God, to his own sinful apprehension; yet it shall be impossible to prove, that Job in all these complaints had no other but a mere legal esteem of God's dispensation; and that 2. God stamped not temporary wrath, and the pain of a hidden and over-clouded God, the subtraction of the sense of divine manifestations of love, (the Lord standing behind the wall) in all these afflictions. Now it is known, that as these are often trials of the faith of the saints, yet are they sour fruits of our fleshly indulgence to our carnal delights, and of our not opening to our Beloved, when he knocks, (Song of Solomon 5:2-6). And though the godly do steadfastly believe their salvation is in a castle, above losing; yet in reason, sin bringing broken bones, (Psalm 51:10), a sad cloud, the damming up of a spring of Christ's love spread abroad in the heart, a temporary hell in the soul, it must be sorrowed for, hated, mourned for, confessed; and yet in all these there is no necessity of such a law-spirit of bondage to work these, nor is faith in any sort diminished; but put to a further exercise. And the same sad fruits follow from the sins of the saints under the New Testament, as may be cleared from (Revelation 2:5, 16, 22; Revelation 3:3, 17, 18; 2 Corinthians 1:8-10; 2 Corinthians 2:7; 2 Corinthians 7:5-7; Revelation 3:20; John 14:1). Nor can we think, that the strictness of the law gave those under the law an indulgence not to be a whit troubled in soul for sin, as it over-clouded the influence and flowings of divine love, suppose they had assurance of freedom from the wrath to come, as is evident in the Spouse, (Song of Solomon 5:1-6; Song of Solomon 2:16-17; Song of Solomon 4:7). Nor is it true, that Gospel-grace and liberty entitles the saints now to such wantonness of peace, as that persons fully assured of deliverance from the curse of the law, are never to be troubled for sins committed in the state of free justification; nor are they any more to mourn, nor groan under sin's captivity, nor to confess sin, in regard that Christ's blood has washed soul, and eyes, and faces from all tears; and the salvation of the saints in this life is not in hope only, as wheat in the blade, but actual, as in the life to come; and therefore, holy walking and good works can no more be means or the way to the kingdom, (as Mr. Towne and other Antinomians say) than motion within the city can be a way to the city, in regard the man is now in the city, before he walk at all.

Assertion 5. If Jesus Christ had soul-trouble, because of divine wrath, for our sin, and was put to a sweat of blood, God roasting Christ quick in a furnace of divine justice, though every globe of sweat in the Garden was a sea of free grace, not his eyes only, but his face and body did sweat out free love from his soul (Luke 22:44; Hebrews 5:7), what must soul-trouble be in a fired conscience? It is no wonder that wicked men, wrestling with everlasting vengeance, cannot endure it. The Devil's predominant sin being blasphemous despair, he tempts most to his own predominant sin; the issue and final intent of all his temptations is despair: because Devils are living and swimming in the sphere and element of justice, they cannot bear it; they cry to Christ, the whole company and family making the despiting of Christ a common cause, "Are you come here 〈in non-Latin alphabet〉, to torment us before the time?" (Matthew 8:29; Proverbs 18:14). The spirit of a man will bear his infirmity, the spirit is the finest metal in the man, but a wounded spirit, who can bear that? So the Hebrew reads. Anything may be borne, but break the man's soul, and break the choicest piece in the soul, the conscience, who can then stand? As conscience is the sweetest bosom-friend of man, so it is the sorest enemy. David is persecuted by his prince, and he bears it; Jeremiah cast in the dungeon by the rulers, priests, and prophets, and he overcomes it; Job persecuted by his friends, and he stands under it; Christ betrayed and killed by his own servants and kinsmen, and he endures it; the Apostles killed, scourged, and imprisoned by the Jews, and they rejoice in it. But Judas is but once hunted by a fury of hell in his own breast, and he leaps overboard; in a sea of infinite wrath: Cain, Saul, Achitophel, cannot endure it; Spira roars as a bear, and cries out, "Oh that I were above God" — though we may hope well of his eternal state. Nero, after the other murders, having killed his mother Agrippina, could not sleep; he did often leap out of the bed, and was terrified with the visions of hell. Eternity, the resurrection, and the judgment to come, are virtually in the conscience. 2. What is fear? A tormenting passion. To hang a living man by an untwisted thread over a river of unmixed, pure vengeance, and let the thread be wearing weaker and weaker — what horror and paleness of darkness must be on the soul? 3. What sorrow and sadness, when there is not a shadow of comfort? But 4. positive despair, rancor, and malice against the holy Majesty of God; when the soul shall wish, and die of burning desire, to be above and beyond the spotless essence of the infinite Majesty of God; and shall burn in a fire of wrath against the very existence of God, and blaspheme the Holy One of Israel, without date. Job says of such (Job 27:20), in this life, "Terrors take hold of him as waters, and a tempest steals him away in the night."

But consider what it is to the saints; Job complains (Job 14:16), "Do you watch over my sin?" (Verse 17) "My transgression is sealed up in a bag, and you sew up my iniquity." Vatablus: "You appear to be a watchful observer of my iniquity, and add" (as Arias Montanus) "punishment to punishment, sewing sin to sin, to make the bag greater than it is." Now though there be a mis-judging unbelief in the saints, yet it is certain God does inflict penal desertions, as real pieces of hell, on the souls of his children, either for trial, as in Job; or punishment of sin, as in David; whose bones were broken for his adultery and murder (Psalm 51:10), and whose moisture of body was turned into the drought of summer, through the anger of God in his soul, till the Lord brought him to the acknowledgment of his sin, and pardoned him (Psalm 32:3-6). But some will say, can the Lord inflict spiritual punishment, or any of hell, or the least coal of that black furnace upon the souls of his own children? To which I answer, it is but curiosity to dispute whether the pains of hell, and the flames and sparks of real wrath, which I can prove to be really inflicted on the souls of the saints in this life, be penalties spiritual, different in nature. Certain there be three characters sealed and engraved on the pains of the damned, which are not on the real soul-punishments of divine wrath on the souls of the saints. As 1. what pieces of hell, or broken chips of wrath are set upon the souls of deserted saints, are honeyed and dipped in heaven, and sugared with eternal love. God's heart is toward Ephraim as his dear child, and his bowels turned within for their misery, even when he speaks against them (Jeremiah 31:20-21). But the coals of the furnace cast upon reprobates are dipped in the curse of God; so that in a small affliction, even in the miscarrying of a basket of bread, and the loss of one poor ox, there is a great law-curse, and intolerable vengeance (Deuteronomy 27:26; Deuteronomy 28:17, 31). And again, [reconstructed: in the in-breaking] of a sea and flood of hell in the soul of the child of God, a rich heaven of a divine presence (Psalm 22:1; Psalm 89; Psalm 18:4-6). (2.) The hellish pains inflicted on reprobates are law-demands of satisfactory vengeance, and payment to pure justice; but fire-flashes, or flamings of hell on the deserted saints, are medicinal, or exploratory corrections, though relative to justice and punishments of sin, yet is that justice mixed with mercy, and exacts no law-payment in those afflictions. 3. Despair, and blasphemous expostulating and quarreling divine justice, are the inseparable attendants of the flames and lashings of wrath, in reprobates; in the godly there is a clearing of justice, a submission to God, and a silent psalm of the praise of the glory of this justice, in this temporary hell, no less than there is a new song of the praise of free grace in the eternal glory of the saints, perfected with the Lamb.

Nor should this seem strange, that God punishes the sins of his children with such spiritual plagues of unbelief, and jealousies, and lying misjudgings of God in their sad desertions, more than that the Lord punished the lifted-up heart of Hezekiah with leaving him to fall on his own weight; and David's idleness and security, with letting him fall in adultery; and Peter's self-confidence, with a foul denying of his Lord. But it is a sad dispensation, when God cleaves a saint with a wedge of his own timber; and links one sinful misjudging of God, in this fever of soul-desertion, to another: and justice sews (in a permissive providence) one sin to another, to lengthen the chain, if free grace, a link of gold, did not put a period to the progress thereof. Now we are not to look at this as an ordinary calamity: Job's expressions are very full (Job 6:4): For the arrows of the Almighty are within me, the poison of which drinks up my spirit: the terrors of God do set themselves in array against me. An arrow is a deadly weapon, when it is shot by a man, or by an angel; but it is soft as oil in comparison of the arrow of the Almighty. 1. It is the arrow of [illegible]. The Almighty did frame and mold, and sharpen it in heaven. 2. The arrow was dipped in poison, and has art from hell and divine justice. One Devil is stronger than a host of men; but legions of Devils are mighty strong, when such archers of hell are sent to shoot arrows that are poisoned with the curse and bloody indignation of heaven. 3. What a sad stroke must it be, when the arms of Omnipotence draw the bow? The arms of God can shake the mountains and make them tremble, and can move the foundation of the earth out of its place, and take the globe of heaven and earth and can cast it out of its place, more easily than a man casts a slung stone out of his hand. When he puts forth the strength of Omnipotence against the creature, what can the man do? 4. Every arrow is not a drinking arrow; the arrows of divine wrath drink blood: Suppose a thousand horse-leeches were set on a poor naked man, to drink blood at every part of his body, and let them have power and art to suck out the marrow, the oil, the sap of life, out of bones and joints; say also that one man had in his veins a little sea of blood, and that they were of more than ordinary thirst and power to drink the corpse of the living man, as dry as straws or flax; what a pain would this be? Indeed, but it were tolerable. 5. Arrows can but drink blood; arrows are shot against the body, the worst they can do is to drink life out of liver and heart, and to pierce the strongest bones; but the arrows of the Almighty are shot against spirits and souls: The spirit is a fine, subtle, immortal thing. (Isaiah 31:3): The horses of Egypt are flesh, and not spirit. The spirit is a more God-like nature, than anything created of God. The Almighty's arrows kill spirits, and souls: There is an arrow that can pierce flesh, joints, liver, heart, bones, indeed but through the soul also: Never an archer can shoot an arrow at the soul; but this the Almighty can do. Say your arrow killed the man, yet the soul is saved. 6. Many love not their life to death, as the witnesses of Jesus: Death is death, as clothed with apprehensions of terror; no man is wretched, actu secundo, within and without, but he that believes himself to be so: here are terrors, self-terrors: Jeremiah could prophesy no harder thing against Pashur; The Lord (says he) has not called your name Pashur, but Magor-missabib (Jeremiah 20:3). You shall be a terror to yourself. Compare this with other pains; Job would rather choose strangling, or the dark grave; and the grave to nature is a sad, a black and dreadful house; but a believer may get beyond the grave. What do the glorified spirits fear a grave now; or are they afraid of a coffin, and a winding-sheet, or of lodging with the worms and corruption? Or is burning quick a terror to them? No, not any of these can run after or overtake them; and they know that. But self-terrors are a hell carried about with the man in his bosom, he cannot run from them. Oh! he lies down, and hell beds with him; he sleeps, and hell and he dream together; he rises, and hell goes to the fields with him; he goes to his garden, there is hell. It is observable, a garden is a paradise by art; and Christ was as deep in the agony and wrestlings of hell for our sins, in a garden, a place of pleasure, as on the cross, a place of torment. The man goes to his table, O! he dare not eat, he has no right to the creature; to eat is sin, and hell; so hell is in every dish: To live is sin, he would gladly choose strangling; every act of breathing is sin and hell. He goes to church, there is a dog as great as a mountain before his eye: Here be terrors. But what, one or two terrors are not much; though too much to a soul spoiled of all comfort. 7. The terrors of God (God is always in this sad play) do set themselves in battle array against me. Or, (Job 16:13): His archers compassed me about round. In the Hebrew: his great ones; or, his bowmen (because they are many, or because the great ones did fight afar off) have besieged me. So (2 Chronicles 17:9), (1 Samuel 7:16): Samuel went in a circuit to Bethel, and Gilgal, and Mizpeh. And (Joshua 6:3): You shall besiege Jericho. The wrath of God and an army of terrors blocked up poor Job, and stormed him. Now here be these sore pressures on the soul: 1. The poor man cannot look out to any creature-comfort, or creature-help. Say that an angel from heaven would stand for him, or a good conscience would plead comfort to him, it should solace him; but the man cannot look out, nor can he look up (Psalm 40:12). The enmity of God is a sad thing. 2. A battle array is not of one man, but of many enemies: Say the man had one soul, it should be his enemy; and that he had a hundred souls, he should have a hundred enemies; but as many millions of thoughts, as in his wearisome nights escape him, he has as many enemies; indeed, as many creatures, as many stones of the field, as many beasts, so many enemies. (Job 5:23), (Hosea 2:8): Christ gave to the Father propositions of peace, and to the poor soul under sense of wrath, they are nothing: The fear of hell is a part of real hell to the man who knows no other thing, but that he is not reconciled to God. Creatures behind him, and before him, heaven above, and earth below, and creatures on every side, within and without, stand with the weapons of heaven, and of an angry God, against him; friends, wife, servants, acquaintance, have something of wrath and hell on them; the man in his own thought is an outlaw to them all; and the leader of all these archers is God. God, God is the chief party. See (Job 19:12-17): And there you see, brethren, acquaintance, kinsfolk, familiar friends, manservant, maidservant, wife, young children, bone, skin, flesh, are all to Job as coals of the fire of hell. And (Isaiah 8:21-22): Men in this shall curse their king, and their god.

Assertion 6. These being materially the same soul-troubles of deserted and tempted saints, and of plagued and cursed reprobates, do differ formally and essentially according to God's heart, his dispensation and intentions, his mercy and his justice regulating them: so I shall speak of the difference between Christ's troubled soul, and the saints' trouble. 2. Of some ways of God's dispensation, in the soul-trouble of the saints. Touching the former; there was in Christ's soul-trouble, 1. No mis-judging of God; but a strong faith, in that he still named God his Father, and God. 2. In that as this trouble came to a height, and more fuel was added to the fire of divine wrath (Luke 22:44), [illegible], he prayed with more extension of body and spirit: he extended himself in fervour of praying. And (Hebrews 5:7), he offered prayers, and [illegible], humble supplications of the poor, or oppressed, that make their address to one who can help them: he put in to God a humble petition, and a bill to his Father, as an overwhelmed man, and he offered this bill, [illegible], with a hideous cry and tears. (Revelation 14:18) The angel cried with a loud voice. To cry with a full and lifted up voice, or with a shout; so is the verb used (John 18:40), when men cry and cast away their clothes, and cast dust in the air. 3. His soul-trouble and death was satisfactory to divine justice, for our sins; he being free of sin himself: which can agree to no soul-trouble of the holiest saint on earth. But touching the second: these positions may speak somewhat, to clear the way of the soul-trouble of saints.

1. Position. Conscience, being a mass of knowledge, and if there be any oil to give light, it's here; it's then most like itself, when it most bears witness of well and ill-doing. Now, we are more in sinning, than obeying God; and because of the corruption of nature, the number of natural consciences that are awake to see sin, are but very few. And when the renewed conscience is on the work of feeling and discerning guiltiness, in its best temper, the more life the more sense: sick ones in a swoon, or dying persons that do neither hear, see, nor speak, are halfway among the dead. The conscience sick of over-feeling, and so under over-sense of sin, is in so far in a fever: for often a fever is from the excess of too much blood, and rankness of humors, the vessels being too full; and therefore it's like a river that cannot choose but go over banks, the channel being a vessel too narrow to contain it all.

2. Position. Therefore often the time of some extreme desertion and soul-trouble is, when Christ has been in the soul with a full, high spring-tide of divine manifestations of himself. And if we consider the efficient cause of desertion, which is God's wise dispensation: when Paul has been in the third heaven, on a hyperbole, a great excess of revelations, God thinks then good to exercise him with a messenger of Satan; which by the weakness and spiritual infirmity he was under, wanted not a desertion, less or more, whatever the messenger was; as it seems to be fleshly lust, after a spiritual vision. Paul was ready to think himself an Angel, not flesh and blood; and therefore, (2 Corinthians 12:7) he says twice in one verse, This befell me, [illegible], That I should not be lifted up above ordinary comets, up among the stars. But if we consider the material cause, it may be, that extreme and high overflowing of Christ's love broke our weak and narrow vessels: (Song of Solomon 5:1) there is a rich and dainty feast of Christ, I am come into my garden, my Sister my Spouse, I have gathered my myrrh with my spices, I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey, I have drunk my wine with my milk: eat, O friends, drink, yes drink abundantly, O beloved. Yet in that Song, the Spirit of God speaks of a sad desertion in the next words, I sleep, but my heart wakes: it is the voice of my Beloved that knocks, etc. There is not only impiety, but want of humanity, that the Church had rather that wearied Jesus Christ should fall down and die in the streets, in a rainy and snowy night, when his locks were wet with rain, than that he should come in and lodge in the soul. And let us not think that the thread and tract of the Scriptures' coherence, one verse following on another, as the Spirit of God has ordered them, is but a cast of chance, or a human thing: When the Spouse rides on the high places of Jacob, and says, (Isaiah 49:13) Sing, O heaven, and be joyful, O earth, and break forth into singing, O mountains: for God has comforted his people, and will have mercy on his afflicted. Yet this was nothing to the afflicted people; verse 14: But Zion said, The Lord has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me. When the Lord's Disciples, (Matthew 17) are in the sweetest life that ever they were in, at the transfiguration of Christ, when they saw his glory, and Peter said, Master, it is good for us to be here, even then, they must appear to be weak men; and Christ must forbid and rebuke their faithless fear, verse 6. They fell on their faces, and were sorely afraid. I leave it to the experience of the godly, if Jeremiah his singing of praise in one verse, (Jeremiah 20:13) and his cursing of the day that he was born on, in the next verse, verse 14, the order of Scripture being of divine inspiration, does not speak God's dispensation in this to be such, as to allay and temper the sweetness of the consolation of a feast of God's high manifestation, with a sad desertion. So John his glorious soul-ravishing comforts, in seeing the seven golden candlesticks, and the Son of man in such glory and majesty, (Revelation 1:12-15) yet it appears to be a desertion that he is under, when Christ forbids him to fear, and when he must have the hand of Christ laid on his head, and when he falls down at Christ's feet as dead, (Revelation 1:17-18). And when Isaiah saw the glorious vision, (Isaiah 6) the Lord sitting on his throne, high and lifted up; it must be a throne higher than the heaven of heavens, that he sits on; and his train filling the Temple. It's a desertion he falls into. Verse 5: Then said I, woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts; he was a pardoned man before. It's so with us, while the body of sin dwells in us, that we cannot, being old bottles, bear new wine; and therefore the fullness of God, breaks crazy lumps of sinful flesh and blood: as a full tide, is preparatory to a low ebbing; and full vessels in the body, to a fever. Would Christ in his fullness of the irradiations of glory, break in upon us; he should break the bodily organs, and over-master the soul's faculties, that all the banks of the soul, should be like broken walls, hedges, or clay channels; which the inundation of a river, has demolished, and carried away from the bottom. Flesh and blood is not in a capacity of over-joy, and can hold but little of heaven, no more than earth could bear such a glorious creature as the Sun: we must be both more capacious, and wider, and stronger vessels, before we be made fit to contain glory; we are leaking, and running-out vessels, to contain grace. Manifestations, and rays of divine love, are too strong wine that grew up in the higher Canaan, for our weak heads.

Assertion 3. Desertion comes under these considerations: 1. As it's a cross, and a punishment of sin; 2. As a trial from mere divine dispensation: 3. As it's a sin on our part, full of sinful misrepresentations of Christ.

In the first consideration, we are to submit to any penal over-clouding of Christ. 1. Because the eye cannot water to look on any cross of Christ, where faith's aspect goes before, and says, Though I sit in darkness, yet I shall see light. 2. There is required a sort of patience under sin, as it is either a punishment of another sin, as David was submissive to the sinful railing of Shimei, and the wicked treasons, and incestuous pollutions of his concubines, by his son Absalom. Or as sin dwells in us, and in Divine dispensation must be our cross, as well as our sin; we are to be grieved at our sins, as they cross God's holy will: but as they are our own crosses, and thwart our own desires, and now are committed by us, or dwell in us, we are not to bite at, and utter heart-railings against Divine providence, who might have prevented, and efficaciously hindered these sins; and yet did not hinder them. 3. This dispensation should be adored, as a part of Divine wisdom; that broken souls are not wholly cured, till they be in heaven. Sin is a disunion from God: Jesus does not so completely solder the soul to God, but the seam has holes and gapings in it, by reason of the indwellings of sin (Romans 7:17-19, 22-23). And since libertines will confound justification with regeneration, we say, their justification they speak of, is never perfected in this life. And because sin, as sin which remains in our flesh, must make God and the soul at a distance; there cannot be such perfect peace as excludes all soul-trouble; the blue scar of the wound remains so, and the dregs of that domestic falling-ill, that we have of our first house of Adam, are so [reconstructed: seated] in us, that as some diseases recur, and some pain of the head, when an East wind blows; so the disease we have in our head, the first Adam, sticks to us all our life; and when temptations blow, we find the relics of our disease working, and foaming out the smell of the lees, and [reconstructed: scent] that remains. Christ has need to perfume our ill odors, with his merits, for our begun sanctification is so imperfect, as that yet our water smells of the rotten vessel, the flesh; and we cannot but have our ill hours, and our sick days, and so a disposition to sinful desertions. 4. Unbelief naturally stocked in the body of sin, is humorous and ill-minded to Christ: there is a liar in our house, and a slanderer of Christ, that upon light occasions can raise an ill fame of Christ, that he is a hard man, and gathers where he did not sow: that Christ is nice and dainty of his love, that he is too fine, too excellent, and majestic to condescend to love me: and take this as the mother-seed, of all sinful desertions, to blame Christ's sweet inclination, to love us as well, as his love. I knew you were a hard man; it is dangerous to have ill thoughts of Christ's nature, his constitution, actu primo. The next will be to censure his ways, his saving, and his gathering; which I take to be the current objection of old Pelagians, and late Arminius. O, he must gather where he did never sow, if he commands all to believe under the pain of damnation, and yet he judicially in Adam, removed all power of believing: so he puts out the poor man's eyes, and cuts off his two legs, and commands him to see with no eyes, and walk with no legs, under pain of damnation: men believe not they hate Christ by nature; and hatred has an eye to see no color in Christ, but blackness; as the instance of the Pharisees does make clear; who saw but devilry in the fairest works of Christ, even in his casting out of devils.

Assertion 4. Desertions on the Lord's part are so often mere trials; we may not think they are the greatest sinners who are most deserted. Desertion smells more of heaven, and of Christ deserted for our sins, than of any other thing; it is the disease that follows the Royal seed, and the King's blood; it is incident to the most heavenly spirits; Moses, David, Heman, Asaph, Hezekiah, Job, Jeremiah, the Church (Psalm 102; Lamentations chapters 1, 2, 3, 4); it is ore that adheres to the choicest gold. But how is it, say some, that you read of so little soul-desertion in the Apostles, and Believers under the New Testament, and so much of it under the Old Testament? Is it not because it belongs to the Law and the Covenant of Works, and to the Spirit of the Old Testament, and nothing to the Gospel of Grace? So Antinomians dream. I answer: We read indeed of heavier and stronger external pressures laid on men, to chase them to Christ under the Law, than under the Gospel, because the Gospel speaks of curses and judgment in passing; and the Law more naturally, and more frequently, because of our disobedience; and of the preparing of an infant church, under nonage, for Christ. But though the Gospel speaks less of God's severity in external judgments, as in killing so many thousands for looking into the Ark, for idolatry; yet the Apostle says that these things were not merely Pedagogical and Jewish — so that, because the like are not written in the New Testament, it does not follow that they do not belong to us; for he says (1 Corinthians 10:6), "Now these things were our examples" — verse 11: "Now all these things happened to them for examples, and they are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are come." Therefore, the like for the like sins do, and may, befall men under the Gospel. Moreover, never were greater plagues threatened, by Christ's own mouth; never did wrath to the full come upon any, in such a measure, as upon the city of Jerusalem and the people of the Jews, for killing the Lord of glory. And though no such desertions are read of in the Apostles, as of Job (who yet was not a Jew, and yet more deserted than David, Heman, or any Prophet), Hezekiah, the Church (Lamentations chapters 2 and 3); yet we are not hence to believe that there were never such desertions under the New Testament. For as external judgments, so internal soul-trials, are common to both the saints under the Old and New Testament, as is evident in Paul (2 Corinthians 1:8-9; 2 Corinthians 5:11; 2 Corinthians 7:4-6; 1 Peter 1:6-7); and as both were frequent under the Old Testament, so were they written for our learning. And if it were to the Jews merely Pedagogical to have terrors without and fears within, and to be pressed out of measure — or to afflict their souls for sin were a work of the law — then to be afflicted in conscience were a denying that Christ is come in the flesh, and simply unlawful; whereas the Lord's absence is a punishment of the church's not opening to Christ (Song of Solomon 5:4-6). And God's act of withdrawing his lovely presence is an act of mere free dispensation in God, not our sin. For this would be well considered: that the Lord's active desertion — in either not cooperating with us when we are tempted, or secondly his not calling, or the suspending of his active pulsation and knocking at the door of our soul, or thirdly the not returning of a present comfortable answer, or fourthly the withdrawing of his shining manifestations, his comforts, and the sense of the presence of Jesus Christ — cannot be formally our sins. Indeed, our unbelief, our sinning which results from the Lord's non-cooperating with us when we are tempted, our misjudging of Christ (as if it were a fault in him to stand behind the wall) — which are in our passive desertions — are sins.

Assertion 5. The saddest desertions are more incident to the godly than to the wicked and natural men; as some moth is most ordinary in excellent timber, and a worm rather in a fair rose than in a thorn or thistle. And surely, though unbelief, fears, and doubtings be more proper to natural men than to the saints, yet unregenerate men are not capable of sinful jealousies of Christ's love, nor of this unbelief which is incident to the desertion we now speak of; even as marriage jealousy falls not on the heart of a whore, but of a lawful spouse. Secondly, according to the measure and nature of love, so is the jealousy, and heart-suspicions for the want of the love, from which the jealousy is occasioned: the soul which never felt the love of Christ can never be troubled, nor jealously displeased for the want of that love. And because Christ had the love of God in another measure, possibly of another nature, than any mortal man, his soul-trouble for the want of the sense and actual influence of that love must be more, and of a higher, and it may be of another nature, than can fall within the compass of our thoughts: never man in his imagination, except the man Christ, could weigh, or take a lift of the burden of Christ's soul-trouble. The lightest corner or bit of Christ's satisfactory Cross should be too heavy for the shoulders of angels and men. You may then know how easy it is for many to stand on the shore and censure David in the sea; and what an oven, and how hot a fire must cause the moisture of his body to turn to the drought of summer. The angels (John 20) have but a theory and the hearsay of a bystander, when they say, "Woman, why do you weep?" She had slept little that night, and was up by the first glimmering of the dawning, and sought her Savior with tears, and a heavy heart, and found nothing but an empty grave; "O they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him." And the daughters of Jerusalem stood but at the sick spouse's bedside, and not so near, when she complains, "I am sick of love." To one whose wanton reason denied the fire to be hot, another said, "Put your finger in the fire, and try if it be hot." Some have said, all this soul-trouble is but melancholy and imagination: would you try whether the body of a healthy and vigorous man, turned as dry as chaff, or a withered half-burnt stick, through soul-pain, be a cold fire, or an imagination; and what physic one of the smallest beams of the irradiation of Christ's smiling countenance is to such a soul, you would not speak so.

Asser. 6. Why some of the saints are carried to Abraham's bosom, and to heaven in Christ's bosom, and for the most, feast upon sweet manifestations all the way, and others are more often in the hell of soul-trouble, than in any other condition, is among the depths of holy Sovereignty. (1.) Some feed on honey, and are carried in Christ's bosom to heaven; others are so quailed and kept under water, in the floods of wrath, that their first smile of joy is when the one foot is on the shore, and when the morning of eternity's sun dawns in at the window of the soul. Some sing, and live on sense all the way; others sigh, and go in at heaven's gates weeping, and Christ's first kiss of glory dries the tears off their face. (2.) Christ walks in a path of unsearchable liberty, that some are in the suburbs of heaven, and feel the smell of the dainties of the King's higher house, before they are in heaven; and others, children of the same Father, passengers in the same journey, wade through hell, darkness of fears, thrones of doubts, have few love-tokens till the marriage-day. (3.) There are not two separate ways to heaven; but there are (I doubt not) in the latitude of Sovereignty, hundreds of various dispensations of God, in the same way. Jerusalem is a great city, and has twelve, and many ports and angles and sides to enter at; but Christ is the one only way: he keeps in all, and brings in all; he keeps in angels that they never came out, he brings in his many children to glory. But some go to heaven, and till the twelfth hour know nothing of sin, death, God, Christ, heaven and hell. Grace took a short cut, and a compendious way with the repenting thief. Christ cannot only run, but fly post with some in few hours to heaven: grace has eagle's wings to some; and some wrestle with hell, fight with beasts, make war with lusts, and are dipped in and out, as the oars in the river, in floods of wrath from their youth, and a long time. Caleb and Joshua for two generations were in the journey to Canaan; many thousands not born when they entered the journey, yea new generations arose, and entered into that good land with them, and were there as soon as they.

Asser. 7. In consideration of desertions, as actively they come from God, and passively they are received in us, and consecutively, or by abused resultance are our sins, they have sundry and diverse causes.

1. Sorrow for the withdrawing sense and influence of Christ's love, as formally a desertion passive in us, is not sinful; except sorrow, which is a luxuriant and too indulgent passion, exceed measure. For 1. It's a mark of a soul that lives and breathes much on Christ's love: now, if love be the life of some, it must be continued in sense, or some fruition of love, less or more. Now, as the irradiation of the sun's beams and light in the air yesterday, or the last year, cannot enlighten the air and earth this day; and the [reconstructed: meat] I did eat a year ago, the sleep I slept the last month, cannot feed and refresh me now; but there must be a new application of new food, and new sleep: so the irradiation of the manifested love of Christ in the years of old, must go along with us; though as experiences of old favors, they may set faith on foot again, when it's fallen; yet the soul that lives by fruition of divine love, must have a continued influence of that love: and to live on divine love, of itself, can be no sin. O it's a life liable to many clouds, over-castings of sadness and jealousies, that lives on the manifestations of Christ's love: it's sweet and comfortable, but has mixtures of hardest trials; for such set on no duties comfortably, without hire in hand, as it were: when Christ's love-letter from heaven miscarries, and is intercepted, the soul swoons: it's surer to live by faith.

2. To murmur, and impatiently to so sorrow, as if God had forgotten to be merciful, is sinful sorrow. 1. Because the object of it is materially blasphemous, The strength of Israel cannot lie, nor repent; nor can any change, or shadow of change fall on him. 2. It's most unjust to complain and quarrel with him, who has [reconstructed: the right], right, law, full and unconstrained liberty to do with his own what he pleases; but the heavenly irradiations and out-shinings of Christ's love, and the influence of his free grace, are all his own, and most free; for if the seaman has no just cause to quarrel with God, because the wind blows out of the East, when he desires it may blow out of the West; and the husbandman cannot in reason plead misgovernment in the Almighty, because he restrains the clouds, and binds up the womb of heaven, in extreme drought, when he cries for rain and dew to his withered earth, and meadows, and valleys; so neither is there any just pleading (a sinless desire of the contrary is a far other thing) with the Lord, because he binds up the bowels of Christ [reconstructed: withholding] his love, or restrains the winds and breathings of the Spirit from blowing. 3. We may desire the wind of the Lord to blow, because it's an act of free grace in him, so to do; but to contend with the Lord, because he will not act himself in works of free grace, at our pleasure, is to complain that grace is grace; for if grace were obnoxious, in all its sweet breathings and motions, to my will, or to your desires, it should not be grace, but a work of my hiring and sweating. 4. This sorrowing must accuse the free, holy, and innocent love of Christ, as if his love were proud, nice, humorous, high, passionate; whereas infinite freedom, infinite majesty, and loveliness and meekness of tenderest love, do all three concur admirably in Jesus Christ. Love cannot be hired; (Song of Solomon 8:7) If a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned. And for the strength of tenderness of love, the same place pleads; Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. And Paul asserts, (Ephesians 3:18) The breadth, and length, and [reconstructed: depth], and height of it. 5. There is required a submission under such a divine dispensation; else we upbraid grace, and will be wicked, because God will not be (actu secundo,) as gracious in his influence, as we are humorous in our sickly desires. 6. If we could understand the sense of divine dispensation, the Lord often intends grace, when he suspends grace; and his desertions are wrapped up in more invisible love and free grace, than we are aware of: and why should we not, in faith, believe his way of dispensation to be mercy?

Assertion 8. Sometimes (2.) God's immediate lashes on the soul is the occasion of our sinful misjudging of God (Psalm 38:2): "Your arrows stick fast in me, and your hand presses me sore." From this comes a sad reckoning (Verse 4): "My iniquities are gone over my head; as a heavy burden they are too heavy for me." And (Psalm 77:4): "You hold my eye waking; I am so troubled that I cannot speak." And what follows from this? A great misjudging of God. Verse 7: "Will the Lord cast off forever? Will he be favorable no more?" Verse 8: "Is his mercy clean gone forever? Does his promise fail forevermore?" Verse 9: "Has God forgotten to be gracious?" It is but a poor ground for inferring that God has forgotten to be merciful, and Christ is changed, because there is night and winter on your soul: Is the God of Nature changed, because it is not ever summer and daylight? Because a rose withers, and a flower casts its bloom, and the sun is over-clouded, has God therefore forgotten himself? Dispensations of God are no rules to his good pleasure; but his good pleasure regulates all his dispensations. If the soldiers of Christ quarter in the dry wilderness, not in the suburbs of heaven, their Leader is wise.

3. Darkness and night are blind judges of colors; in desertion, it is night on the soul, and imaginations are strongest and biggest in the darkness; the forms of terrible things plow deep furrows of strong impressions on the fancy in sleep, when the man walks in darkness and has no light, either of sound judgment or soul-comfort. It is night with the soul, and then a bush moved with the wind is an armed man; every conviction of conscience is condemnation. 2 Corinthians 1:8: "We were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of our life." Verse 9: "But we had the sentence of death" — there were loads and weights laid on us above strength. Darkened souls put on Christ's deep representations of wrath and blackness of indignation, and change him in their apprehensions into another Christ.

4. Satan can drink up at one draught a grieving and sorrowing spirit (2 Corinthians 2:7), and he has access to the fancy and outworks of the soul of the child of God, so he can enlarge the forms to a double bigness. Let it be considered whether the grammar of Heman is not a little swelled in more than ordinary rhetoric (Psalm 88:4): "I am counted as those who go down to the pit, as a man that has no strength." Verse 5: "Free among the dead, like the wounded that lie in the grave, whom you remember no more; and they are cut off by your hand." Verse 7: "Your wrath lies hard on me, and you have afflicted me with all your waves." If God forgot him as a buried man, and not a wave of God's wrath but was gone over his soul, what could God do more? And Job's words are a little beyond the line (Chapter [reconstructed: 13]:24): "Why do you hide your face from me, and take me for your enemy?" Words rise up to mountains. Job was not held by God to be an enemy: Satan can make every pin in the cross a hell, and put a new sense on God's dealings, other than he ever meant. When Christ opens a vein to bleed a conscience, Satan — if he may have leave — shall shut in his lion's teeth to tear the vein, and make the hole of the wound as wide as heart and life may come out; and therefore he raises up apprehensions, and sows strife, and brings pleas against Christ, and waters his own seed. "Can love kill you? Were it Christ that does all this, would he not once come to the bedside of a sick son? Can Christ's love throw a poor friend into hell, and leave him there? He has forgotten you." Satan can argue from dispensation and trials to the state, which is false logic. "This you suffer: therefore you are not in the state of adoption." It is not good that such a minion as Satan should have the ear of a deserted soul; he can carry tales between Christ and the soul, to separate between friends. Never believe ill of Christ; love thinks no ill. If you love Christ, two hells may cast water on your fire of love, but cannot quench it. Christ will believe no ill of you, let Satan speak his will.

5. Even the love of a saint to Christ, under a hard dispensation, is sick with jealousy, and travels in birth with fancied suspicions of Christ's love. Our love is swayed with misgivings; it is full of cares, and fears, and doubtings; because it is not always edged with heavenly wisdom. It takes life from sense, and felt embracings, from presence, and reciprocation of warmness from Christ's bowels; and when face answers not face, and Christ's love does not echo and resound to our love, then it faints. We too often measure Christ's love by our foot; we calculate Christ's love by our own elevation, not by his; and Christ's mysterious dispensation should not point the hour. Nor is the full moon, nor the noonday sun of Christ's love, the compass that our affections and love should sail by. Indeed, having not seen Christ (1 Peter 1:8), nor felt him, yet we love him, and believe in him; and this is most spiritual love, and has most of love in it. The more jealousy without ground, the less love of Christ — at least, the less solid constancy of love.

6. Unbelief is a special cause of soul-trouble. 1. In bodily diseases pain does not create itself; but sinful passive desertion does create itself. Christ cannot own unbelief, as coming within the compass of his creation; though by him all things were created. Unbelief spinning out new calumnies of Christ, adds oil to the fire, and makes desertion a thousand talent weight heavier than it would be. This may be evidenced in all the complaints of the saints under desertion; in which more is laid on Christ's name than is true. Unbelief is a querulous thing. (Isaiah 49:14) But Zion said, unbelieving Zion said, the Lord has forsaken me, and my Lord has forgotten me; this was an untruth, and is confuted in the next verses. Mary Magdalen thought they had taken away her Lord, and he was as near her as the turning about of her body; and she within speaking to him face to face; and when unbelief does raise such thoughts, as Christ has forgotten to be merciful; Christ is changed, he loves not to the end. What pain must be at the soul's bottom, where such misjudging of Christ, and his love is in the brim? And yet there is a coal of the love of Christ, smoking in the bottom of the soul. A loving opinion of Christ is hardly expelled. Especially, one particular mis-report should not make me receive a misunderstanding of Christ, I never heard ill of Christ before, but much of his excellence and sweetness, and why should I admit an untried impression, that the sun that gives light to all, is dark; that fire is cold, it's not true-like; that Christ is an enemy, if once a friend. Had we a storehouse, and a high-bent habit of honorable, sublime, and high thoughts of Jesus Christ, his excellence, the weight of his preciousness, eminence, we should the more hardly give way to the lies that our unbelieving heart raises against him.

2. Our second misgiving from unbelief, is in believing our state. (Psalm 31:22) I said in my haste, I am cut off from before your eyes. I am none of Christ's, is a too ordinary mistake; as (he is changed, and not mine) often goes before. We often find more fault, and first blame in Christ, if not only, before we see our own provocations. Hence the complaints of Job (chapters 6, 13, 16, 19) and of Jeremiah (chapters 20, 15) of Hezekiah (Isaiah 38) of Asaph (Psalm 77) of Heman (Psalm 88) of the Church (Isaiah 49:14-15; Isaiah 63; Isaiah 64; Psalm 102; Psalm 6; Psalm 42; Psalm 31) run more on the strain of complaining of God, and his unkind dispensation, than of the plaintiff's sins, and provocations; and where there is one mistake of ourselves under desertion, the reader may find out ten mistakes of Christ, and when the deserted soul misjudges his own state; it issues from, and reflects on the misjudged apprehension of Christ.

3. From unbelief issues the misjudging of our own actions: I do no good; or if I do, it's not [reconstructed: done] on the right motives, and for the right end, the good that I do. The antecedent is true, but not the consequence: there is a cloud in our fairest sun, and clay in our water; but because good works are not our saviors, it's no good ground to say, they have no influence in the way of our salvation; and they are not waymarks in our journey; because they are no part of the ransom that bought heaven. We have a grand opinion of our own righteousness, and when we miss it, we think we miss Christ himself; which is a great misjudging, and argues a believing in ourselves, not in Christ. And often soul-trouble arises from defects, omissions, and sins in ourselves. If simple grief for sin as offensive to love arise, that's good soul-trouble; but such soul-trouble as shakes the bottom of faith, and turns the soul off Christ, to seek righteousness in itself, is damnable: as it's hard for an unregenerate man to see sin in its most dreadful colors, and not despair: so it's hard for a regenerate person to see sin, as sin, and not to fall on unbelief, and doubting of Christ's love. Antinomians think any anxiety for sin, which expels actual rejoicing in Christ, is our turning off Christ, and our casting of the conscience again under the Spirit of bondage, and work of the law. Which is contrary to truth, and the command of James, to be afflicted and mourn; and Christ's saying, Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted; and Peter, who says, there may be need, that the saints be in heaviness for a season.

It's a great point of wisdom: 1. to know how far forth our spiritual walking may be a seed of comfort, we may easily err on either hand. 2. The logic would be: humble; Lord I am not haughty, therefore, I am comforted in you. Paul says, well, I know nothing by myself, yet am I not hereby justified; we would not build a tower on a molehill. 3. From our sinful walking, we may draw grounds of godly sorrow, yet not grounds of unbelief; faith and godly sorrow are consistent together. 4. It's not safe to argue that we are not in Christ, from the wants adhering to our sincere performances. While we slander ourselves, we may slander the Spirit of God. 5. The measure of our obedience, cannot be a warrant to counter-argue Christ, as want is no warrant to stand far off from Christ: no more than it's good logic; to flee from the fire, because you are cold; or to be at odds with gold, because you are needy, and poor; poverty may conclude a sailing with low sails, and humility, but not unbelief; your want of all things, should not empty rich Jesus Christ.

7. Absence of Christ misapprehended through unbelief occasions soul-trouble. In which there is something which evidences saving grace in the troubled soul, as is aforesaid. For the want of the thing loved cannot but here be a gracious torment to the lover. The Spouse is sick, and dies, when she wants him whom her soul loves (Song of Solomon 2:5; 5:6, 8). David so expresses himself (Psalm 84:2): My soul longs, yes even faints, or dies, or is at an end, for the courts of the Lord, my flesh and my heart cry out for the living God. The word [non-Latin alphabet] is to desire, or to be consumed, or to make an end of any thing. David's desire of enjoying God was such, as it was his death to want God; it may hold forth, as Pagnine observes, that David's soul either extremely desired the Lord, or died upon the absence of God. But to be anxiously troubled in an unbelieving manner is the sinful soul-trouble. Why does the soul doubt of Christ's winter more than of his summer? Absence and presence, his coming and his departing, are both his own works. God has liberty in the one as in the other; as it is God's liberty to make fair weather and storms, to make a fair day and a cloudy day; to make David a king, and his brethren shepherds and common soldiers, so has he his own freedom in the breathings of his own Spirit, and the blowing of his own wind, or of the drawing a curtain over his own face, and hiding himself: and neither in this, nor in any of his ways of freedom, can we challenge the Lord, or plead against him. And if we think we do well to be angry, even to the death, at the motions and breathings of Christ's free love, then may we compel Christ to be kind, and visit us, as we think good. Whatever you be, Christ is Lord of his own presence and visits, and it's good the King's chamber of presence be a dainty; and Christ's wine be not so common as water: nor can we here force kindness, or acts of heavenly manifestations on him; he hides himself. Why, he is as reasonable and wise in his going as in his coming.

2. We should take on us to steward and husband the kisses and embracements of Christ, better than he can do himself; and should quarrel, because the Lord has not thought fit to make heirs and minors, that are yet under nonage, masters and lords of their own young heaven; this were not a good world for us. Christ's love is better than wine (Song of Solomon 1). Neither our head nor our heart could endure to drink, at our own will, of this new wine of the higher kingdom. Better for us it is that Christ bear the key of the well of life, than children have it; and if the government of the higher and lower family be upon the shoulders of Christ, the leading of this or that single person to heaven is worthy Christ's care.

3. And consider, that Christ goes not behind the mountain, or hides himself upon mere hazard, but so weighty reasons, that love may be sharpened through absence; that the house may be adorned with new hangings, and Christ's bed made green; that care may be had, when he rests in his love, not to stir up, nor awake the beloved, until he please; that the high tides and rich feasts of Christ's love, after sad and heavy desertions, may heighten the worth and esteem of Christ; that faith and love may with more of the violence of [reconstructed: longing] lay hold on Christ, after long seeking, and not part with him on so easy terms (Song of Solomon 3:1-4); that we may know what weakness is in our own clay legs, under desertion, and how we are to walk on Christ's legs, which are pillars of marble set on sockets of gold; that absence and presence, the frownings and smilings of Christ, may be to the saints the little images of hell and heaven, and broken men may read their debts in Christ's account-book of free grace, with tears in their eyes, and songs of praise in their mouth. That we may be in high love, and sick for absent Christ; and may be at the pains through thick and thin to seek him. And learn to live less by sense, and more by faith, and resolve to die believing; and be charitable of Christ absent, and kiss his veil, when we can see no more; and be upon our watchtower, and know what of the night, and observe a soul-communion with God; which the Spirit of the world cannot do.

4. Nothing does more aloud cry the softness and baseness of our nature, than our impatience under sad dispensations, when we are positively resolved upon this, that God loves us; yet because of a cloud over our sun, and one scruple of gall in our joy, to lodge a new opinion, that Christ is changed into another God, and that his love does plot and contrive our destruction, argues a weak and soon shaken faith. It speaks lightness of love to Christ, that it's loosed at the root with the scratch of a pin; he hides himself, and you say, oh, it's not Christ, but some other like him; for Christ would not so go and come. Well-rooted friendship can scarcely suffer you to believe so much of a brother, or a companion. But when you thus misjudge Christ, we may gather, if he should appear in the garments of vengeance, as he does to the damned; it's to be feared, this would drink up our faith and love, if Christ were not more gracious than we are constant; Lord, lead us not into temptation.

5. I deny not but seeming wrath, and Christ's intercepting of messengers of love, and flamings of hell's fury on the soul, are prodigious-like comets, glimmering over a trembling conscience; and that it's much to keep orthodox, sound, and precious thoughts of Christ, when the Christian is not himself; yet when the child [reconstructed: reels] about in a round, to say, the earth runs about in a circle, or to think the shore or the rock sails from the ship that carries you, when the ship moves and the shore stands still, are but signs of a weak-headed and green sailor: so because you are deeply affected with a sad absence, to believe Christ's love runs a circle, and that you stand still as a rock, and the change is in Christ, argues a green, raw wit, and instability of faith; and that the sea-sands can no more easily drink up a gallon of water, than that temptation would swallow up the poor man's faith thus fainting, if the invisible strength of the Advocate, who intercedes for the saints, did not uphold him.

Now is my soul troubled.

2. The second circumstance in the text, is the time, now is my soul troubled. There is an emphasis in this Now: Christ had a troubled soul before, and was sensible of afflictions; but now he saw more in this cross, than in all afflictions; he saw the curse of the law, and the wrath of God stamped on this cross. Christ had never any Now, or juncture of time, before or after, comparable to this Now. Observe that, Christ and his followers must look for growing and swelling crosses. (Matthew 26:37) Jesus began to be sorrowful, and very heavy. He had all his life (Isaiah 53) sorrow; verse 3, he was a man of sorrows; as if every piece of Christ had been sorrow, and had acquaintance with grief: and was known and noted to all, marked out to all, by his griefs; but now he wades deeper in troubles. Let all Christ's followers look for a growing cross, and a sadder and sadder Now. (Psalm 3) Lord, how are they increased that trouble me? (Psalm 25:17) The troubles of my heart are enlarged — that is, become most broad. (Psalm 42:7) Deep calls to deep, at the noise of your water-spouts, all your waves and your floods are gone over me. One cross calls to another, God rains them down, as one wave of the sea calls another. So Job's afflictions came on him in a growing way. David, (Psalm 69:2) I sink in the deep mire, where there is no standing. I wade on deeper and deeper, till I lose ground and bottom. I am come into the deep waters, where the floods overflow me. (2.) Christ's sufferings are called a Cup; it behooved to be filled to the brim, and Christ weighs out in ounces and drams, so much gall in the Cup, and yet some more; and because that does not work the cure, yet an ounce more. (3.) Christ can appoint clothes for us, as we have cold; and a burden answerable to the bones and strength of the back. It is a doubt if David's faith would reach so far, as that he should bear it well, that another should sacrifice a wicked son Absalom to God's justice; O how did David mourn that he was killed! Yet the Lord measured out to Abraham a Cup of deeper gall, to kill with his own hand his one son, a believing son, an heir of the promise. (4.) What if twelve years of bloody issue be little enough for to work a woman to a necessity of seeking to Christ; yet another must be eighteen years; and a sick man thirty and eight years. Our Physician knows us well. Let us study for a growing faith to growing crosses: and if a cross as broad and large as all Britain, and a sword as public as three Kingdoms, indeed as all the bounds of Christendom come; so that there be no peace to him that goes out, or comes in, we are to be armed for it. Nor 2. is it enough after pestilence and the sword to sit down, and say, Now I'll die in my nest, and multiply my days as the sand. Stay, in heaven only there be neither widows, nor killed husbands, nor beggars, nor plundered houses; understand the sense of providence right; we have not yet resisted to blood: we have yet seas and floods of blood to swim through, before we come to shore. A private cross is too narrow a plaster to our sore; and therefore a public one, as broad as all Scotland, as all your Mother-Country and Church is little enough. It must be yet broader, and we must yet lose more blood.

What shall I say?

3. The third circumstance in Christ's soul-trouble, is his anxiety of mind, What shall I say: it is as much as, What shall I do? But what does this anxiety of Christ mean? It is like a doubting of the event; but there is neither doubting nor despairing in it. There is fear, exceeding great heaviness and sorrow in it; and as an anxious man through extremity of suffering is put to his wits' end, as destitute of counsel, to say, I know neither what to do, nor say; so Christ had a sinless anxiety. Learned divines acknowledge there was an innocent and sinless oblivion in the sensitive memory, in regard it was intent only upon the extreme agony, and not obliged in all differences of time to remember every duty: and affirmative precepts oblige not in all, and every juncture of time.

2. Nor is faith actually, always, without exception, to believe: it is possible that faith in the act, and extreme fear in the same act, be physically inconsistent.

3. Neither were Christ's sensitive affections, in their physical and natural operations, so restrained and awed by a divine law, as that they may not put forth themselves to the utmost and highest degree of intensity, when the light of reason shows the object in the superlative degree of vehemency. Reason and light could never show to any suffering man, at one time, such a great death of evil of loss and positive evil of sense, as it did show to Christ, at this instant of time. To be suspended from an immediate, full, perfect, personal, intuitive fruition, and vision of God, is a greater eclipse, than if ten thousand suns were turned into pieces of sackcloth of hair, and the light totally extinguished; or, than if all the angels, all the glorified saints that are, or shall be, in heaven, were utterly excluded from the comfortable vision of God's face. You cannot imagine what a sad suspension of the actual shining of the immediately enjoyed majesty of God this was; and what a positive curse and wrath was inflicted on Christ, so as his anxiety could not exceed.

4. Christ was to suffer in his natural affections, of joy, sorrow, confidence, fear, love, yet without sin; and though I could not show how this anxiety and faith could consist, yet it cannot be denied; for grace does not destroy nature, nor could the vision of personal union hinder the exercise of all human affections and infirmities in Christ, in the state of his humiliation, as clothes of gold cannot allay the pain of the head and stomach. Grace is a garment of cloth of gold, and the union personal, the perfection of grace; yet it hindered not Christ from being plunged in extreme horror and anxiety.

5. There were in Christ at this time some acts of innocent and sinless darkness in the sensitive soul, that he actually thinking of the blackness and dreadful visage of the second death, was now like a man destitute of counsel. But 1. This was merely penal, and out of dispensation; for Christ's soul-pain is an excellent screen and shadow, or a sconce between the soul-troubled believer and hell; and Christ's anxiety, and his, What shall I say? is a bank and a great high coast between a distressed conscience who is at, What shall I do? where shall I go? where shall I have relief and help? and the extremity of his forlorn condition.

2. Christ's anxiety was not opposite to any light of faith, or moral holiness; as the simple want of light is not night, an eclipse of the sun removes no light, indeed not at all one beam of light from the body of the sun; all is light that is on the other side of the covering, it removes only light from us, who are on this side of the interposed covering which causes the eclipse. This anxiety was only opposed to the actual happiness and natural fruition of God enjoyed in the personal union, not to any light of a moral duty required in Jesus Christ. But 2. We are not to conceive that Christ's anxiety, fear and sorrow, were only imaginary, and supposed upon a mistake that had not any fundamentum in re, ground in the thing itself; as Jacob mourned and would not be comforted, at the supposed death of his son Joseph, thinking he was torn with wild beasts, when the child was alive and safe; and as the believer will sorrow that God has forsaken him, and has forgotten to be merciful, and that he is turned of a friend an enemy, when it is not so, but a great mistake; God has not forgotten to be merciful, The Strength of Israel cannot repent and change. Christ's darkness in this was negative, and naturally negative, he looking wholly on real sadness, death, wrath, the curse of the Law, but not privative, or morally and culpably privative; for Christ had never a wrong thought of God, he did never believe God to be changed; nor did he upon a misjudging of God conceive God had forsaken him, when as he had not forsaken him, as if Christ's spiritual sense were deceived, in taking up a misapprehension of God, or his dispensation. And therefore that complaint, Why [illegible] have you forsaken me? has not this meaning, as it has in many places of Scripture, There is no cause why you should forsake me; for there were just causes why the Lord, at this time, should forsake his Son Christ. And therefore the forsaking of Christ was real; because grounded upon justice. The elect had forsaken God, Christ stood in their place, to bear their iniquities (Isaiah 53), that is, the punishment which the elect should have suffered eternally in hell, for their own iniquities: And in justice God did for a time forsake his Son Christ, not only in sense and apprehension, but really. 2. Satan does so mist and delude the weak believers, that because they will not mourn, nor be humbled, for real objects, sins, unbelief, misspending of time, which are true causes of sorrow and mourning, they waste sorrow needlessly and sinfully, the righteous dispensation of God intervening, for false and supposed causes, as through ignorance, for these things that are not sins, yet are falsely conceived to be sins; or through misapprehension, imagining that the Lord is changed, and become their utter enemy, when he cannot forget them (Isaiah 49:14-15); or through misjudging their own state, conceiving they are reprobates, when there is no such matter. So when we will not duly object, place and time our affections, it is righteousness with God that we lose our labor, and spill and feed away our affections prodigally, in a wood of thorns, for nothing; because we do not give them out for Christ: and so we must sow, and never reap. But Christ could not thus lavish away his fear, sorrow, sadness. I know there is a forsaking in God, joined with hatred: God neither in this sense forsook Christ, nor did Christ complain of this forsaking. God's forsaking of him, was in regard of the influence of actual vision, 2. of the actual joy and comfort of union, 3. of the penal inflicting of the curse, wrath, sorrow, sadness, stripes, death, on the man Christ.

Use. If Christ was put to, What shall I say? what shall I do? what a sad and forlorn condition are sinners in? How shiftless are they? (Isaiah 10:3) When God asks of them, What will you do in the day of visitation, and in the desolation that shall come upon you from far? to whom will you flee for help? where will you leave your glory? (Jeremiah 5:31) What will you do in the end? Guiltiness is a shiftless and a forlorn thing. Take a man pained and tormented with the stone, he cannot lie on this side, he turns to the other, he cannot lie, his couch cannot ease him; he casts himself out of the bed to the floor of the house, he cannot rest there; no place, not Paradise, say a man were [reconstructed: transported up to] heaven before the throne, the place of glory, simply considered, should not ease him. What a desperate course do the damned take, to seek dens and rocks of the earth to hide themselves in? Can you lodge under the roof of the creature, when the Creator armed with red and fiery wrath pursues you? And when that fails them, and they dare not pray to God, they petition hills and mountains to be graves above them, to bury such lumps of wrath alive (Revelation 6).

2. I defy any man, with all his art, to be a hypocrite, and to play the politician in hell, at the last judgment, in the hour of death, or when the conscience is wakened. A robber does never mock the Law and Justice at the gallows, whatever he do in the woods and mountains. Men do cry, and weep, and confess sins right down, and in sad earnest, when Conscience speaks out wrath, there is no mind then of fig-leaf coverings, or of colors, veils, masks, or excuses.

3. Conscience is a piece of eternity, a chip that fell from a Deity, and the nearest shadow of God, and ends as it begins. At first, even by its natural constitution, Conscience wars against Concupiscence, and speaks sadly out of Adam, while it is hot, and not cold-dead; I was afraid, hearing your voice, I hid myself; and this it does (Romans 1:19; Romans 2:15). While lusts buy and bribe conscience out of office, then it cooperates with sin, and becomes dead. In the end, when God shakes an eternal rod over conscience, then it gathers warm blood again, as it had in Adam's days; and has a resurrection from death, and speaks gravely, and terribly, without going about the bush. O how ponderous and heavy! How far from tergiversation, cloakings, and shifting, are the words that dying Atheists utter, of the deceitfulness of sin, the vanity of the World, the terrors of God? Was not Judas in sad earnest? Did Saul speak policy, when he weeps on the Witch, and says, I am sore distressed? Did Spira dissemble and sport, when he roared like a Bear against divine wrath?

What shall I say?

This says, that Christ answering for our sins had nothing to say; the sufferer of Satisfactory pain has no words of Apology for sin. The friend that was to be cast in utter darkness, for coming to the Supper of the great King, without his wedding Garment, his mouth was muzzled, as the mouth of a mad dog; he was speechless and could not bark, when Divine justice speaks out of God. Job chapter 40, answers verse 4: Behold, I am vile, what shall I answer you? I will lay my hand on my mouth. When the Church finds justice pleading against her; it is thus (Ezekiel 16:63): That you may remember your sins and be confounded, and there may be no more an opening of a mouth, because of your shame, when I am pacified toward you, for all that you have done, says the Lord. I grant, satisfactory justice does not here put men to silence, but it proves how little we can answer for sin. Even David remembering that Shimei, and other instruments had deservedly afflicted him, in relation to Divine justice, says (Psalm 39:9): I was dumb, I opened not my mouth, because you did it. There were three demands of justice given in against Christ, all which he answered: Justice put it home upon Christ. 1. All the elect have sinned, and by the law are under eternal wrath: To this claim, our Advocate and Surety could say nothing on the contrary. It is true, Lord. Christ does satisfy the Law, but not contradict it. The very word of the Gospel answers all these. In this regard, Christ's silence was an answer; and to this, Christ said, What shall I say? I have nothing to say.

2. You are the sinner in Law; to this Christ answered, A body you have given me. The Son of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give himself a ransom for many (Matthew 20:28). The whole Gospel says, Christ who knew no sin, was made sin for us.

3. You must die for sinners. This was the third demand; and Christ answers it (Psalm 40; Hebrews 10): You have given me a body, here am I to do your will. To all these three Christ answered with silence: and though in regard of his patience to men, it be said (Isaiah 53:7): He was brought as a Lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before the shearer is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. Yet it was most true, in relation to Divine justice, and the Spirit of God has a higher respect to Christ's silence (which was a wonder to Pilate) before the bar of God's justice. O could we by faith see God giving in a black and sad claim, a bill written within, and without, in which are all the sins of all the elect, from Adam to the last man; and Christ with watery eyes receiving the claim, and saying, Lord, it is just debt, crave me, what shall I say on the contrary? We should be more bold, not barely to name our sins, and tell them over to God, but to confess them, and study more for the answer, of a good Conscience; by faith to substitute an Advocate, to answer the demands of Justice for our sins. And if men believed that Christ, as surety satisfying for their sins, could say nothing on the contrary, but granted all; they should not make excuses and shifts, either to wipe their mouth with the whore, and say, I have not sinned, nor be witty to make distinctions, and shifts, and excuses to cover, mince, and extenuate their sins.

Father save me from this hour.

The fourth part of this complaint, is an answer that Faith makes to Christ's question. What shall I say? What shall I do? Say praying wise (says Faith) Father, save me from this hour. A word of the coherence, then of the words. We often dream, that in trouble, help is beyond Sea, and far off; as far as heaven is from earth. When help is at our elbow; and if the Spirit of Adoption be within, the prisoner has the key of his own jail within, in his own hand. God was in Christ's bosom, when he was in a stormy Sea, and the light of Faith says, behold, the shore at hand. Death takes feet and power of motion from a man; but, (Psalm 23:4) yet Faith makes a supposition, that David may walk and live, breathe in the grave, in the valley of the shadow of death. It is the work of Faith to keep the heat of life in the warm blood, even among clods of clay, when the man is buried. This anxious condition Christ was in, as other straits are to the saints, is a strait and narrow pass, there was no help for him on the right hand, nor on the left; nor before, nor behind, nor below. Christ, as David his type, (Psalm 141:4) looked round about, but refuge failed him, no man cared for his soul; but there was a way of escape above him, it was a fair easy way to heaven. The church was in great danger and trouble of war and desolation, when she spoke to God, (Psalm 46). Yet their faith seeing him to be very near them; God is our refuge and strength: true, he can save (says sense) but that is a foul flying in the woods, and over-Sea-hop, far off: Not far off (says Faith) a very present help in trouble: or a help easily, or [illegible] exceedingly found in [reconstructed: trouble]. So (Psalm 44:9), 'You have cast us off.' (Hebrew: 'You are far from us, you have put us to shame.') What lower could the people be? Verse 19: 'We are in the dungeon, in the place of dragons: We are in the cold grave, beside the worms and corruption; and you have covered us with the shadow of death, a cold bed.' Yet then see what Faith says, Verse 20: 'We have not forgotten the name of our God.' 'Our God' is a word of great faith. And to come to Christ; his soul was troubled; He was at, 'What shall I say?' in a great perplexity. Yet he has a strong faith, both of his Father, and of his own condition. He believed God to be his Father, and calls him Father. Indeed, in this hell, he applies the relation of a Father to himself, (Matthew 26:39) 'O my Father'; this is the warmest love-thought of God; and when his comfort was at its lowest, his confidence in the covenant strongest. 'My God, my God,' etc. It is much glory to our Lord, that Faith sparkle fire and be hot, when comfort is cold and low. O what an honor to God, the man is slain, and cold dead, yet he believes strongly the salvation of God. Christ kills the poor man, and the man's faith kisses and hangs about Christ's neck, and says, 'If I must die, let Christ's bosom be my death-bed.' Then he must believe, if God was his Father, by good logic, he must be the Son of God, and if God was his God, then the heir of all must claim the privileges of all the sons of the house in covenant. God (I may say) was more than Christ's God, and more than in covenant with God, as he was more than a servant, so more than a son, than a common one, and Christ's faith is so rational, and so binding with strength of reason, that he will but use such a weapon, as we may use, even the light of Faith, and he will claim but the common benefit of all the sons in covenant, when he says, 'My God, my God.' Whatever Papists say, if ever Christ was in hell, it is now; but see, he has heaven present with him in hell. If God could be apprehended by faith, in hell, as a God in covenant, then should hell become heaven to that believing soul. Christ took God, and his God, and his Father; as Jonah, a type of him, down to the bowels of hell with him: and as we see some dying men, they lay hold on some thing dying, and die with that in their hand; which we call the dead-grip: so Christ died with his Father, by faith, and his Spouse, in regard of love stronger than the grave, in his arms: this was Christ's death-embracings, his death-kiss; and Job professes so much. Lower he could not be, than he complains he is, (chapter 19) in all respects, of body, which was a clod of bones and skin; in regard of wife, servants, dear friends, of the hand of God in his soul. Yet verse 25: 'I know that my goel, my kinsman, Redeemer lives, and that he shall stand the last man on the earth.'

This leads us, in our forlorn perplexities, to follow Christ's footsteps, both under evils of punishment and sin. The people in their captivity in Babylon, (Ezekiel 37) were a host of dead and (which is more) dry bones; the churches in Germany, in Scotland, are dry bones, and in their graves. The churches in England and Scotland, in regard of the sinful divisions, and blasphemous opinions in the worship of God, are in a worse captivity, and lower than dry bones, and our woes are not at an end; yet the faith of many sees, that deliverance, and union there must be, and that our graves must be opened, and that the wind of the Lord must breathe upon the dry bones, that they may live. God has in former times opened our graves, when strange lords had dominion over us, I would we were freed of them now also, but our yoke is heavier than it was; but God shall deliver his people from those that oppress them.

Again, as you see in great perplexity Christ believed God to be his Father, and that he himself was a son; so are we under pressures of conscience, and doubtings because of sin, to keep precious, high, and excellent love-thoughts of Jesus Christ.

Object 1. But what if a soul be brought to doubt of its conversion; because he finds no good he either does, or can do? True faith, is a working faith.

Some cure this as they prove physicians of no value to poor souls — I mean, Antinomians: for, say they, this is the disease that you are in doubting of your faith, because you find not such and such qualifications in you, and therefore seek a righteousness in yourself, and not in Christ. I should easily grant that man's inherent righteousness is, in his carnal apprehension, his very Christ and Redeemer; but in the meantime, these are two carnal and fleshly extremities, and faith walks in the middle between them. First, it's a fleshly way to say that, because I find sin reigning in me — I have killed my brother, says a Cain; I have betrayed the Lord of glory, says a Judas — yet I am not (says a Libertine) to question whether I believe or no; for this puts fleshly and profane men on a notion: be not solicitous about what you are, take no fear of serving sin and various lusts, but believe, and never doubt whether your faith be a dead or a living faith, though you go on to walk after the flesh; but believe, and doubt not whether you believe or no. The other extremity is of some weak Christians, who because they find that in them — that is, in their flesh — dwells no good, and they sin daily, find much untowardness and back-drawing in holy duties; therefore (say they) I have no faith, I am none of Christ's: this is a false conclusion, drawn from a true antecedent, and springs from a root of self-seeking, and righteousness which we naturally seek in ourselves; for I am not, being once justified, to seek my justification in my sanctification; but being not justified, I may well seek my non-justification in my non-sanctification. As Libertines say, this is the fault of all, when it is the fault only of some weak mis-judging souls; so do they take the saints off from all disquietness and grief of mind for neglect of spiritual duties, as if all godly sorrow and displeasure for our sinful omissions were nothing but a legal sorrow for want of self-righteousness, and a sinful unbelief: but it's formally not any such thing, but lawful and necessary, to make the sinner go with a low sail, and esteem the more highly of Christ; and it's only sinful, when abused to such a legal inference, I omit this and this, I sin in this and this, therefore, God is not my Father, nor am I his son.

But I hold this position, as evidently deducible out of the text: in the roughest and most bloody dispensation of God toward saints, neither soul-trouble, nor anxiety of spirit can be a sufficient ground to any, why they should not believe, or question their son-ship and relation to God, as their Father. It's clear that Christ in his saddest condition believed, and stood to it, that God was his Father. The only question will be, if sinful and fleshly walking be a good warrant. To which I answer, if any be a servant of sin, and walk after the flesh, and be given up to a reprobate mind to commit sin with greediness, such a one has good warrant to believe that God is not his Father, and that he is not in Christ; because (2 Corinthians 5:17), if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. If any be risen with Christ, he seeks the things that are above, where Christ is at the right hand of God. He is dead, and his life is hid with Christ in God. And, he mortifies his members on earth (Colossians 3:1-4). He is redeemed from this present evil world (Galatians 1:4). He is dead to sins, and lives to righteousness (1 Peter 2:24). He is redeemed from his vain conversation (1 Peter 1:18). He is the temple of the Holy Ghost; he is not his own, but bought with a price; and is, being washed in Christ's blood, a king over his lusts, a priest to offer himself to God, a holy, living, and acceptable sacrifice (1 Corinthians 6:19-20; Revelation 1:5-6; Romans 12:1). But he that remains the servant of sin, and walks after the flesh, and is given up to a reprobate mind, etc., is no such man; therefore, such a man has no claim to God as his Father: and upon good grounds may, and ought to question his being in Christ. Only, let these cautions be observed. First, it is not safe to argue from the quantity of holy walking; for many sound believers may find untowardness in well-doing, yet must not cast away themselves for that. A smoking flax is not quenched by Christ, for that it has little heat, or little light; and therefore ought not by us. Second, beware we lean not too much to the quality of walking holily, to infer, I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all I have; then, God I thank him, I am not a hypocrite, as the publican, and a wicked man. Sincerity is a perceptible, speaking grace; it's seldom in the soul without a witness. Lord, you know that I love you (says Peter); he could answer for sincerity, but not for quantity: he dared not answer Christ, that he knew that he loved him more than these. Sincerity is humble, and walks on positives, Lord, I love you; but dares not venture on comparatives, Lord, I love you more than others. Third, there be certain hours, when the believer cannot make strong conclusions, to infer, I am holy, therefore I am justified; because in darkness we see neither black nor white, and God's light hides our case from us, that we may be humbled, and believe. Fourth, believing is surer than too frequent gathering warmness from our own hot skin.

Saltmarsh, and other Libertines make three doubts that persons have, as sufficient grounds, to question their being in Christ: first, back-sliding; second, the man's finding no change in the whole man; third, unbelief. Give me leave therefore in all meekness to offer my thoughts, in sifting and scanning this doctrine.

This is then (says he) your first doubt, that you are not therefore beloved of God, or in Christ, because you fell back again into your sin, so as you did. Suppose I prove to you, that no sin can make one less beloved of God, or less in Christ.

Answer.

Then I shall conclude, that sin cannot hinder the love of God to my soul.

Question.

This I prove: 1. The mercies of God are sure mercies, his love, his covenant everlasting: Paul was persuaded that neither life, nor death, etc. could separate him from the love of God. The Lord changes not in loving sinners. 2. Whom the Lord loves, he loves in his Son, he accounts him as his Son; for he is made to us, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. But God loves his Son always alike; for he is the same yesterday, and today, and forever: therefore, nothing can make God love us less; because he loves us not for ourselves, or for anything in ourselves, etc. 3. God is not as man, or the son of man. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's chosen? The foundation of God stands sure. God's love is as himself, ever the same.

Answer 1. The thing in question to resolve the sinner, whether he be loved of God, from eternity, as one chosen to glory, is never proved, because no sin can make one less beloved from eternity; and sin cannot hinder the love of God, (non concluditur negatum;) for it is true, sin cannot hinder the flowings and emanation of the love of election, it being eternal; else not any of the race of mankind, God seeing them all as guilty sinners, could ever have been loved with an eternal love. But the consequence is nothing, therefore, backsliders in heart, and servants of sin, have no ground to question, whether they be loved with the love of eternal election, or not.

2. This Physician lays down the conclusion in question, which is to be proved, to the resolving of the man's conscience, that he may be cured; the thing to be proved to the sick man, say he were a Judas, wakened in conscience, is, that notwithstanding his betraying of Christ, yet God loved him with an everlasting love, and he is in Christ. Now he cures Judas thus, God's love is everlasting, his covenant everlasting, no sin can hinder God to love Judas, or separate a traitor to Christ, from the love of Christ. Separation supposes a union; less loving supposes loving: so he heals the man thus; no disease can overcome or hinder the art of such a skilled Physician, to cure a dying man. But what if this skilled Physician will not undertake to cure the man, nor to move his tongue for advice, nor to stir one finger to feel the man's pulse: therefore, the man must be cured. For if the man be a backslider in heart and a servant of sin, Christ never touched his pulse. He has as yet sure grounds to question, whether he be loved of God, or be in Christ, or no; for except you prove the man to be loved with an everlasting love, you can prove nothing: and your argument will not conclude anything for the man's peace, except you prove him to be chosen of God; which is his only question. But say that he is loved from everlasting, and that he is in Christ, by faith, it is easy to prove, that his sins cannot change everlasting love, nor make him less beloved of God, nor separate him from the love of God. You must then either remove the man's doubting, from signs inherent in the man, (and if he be a backslider in heart, you fetch fire and water from beyond the moon to cure him;) or you must fetch warrants to convince him, from the mind, eternal counsels of love and free grace within God; and that is all the question between the poor man and you. You cannot prove God has loved him from everlasting, because he has loved him from everlasting. If Libertines in this argument intend to prove, that a chosen convert in Christ has no ground to question, that he is not beloved of God, and not in Christ — 1. That is nothing to the thesis of Antinomians, maintained by all, that sinners, as sinners, are to believe God's eternal love in Christ to them; and so all sinners, elect or reprobate, are to believe the same. 2. It is nothing to the universal commandment, that all and every one in the visible church, wearied and laden with sin, or not wearied and laden, are immediately to come to Christ and rest on him, as made of God to them their righteousness, sanctification, and redemption, without any inherent qualification in them. 3. It is nothing to the point of freeing all, and building a golden bridge to deliver all who are obliged to believe, elect or reprobate, from doubting whether they be in Christ or not, that they may easily come to Christ, and believe his eternal love and redemption in him, though they be in the gall of bitterness, and bonds of iniquity, and that immediately. Which golden paradise to heaven and Christ, Antinomians liberally promise to all sinners, as sinners. I cannot believe that it is so easy a step to Christ.

For the second: It's a dream, that God loves sinners with the same love every way, with which he loves his own Son Christ. And why? Because God loves us only for his own Son, and for nothing in us — therefore, far more it must follow, it's a far other, a higher, fountain love, with which the Father loves his own eternal and consubstantial Son, the Mediator between God and man; and that derived love with which he loves us sinners. As the one is: 1. Natural; the latter, free. 2. The love of the Father to the Son, as his consubstantial Son, and so far as it's essentially included in his love to Jesus Christ Mediator, is not a love founded on grace and free-mercy, which might never have been in God; because essentially, the Father must love his Son Christ, as his Son; and being Mediator, he cannot for that renounce his natural love to him, which is the fundamental cause, why he loves us for Christ his Son, as Mediator; but the love with which the Father loves us for his Son Christ, is founded on free grace and mercy; and might possibly never have been in God. For, 1. as he could not but beget his Son, he could not but love him; nature, not election can have place in either: but it was his free will to create a man, or not create him. 2. He cannot but love his Son Christ, but God might either have loved neither man nor angel, so as to choose them to salvation, and he might have chosen other men and angels, than these whom he has chosen; God has no such freedom in loving his own consubstantial Son. 2. It's an untruth, that God loves his chosen ones, as he does love his Son; that is, with the same degree of love, with which he loves his Son; I think that not far from either gross ignorance, or blasphemy. It possibly may be the same love by proportion, with which the Father tenders the Mediator, or Redeemer, and all his saved and ransomed ones; but in regard of willing good to the creature loved, he neither loves his redeemed with the same love, with which he loves his Son; except blasphemously we say, God has as highly exalted all the redeemed, and given to them a name above every name, as he has done to his own Son; nor does he so love all his chosen ones, as he confers equal grace and glory upon all alike; as if one star differed not from another star in glory, in the highest heavens. Our own good works cannot make our Lord love us less or more, with the love of eternal election; but they may make God love us more with the love of complacency, and a sweeter manifestation of God in the fruits and gracious effects of his love. According to that (John 14:23): Jesus said, if a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him.

The third reason is the same with the first, and proves nothing but a Major Proposition, not denied by the disquieted sinner, which is this: Whoever is justified and chosen, cannot be condemned; whomever the Lord once loves to salvation, he must always love to salvation; for his love is like himself, and changes not. But the disquieted sinner is chosen and loved to salvation. This assumption is all the question: and the truth of a Major Proposition, can never prove the truth of the assumption.

Saltmarsh, Free Grace, Chap. 4. Pag. 83, 84, 85.

Because you feel not yourself sanctified, you fear you are not justified. If you suppose that God takes in any part of your faith, repentance, new obedience, or sanctification, as a ground upon which he justifies or forgives: 1. you are clearly against the Word; for if it be of works, it is no more of grace. 2. It must then be the only evidence you seek for; and you ask for sanctification to help your assurance of justification: but take it in the Scripture's way.

1. In the Scriptures, Christ is revealed to be our sanctification. Christ is made to us righteousness, sanctification. I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. You are Christ's, but you are sanctified, but you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus. He has quickened us together with Christ. We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to good works. Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone: That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that new man which after God was created in righteousness and true holiness; We are members of his body, of his flesh, and his bones. And being found in him, not having my own righteousness. I can [reconstructed: do] all things through Christ which strengthens me. But Christ is all in all. Your life is hid with Christ in God (Hebrews 13:20-21). All these set forth Christ as our sanctification — the fullness of his, the all in all. Christ has believed perfectly for us, he has sorrowed for sin perfectly, he has obeyed perfectly, he has mortified sin perfectly; and all is ours, and we are Christ's, and Christ is God's.

2. The second thing is faith about our own sanctification — we must believe more truth of our own graces than we can see or feel: the Lord in his dispensation has so ordered, that here our life should be hid with Christ in God, that we should walk by faith, not by sight. So we are to believe our repentance true in him, who has repented for us; our mortifying sin true in him, through whom we are more than conquerors, our new obedience true in him, who has obeyed for us, and is the end of the Law to everyone that believes, our change of the whole man true in him, who is righteousness and true holiness. And thus without faith, it's impossible to please God. This is Scripture-assurance to see everyone in himself as nothing, and himself every thing in Christ. Faith is the ground of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen. All other assurances are rotten conclusions from the Word, invented by legal teachers not understanding the mystery of the Kingdom of Christ. The Scriptures bid you see nothing in yourself, or all as nothing. These teachers bid you see something in yourself: so as the leaving out Christ in sanctification, is the foundation of all doubts, fears, distractions. And he that looks on his repentance, on his love, on his humility, on his obedience, and not in the tincture of the blood of Christ, must needs believe weakly and uncomfortably.

Answer.

If a servant of sin, any Cain, wakened with the terrors of God, see his sins, feel hell in his soul for them, and have no warm thoughts of love, and far-off-affiance, at least in Christ Jesus; but flee from Christ, and go to the enemies of Christ for comfort, as Judas did, he may strongly conclude: I feel, I am not sanctified; I hate the Physician Christ, and run from him: Therefore, I am not justified. And from a true real non-feeling of sanctification, it is a strong consequence, there is no justification. But from a misprizing of grace and sanctification in myself, I cannot conclude, I am not justified. We know Papists in point of certainty of salvation, argue so; many deluded hypocrites believe, or imagine, they have oil in their lamps, yet they are deceived; therefore the saints can have no certainty they are in Christ. It is just like the answer now in hand. A misjudging of sanctification, cannot argue no justification: Therefore, a true and real judgment of no sanctification in hypocrites, and slaves of sin, cannot argue the persons to be justified, who thus argue. It is as if I should argue thus; a frantic and a sleeping man cannot know that he is frantic, and sleeping; therefore a sober and a waking man, cannot know that he is sober and waking. For a deserted child of God is in some spiritual frenzy and sleep, and does misprize Christ in himself, and sanctification; and therefore argues often, that he is not in Christ, upon false principles. But a wakened conscience in Cain, and Judas, do strongly conclude, I am not a new creature, but a servant of sin: Therefore, I am not justified, and not in Christ; and Cain in this consequence is sober, and not asleep.

2. Not any Protestant divine, whom the author calls Legal teachers, ignorant of the mystery of the Gospel; did ever teach, that faith, new obedience, repentance, are grounds upon which God justifies a sinner. Antinomians, who make repentance and mortification all one with faith; and as Master Den says, they are but a change of the mind, to seek righteousness and mortification in Christ — not in ourselves. Thus much [illegible] does signify, must say, as we are justified by faith, so also by repentance, and mortification: if repentance be nothing but faith, as they say.

3. We seek only the evidence of justification in our holy walking; as the Scripture does, (1 Peter 1:24; Galatians 1:4; 1 Peter 1:18; 1 John 3:14). Countless places say, these that live to Christ, and are new creatures must be in Christ, and justified, (2 Corinthians 5:17; 1 Corinthians 6:9-12; Galatians 2:20; Colossians 3:1-4). Then the arguing from the effect to the cause can be no rotten conclusion, except by accident, in a soul distempered under desertion and weakness.

4. These places that make Christ our sanctification, and Christ to live in us, and believers to be the workmanship of Jesus created in him, to good works, etc. Make not these to be acts of Christ formally repenting perfectly in us, sorrowing for sin, mortifying sin perfectly in us: as if we were mere patients, and were only obliged to repent, sorrow, mortify sin, when the Spirit breathes [reconstructed: in] us, and not otherwise, as Libertines explain themselves; which I hope to refute hereafter. 2. Nor do these places make justification and regeneration all one; as Master Towne, with other Antinomians do. For we are not regenerated by faith, but that we may believe; but we are justified by faith. 2. Regeneration puts in us a new birth, the image of the second Adam; justification formally is for the imputed righteousness of Christ, which is in Christ, not in us. And it seems to me, that they make justification and sanctification all one: for the author says, that Christ not only repents in us, but for us, Christ obeyed for us, and is the end of the Law to every one that believes. Now what mysterious sense can be here, I cannot dream; Sure, it is no Gospel-secret; if the meaning (that Christ repents, and obeys for us,) be, that Christ by his grace works in us repentance, and new obedience, and mortification, and the change of the whole man; it is a good and sound sense. But then how must all assurances from repentance and new obedience, be the rotten conclusions of legal teachers? To see all these worked by Christ, as the efficient and meritorious cause, and to ascribe them to the Spirit of Jesus, and from there conclude, we are justified, as all Protestant divines teach, is no rotten conclusion of legal teachers. For sure, if we ascribe them to nature, to free will, to ourselves, and confide in them, as parts of our righteousness, and from them, in that notion, draw the assurance of our justification, as Papists, and Arminians do, and as the Saints out of fleshly presumption may do; this is no doctrine of Protestants. Is the sun obliged to me, because I borrow light from it? Or the floods and rivers beholden to men because they drink out of them? The new man is a creature of Christ's finding; cursed be they that sacrifice to free will; it is a strange God. The kingdom of grace, is a hospital of free graces to sick men: all we do, the least good thought, or gracious motion in the soul, is a flower, and a rose of Christ's planting, and an apple that grew on the tree of life; a sinner is the stock, but free grace the sap. Christ's Father the husbandman, life and growing is from Jesus the vine tree; we are but poor twigs that bring forth fruit in Christ. But I fear the sense of this, that Christ repents for us, and obeys for us, he being the end of the Law to every one that believes; be far otherwise, to wit, that Christ's obedience of the Law, he being the end of the Law, as also his passive obedience is ours. If this be the intended sense, then all our sanctification is nothing, but the sanctification and holy active obedience of Christ. I yield this to be a broad, a fair and easy way to heaven. Christ does all for us, Christ wept for my sins, and that is all the repentance required in me, if I believe that Christ was mortified, and dead to the world for me, that is my mortification; and if I believe, that the change of the whole man was truly in Christ, this is my true holiness: then my walking in holiness cannot be rewarded with life eternal, nor have any influence as a way, or means leading to the kingdom. 2. Christ's active obedience imputed to the sinner, can be no evidence of justification, because it is in Christ, not in me; any evidence, or mark of justification must be inherent in the believer, not in Christ. 3. And one and the same thing cannot be a mark and a sign of itself. Now the active obedience of Christ imputed to the sinner, is held to be a part of justification.

5. The Scripture does indeed bid you see nothing in yourself, that can buy the righteousness of Christ, or be a hire and wages to ransom imputed righteousness; and legal teachers, not any Protestant divines, [reconstructed: bid] you see something, a great something of merit, and self-righteousness in yourself. And Antinomians say, that the new creature, or the new man mentioned in the Gospel, is not meant of grace, but of Christ. The Scripture makes Christ and justification the cause, and sanctification and the new creature the effect; (2 Corinthians 5:17) If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature. And this assertion makes sanctification, as [reconstructed: formally] distinguished from Christ and justification, just nothing. And Antinomians say, that in the regenerate and Saints there is no inherent righteousness, no grace or graces in the souls of believers, but in Christ only. And M. Saltmarsh says the same, that our sorrow, repentance, mortification, and change of the whole man, are nothing in us; but they are in Christ, and must be apprehended by faith, as things unseen: whereas the divine nature is in the Saints (2 Peter 1:4). Faith dwells in us (2 Timothy 1:5). The new creation and image of Christ is in the mind (Ephesians 4:23). The seed of God abides in us (1 John 3:9). The anointing that teaches all things, [illegible], remains in you (1 John 2:27). And (Ezekiel 36:26) I will give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my Spirit [illegible] in the inner part, or in the midst of you.

Antinomians teach, that true poverty of spirit does kill and take away the sight of grace. And, sanctification is so far from evidencing a good estate, that it darkens it rather; and a man may more clearly see Christ, when he sees no sanctification, than when he sees it; the darker my sanctification is, the brighter is my justification. So Saltmarsh, "The Scriptures bid you see nothing in yourself, or all as nothing; these teachers bid you see something in yourself." And it is a walking by faith, and not by sight; and a life hid with Christ in God, to believe more truth in our own graces, than we see or feel. Now it is true, the saints out of weakness misprize the Spirit's working in them, and while they under-value themselves, they under-rate the new creation in themselves, and tacitly upbraid and slander the grace of Christ, and lessen the heavenly treasure, because it is in an earthen vessel; but poverty of spirit and grace will see, and do see grace inherent in itself, though as the fruit of grace. Song of Solomon 1:5: I am black (O daughters of Jerusalem) but comely, as the tents of Kedar. (Song of Solomon 1:11): While the king sits at his table, my spikenard sends forth the smell thereof. The saints as they make a judgment of Christ and his beauty, so also of themselves; My heart waked. I am sick of love. (Psalm 116:16): O Lord, truly I am your servant. (Psalm 63:1): My soul thirsts for you, my flesh longs after you. (Psalm 73:25): Whom have I in heaven but you? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside you. (Psalm 130:6): My soul waits for the Lord, more than they that watch for the morning. So Hezekiah (Isaiah 38:3); Paul (2 Corinthians 1:12; 2 Timothy 4:7-8; 1 Corinthians 15:9-10). And others have set out in its colors the image of Christ in itself; but not as leaving out Christ, and taking in merit; nor does the sense of sanctification darken justification, or lessen it to nothing, except where we abuse it to merit, and self-confidence, as Peter did; who in point of self-confidence ought to have forgotten the things that are behind. 2. Indeed, to say we see justification more clearly, when we see no sanctification, is to make the water and the Spirit (1 John 5:8) dumb or false witnesses, that either speak nothing, or tell lies. 3. It is against the office of the Spirit, which is to make us know [illegible], the things that are freely given us of God, such as faith, repentance, love, mortification (Acts 5.[illegible]; 2 Timothy 2:25; Philippians 1:29; Ephesians 2:8; Romans 5:5; Galatians 2:20). I grant by accident, when sin appears to a saint out of measure sinful, and he sees how little good he has, that he is blind, naked, poor, and has no money, nor price, that he is sold as a wretched man under a body of sin (Romans 7:14, 24), it heightens the excellency and worth of the ransom and blood held forth in Justification: and white righteousness, free and glorious, set beside black guiltiness, and no sanctification appearing as price or hire, makes Christ appear to be choicer than gold or rubies. Indeed, when I see no sanctification to buy Christ, then justification is more lovely, eye-sweet, taking, and soul-ravishing; as the more light, the more darkness is discovered; and the more sin, the higher is Jesus Christ. And by all this, the saints professing their own integrity, and holy walking before God, should see something in themselves, not understanding the mystery of the Gospel, and err miserably with legal teachers, and darken free justification by grace: and one grace of God should obscure and destroy another; for to see, feel, and profess sanctification, is an act of supernatural feeling, and of grace; how then can it darken the faith of the remission of sins in Christ?

But it may be asked, when the saints cannot be assured that God is their Father, in regard of sin, unbelief, and present deadness, what reasons would you use to raise their spirits up to the assurance of their interest and relation to God, as to their Father?

Answer: There is no way of arguing saints out of their unbelief, except he that labors to strengthen them, being an interpreter, one of a thousand, who can show a man his righteousness, be so acquainted with the condition of the afflicted soul, that he sees in him some inherent qualification, that may argue to the physician there is some, less or more of Christ in the soul of the man; else if he knows him to be a person yet utterly void of Christ, surely he must deal with him that is under the law, in a more legal and violent manner, than with him whom he conceives to be under the Gospel; for one and the same physic cannot suit with contrary complexions. The author professes he deals with sinners as sinners, and so with all sinners; as if physic for the gut were fit physic for the stone in the bladder. I go not so high, but speak to a weak son, who has God for his Father, but under soul-trouble doubts whether God is his Father or not.

If he lays down a principle that he was never in Christ, because of such and such sins; you are not, whoever intends to cure him, to yield so much, and to deal with him according to a false supposition, as if he were not in Christ: but must labor to prove he is in Christ; which to no purpose is done, by proving fair generalities, as Saltmarsh, with other Libertines, does; that is, you but till the sand, and beat the air to prove, that God's love is eternal, and his covenant and decree of election to his chosen so stable and unalterable, as no sin can hinder the flowings of eternal love, when you make not sure to the man, that he is loved with an everlasting love.

Hence these considerations for easing the afflicted conscience of a weak child of God.

Assertion 1. The soul laboring under doubts whether God is his Father, is to hold off two rocks, either confiding or resting on duties, or neglecting of duties: the former is to make a Christ of duties; as if Christ himself were not more lovely and desirable, than the comfortable accidents of joy, comfort, and peace in doing duties. Indeed, take the formal vision of God, in an immediate fruition in heaven, as a duty, and as in that notion contra-distinguished from the objective vision of Christ, then Christ is to be enjoyed, loved, rested on, infinitely above the duties of vision, beatific love, eternal resting on him, indeed, above imputed righteousness, assurance of pardon, reconciliation; as the King is more than his bracelets of gold, his myrrh, spikenard, perfumes, ointment, kisses; the tree more desirable than a fleece of apples that grows on it for the fourth part of a year. 2. Sin, it must be to sue and woo the King's Attendants and Courtiers by himself, or to make duties Christ, and Christ but a Man-servant and Mediator to duties, sense, comfort, assurance, or the like. 3. The Whelps of the Bear are taken from her by swift riding away with them, and by casting down one of them, that she may lose time in gaining the rest, while she returns back again so many miles to bring that one to the den. And the smell of some delicious fields, they say, so takes the dogs, that they forget the prey, and follow it no more. To smell so much in duties, and to be so sick and impotent in loving and resting on them, as to lie down in the way, and seek Christ no more, is doubtless a neglect of Christ. And thus high our doctrine never advanced sanctification, nor enthroned any acts, duties, or qualifications, under the notion of witnesses, or creators of peace or reconciliation; how our hearts may abuse them, is another thing.

Assertion 2. What, do you advise then a deserted soul to go on in duties? and seek righteousness in himself? By no means; to seek righteousness in himself, that is highest pride: but will you call it pride for a starving man to beg? Is it self-denial for such a one to be stark dumb, and to pray none in his famishing condition for food? Did the Spouse seek herself in this duty? (Song of Solomon 3) Watchmen, did you see him whom my soul loves? Was this a resolution of pride? (Song of Solomon 3:2) I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways, I will seek him whom my soul loves. And is it self-righteousness for the Spouse to send her hearty respects of service to Christ, when she cannot have one word from him, nor one smile? (Song of Solomon 5:6) Tell my beloved that I am sick of love. Nor do I think Mary Magdalen was in a distemper of Pharisaical righteousness, when she rose and anticipated the morning sky, and came weeping to the grave; O Angels, did you see the Lord? Gardener, where have you carried him? May I not do these duties, when I miss him? May I not wake in the night? May I not do well to [reconstructed: feed] a love-fever for the want of him? May I not both pray, and say, Daughters of Jerusalem, pray for me? May I not make a din through all the streets and the broad ways, and trouble all the Watchmen and Shepherds, and pray them, Can you lead me to his tent, and tell me where he lies? O but all these were to be done in faith: True; but are they not duties of love-sickness I owe to Christ also? I know they cannot bring to me everlasting righteousness; but is not seeking and knocking, stairs to finding and opening?

Assertion 3. Another counsel is; force not a lawsuit, seek not, buy not a plea against Christ. Conscience a tender piece under jealousies says, O he loves not me, Christ has forgotten me, join not in such a quarrel with conscience. Have not cold and low thoughts of Christ's love to you, because he is out of sight, he is not out of languor of love for you.

Assertion 4. Unbelief is a witch, an enchantress, and covers Christ's face with a veil of hatred, wrath, displeasure. Examine what grounds of reason you have to disbelieve, or break with Christ; say, he had broken with you, yet because you know it not, for suspicion; lose not such a friend as Christ, if you get never more of him, you may swear and vow to take to hell with you (if so he deals with you) the pawns, and love-tokens you once received, that they may be witnesses what Christ is, and may be the remnants, seeds, and leavings, of the high esteem you once had of him.

Assertion 5. A time Christ must have to go and come, and therefore must be waited on. We give the Sea hours to ebb and [reconstructed: flow], and the Moon days to decrease and grow full; and the winter sun and the summer sun months to go away, and return; and whether we will, or no, God and Nature take their time, and ask us no leave: Why has God given to us eyes within, and without, but that David may wear out his eyes, while they are at the point of failing, in looking up, and in waiting for God (Psalm 69).

Assertion 6. And though you were in hell, and he in heaven, he is worthy to be waited on; the first warm smile of a new return, is sufficient to recompense all sorrow in his absence, to say nothing of everlasting huggings, and embracings.

Assertion 7. Nor is this a good reason: I find sin, rottenness, and so a deserved curse in all my works of sanctification; therefore why should I make them any bottom for assurance, but I must take in Christ here for sanctification: for if works of this kind be not done in faith, to the knowledge of the doer, they can witness nothing, but bear a false testimony of Christ; nor do we ever teach, that Christ is to be [reconstructed: discounted] from our works of sanctification; but even faith itself, which is a bottom of peace to Antinomians, by this reason, must be cashiered; for as the love of Christ, our prayers, humility, are not formally sins, but only concomitantly, in regard that sin adheres to them; as muddy water is not formally clay and mud, but in mixture it is clayey and muddy; so our faith is concomitantly sinful; both because often it is weak, and so wanting many degrees, and mixed with sin, deserves a curse, as well as works of sanctification, but it apprehends Christ and righteousness in him, and so it bottoms our assurance. If by apprehending, you mean to bring to you certain knowledge, and assurance, that Christ is made my righteousness; then you beg the question, if you deny this to works of sanctification. For, (1 John 2:3) Hereby we know that we know him, if we keep his commandments. Verse 5. And whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected: hereby (that is, by keeping his word, called twice before, verses 3 and 4, the keeping of his commandments; and verse 6, walking as he walked:) hereby, says he, we know that we are in him, in Christ our propitiation and righteousness; and thus are we justified by keeping the commandments of God, because by this we apprehend, and know that we are justified. 2. But then all that are justified must be fully persuaded of their justification, and that faith is essentially a persuasion and assurance of the love of God to me in Christ — it is more than I could ever learn to be the nature of faith; a consequent separable, I believe it is. 3. If by apprehending Christ and his righteousness, be understood a relying, and fiducial acquiescing and recumbency on Christ for salvation: it is granted in this sense, that faith is a bottom to our assurance of our being in Christ; but that it breeds assurance, in a reflect knowledge, always, that a believer is in Christ, is not true. For, 1. I may believe, and be justified, and not know; yes, positively doubt that I believe and am justified; as thousands have pardon, and have no peace nor assurance of their pardon, and have faith in Christ, and in his free love, and have no feeling of Christ, and of his free love. For we believe more truth of our own graces (and so of our faith and assurance of our pardon) than we can see or feel, which is God's dispensation, that our life should be hid with Christ in God; therefore, the life of faith, by which the just does live, is hid, and above the reach of feeling at all times. 2. As faith which is the direct act of knowing and relying on Christ for pardon, is a work of the Spirit, above the reach of reason; so also the reflect act of my knowing and feeling, that I believe and am in Christ, which proceeds sometimes from faith, and the immediate testimony of the Spirit; sometimes from our walking in Christ (1 John 2:3-4; 1 John 3:14) is a supernatural work, above the compass and reach of our free will, and is dispensed according to the spirations and stirrings of the free grace of God; and as the keeping of his commandments, actu primo, and in itself, gives testimony that the soul is in Christ, and justified, even as the act of believing in itself does the same; yet that we actu secundo, efficaciously know and feel that we are in Christ, from the irradiation and light of faith, and sincere walking with God, is not necessary, save only when the wind of the actual motion and flowing of the Spirit concur with these means; just as the gospel promises of themselves are life, and power, but they then only actually, actu secundo, animate and quicken withered souls, when the Lord is pleased to contribute his influence, in the shining of his Spirit. Otherwise I may walk in darkness, yes, believe, pray, love, die for pain of love, and have no light, no reflect knowledge, and feeling that I am in Christ (Isaiah 50:10). I may be sick of love for Christ, call, knock, pray, confer with the watchmen, and daughters of Jerusalem, and be at a low ebb in my own sense; yes, the beloved may to my feeling and actual assurance have withdrawn himself (Song of Solomon 3:1-5; Song of Solomon 5:5-8) and all my inherent evidences cannot quicken me in any tolerable assurance. It is true, sanctification may be darkened, yes, and faith also, when there is nothing to the faith-failing and outer dying but this only of Christ the head — all the life of a saint retiring not to his faint heart, but to his strong head — I have prayed for you, that your faith fail not: but the dark evening of David's, both faith and sanctification, and of Peter in his denying of his Master, and his Judaizing (Galatians 2), when he and others, verse 14, crook and halt between grace and the law, as the people did between Jehovah and Baal; their profession of Jehovah, and Christ's grace being long, and their practice short, and inclining too much to Baal, and salvation by the law: as halting is a walking with a long and a short leg, the body unevenly inclining to both sides of the way: this darkening (I say) was in the second acts of faith and sanctification: but life and sap was at the root of the oak tree, when it was lopped, hewn, and by winter storms spoiled of the beauty of its leaves. We do not say, that sanctification does at all times, actually bear witness, or a like sensibly, and convincingly, that the soul is justified, is in Christ; there be degrees, and intermission, and sick days, both of faith and sanctification. But we say, roses and flowers have been ever since the creation, and shall be to the end of the world, because though they vanish in winter, yet in their causes they are as eternal as the earth: so is faith, and the bloomings, and green blossomings of sanctification, always; but there is a summer, when they cast forth their leaves and beauty.

Assertion 8. To press duties out of a principle of faith, is to press Christ upon souls, nor can the seeing of beams, and light in the air, or of wine grapes on the tree, be a denying of the sun to be in the firmament, or of life and sap to be in the vine tree: to see and feel in ourselves grapes, and fruits of righteousness, except we make the grace of Christ a bastard, and misfather it, is no darkening of Christ, and free grace (1 Corinthians 15:9-10).

Assertion 9. There is a great difficulty, indeed an impossibility, when the Lord hides himself, and goes behind the mountain, to command the flowing and emanations of free grace.

1. Because desertion were not desertion, if it were under the dominion of our free will. For desertion as a punishment of sin, cannot be in the free will of him that is punished; every punishment, as such is contrary to the will of the punished: and desertion as an act of free dispensation for trial, must be a work of omnipotent dominion.

2. As in works of nature and art, so is it here, that God may be seen in both; do not men sweat, till, sow much, and the sun and summer, and clouds, warm dews and rains smile upon corn and meadows, yet God steps in between the mouth of the husbandman and the sickle, and blasts all; and the Lord takes away the [reconstructed: sustenance], stay and staff of corn and grass; and there is bread enough, and yet famine and starving for hunger. Do not some rise early, and go late to bed, eat the bread of sorrow; yet the armed soldier of God, extreme poverty, breaks in upon the house? Do not watchmen wake all the night, yet the city is surprised and taken in the dawning, because the Lord keeps not the city? The Lord does all this, to show that he is the supreme and absolute Lord of all second causes. Why, but he has as eminent and independent a lordship in the acts of his free departure, and returns, in the sense of his love. Has not the King of Saints a withdrawing room, and a hiding place? Is not his presence and manifestations his own? The deserted soul prays, cries, weeps; the pastor speaks with the tongue of the learned; the Christian friend argues, exhorts; experience and the days of old come to mind; the promises convince, and speak home to the soul; the poor man remembers God, and he is troubled; the church, and many churches pray, Christians weep and pray; yet Christ is still absent, the man cannot have, from all these, one half smile from Christ's face; the vision will not speak one word of joy: all these can no more command a raging sea and stormy winds to be still, and create calmness in the soul, than a child is able to wheel about the third heavens, in a course contrary to its natural motion. Omnipotency is in this departure. God himself is in the dispensation, and absolute freedom of an independent dominion acts in the Lord's covering of himself with a cloud, and puts an iron cross-bar on the door of his pavilion; and can you stir Omnipotency, and remove it? Do you think praying can charm and break independent dominion, working to show itself as a dominion?

3. The sense of Christ which is wanting in desertion, cannot be enforced by persuasion, no more than you can, by words, persuade the deaf to hear. Oratory cannot make the taste feel the sweetness of honey. There is a light that comes from heaven, above the sun and moon; indeed, above the gospel; and is not extracted, or drawn out of the power of either the soul, no, nor of the gospel, (I conceive,) that brings forth, in act, the white stone, and the new name: and as nature and natural instincts perform their natural duties without any oratory, so as persuasion cannot make the fire to burn, nor the sun to shine, nor the bird to build its nest, nor the lamb to know its mother; nature does all these: so neither does the persuasion of Paul, preaching the gospel (Acts 26:28; Acts 16:14), the same thing, and every way the same work, that the Lord does, in persuading Japheth to dwell in the tents of Shem (Genesis 9:27). I could easily admit, that we are patients in receiving the predetermination active of the Holy Ghost in either believing, or in actual enlightening, and the actual witness light by which Christ shines in the heart, for producing actual assurance; though in the same moment and order of time (not of nature) we be also agents.

Assertion 10. Though means must not be neglected, as praying, and waiting on the watchtower, for the breathings of renewed assurance; yet as touching the time, manner, way and measure of the speaking of the vision, God's absolute dominion is more to be respected here, than all the stirrings and motions of the under wheels of prayer, preaching, conference.

Assertion 11. The soul should be argued with, and convinced, thus: Why, will you not give Christ your good leave to tutor and guide you to heaven? He has carried a world of saints over the same seas you are now in, and Christ paid the fare of the ship himself, not one of them are found dead on the shore; they were all as black and sunburnt as you are, but they are now a fair and beautiful company, without spot before the throne, and clothed in white; they are now on the sunny side of the river, in the good land where glory grows, far above sighing and jealousy. You are guilty of the breach of the privilege of Christ; 1. He is a free prince, and his royal prerogative is incapable of failing against the fundamental laws of righteousness, in the measuring out either work or wages, grace or glory (Matthew 20:13). Friend, I do you no wrong: my own is my own.

Objection. O but he is sparing in his grace, his love visits are thin sown, as strawberries in the rock.

Answer: I answer for him; 1. The quantity of grace is a branch of his freedom. 2. Why do you not complain of your sparing improving of two talents, rather than of his niggard giving of one only. He cannot sin against his liberty in his measuring out of grace; you cannot but sin in receiving. Never man, except the man Christ, durst, since the creation, (the holiest I will not except) face an account with God, for Evangelical receipts; Christ to this day is behind with Moses, David, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Job, Peter, John, Paul, and all the Saints, in the using of grace, they were below grace, and Christ was necessitate to write in the close of their counts with a pen of grace, and ink of his blood, Friend, you owe me this, but I forgive you. They flew all up to heaven with millions of arrears, more than ever they wrought for: As some godly rich man may say, This poor man was indebted to me thousands, now he is dead in my debt, I forgive him, his grave is his acquittance; I have done with it. Christ upbraids not you with old debts, that would sink you; why cast you up in his teeth, his free gifts? 3. Think it mercy he made you not a gray-stone, but a believing Saint: And there is no imaginable comparison, between his free gifts, and your bad deserving.

2. The way of his going and coming should not be quarreled. The Lord walks here in a liberty of dispensation; a summer-sun is heritage to no land. It was not a blood of a daily temper that Paul was in, when he said (Romans 8:38), For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, etc., shall be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ. It was a high and great feast, when Christ says to his Church (Song of Solomon 5:1), I am come into my garden, my Sister, my Spouse, I have gathered my myrrh with my spice, I have eaten my honey-comb with my honey: eat, O friends, drink, indeed drink abundantly, O beloved. It's true, he is always in his Church, his Garden, gathering lilies; but storms and snows often cover his Garden.

3. Were assurance always full moon, as Christ's faith in his saddest soul-trouble was bank-full sea, and full moon; and were our joy ever full, then should the Saints' heaven on earth, and their heaven above the visible heavens, differ in the accident of place, and perhaps, in some fewer degrees of glory; but there is a wisdom of God to be reverenced here. The Saints in this life are narrow vessels; and such old bottles could not contain the new wine that Christ drinks with his, in his Father's Kingdom (Matthew 17). When the Disciples see the glory of Christ in the Mount, Peter says (Verse 4), Lord, it is good for us to be here: but when that glory comes nearer to them, and a cloud overshadows them (Luke 9:34), and they hear the voice of God speak out of the cloud (Mark 9:7), They fell down on their face (Matthew 17:6) [illegible], They were sore afraid. Why afraid? Because of the exceeding glory, which they testified was good, but knew not what they said. We know not that this joy is unspeakable. We rejoice [illegible], with joy that no man can relate: How then can a man contain it? I may speak of a thousand millions of things more excellent and glorious than I can feel. Should God pour in as much of Christ in us in this life, as we would in our private wisdom, or folly desire, the vessel would break, and the wine run out: We must cry sometimes, Lord, hold your hand. We are as unable to bear the joys of heaven in this life, as to endure the pains of hell. Every drop of Christ's honey-comb is a talent weight; and the fullness of it must be reserved, till we be enlarged vessels, fitted for glory.

Assertion 12. We do not consider, that Christ absent has stronger impulses of love, than when present in sense and full assurance: as is clear in that large Song of the high praises of Christ, which is uttered by the Church (Song of Solomon 5), when he had withdrawn himself (Verse 6), and she was sick of love for him (Verses 9-16). 2. There is a sort of heavenly antiperistasis, a desire of him kindled, through occasions of absence; as we are hottest in seeking after precious things, when they are absent, and farthest from our enjoying. Absence sets on fire love. The impression of his kissing, embracing, lovely and patient knocking, Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove; the print of his foot-steps, the remnants of the smell of his precious ointments, his shadow when he goes out at doors, are coals to burn the soul. Psalm 63:6: When I remember you, upon my bed, and meditate on you in the night watches. I cannot sleep, for the love of Christ, in the night. What follows? Verse 8: My soul follows hard, cleaves strong after you. Psalm 77:3: I remembered God, and was troubled: rather, I remembered God, and rejoiced: But the memory of old love, and of absent and withdrawing consolations, break the heart. How do some weep, and cast aside their harps, when they remember the seven year old embracements of Christ, and Christ's virgin-love, and Zion-sweet songs in the days of their youth? Song of Solomon 5: when the Church rose, but after the time, to open to Christ, when he was gone, and had withdrawn himself (Verse 5), Mine hands (says the Church) dropped with myrrh, and my fingers with sweet-smelling myrrh upon the handles of the bar. Then her love to Christ was strongest, her bowels moved, the smell of his love, like sweet-smelling myrrh, was mighty rank, and piercing.

Assertion 13. Why, but then when the wheels are in motion, and the longing after Christ awakened, and one foot, we should pray Christ home again, and love him into his own house, and sigh him out of his place, from beyond the mountain into the soul again; as the Spouse does (Song of Solomon 3:1-5), if ever he be found, when he is sought, it will be now, though time, and manner of returning be his own.

Assertion 14. Nor are we to believe that Christ's love is coy, or humorous in absenting himself, or that he is lordly, high, difficult, inexorable, in letting out the sense, the assurance of his love, or his presence; as we dream a thousand false opinions of Christ under absence, nor do we consider that security and indulgence to our lusts loses Christ, and therefore it's just, that as we sin in roses, we should sorrow in thorns.

Assertion 15. If the Lord's hiding himself is not formally an act of grace, yet intentionally on God's part, it is; as at his return again, he comes with two heavens, and the gold chain soldered is strongest in that link which was broken; and the result of Christ's return to his garden (Song of Solomon 5:1) is a feast of honey, and milk, and refined wines: when he is returned, then his Spikenard, his perfume, his myrrh, aloes, and cassia, casts a smell even up to heaven; in the falls of the saints, this is seen; David after his fall hearing mercy, feeling God had healed his bones, that were broken (Psalm 51), there is more of God's praises within him, than he can vent, he prays God would broach the vessel, that the new wine may come out, Verse 15. O Lord open your lips, that my mouth may show forth your praise: and after the meeting of the Lord and the forlorn Son, besides the poor son's expression, full of sense: consider how much sense and joy is in the Father; it is a parable, yet it says much of God. Luke 15, Verse 20. And when he was yet a great way off, his Father saw him. Christ the Father of age or eternity, [illegible] (Isaiah 9:6) knows a friend a far off, and his heart kindles, and grows warm when he sees him, were he thousands and millions of miles from God, yet aiming to come, he sees him, and had compassion; he sees with moved bowels, and ran, how swift is Christ's love, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. O what expression of tenderness! and to all these, is added a new robe, and a ring for ornament, and a feast, the fat calf is killed, and the Lord sings, and dances, Verse 23, 24, 25. Peter's denial of Christ brought him to weeping, flowing from the Spirit of grace poured on David's house (Zechariah 12:10). And Peter had the more grace, that he lost grace, for a time. As after drawing blood and cutting a vein, more comes in the place; and after a great fever, and decay of strength, in a recovery, nature repairs itself more copiously. And often in our sad troubles, we have that complaint of God, which he rebukes his people for; (Isaiah 40:27) Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, my way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from God; that is, the Lord takes no notice of my affliction, and he forgets to right me, as if I were hid out of his sight: and David (Psalm 31:22) I said in my haste, I am cut off from before your eyes. It is not unlike a word which Cain spoke, with a far other mind (Genesis 4:14), From your face shall I be hid. But this is 1. To judge God to be faint and weak, as if he could do no more, but were expiring (Isaiah 40:28). He will be both weak and wearied, if he forgets his own; and our darkness cannot rob the Lord of light, and infinite knowledge, he cannot forget his office as Redeemer. God is not like the stork that leaves her eggs in the sand, and forgets that they may be crushed and broken. When Christ goes away, he leaves his heart and love behind in the soul, till he returns again himself; if the young creation be in the soul, he must come back to his nest, to warm with his wings, the young tender birth.

Assertion 16. Nor is Christ so far departed at any time, but you may know the soul he has been in, indeed he stands at the side of the sick bed, weeping for his pained child; indeed your groans pierce his bowels (Jeremiah 31:20). For since I spoke against him (says the Lord) I do earnestly remember him; it is not the less true, that the head of a swooning son lies in the bosom and the two arms of Christ; that the weak man believes, that he is utterly gone away.

Assertion 17. Nor will Christ more reckon in a legal way, for the slips, misjudgings, and love-rovings of a spiritual distemper, than a Father can whip his child with a rod, because he misknows his Father, and utters words of folly in the height of a fever. Christ must pardon the fancy, and sins of sick love; the errors of the love of Christ, are almost innocent crimes, though unbelief makes love-lies of Jesus Christ. There be some over-lovings, as it were, that foams out, rash and hasty jealousies of Christ, when acts of fiery and flaming desires do outrun acts of faith: as hunger has no reason; so the inundations and swellings of the love of Christ, flow over their banks, that we so strongly desire the Lord to return, that we believe he will never return.

Assertion 18. Though hid jewels be no jewels, a lost Christ, no Christ, to sense, yet is there an invisible, and an undiscerned instinct of heaven, that hindered the soul to give Christ over.

Shall we upon all this, extend all these spiritual considerations to all men, whether they be in Christ, or not. Some teach us this, as the great gospel-secret concerning faith; that none ought to question, whether they believe God to be their Father, Christ their Redeemer, or no; but are to believe till they are persuaded, that they do believe, and feel more and more of the truth of their faith, or belief; righteousness being revealed from faith to faith: the 1. ground of this is, Christ's command to believe; now commands, of this nature are to be obeyed, not disputed.

But this is so far from being a gospel-secret, that it is not a gospel truth; and sends poor souls to seek honey in a nest of wasps, the pathway to presumption. For though these who truly believe, ought not to doubt of their belief, yet these who have lamps of faith, and no oil, ought to question, whether there be oil in their lamps, or no, and true faith with their profession, else the foolish Virgins were not far out, who never questioned their faith, till it was out of time to buy oil; and that these Virgins should believe, they had oil in their lamps, when they had none, till they should be persuaded, that empty lamps, were full lamps, and a bastard faith, true faith, were to oblige them to feed upon the east wind, till there should be a faith produced in the imagination, that the East is the West. 2. All the scriptures that charge us to try ourselves (1 Corinthians 11:28), to examine ourselves, whether we be in the faith, and to know ourselves, that Jesus Christ is in us, except we be reprobates (2 Corinthians 13:5), and to know the things that are freely given us of God (1 Corinthians 2:12), and so to know our faith (Philippians 1:29), do evince that we are to try, and so far to question, whether we believe, or not; as multitudes are obliged to acknowledge, their faith is but fancy, and that there is a thing like faith, which is nothing such; and that we are not to deceive ourselves, with a vain presumption, which looks like faith, and is no faith. And (James 2:18-20), many who believe there is a God, and imagine they have faith, being void of good works, and of love, in which the life and efficacy of faith is much seen, have no more faith, than Devils have. (3.) It is true that we are to believe on the name of his Son Jesus Christ, without any disputing concerning the equity of the command of believing, or of our obligation to believe: For both are most just. And to dispute the holy and just will of God, is to oppose our carnal reason, to the wisdom of God; but we are not, because we cannot dispute the holy command of God; nor to reason our duty, not to examine whether that which we conceive, we do as a duty be a bastard and false conception, or a true and genuine duty; nor, because I may not reason the precept of believing, given by Jesus Christ, am I therefore to believe, in any order that I please, and to come to Christ, whether I be weary and laden with sin, or not weary and laden. Christ commands me to believe, therefore, remaining in my wickedness, regarding iniquity in my heart, without despairing of salvation in myself, I am to believe, I shall deny this consequence. It is all one, as if Antinomians would argue thus; All within the visible church are obliged to believe and rest on Christ for salvation; whether they be elect or reprobate? whether their whorish heart be broken with the sense of sin, or whole? Therefore, they are obliged to presume, or to rest on Christ, their righteousness, whether they distrust their own, or not.

Object. 2. We find not any, in the whole course of Christ's preaching, or the Disciples, that asked the question, whether they believed or not; or whether their faith were true faith or no. It were a disparagement to the Lord of the feast to ask, whether his dainties were real or delusions. The way to be sure of the truth of good things, is tasting and feeling: Eat, O friends, drink, indeed drink abundantly, O beloved.

Answer. This reason would infer, that there is not a saint on earth capable of such a sin, as to doubt whether they believe or not; because we read not of it in any of the hearers of Christ, or the Apostles: This is a bad consequence, except you say, All the various conditions of troubled consciences are set down, in particular examples, in the New Testament. Which is contrary to all experiences of the saints. 2. It is one thing to doubt of the truth of the promises, and another thing to doubt, whether my apprehension of the promise be true or false: The latter is not always sin; for it may be my apprehension of the truth of the promises be beside the line, and off the way; and then I question not Christ's dainties (which to do were unbelief) but my own deluded fancy, which may appear to be faith, and is nothing less: the former is indeed unbelief, not the latter. 3. It is true, tasting makes sure the truth of the Lord's good things, that are enclosed in the promises; but then, an unconverted sinner, who is void of spiritual senses, cannot be the beloved, nor the friend that Christ speaks to (Song of Solomon 5:1). We do not say, a believer ought to doubt, whether he has true faith or no: but because the command of believing obligates the non-converted, as well as the converted, shall the natural man eat as a friend and a beloved, he remaining in nature, and not yet converted, and this man in nature ought not to doubt, whether his fancy be faith or not, but he is obliged to believe, that is, to imagine that his fancy is faith? 4. I see not how, if the faith of the saints be tried as gold in the fire, they may not through the prevalence of temptation be shaken in their faith, as Peter was, when he denied his Savior; and Paul; who (2 Corinthians 1:8) was pressed out of measure, above strength, despaired of life, had the sentence of death. (2 Corinthians 7:5) was troubled on every side, fightings without, and fears within: and the sons of God, who may fear that they have received the spirit of bondage to fear again, opposite to the Spirit of adoption (Romans 8:15), but that they may faint in their tribulations (Ephesians 3:13), and may be surprised with fear, which has torment, and must be cast out (1 John 4:18), and may be ready to faint and die (Revelation 3:2), and turn lukewarm, be wretched, miserable, poor, blind, naked, and yet believe the contrary of themselves (Revelation 3:16-17). All these may come, and often do come to that low condition of spirit, after Justification, as to say and think that all men are liars, their faith is no faith, that they are forsaken of God, to their own sense, and cast out of his sight, and question whether they ever did believe, or no: And why would the Apostle say, Patience brings forth experience, and experience hope, and hope makes not ashamed (Romans 5:4), if experience that ever God loved me, or that ever I believed, to my present sense, cannot be removed? But this is but the doctrine of Familists; who teach, That after the revelation of the Spirit, neither devil nor sin can make the soul to doubt. And To question whether God be my dear Father, after, or upon the committing of some heinous sins, (as murder, incest, etc.) does prove a man to be in the Covenant of works. Do not they then teach us a way of despairing, who say, that We find not in the whole course of Christ's preaching, or the Disciples, that any asked the question, whether they believed, or no; whether their faith were true faith, or no? What then shall thousands of smoking flaxes and weak reeds do, who often ask this question, and say and think, Ah, I have no faith; my faith is but counterfeit metal? And then by this doctrine of despair, believers ought to conclude, I am not under Grace, but under the Law, and a Covenant of works, and so not in Christ; indeed, whatever lusters were in me before, I am in no condition of any we read of in the New Testament, who were hearers of Christ and the Apostles; for Libertines, never true believers, doubted whether their faith was true, or not.

Objection 3. For any to doubt whether they believe or no, is a question, that Christ only can satisfy, who is the Author and Finisher of our faith. Who can more properly show one that he sees, than the Light which enlightens him?

Answer. Christ solves not questions that no man ever made: S. thinks that believers never doubt whether their faith be true faith, or not; which is a strong way of believing: and those must be so strong in the faith, who doubt not of this, as they are above all temptations. But this will be found against the experience of all believers. It is most true, none can work faith, but the only Creator and Author of faith: but will the Author hence infer, no man, the most wicked, nor any that ever heard Christ or his Apostles preach, doubted of their faith? 2. The sun, with all its light, cannot persuade a blind man who does not see, that he sees: believers often think they see, when they see not, and think they are blind, when they see; as experience and Scripture (Revelation 3:16-17; John 9:38-39) teach us.

Objection 4. Faith is truly and simply this, A being persuaded more or less of Christ's love: and therefore it is called a believing with the heart. Now, what infallible sign is there to persuade any that they are persuaded, when themselves question the truth of their persuasion: God only shall persuade Japhet. Who can more principally, and with clearer satisfaction persuade the Spouse, of the good will of him she loves, but himself? Can all the love-tokens, or testimonial rings and bracelets? They may concur and help in the manifestation, but it is the voice of the beloved, that does the turn: My beloved spoke and said to me, Rise my love, my fair one; says the Spouse.

Answer 1. Faith may be a persuasion in some sense, but that it is a persuasion that my faith or persuasion is true, not counterfeit, and so formally, is utterly denied. How many believe and love Christ with the heart, who are not persuaded that they do so; indeed, much doubt whether they believe with the heart, and would give a world to know (if it were possible) that they truly love God? No divine, who knows that a direct act of faith and to believe, is, when there is no reflexive act, can deny this. 2. Arguments or signs, in accurate speech, are not called infallible, actu secundo; the word of God is in itself infallible, [reconstructed: actu primo]: But to Aristotle, this, "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," is not infallible, actu secundo; nor are the promises, "He that believes, shall be saved. Knock, and it shall be opened. He that overcomes, shall inherit all things;" actu secundo; to a believer, who, under a distemper, does doubt of them, infallible. So, "The love of the brothers" (1 John 3:14), the keeping of the commandments, and the word of Jesus, is infallible in itself. That I know Christ savingly, and that he dwells in me (1 John 2:3, 5), but that it infallibly concludes so to me, actu secundo, is not sure, except the wind blow fair from heaven, and the Spirit act in me. So the love-tokens and testimonial rings and bracelets of the Husband, my love to the saints, my keeping of his word, my holy walking in Christ, being the works of his Spirit, which dwelt in Jesus Christ, are actu primo, in themselves, as infallible signs of the Bridegroom's love to me; as the Beloved's word who spoke and said, "Arise, my love:" And if the spirations and breathings of the Spirit go not along, both the voice and the love-bracelets (for Christ is no more counterfeit in his love-tokens, than in his word, when he speaks as a Husband) are alike ineffectual to persuade the soul. I see no reason to call the works of sanctification inferior helps in the manifestation, more than the voice of the Beloved; for both without the Spirit are equally ineffectual: and if the Spirit breathe and move with them, both are effectual, and actu primo, and secundo, and they infallibly persuade. It is then a weak argument, "None can simply persuade Japhet but God; therefore, the word of the Bridegroom only can infallibly persuade;" or, "therefore love-bracelets cannot infallibly persuade:" for the word not quickened by the Spirit of Jesus, cannot simply persuade; and the Lord's persuading of Japhet, is the Lord's work of converting Japhet, not his enlightening of Japhet to know his faith to be true faith. Hence for that which infallibly persuades us, I say,

1. Our act of believing does no more persuade of itself that we do believe, except the Spirit breathe with the act of believing, for actual illumination and persuasion, than any other act of loving Christ, his saints, or universal intention, or sincerity of heart to obey, does prove to us that we believe; for many believe who know not, indeed, doubt of their believing, because the Holy Ghost makes not the light of faith effectual to persuade, that they truly believe.

2. Assertion. The testimony of the Holy Spirit, is the efficacious and actual illumination and irradiation of the Sun of righteousness and his Spirit, assuring us that we are the sons of God. This light comes from inherent acts of grace in us: (1 John 2:3-5; 1 John 3:14). (2) From the testimony and rejoicing which results from a good conscience: (2 Corinthians 1:12; 2 Timothy 4:6-8; 1 Timothy 6:17-18; Hebrews 13:18). (3) From the experience they have had of the Lord's dealing with their souls, and the love of God spread abroad in the heart, by the Holy Ghost: (Romans 5:3-5). (4) From a sincere aim and respect to all the commandments of God (Psalm 119:6; Acts 24:16; 1 John 3:20-21; 1 Thessalonians 5:23; Philippians 4:12; Revelation 22:14-15). (5) From the positive marks that Christ puts on his children as marks of true blessedness (Matthew 5:3-11; Psalm 119:1-2; Psalm 32:1-2). (6) From the judgment that the saints make of themselves, and their own begun communion with God (Psalm 73:25; Psalm 18:20-22; Psalm 26:3-4, 8; Psalm 40:9-10; Job 31; Job 29; Isaiah 8:3; Psalm 42:1-2; [reconstructed: Psalm 63:1-4, 8]; Psalm 84:2-5; Psalm 119:[reconstructed: 10], 31, 40, 46, 50, 57, 60, 62, 63, 81, 82, 97, 98-99, 101, 103, 111, 112, 125, 127, 128, 136, 139, 145, 148, 162, 164; Song of Solomon 1:5; Song of Solomon 2:4-6, 16; Song of Solomon 3:1-5; Song of Solomon 5:6-12) — all which were needless flourishes, if they had neither peace, consolation, nor assurance from these, as from marks and signs which do infallibly convince (the light, breathings and irradiations of the Holy Ghost concurring with them) that they are in a saving condition, who have these qualifications in them. (7) Because by holy walking, the saints make their calling and election sure and firm, not to God, but to themselves (2 Peter 1:10-12; 2 Peter 1:5-7).

Assertion 3. As there is in the eye, lumen innatum; in the ear, aer internus; a certain inborn light, to make the eye see lights, and colors without; and a sound and air in the ear within, to make it discern the sounds that are without. So is there a grace, a new nature, an habitual instinct of heaven, to discern the Lord's Spirit immediately testifying, that we are the sons of God (Romans 8:16; 1 Corinthians 1:12). Grace within knows Christ speaking without, the voice of my beloved. As the lamb knows, by an internal instinct, the mother; but for awakening and quickening of the instinct to apprehend this, there is need of opened eyes, and the presence of the mother to the eye, or of the bleating of the mother, to a waking ear; for instincts cannot work in the sleep, if the Spirit speak, and the voice behind be heard, the soul knows what sound it hears, but not otherwise. It is but curiosity so to compare the evidence by signs and marks of sanctification, with that evidence, that comes from the Spirit's immediate voice, or testimony, so as the former should be less sure, fallible, conjectural; and the latter infallible, sure and efficaciously convincing. For the evidences are both supernatural, certain, divine, and strongly convincing, if there be any deception in either, it is because of the dullness of our apprehension, or our imagination, which fancies, we see, what we see not, or from our unbelief who will not be convinced. For the Holy Ghost speaks the same thing, by his operations of grace, in holy walking, that he speaks by either the Word preached, or by the Word, and immediate voice of the Spirit, witnessing to our Spirit; and there is the same authority revealing to us a thing hidden, and the same thing revealed. It may be, there be a variation of the degrees, of light and divine irradiation: or the one may carry into the soul a more deep impression of God than the other, and the radiation of light in the subject, may be more strong in the one, than in the other; but of themselves they are both infallible, supernatural, and convincing.

It is doubted which of these evidences be more free, and partake more of the nature of grace. Antinomians conceive that an evidence by marks in our self is more [reconstructed: selfish], less free, and nearer to a seeking of assurance in our self, than that evidence which results from the immediate testimony of the Spirit. But the ground they build on is false, and the superstructure is less sure. If it were a matter of giving and receiving, or of wages and work, it were something, but it is a matter of mere knowledge, God revealing our condition to us one way, not another. Possibly the more external, the more immediate, and far a thing be from a condition, even of grace, the more free, as the election to glory, the paying of the ransom of Christ's blood, or the act of atonement are most free, for they require not so much as the condition of faith wrought by the free grace of God; but justification (say our divines) requires faith, as a condition. And here God may keep his hands free of any knot, or obligation of a condition; and it would seem that the immediate testimony of the Spirit, is more free than evidence from inherent marks, the wind seems to be freer in its motion, which has not a restriction to fixed causes, rather at this hour, than at that. The sea again in its ebbing and flowing, and the sun in its rising and going down, are more fettered to set times, and condition of natural causes, yet all these detract nothing from the freedom of God the creator, in his concurring with these causes; nor do conditions that are wrought in us irresistibly by the grace of God, lay any tie on that independent, sovereign, and high freedom of grace, which does no less justify, and save us freely, than choose us to glory, and redeem us with the same freedom, without [reconstructed: price] and hire. Only I will remind libertines, who deny that justification, the covenant of grace and salvation, have any the most gracious conditions in us; for that should obscure the freedom of grace, (they say) all within the visible church, without any preparations, are immediately to believe salvation and remission of sins to themselves in particular. But I hope, faith is a work of free grace, and must presuppose, conversion and a new heart, as an essential condition, else with Pelagians, they must say, that out of the principles of nature, all are to believe; and this obscures far more the freedom of the grace of God working faith in us, than all the conditions of grace, which we hold to be subservient, not contrary to the freedom of grace.

Objection 5. We ought to believe, till we be persuaded that we believe. Ephesians 1:13: In whom after you believed, you were sealed. The way to be warm, is not only to ask for a fire, or whether there be a fire or no, or to hold out the hands a little toward it, and away, and wish for a greater; but to stand close to that fire, and gather heat.

Answer 1. That believing brings persuasion, I doubt not; but not such a sealing with the broad and great seal of heaven, as excludes all doubting, as Antinomians teach; nor does the place prove it. For these who can flee with such strong wings, and are above all doubting, (1.) need not Christ's intercession, that their faith fail not, they are above, and beyond the sphere of all obligation to grace. Nor (2.) need they pray, Lead us not into temptation. Nor (3.) need they bear in meekness, the overtaken weak ones, who trip and stumble unawares, considering lest they also be tempted (Galatians 6:1). (4.) The faith of the strongest is not full moon, or incapable of growing (Philippians 3:12). (5.) There is need of praising of grace, for the prevailing victory of a faith beyond doubting. (6.) Nor need such pray Christ to increase their faith. Judge then of libertines, who talk of a broad seal, of perfect assurance, and say, There is no assurance true and right, unless it be without fear and doubting.

2. The way to be warm at a painted fire, such as is the immediate revealing of Christ to an unconverted sinner, never humbled, nor despairing of himself, which is the libertine's dead faith, is not the way to be warmed, nor are we to believe in Christ, but in Christ's own way and order. And it is safe to call in question, whether such a painted fire be fire; nor are we to go on in this believing, till we be persuaded that we believe, truly this is no gospel secret.

If Libertines say, it's impossible to believe, but we must despair in ourselves. I answer, so I believe; but then must it follow, that Libertines deceive, and are deceived, when they teach, that sinners as sinners are to believe, because sinners despairing of salvation in themselves, must be fewer in number, than sinners as sinners; for sinners as sinners, comprehends Pharisees, and all secure and malicious slaves of hell; but self-despairing sinners include not any such, far less include they all sinners, they be only such sinners as are half sick, looking afar off, with half an eye to Jesus Christ, not daring fully to make out to Jesus Christ; proud Pharisees despair not of salvation in themselves, for then they should not be proud Pharisees in so far; but Libertines teach us, that Pharisees remaining Pharisees, without any preparations going before, are immediately to believe in Christ, if they say, self-despair is an essential part of faith, not a preparation going before faith; they err: Judas, Cain, despair of salvation both in themselves and in Christ, yet have they not any essential part of saving faith, nor can any essential part of saving faith be in such, nor can any come to Christ, and believe in him, before first they know sin by the law, and their mouth be stopped, that the law cannot justify nor save them (Romans 3:19-21). And Mr. Eaton and the Antinomians that are not mere Familists, and Enthusiasts rejecting all written Scripture, do also grant this; then it must be impossible, that any can believe, but some preparation foregoing there must be; and because all sinners as sinners have not such preparation, all sinners as sinners are not at the first go, to believe in the soul physician Christ, but only such as in Christ's order are plowed, before Christ sow on them, and self-condemned before they believe in Christ.

Objection 6. We are no more to question our faith, than we ought to question Christ the foundation of our faith, for salvation to the soul in particular is destroyed by unbelief, they did not enter in because of unbelief: the word profited not, being not mixed with faith.

Answer 1. We cannot question Christ, more than we can question whether God be God; but we may examine Paul's doctrine, as the Bereans did; we may try our own faith, if it can hold water. If some would wash their false coin, and bring it to the touchstone, the false metal would be seen. 2. The unbelief in weak ones doubting of their faith, is not that which destroys salvation, and excludes men out of the holy land: they are cruel to weak reeds, who exclude them out of heaven, because in their misjudging distempers they exclude themselves; were Christ as cruel to a faint believer, who is sick of misgivings, as he is to himself, who could be saved? But a believer may appeal from himself ill-informed, and doubting groundlessly, to meek Jesus well-informed, and judging aright a weak reed, to be a reed; a sick believer, and a swooning faith, to be a believer, and a faith, that will bear a soul to heaven. A weak hackney, if spirited, may accomplish a great journey.

Objection 7. Satan puts us clean back here; we are proving our faith by our works, when no works can be proved solidly good, but by our faith; for without faith it's impossible to please God. We know that every piece of money is valued according to the image and superscription; if Caesar be not there, though it be silver, yet it is not coin, it is not so current: so there is not anything of sanctification current, and of true practical use and comfort to a believer, if Christ be not there. Crisp says, sanctification and good works are litigious grounds of our faith. This borders with the language of Libertines. It is a fundamental and soul-damning error to make sanctification an evidence of justification. And Christ's work of grace can no more distinguish between a hypocrite and a saint, than the rain that falls from heaven, between the just and the unjust. And the Spirit gives such full evidence of my good estate spiritually, that I have no need to be tried by the fruits of sanctification, this were to light a candle to the sun.

Answer 1. That which the Spirit of God calls saving knowledge (1 John 3:14: "Hereby we know," etc.; 1 John 2:3-5), that Libertines affirm to be a policy of Satan, leading us back again, and a soul-condemning error. (2) 1 John 3:10: "In this are the children of God manifest, and the children of the Devil: whoever does not righteousness, is not of God, neither he that loves not his brother." This is some other difference than the rain can make between the just and the unjust. And 1 John 5:8: "And there are three that bear witness on earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood; and these three agree in one." And that we may know that the Spirit is in us, is evident (1 John 4:12-13): "No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwells in us, and his love is perfected in us. Hereby we know that we dwell in him, and he in us; because he has given us of his Spirit." Now, 1 John 3:3: "Every man that has this hope in him, purifies himself, even as he is pure." And, Romans 8:1: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus, which walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit." 2 Corinthians 7:1: "Having therefore these promises (dearly beloved) let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and Spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." Hence we argue, whoever walks after the Spirit, must know his Guide that leads the sons of God (Romans 8:14), and whoever purges himself, and loves his brother, and perfects holiness in the fear of God, he must know that he so does; but he that does walk so, knows that he is in Christ, freed from condemnation, and that God dwells in him; for it is express Scripture. He that is holy, may know he is chosen to be holy (Ephesians 1:4). Now, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's chosen? It is God that justifies" (Romans 8:33). He that is conformed to the image of his Son, and called, may know that he is predestinated to that end (Romans 8:29-30), and shall be glorified. Now, Crispe labors to prove, that these which commonly go for marks and infallible signs of our justification and interest in Christ — which are universal obedience, sincerity, love to the brethren — are either found in no man in their perfection, or they be such marks as agree to good and bad, to hypocrites and Saints; and so are not infallible marks; just as the falling of rain, and the shining of the sun, does not difference between just and unjust men, because both have a like portion and share in sun and rain. Now for the former reason: faith and the light of it is imperfect, capable of accession, and so tainted with sin; and if this be a strong reason, it cannot give assurance, which Libertines do not all hold. The other is the saying of Papists, teaching us to doubt of our salvation, because there be such shifts, wiles, circuits, and lurking places in a man's heart, that he can give no infallible judgment, with any divine certainty, of himself or his own spiritual state. But is there not so much darkness, so much night and blindness in our mind, as in admitting of the light of immediate witnessing of the Spirit (which they call the Broad-seal of heaven) we may no less be deceived, than we are in the light that results from our signs of sanctification? There is a like darkness, and no less delusions, from the white Spirits, the day-light-ghosts and Angels of Enthusiasts, and dumb and Scripture-less inspirations, than in black Spirits. But surely we walk not in the ways of sanctification sleeping, nor does the Spirit perfect holiness in the Saints, as in a night-dream; we being led with fancy as frantic men are. Shall the Saints, when they attest the Lord of their sincere desire and unfeigned intentions, though mixed with great weakness, bring before God their integrity, and their rejoicing of a good conscience — as Paul, the Apostles, Peter, John, James; "Lord, you know that I love you"; David, who desired God might try him; Job, Hezekiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, etc. — hold forth to God their conjectures, fancies, and such moth-eaten and rotten signs of their justification, as Crispe and others say may be, and were in Pharisees, in Papists, hypocrites, and bloody oppressors, carnal Jews following the righteousness of the Law, tax collectors, heathens, harlots, all the wicked sects? For Crispe says, "All these have your marks of sanctification, such as are universal obedience, sincerity, zeal for God, love to the brethren." Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord, blameless (Luke 1:6): was this such a righteousness, attested by the Holy Ghost, as is in Paul a persecutor, in heathens, in Pharisees, in carnal Jews? I grant it was not that righteousness of God through faith (Philippians 3); yet it was a fruit and infallible sign of that righteousness, and such as did prove them to be in Christ. And 2. all our acts of sanctification are no acts, no infallible marks of justification to my soul, except they be done in faith; indeed, without faith they are sin (Romans 14:23); but when I find they are done in faith, they add a further degree of evidence and certitude, that they argue me to have saving faith and interest in Christ, as in the Lord my righteousness (Jeremiah 23:6), for that is his name. And this reason does conclude, it is unlawful to seek any ground of assurance in sanctification, except we would with Papists argue in a circle, thus: "How know you that your works are signs of justification? Because they are stamped with faith. And how know you that your justification and faith are not counterfeit? By your works."

But this is not the Papists' circle, because works to my sense and spiritual discerning, may, and do add evidence and light to faith, and faith adds evidence and light to works; as we prove the cause from the effect, and the effect from the cause, especially under desertion, without the fault of circular arguing. But Papists believe the Scripture to be the word of God, because the Church says so, else it should be no word of God, to them more than the Turk's Alcoran; and they believe that the Church says that Scripture is the Word of God, because the Scripture says that the Church says so.

This is no proof at all, and a vain consequence, without faith it is impossible to please God, no work can be proved solidly God's, without faith, but how then follows it; therefore, we cannot prove faith to be true from good works. Saltmarsh can make no logic out of this; nothing follows from this antecedent, but therefore, by hypocritical works done without faith, we cannot prove our faith to be true faith, valeat totum, the conclusion is not against us. We acknowledge, except good works carry the stamp and image of faith, they are not good works; but if they carry this stamp, as we presuppose they do, in this debate, because works are more perceptible to us than faith it follows well, then we may know our faith by our works; and a believer doing works in faith, and out of warmness of love to Christ, and a sincere sense of his debt, he may be ignorant that he does them in faith, but a coal of love to Christ, smoking in his soul, and the sincere sense of the debt that love lays on him to do that; indeed, and to swim through hell to please Christ, are ordinarily more perceptible than faith, and lead us to know, there must be faith where these are.

3. Nor are ours litigious and disputable marks, except when our darkness raises disputes, more than the Gospel itself is litigious; for men of corrupt minds, raise doubts against the Gospel, and weak believers sometimes would argue themselves out of faith, Christ, out of imputed righteousness, election of grace and effectual calling; yet are not these litigious points, and say, that the evidence of the Spirit be as light and evident as the sunlight in itself: so is the Gospel, yet are we to seek evidences for our faith and peace, in such marks as the Holy Ghost has made waymarks to heaven; by this we know, etc. but we build our knowledge and sense on these marks, as on secondary pillars and helps, which a divine, and supernatural certitude, furnishes, though without the influence of the Spirit, they shine not evidently to us; but our faith rests on the testimony of the Spirit, witnessing to our hearts; and this is not to bring a candle to give light to the Sun; but to add the light of supernatural sense, to the light of divine faith; else they may as well say, that the confirming evidence that comes to our sense from the Sacraments, adds something to the Word, which is a light, and a sunlight to our eyes, if we did confide in them, as causes of our justification, it were Pharisaical: but divine motives, and secondary grounds, though they be mixed of themselves with sinful imperfections, may be, by divine Institution, helps and confirmatory grounds of our faith and joy; and the Scripture says so, as we heard alleged.

The question proposed by F. Cornewell I shall not father upon that learned and godly divine, Master Cotton: whether a man may evidence his justification by his sanctification: he should have added, whether he may evidence to himself, or his own conscience, his justification; for that so, he may evidence it, in a conjectural way to others, no man doubts. 2. The question is misstated; as if sanctification did formally evidence justification, as justification, in abstracto, and faith in its actual working; it is enough against Antinomians, if it evidence to the sense of the person, that he is in the state of justification, and that he has faith to lay hold on Christ's righteousness, when he esteems the saints precious, and places his delight in them. Sanctification does not, as Libertines would imagine, evidence justification as faith does evidence it, with such a sort of clearness, as light evidences colors, making them actually visible; now light is no sign or evident mark of colors. Love and works of sanctification do not so evidence justification; as if justification were the object of good works; that way faith does evidence justification, but sanctification does evidence justification to be in the soul, where sanctification is, though it does not render justification actually visible to the soul, as light makes colors to be actually visible; or as faith by the light of the Spirit renders justification visible: for even as smoke evidences there is fire, there where smoke is, though smoke render no fire visible to the eye; and the moving of the pulse evidences that there is yet life, though the man be in a swoon, and no other acts of life do appear to the eye, and the morning star in the east when it is dark evidences that the sun shall shortly rise, yet it makes not the sun visible to the eye; and the streams prove there is a head-spring, from where these streams issue; yet they show not in what part of the earth the head-spring is; so as to make it visible to the eye: so does sanctification give evidence of justification, only as marks, signs, and gracious effects give evidence of the cause; as when I find love in my soul, and a care to please God in all things; and this I may know to be in me, from the reflected light of the Spirit, and from these I know there is faith in me, and justification, though I feel not the operation of faith in the meantime, yet the effect and sign makes a report of the cause; as acts of life, eating and drinking, and walking in me does assure me, that I have the life of nature. So the vital acts of the life of faith do, as signs and effects, give evidences of the cause and fountain; yet there is no necessity that with the same light, by which I know the effect, I know the cause; because this is but a light of arguing, and of heavenly logic, by which we know (by the light of the Spirit's arguing) that we know God, by the light of faith; because we keep his commandments: and know by God's logic, that we are translated from death to life, because we love the brethren; in effect we know, rather the person must be justified, in whom these gracious evidences are, by hearsay, report, or consequence; than we know, or see justification itself, in abstracto, or faith itself; but the light of faith, the testimony of the Spirit, by the operation of free grace, will cause us, as it were, with our eyes see justification and faith, not by report, but as we see the sun's light. A 3. Error there is in the state of the question, that never a Protestant divine (Arminians and Socinians I disclaim, as no Protestants) made either sanctification a cause of justification, but an effect; nor common sanctification that goes before justification, and union with Christ, void of all feeling of our need of Christ, an evident sign of justification. If Master Cornewell dreams, that we thus heighten preparations before conversion, as he seems in his arguments, against gracious conditions in the soul, before faith; he knows not our mind; and as other Antinomians do, refutes he knows not what. And 4. We had never a question with Antinomians, touching the first assurance of justification, such as is proper to the light of faith. He might have spared all his arguments, to prove that we are first assured of our justification by faith, not by good works; for we grant the arguments of one sort of assurance, which is proper to faith; and they prove nothing against another sort of assurance; by signs and effects, which is also divine. To Antinomians 1. to be justified by faith; 2. and to come to the sense and knowledge of justification, which either was from eternity, as some say; or when Christ died on the cross, as others; or when we first take life in the womb, as a third sort dream: And 3. to be assured of our justification, are all one. And so to be justified by faith, should be, to be justified by works, which they in their conscience know, we are as far against, as any men. But they should remember, that the peace and comfort that the saints extract out of their holy walking, is a far other peace, than that peace which is the natural issue of justification, of which Paul says, Romans 5:1: Being therefore justified by faith, we have [reconstructed: peace] with God through Jesus Christ our Lord; and the peace that issues from our holy walking; or at least, if they be the same peace, it comes not one and the same way. For 1. Peace which is the fruit of justification, is a peace in the court of God, as the peace that a broken man has in the court of justice, when he knows his surety has paid the debts; he dares look justice in the face without any war, having assurance that war is removed, and enmity with God cried down, and all sins are freely pardoned; the peace that issues from our holy walking is in the court of conscience, and sense of sincerity, and straightness of walking; and is grounded on holy walking, as on a secondary help; and if there were not some confidence, that the sinfulness of these works, are freely pardoned, there should be little peace at all. 2. The former peace is immediately from pardon, that is the true cause of peace; the latter from signs, which dwell as neighbors with pardon; and is only peace, as it has a necessary relation to pardon; and is resolved in some promise of God, and not as it is a work of our own: as hungering for Christ, as it is not the ground of pardon, so it is not the ground of peace that issues from pardon; yet it is the ground of a comfortable word of promise, Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. And the like, I say, of assurance, comfort, joy, that result from holy walking, and from justifying faith; we never placed good works in so eminent a place, as to ascribe these same effects to them, and to faith in Christ.

Then Master Cornewell loses his labor to prove, that God does not first declare and pronounce us righteous, upon sight and evidence of our sanctification, which is a righteousness of our own. For to pronounce us righteous, is to justify us; and does Master Cornewell know any Protestant Divines, who teach that God, either first or last does justify us for our inherent sanctification?

Then Mr. Cornwell does confound evidence and assurance of justification, as if they were both one. For many Saints have assurance of justification, so far as they are assuredly justified, and doubt much of their estate, through want of evidence: as many believe, and many times doubt, whether they believe or no. Therefore the argument to prove Abraham's assurance of justification (Romans 4) cannot conclude, that Abraham had not divine evidence and assurance, that he was justified, by his holy walking, as by signs and fruits of faith. The assurance of Christ's righteousness is a direct act of faith, apprehending imputed righteousness: the evidence of our justification we now speak of, is the reflect light, not by which we are justified, but by which we know that we are justified: and the argument that proves the one, cannot prove the other.

Object 3. If the promise be made sure of God to faith, of grace, then it is not first made sure of faith to works.

But the promise is made sure of God, to faith, out of grace (Romans 4:5), to him that works not, but believes: the opposition between grace and works (Romans 11:6; Romans 4:4) is not only between grace and the merits of works, but between grace and the debt due to works. Now to him that works, is the reward not reckoned of grace, but of debt (Romans 4:4). Right of promise makes a work to be of debt, not of grace.

Answer. The promise is made of righteousness and free justification by the grace of Christ; by the promise, that is, by the promised seed (Romans 4), but these places speak not one word of the reflect evidence that a man has in his own soul, by which he knows in himself he is justified. This Disputer knows not what he says: he proves we have no promise to be justified by works, nor any assurance thereof from working; that is not the question now; but he should prove, that we cannot know and make evident to our own souls that we are assuredly justified, and that we believe, when we bring forth the fruits of faith. There is one cause why there is life in this tree, and another cause, why all that pass by, and the tree itself, (if we suppose it to be capable of reason, as man is) does know it has life and sweet sap: this latter is known to the tree and to others, by bringing forth good fruit. As if there may not be sundry causes, 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉 and 〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉, of the being of a thing, and to know the being of a thing: bringing forth fruit is not the cause of the life of the tree, good works are not the cause of our justification; but we know well the tree has life, when we see it brings forth fruit; as we know we are justified, and in Christ, when we walk after the Spirit, and not after the flesh. The whole argument is of a direct assurance, called certitudo entis, or of the object: the question is, touching reflect certainty, how persons may be sure in their own conscience, called certitudo mentis; and so it concludes not the question.

2. It is Antinomian doctrine to make opposition between the Gospel promise, and the debt of the promise: the debt of works (Romans 4 and Romans 11) is law-debt due to the worker, as a hireling is worthy of his wages, because he has done the work perfectly, according to a covenant made with his Master: in which case, no man says the wages of the laborer is a free gift. But if whatever the Lord promises to us in the Gospel, makes God a debtor, and the thing promised to be debt, then let Antinomians speak out, for they say, the whole letter of Scripture (and so of the whole Gospel-promises) holds forth a covenant of works, contrary to (Galatians 4) where there are two covenants, one of works, another of grace; and contrary to the promises of grace in the Gospel (John 2:16; Hebrews 8:10-12; Matthew 11:28; 1 Timothy 1:15). (2) All the promises of the Gospel must make salvation debt: was not Christ promised in the Prophets to the lost world (Romans 1:2)? The inheritance is not by law, but by promise (Galatians 3:17-18; Romans 9:8-9; Luke 1:45, 54-55, 68-70). Is Christ come to save sinners by debt, or by grace? Is salvation debt? It is promised. Is not righteousness promised to him that believes (Romans 4:5)? Then righteousness must be debt, and so not of grace; for Cornwell tells us, page 13, the right which a man has by promise to a work, makes the assurance of the promise but of debt to him; and then the promise is not sure to him out of grace. Then all the promises of an established kingdom to David, and his seed, if they should keep God's commandments, all the blessings and salvation promised to believers in the Old and New Testament, so they bring forth the fruits of a lively faith, are mercies of debt, not of free grace. I well remember that the [reconstructed: Familists] say, it is dangerous to close with Christ in a promise. And there can be no true closing with Christ in a promise that has a qualification or condition expressed. I rather believe the Holy Ghost, Ho, every one that thirsts, come to the water, come buy wine and milk without money and without price (Isaiah 55:1). And if any man thirst, let him come to me and drink (John 7:37). And whoever will, let him take of the water of life freely (Revelation 22:17; Mark 1:15). If Cornwell can free willing, thirsting, desiring, from working, he has much divinity: yet the water of life and salvation promised to such cannot be debt, but free grace; for they are promised to these freely, and to be bestowed without money. Of the same strain is the fourth argument of Cornwell.

Object 5. When sanctification is not evident, it cannot be an evidence of justification.

But when justification is hidden and doubtful, sanctification is not evident.

Therefore sanctification cannot be our first evidence of justification.

The Minor is proved, because when faith is hidden and doubtful, sanctification is not evident: but when justification is hidden and doubtful, faith is hidden and doubtful; therefore when justification is hidden and doubtful, sanctification is not evident.

The proof of the Major is, 1. Faith is the evidence of things not seen; and so makes all things evident: then when faith is hidden, what can be clear?

2. Because no sanctification can be pure and sincere, but when it is wrought in faith; and so it cannot be evident, but when it clearly appears to be wrought in faith.

Answer 1. There is in the conclusion (first) the first evidence of justification, that is not in the premises, against all art. The proposition, When sanctification is not evident, it cannot be an evidence of justification, is weak, and weakly proved: For there is a twofold evidence, one of sense and feeling spiritual, another of faith. When sanctification lacks the evidence of faith, that I cannot believe salvation from my own Christian walking, yet may the soul have evidence of feeling and sense, that we trust we have a good conscience in all things, willing to live honestly (Hebrews 13:18), and we dare say, Lord, we delight to do your will, and long for you, O Lord, as the night-watch watches for the morning; and, whom have we in heaven but you, &c. and can out of sense give a testimony of ourselves, yes, and can place all our delight in the excellent ones (Psalm 16:3; 119:62; 1 John 3:14), so as the heart warms, when we see the saints; and in this case sanctification is evident, when remission of sins may be under cloud; else this argument does conclude, if it have any feet, that sanctification ever and at all times is dark, when justification is dark; and so sanctification is never an evidence of justification, but when justification is evident: So the wisdom of God is taxed, as if he would never have us to know that we are translated from death to life, because we love the brethren, but when we evidently know, we are thus translated, though we had no love to the brethren: Then the Lord has provided a candle for his weak ones, by this argument, when it is day-light; but has denied any candle-light, moon-light, or star-light, when it is dark night. 2. The major is not proved: Faith is not so the evidence of all things, as that it makes all things evident to our spiritual sense; for Cornwell grants, faith may be hidden; then it can evidence nothing when it is hidden. Love to the brethren, keeping of his commandments, yield sensible evidences that we are justified, even when faith is not evident; and how many are convinced they have undoubted marks of faith and justification, who doubt of their faith and justification? And so the minor and probation of it is false; for it is most false, that when faith is hidden and doubtful, sanctification is not evident: this is asserted without proof, not proved: As if you would say, Ever when the well-head is hidden, the streams are not seen; when the sap and life of the tree is not seen, but hidden, the apples, leaves and blossoms are not evident. This is a begging of the conclusion: for then should a man never, neither first nor last, know that he is translated from death to life, because he loves the brethren: Why? Because when translation from death to life, or when faith and justification is hidden, the love to the brethren, and all the works of sanctification are hidden; says this author.

3. The second proof of the major is lame; Sanctification is never pure and sincere, without faith, (says he;) Therefore, It cannot be evident, but when it appears to be wrought in faith. The consequence is null; just like this, Sweet streams cannot flow but from a sweet spring; therefore, It cannot be evident and clear to my taste that the streams are sweet, except I taste the water at the fountainhead, and see it with my eyes; and my taste cannot discern the sweetness of the fruit, except my senses were within the trunk or body of the tree, to feel, see, and taste the sap of life, from where the fruit comes. Indeed, the contrary consequence is true, because I smell sincerity, love, single intentions to please God in my works of sanctification; therefore I know they came from faith; so the Holy Ghost should delude us, when he says, We know, we know, or believe in Christ, because we keep his commandments. Therefore, We cannot know this, except it be evident, that our keeping of his commandment comes from faith, and the knowledge of God.

Object. 6. Such a faith as a practical syllogism can make, is not a faith wrought by the Lord's almighty power; for the conclusion follows, but from the strength of reasonings, not from the power of God, by which alone divine things are wrought (Ephesians 1:19-20; Colossians 2:20).

But faith wrought by a word and a work, and the light of a renewed conscience, without the testimony of the Spirit, is such a faith as a practical syllogism can make: Therefore, such a faith so wrought, is not wrought by the Lord's almighty power.

The minor is proved, because all the three, the word, the work, and the light of conscience, are all created blessings and gifts, and therefore cannot produce of themselves a word of almighty power; and the word of itself is a dead letter, the work is less: for faith comes by hearing a word, not by a work.

Answer: When Master Cornwell says, "By the power of God alone, divine things (such as faith that lays hold on Christ's righteousness) are wrought" (Ephesians 1:19; Colossians 2:20), he excludes the ministry of the Gospel, and all the promises thereof, for they are created things, and so they have no hand nor influence in begetting faith. Antinomians will have us believe that Paul (Ephesians 1:19-20; Colossians 1:20) thinks no ministry of the Word, nor any hearing of the preached Word, begets faith — contrary to (Romans 1:16; Romans 10:17) — but that by the only immediate power of the Spirit we are converted without the Word. Nor is here that which is in question concluded; never did any Protestant divine teach that, without the actual influence of omnipotent grace, faith or spiritual sense that we are justified can be produced by the Word, work, or created light alone; nor can the corn grow alone by power in the earth, clouds, or rain; nor can any creature move without the actual influence of the omnipotent Lord, in whom we move. Therefore by this reason we could not know that the sun shall rise by the rising of the morning star; nor can we have any supernatural sense by our holy walking, contrary to Scripture (1 John 2:3; 1 John 3:14). But we know by this: all faith is ascribed by Antinomians to the immediate testimony and enthusiastic inspiration of the Spirit; as for the searching of Scripture (say they), it is not a sure way of searching and finding Christ, it is but a dead letter, and holds forth a covenant of works in this letter; and therefore, with the old Anabaptist, they will have no teaching by Scripture, but only teaching by the Spirit. We hold that conditional promises are made to duties of sanctification, and therefore we may have comfort and assurance from them in our drooping condition. Cornwell answers (pages 23-25): the promises are not made to us as qualified with such duties of sanctification, for then they should belong to us of debt, not out of grace (Romans 4:4), but in respect of our union with Christ, in whom they are tendered to us and fulfilled to us. Satisfaction is made to the thirsty, not for any right his thirst might give him in the promise, but because it directs to Christ, who fulfills the condition and satisfies the soul; and the soul must first have come to Christ and gotten his first assurance from faith in Christ, not from these conditions and duties.

Answer 1: This is a yielding of the cause. We say there are promises of the water made to thirsty souls, not as if the right, jus, law, merit, debt that we have to them belonged to us for the deed done, but for Jesus Christ only. 2: Not as if we, upon our strength and the sweating of free will, did conquer both the condition and reward. 3: But yet we have comfort and assurance when we by grace perform the duty, that our faithful Lord, who cannot lie, will fulfill his own promise. 4: He knows nothing of the Gospel who thinks not that God by his promise comes under a sweet debt of free grace to fulfill his own promise, and that this debt and grace are consistent. But Antinomians' breath smells of fleshly liberty, for they tell us: conditional promises are legal, contrary to the Gospel (Romans 10:9; John 3:16; John 5:25); that it is not safe to close with Christ in a conditional promise; if anything be concluded from water and blood, it is rather damnation than salvation; that it is a sandy foundation to prove that Christ is mine from a gracious work done in me by Jesus Christ, were it even faith — for we are completely united to Christ without faith wrought by the Spirit; it is incompatible with the covenant of grace to join faith with it; to be justified by faith is to be justified by works; that to say there must be faith on man's part to receive the covenant is to undermine Christ. Neither Cornwell, nor Saltmarsh, oppose these blasphemies, but extol the patrons of them in New England.

Father, save me from this hour.

"Father" is a word of faith. But had Christ need of faith?

Answer: Not of faith of confiding in him that justifies the sinner, except he had faith of the justifying of his cause in God's acquitting him of suretyship when he had paid all; but he had faith of dependency on God in his trouble, that God would deliver him, and he was heard in that which he feared. And Question 2: how could there be a faith of dependency in Christ, for he was the same independent God with the Father?

Answer: There were two relations in Christ — one as Viator, going toward glory and leading many children with him to glory; another as Comprehensor, seeing and enjoying God. 2: There were two sights in Christ — one of vision, another of union; the sight of union of two natures is the cause of the sight of vision. Christ being on his journey traveling toward glory did with a faith of dependency rest on God as his Father, seeing and knowing that the union could not be dissolved; but as a Comprehensor and one at the end of the race, enjoying God in habit, there was no necessity that Christ should always — et in omni differentiâ temporis — actually see and enjoy God in an immediate vision of glory.

For, 1. this implies no contradiction to the personal union, even as the seeing of God habitually, which is the most joyful sight intelligible, and by necessity of nature, does produce joy and gladness, may, and did consist in Christ, with groanings and sadness of spirit, even before his last sufferings: so the interruption for a time, of the actual vision of God, might stand with Christ's personal happiness, as God-man. 2. If we suppose there were just reasons, why God should command that angels, and glorified spirits, should not actually see God for a time, there were no repugnancy in this, to their true blessedness, so it fell not out through their sins, no more than the sun should lose any of its nature, if we suppose God should command it to stand still, and to be covered with darkness many days, as in Joshua's time, it stood still in the firmament some hours, and for a time was covered with darkness at the suffering of Christ. What an interposed cloud of covering it was, or what a screen did interrupt the flux of the beams and rays of the Godhead from actual irradiation on the soul and faculties, and powers of the soul of the man Christ is more than I can determine. Certain it is, God was with the manhood, and so near as to make one person, but there was no actual shining on the powers of the soul, no heat and warmth of joy, but as if his own infinite sea of comfort were dried up, he needed a drop of the borrowed comfort of an angel from heaven. Now whether this angel (Luke 22:43) did wipe the sweat of blood off his holy body, and really serve him that way; or if the angel was sent with good words from the Father, to comfort him, and say to this sense, O glorious Lord, courage, peace, and joy, and salvation, shall come; your Father has not forsaken you utterly: it cannot be known, but Luke says, an angel appeared from heaven [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉], strengthening him. But it was admirable, that the Lord of all consolation, should stand in need of consolation, and a good word from his own creature; or that the great Lord, the Lawgiver, should need the comfort of prayer, or any ordinance. O what a providence! what a world is this! that God-man, sweet Jesus, is put to his knees, and his prayers with it. Come see the Lord of life at a weak pass he is at, God help me, at tears and sighing, God save me. This is more than if the whole light of the sun were extinguished, and it had to borrow light from a candle on earth; and the whole sea and rivers dried up, and they had to beg some drops of dew from the clouds to supply their want.

2. Christ himself refused comfort to himself: There was a sea of joy in Christ, within him; but not one drop can issue out on the powers of his soul: joy is sad, fairness black, faith fears and trembles; the infinite All, lies under the drop of the comfort of a creature-nothing. Riches beg at poverty's door; the light is dark, greenness withers and casts the bloom, life makes prayers against the death of deaths, the glory and flower of heaven stands sad and heavy at the jaws and mouth of hell. 3. (Matthew 26) He prayed to this sense, fallen on his face to the earth once, O my Father, remove this cup; but he is not answered: He knocks the second time, O my Father, if it be possible, remove this cup. O but here's a hard world, the substantial Son of God knocking and lying on his face on the earth, and his Father's door of glory fast bolted, the Son cannot get in. The like of this providence, you never read, nor hear of. The natural Son of God cries with tears and strong cries, with a sad, heavy and low spirit to his Father; he cannot get one word from heaven, nor half a glimpse of the accustomed glory that was natural and due to him as God. O rare and sad dispensation! He must cry the third time, O my Father, remove this cup. We storm, if the Lord does not open his door at the first knock: O what hard thoughts have some of God, if a flood of love issues not from his face at the first word! But the Lord's saints are not to look for a providence of the honey drops of the fattest consolations of heaven, in every ordinance of prayer and praises. O what a sad administration, (Psalm 22:2) O my God, I cry in the day time, and you hear not; and in the night season, and am not silent. The Church speaks sadly to God. What can be worse than this? (Lamentations 3:7) He has hedged me about, that I cannot get out; he has made my chain heavy. Yet to open a sad heart in the bosom of a friend, far more to God, is much ease; but here is worse, verse 8. Also when I cry and shout, he shuts out my prayer. (Psalm 69:3) I am weary of crying, my throat is dried: my eyes fail, while I wait for my God. It is grace to put a construction of love and faith on the Lord's not answering our desires. These experiences may silence us; 1. It may be good that the Lord answer, and not good that he answer now: The saints are often ripe for praying, when they are unripe for the mercy of a real answer and help from God. Two things necessitate prayer, 1. Our duty to worship. 2. Our necessity and straits. But on our part we are not ripe for an answer for any of these, being yet not humbled, and praying with slow desires, little fervor of faith. 2. It's possible it be our duty to pray, as supposing a real necessity of what we need, and yet it is not our good that God hear us now. No doubt Abraham and Sarah both prayed for a son, many years before the one was a hundred, the other ninety and nine years old; but it was not good that God should hear them till it be a miracle, and a new way, and more than ordinary providence they were answered. 3. God refuses never to hear us, for favors that are non-fundamentals toward everlasting life, but when it's better be not heard, than heard: Moses might possibly not know a reason, but it was better for him that he saw far off the good land, (more for faith and mortification and heavenly-mindedness, which he saw not) than that he should enter with the people into that land, which he prayed for. 4. Not any of the saints, considering that all things work together for good to them that love God, but as they praise God that he has heard their prayers, so they praise God in some things that their prayers lie at a fast bolted door, and take it well in other things that he was displeased with them, and so that they have cause to be humbled, that God did grant their desire. Let it be that David prayed for a son, and God gave him Absalom; it's a question, if David had not cause to wish he had never been born. 5. God has equally regulated and limited our desires to be heard, and our willingness, faith, submission, and patience, and our praises according as we are heard, or not heard; yet we are less in praises, when we are heard, and our desires fulfilled, and in submission, when we are not heard, than we are forward to praise; because necessity and straits can more easily obtain of us to pray, and set on moving the wheels of our affections, than grace can keep our spiritual affections in heat of motion, or limit and border our natural affections in praising, when they take them to their wings. David, (Psalm 22; Psalm 69) O my God, I cry night and day, till my throat be dry in asking: but where does he say, O my God, I praise night and day, till my throat be pained in praising, and my heart and eyes are wasted and spent in submissive waiting for you, and praising, for not hearing me in some things. 6. God is equally gracious to his own, in not hearing and granting, as in fulfilling their desires. 7. No man should take it hard not to be answered at the first, when the prime heir Christ was kept knocking at his Father's door. 8. Heard or not heard, the prayers of faith have a gracious issue, though the dross of them be cast away. 9. As praises have no issue, but to give to God, not to ourselves; so prayers in faith are to be offered to God as God, though nothing return in our bosom, that God may be extolled. Christ knew deliverance from this hour cannot be granted, yet he prays. 10. Faith is required no less to believe the good that the Lord intends for us in not hearing us, than the good he intends in hearing and fulfilling our desires: No condition of providence can fall wrong to faith; which can fly with any wings, and sail with every wind, so long as Christ lives.

Father, save me from this hour.

Christ bases his prayer on the sweetest relation of a Father and a Son: Father, save me. So (John 17) Father, glorify your Son. Verse 5: And now Father, glorify me. Six times in that prayer he uses this style. (Matthew 11:25) I thank you, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth. (Matthew 26) O my Father, remove this cup. His Father was great in his esteem: none like his Father. It is a strong argument to Christ, to persuade a hearing and a deliverance; and he was heard in that which he feared. He had no end in his coming into the world, but to do the will of his Father (John 5:30). 2. Love is a sweet ingredient in prayer: the beloved disciple John, who only of all the Evangelists sets down Christ's love-prayer (chapter 17), uses it more frequently than any of the other three Evangelists. 3. Propriety, interest, and covenant-relation is a sweet foundation and a strong ground for prayer: so in praying has Christ taught us to say, Our Father who is in heaven. And (Psalm 5:2) Listen to my voice, my King, and my God. (2 Kings 19:19) Now therefore, O Lord our God, I ask you to save us out of his hand. Ezra bases his prayer on this (Ezra 9:6): O my God, I am ashamed and blush. And Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 20:12): O our God, will you not judge them?

In prayer consider what claim and interest you have to God, if you be a son, and he a Father: Bastards cannot pray; strangers without the Covenant, and Heathen, having no right to God as their God and Father, may petition God as a subdued people do their Conqueror, or as ravens cry to God, for food, and as some howl upon their beds for corn and wine (Hosea 7:14). But they cannot pray; for praying rightly to God there is required not only gracious ingredients in the action, but also a new state of adoption and filiation: many speak words to God, who do not pray; many tell over their sins, who do not confess their sins to God; many speak good of God, who do not praise God; many sigh and groan in praying, and have no deep sense of God or their own sinful condition. Trees growing together do not always make a wood. Ah, our prayers, God knows, are often out of their right wits. Many cry, Father, to God, but lie; for they are not sons, and their words are equivocation. Thousands claim Father-ship in God, where there is no Son-ship, nor fundamentum in re, no ground in the thing itself. A new nature is that only best foundation of praying, that takes it off from being a taking of the name of God in vain. All creatures speak of God, and, in their kind, to God; but only a son can speak to God in prayer, as to his Father: calling upon God, with a pouring out of the soul to him in Christ, is essential to sons.

Father, save me from this hour.

Christ had no means of refuge safer and surer in his trouble, when he knew not what to do, than prayer. Christ had never a greater business in hand, than now he was to transact with God, and divine Justice, the Law of God, in the weighty bargain of paying a ransom of dearest and most precious blood, to open the new way to heaven; he had to do with devils, principalities and powers, and hell, to subdue devils, and death and hell, and to redeem his Catholic Church from the second death; and he was to offer himself a Sacrifice to God, through the eternal Spirit, for the sins of the whole elect, and he must use prayer in all this great work. The greatest works have been thus effectuated. For the dividing of the Red Sea, Moses cried to the Lord, and it was done. Hezekiah obtained 15 years' lease of his house of clay from Jehovah his Landlord; and how? (2 Kings 20:2) He turned his face to the wall, and prayed. Jonah broke the prison of hell by prayer. Jeremiah had many against him (Jeremiah 20:12): To you (says he to the Lord) I have opened my cause. Daniel, in his captivity; Ezra, when the people were under wrath; Esther and her maids, when the church's destruction is warped, and in weaving, by prayer loose the captive bands, and break death's jaws. So low a man as Job (Job 7:20) was, What shall I say to you, O preserver of man? David looks back to his prayers (Psalm 34:6), and when he is overwhelmed (Psalm 61:2): From the ends of the earth will I cry to you, when my heart is overwhelmed. To Elias this is the key that opens heaven. The last great work, the perfecting of Mystical Christ, the judging of the world, the putting of crowns on the heads of so many thousand kings, must have prayer to bring it to pass: Even so come Lord Jesus. The putting and keeping of the crown on Christ's head, is by prayer: his sword, crown and scepter, stand and prosper by this prayer, Your kingdom come. 2. Though Christ knew of his own deliverance, and was sure of it, yet he will not have it but by prayer. Christ had Son-right to heaven, yet he will take a new gift of heaven, by prayer-right: Christ makes prayer his new charter. (John 17:5) Father, glorify me, with the glory which I had with you before the world was. Christ will have his spouse, though his by conquest, and the law of buying, and ransom, made over to him by a De novo damus (Psalm 2:8): Ask of me, (pray to me) and I will give you the heathen. His kingdom's pillar is prayer. (Psalm 72:15) Prayer also shall be made for him continually, that his throne may stand, and he may bear the crown. What, must we pray for Christ, he prays for us? Indeed, we pray for Mystical Christ, and his crown. It's better to hold lands of Christ by prayer, than by conquest or industry, by right of redemption or heritage; even the rich who have broad lands, when the bread is at their lip, and on the table before them, are to pray, Give us this day our daily bread. Have you wisdom, honor, learning, parts, eloquence, godliness, grace, a good name, children, peace, ease, pleasure, wife, houses, lands, see how you got them; if not by prayer, in so far they are unjustly purchased: the next best is to get a new charter of them by prayer. I grant, conversion is not obtained by my praying, because an unconverted man cannot pray, no more than the birth can pray itself out of the mother's womb; yet it is gotten by Christ's prayer. Some after sickness have health, as robbers have the traveler's purse, they have them by spoil, not through Christ, or any prayer-right: Victories, and subdued cities, are better taken and enjoyed by prayer, than by bribes or money.

They know not the use of prayer, who teach, that we are not to pray against that which cannot be avoided. So Libertines say, we are not to pray against all sin, because it cannot be avoided: but the old man must be in us, so long as we live. The Lord has so decreed the end, as that he has ordained prayer to be a necessary way to accomplish his end. Indeed, Paul prays (1 Thessalonians 5:23) that the very God of peace may sanctify the Thessalonians throughout [non-Latin text]. And we know that we cannot be free of temptations in this life; yet we pray not to be led into temptation, which is not so much, that the body of sin may be fully rooted out of us, and inherent sanctification may be perfected in this life, as that we may be delivered from guilt and damnation, and from the power and dominion of sin, and that prayer may be stairs up to the laying of the last stone of the new building; indeed though it was revealed to Peter, and the disciples, that they should deny Christ, and as sheep be scattered away. When the sword should awake against the Shepherd, and this was unavoidable, in regard of the decree of God, and fulfilling of the Scripture (Zechariah 13), yet were the disciples to pray they might be so guarded against that temptation, as they might not leave, and forsake Christ in his sufferings.

Father save me from this hour [non-Latin text].

That which Christ deprecates has two things considerable. 1. That his sufferings were so timed, and [reconstructed: destined], as they should endure, but for an hour. 2. But it was a sad hour; there is an emphasis put on it, this hour.

1. Christ's sufferings are but hour-sufferings, we had to suffer eternally.

Objection: Therefore, Christ suffered not that same punishment that we were to suffer for sin, if Christ had never died for us.

Answer 1: He suffered not all, according to every accident and circumstance, that we were to suffer; it is true, we should have suffered sinful despair, and there could be no mixture of sin in his cup. 2. We should have suffered for ever, he exhausted all the pain, and the curse in some few hours. But he suffered all that we were to suffer according to the due equivalence, worth, and substance of the suffering. Christ paid (as we say) as good; a [reconstructed: debtor] owes ten thousand millions to a prince, to be paid in silver, at so many several terms; the surety of this broken debtor pays the whole sum at one term, and in gold, the most excellent metal: it is the very same debt, and the same bond acquitted, as if the sum had been paid by the chief debtor. Christ, by agreement, paid all in cumulo, at one term, and in excellent metal and coin, being the dear blood of God. A traitor is to die, and suffer hanging, or beheading for such a high point of treason; the prince's son will die the same death for him; only, by agreement, he has, because of the eminence of his person, a privilege, which the principal man had not: what if he be hanged in a chain of gold, and a crown on his head, or be beheaded with a silver-axe, it is the same satisfactory death for law and justice, as if the other had died like himself, there were some sparkles of the majesty and crown of heaven, or some glistering rubies and diamonds did shine in Christ's death, which could not have been in ours, and it was convenient it should be so.

2. Christ's time-sufferings are more than our eternal sufferings, because of the dignity of his person. It is true, a poor man's life is as sweet and dear to him physically, as the life of a prince, in the court of nature, in curia naturae; it is a like taking to every man; but in curia forensi, if we speak legally, and in relation to many, David a king is more, for his royal place, to save and judge many thousands, than ten thousand of the people. 2. A prince shamed and disgraced shall lose more honor, than a man of a low, poor, and base condition; the honor of a free, and just prince, is by a thousand degrees more than the loss of honor in a wicked and base slave. Sinners had little to lose in comparison of the Prince of life, like us in all things, except sin.

3. The more noble privilege that life has, as the more immediate communion with God, the loss of life is a greater loss. It is more for glorious angels to lose their happy and blessed life in the fruition of God, than for damned devils to lose their being, who are in chains of darkness. It is more for the spirits of just and perfect men, who are now up before the throne, to be made miserable, to lose life, and such a life; glory, and such a glory, than for slaves of hell, living in wickedness, to be thrust down to hell with everlasting shame; It is more that the whole sea, and all the rivers be dried up, than that one winter-fountain be dried up. Christ had more to lose than all angels and men, even to be suspended of the vision of God, for a time was more than all that angels and men could lose for ever.

4. It's true, the influence meritorious from Christ's person on his suffering is not real, but infinite in a moral estimation. But give me leave to think it disputable, whether or no, it depends not on the free decree and pleasure of God, that the punishment of sin be infinite in duration, or if it depends on the nature of sin, and of divine justice; so as essentially God be necessitated, not from any free decree (that is not properly necessity) but essentially from that spotless and holy justice, which is essentially in him, to punish those who equally sinned on earth, with equal torments in hell, and all with eternal punishment. Yet notwithstanding all this, Christ, by his death, not only exhausted the infinite punishment due to us; as infinite mountains of sands can drink up all the finite seas, rivers, brooks, and fountains of the earth; but he purchased to us an infinite and eternal weight of glory, by the worth of his merit. Now, by this there must be more in Christ's death, than we can easily conceive: as it is more to bring Israel out of Egypt only, and divide the Red Sea, and to present them living men on the shore, than to do that, and also to give them in peaceable possession, that good land which flows with milk and honey; and it's much to deliver a slave from perpetual poverty, misery, and bondage; and not only that, but positively to make him a rich, honorable, and glorious king; all which Christ by his blood purchased to us. I leave it then to be disputed, whether Christ's sufferings had not only a moral, meritorious and legal worthiness, from the free act of God's acceptation, or also an intrinsical worth and weight, real, and intrinsically congruous, and proportionable to the pain and shame he delivered us from, and the glory that positively he conquered for us. It is more to pay a poor man's debts, than to make him rich.

Quest. 1. If Christ's sufferings were limited, in regard of time and hours, why then could he suffer infinite punishment? It involves a contradiction to limit that which is infinite; and if an angel was sent to comfort him, it is likely, God did extend mercy, and not unmixed and satisfactory justice to him.

Answ. Moderation in suffering, as an angel to comfort him, that not a bone of him should be broken; that he should not lie three full days in the grave, that his body should not see corruption; all these may well stand with sufferings, that are infinite, morally, and from the worth of his noble and glorious person, who is God blessed forever. And it proves that all the exactest justice that the Lord followed in pursuing Christ to the second death for our sins, was not in inflicting punishment on Christ intensively, and intrinsically infinite, and which should be infinitely satisfactory, if we lay aside all supposition of the punishment of the person suffering, who was infinite, and of the free and voluntary acceptation of God.

Quest. 2. But then was not all the infiniteness of justice in punishing Christ, not in inflicting pain infinitely and intensively extreme on him, but in that the person was infinite — but the pain finite, both in time and otherwise.

Answ. We hold that the suffering for the time, was so extreme, that he and he only could [reconstructed: endure] the [reconstructed: infinite] wrath of God; but whether all the infiniteness of pain flows from this, that the person was infinite, or that the pain was intrinsically infinite, we desire not too curiously to determine. Sure the infiniteness of his person conferred infiniteness of worth to his merit; so as he purchased a Church by the blood of God (Acts 20:28). The Lord Jesus gave himself for his Church (Ephesians 5:25-26), and a ransom for many (Matthew 20:28; 1 Timothy 2:6). But I see no reason, why Christ's suffering should be thought finite, because he suffered in some few days; than the Lord's acts of creating the world, of raising the dead, working of miracles, should be finite acts, because completed in a short time.

Hence we cannot say, what an obligation is on us to Jesus Christ — love for love is too little; because our drop of dew can [reconstructed: bear] no proportion to his infinite and vast sea of tender love to us. As Christ gave himself an infinite ransom, by law, for us; so he brought us under an infinite debt of love and service to him. Christ paid all our debts of law to infinite justice, but we shall never pay all our debt of love to him. O how many thousand talents are we owing to Christ? And because glory is a love-engagement to Christ, the longer we enjoy the glory of heaven, through millions of ages, the debt to the Lamb, to him that sits on the throne, will be the greater, and shall grow infinitely: praises for eternity shall take nothing down of the debt. Know, you are the sworn and over-engaged and drowned debtors of Jesus.

Use 2. The sufferings of Mystical Christ are but for an hour; for a night, and joy in the morning (Psalm 30:5). A little season (Revelation 6:11). Three days (Hosea 6:1). A short time, and the vision will speak, and will not tarry (Habakkuk 2:3; Hebrews 10:37). It is but tribulation ten days (Revelation 2:10). And which is shorter than all, a moment (2 Corinthians 4:17); and the shortest of all (Isaiah 54:7), a little moment. All the generations of the firstborn, that were in great tribulations, and in the womb and belly of the Red Sea, are now come off safe, and landed on the shore, and are now up before the throne in white, triumphing with the Lamb; the hour is ended, some of them two thousand years ago are eased of burning quick, of the sword, of the [reconstructed: teeth] of lions. Job's face now is not foul with weeping; David's soul droops away and melts no more with heaviness, as in Psalm 119. The traces of tears on Christ's fair face, are fifteen hundred years ago washed off, and dried with his Father's hand. Paul is now beyond fears without, terrors within, and the sentence of death. All the martyrs now are above the fire, the [reconstructed: faggots], the rack, the gibbet, the axe. What thoughts has John the Baptist now of beheading? or Stephen of stoning to death? The gashes and wounds of the stripes of the apostles, scourged for the name of Jesus, are over now: there is not one sigh, nor one [reconstructed: tear], nor one cry, nor one death, now in heaven; all the former things are gone. Afflictions are but a short trance, for an hour; our short-lived sufferings will be over quickly: we are near the shore. Our inch of winter shall wear out, there is but a little bit of sour death before us; the ceremonies of death's approaching, of the noise of its feet, of its awesome and dreadful gloom, the train of little images of death, the aching of bones, the stitches of heart, the pain of the side, and such soft passing accidents, and the name are more than death itself; and all these shall pass over quickly. We have not centuries nor millions of years to suffer; he who limited a time to the Head Christ's suffering, has set so many sand-glasses, and determined so many hours for all our sufferings. Indeed, 2. the gall in our cup must be weighed by God's own hand: not a man killed more in the two kingdoms, nor a house burned, nor a scratch in the body, nor one wound in the poor soldier of Christ, but all are numbered; all go by ounces, grains, and scruples in heaven: there is a pair of just and discreet balances before the throne. Crucify Christ, and pierce his side, but not one of his bones can be broken: there be broken bones of two, one at either side of him, within the breadth of five fingers to him. Cast Joseph in the dungeon, but he must not die there. Cast Moses in the river, when he is an infant, to die there, but Pharaoh's daughter must bring him up as a prince. Let Job's body be afflicted, but save his life. Imprison and scourge the apostles, but there is more to do, by them, before they be killed. Make the kingdom of Judah weeping captives in Babylon, but the dry bones must live again. Let David be sorely afflicted, but he cannot be delivered to death (Psalm 118). Let Daniel be a captive, and meat for the lions, but he must be saved and honored. Appoint a day for the destruction of the Jews under Ahasuerus, let death be shaped and warped, but they shall not die. Love, even the love of Christ, whose seven spirits full of wisdom are before the throne, is a straight line, a just measure, and weighs all to the tempted souls, that nothing shall go above their strength: no burden more than their back, no poison, no death in their cup, no gall, more than the stomach can endure. You may, O redeemed ones, refer your hell to Christ's love, and make over all your sorrows to his will; see if he will destroy you. Let Christ be moderator to brew your cup, and free grace be judge of your portion of Christ's cross, and the cross may bruise your shoulder, it shall not grind you to powder. Had I ten eternities of weal or woe, I durst refer them to the bowels of Christ's boundless mercy and free love — shall I be the first that Christ's warm love over-killed and over-destroyed? Christ's love is infallible, and above error. Fatherly providence determines all so equally, measures all so straightly, tempers all so sweetly, that black death is sugared with white heaven, the sad grave a royal palace for a living and victorious king: apples of life grow on the saddest cross that the saints bear. The love of Christ has soft and silken fingers; love measures out strokes (Revelation 3:19). And can love kill and destroy a son of God's love?

The sufferings of Christ and the saints are measured by hours: God is the Creator of Time, and tempers the clock. My times are in your hands (Psalm 31). How long Ephraim, a raw cake, shall be in the oven, is decreed from eternity. 2. Put away your scum, your froth, and the bad blood, and you have a diet drink from Christ, the shorter while. 3. You think it long to have Britain's hour, or the ten days of pestilence and sword on Scotland, or the [reconstructed: devastations] of Ireland, the wars, divisions, and new blasphemies of England, gone, and over; but though we lose much time, and have bid farewell to yesterday, and shall never see it again, yet the Lord of time loses not one moment; if through acquaintance and familiarity you may become good friends with the cross, and bear it patiently: do for Christ, what you will do, for time the former is an act of grace, the Lord will thank you for it; the latter is the work of a carnal man, and will yield you no thanks. 4. Life is a burden to you, when it has such a sour and sad convoy as heavy afflictions; and the soul looks out at the windows of the [reconstructed: clay-prison], O when will the jailor come with the keys, and release a prisoner? But why would you fall out with a friend, for a foe's cause. Christ has sewn them together for a time; the vision will not tarry. Christ is on his journey, wait on, let patience have its perfect work, it is a floor that lies long under ground, it is a long quarter between sowing and harvesting, yet faith always has a good crop.

This hour.

Among all the hours that Christ had, this was the saddest. 1. Christ saw that his life in this hour would be taken from him; it was convenient that Christ, who was a man, like us in all things except sin, should not be a stock in dying; but have actual pain and sense in the losing of his life, for Christ had as much nature, though no corruption, as any man; and life is a sweet inheritance, its nature's excellent freehold, and no man is willingly, and without one sigh or tear cast out of this freehold, and Christ's nature was not brass or iron. Sorrow and sadness found a kindly lodging in him. 2. He had a clay tent of flesh and blood, as the children have, that (Hebrews 2:15) he might deliver them, who through the fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage. He must in our nature put on actual fear to deliver the saints, from habitual fear. Nature cannot, without horror, and a wrinkle on the brow, look straight out on the breadth of death's black face. The Martyrs kissed death, because the joy of heaven took lodging in their soul, by anticipation before the term day, to confirm the truth of God; but death has a sour bite, and sharp teeth, with all its kind kisses. Indeed, but Christ must read in the face of death more millions of curses — a curse for every elect, single man (Deuteronomy 27:26; Galatians 3:10) — than would have frightened millions of angels. O! but there was black and doleful painting — hell; and thousands of deaths in one, all written on the visage of death, which was presented to Christ now; and when there was a sad, dark, and thick curtain drawn over Christ's heaven, it must be a sour kiss, to lay his holy mouth to such a black face as death now had. Christ was in sad earnest, when he said (Matthew 26:38), "My soul is [reconstructed: περίλυπός ἐστιν] extremely, out of measure, heavy, even to the death." 3. Christ having well-tempered affections, his soul never being out of joint with sin, was not in dying foolhardy, or bold-life-wasting, or casting away the soul for a straw, which is forbidden in the sixth Commandment. He saw sad and bloody bills given in against him. O how many thousands of sins, were all made his sins, by imputation? And Justice was to sell all the elect over to Christ, and to deliver them all, by tale, to free grace, at no cheaper rate, than the rendering of the soul of Christ, to harder than ten thousand millions of ordinary deaths. Christ had to earn heaven at the hardest cost, for all his own, with no less than the noble and eminent life and blood of God; such a sum was never counted out in heaven, before or after. 4. There is much weight on this hour, in regard of Christ's opposites; three hosts came against Christ — Heaven, Hell, Earth; any adversary but God, the enmity of men cannot make me, or any man formally miserable. There be great edges and emphasis in these words, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me." Not a point, not a letter of them can be wanting, they are so full and emphatic. 1. My God, my God, the forsaking of angels is nothing, that men, all men, friends, all my inward friends, forsake me, is not much; they do more than forsake, they abhor Job their friend (Job 19:19); that father and mother, and all my mother's sons forsake me, is hard, yet tolerable (Psalm 27:10; Psalm 31:11; Psalm 88:18). Indeed, that my own heart, and flesh forsake me, is an ordinary thing (maybe) among men (Psalm 73:26). But God's forsaking of a man is sad. 2. If he be a God in covenant with me; both God, and then my God, that is a warm word, with child of love; if he forsake me, it is hard: When our own leave us, we forgive all the world to leave us. 3. In forsaking there is a great emphasis; anything but unkindness, and change of heart and love is well taken; this speaks against faith; though Christ could not apprehend this; the Lord cannot change, Christ could not believe such a blasphemy, yet the extremity of so sad a condition, offered so much to the human and sinless and innocent sense of Christ, a change of dispensation. 4. "Why have you forsaken me" — the son of your love, your only begotten Son, the Lord of glory, who never offended you; but the relation of Christ to God was admirable; he was as the sinner, made sin for us; in this contest, the enmity of a lion and a leopard is nothing (Hosea 13:7-8), the rending of the caul, of the web that goes about the heart is but a shadow of pain, to the Lord's running on a man as a giant, in fury and indignation. 2. Hell, and all the powers of darkness, came against Christ in this hour (Colossians 2:14-15). 3. All the earth, and his dearest friends, stood aloof from his calamity; there was no shore on earth to receive this shipwrecked man.

In regard of that which was taken from Christ, it was a sad hour; which I desire to be considered thus. 1. The most spiritual life that ever was, the life of him who saw and enjoyed God, in a personal union was veiled and covered. (1. Possession in many degrees was lessened: but in jure, in right, and in the foundation not removed. 2. The sense and actual fruition of God, in vision, was overcast, but life in the fountain stood safe in the blessed union. 3. The most dreadful effects, in breaking, bruising, and grinding the Son of God, between the millstones of divine wrath, were here. Yet the infinite love and heart of God, remained the same to Christ, without any shadow of variation or change. God's hand was against Christ, his heart was for him. 4. Hence his saddest sufferings were by divine dispensation and economy. God could not hate the Son of his love, in a free dispensation, he pursued in wrath the surety, and loved the Son of God. 5. It cannot be determined what that wall of separation, that covering and veil was, that went between the two united natures, the personal union still remaining entire, how the Godhead suspended its divine and soul-rejoicing influence, and the man Christ suffered to the bottom of the highest and deepest pain, to the full satisfaction of divine justice. As it is easy to conceive how the body in death, falls to dust, and ill-smelling clay, and yet the soul does not die, but how the soul does not suffer, and is not saddened, is another thing. How a bird is not killed, and does flee out, and escape, and sing, when a window is broken, with a great noise in the cage, is conceivable: but how the bird should not suffer, or be affected with no fright, is harder to our apprehension; and how shipwrecked men may swim to the shore, and live, when the ship is dashed in a hundred pieces, is nothing hard; but that they should be nothing frightened, not touch the water, and yet come living to shore, is not so obvious to our consideration. Yes, that the soul should remain united with the body, in death, and the ship sink, the passengers remaining in the ship, and not be drowned, is a strange thing. The Lord suffered, and died; the ship was broken and did sink, the soul and body separated, and yet the Godhead remained in a personal union, one with the Manhood, as our soul and body remain together, while we live and subsist as entire persons.

Use 1. Christ has suffered much in these sad hours for us: he has drunk Hell dry to the bottom, and has left no Hell behind for us (Hebrews 12:2). Jesus the Author and finisher of our faith, he has not only suffered so much of the Cross, but he has suffered all the cross; he has endured the cross, despised shame. In the original, the words are without any Article, [illegible]. It is as much as he has left no cross, no shame at all to be suffered by us; and (Philippians 2:8), he was obedient to the Father: he says not to the death, but to death, even death of the Cross, [illegible]. It holds forth to us, that Christ suffered so much for us, as he has taken up to heaven with him the great Cross, and has carried up with him, as it were, the great death; and has left us nothing, or very little to suffer; and indeed Christ never denied, but affirmed, he himself was obliged to die: but for the believer, he expressly denies, he shall die, and that with two negations (John 11:26), [illegible], he shall never in any sort, die; and for our sufferings, Paul calls them (Colossians 1:24), [illegible], the remnants, the leavings, the dregs, and after-drops of the sufferings of Christ, the sips and dew-drops remaining in the bottom of the cup, when Christ has drunk out the whole cup; so are our afflictions, and being compared with what Christ suffered, they are but bits, fragments, and small pieces of death, that we suffer, for the first death that the saints suffer, is but the half, and the far least half of death; it is but the lips, the outer porch of death; the second death, which Christ suffered for us, is only death, and the dominion, lordship, and power of death is removed. Why do you then murmur, fret, repine under afflictions, when you bear little wedges, pins, and chips of the Cross? Your Lord Jesus did bear for you the great and only Cross, that which is death, shame, and the Cross, [illegible], by way of excellence so called. It is true, the Spouse of Christ, since the beginning of the world, and since Christ's time these 1,600 years, has been crying as a woman travailing in birth of a man-child, and the Dragon near pursuing her, and is not yet brought to bed. Lord Jesus, when will the man-child be born, and your Spouse be eased of the birth? Yet is not this disease deadly; Zion, as soon as she travailed, brought forth her child (Isaiah 66:8). All her shadows of sufferings shall be quickly gone. The Spouse cannot die of childbirth pain; Christ will save both the mother's life, and the babe.

2. Sin is a dear and costly thing: in heaven, in the account-book of justice, it goes for no less than the blood of God, the shaming of the Lord of glory; justice, for the request of all the world, and the prayers of Christ, could not abate one farthing. A man's soul is a dear thing: exchange of commodities, of silks, purple, fine linen, is much; exchange of sapphires, diamonds, rubies, and other precious stones, for baser commodities, is much more; and that ships full of the gold of Ophir should be given for bread, and things obvious, is a rich trafficking: but the market and value of souls, as it has not, since God made man on earth, fallen or risen; so it is ever above a world (Matthew 16:26). What has a man profited, if he lose this? God will not take silks, nor purples, nor sapphires, nor rubies, nor navies laden with fine gold, nor any corruptible thing (1 Peter 1:18), for souls. The price is one and the same; souls were never bought, nor sold, nor exchanged, nor ransomed, but once; and the price is one, and as high as the soul and blood of the Lord of life. (Job 27:8) What is the hope of a hypocrite, though he has gained, when God takes his soul from him? Let him cast up his accounts, and lay his charges, he stands a poor man, a man without a soul. What mad men are we, who sell souls daily for prices so far below the Lord's price? A man that would [reconstructed: feu] a lordship of many thousands yearly, for a base sum, some pence, or for a night's sleep in a straw-bed, and bind himself not to redeem it, what a waster were he? How worthy to beg? Satan is going through the world, and he gives some pence in hand; O how sad a reckoning, when the Devil the cozening creditor comes at night, with his back counts, Pay me for your sweet lusts I gave you: answer my bill for your idle oaths, your lies, oppressions, cozening, covenant-breaking, your unjust judging, your starving, and murdering of the widow, and the fatherless, by detaining of the wages of the soldier, your slighting of Christ, and reformation, and the price is referred to God, and the market known. Satan can abate nothing, your soul he must have, and within few days the body too; is this wisdom to earn hell? And to make away a noble soul for a straw?

3. What are we to give for Christ? What bonds of love has he laid on us, who earned our heaven for us at so dear a price? I desire only these considerations to have place in our thoughts.

1. As God had but one Son, and one only begotten Son, and he gave him for sinners; so Christ had two loves, one as God, and another as man, he gave them both out for us; and two glories, one as God, one as man and Mediator, the one was darkened for us, [non-Latin text]; he emptied a sea of glory for us, he poured it out for us, and for his other glory, he laid it down, as it were in hell, endured infinite wrath for us.

2. He went to death and the grave, made his testament, and left his love, grace, and peace in legacy to us.

3. Greater love than this has no man; but he says not, greater love than this has no God. That God did let out so much love to men is the wonder of the world, and of heaven. We may find words to paint out creatures, and the garment may be wider than the thing; but should angels come and help us to find out expressions for Christ's love, words should be below and on this side of Christ.

4. Behold the man, says an enemy of Christ, but behold him more than a man, behold the Lord in the garden, sweating out of his holy body, great blobs and floods of love, trickling down upon sinners of clay. Men and angels come see, and wonder, and adore.

5. Love was Christ's cannon-royal, he battered down with it all the forts of hell, and triumphed over principalities, and powers; Christ was judgment-proof; he endured the wrath of God, and was not destroyed: he was hell-proof, and grave-proof, he suffered, and rose again; but he was not love-proof, (to borrow that expression) he was not only love-sick for his Church; but sick to death, and died for his friends. (Song of Solomon 2:4) His banner over his Church was love; saints be sworn to his colors, die and live with Christ: and take Christ in the one arm, his cause, and Gospel in the other, and your life between both, and say to all enemies; take one, take all. The midst of Christ's chariot is paved with love, for the daughters of Jerusalem (Song of Solomon 3:10). Christ's royal seat, both in the Gospel, in which he is carried through the world as a conqueror (Revelation 6:2), and in the souls of his children, is love. From the sense of this, it were our happiest life, to live and love with Christ, for he has carried up to heaven with him, the love and the heart, and the treasures of the sons of God; so as all ours are with him above time.

6. We are not to fear death extremely, nor hell at all. Christ feared both for our comfort: he has taken away the worst of death; in that 1. He has subdued hell and sin, and there remains to us, but the outer side of death. 2. The believer but half dies, and swoons, or rather sleeps in the grave. 3. He dies by will, because he chooses to be with Christ (Philippians 1:23), rather than by nature, or necessity. 4. As dying, and sufferings are the cup that Christ drank; so are we to love the cup the better, that Christ's lip touched it, and left the perfume of the breathings of the Holy Ghost in it. In common inns, by the wayside, princes, and common travellers, and thousands lie in one bed; the clothes may be changed, but the bed is the same. Christ tasted of death (Hebrews 2) for us; but there was gall in his cup, that is not in ours: Christ's wormwood was bitter with wrath, ours sweetened with consolation.

7. All the saints are in Christ's debt, of infinite love. When we grieve the Spirit purchased by Christ, we draw blood of his wounds afresh, and so testify, that we repent that Christ suffered so much for us. The Father has sworn, and will not repent, that he is an eternal Priest, and stands to it, that his blood is of eternal worth; and when the Father swears this, Christ is the same one God with him, and swears, that he thinks all his blood well bestowed, and will never give over the bargain, his Bride is his Bride, though dear bought, and his intercession in heaven speaks his hearty Amen, and fullest consent of love to our Redemption.

8. All this was done by Christ for nothing; Grace fell from God, on the creature, by mere grace. Grace is the only hire of grace.

9. When Ancient Love looked first on sinners, how ugly and black did the Lord see and foresee us to be? But Christ loved us, not according to what we were, but to what Grace and Love was to make us; and that was fair and spotless. And this love was so free in the secret of eternal election, that it was not increased by Christ's merits and death; but the merits, death, and fruit of this love, had being and worth from Christ's eternal love, and Christ's love has no fountain and cause, but love.

10. The Law of Gratitude ties us to love Christ; for he has loved us. If the love of Christ be in us, it works nothing in order to merit or hire; (Libertines need not weaken Christ's love from doing, upon this fear;) but love does all in order to the debt of love and obliged expressions to love, which excludes not Law, but the Law's rigid cursing and imperious commanding. Christ's love is most imperious, but is no hireling, and looks not to the penny wages, but the free Crown.

But for this cause came I to this hour.

Here is the fifth Article in this Prayer; a sort of correction, in which Christ does resign his will, as man, to the will of God; as (Matthew 26:39; Luke 22:42). Nevertheless, not my will, but your be done.

In this there is offered to us a question, Whether or no there be in this Prayer any repugnancy in the human will of Christ to the will of God? For 1. a correction of the human will seems to import a jarring and a discord; 2. Christ desired that, the contrary of which, he knew was from eternity decreed of God. 3. The Law of God is so spiritual, strict and holy, that it requires not only a conformity to it, and our will, actions, words and purposes; but also in all our affections, desires, first motions, and inclinations of our heart, that no imperfect and half-formed lustings arise in us, even before the complete consent of the will, that may thwart or cross the known Law and command of God; and by this, You shalt not lust (Romans 7), and the duty of the highest love we owe to God, to love him with all the heart, soul, mind, and whole strength (Matthew 22:37; Mark 12:33; Luke 10:27). Some Arians and Arminians, John Geysteranus at the Synod of Dort, have said blasphemously, that there was concupiscence and a will repugnant to God's will in the second Adam, as in the first. But this they spoke against the consubstantiality and deity of the Son of God. To which we say,

Assertion 1. Jesus Christ that holy thing (Luke 1:35), was a fit high Priest, holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners (Hebrews 7:26). Which of you (says Christ to the Jews) convinces me of sin (John 8:46). There could not be a spot in this Lamb sacrificed for the sins of the world, no prick in this Rose, no cloud in this fair Sun, no blemish in this beautiful Well-beloved.

Assertion 2. An absolute, resolved will or desire of heart, to lust after that which God forbids in his Law, must be a sinful jarring between the creature's and the Creator's will. Now, Christ's will was conditional, and clearly submissive; it lay ever level with his Father's holy will.

Assertion 3. I shall not with some affirm, that, which in the general is true, a will contrary to God's revealed command and will, called voluntas signi, which is our moral rule to oblige us, is a sin; but a will contrary to God's decree, called voluntas bene-placiti, which is not our rule obliging, except the Lord be pleased to impose it on us, as a moral Law, is not a sin. Peter and the Apostles, after they heard that prophecy of their denying of Christ, and their being sinfully scandalized, and their forsaking of Christ, when the Shepherd was smitten, were obliged to have a will contrary to that decree, and to pray that they might not be led into temptation, but might have grace to confess their Savior before men, and not flee, nor be scattered: Here is a resolute will of men lawfully contrary to the revealed decree of God; yet not sinful. But the Lord's will that Christ should die for man, as it was a decree of the wise and most gracious Lord, pitying lost man, so was it also a revealed commandment to Christ, that he should be willing to die, and be obedient to the death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2:8). Indeed, a rule of such humble obedience, as we are obliged to follow; as is said, verse 5. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, etc. If the Lord's will that Christ should die be nothing, but his mere decree, it could not oblige us in the like case to be willing, as John says, to lay down our life for the brothers. Indeed (John 10:18), Christ has a commandment of God, and the revealed will of God, to die for us; No man takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself: I have power to lay it down, I have power to take it again: this commandment have I received of my Father. Here is an express commandment given to Christ, to die for sinners; and the Father loves Christ for obedience to this commandment.

Assertion 4. A conditional and a submissive desire, though not agreeable to a positive Law and commandment of God, is no sin, nor does the Law require a conformity in all our inclinations, and the first motions of our desires, to every command of God, though most contrary to nature, and our natural and sinless inclinations.

1. If God command Abraham to kill his only begotten son, and offer him in a sacrifice to God, which was a mere positive commandment; for it is not a command of the law of nature (nor any other than positive) for the father to kill the son; if yet Abraham retains a natural inclination and love, commanded also in the law of nature to save his son's life, and to desire that he may live, this desire and inclination, though contradictory to a positive command of God, is no sin; because the fifth commandment, grounded on the law of nature, does command it. Nor did God's precept (Abraham, kill now your son, even Isaac your only begotten son) ever include this, Abraham, root out of your heart all desire and inclination natural in a father to preserve the life of the child. So the positive command of the Father, that the Son of God should lay down his life for his sheep, did never root out of the sinless nature of the man Christ a natural desire to preserve his own being and life, especially he desiring it with special reservation of the will of God commanding that he should die.

2. A Martyr dying for the truth of Christ may have a natural and conditional desire and inclination to live, though his living be contrary to the Lord's revealed will, commanding him to seal the Gospel with his blood, and to confess Christ before men.

3. If the brother, son, daughter, wife or friend, that is as a man's own soul (Deuteronomy 13:6), blaspheme God; indeed, if father or mother do it (Deuteronomy 33:8-9), yet is a father obliged to stone the son or daughter; the son, being a Magistrate or a Levite and Priest, to judge according to law (the Priests lips should preserve knowledge, Malachi 2:8), that his father or mother ought to be stoned to death; yet ought not father or son to lay aside that natural desire of being and life to son, father, brother, which the law of nature in the fifth commandment does require; especially the desire being conditional, with submission to God's will, as the desire of Christ is here; and the command to stone the blasphemer, that the father stone the son, the son the father, being positive, and though founded on the law of nature, that a man prefer his Lord Creator and God before son, or father and mother, yet are they not precepts of the law of nature, such as is the precept of nature that a man desire his own life and being, the father the life and being of the son.

Assertion 5. The apparent opposition (for it is not real) is rather between Christ's sensitive and his sinless mere natural desire and affection, and his reasonable will, than his will, and the will of God: nor can any say there is a fight or jarring between the conditional desire of Christ subjected, in the same act of praying, to the Lord's decree, and the resolute and immutable will of God. The law of God, because holy and spiritual, does require a conformity between all the inclinations and motions of our soul, and the law of nature; but an absolute conformity between all our inclinations and every positive command of God, such as was the Lord's command that Christ should die for sinners, is not required in the law of God. If Adam submit his natural hunger or desire to eat of the forbidden tree, to God's law, and eat not, there is no sinful jarring between his will and God's positive law, You shall not eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

It becomes us, as Christ's example goes before us, to submit in the hardest and most bloody providences, to the straight and holy will of God. 1. Christ [reconstructed: professes] he has no will divided from God's will; he lays down his glory, his heaven, his life, his fruition of the sweet influence of an highest vision, love, presence, feeling of God in a personal union at the feet of God, that the Lord may carve and cut and dispose of him, and his blood, as he thought good. 2. All the difficulty in us, in whom dwells a body of sin is to answer the objections, that flesh and blood has against a sad providence; which I will labor to do, and then give some rules for direction.

Obj. 1. This is a bloody and rough way that the Lord leads his people, that they drink wormwood, and gall of blood, and not tears only.

Ans. Providence is full of mysteries, let the way be shame, the crown is glory, and the present condition be hell, the end is heaven; Providence is a hand-writing of mercy, though we cannot ever read it, more than Belshazzar could read his bill of justice; we see a woman with child, but cannot tell whether it be a living or a dead birth, she shall bring forth; or whether the child shall be base and poor, or honorable and renowned, ere he die. The births in the womb of providence are invisible to us; out of the ashes of a burnt and destroyed Church, the Lord raises up a Phoenix, a King's daughter, a Princess that shall rule the nations with a rod of iron, a Zion that has the strength of a Unicorn; indeed, Jacob's seed shall be in many waters, his King shall be higher than Agag, and his Kingdom shall be exalted: God brought him out of Egypt (Numbers 24:7-8). Christ brews the water of life, out of drink of gall, wormwood, and blood; if the head be gold, as Christ is, the body cannot without great incongruity be base clay.

Obj. 2. But all go wrong, confusion and devastation lie on the people of God.

Ans. To him who sits on the Throne, and gives law and judgment to the most inconstant things imaginable, the waves of the Sea, and orders them, and rules a Sea of glass, a brittle and frail thing, and a Sea of most unnatural confusions, a Sea mingled with fire, nothing can be out of order, hell, the Beast and Dragon that make war with the Lamb, the laying waste the holy City, the killing of the witnesses; are all orderly means ranked by the Lord whose armies cannot reel, nor spill their march, when he draws them up to the execution of his [reconstructed: wise] decrees, the confusion is to our eye; but judgment, law, and order there are, though not visible to us. Who can pull him out of his invisible and high Throne of wisdom, counsel and power? It may be he sits not always on his Throne of justice.

Obj. 3. But what a providence is it, that those that open their mouth against heaven are fat, and shine, and prosper, and those that fear God are plagued every day; and killed all the day long and counted as sheep for the slaughter?

Answer 1. Offend not against the generation of the children of God, as if it were lost labor, and as good to sow wheat in the sea, as serve the Lord, and walk mournfully before him — you see their work, but not their wages. 2. It is painful to trace providence in all its ways, circuits, byways, lines, turnings. But 3. surely in the end God turns the tables, he makes all odds equal, the empty bucket goes down, the full comes up. 4. The Lord has set the wicked in a chair of gold, but on the top of a house, and a rolling stone above the mouth of a pit ten hundred fathom deep: this is a jogging and slippery condition. 5. They slip away to eternity and to hell in a moment. 6. Their happiness is a golden dream (Psalm 73:12-13, etc.).

Objection. Means fail, men change, creatures are weak.

Answer. So long as Christ changes not, and your head lives, and stirs the helm of heaven and earth, all must be well — if all life, all health, and so much as eternal life be in the head, how can the heart ache or quake, except it first create, and then fancy fears, and does not really suffer?

Objection 5. Our kingdom's strength is gone, we cannot subsist.

Answer. (Colossians 1:17-18) In Christ all things subsist, he is the head of the body the church. Faith is the substance — Budaeus calls it the boldness and fortitude; Beza calls it the firm and constant expectation; the Syrian, and Arabian, the confident gloriation of, or in things hoped for, and a convincing light and evidence of things not seen. There is good reason to believe that God will lift up a fallen people, who desire to fear him, and wait for his help.

Objection 6. They plow upon Christ's back, and make long and deep furrows on Israel from her youth (Psalm 129:1).

Answer. True, plowing is a work of hope, but have you not seen enemies digging a grave for Christ, and preparing a coffin for him before he be dead? And they have been compelled to fill up the living man's grave, and they plow, but Christ comes in and sows joy in the hot furrow, and reaps the crop, and the quiet fruits of righteousness. The enemies plant, and the vintage is Christ's — one sows, but another reaps.

Objection 7. But the souls under the altar cry to God, and their blood is not avenged: their blood, and their graves in their kind, make supplications before the throne for justice, yet the enemies prosper.

Answer. Has not the Lord appointed a time for fighting, and suffering, and a time for triumphing, when those that have gotten the victory over the Beast, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God, singing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb: there was a time when the Lamb did weep, and in the days of his flesh, offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, to him that was able to save him from death (Revelation 15:2-3; Hebrews 5:7). It is a sin to carve a date of our own for justice.

Objection 8. But he delays his coming.

Answer. But he is not slack, as some count slackness. If general justice to a world must be measured by thousands of years, as but one day to God; particular judgments may have hundreds of years; and when the saints are killed, Christ survives them, to redeem them from blood, and disgrace, when they are dead, when their cause is judged, and they rotten into powder in the grave, they are redeemed, even when the souls under the altar, are avenged on their murderers.

Objection 9. It stumbles many, that wicked men are fat, and their faces shine, as if God were with them.

Answer. If they be fat on common mercies, the more shame to the saints, if they be not fat, and their bones green as an herb upon the same fare, and the same mercies, perfumed with Christ, and there is more fatness and marrow in the higher, than in the lower house: saints are lean through their own unbelief.

Now for rules of submission to providence in order to the text, let these be considered.

Rule 1. Christ's patience, and so our submission must be grounded on a looking above-hand to the will of God; every wheel in a great work moves according to the motion of the highest and first wheel that moves all the rest. Every inferior court acts, as ordered by the highest and supreme senate, the greatest in the kingdom. Every inferior orb in the heaven is moved in subordination to the Primum mobile, the highest that moves all the rest; the motion of rivers regulates the flowings of lesser brooks. And things that move on earth, as the heavens move, so are they carried; the principle of motions and ways in all morals begins at the highest mover, the just and wise will of God; all are to say, not my will, but your will be done.

Rule 2. There is no ground of submission in a cross-providence, but to look to the end that Christ looked to, the Lord's wise and holy will; he curses, because the Lord bids him, says David of Shimei; and there he fixes his stake. The Lord has taken away, says Job, and upon the Lord's taking away, he says, Blessed be the name of the Lord; any man can say, Blessed be the name of the Lord, who gives; the greatest part of men break their teeth, in biting at the nearest link of the chain of second causes, but they arise never up to God, the first mover.

Rule 3. Christ not only submits to God's will, but he approves that it may be done. So Hezekiah (Isaiah 39:8) — he said moreover, good is the word of the Lord — the thing was hard, that all in his house should be carried away to Babylon, and his sons should be captives. Yet the will of the Lord was good and just, when the thing willed and decreed of God was evil to him.

Rule 4. Christ will not hinder God to do what he thinks good; Your will be done. Murmuring is a stone in God's way; murmuring is an anti-providence, a little God, setting itself against the true God, that stirs all in wisdom; and the murmurer does what he can to stop up God's way. Old Eli, when he heard sad news, says (1 Samuel 3:18), "It is the Lord, [illegible] Let him, I hinder him not to do what is good in his eyes." David says (2 Samuel 15:26), "If the Lord says, I have no delight in you, behold here am I, let him do to me what seems good in his eyes, here am I" — which is as much as to say, I will not flee him, nor hinder him; I lay myself under him to receive his strokes. So Christ (Hebrews 10:5; Psalm 40): "You have prepared my ears, or my body, here am I" — Verse 7: "Here am I to do your will."

Rule 5. Christ gave not away his natural will; but in the act of willing, he submitted it — it was a broken will that Christ reserved to himself, or a submitted will, hic & nunc. Christ seeks not the resigning of natural faculties in hard providences, but that we [reconstructed: quit contesting] with God; and that our will be not abolished, but broken — especially, that we do not quarrel with justice. Lamentations 3:28: "He sits alone, and keeps silence, because he has borne it upon him." Verse 29: "He puts his mouth in the dust, if so be there may be hope." Verse 30: "He gives his cheeks to him that strikes them; he is filled with reproach" — there are here many sweet signs of a broken will. 1. Solitary sadness. 2. Silence, the soul not daring to quarrel with God. 3. The stooping to the dust, and putting clay in the mouth, for fear that it speak against God's dispensation, as (Job 40:4-5). (4) A willing accepting of buffets on the cheeks, and reproaches — so (Micah 7:9), "I will bear the indignation of the Lord, because I have sinned." When the soul is made like a broken and daunted heifer, or a simple heartless dove, so as the man like a well-nurtured child, kisses the rod of God. He is a bad soldier, who follows his captain sighing, and weeping; faith sings at tears, and rejoices under hope in the ill day.

Rule 5. It is the child's happiness, that the wise father's will be his rule, not his own; and for the orphan, the tutor's wit is better than his own will. Our own will is our hell (Ezekiel 18:31): "Why will you die, O house of Israel?" Christ's will is heaven. Christ thinks it is best, that his Father's will stand, and his human will be repealed (Romans 15:3), for even Christ pleased not himself — to have no will of your own is the pearl in the ring, a jewel in submission. (2.) That the Lord's end is good, he intends to have me home to heaven; then as in his six days' works of creation, he made nothing ill, so he has been working these five thousand years; and all his works of providence are as good as his works of creation — he cannot choose an ill means for a good end. If God draws my way to heaven through fire, tortures, blood, poverty, though he should trail me through hell, he cannot err in leading; I may err in following.

Objection. But there is a better way besides, and he leads others through a rosy and green valley, and my way, within few inches of it, is a wilderness of thorns.

Answer. Gold absolutely is better than a draught of water; but comparatively, water is better to Samson, dying for thirst, than all the gold in the earth. So cutting a vein is in itself ill; but comparatively, letting blood through a cut vein is good for a man in danger of an extreme fever. There is no better way out of heaven for you, than the very way that the Lord leads you. God not only chooses persons, but also things; and every cross that befalls you is a chosen and selected cross, and it was shaped in length, and breadth, and measure, and weight, up before the throne, by God's own wise hand. Heaven is the workhouse of all that befalls you; every evil is the birth that lay in the womb of an infinitely wise decree; so God is said to frame evil, as a potter does an earthen vessel (so [illegible] jatsar signifies) (Jeremiah 18:11); to frame a vessel of clay is a work of art and wisdom, so it is a work of deliberation and choice. God is said to devise judgment against Babylon (Jeremiah 51:12); and the Lord has done to his people the things which he devised — [illegible] is to think, meditate, study, devise (Deuteronomy 19:18); and (Isaiah 45:7) he creates darkness and evil — it is such a work of omnipotency and wisdom as the making of a world of nothing. Then if God follows infinite art in shaping vengeance against Babylon, far more must he wisely study to mold and shape afflictions for his own; for no afflictions befall the saints, but they be well framed, chosen, wisely studied, forged, and created crosses. A potter cannot frame by deeper art and judgment a water-pot for such an end and use; a fashioner cannot frame clothes in proportion for a man's body so fitly as the wise Lord, in judgment and cunning, shapes and frames this affliction as a measure for your foot only — poverty for this man, and it is shaped to his measure; wicked children and the sword on David's house, fittest for him; such a loathsome disease for this saint; want of friends and banishment for such a man. Another more and heavier should be shaped too wide for your soul, and another lighter should have been too strait, short, and narrow for you. It is comforting, when I believe the draft, portraiture, and lineaments of my affliction were framed and carved in all the limbs, bones, parts, and qualities of it, in the wise decree and in the heart and breast of Christ. It were not good to bear a cross of the Devil's shaping; were there as much wormwood and gall in the saints' cup as the Devil would have in it, then hell should be in every cup — and how many hells should I drink, and how often should the Church drink death? It is good I know Christ brewed the cup; then it will work the end, for be it never so contrary and sour to my taste, and so unsavory — Christ will not taste poison in it. He has purposed I should sail with no other wind to heaven, and I know it is better than any wind to me, for that port.

Rule 6. Christ prescribes no way to his Father, but in the general, The Lord's will be done on me, (says he) be what it will: Let hell, and death, and devils' malice, and heaven's indignation, and enmity, and war, ill-will, and persecution from earth, hard measure from friends and lovers, if the will of my Father so be, welcome with my soul; welcome black cross, welcome pale death, welcome curses, and all the curses of God, that the just law could lay on all my children, (and they are a fair number) welcome wrath of God, welcome shame, and the cold grave. The submission of faith subscribes a blank paper, let the Lord write in what he pleases, patience dares not contest and stand upon pennies or pounds, on hundreds or thousands with God; Moses and Paul dare refer their heaven, and their share in Christ, and the book of life to Christ, so the Lord may be glorified: Submissive faith puts much upon Christ, Let him slay me, yet I will trust in him, said Job (Job 13:15). Heman alleges it was not one single cross (Psalm 88:7): You have afflicted me with all your waves. And David (Psalm 42:7): All your waves and your billows are gone over me: One of God's waves could have drowned David, afflictions coming in armies, and in a battle-array, say that one single soldier cannot subdue us. Lawful war is the most violent, and the last remedy against a state, and it argues a great necessity of the sword. Job had an army sent against him, and from heaven too (Job chapter 6:4): The terrors of God set themselves in array against me. See what a catalogue of sufferings Paul did refer to God (2 Corinthians 11:23-25, etc.): one good violent death would have made away a stronger man than Paul, yet he was willing for Christ to be in deaths often, [in non-Latin alphabet], many deaths, many stripes, many prisons, five times nine and thirty stripes, this was near two hundred stripes, every one of them was a little death: Three times beaten with rods, once stoned, three times in shipwreck, night and day sailing in the deep, in journeying often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of his own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren, in weariness, and painfulness, in watching often, in hunger, in thirst, in fasting often, in cold, in nakedness, etc. Many of us would either have a cross of our own carving, as we love will-worship, and will-duties, so we love will-suffering, and desire nothing more than if that we must suffer, Christ with his tongue would lick all the gall off our cross, and leave nothing but honey, and a cross of sugar and milk, we love to suffer with a reserve, and to die upon a condition; an indefinite and catholic resignation of ourselves without exception to Christ, and to undergo many furnaces, many hells, many deaths as Christ will, is a rare grace of God, and not of ordinary capacity.

Rule 7. Christ, in submitting his will, makes the prophecies, the revealed gospel his rule: and in the matter of duty, is willing to be ruled by God's revealed will; in the matter of suffering, he is willing that the Lord's will stand for a law, to which he does willingly submit, and will in no sort quarrel with everlasting decrees. To be ruled by the one, is holiness; to submit to the other, is patience: For patience is higher than any ordinary grace, in regard its willing to adore and reverence something more and higher than a commanding, promising, and threatening will of God. It was a grace in Christ most eminent, in the Lamb of God, dumb, meek and silent before his shearers, the meekest in earth and in heaven, that he did not only never resist the revealed will of God, but never thought, motion, nor any hint of a desire was in him, against the secret and [reconstructed: eternal] decree and counsel of God. Christ will not have us to make images of him, who is the invisible God; but, when in his works of justice, power, love, free grace, he sets before us the image of his glorious nature and attributes, he will have us to adore him in these. According to his decree of reprobation, he raised up Pharaoh to be clay to all men; on whom, as on a voluntary and rational vessel of wrath, they might read power, justice, truth, sovereignty; in these works we are to tremble before him, and adore the Lord. So in works of grace, that are the image of the invisible God, the Lord is to be loved. In Paul, the chief of sinners, the Lord holds forth an image of the freest grace, no less than in the revealed will of God (1 Timothy 1:16); for, 1. Christ made an example of mercy and free grace in him. 2. He made a speaking and crying spectacle to all ages, an [in non-Latin alphabet], a printed copy of crying grace to all the world: and in this we are to adore and submit to him. Such a limb of hell has received mercy, not I, who before men was holier. O submit to this work of grace, as to the copy of his eternal decree, and be silent.

Rule 8. Christ puts nature and natural reason, that his natural will might seem to plead withal, under the Lord's feet: so it would seem strange. God has many sons, but none like Christ: he was a Son, his alone; he had never a brother by an eternal generation; he was the only heir of the house; but never a son so afflicted as he: this seems against all reason. But Christ brings in his Father's will with a [reconstructed: "But"] (Matthew 26:39; John 12:27; Luke 22:42; Mark 14:36): But your will be done. It is against submission to put absolute interrogatories upon the Lord: we love to have God make an account of his providence to us, and that the last and final appeal of the ways of the Lord should be to our reason, as to the great senate and supreme court in heaven and earth. It is true, Christ puts a "Why" upon God — "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" — but, 1. with the greatest faith that ever was, a doubled act of believing: "My God, my God." 2. With the most extreme love that ever was in a man; it is also a two-fold cord of warmness of heart to his Father: "My God, my God." 3. It is a word relative to the covenant between the Father and the Son; for "My God" is a covenant-expression, that the Father will keep what he has promised to his Son; and it relates to the infinite faithfulness of the Covenant-Maker. 4. "God" relates to the dominion, Lordship and sovereignty that the Lord has, and therefore that Christ will submit to him. 5. Christ's complaint of the Lord's forsaking shows the tenderness of his soul, in prizing the favor of his Father more than anything in heaven and earth. And therefore Christ's "Why" is a note of: 1. admiration; 2. of sinless sorrow — conjoined with love, tenderness and submission to God. Christ cannot speak to his Father beside the truth: but every man is a liar; and we seldom put questions and queries upon sovereignty, but we prefer our reason to infinite wisdom. Job is out, and takes his marks by the clouds and the moon, when he says (Job 13:24), "Why do you hold me for your enemy?" (Chapter 3:11) "Why did I not die from the womb? why did I not give up the ghost, when I came out of the belly?" And (Jeremiah 15:18) "Why is my pain perpetual, and my wound incurable, which refuses to be healed?" (Chapter 20:18) "Why did I come out of the womb, to see labor and sorrow, that my days should be consumed with shame?" All the Lord's works are full — indeed with child of reason, wisdom, and grave and weighty causes: and though we see not his acts to have a "why," yet there is a cause why he does all he does; reason is necessity to him, and an essential ingredient in all his actions.

Rule 9. In this administration of providence, with Christ, the Lord goes many ways at once: in this very act he redeems the world, judges Satan, satisfies the law and justice, glorifies Christ, destroys sin, fulfills his own eternal will and counsel. In one war he can ripen Babylon for wrath, humble his Church, deliver Jeremiah, punish idolatry. In the same war he can humble and correct Scotland, harden malignants, that they will not hearken to offers of peace; and blow up their haters, that they may be lofty through victories, and be ripened for wrath through unthankfulness to God. Providence has many eyes, so also many feet and hands under the wings, to act and walk a thousand ways at once. There is a manifold wisdom in providence, as in the work of redemption. In every work that God does, he leaves a wonder behind him: no man can come after the Almighty, and say, "I could have done better than he." It is natural to blame God in his working, but impossible to mend his work.

Rule 10. Nor is Christ made a loser, by losing his will for the Lord, but his will is fulfilled in that which he feared (Hebrews 5:7). Providence submitted to renders a hundredfold in this life (Matthew 19:29). God makes the income above hope (Genesis 48:11). And Israel said to Joseph, "I had not thought to see your face, and lo, God has shown me also your seed." One berry is not a cluster that two men cannot bear, but it is a field, an earth of vine-trees in the seed (Ephesians 3:20). He is able to do above all things [reconstructed: exceedingly] more than abundantly above what we can ask or think, above the shaping or frame of my words and thoughts. But I can ask heaven — he can give more than heaven, and above heaven; indeed I can think of Christ, but he can give above the Christ that I can think on, because I cannot comprehend infinite Jesus Christ.

Rule 11. Christ is not so intent and heart-bent on freedom from death and this black and sad hour, but he reverences a higher providence, that God's will be done; so are we to look to providence, and we are not to stumble at an external stroke in sad occurrences, when (Job 9:22) God destroys the perfect and the wicked. And he sharpens his sword (Ezekiel 21:3) and says, "I will draw out my sword out of its sheath, and will cut off from you, the righteous and the wicked."

Then 1. Arise, go down to the potter's house (Jeremiah 18). The earth is God's workhouse; for clay, good and bad are equally on the wheels; Christ as punishable for our sins, though a vessel of burning gold, is under art; sovereignty rolls about three in one wheel: the blaspheming and the repenting thief, and Christ, who is virtue, grace — indeed glory — in the midst. An elect and a reprobate man may both be sewn in the same winding-sheet, they may touch each other's skin in the same grave, but they are not rolled in to the same hell. Indeed Ham is saved in the Ark, but as the unclean beasts are — he is preserved from drowning, but reserved to cursing.

2. There is a providence of grace, as there is in God a special love of free grace; the good and the bad figs are not in the same invisible basket; there is a pavilion, a cabinet of silk in God's private chamber, seen by no eye (Psalm 27:5). And upon all the glory shall be a covering (Isaiah 4:9). Christ's free and invisible love is a fair white web of gold, that a saint is wrapped in on the evil day. Where is he? he is hid, yet he goes through the sieve, and sifted he must be, but not a grain of him falls to the earth (Amos 9:9).

3. There have been questions about the Prerogative of Kings and the Privilege of Parliaments too, but undeniably in the market-road of Providence, the Lord has kept a Royal Prerogative of justice to himself, to cut off the innocent and righteous with the wicked, in temporal judgments. 2. And of special grace of Providence, when the godly man is marked with a death-mark, and condemned to die, God's Prerogative sends him a reprieve of grace, above the law and current of providence. Isaiah 38:5 — Hezekiah (says the high Landlord) is summoned to depart and remove, yet he shall dwell in his farm of clay, fifteen years. 3. This Prerogative dispenses with fire, not to burn; with the Sea, not to ebb and flow, so long as the soles of the feet of Christ's bride are upon the new-found sands in the heart of the Sea. Indeed, with hungry lions not to eat their meat, when they have no food but the flesh of Daniel, beloved of the Lord. Christ here commits himself to an unseen Sovereignty. For Abraham to kill his own only begotten son of promise — to reason, it's a work of God, but it's a providence of nonsense. Neither Law nor Gospel, for what reason can see, shall warrant it; yet Sovereignty commands it, and that's enough. Afflictions of trials, such as the prosperity of the wicked, and the trying sufferings of the godly, seem more to contradict God's promises, and revealed will in the Word, than any other visitations of God, therefore beside that they require patience, they must have faith in an eminent manner. To believe infinite wisdom can tie the murdering of Isaac by his own Father, against the Law of Nature (as it seems) with the Gospel, which cannot command unnatural blood, must require much faith.

Rule 12. Christ declares when matters are at the worst, there is good will for him, in the done will of God; it's an objection to sense, and to sinless Nature in Christ-man: O do you not see sad and grim-faced death, is not your soul your darling in the power of dogs? Has not hell long and bloody teeth? Is not the furnace, the oven of the Lord's highest indignation, for the sins of all the chosen of God very hot? When the flames of it make you a troubled soul, and cause you to sweat out blood; what blood shall be left for scourging, for the iron nails of that sad cross? True (says Christ) I have (God knows) a heavy soul, my strength is dried up like a potsherd: this cup casts a savor of hell and fiery indignation, a sight of it would kill a man, yet I'll drink it, the good and just will of my Father be done, there I stand, further I go not. To be at a stand, and to lay silence on our tumultuous thoughts, who are compassed with a body of sin, and to be satisfied with the will of the Lord is our safest — we should not be persuaded by the cross, or all that sense can say, far less what sin can say from this, The will of the Lord be done. The friends of Paul hearing what he must suffer, say (Acts 20:14), When he would not be persuaded, we ceased saying, The will of the Lord be done. It is grace to cease and say no more, when we see the Lord declare his mind to us; an holy heart will not go one hair's breadth beyond the Lord's revealed will.

1. Because love which thinks not ill, does not blacken the spotless and fair will of God, when it is revealed to be from God, though Hell were in that will.

2. Faith sees even in permitting of persecution from Pharaoh and Egypt, the Lord's good will in the burning bush, the very good will by which he saves his people redeemed in Christ (Matthew 11:26; Philippians 1:13), who dwells in the bush (Deuteronomy 33:16). And it's considerable that the same good will which is the root of reprobation, and of permitting hell and Devils, and Devils persecuting instruments to turn his Church into ashes, and to a burnt bush; and Devils and men to crucify Christ is free grace, and the root of Election to glory, and is extended to the Saints (Romans 9:15-17; Ephesians 1:11). Faith sees and reads free grace in a providence, which of itself, is extended to Devils and reprobate men, though not as extended to them; and it is an argument of true grace, if any can say Amen to Hell and the saddest indignation coming from this will, though against a particular will of our own.

3. As we are obliged to adore God, so also his Sovereignty and holy will, when it's revealed to us; and to murmur against it, because it crosses our short-sighted, and narrow-witted will, is the highest contempt of God, and that which is the soul and formal of sin, and the determination of a wicked and ill-stated question. Whether should my short and purblind will stand for eternity; or the holy and infinitely-wise will of God, which had eternity of duration, infiniteness of wisdom, and not seven, but millions of eyes, to advise what was decreed as fittest to be done.

4. Since there is not a Fatum, nor an adamantine destiny and irrevocable decree but this; is it holy wisdom to knock hard heads with God? It is true, pride grows green, and casts out its golden branches in the fattest soil: But (Job 9:4) He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength; who has hardened himself against him, and prospered? There is infinite wisdom in God, and infinite power to bring to [reconstructed: passage] his decrees; will clay counterwork God's infinite counsel? The Former of all things makes fireworks under the earth against sinners; can sinners make counter-mines to outwork the Almighty? Sure if he be wise in heart, who has a most eminent, holy, and just providence in all that falls out, when we hear that the Gospel, and the Church of Christ are oppressed in judgment, we are to look on that oppression, as on the sin of other men, and as our cross, and to mourn for it: In the former consideration, and in the latter, as it troubles us, to judge it good, necessary, and better, than if it had been otherwise. The formal reason of goodness is the will of God, and your judgment is to esteem that good, which is ill to you, though it be sour and heavy; for it has goodness from this, and goodness to you that the Lord has decreed it; to be sour and sweet make up a middle taste most pleasant; Christ twists black and white in one web; the Jews' sins, which he wills not; and their sin is the redemption of man, which he loves; and these two are pleasant to behold, and when they are mixed in one, and come from the most wise God, they have beauty to God, far be it from me, to judge them black, or unjust, which are fair to him.

Rule 13. Christ submits his will to the will of God, in soul-desertions, so should we do. Christ's love to his Father, is no critic, no knotty questionist to spin, and forge jealousies against the Lord's dispensation in the influence of heaven on his soul. He is willing to lay his soul-comforts in the bosom and free-will of his Father; and in this he judges the Lord's will, better than his own will. We have too many querulous love-motions against the reality of Christ's love, when he hides himself. O but we are covetous and soul-thirsty after our own will, in the matter of soul-manifestations; either I see little here, or we idolize comforts, and would gladly have a Christ of created grace, rather than Christ, or his grace; and when we are thirsting for Christ, it is his comforts, the rings, jewels, bracelets of the Bridegroom, we seek after, rather than himself; it is not an unmixed, nor a poor marriage-love, to [reconstructed: marry] the riches and possessions, and not the person, (Matthew 22:2) The Kingdom of heaven is like to a certain King, which made a marriage [illegible], for his Son, not for his daughter in law. The glory of Gospel dainties resembled to a marriage, are for the King's Son, and the glory of Christ; not for our glory, but for our grace. Christ is the final end, for whom all the honeycombs, the myrrh, the spices, the wine, and the milk of the banquet are prepared. (Song of Solomon 5:1) We have need of Christ to cure, even our perfections: there be some wild oats, some grains of madness and self-will in our best graces. 2. You cannot idolize Christ himself; love in pounds, in talent weights is too little for him; his sweet accidents, his delights, consolations, love-embracements are sweet; but swelling, and too fattening, and if Christ send these to a believer, in a box of gold, or in a case made of a piece of the heaven, or of a chip of the noon-day Sun, and not come himself, they should not satisfy the soul. (Song of Solomon 3:1) I sought him whom my soul loved; Watchmen, did you see him? O it is the beloved himself, that is a great man in the Spouse's books, his wine, his spikenard, his myrrh, his ointments, his perfume, the savor of his garments, his apples of love, are all in that heavenly song set out for himself. Love-tokens are nothing, duties nothing, inherent righteousness nothing, heaven nothing, if separated from Christ; but Christ himself is all in all.

Our second disease is, we forget that he that created the love of Christ in the heart, can only cure our love, when it is sick for Christ: As he that created the first world can rule it, so he that created the second new world, can guide it, and all the creatures in it, though our faith stagger, touching his special providence, in particulars of either, as we are deserted, and left to ourselves.

3. We often thirst after comforts, and sense, as the people did, and (Isaiah 58:5) were reproved for their fast: Is it such a fast as I have chosen? And (Zechariah 7:5) Did you at all fast to me, even to me? So may Christ blame us for the like sin, and say, Have you thirsted to me, and for me, and not rather for yourselves? Let us examine delusions, and not father them upon Christ, except we know he will own them.

4. We desire a never interrupted presence and sense of God, whereas Christ submitted, to want it for a time; when he saw it was God's will so to do; and though we have not, nor can we have positively, always an edge of actual hunger; yet we negatively can be submissive to want, when we see it is his will, we want; whereas he is the same Christ, with the same immanent, and eternal love of election, without variation of the degrees of the altitude and height thereof, the same infinite wisdom, when he frowns, and hides his face, and when he shines and smiles in his kingly manifestations. Clouds alter not the sunlight, coverings change not Christ, that he cannot love behind the curtain. Except we take a cloud to be the Sun, or created sweetness to be Christ; were the beam separated from the Sun; what should it be but as good as nothing? We dream that the curtains and robes of Christ's manifestations of love, adds somewhat to his excellency; then he must be of more eminence, when he expresses himself in love-embracements to us, than when he was from eternity the flower of his Father's delight. Christ's outside in revealed sweetness, and in transient manifestations of his beauty, must then be more excellent than himself; this is too selfish a conception of Christ. The Lord Jesus is more within, than we can enjoy of him, in his love-expressions; he loses none of that immanent sweetness, under his wise withdrawings; though you, or I, or men, or angels, should never feed upon any time-enjoyments of sweetest love, and manifested glory from his revealed kindness.

5. It is a great question, if it be expedient, that our motion to heaven should be as the motion of the Sun that never rests, but moves as swiftly in the night as in the day, and if we should ever be on wings, I know it is our duty; but even the falling on our own weight, and the conscience of our clay-mold, our short breath, nature's weak legs in walking up the mount, are good for the adding wind and tide, and high sails to the praising of Christ, and free grace. Utile est peccavisse, [reconstructed: nocet peccare]. It is profitable that we have sinned, that grace may be extolled; it is ill to sin. Even to the nature of man it is good that he has died, and has been in the grave, yet it is not good, but contrary to nature, to die, and to lie in the grave.

6. It is our forgetfulness, that we see not the dearest to Christ has been kept lowest, and most empty in their own eyes; hidden grace extols Christ. 2. That often the saints are kept in a condition of sailing with as much wind as blows, with praying, and believing. 3. That yet prayer and the sweating of faith cannot earn, nor merit the renewed sense of Christ, so as Christ returns to eat his honeycomb, and his wine, and milk, and banquet with the soul, rather at the presence of these acts, than for them, as some have said, (though with no strength of reason) that fire burns not, the Sun enlightens not, the earth does not send forth flowers, and herbs; but God at the naked presence of these causes, does produce all effects; yet in this case it has a truth; that the sweating of all supernatural industry, cannot redeem the least half glimpse of God's presence, in the sense of eternal love, when God is pleased for trial to hide himself.

7. Our great fault here is merit, that we tie the flowings and inundations of Christ's love to the beck of our desires, whereas we may know: 1. That the Sun does not shine, nor the rain water the earth, in order to merit. 2. We should know that grace, and all the acts of grace are alms, not debt, and that a rich Savior gives grace to us as beggars, and pays it not to hirelings, as the due, or as wages we can crave for our work; but we love penny-worths better than free gifts.

But for this cause came I to this hour.

Christ's work of redemption was a most rational work, and was full of causes, [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉]; this says, that to redeem lost sinners, was not a rash and reasonless work.

1. There was no cause compelling. Love cannot be forced (John 3:16). God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, etc. Grace works more from an intrinsic cause, and more spontaneously than nature. For nature often is provoked by contraries for self-defense to work: as fire works on water, as on a contrary; the wolf and the dog pursue one another as enemies. But grace, because grace has abundance of causality and power in itself, but has no cause without it.

2. Any necessity of working from goodness in the agent, as from such a principle is strong. (1 Timothy 1:15) It is a true saying, and by all means worthy to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. If the thing be worthy [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉], of all receipt and embracing, then it must be good; an agent working from a principle of goodness does in his kind work necessarily, though he may also work from another principle freely. (John 10:11) I am the good shepherd, the good shepherd gives his life for his sheep. (Luke 19:10) For the Son of man is come to seek, and to save that which is lost.

3. God will seek reasons or occasions without himself, to be gracious to sinners. When no reason or cause moves a physician to cure, but only sickness and extreme misery; we know grace and compassion is the only cause. (Ezekiel 36:23) I will sanctify my great name — why? Which was profaned among the heathen; and which you have profaned in the midst of them; then the true cause must be expressed, verse 22. Thus says the Lord God, I do not this for your sakes, O house of Israel, but for my holy name's sake.

4. The Lord takes a cause from the end of his coming (Matthew 20:28). The Son of man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many. (John 18:37) To this end was I born, and for this cause came into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. (John 10:10) I am come that they might have life, and have it in abundance.

5. Something, indeed very much of God, is in the creation; much of God in his common providence; but most of all, indeed whole God in the redemption of man. God manifested in the flesh is the matter and subject of it, grace the moving cause, most of all his attributes, working for the manifestation of the glory of pardoning mercy, revenging justice, exact faithfulness and truth, freest grace, omnipotency over hell, devils, sin, the world; patience, longanimity to man, cooperate as the formal and final causes, it is a piece so rational and full of causes, that as he is happy, (Felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,) who can know the causes of things: so angels delight to be scholars to read and study this mysterious art of free grace (Ephesians 3:10; 1 Peter 1:12). Works without reasons and causes are foolish. The cause why we do not submit to God, is, because we lie under blind and fatherless crosses: it is true, affliction springs not out of the dust, and crosses considered without God, are twice crosses. Three material circumstances in crosses are very considerable: Quis, quare, quomodo — who, for what cause, and how. 1. Who afflicts is worthy to be known (Isaiah 42:24). Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? The highest cause of causes did it. Did not the Lord, he against whom we have sinned? (1 Samuel 3:18) It is the Lord, let him do what seems good to him. 2. For what end God the Lord did this, is a circumstance of comfort; why led the Lord Israel through a great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery scorpions, and serpents, and drought? (Deuteronomy 8:16) That he might prove you, to do you good at your latter end. 3. And how the Lord corrects, is worthy to be known. He corrects Jacob in measure (Jeremiah 6:28). Mercy wrapped about the rod, and a cup of gall and wormwood honeyed, and oiled with free love, and a piece of Christ's heart, and his stirred bowels mixed in with the cup, is a merciful little hell (Psalm 6:1; Jeremiah 31:18-20). The Law says, a bastard has no father, because his father is not known. The Philistines are plagued with hemorrhoids, but whether that ill was from the Lord, or from chance, they know not. The cross to many is a bastard. We suffer from Prelates, because we suffered Prelates to persecute the Saints. Papists shed our blood, why? Our forefathers burnt the witnesses of Christ, and we never repented. Christ and Antichrist are at bloody blows in the camp: Antichrist has killed many thousands in the three kingdoms for religion; that is the quarrel: and when England had often before, and have now opportunity, they will not lift Christ up on his throne, nor put his royal crown on his head, but do put it on their own head, but the judgment is not yet at an end. Scotland has not walked worthy of the Gospel, but have fallen from their first love. We take not a deliberate list of every limb, thigh, leg, and member of this national wrath, and we neither see why we are afflicted, nor how.

For this cause came I to this hour.

There is some peculiar act of Christ's will here held forth, and that is Christ's peculiar intention, to die for his people; in which we are to consider the activeness of Christ's will in dying for man, which may be seen.

1. In his free offering of himself, and his service to the Father. (Psalm 40:6) Sacrifice and offering you did not desire, my ears have you opened. (Hebrews 10:5) A body (that is, the office house, and instrumental subject of obedience to the death, as the ear is of hearing, and obeying the commandments of God) you have prepared me. Verse 7: Then said I, lo I come (in the volume of your book it is written of me) to do your will, O God. In these words Christ is brought in as a servant, with three excellent qualities. 1. Physically, he is fitted with a body and a soul to offer to God for us; as in a servant there are required strong limbs and arms to endure drudgery, in this he was born of his mother, for this sad service: his Master furnished him for this, even the seed of man's flesh and blood for suffering.

2. There were moral abilities in him; promptitude of will. So the Lord is brought in, as a Lord and Master in justice crying, servant; O Son and servant Jesus, I have a business for you of great concernment. At the first word, as all good servants do, Christ takes him to his feet, and appears before his God, his Master and Lord, Lo I come, here am I; so servants of old answered their Master: What service will you command so hard, which I will not undergo? Master, here's a body for your work, here be cheeks for the nippers, a face for those that will pluck off the hair, a back for smiting, a body for the cross and the grave. Christ as a servant uncovered, standing on feet, would say; Lord, send me your servant to the Garden, to work under the burden of your wrath, till I sweat blood; bid me go to shame, to scourging, and spitting, is it your will I go up on the cursed cross, and be made a curse for sinners, that I be crucified and die, that I go lower into the utter half of hell, the grave, which is a sad journey; lo here am I, willing to obey all.

3. There was in Christ, not only willingness, but delight (Psalm 40:8). [illegible] My God I delight to do your will, every servant cannot say this to his Master, your Law is in the midst of my heart.

2. His willingness to die was a part of his testament and last will, he died with good will, and left in legacy his death, and the fruits of it, his blessing, his heart, his love, his peace, his life to his bride in testament, confirmed by law, to all his poor brothers and friends (Hebrews 9:17; John 14:27). Peace I leave (in testament) with you. But the orphan, and the poor friend gets not all that his dying Father and friend leaves in testament, but Christ gives possession himself before he dies, My peace I give to you; but to the point: His latter will, was willingness to die.

3. No external force could take his life from him, against his will (John 10:18). "No man takes my life from me, but I lay it down of myself, I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again." Yet lest it should seem a will-action in Christ, and [reconstructed: so] not obedience, he adds: "This commandment (that is the will of a superior) have I received of my Father." Compelled obedience is no obedience: exact willingness was a substantial and essential ingredient in Christ's obedience. Acts of grace cannot be extorted; can you tear a shower of rain from God in an extreme drought, or bread from him in your hunger, against his will? Far less, since Christ's dying was an act of pure grace, can any compel him to die for man. Love arrested his holy will, and that made him run apace to die for us: O blessed be his good will, who burned himself in the bush, in a fire of free love.

4. Though dying be a passion, yet Christ's dying was both a passion and an action. Will added as much perfume and strength of obedience as nature, and pain, [reconstructed: hardship], shame, and abasement could do; his life was not so much plucked from him as out of his own hand. As an agent he offered his blood and soul — yes, himself — to God, through the eternal Spirit (Hebrews 9:14). Love was the cord, the chain that did bind Christ to the altar.

5. Christ [in non-Latin alphabet] on this intention came to this hour; so is [in non-Latin alphabet] often in Scripture. Not only his will, but the flower of his will — his intention — was to die, for Christ's eye and his heart and his love were on his bride; the intention is the most eminent act that love can put forth. Christ's eye and his heart being upon his spouse, he made our salvation his end and measure of his love, to compass this end: the Lord laid many oars in the water; his rising early, his night watching, his toiling, his sweating, his sore and hard soul-travail, as being heavy with child of this end — "O might I have a redeemed people" — was all his care; and his soul was eased, when dying, bleeding, crying, he went through hell and death, and slept in death's black and cold prison, and his redeemed ones in his arms. When he came to the end of this sad journey, and found his ransomed ones, he said: "I have sought you with a heavy heart, fair and foul way, sad and weary; and all is well bestowed, since I have gained you. Let us up together to the hill of spices, to our Father's house, to the highest mountain of frankincense." All that Christ did was for this end: that he might deliver us from this present evil world (Galatians 1:4); that he might be a ransom for many (Matthew 20:28); that we might have life, and have it more abundantly (John 10:10); that he might seek and save the lost (Luke 19:10); that he might present his wife a glorious church to himself, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish (Ephesians 5:26-27); that we being dead to sin should live to righteousness (1 Peter 2:24). Christ came to seek, and traveled ever till he found his desire, a redeemed and saved people, and then he rested; even as he journeyed through all the creation, but till he found man, a creature that he made according to his own image, he had no Sabbath, no rest. His willingness to die respected his redeemed people, whom out of mere mercy he loved, and the worth of will and merit respected infinite justice, which he exactly satisfied.

Hence we learn: 1. To imitate and follow our pattern Christ, in voluntary obedience, delighting to do God's will, and to suffer God's will. It is said of Christ (Hebrews 5:8): "Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience through suffering." He was the most excellent scholar among all his school-fellows, and yet the rod of God was heaviest and most frequent on him; he learned his lesson beyond them all. He was quick in understanding, in the fear of the Lord (Isaiah 11:3). He had in him an excellent Spirit — the Spirit of wisdom, of counsel, of knowledge, and of the fear of the Lord — and was holy and obedient to the death, the death of the Cross. It is much to learn to be active for God, but more to learn to be passive. That is a profound science (Philippians 4:12): "I know how to be abased — I am instructed to be hungry — and to suffer need." It is the singular art of grace to know how to love, fear, and obey God, under death, pain, and hell. It is a high lesson to learn the mystery of that deep science, of hunger, want, suffering, stripes, and torment, and death for Christ. This is high (Hebrews 10:34): "You took patiently the spoiling of your goods, knowing that in heaven you have a better and more enduring substance." They are but accidents we have here, and these very separable. Heaven is all substance. Our passive obedience is not willing — it is constrained. We might by grace turn clay into gold, hell into heaven: if we could look in faith and patience on the persecution and reproaches of men, as on the brutish and irrational motion of a staff or an axe that beats and cuts us; suppose we knew no hand under God that wronged us — he curses, because the Lord has bidden him. For the freedom of Christ's kingdom, and the right government of his house, and for opposing blasphemies and reproaching of Christ, his Word, Scripture, ordinances, we are killed all the day long, and counted the off-scourings of men; could we overlook unthankfulness, malice, wickedness, persecution from men whom we with our lives and blood have redeemed from persecution, and behold the highest mover and first wheel that moves all under-wheels, as if God only were our party, who humbles us that we may be humbled — then should we be silent, and our hearts should not rise at the exorbitances of men. There is too much of nature in our sufferings, too little submissive willingness. The more action of a sanctified will in our sufferings, the more acceptable, and it comes nearest to Christ, who did both run for the crown, and was active, and endured the Cross, and was most passive in a heavenly manner (Hebrews 12).

2. Let us learn of Christ to intend obedience, to put a [in non-Latin alphabet] to our obedience. Many hear the word, but they intend not to hear; many pray, and intend not to pray; many die in these wars for Christ, but intend not to spend their life for Christ: the holy and clean cause of God comes through many dirty and foul fingers. This is the deep art of providence.

Quest. What is a right and straight intention in serving God?

Asser. 1. When the deliberation of a bended will concurs with the intention, its right; as when there is a heart-conclusion for God. (Psalm 39:1) I said I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not with my tongue. (Psalm 31:14) But I trusted in the Lord: I said, you are my God. (Psalm 102:24) I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days. This was an intended prayer. (Psalm 119:57) I have said that I would keep your words.

Asser. 2. The saints are not so perfect in their intentions, as God is their only end. 1. Because a piece of our self is mixed with our end; there is some crook in our straightest line; an angle in our most perfect circle: when we run most swiftly, because of the in-dwelling of corruption, we halt a little. 2. Self-denial is not perfect in this life.

Asser. 3. It is good, when God is so pre-conceived in the intention, as the principal actions and motions both have being and denomination from their predominant element. Honey is honey, though not pure from wax. A believer is not a simple element, nor all grace, and all sincerity. Now in bodies carried with a predominant element, the predominant is affirmed, the subordinate denied. (1 Corinthians 15:10) Yet not I, but the grace of God with me. (2 Corinthians 4:5) For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Christ's sake. Where Christ is the predominant element, he is of weight to sway the whole soul in its motion. And it is right-down sincerity (whatever Crispe, with Papists say on the contrary) though it require some grains of allowance to make it pass.

Asser. 4. Where self is the predominant, the intention is bastard and adulterate. Jehu says, Come see my zeal for the Lord; but he only says it. He could have said, Come see my zeal for myself. In the Jews' zeal (Romans 10:1) there is a pound of self-righteousness, for one half grain of Christ, and of free grace; therefore it is not the right zeal of God.

Asser. 5. There are two characters of an intended end, which are also here: 1. All that the agent does, he refers to his end; for his end is his God. The wretch does all in reference to gold, that is his end: and Joab did all for court and honor; for the chief end is the man's master, and uses a lordship over him. Christ is so mighty through God, that he darkens the Scribes and Pharisees' light; because their end lies in the fat womb of the world, and it is gain and glory; all they do is to make Christ out of the way. So when the believer sails all winds, rolls every stone, presses all means for Christ, as his end, and his weight, then stirs he to the right port. Christ's love has a dominion over lord-will: One Adamant will cut another; the sinner is a rock, Christ's love an Adamant. Christ's love setting on the will's intention, burns the soul to the bone. Mary Magdalene cannot sleep, (and it is a ticklesome game where the heart is at the stake) and Christ she must have; Apostles, Angels, Christ himself shall hear of it before she wants him. And the rougher and harder the means be, when undertaken for Christ, Christ must be a stronger and more love-working end. When torment and burning alive are chosen for Christ, it is likely he is the end; for love overcomes a rough and dangerous journey: A sweet and desirable home, is above a dirty and thorny way. Christ's love is stronger than hell. Our affections often take fire from difficulties; as absence of the Beloved kindles a new fire; Stolen bread, because stolen, is sweeter, and not our nature only; but longing after Christ, nititur in vetitum, inclines to that which is forbidden. What if Christ be longed for and loved more when absent, than present?

2. The other character is, that when the end is obtained, all operation for, or about the means ceases, and the soul has a complacency in the fruition of the end. When the wretches' chests are full, he has a heart-quietness in gold; (Luke 12) Soul, take your ease; but if the soul have an aching and a disquieting motion after gold is obtained, it is not because gold was not his end, but because he has not obtained it in such a large measure as he would; or because it is but a sick and lame end, and cannot satiate, but rather sharpen soul-thirst after such corruptible things. When Christ is obtained, the soul has sweet peace; He that drinks of the water of life thirsts no more, appetitu desiderii, as longing with anxiety for this, as we do for earthly things, which we want; though he have [reconstructed: appetitum complacentiae], a desire of complacency, and a sweet self-quietness, that his heritage pleases him well, and his lines are fallen in pleasant parts, and rests on his portion, and would not change it with ten thousand worlds. Men by this, who are fishing and hunting after some other thing than Christ, may know what is their end: when Christ and Reformation come to their doors, they will have neither; but cast out their lines for another prey: Men now fish and angle for gain, in lieu of godliness.

Vers. 28. Father, glorify your Name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.

Here is the last article of Christ's prayer, Father, glorify your Name. 2. The return of Christ's prayer by an audible answer from heaven.

This prayer, Glorify your Name, Father; is of a higher strain: Father, I am willing to die, so you be glorified in giving to me strength to suffer, and you redeem lost man by me, and by so doing glorify your Name. Christ never in his hardest suffering would be wanting to glorify God. Now how far the glory of God, in doing and suffering, should be intended and desired by us, in these considerations I propose.

1. We are to prefer the Lord's glory to our own life and salvation: no point of self-denial, and renouncing of self-pleasing can reach higher than this, when Christ is willing to be the passive object of the glory of God; Put me, Father, to shame and suffering, so you may be glorified. Paul and Moses are not far out, but they are far out of themselves, when the one for the glory of the Lord, in saving the people of God, wills his name may be razed out of the book of life: and the other, to be separated from Christ, for the salvation of his kinsmen, God's chosen people. When Abraham is willing that glory to the Lord should be written with the ink of his son Isaac's blood; and the Martyrs, that their pain may praise God, they then level at the right end; for that must be the most perfect intention, that comes nearest to the most perfect. This is nearest to God's intention; for he created, and still works all for this end, that he may be glorified (Proverbs 16:4; Revelation 4:11; Romans 11:37). Now if Christ put all to sea, and hazard all he has to guard the Lord's name from dishonor, and made his soul, his life, his heaven, his glory a bridge to keep dry and safe the glory of God, that it sink not; and if God would rather his dear Son should be crowned with the cross, and his blood squeezed out, with his precious life, then that any shame should come to his name, then are we to interpose ourselves, even to sufferings, and shame, for the glory of God. Suppose a saint were divided in four, and every member with life in it, and torment of pain, fixed in the four corners of the heaven, East, and West, and South, and North, and the soul in the convexity of heaven, under the pain of the torment of the gnawing worm that can never die, these five were obliged to cry with a loud voice, in the hearing of heaven, of earth, of hell, of men, and angels, and all creatures, Glory, glory be to the spotless and pure justice of the Lord, for this our pain: and when the damned are known to speak against their sentence of condemnation, When saw we you hungry, and fed you not? etc. (Matthew 25), it is clear they are obliged to acquiesce to this, that they are made clay-vessels, passively to be filled to the brim with the glory of avenging justice, and ought in hell to praise the glory of avenging wrath, as the saints in heaven are bottles and vessels of mercy, from bottom to brim, filled with the glory of mercy, to praise his grace in heaven, who redeemed them: the one psalm is as due and just as the other. What the damned do not, or do in the contrary, is their sin. One prayed, his death, pain, torment, sad afflictions that may outrun him, before he escapes into the grave, yes, that his hell might with his own good will be a printed book, on which angels and men may read the glory of inviolable justice.

2. We love that the holiness and grace of others were ours, that we might glorify God, but we glorify him not with that which he has given us; yes, we have a sort of wicked emulation and envy if others glorify God, not we. Moses acquiesced to God's dispensation, that the Lord might be glorified in the people's possessing of the holy land, though he himself should not be their leader, but not at the first. There is a cumbersome piece called, I, ego, self, that has an itching soul for glory due to another.

3. O how unwilling are we, that the Lord's glory outweigh our ease, and humor? Master, forbid Eldad and Medad to prophesy, says Joshua. No, Moses will have God glorified, be the instruments who will.

4. There is a twofold glory here due to God. 1. Active; the glory of duties to be performed by us. 2. Passive; the glory of events, that results from the Lord's government of the world; we are to care for both, but we do it not orderly. We are more careful of God's passive glory, which belongs to himself, than we ought to be. Hence say we, what confusions be there in the world? Nation breaks covenant with nation; heresies and blasphemies prevail; Antichrist is yet on his throne; the churches overseas oppressed, the people of God led to the shambles, as slaughter-sheep, and destroyed, and killed. Hundreds of thousands killed in Ireland, many thousands in England, and very many thousands about the space of one year taken away in Scotland, with the sword and the pestilence. And the Lord's justice is not yet glorified, nor his mercy in avenging the enemies, the cry of the souls under the altar is not heard, the church not delivered. We would here yield patience to divine providence; God has more care of his own glory, than we can have. 2. What men take from God, he can repair infinitely another way. But we are less anxious for the Lord's active glory, to do what is our duty, and serve him, and glorify him in the sincere use of means. Some learn their school-fellow's lesson better than their own. For God's glory of events, we are to be grieved, when he is dishonored, but not to take the helm of heaven and earth out of his hand, but leave to God these, who would plunder Christ's crown off his head. We have nothing to do in the glory of events, but pray it flourish: but we take too much ado in it, and we do too little in the other.

5. There is a glory of God, two-fold also: one of holiness and grace; another of bliss and happiness. This I consider, either as in the kingdom of grace, or of glory. In grace's kingdom, the saints for their holiness, and Titus and the brethren (2 Corinthians 8:23), are the glory of Christ. I will place (says the Lord (Isaiah 46:13)) salvation in Zion, for Israel my glory. Faithful pastors take in cities, and subdue crowns and kingdoms, to Christ. Paul conquered many crowns to Christ (1 Thessalonians 2:19). For what is our hope, or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even you in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? Christ wears the Church on his head as a crown of glory (Isaiah 62:3). How glorious is it to be for holiness Christ's garland, his diadem, and crown? But in this there is a rent of the crown of heaven, a sovereign peculiar flower due to the King of Ages, that no man must seek after: in this the structure and frame of the work of redemption is so contrived, that no flesh should glory in his presence (1 Corinthians 1:29). No man can divide the glory of grace with Christ. In the higher kingdom, there is a glory ordained for saints. The Gospel is a glorious piece, which God has ordained before the world was, to our glory (1 Corinthians 2:7). God has called us to his kingdom and glory (1 Thessalonians 2:12). And when the chief Shepherd shall appear, you shall receive a crown of glory, that fades not away (1 Peter 5:4). This is the reward of faithful elders, that feed the flock of Christ. The heaven of glory is called the holy heaven (Psalm 20:6). The Lord will hear from his holy heaven, and the new Jerusalem the Church, has a brave crown on her head (Revelation 21:10-11). She comes down out of heaven from God, having the glory of God. Grace, grace is a glorious thing.

6. O, but we come short in doing and suffering; when our doing, suffering, eating, drinking, dying, pain, abasement, shame, wants this end of the glorifying God; that adds an excellent luster, beauty, and glory to all that we do. When Christ, the Father, heaven, are tied to the furthest end of all our actions, we are above ourselves. But we differ little in our aims from beasts, when the intention rises no higher than this side of clay and time (Psalm 49:11). That our houses may continue (Isaiah 5:8). That we may be placed, alone on the earth.

[reconstructed: Verse 28]. And there came a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.

In this answer observe these. 1. The answer. 2. The air it came from; from heaven. 3. The way and manner of its coming; by an audible voice. 4. The matter of the answer: I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.

Christ is always answered of his Father: either in the thing he sues for (John 11:42), or in that which he fears (Hebrews 5:7), or by real comfort (Luke 22:42-43), or in a full and perfect deliverance (Psalm 22:20-21) compared with (Psalm 16:10-11) (Acts 24:25) (Acts 5:31), or in supply of strength for his suffering (Isaiah 50:7-8).

It's a proof of the worth of Christ's advocacy and intercession. If I know myself to be in Christ's prayer book, in his breast, among Christ's askings of the Father; it's comforting. Ask of me, and I will give you the heathen for your inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for your possession (Psalm 2:8). When Christ asks souls of the Father, he gives him his asking: the Lord cannot withhold from this King the desire of his heart (Psalm 21:2). He asked a wife of his Father, and it was granted. Christ will have them all in one house to be copartners of the crown of heaven with him: for it's his prayer (John 17:24). The King and the Queen in one palace. We cannot fall from grace, for we stand by Christ's prayers (Luke 22:31-32) (Hebrews 9:24).

We have many diseases, in the matter of the return of an answer. 1. We wait not on an answer; we speak words, we pray not, we breathe out natural desires for spiritual mercies; we have no spiritual feeling of our wants, and there is an end (Psalm 18:41). The wicked cry, but there is none to save; they do not pray, but cry. 2. We storm, and are offended that our humor, rather than our faith is not answered, either at our own time, or that the thing which we ask to spend on our lusts (as James 4:3) is not granted. 3. We are more careful, and troubled, that we are not heard, than anxious to offer the rent, and pay the calves of our lips, in praying, which is God's due. Were we as serious in worshiping in prayer, as we are desirous of seeking wants, it were good; but there is more seeking in our prayer, for ourselves, than there is adoring for God. 4. We employ not Christ as Mediator, and High Priest in praying, and exercising faith so much, as we put forth pith and strength of words, that we may extort rather our needs, than obtain grace; as if praying, and hearing of prayers, were work and wages, rather than begging, and giving of mere grace. 5. We consider not when we pray, and prayer is not returned in the same coin that we seek; that the Father hearing Christ's prayers, virtually, and meritoriously answered all our prayers in substance, and for our good. For, 1. Christ can cull out, and choose petitions more necessary and fundamental for my salvation, than I can do. 2. He is answered in all points; we are answered often in the general, and in as good only. 3. Christ could, with more submission and sense pray, than we can do. Nature in Christ cannot boast and compel God to hear prayers; often our zeal is but natural boasting and quarreling, as if we could force God to answer. Grace in Christ (and grace is the most lowly, and modest thing of the world) prays with all submission, Not my will, but your will be done. 4. All prayers are hard for Christ; therefore, his prayers are better heard, than the prayers of the saints; except our prayers be folded in his prayers, they cannot be answered. The perfume, the sweet odors of Christ's prayers are so powerful and strong, as coming from God-man in one person, they must be both asking and giving, desiring and granting, praying and hearing, flowing from the same person, Christ. When our prayers go to heaven, Christ, before they come to the Father, must cast them in a new mold, and leaves to them his heart, his mouth, though the Advocate takes not the sense and meaning of the Spirit from them; yet Christ presenting them with his perfume, he removes our corrupt sense, so as they are Christ's prayers, rather than ours. Hebrews 13:15. Let us by him (as our High Priest) offer the sacrifice of praise (then of prayers also) to God continually. The offering is the Priest's, as well as the people's (Revelation 8:3), and far more here, because Christ by his office, is the only immediate person who makes request to God for us (Romans 8:34).

From heaven,

Hence, Christ troubled in soul, and afflicted believers on earth, keep correspondence and compliance with heaven.

1. Christ's prayers, in his saddest days, have their return from heaven. Posts and messengers fly with wings between God and a soul in a praying disposition: possibly, ten posts in one night. Prayer has an agent lying at the court of heaven, and an open ear there. (Psalm 18:6) He heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears. Christ takes care that the messenger get presence, and be quickly dispatched with a return. (Psalm 102:19) The Lord (before the messenger comes) looked down from the height of his sanctuary, (Verse 20) to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to loose those that are appointed to death. So (Lamentations 3) tears lie in heaven as solicitors with God, until he hear; mine eye trickles down, and ceases not, (Verse 50) till the Lord look down, and behold from heaven. (1 Kings 8:30) Hear you in the heaven, your dwelling place, and when you hear, forgive: says Solomon. (Isaiah 63:15) Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of your holiness. Our Savior has appointed the post-way in that prayer, Our Father who are in heaven. We have a friend there who receives the packet; a high priest set at the right hand of the throne of majesty (Hebrews 8:1), who has passed into the heavens (Hebrews 4:14), and is made higher than the heavens (Hebrews 7:26), and lives forever to make intercession for us (Verse 25).

2. In Christ's hardest straits comfort came out of this air. (Luke 22:43) When he was in his saddest agony, there appeared to him an angel from heaven strengthening him. In his lowest condition, when he was in the cold grave among the dead, heaven was his magazine of help and comforts. (Matthew 28:2) An angel of the Lord came down from heaven, and rolled away the stone. Heaven came to his bedside, when he was sleeping in the clods.

3. The saints have daily trafficking with heaven: O my dear friend, my brother, my factor is in that land. (Psalm 73:25) Whom have I in heaven but you? What, are not angels, prophets, apostles, and saints there? Indeed; but we have no acquaintance by way of mediation in that land, but Christ: he is the choice friend there. (1 Corinthians 15:47) The second man (both first, highest, second and all) is the Lord from heaven.

4. All our good, every perfect gift comes from heaven (James 1:17). Manna came not from the clouds. How then? (John 6:32) My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. We are ill lodged in bits of sick and groaning clay; our best house is in heaven. (2 Corinthians 5:2) We groaning, desire to be clothed with our house from heaven.

5. The earth is but the believer's sentinel, or at best, his watch-tower; but our hope is in heaven. (1 Thessalonians 1:10) We wait for the Son of God from heaven. Our life and treasure is there. (Matthew 6:20) Lay up treasure for yourselves in heaven. Our [illegible], our city-dwelling and our haunting is in heaven (Philippians 1:21).

What acquaintance have you in heaven? What blood-friend have you in that land? The wicked man, [illegible] is, the man of the earth. And Psalm 17:14, Save me from men of time; men of this life. Are you a burgess of time, or a citizen of the earth? Or a man of the higher Jerusalem? Imagine there were a new-found land on earth, and in it there be twelve summers in one year, all the stones of the land are sapphires, rubies, diamonds; the clay of it, the choicest gold of Ophir; the trees bear apples of life; the inhabitants can neither be sick nor die; the passage to it, by sea and land, is safe; all things there are to be had for nothing, without money, price, or change of commodities; and gold is there for the gathering. If there were such a land as this, what a huge navy would be lying in the harbors and ports of that land? How many travelers would repair there? Heaven is a new land that the Mediator Christ has found out, it is better than a land where there is a summer for every month of the year; there is neither winter, nor night there; the land is very good, and the fruits of it delectable and precious; grace and peace, righteousness, joy of the Holy Ghost, the fruits of that kingdom (Romans 14:17) are better than rubies, sapphires, or diamonds. Christ the tree of life is above all lands on earth, even his alone. And there's no need of price or money in this kingdom; grace is the cheapest thing of the world; wine and milk are here without money, and without price (Isaiah 55:1). It's a land that stands most by the one only commodity of grace and glory. Oh, there is little trafficking with heaven; when were you last there? It is an easy passage to heaven; David, who often prayed even seven times a day, was often a day there. Prayer in faith is but one short post there. Oh, we have too much compliance with the earth.

A voice.

The third particular in this return, is the manner: In an audible voice, the Lord answers him. The multitude heard this voice, though they understood it not. We read not often of an audible voice from heaven to Christ; only at his Baptism, there was a testimony given of him from heaven (Matthew 3:16-17) and at his Transfiguration (Matthew 17) of which Peter speaks (2 Peter 1:18). And this voice we heard, when we were with him on the holy Mount. The Lord, in the hearing of men, gives a testimony of his Son Christ, and his good cause. He was accused because he made himself the Son of God; he prays to God, and calls him Father, openly; a voice from heaven openly answering, acknowledges him to be the Son of God; though they knew not the Lord's testimony from heaven. God makes a good cause, though darkened, to shine as daylight, if men would open their eyes and see. Psalm 7:5, Roll over your way upon the Lord, and trust in him, and he shall bring it to pass. But flesh and blood says, Innocence lies in the dark, and weeps in sackcloth in the dungeon, and is not seen. The Lord answers, Verse 6, And he shall bring forth your righteousness as the light, and your judgment as the noonday. It is true, [illegible] signifies to go from one place to another; it's here applied to the sun, and elsewhere to things that grow out of the earth (Judges 13:14). The sun in the night seems dead, and lost, as if there were no such thing; yet the morning is a new life to the day, and the sun. The grape of the wine tree sown in the earth, is a dead thing; yet it springs in some days, and comes to be a fruitful tree. Christ was crucified, and buried; yet the wine-tree grew again. And (Romans 1:4) he was declared to be the Son of God, with power, according to the Spirit of sanctification, by the resurrection from the dead. The Gospel, and a good cause seems buried, and weeps in a dungeon. Joseph in the prison, and a sold stranger; yet in the eyes of his brethren he is exalted. The Lord cleared Daniel's cause. Psalm 97:11, Light is sown for the righteous, and joy for the upright in heart. The light and joy of the saints are often under the clods of the earth.

1. The Reformation of Religion goes veiled under the mask of rebellion, and of subverting fundamental laws; but God must give to this work, that is now on the wheels, in Britain, the right name, and call it, The building of the old waste places, The rearing up of the Tabernacle of David; and cause it come above the earth.

2. The cross is that great stumbling block, for which many are offended at Christ and the Gospel. It is a sad and offensive providence to see joy weep, glory shamed; this is the gall, the wormwood, the salt of the cross, that the Lord of life should suffer in his own person. Yet here is heaven and the Father speaking, and returning a comfortable answer to Christ, in that which he most feared. The cross makes an ill report of the Gospel and Christ: for this the Apostles are made a theater, a gazing-stock to men and angels, a world's wonder. And Paul would take this away (Ephesians 3:13), Therefore I desire that you faint not at my tribulation. Then saints may fall a swooning at the very sight of the cross in others. And Peter (1 Peter 4:12) says, [illegible], Be not stricken with wonders, or astonished, as at new things and miracles (Acts 17:20) when you are put to a fiery trial. The comforts of the cross are the sweet of it, and the honeycombs of Christ, that drop upon that sour tree.

3. That the Father says from heaven, There shall grow the fairest and most beautiful rose that ever higher or lower paradise yielded, out of this crabbed thorn, was much consolation to Christ. Here grows out of the side and banks of the lake of that river of fire and wrath that Christ was plunged in, many sweet flowers: as, 1. A victorious Redeemer, who overcame hell, sin, devils, death, the world. 2. A fair and spotless righteousness. 3. A redeemed, a washed and sanctified spouse to the Lamb. 4. A new heaven and a new earth; behold, He has made all things new, and has cast heaven and earth in a new mould. 5. A new kingdom, a new crown to the saints, a choicer paradise than the first that Adam lost. 6. Riches of free grace, unsearchable treasures of mercy and love: all these blossom out of the cross.

4. The cross is bought by, and in its nature much altered to the saints. It's true, it's become a necessary inlet, and an inevitable passage, and a bridge to heaven; but the Lord Jesus, not Satan, keeps the pass, and commands the bridge; and lets in, and lets out passengers at his pleasure. But 1. Christ has strewn the way to heaven with blood and wars, and forbids us to censure his sad patrimony, in that the servants are no worse than the Lord, and flower of all the martyrs; though blood has been, and must be the rent and income of the crown of the noble King of Kings, and the consecrated captain of our salvation. Yet it is short, and for a moment, and Christ has a way of outgate, that none of his shall be buried under the cross (Revelation 7:14; Psalm 34:19). (2.) Christ has broken the iron chains of the cross, and the gates of brass: that the cross has but a number of free prisoners, who have fair quarters, and must go out with flying colors, and be ransomed from the grave (John 16:33; Hosea 13:14). (3.) When you are in glory, and in a place above death; there shall be neither mark, nor print; no scar of the sad cross, on back or shoulder, but the very furrow of tears wiped away, and perfectly washed off the face with the water of life, for the former things shall be away (Revelation 21:4). Indeed, the saddest of crosses, the utmost and last blow that the cross can inflict, is death. I should think that Christ is the saints' factor in the land of death; he was there himself, and though he will not adjourn death, yet has our factor made it cheap, and at an easy rate, all toll and custom is removed, and he has put a negation upon death (John 11:26). He that believes shall not die (John 14:19). Much depends on our wise husbanding of the rod of God; yet if Christ did not manage, order, and oversee our furnace, it could not be well with us.

I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.

This is the fourth considerable point, the matter of the answer.

Here is a Lord-Speaker from heaven, testifying that the Lord's name shall be, and was glorified: As 1. In Christ's person and incarnation (John 1:14): The word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. So the angels did sing at his birth (Luke 2:14): Glory to God on the highest. Christ's laying aside of his glory, and his emptying of himself for us, was the glory of rich mercy. 2. His miracles glorified God (John 2:11): This first miracle did Jesus to manifest his glory. When he cured the paralytic man (Luke 2:12), they were amazed and glorified God. When he raised Jairus's daughter (Luke 7:16), there came a fear on all, and they glorified God. 3. In all his life he went about doing good; and sought (John 8:49) to glorify his Father. 4. In his death, God was in singular manner glorified. When the centurion (Luke 23:49) saw what was done, he glorified God. The repenting thief preached him on the cross to be a King: and this was a glorifying of Christ in his greatest abasement and shame. Indeed, his glory was preached by the Sun, when it was, contrary to the course of nature, darkened: and by the rocks, when they were rent, and the temple cloven asunder, and the graves opened, when men weakly, or wickedly denied him, and would not only not preach his glory, but blaspheme his name. 5. He was glorified in his resurrection, being declared to be the Son of God, and obtained a name above all names, and was by the right hand of God, exalted to be a Savior, and a prince, to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins (Philippians 2:9; Ephesians 1:20; Acts 5:31; Acts 3:13). (6.) He shall come again in his glory (Matthew 25:31), and shall be glorified and admired in all his saints (2 Thessalonians 1:10). The fairest and most glorious sight, that ever the eye of man saw, shall be, when Christ shall come riding through the clouds, on his chariot of glory, accompanied with his mighty angels, and with one pull, or shake of his mighty arms, shall cause the stars to fall from heaven, as figs fall from a fig tree, shaken with a mighty wind, and blow out all these candles of heaven with one blast of his ire; and a fire shall go before him, and burn up the earth with the works that are therein; when the higher house of heaven, and the lower of the earth shall meet together, and when mystical Christ shall be glorified.

If there be so much glory in Jesus Christ, and his sufferings as he must bear the glory (Zechariah 6:13), and all the glory of his father's house be upon him (Isaiah 22:24), his crown of glory on his head, must be so weighty, and ponderous, with rubies, sapphires, diamonds, that it will break the neck of any mortal man, King, or Parliament to bear it. None on earth have a head or shoulders, for this so weighty a diadem; parliaments have not necks worthy to carry Christ's golden bracelets, nor a back to be honored with his royal robe; if they will but take his scepter in their hand, it shall crush them as clay vessels: this stone hewn out of the mountain without hands, shall crush the clay legs of parliaments, and then how shall they stand?

God properly glorifies himself; angels and men are but chamberlains and factors, to pay the rent of his glory; and because he will give himself, his Son, his Spirit to us, and his grace, and yet will not give his glory to another; let us beware to intercept the rents of the crown.

Object. The Lord gives grace and glory (Psalm 84), and he has a crown of glory laid up for his saints, in the heavens.

Answer. That glory is but matured and ripened grace, God's glory is the eminent, celebrated, and high esteem that men and angels have of God, as God, or the foundation of this; to meddle with this is to encroach upon the crown and royal prerogative of God. Glory imparted to saints in heaven, is but a beam, a luster, shadow, or way of that transcendent and high glory that is in God; and is as far different from the incommunicable glory of God, as the shadow of the Sun in a glass, or in the bottom of a fountain, and the Sun in the firmament. We may desire the chips, and shadows, and rays of glory, but beware that we meddle not with that which devils and men always seek after, in a sacrilegious way.

3. We are hence taught to admire the excellence of the unsearchable knowledge and skill of divine providence; out of Christ's abasing himself to take on him our nature. 2. Out of his miracles, that were just nothing to blind-natural-men. 3. Out of his death and shame, the Lord extracts the most eminent and high glory of his name. That omnipotence should triumph in the jaw-bone of an ass, in a straw, in a crucified man, commends the glory of God, and the art of his workmanship; to make gold out of clay and iron, diamonds and rubies out of the basest stones, would extol the art of man. A creation out of nothing; and flowers, roses, forests, woods, out of cold earth, is the praise of the wisdom and power of the Creator; the baser the matter be, the art of the Author is the more glorious, if the work be curious and excellent.

God here 1. Out of death, shame, sinful oppressing of the Lord of glory, raises the high work of man's redemption. 2. When we spill business and mar all, through sinning and provoking God, then Israel must bring a spilt business to God, that he may right them (Judges 3:10-11). God can find the right end of the thread, when matters are raveled, and disordered. We see now, nations confounded, enemies rising against us. But blood, wars, confusions, oppression, and crushing down of Christ and his Church, are good and congruous means, when they have the vantage of being handed by omnipotence. When we work, the instrument must be as big as a mountain, and then our eye cannot see God, for the bigness of the instrument. God regards not the nothings, and the few that he works with. Dead men can fight, when God puts a sword in their hand; men shall fall under wounded men: beware of robbing God of his glory. Did ever a decree or a counsel of God part with child? Or can omnipotence bring forth untimely births, or prove abortive? You see Christ now in the death-house of Adam's sons, and wrestling with hell; yet God by Christ at the weakest, works his end; death is a low thing, sin is far more base; but when God acts at the end of either, they have a scope and end as high as God, to glorify God.

3. If God has been, and must be glorified in all that is done — what do we do, we trouble ourselves to seek glory one from another. We are created for this end, and it's our glory to fetch in glory to God. What? can the airy applause of men be golden stilts for cripples to walk to heaven with? Or can the people's poor Hosannas be silken sails to our ship, or golden wings, that by these you may sail and fly up to heaven? Where is Belshazzar, who but built a house for the glory of his own name? Where is Herod, who did receive one word of a God, which the people did steal? Do not these fools take little room in print, and at this day, as little in the clods of the earth? The Roman state would not permit Christ to be a God: what was their doom — must not a kingdom cast its bloom, fall, and wither, that will not suffer Christ to be a King in his Church?

Verse 29. The people therefore that stood by, and heard it, said it thundered: others said, an Angel spoke to him.

Another effect of the prayer of Christ does follow in the people. They had various judgments of this answer from heaven: some said it was a thunder; for they understood it not. Others, in fact, it is above nature; an Angel has spoken to him.

It thundered.

Does not any rude shepherd, or the most simple idiot know a thunder? It's a place that holds forth to us, how ignorant we are of God, and of the gospel-way. Consider what was in this answer: 1. It was the gospel. In what language it was spoken, (probably not in a known language) cannot be determined out of the text. 2. It was a clear expression of that communion between Christ and his Father. 3. What God means, or what is his sense in his word or works, is unknown to us. 4. That they say the gospel is a thunder, and a work of nature, is a mere imagination and a dream. Yet these ways are among themselves all false, and they do not agree one with another.

Consideration 1. The gospel is the will of God from heaven; yet it is a riddle, a parable not understood (Matthew 13:14). In the Law it is written, With men of other tongues and other lips will I speak to this people (1 Corinthians 14:21). And (Isaiah 29:11): And the vision of all is become to you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one that is learned, saying, Read this, I pray you. And he says, I cannot: for it is sealed. Verse 12. And the book is delivered to him that is not learned, saying, Read this, I pray you. And he says, I cannot; I am not learned. (1 Corinthians 1:18) For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish, foolishness.

Consideration 2. God reasons not only with men's minds, to convince them; but also with their will and affections. (Acts 9) Christ from heaven proposes a syllogism to Saul's fury, It's hard for you to kick against pricks. God has logic against anger, which has neither ears nor reason; for if he could not out-argue Laban's hatred, and the haters of the saints, to whom he says, Touch not my anointed, and do my prophets no harm (Psalm 107), he would not speak to their affections, nor would it be said, that in their affections they repute Christ and the gospel foolishness, if there were not a contrariety between the affections and the gospel.

Consideration 3. The understanding is a dark lantern, that has some light within, but casts none at all out, to apprehend things above hand: and as the will is iron and stiff to heaven, so is it waxy and apt to receive the impressions of the flesh, except Christ draws back the curtain of the flesh, to let you see the glory of the gospel. Otherwise, God speaks, and Samuel says, Eli, here am I; for you called me. To the woman of Samaria, Jacob is greater than Christ; and Jacob's Well, as good as the water of life. Justice often puts one seal on the gospel, and another on the man's two eyelids, that the vision is as dark as midnight.

Consideration 4. The communion between Christ and the soul, as here between the Son Christ and the Father, is something given for something received — a thunder, a work of nature, or anything to the natural man; God speaking to the heart is a mystery to him (John 6:52). The Jews say among themselves, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Very hardly, according to their Papistical fancy of a bodily eating. 2. The high esteem of Christ above other beloveds is a mystery to natural saints, in so far as they are natural. It is a strange question for professors of the gospel to say, What more is in Christ than other well-beloveds? Yet they say it (Song of Solomon 5:9). (3.) The natural understanding is the most whorish thing in the world: there is a variety of fancied gods there. According to the number of your cities, were your gods, O Judah (Jeremiah 2:29). They have made them molten images of their silver, and idols according to their own understanding (Hosea 13:2). The understanding, even in the search of truth among the creatures, is a rash, precipitate, and unquiet thing; and like a silkworm, first makes a work of many threads, and then lies fettered and entangled in that which came out of its own bowels. The mind spins and weaves out of itself fancies, dreams, lies, and then its work must be spent on these, and so creates its own chains and fetters. But in the matters of God it runs mad, plays the wanton; in the gospel knowledge it turns frantic, and when it comes to move and act within the sphere of supernatural truths, it but laughs and sports till it comes out again (1 Corinthians 1:23). If Christ preached be foolishness, then Christ himself must be a fool to the Greeks, the most excellent wits in the world (1 Corinthians 2:14). The gospel cannot come within the brain of a natural man, but as a notional fancy, a chimera. Indeed, when the greatest wits came to the borders of divine truth — to look on the outside of divinity, called Theologia naturalis, to look on the Lord's back-parts, and contemplate and behold God in his works, they knew not what to make of God (Romans 1:23). Some thought God to be a dainty bird of paradise; in fact, said other great wits, he is a four-footed beast; or rather, said another, he is a creeping thing: and the most eminent of them, even head of wit among them, said he was a corruptible man: indeed, all of them [illegible]. They turned vain, foggy, reasonless, and stark nothing in their finer discourses and reasonings, in weighing and poising things. The frame of the heart of man is only evil (Genesis 6:5). [illegible] (Genesis 8:21) signifies a potter's vessel. Your turning of things upside-down shall be reputed as the clay [illegible] of the potter (Isaiah 29:16): from the root [illegible] to think, desire; to form a thing of clay as the potter does. From this is the potter named [illegible] (Zechariah 11:13; Genesis 2:7; Deuteronomy 31:21). I know their imaginations, or earthen pots, that be in the heart, mind, and head of men. Many vain frames are in our heads, as there be variety of pots, bottles, and earthen vessels in the potter's house. Many windmills, many pitchers and clay-frames are in the vain heart, but they are evil, wicked, and only evil from the womb. But especially, how many devices and new molds of religions, and various gods are in the heart of men? How many various opinions of Christ are in men's brains? For concerning Christ, some said he was John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah (Matthew 16:14). 4. The love and affections are most whorish, light, and wanton; if Martha seeks not one thing, she seeks many things: no one God is the natural man's God. It may be maintained that an unrenewed man has not one predominant sin, but indefinitely sin is his king; and as many sins, so many kings (Romans 5:14, 17; Romans 6:7, 8, 9). It is true, pride, covetousness, or some particular sins may come to the throne by turns, as either complexion, strength of corrupt nature, or times bear sway; for as Satan is not divided against Satan, so not any natural man will be a martyr for a false god, or a predominant lust, in opposition to another known false god, though all may oppose the gospel. The Lord complains of a whorish heart, that plays the harlot with many lovers (Jeremiah 3:1), and heaven and saving grace stands on an indivisible point, like the number of seven; one added, one removed, varies the nature: no man is half in heaven, half in hell: almost a Christian is no Christian. When Adam fell from one God, he fell upon many inventions; not upon one only (Ecclesiastes 7:29). Our wandering is infinite, and has no home: either God is a thunder, or then he is an angel, speaking from heaven.

Consideration 5. Men think the supernatural ways of God a thunder in the air, which is a most natural work; the ebbing and flowing of the Spirit, either natural joy or melancholy, naturally following the complexion of the body. It's grace that puts a right sense on the works of God, as on the word: we are no less heterodox in misinterpreting the ways and works of God, than in putting false and unsound senses on his word. Emerods plague the Philistines; they doubt if by chance, or if the God of Israel has thus plagued them. Moses works miracles, the magicians work miracles, and the Egyptians doubt whether their false god, or the living God that made the heaven and the earth, has wrought the miracles. When God and nature both work, natural men, or saints as natural, betake themselves to the nearest god. As sickness comes, the natural man says, neglect of the body, health, the moon, humors, the air, cold weather did it; but he looks not to God. And the believer, guilty of a breach of the sixth commandment, in neglecting second causes, and in needless hurting the body, sees not this; but fathers all upon God, only in a spiritual dispensation, and considers only dispensation in God, not sin in himself. 2. Mercies grow invisibly, and we see not; we are ready to sleep at mercies offered. When Christ knocks in love, we are in bed (Song of Solomon 5:3). Judgments speak in the dark, but we hear not: the Lord fattens some slaughter-oxen for hell, and death is on some men's faces, even the second death on their person, but they see not. To hear the Lord's rods, and who has appointed it, is the man of wisdom's part (Micah 6:9). There is an orthodox wisdom and will, as there is an orthodox faith. Will, as well as the mind, can frame syllogisms; every unrenewed man has a faith of his own in the bottom of his will. Some are willingly ignorant (2 Peter 3); some, through deceit, refuse to know the Lord (Jeremiah 9); whereas lust puts out reason, and takes the chair. Lust has stout logic against Christ; a fleshly mind vainly puffed up is a badge of bastard wit, out-reasoning all the gospel. O but grace is quick-eyed, sharp, and a witty thing, to see God veiled in, under the curtain of flesh; to see Christ and heaven through words, and the gospel with child of so great a salvation.

Consideration 6. What wonder that there be divisions about Christ. Some will have the Lord speaking from heaven, a thunder; others, an angel. Christ is the most disputable thing in the world (Matthew 16:13-14); there be five religions, and sundry opinions touching Christ; the scribes and Pharisees had many sundry opinions, and one of them is the right way only, and ten false. Many say Christ is a prophet (John 7:40). Others said, this is the Christ; others no: shall Christ come out of Galilee, and there was a division among them (Luke 2:34). Christ is for a sign that shall be spoken against. And among Christ's sufferings this is one (Hebrews 12:3): he sustained contradiction of sinners. Many false Christs shall arise (Matthew 24). There is but one heaven, and one way to heaven; and there is but one hell: but there be thousands of ways to hell: from one point to another, you can draw but one straight line; but you may draw ten thousand crooked, and circular lines. The truth is one, and very narrow; the lie is broad and very fertile, and broody; error is infinite. It's a blessed thing to find wisdom to hit upon Christ, and adhere to him; there be some [reconstructed: dicers] and cozeners (Ephesians 4:14) that lie in wait to deceive the simple; and they cast the dice for heaven, and can cast you up anything on the dice, either one, or seven; do you then resign yourselves in this wood of false religions that now is, to Christ, to be led to heaven. Many now teach, there be some few fundamentals, believe them, and live well, and you are saved. And many false teachers that turn the gospel upside down, say, it is the same gospel, though the head be where the feet should be; and for errors, we wrong not truth, so long as we hold nothing against fundamentals. Should a man remove the roof of your house, cut down the timber of it, and pick out all the fair stones in the wall, and say, Friend, I wrong not your house, see, the foundation stones are safe, and the four corner stones are sure, in the meantime, the house can fence off neither wind nor rain, would not this man both mock you, and wrong you? He that keeps the foundation Christ shall be saved, though he build on it hay and stubble (1 Corinthians 3). It's true. But it was never the intent of the Holy Ghost, that a man believing some few fundamentals, though he hold, and spread lies and false doctrines, is in no hazard of damnation; or that he has liberty of conscience, to add to the foundation hay, and stubble, and untempered mortar: and to daub dirt upon the foundation Christ, and not sin, the place speaks no such thing, but of this elsewhere.

Others said it was an angel.

These come nearer to the truth; for they conceive there is more in this voice, than a work of nature, such as a thunder is; they think, an angel spoke to Christ; and they are convinced, that Christ keeps correspondence with heaven and angels.

Angels have been, and are in high estimation among men always; and there is reason for it.

1. There is more of heaven in angels, and more of God, than in any of their fellow-creatures. Sinful men have been stricken with fear at the sight of them; they are persons of a more excellent country than the earth. John the Apostle did overvalue an angel (Revelation 19; Revelation 21), and fell down to worship him.

2. Angels elect and chosen, never lost their birth-right of creation, as men and devils have done; they were created as the lilies and roses, which no doubt, had more sweetness of beauty and smell, before the sin of man made them vanity-sick (Romans 8:20), but they have kept their robes of innocency, their cloth of gold above five thousand years, without one spark of dirt, or change of color, for they never sinned; innocence and freedom from sin, has much of God. Adam (as many think) kept not his garments clean one day. Courtiers of heaven, and saints should walk like Angels, and keep good quarters with Christ. Grace is a pure, clean, innocent thing; teaches saints to deny ungodliness; and so much the more have Angels of God, that they are among devils and sinful men, and yet by grace are kept from falling; the more grace, the more innocence. Grace as pardoning has its result from sin, but is most contrary to sin. Grace pays debt for sin, but takes not on new arrears; it is abused grace that does so.

2. But these thus convinced, that the Lord's voice is more than a thunder, go no further, they say here, others said it was an Angel.

Hence touching conviction.

Proposition 1. Conviction of conscience may be strong, and yet at a stand. Never man spoke like this man, say the Jews, yet they hate him (John 7:28). Jesus cried in the temple, as he taught, saying, You both know me, and you know from where I am; I am not come of myself, but he that sent me is true, whom you know not. Verse 29. But I know him. Then they knew Christ, for conviction, and they knew him not; for, they crucified the Lord of glory; and if they had known him under the supernatural notion of the Lord of glory, they would not have crucified him (1 Corinthians 2:8). Felix trembles, and is convinced, but imprisons Paul. The devils believe there is a God, and tremble (James 2), but light is made a captive, and made a prisoner (Romans 1:18). It is a most troublesome prisoner, it holds the conqueror waking, and yet he cannot be avenged on it.

Proposition 2. Conviction turned to malice, becomes a devil; the Pharisees convinced, go on against heaven, and the operation of the Holy Ghost. And the Jews saw the face of Stephen, as it had been the face of an Angel (Acts 6:15). Yet Acts 7:57-58, they run on him, and stone him to death.

Proposition 3. Conviction makes more judicial hardening than any sin; it revenges itself upon heaven; hell near heaven is a double hell. John 12:37-38. Though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not. A reason is, Verse 40. He has blinded their eyes, and hardened their [illegible].

Proposition 4. Omnipotence of grace can only convince the will.

Preachers may convince the mind, and remove mind-heresy, but Christ only can give [reconstructed: ears] to love, fear, sorrow, and remove will-heresy (John 6:45). There be reasonings and logic in the will, stronger than these in the mind; the will has reason why it will not be taken with Christ (John 5:40), and a law (Romans 7:23) of sin, why it is sweet to perish, and death is to be chosen.

Proposition 5. It is the right conviction of the Spirit, to be convinced: 1. Of unbelief: 2. Of the excellency of Jesus Christ, that I must have Christ, cost me what it will; say it were all that the rich merchant has (Matthew 13:45-46). There is a white and red in his face, has convinced the man's love, and has bound his affection, hand and foot; that he takes pains on despised duties that lie under the very drop of the shame of the cross (Acts 5:4).

Proposition 6. To be willing to do a duty that has shame written on it, as to be scourged for Christ, as the Apostles were, and for an honorable lord of counsel, as Joseph of Arimathea was, to petition to have the body of a crucified man to bury, it being a duty near of blood to the cross; both apparent loss, and present shame, is a strong demonstration, that the whole man, not the mind only, but the will and affections are convinced. Some duties grow among thorns, as to be killed all the day long, and to take patiently the spoiling of our goods, for Christ. Some duties grow among roses, and are honorable and glorious duties; as to kill and subdue, in a lawful war, the enemies of God. The former are no sign of wrath, nor the latter of being duly convinced of the excellency of Christ, except in so far as we use them, through the grace of Christ, as becomes saints; or abuse them, but it is more like Christ to suffer for him, than to do for him.

Proposition 7. God will have some half gate to heaven, though they should die by the way; some are more, some less convinced: the more conviction, if not received, the more damnation. The Gospel is not such a messenger as the raven that returns not again: Isaiah 55:11. My word that goes forth out of my mouth, it shall not return to me void, it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it. The Gospel, and opportunity of reformation, falls not in the sea-bottom, when a nation receives it not, but it returns to God to speak tidings: we will not give an account of the Gospel, but the Gospel gives an account of us. 2. Even when the ordinances are rejected, they prosper (Isaiah 55:11) to harden men: they are seed sown, and rain fallen on the earth, they yield a crop of glory to God, even a sweet savior to God, in those that perish, as in those that are saved (2 Corinthians 2:15-16). The lake of fire and brimstone, as a just punishment of a despised Gospel, smells like roses to God.

30. Jesus answered and said, This voice came not because of me, but for your sake. 31. Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the Prince of this world be judged.

Now follows the other effect of Christ's prayer, toward the world.

1. In general. The prayer is answered (says Christ) not so much for my cause, to comfort me, (for he might otherwise be comforted) as for you, that you may believe in me, hearing this testimony from heaven. 2. In particular: He sets down the fruit of his death. 1. On the unbelieving world, they shall be judged and condemned. 2. On the spiritual enemies, and by a Synecdoche, the head of them, Satan, the god of this world shall be cast out, and sin, and death, and hell with him. 3. The prime fruit of all, Verse 32. When I am crucified, by my Spirit of grace, the fruit of the merit of my death, I will draw all men to me.

This voice came not because of me.

Christ's well and woe, his joy, his sorrow, is relative, and for sinners. Christ as Christ is a very public person, and a giving-out Mediator. And it adds much to the excellency of things, that they are public, and made out to many: as the sun, the stars, the rain, the seas, the earth, that are for many, are so much the more excellent: it is a broader and a larger goodness, that is public. Heaven is an excellent thing, because public, to receive so many crowned kings, and citizens, that are redeemed from the earth. The Gospel is a public good for all sinners: eternity is not a particular duration, as time is, that has a poor point to begin with, and end at; but the public good of angels and glorified spirits. Time indeed is a public thing, but because it is the heritage of perishing things, it is not public in comparison of eternity. And Christ, because a public spirit, for the whole family of elect angels and saints in heaven and earth, is a matchless excellent one. And it is observable, that there is nothing in heaven, that is the seat and element of happiness, and the only garden and paradise of the saints' felicity, but it is public and common to all: the inhabitants the glorified saints and angels, all see the face of him that sits on the throne, (of degrees of fruition, I speak not;) they all drink of the river of water of life; all have access to eat of the apples of the tree of life, there is no forbidden fruit in heaven; all have the blessing of the immediate presence of the Lamb, and there is neither need of sun, or moon, or light of a candle to any; all equally enjoy eternity, there is one lease and term-day to the lowest inhabitant of glory, and that is eternity; there is common to them all one city, the streets of which are transparent gold; that the poorest inhabitants of a town, walk on a street of gold of Ophir, is a great praise to the city: it is common to them all that they shall never sigh, never be sad, never sicken, never be old, never die; and eternal life is common to them all: and then all feel the smell of the fairest rose that angels or men can think on, the flower, the only delight, the glory, the joy of heaven, the Lord Jesus; all walk in white, and can sin no more. Then, a public spirit, who is for many, is the most excellent spirit. Men of private spirits, who carry a reciprocation of designs only to themselves, and die and live with their own private interests, are bad men. When our self is the circle, both center and circumference, we are so much like the devil, who is his own god, adores himself, and would have God to adore him (Matthew 4:9). Now, Christ is the most public, relative, and communicative spirit and Lord that is. 1. All Christ's offices are for others than himself: he is not a Mediator of one: a Redeemer is for captives, a Savior for sinners, a priest for offenders and trespassers, a prophet for the simple and ignorant, a king to vindicate from servitude, all that are in bondage; the physician for the sick: and this speaks for you, sinners. 2. Why did he empty himself (Luke 19:10; 1 Timothy 1:15), and come into the world [reconstructed: to save] sinners. 3. Why was he a fitted sacrifice to die (John 7:19)? For their sake also I sanctify myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth. 4. His dying was a public and relative good (John 10:10). For his sheep. For (John 15:13) his friends. For (Romans 5:10) his enemies. For his wife, to present a bride without spot or wrinkle to God (Ephesians 5:25-26). (5.) And he rose again for us, even for our justification (Romans 4:25). (6.) And whose cause does Christ advocate in heaven now? Ours. For us, if we sin (1 John 2:1), he intercedes for us (Hebrews 7:25), that we may have boldness to enter into the holy of holiest (Hebrews 10:19). (7.) Christ has so public a heart, that he longs to return again, and to see us (John 14:3): I will come again, and receive you to myself. A surety is a very relative person, and for another: the head is for all the members, the meanest and lowest: and it is not enough to him to rent the heaven, and dig a hole in the skies once, when he was incarnate, but he makes a second journey in coming down to rent the heaven, and fetch his bride up to himself. They are hence rebuked, that so use Christ, as if he were a jewel locked up in a cabinet in heaven, to be touched and made use of by none: Oh, I am a sinner, I am a wretched captive — what have I then to do with so precious a Lord, as Christ? But, I pray, (1.) why is Christ a Savior? is he not for sinners? Why a Redeemer? is it that he should lie by God, as useless? was he not a Redeemer for captives? (2.) What if all the world should say so? Christ should be a Savior, and save none; a Redeemer, and ransom none at all; for all are sinners, all are captives. Christ's very office begets an interest in the sick to the physician: Claim your interest, O sick sinner.

Now this voice was unknown to those that heard it, and yet it was for men that understood it not: Christ acts for us, when we are sleeping. The people of God were to be seventy years in Babylon, and were going on in their obstinacy, yet then God says (Jeremiah 29:11), I know the thoughts I think toward you, (you know them not; I love you, but you know not) even thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you an expected end. Many glorious mercies are transacted in God's mind, without our knowledge: Before the corner stone of the earth was laid, he had made sure work of our election to glory (Ephesians 1:4; Romans 9:11). (2.) The everlasting covenant between the Father and the Son, that blessed bargain of free-redemption in Christ, was closed from eternity (Jeremiah 32:39-40). To do us good when we are far off, and know no such thing, is a great and free expression of love. (3.) We should be narrow vessels, not able to contain our joy, without breaking, if we understood what a house not made with hands were prepared for us in the heavens; but our life is hid with Christ in God, it appears not now what we are. You never saw the Bride the Lamb's Wife embroidered with heaven, free-grace, and riches of glory. Every Saint is a mystery to another Saint, and that is the cause that love to one another is so cold: Every Saint is a riddle, and a secret to himself. It was a privileged sight, even a privilege of the higher House, and of the Peers of Heaven, that John saw (Revelation 21:10). And he carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great City, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God, Verse 11. Having the glory of God: and the light was like a stone most precious, even like a Jasper stone, clear as Crystal. Here is a King's daughter, a beautiful Princess, in the gold of heaven's glory, arrayed with Christ; who sees this while we are here? Every one sees not such a sight of glory.

If there be such an active application on God's part, that Christ is fitted and dressed for sinners, there should be a passive application on our part: O what an incongruity and unsuitableness between Christ and us! He is a Savior for sinners, we are not sinners for a Savior: he is open and forward to give, we narrow and drawing to receive. A physician that thrusts his art and compassion to cure, is unfitting for a sick one, contrary and unwilling to be cured. We should be for Christ, as for our only perfecting end; but it is not so. Oh, men are for their own gain, from their quarter (Isaiah 56:10). Their eyes and hearts are not but for covetousness (Jeremiah 22:17). For the glory of their own name (Daniel 4:30). For the continuance of their houses to many generations (Psalm 49:11). For the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof (Romans 13:14).

If Christ be for the Saints, then all other things are for them; all things are theirs: Death is a waterman to carry them to the other side of time; the earth the Saints' inns; the creatures their servants; as sun, moon, and stars, are candles in the house for them: Providence for them, as the hedge of thorns, is to fence the wheat, the flowers, the roses, not the thistles, and all because Christ is their Savior. Verse 31: Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the Prince of this world be cast out.

Two enemies are here judged, the World and Satan.

As touching the former enemy: We are to consider the time — Now; 2 the enemy, the World; 3 the restrictive Pronoun, This world; 4 that which Christ acts — he judges the world. But what is meant by the judgment of the world? Some understand, that now by Christ's death is the right constitution of the world, as if the world were put in a right frame, and delivered from vanity, and restored to its perfection by Jesus Christ's death. Others think by the world, is meant the sin of the world, or the sinning world; in that Christ condemned sin, in the flesh, by his death. But by the World is meant the reprobate, and wicked world, that are here ranked with Satan, for Christ in his death gives out a doom and sentence on the unbelieving World; because they receive not him; as (John 3:19) This is the [illegible] judgment of the world) that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness, etc.

Now for the first of these: We see that Hope helps the weak; before Christ yokes with devils, hell, and death, he sees and believes the victory: It was now a dark, and a sad providence with Christ in his soul-trouble; but hope lying on the cold clay, prophesies good; Hope among the worms breathes life and resurrection. (Psalm 16:10) You will not leave my soul in the grave. Verse 11: You will show me the path of life. (Psalm 118:17) I shall not die, but live; and declare the works of the Lord. He was at this time, in regard of danger, almost in death's cold bosom. Have you never seen Hope laugh out from under dead bones in a bed? Boil-covered, rotten, and half dead (Job 19:25-26), I know that my Redeemer lives, and that he shall stand at the latter day on the earth: Verse 26: And though after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh I shall see God. And (2 Corinthians 5:1) Hope does both die, and at the same time prophesy heaven and life: We know, if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heaven. Would any man say, Paul, how do you know that? The answer is: Faith holds the candle to Hope, and Hope sees the Sun in the firmament at midnight. We know if this house be destroyed, we have a better one.

2. Hope is one of the good spies, that comes with good tidings, be not dismayed, God will give us the good land; when they were plucking the hair off Christ's face, and nipping his cheeks, Hope speaks thus to him, and to all standers by (Isaiah 50:7), For the Lord God will help me, therefore I shall not be confused: therefore have I set my face as flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. It is a long cable, and a sure anchor (Hebrews 6:19): Which Hope we have as an anchor of the soul both sure and steadfast, and which enters into that which is within the veil. Hope is sea-proof, and hell-proof, and Christ is anchor-fast in all storms: Christ in you the hope of glory (Colossians 1:27).

3 A praying grace is such a prophesying grace; as both asks when he prays, Father, glorify your name, and takes an answer: so does Christ here take an answer. Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the prince of this world be cast out. He was not yet cast out, but hope in Christ with one breath, prays, Father save me from this hour; and answers, I shall be saved: the world, and the prince-enemy shall be cast out. It's a [reconstructed: winning battle], all shall be well. Faith and hope laugh and triumph for tomorrow (Psalm 6). Rebuke me not, Lord, in your anger (verse 4). Return, O Lord, deliver my soul (verse 8). He takes an answer, For the Lord has heard the voice of my weeping (verse 9). The Lord has heard my supplication. In Psalm 35, he prays that the Angel of the Lord would chase his enemies. And he answers himself in antedated praises, verse 9: And my soul shall be joyful in the Lord. Verse 10: All my bones shall say, Lord, who is like to you, etc. He makes a bargain beforehand, hope lays a debt of praises upon every bone and joint of his body (Psalm 42). Banished, forgotten, and withered David, complains to God, and in hope takes an answer, verse 8. Yet the Lord will command his loving kindness in the daytime. We have need of this now. When Scotland is so low, they cannot fall that are on the dust, and more thousands under the dust, with the pestilence, and the sword, and the heartbreak of forsaking and cruel friends, that not only have proved broken cisterns to us in our thirst, but have rejoiced, as Edom did, at our fall, than ever stories at one time, in ancient records can speak: and God grant friends turn not as cruel enemies, as ever the idolatrous and bloody Irish have been. Yet there is hope in Israel concerning this thing. The Lord must arise, and pity the dust of Zion: Our bones are scattered at the grave's mouth, as when one hews wood. Though we sit in darkness, we shall see light. Some say, there is no help for them in God. O say not so, they that are now highest, must be lowest. God must make the truth of this appear in Britain (Ezekiel 17:24). And all the trees of the field shall know, that I the Lord, have brought down the high tree, and have exalted the low tree, and have dried up the green tree, and have made the dry tree to flourish, I the Lord have spoken it, and have done it. Others say, we shall be delivered, when we are ripened by humiliation for mercy. No, it's not needful it be ever so. God sometimes first delivers, and then humbles, and has done it; the Lord delivered his low church, when they were in their graves (Ezekiel 37), but they were never prouder, than when they loaded the power, the faithfulness, and free grace of God with reproaches, and said (Ezekiel 37:11). Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost, we are cut off for our parts.

This world.

This is the lost world. 1. Because it is the judged world (John 3:19). (2.) It is that world of which Satan is Prince. The world being the damned, is the worst of the creation; which I prove from the word, and also shall give the signs and characters of the men of the world.

1. The world is the black company that lies in sin, all of them (1 John 5:9). The whole world lies in sin; they are haters of Christ, and all his. If the world hates you, you know (says Christ) that it hated me before you (John 15:18).

2. They are a number incapable of grace, or reconciliation: which is terrible, and have no part in Christ's prayers (John 17:9). I pray not for the world; nor of sanctification; the Comforter that Christ was to send (John 14:17) is the Spirit that the world cannot receive.

3. It is one of the professed enemies on Christ's contrary side that he overcomes, and we in him (John 16:33). In the world you shall have tribulation. They are the only troublers of the saints, But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world. Whoever is born of God overcomes the world (1 John 5:4).

4. It's a dirty and defiling thing, pure religion (says James 1:27) keeps a man unspotted of the world. It is the praise of the church of Sardis (Revelation 3:4) that there was among them a few names, that had not defiled their garments; but kept themselves from the pollutions of the world; it's a sooty pesthouse: there be drops of soot that defiles men in it.

5. There can be no worse character, than to be a child of the world. It is a black mark (Luke 16:8). You know the Hebraism; Children of disobedience: that is, much addicted to disobedience; as the son has the nature of father and mother in him: Children of pride, of wrath; much addicted, and far under the power of wrath, and pride: so the sparks of fire are called (Job 5) the daughters of the burning coal: thus a child of the world, is one that lay in the womb of the world, one of the world's breeding, opposed to a pilgrim and a stranger on earth; for a stranger is one that is born in a strange land (Psalm 119:19, Psalm 39:12, Hebrews 11:13) and contrary to a child of light. Who has the pilgrim's sigh, ordinarily night and day; Oh if I were in my own country. Wrong him not; his mother is a woman of heaven, she is a mighty Princess, and a King's daughter (Revelation 21:10) the New Jerusalem, the church of God came down from heaven; father, mother, seed, principles, and all are from heaven. 2. There is a Spirit called the Spirit of the world (1 Corinthians 2:12). This Spirit is the genius, the nature, and disposition of the world (1 John 2:16) and is all for the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life; and these be the world's all things. Such a soul knows not the white stone, and the new name, nor can he smell the rose of the field, and the Lily of the valley; nor knows he the King's banqueting house, nor the absence, or presence of Christ in the soul; the man's portion is in this world (Psalm 17:14) within the four angles of this clay-globe.

This world.

The world, the Lord Jesus judges, is this world; a thing that comes within the compass of time, and may be pointed with the finger.

1. It is near our senses, therefore called (Galatians 1:4) the present evil world, the world that now is, on the stage: so (2 Timothy 4:10) Demas has forsaken me, and has loved [Greek text], the world that is upon its present Now. The world that is on its post, and now, in its flux, motion and tendency to corruption. (1 Timothy 6:17) Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high minded; this world is opposed to eternity, and to life eternal, for which the rich are to lay up a sure foundation. (Luke 20:34) The sons of this world marry, and are given in marriage. Verse 35: But these that shall be counted worthy of that world and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage. Verse 36: Neither can they do any more, [Greek text], that world; this puts a great note of excellence on the world to come.

2. This world is a thing that comes under our senses, and that [Greek text], a single one creature, that we may point with our finger. Satan from the top of a mountain showed Christ, [Greek text], all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory, or opinion of them (Matthew 4:8), and it is (Luke 4:5) all the kingdoms, [Greek text]; he showed him the fancy of the habitable earth in a point of time; the life to come cannot come under your senses. You cannot point out the throne of God, and the Lamb, and the Tree of life, and the pure River of water of life, that proceeds out of the throne of God, and of the Lamb; there be such various treasures of glory in the infinite Lord Jesus, so many dwelling places in our Father's house, that you cannot number them all. The kingdoms of this world, and the glory of it comes within tale and reckoning; I grant this is meant of the structure and dwellings of the world, but they are the settled home of reprobate men.

It were good, if we could believe that the [Greek text] of the world, the figure and painted appearance of this house of lost men (1 Corinthians 7:30), is in a trance, and passing away; ah! are you conformed to the world? Your condition is woeful. The world swears, and so do you; the world serves the time in religion, and so do you; the world is vain in their apparel; the world cheats, lies, whores, and so do you; the world hates Christ, and his friends, and so do you; the world lies in sin, it is the fashion of the world, and so do you. Oh! if you would be conformed to the new world, in righteousness and holiness. 1. The indwellers are all the children of a king, and princes, and their mother a prince's daughter. 2. The lowest piece of the dwelling house of that other world, the heavens, we see are curious work; any one pearl, or candle of sun, or moon, or stars, is worth the whole earth, setting aside the souls of men. 3. The foundation of the city is precious stones (Revelation 21, etc.). What fools are we, who kill every one another for pieces and bits of the Lord's lowest footstool; for the earth, the seat of the worldly man, is but the footstool of God.

The judgment of this world.

How did Christ condemn and pass sentence on the wicked world in his death?

1. He did it legally, in that his offering of a sufficient ransom for sin, there is a seal put on the condemnation of all impenitent men, that they shall not see life, but the wrath of God (that they were by nature under, being the captives of the law) abides on them (John 3:36), because they believe not in the Son of God (John 16:9). Christ's dying day was the unbeliever's Doomsday.

2. He condemns the world declaratorily; in removing the curse from all the persecutions of the ill world; which was also more than a declaration, it being a real overcoming of the world (John 14:33). He has removed all offence from the enmity, and deadly feud that the world bears against the saints. Christ's good will in dying, has sanctified, sweetened, and perfumed the world's ill-will to the saints.

3. He judges the world in his death exemplarily; as it is said (Hebrews 11:7), Noah condemned the world in preparing an ark. So Christ's example of obedience in dying for the world, at his Father's command (John 10:16), condemns the world's disobedience. Christ dying, and in his thirst, not master of a cup of water, is a judgment of the drunkard; his dying, being stripped of his garments, is a condemning of vain and strange apparel; his face spitted on, says beauty is vanity; his dying between two thieves says, a high place among princes is not much, when the Prince of the kings of the earth was companioned with thieves; his being forsaken of lovers and friends, condemns trusting in men, and confidence in princes, or the sons of men: all this is for our mortification, that we love not the world, for it is Christ's condemned malefactor.

Now is the Prince of this world cast out.

Here two things are considerable. 1. Who is the Prince of this world. 2. How he is, by Christ, cast out.

The Prince of this world is Satan, so called (John 14:30), and the prince that rules in the children of disobedience (Ephesians 2:2), called with a higher name (2 Corinthians 4:4), [Greek text] — the God of this world. What principality, or what godhead can the devil have in the world? Or who gave to him a scepter, a crown, and a throne? For Satan has a throne (Revelation 2:3).

The Devil is not 1. a free Prince. 2. Not an absolute Monarch. 3. Nor a lawful King; not free, because he is a captive Prince, reserved in everlasting chains of darkness, to the judgment of the great day (Jude 6). The Son of God is the only free prince in the world, there be none independently free in heaven and earth, but he (John 8:36). The kingdom of grace is an ancient free estate; and never was, never can be conquered, not by the gates of hell (Matthew 16:18). Zechariah 12:3, and in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone, though all people of the earth be gathered together against it. Sure, Christ is a free king, by all the reason, and lawful authority in heaven and earth (Psalm 2:6-7). Hell is no free princedom, all in it are slaves of sin (John 8:34, 39-44). The liberty of loving, enjoying, seeing, and praising God, and leisure, or thoughts, or cares to do no other thing, is the only true liberty, and liberty to be a King, and absolute over lusts, and wicked will is the only liberty (Psalm 119:45). I shall walk [in non-Latin alphabet] in latitude, in breadth, in liberty; for I seek your precepts. (2.) He is not an absolute Prince. 1. He is under bail, and in chains of irresistible providence: Satan's providence, in power, is narrower than his will and malice; otherwise he had not left a Church on earth. 2. He can do nothing without leave asked and given, against Job; nor could he winnow Peter, till he petitioned for it. (3.) He is not a lawful Monarch, but usurps; and therefore is called the god of this world (2 Corinthians 4:4), not that he has any Godhead, properly so called.

1. It's true, a black Monarch wears Christ's fair Crown, and intrudes on his Throne, in every false worship: as Leviticus 17. He that kills ox, or goat, or lamb to the Lord, in the camp, and brings it not to the door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation, to the Priest (verse 7), offers sacrifice to devils. 2 Chronicles 11:15, Jeroboam ordained him Priests for the high places, and for the devils, and for the calves that he had made.

2. To fear the Devil, the Sorcerer, or him that can kill the body (as Satan may bear the keys of prison houses, and the sword (Revelation 2:10)) more than the Lord, is to put a Godhead on the Devil.

3. Satan usurps a Godhead, over that which is the flower and most God-like and divine piece in man, the mind. 2 Corinthians 4:4, In whom the god of this world has blinded the mind of them that believe not: and he makes a workhouse of the souls of the children of disobedience (Ephesians 2:2), they are the Devil's forge and shop, in whom he frames curious pieces for himself.

4. His crown stands in relations: Fathers, tyrants by strong hand, and lords by free-election were Kings, of old; so the Devil is a father, has children, and a seed (Acts 13:10; 1 John 3:10). The world is his conquest, and his vassals (Acts 10:38; 2 Timothy 2:26; 1 Peter 4:3 and 5:8) are the world which he governs and rules, by the three fundamental principles of his Catholic Kingdom, which he has held these 5,000 years, The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life (1 John 2:16). Sinners hold the crown on the Devil's head; their loyalty to Prince Satan acts on them to die in wars against the Lamb and his followers.

A cause is not good, because followed by many. Isaiah 17:7, in that day, when the Church is but three or four berries on the top of the olive tree, a man, one single man, shall look to his Maker. Men come to Zion, and follow Christ in ones and twos of a whole Tribe (Jeremiah 3:14). They go to hell in thousands; a whole earth (Revelation 13) worships the Western Beast; and the Eastern Leopard has the far greatest part of the habitable world; Indians and Americans worship Satan. Christ's are but a little flock; ah the way to heaven is overgrown with grass, there the traces of few feet to be seen in the way: only you may see the print of our glorious Forerunner Christ's foot, and of the Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, and the handful that follow the Lamb. Follow you on, and miss not your lodging.

Shall be cast out.

There is a two-fold casting out of Satan; one for his first sin (2 Peter 2:4): God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell (Jude 6). This is a personal casting out, not spoken of here: But Satan must have two hells; for though the Gospel was never intended to Satan, yet Satan is guilty of Gospel-rebellion, in that the Dragon fights with the Lamb, and the weak woman traveling in birth, by the Gospel, to bring forth a man child to God. And (2.) as Satan is the mystical head and Prince of that condemned body, he is cast out; and he has a power, in regard of the guilt and dominion of sin, both over the elect and the reprobate. Christ's death has broken hell's bars, and condemned sin in the flesh (Romans 8:3), and dissolved the works of the Devil, and taken his forts and castles; and (1 John 3:8) taken many of Satan's soldiers captives. Death was the Devil's Fort-royal; Hell is his great prison-house, and principal jail; these he has taken (1 Corinthians 15:55-56; Hosea 13:14): I will ransom them from the power of the grave, I will redeem them from the power of death. O death, I will be your plague: O grave, I will be your destruction. And these captives can never be ransomed out of Christ's hand again; for (says he) repentance shall be hid from my eyes. When Christ spoils, he will never restore the prey again. He has overcome the world (John 16:33), and that was a strong fort: and he has delivered the saints from the dominion of sin, because they are under a new husband (Romans 6:6-10; Romans 7:1-6). All crosses have lost their salt and their sting; even as when a city is taken by storming, all the commanders and soldiers are disarmed: and when a court is cried down, by law, all the members and officers of the court, judge, and scribe, and advocates that can plead, pursuivants, jails, are cried down; they cannot sit, nor lead a process, nor summon a subject. So when Christ cried down Satan's judicature, and triumphed over principalities and powers, and annulled all decrees, laws, handwritings of ordinances, that Satan could have against the saints (Colossians 2:14-15), all the officers of hell are laid aside; the Devil is out of office by law, jure, the jails and pits are broken (Isaiah 49:9), that you may say to the prisoners, Go forth: to them that are in darkness, Show yourselves (Zechariah 9:11). When a righteous King comes to the crown, he puts down all unjust usurpers.

If Satan be cast out, we are not debtors to the flesh, to fulfill the lusts of it (Romans 8:12). Sin has no law over us. There is a law of sin, a dictate of mad reason, by which the sinner thinks he is under the oath of allegiance to Satan, and his crown, scepter, and honor he must defend; but there is no reason, no law in hell, and in the works of hell. And if he be once cast out, who is this usurping lawless lord, if you sweep the house to him, and take him in again to a new lodging, one devil will be eight devils; for Satan, thus cast out, will return with seven devils worse than himself. Remember Lot's wife, if you be escaped out of Sodom. Look not over your shoulder with a wanton and lustful eye to old forsaken lovers; let repentance and mortification be constant.

Now is the Prince of this world cast out.

But yet to consider more particularly, Satan's principality, and Satan's power: I add yet more of these two heads, 1. The power of Satan. 2. The punishment of Satan.

His power is held forth, in that he is a Prince.

- 1. In his might and power natural. - 2. In his power acquired. - 3. In his power sinful, and judicially inflicted.

The Devil's power, he was created in, both in the mind, and will, and executive faculty, by no Scripture or reason can be imagined to be less, before the fall of these miserable spirits, than the power of their fellow angels.

1. The angels being all created holy, and according to God's image, they must have been created with their face to God, and in their proper place and sphere; and so with power to stand in their place. Now, what station can these immortal spirits be created in, rather than in a state of seeing God? 2. Satan abode not in the truth, (says the Lord Jesus, John 8:44) and the bad angels left, (says Jude 6) [in non-Latin alphabet], their proper dwelling. These two places compared together, seems to hold forth that truth, and the first truth; God seen and known, though not immutably, was the first element, native country of the angels: They must then see God and his face.

It is a bold and groundless conjecture of some rotten schoolmen, to say, That truth from which the angels are said to fall, was the Gospel-truth; and that they envied that man was in Christ, to be advanced above the angelic nature.

1. It is a dream, that the Gospel was revealed to the Devils before their fall; for then their own fall and future misery, that they were to be kept eternally in chains of darkness, on the same ground, must be revealed to them. What horror and sadness must fill Adam's mind, and the angels' spirit, if hell and the necessity of God manifested in the flesh, was revealed to them in the state of happiness? 2. The mystery of the riches of the glorious Gospel was hid, from the beginning of the world; and the glorious elect angels come in time (Ephesians 3:8-10) to learn that manifold wisdom of God; and delight, in Peter's time, to look into it, as to a great secret of God (1 Peter 1:12). We have not then reason to think this secret was whispered in the ears of the Devils, before they fell.

2. It is true (Matthew 18) the elect angels, [in non-Latin alphabet], always now behold the face of Christ's Father; for now they are confirmed, that they cannot look awry, and turn their eyes off God's face; even when they come down as servants, to the heirs of glory on earth, they carry about with them their heaven, and the pleasures of the court they enjoy; no reason their posting among sinners should decourt them, or deprive them of the actual vision of God. But it follows not therefore, the fallen angels never saw the face of Christ's Father; it follows only, they saw it not immutably, and in a confirmed way of grace, and [in non-Latin alphabet], always, as now the elect angels do.

It is no dominion in Satan to know the thoughts of the heart; this is proper to God only (1 Kings 8:39; Jeremiah 17:10; Psalm 44:21). Nor has he, or the good angels, any immediate dominion over the will, to know what are my thoughts, or to know one another's thoughts, or to act immediately upon free will: not because the thoughts of the heart are objects of themselves so abstruse and high, that they are not intelligible; for a man's own spirit knows the things in himself (1 Corinthians 2:11). Indeed, (2.) then they could not be known by revelation; for God cannot, by revelation, cause a finite understanding comprehend an infinite object; because the object exceeds the faculty in proportion infinitely. The thoughts of a man's heart cannot so exceed the understanding faculty of a man, far less of an angel. Therefore God, in the depth of his wisdom, by an act of his own free will, not from any mysteriousness or intrinsic darkness of the object, has cast a covering over the thoughts of man's heart, that they are not seen clearly to any other men or angels. Nor could human societies, now in the state of sin, subsist, if but the father could read the heart of the son.

Nor have angels, good or bad, any immediate dominion over free will: nor would I say, Satan is the author, indeed, or the immediate tempter to all sins: many sinful thoughts, and wicked acts, are transacted in this dark chamber of presence, the heart of man, to which Satan can have no personal access, neither with his eyes to see, nor his hands of power to stir or move in them. The heart is the privy garden, weeds grow there without Satan's immediate industry: he may knock, or cast fireballs over the wall, or in at the windows, or send letters and messages in, but he cannot immediately talk with the heart, or act immediately on the will. We are to keep this virgin-love of the heart, to Christ; he can ravish it, and none but he. It is the will that makes the bargain in sinning: with all keeping, keep the heart. We make away the created dominion over free will, that God gave us in our creation.

3. Satan has a dominion in 1. natural knowledge, 2. in acquired knowledge. In natural knowledge; because he is a piece of light, a lamp once shining in heaven; but now, for his sin, smoking and [reconstructed: glimmering] in hell. The natural intellectuals of the Devil are depraved, not removed. It is a question, if he can remain a spirit, if that candle were extinct, by which he believes there is a God, but trembles (James 2). The acquired knowledge of the Devil is great, he being an advancing student, and still learning now above five thousand years; and he that teaches others, becomes more learned himself. He is the great Mint-master and Coiner of knowledge, in magicians, wise-men, soothsayers, sorcerers, and is a careful reader in turning over the pages of the book of nature, and the whole works of creation. But still Satan studies man, better than man does himself: he knows nature, in general, may sin; and that corrupt nature, must sin: he observes second inclinations, of humor, complexion, temper of body, disposition, before he tempts; as no seaman sails, until he knows how the wind blows: and he learned that by the prophets, and experience, which he says (Luke 4:34), "I know you, who you are, the holy one of God."

4. He has a particular dominion of power, legally, over mankind, until Christ set them at liberty; as the executioner has over the condemned man, from the judge. (Hebrews 2:14) Christ took part with the children of flesh and blood, that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the Devil; (verse 15) and deliver them, who, through the fear of death, were all their lifetime subject to bondage. Satan, from men's sins, has a sort of conquered dominion, until the Son of God makes us free (John 8:36). And this dominion he keeps over all the sons of disobedience, as their father (John 8:44), as the king of the bottomless pit. And we have no ground to say, that Satan at the day of judgment leaves off to be king, because the damned and the Devil and his angels are said to be tormented together in everlasting fire (Matthew 25); for communion in pain makes not Satan to have no angels under him, or damned men, whom he torments.

Quest. But how keeps Satan still power over Job, Peter, to winnow them and afflict them, in this life, if Christ has cast him out of his dominion?

Answer. 1. It is mere service for the trying of the saints, and mortifying of their lusts, not dominion, not any legal power, such as he has over the sons of disobedience, whom he keeps captives at his will.

2. In relation to Satan it is a mere grant of permission; as a nobleman forfeited for treason, and kept, some years, in prison, before he die, has the life-rent of his own lands, for his necessity, not by heritage as before, but by a grant or gift of grace, from the bounty of the prince and state; so has Satan, not by grace to himself, but by a grant of mere permission, as it were his life-rent to tempt, winnow, and try the saints, so long as Satan is in the way to his full doom in hell. Now, if Christ had not spoiled Satan, and dissolved his works; the use of this power had been, as it were, heritage, to Satan, in regard the law gives him a sort of right over sinners, not made free in Christ. Yet I do not say, it is his proper right, because Satan sins in tempting any to sin; yet the temptation, as it falls passively on the sons of disobedience, is a work of divine justice, and as it falls on the saints, an act of spotless, and holy dispensation, for most just reasons known to God.

2. Satan is a prince in regard of magnificence, called a Prince, a Prince of the air, a God, for he has a royal army under him, the Devil and his Angels, are a great host (Revelation 12:9). The Devil, and Satan, and his Angels, were cast out (verse 7). The Dragon and his Angels fought with Michael; and he has Legions garrisoned in one poor man, he has kept the fields above these five thousand years, with a huge and mighty army, both by Sea, and Land (Ephesians 6:12). For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against Principalities, and powers, against the rulers in the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. Here be great persons in eminent places, and they can lead armies against us, and have in every single soldier, a strong garrison of concupiscence, and fleshly lusts, that war against the soul (1 Peter 2:11). And the flesh is a strong Fort-royal, a tower of imaginations, which exalt themselves against a strong King, the Lord Jesus, and cannot be his captives, but by the mighty power of God (2 Corinthians 10:5). The Devil is not a despicable and poor enemy to be despised, it is not good war-wisdom to despise a mean enemy, far more should we not sleep, but watch and be sober; when the Peers of hell, and Princes and Rulers in high places, who have the vantage of the Mount above us, are against us.

3. Satan's Princedom is especially seen in tempting to sin, which that it may be better cleared. I shall shortly show what a temptation in general is. 2. Open Satan's power in tempting. To tempt is to take a trial of any, to try what is in them; therefore the nearest end of tempting is knowledge; now the ways or manner of bringing out this knowledge, renders the temptation good or ill: for God tempts, and Satan tempts. So Temptation is a working upon the senses, reason, inclination, affections, by which any is, or may be moved under the color of good, toward that which is offensive to God.

1. Temptation is a working, or an act of stirring in the tempter, not Physical, but Moral, and Objective; no tempter, who is only a tempter, can by any real action fire the will. Satan does but knock, by his Logic, at the outside of the door, but cannot open. Free-will is a tender, excellent, piece of creation; and either the best or the worst of the whole creation of God. See well to it, it's a work of your whole lifetime to watch this door.

2. Temptation is an act of moving, or stirring the powers of the man: as when wine is stirred, and wine and dregs are jumbled through other; or a Fountain troubled, and water and clay mixed in one; hence every tempted person is some way a sufferer, though he know not particularly it is so. As the Fish tempted with the bait, the Bird with the Fowler's song, are sufferers, though they know not; there is a breaking in upon the fancy, sense, reason, will, and affections to strike a hole in the soul; so tempting is called piercing, though the fool going to the chambers of death, knows not that it is for his life (Proverbs 7:23). To be tempted is a matter of great concernment; illumination is most necessary here, and specially to know that God aims at the trial of our Faith, and other glorious ends. And that 1. Satan seeks some of his own work in us, as God seeks to bring out some of his work in us. 2. That Satan aims to go between the believer and his strong hold. 3. That he aims at house-room in the soul.

3. The temptation works upon both, the inward and outward man; on senses, fancy, mind, inclination, will, and affection, but has a special design at the soul.

4. By the temptation any is, or may be moved to sin; for all tempted, are not actually induced to sin. Christ was really tempted of the Devil, but was never induced to sin. Satan shot his arrows at Job for nothing; he lost his labor in seeking the failing, and drinking up of Peter's faith. Therefore to be tempted of the Devil, or the World, is not a sin.

5. The temptation works under the color of good. The first Printing iron and Master sampler of tempting, has this character of apparent good (Genesis 3:6). The Woman saw that the fruit was good. 1. Because tempted persons are reasonable creatures, and as instinct takes with birds, and beasts, and poor nature sways elements in their motion, so reason is a strong tying chain.

2. Every temptation has a garment, or rather a shirt of truth in the understanding, and coming under the shadow and roof of the desiring faculty as good, nothing hinders it to take, but a marring of the understanding, in apprehending some black spot, in the fairness of it; when Satan sails fair with favor of the wind, and comes in his whites, and in cloth of Gold, as an Angel of light, we are as readily moved often (such is our childishness) with good-like as with good. Believe not therefore a white Devil, because white. O beware to yield your tongue to lick a honey-temptation, under the veil of sweetness. Receive things rather because lawful, than because good or pleasant. 2. Believe it, there can be no reason for sin, no reason can wash the Devil to render him fair; neither thirst, nor company, can be a reason of drunkenness. An injury cannot justify every War and bloodshed; because injury is a sin, and to wash one sin with another, is as if you should wash a foul face with ink-water. 3. Believe sin to be folly and darkness, and light of reason can be neither father nor mother to folly and darkness: holiness is white and fair, within and without.

6. The object of the temptation, in the definition; the terminus ad quem, is that which is offensive to the majesty of God. That we may understand this, remember four are said to tempt. 1. God, his tempting neither in the condition of the work, or intention of the worker is sin, but the Lord proves you (says Moses to Israel) that he might know, whether you love the Lord your God. 2. Our own lusts tempt and lead aside (James 1:14). And as fire cannot but make fire; so both in the intention of the work, and the worker, the end of temptation is sin. Concupiscence is a mother that cannot bring forth a good daughter. 3. If men tempt to sin, as a Magistrate by good Laws tempts wicked men, the end is not necessarily sin in the intention of the doer; though no man can formally tempt another to sin, but he sins and tempts to sin both ways. And when Satan tempts, he drives ever at sin; both ways we are to fear God, to watch, to stand out, when he tempts.

2. Now we are to consider, that though Satan be sentenced already, and as a malefactor under bail, and in chains, yet has he leave to walk to and fro in the earth, and is not yet cast in prison, nor are we freed from his temptation, the personal persecution and malice of Satan; as we are from the persecution of the damned now in hell, who did persecute us here on earth, but cannot now. No doubt but as the good angels struck the men of Sodom with blindness, so the evil angels have the like power on the senses; a man possessed with the Devil was both dumb and deaf (Job 2:7). Satan smote Job with sore boils, from the sole of his foot to his crown; and so devils have power over the senses, and bodily organs; and so of necessity over the blood, to cause rottenness in it, which must be in boils, and to alter and infect the humors. Psalm 78:49: Evil angels were ministers of the Lord's plagues on the Egyptians. But I shall not think it a good argument, to prove, that angels can jumble the humors, to make many things appear without that they are not; and that they can work on the internal senses, the fancy and imagination, because we ourselves, by an act of free will, can stir up the memory of things, and provoke our fancies to the apprehension of things. Ergo, angels either good, or evil, can do the like. This is but a sorry poor reason, for we ourselves can do many things within ourselves, which the angels cannot do; I know the thoughts of my own heart, when they come forth in act (1 Corinthians 2:11). No angels good or evil can know them; I can with an obedient act of free will, by grace, set my free will on acts to command my memory, fancy, imagination, thoughts, to meditate on by-passed experiences of divine favors, and sweetly solace myself in God, with these thoughts; no angels in heaven or hell, can determine my free will to those spiritual acts; yet, by the grace of God, I can do it. Nor is that true, whatever an inferior power can do, that a superior can much more do; if there be orders in angels, a superior angel cannot determine the will of an inferior, as he himself can do. Sure my knowledge and will are inferior powers, in comparison of angels (1 Corinthians 13:1), yet have I greater dominion over my own understanding and will, than the angels have over my understanding and will, and can know my own actual thoughts, and determine my own will, by grace, which no superior powers of angels, or any else, save the Almighty, can do.

I rather conceive that the outward and inward senses, humors, imagination, fancy, memory, being natural agents; and Scripture clearly showing, that angels and devils can, and do work upon natural agents, have a power over all our dispositions, temperature, senses, fancy, imagination, memory; therefore what is natural in the acts of understanding and memory, not moral, angels do, and may know. What heart-secrets devils know from the disposition of body, paleness, redness, trembling, dejected countenance, are good conjectures; and surer it may be than we can apprehend, but no certain knowledge.

God only knows all the thoughts of man, and his secrets (1 Kings 8:39): "For you, even you only, know the hearts of all the children of men" (Proverbs 15:11). Hell and destruction are before the Lord, how much more than the hearts of the children of men. He that can read hell, and destruction, and all the secrets of darkness, can also read, as a book opened at noon-day, the midnight-thoughts of all the children of men (Psalm 44:21; Jeremiah 17; Romans 8:27; 1 Thessalonians 2:4; Revelation 2:23; Acts 1:24; Proverbs 17:3; Proverbs 21:2; John 2:24-25). Indeed, to know the present thoughts is proper to God (Matthew 19), and Jesus knowing their thoughts, said, "For why do you think evil in your heart?" Nor can angels see the present thoughts come out in action; for otherwise the man himself knows his own thoughts, when he actually thinks them (1 Corinthians 2:11), else he could not be convinced of the sinfulness of them, nor comforted in the spiritualness and preciousness of them.

It is a foolish opinion of some, who say, angels can see the thoughts of the heart, when they are, but not what they are, whether they be good or bad, love or hatred; for that is nonsense, to see moral acts, and not be able to pass any judgment on them: or that angels see our thoughts, but not whether they be intense, and vehement; or cold, and remiss; for it is proper to God, as the searcher of hearts, to know the secrets of the heart, and all the qualities of it, that he may accordingly judge them. And if angels see them as moral acts, they must know the vehemence, or slowness of them; the Scripture places also the difficulty of knowing the thoughts, and the distance, and remoteness of them, from the understanding of men, or angels in the thoughts themselves, not in the vehemence or slowness of the thoughts; and it is but an evasion that some have, that angels may know the thoughts, and acts of the will in themselves, but not know to what end they are directed, and that the intention of the mind is the great secret that God has reserved to himself; because 1. The Scripture places the secrecy of the free acts of will and understanding in the acts themselves, and not in the intention; for so most of the actions of men and angels, their speaking this, not that; their walking to this city, their eating, sleeping, now, not another time, their praying, hearing, reading, shall be secrets, known to God only, not to angels, or men, just as the acts of understanding, the will, are, because the particular intention, whether we do these sincerely, for a good or bad end; indeed, often for what end we do them, is among the secrets of the heart as far distant from the understanding of men or angels, as any secret can be. 2. The intention of all our elicited acts that issues from will and understanding, are also acts of the heart and reins, that fall under the present question, and the greatest secrets in man (Hebrews 4:12).

Neither do I see any reason, from the disproportion between the knowing faculty and the understanding of Angels, why Angels may not know the thoughts of my heart, as well as I may know them myself; nor can the reason be, as Suarez says, because Angels, though they have sufficient power in the faculty of understanding to know these things, yet have not in their understanding the species, the babies, images, and representations of heart-secrets, but with his good leave; this is Petitio principij. For the question is, how does it come to pass, that Angels, who have the species of higher and more profound things, as of the natural knowledge, that there is a God, that he is infinite, eternal, yet have not the species of an object, far inferior, and yet intelligible, namely, of the heart-actions of a man. 2. When I ask how does it come to pass, that an Angel, or a Man, knows not this; I ask indeed, how does it come to pass, that an Angel, or a Man, lacks such a species of such a thing, so Suarez says in effect, Angels know not heart-secrets, because they know not heart-secrets. I conceive God has laid a covering over the hearts of Men and Angels, from his own free and wise will, and reserved that secret to himself: for God gave speech to men, and a way how Angels should communicate their thoughts to Angels, and Men, which is Angel-speaking; and this gift had been useless, if Angels and Men could intuitively read and behold the thoughts of one another's hearts, nor is it useful for the end of reasonable nature, for love and society that we know the secrets of one another's hearts, for the author of nature gives not that by nature, which with less impeachment of love, and not without danger of contention and hatred, may by industry be acquired. And we should take heed, what is written in the book of our heart, when such a searching eye reads it, as God; and will one day read out to the hearing of Men and Angels, all these secrets (Ecclesiastes 12:14), except we be pardoned in Christ, many state-secrets, many foul contrivances may come out, to our everlasting shame.

And for this cause, we are to bless the Lord, who has reserved from Satan's Princedom, and left out of his charter any power to compel our will. It's true, Satan has a bordering or (as it were) some outland Princedom over Saul's will, in that he can sit and ride on his melancholy; so as he is moved to throw a javelin at Jonathan, and to seek to kill David; yet so as he, that is so acted by an evil Spirit, is blameworthy; and then it must be presumed, he has some dominion over his will. (Acts 5:2) Peter says to Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Ghost? Here the Holy Ghost arraigns not Satan, but Ananias for a lie, which yet came from the Father of lies. Which is, 1. Because there was fuel and powder in the hearth before, and Satan did but blow the bellows, and brought forth the flame. 2. Because we willingly join, and love to have it so. 3. Because the act of sinning, comes formally from free-will, which cannot be forced, but may keep out the siege without violence, but yet basely renders.

If Satan be the Prince of the air, and can raise mighty storms and winds, that can smite the four corners of a house, which is not like an ordinary wind, that blows from East, or West, or North, or South, but rather right down (Job 1:19), if he have power of floods, and seas, and be a roaring Lion, and, by reason of his sagacity and skill in the secrets of nature, can do wonders, though no miracles, as to raise the dead, by applying actives and passives together; no question, the Lord letting loose some links of the chain he is fettered with, he can work carefully and strongly on the walls of bodily organs, on the shop that the understanding soul lodges in, and on the necessary tools, organs, and powers, of fancy, imagination, memory, humors, senses, spirits, blood, so nearly joined with the soul, as will, understanding, conscience, and affections sit in dangerous [reconstructed: neighborhood], with such malignant Spirits.

It is (no question) hard enough to give an exact delineation of the length and breadth of the borders of the principality of Satan; nor is it necessary, for our edification, to know all the secrets and mysteries of the devil's power, how he assumes a body, what he can do in the sphere of nature, how he acts upon men. Sure, he has some in his snare, as poor birds, who are taken captives by him, at his will (2 Timothy 2:26), and that he sits at the helm, as it were, of some, and acts and stirs them so, the wind and tide of their lusts complying with him, that they cannot choose but sail, and walk according to the course of this world, according to the Prince of the power of the air, the Spirit that now works in the children of disobedience (Ephesians 2:2). And that he can borrow tide and fair wind at his nod, and woo the soul by the shop and office-house, the body, the flesh, the senses; and reciprocally, act, indirectly, by foreign embassies and missive letters, on the will and understanding, and the lusts, that are domestic friends within, to draw in the senses, and the fancies and imagination, to join with him; as is clear in his first dealing with Eve. It is not his way to deal with the senses only, or with reason only, or to keep such a method, as peremptorily to begin at one before another; but in Satan's first temptation of Eve, he acts collaterally and reciprocally; he acts on the ear, by speaking; and on the mind, by speaking reason: Has God said you shall not eat of every tree? Does he so strictly tie you? Is that reason and justice, to put a law on an apple? Then you may not eat of every tree, which God has made for eating. And Satan works on the sense by reason (Genesis 3:5): For God does know, that in the day you eat, then your eyes shall be opened, and you shall be as gods knowing good and evil. And this worked upon the sense; for it is added (verse 6): And the woman saw that the tree was good for food. And again, by the sense of seeing, Satan worked on the will, to bring out the consent (verse 6): And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat. So Satan can make the body a tempter to the soul, and the soul and reason a tempter to the body: as when the husband is leprous, and the wife infected with the pestilence, he renders her a leper, and she renders him sick with a running botch. When the body is pampered, and the vessels full, it draws the soul's consent to fleshly lust; and the soul finds reason, but corrupt reason, why the body should be a member of a harlot. And there is mutual help between concupiscence and conscience; the one tempting with strong acts of lusting, the other tempting with lustful reason, showing it should be so, and may be so: as in a water-work, drawing water from such a place, twenty empty buckets come down, and twenty full buckets come up, and every one serves another, for one common work. Nor is it a wonder, that one devil does kiss and embrace another.

Cast out.

The Prince of this world's casting out leads us to a further consideration of Satan's punishment: as there is a double sin in Satan, so a double punishing and casting out. The ill angels' first sin I determine not; they did not abide in the truth: they kept not their first and proper station. God made all things good, and placed them all in due and fit houses and stations, and God was the station and house of the angels; the devil's first act was to [reconstructed: forsake] God, and leave their own house; it is likely they would have been higher, and affected a godhead: they would not sit, contentedly, in the place God set them in. Shifting spirits, climbing men, that would be higher than God has placed them, and would be without their own skin, and above their own element and proper sphere, have this, as a grain of the ill seed, that the old Serpent spewed in Eve. The devil knew how to go out of his own house, and to climb above his own proper station, and he would lead Eve up the stairs, where he did climb himself, to seek to be like God, knowing good and evil (Genesis 3:5). The whole creation was like a well-ordered army, at the beginning, all kept rank, and marched in order; the devils were the first soldiers in the army that broke the comely rank, and marred the first order: the Prince of darkness, that great Lord of confusion, made the first jarring, and example and prime discord in the sweet music and song of the praises of the Creator, that all creatures did sing. Therefore God the Creator, in his justice, spared not him, and his fellow-mutineers, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them to chains of darkness, to be reserved to judgment (2 Peter 2:4). Christ, as Mediator, did not inflict this punishment on the fallen angels.

Now, there is a second sin of the Devils, and that is not only the casting down of man, but the continuing without retreating in the first sin. (1 John 3:8) He that commits sin is of the devil: for the devil sins from the beginning. (John 8:44) Satan was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth; because there is no truth in him. What, is not Satan's first sin a transient act gone and past? Is Satan this day in the very act of murdering all mankind, and of murdering Adam and Eve, who many thousand years ago are dead? It's true, the act physically considered, is gone; but morally, Satan is yet on that same sin. 1. Because he did, and does spin out, in a long thread, the very first sin; and all Satan's life, from that day to this, is one continued act of apostasy: in 1. the not retreating, nor repenting his first sin, and his first murder; Satan's hands are wet and hot this very day with the blood of Adam and Eve's soul. 2. In the continuing in, and the approving of the act of his first sinning, by still envying the glory of God, maligning his workmanship and image, so as the guilt of that sin goes along with him. Hence Christ adds his seal, as Mediator, to the Lord's first sentence of justice, in casting him out of heaven; and in regard he continues in that sin, and adds new soul-murders, to his first transgression, in tempting, tormenting, hating, opposing the redemption of man, the Gospel, the offices of Christ, the Church of Christ, Christ comes in, by his office, as his Judge, to add to his chains. In which a word, 1. Of the punishment of Devils. 2. Of Christ, as he is the Judge of Devils.

The punishment has relation to his first sin: His first sin was against the Holy Ghost, in that being a lamp of light, shining up in the high palace, and standing before the throne, wanting not any wicked principle of concupiscence within, or any habitual aversion from God, looking God in the face, and beholding the first truth, he sinned against God, and therefore was made an exemplary spectacle to angels and men of pure and unmixed justice, without mercy, and cast down to hell without hope of a Saviour, or redemption. (Hebrews 2:16) For truly he took not on him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham.

The evils of punishment inflicted on Satan, are 1. His being cast out of the presence of God, never to see his face again, nor enjoy his favor. (2 Peter 2:4) For God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell. Hence from this the Schoolmen infer a second punishment, a perpetual sadness and dejection of mind, for the loss of that happy fruition of God. But I much doubt, whether sadness for the want of God's lovely presence, can consist with the extreme hatred of God, and fiery averseness, implacable wrath, and burning envy, that Satan has against the glory of God, or image of God, or anything of God; especially against the Lamb and his followers; against whom he wars continually. A sadness there may be in him, because he is a rational creature, in regard he has fallen from the good of happiness, not of holiness; but conjoined with wrath and hatred against God: and this is without question in all the damned.

2. The pain inflicted on the understanding, is the hurting of his natural speculative knowledge. Sure, if he sees not God as the first truth, he sees all deductions from the will, sovereignty, wisdom, justice of God, etc. more darkly than he did before; but, if his natural speculative knowledge was utterly lost, there should be no foundation remaining in him of wrath and envy against God, and his creatures and image. 2. His true and saving practical knowledge is lost, and in place thereof a crafty, wily, cunning, deceitfulness and subtlety to deceive and tempt; such as is in the Serpent to sting; such a bloody instinct as is in the Dragon, in the lion to devour; but otherwise, the devil is the first fool of the creation of God, and has played the fool above five thousand years; for, in rational policy, the tempting of our first parents to sin, though it was a masterpiece of wit, was the ruin of his kingdom: and the Serpent, even in the crucifying of Christ, did buy a scratch in Christ's heel at a dear rate, with the bruising and grinding to powder the head and life of the Serpent, and the full destruction of his kingdom. And by experience Satan knows he is a loser, in tempting and persecuting the Lord Jesus and his members, yet malice having put out the light of prudence, he knowingly sows sin, blood, wrath, in Christ's field; and in so doing he sweats in laboring the vineyard of the Lord, to make a harvest and vintage for Christ.

3. Infused grace Satan has not at all; because, grace supernatural is a stem and blossom of heaven: it's hard to think that since Satan was thrust out of heaven, any of the fruits or blossoms of that Paradise can grow in him. Acquired knowledge Satan may have. And,

4. From this Satan has faith against his will, (James 2:19). It's necessary in the specification rooted in a natural understanding; but in the exercise, as it were, forced, and compelled, he would wish to want the constraining power of a natural knowledge: so as this is a wicked faith, and a tormenting virtue in the devil, as it is in many wicked men, who desire nothing more than to have conscience cut off from their soul. As some men are so pained with a gangrene in the foot, that they are willing their leg be sawn off. Or like a man that has a necessary servant, and most useful, yet because he has one intolerable flaw, he must put him away. For light adds fear and terror to some distracted persons, and makes them out of measure furious; therefore you must close door and window on them, and they are most sober when they have least light: So here, glancings of conscience serve but to make some see ghosts of hell, and terrifying sights.

5. Satan can have no hope of deliverance, but knows his prison-door is locked on him with a sad key, eternal despair, that so long as the Almighty lives and is God blessed for ever, so long shall he be miserable. Would sinners lend their thoughts and faith to eternity, that runs out in so long a thread as ever and ever, and on pain, horror, and torment for ever and ever, it might be they would not run and sweat so much in the way of sin.

6. Obstinacy, and invincible obduration and hardness lies on the mind, will, and affections of the Devils; the cause of which is his habitual continuance in, and love of the sin against the fair shining and convincing light of seen and enjoyed God, the justice of God, and the withdrawing of all grace and remedies against willful hardening the heart.

7. The breaking of Satan's hopes and counsels in all his ill attempts, his burning hatred of God, the Lamb's victories over the Dragon, the chaining and bordering of his malicious power, etc. are great punishments.

8. I dare not, nor cannot determine what the fire is that torments him; nor the place of hell: it is more praiseworthy labor, to seek to be delivered, in Christ, from it, than to search curiously into it.

Satan's Judge and caster out is Christ; as may clearly be gathered from the words, Now is the Prince of this world cast out. Hence,

Consideration 1. When Christ came to the office of Redeemer and Mediator of his Church, to deliver his people out of the hands of Satan, he found Satan under old treason committed against God; for before this he kept mankind captive, and found him under a sentence for it, and cast down to hell: and because Christ was God, and the same God equal with the Father, therefore he made good his Father's deed, and puts his seal and Amen to that sentence; and for new treason against God, in man his image, whom God had made lord and little king of the earth, Christ gave out a new sentence against Satan (Genesis 3:25): I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed: it shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel.

Consideration 2. All punishment on Satan is now inflicted by the Mediator Christ; for since Satan came in the play, to appear a Satan and adversary to man, he set up another kingdom of darkness, opposite to the kingdom of the Son of God (Colossians 1:13; John 14:30). He persecutes the woman that brought forth the man-child (Revelation 12:13). He goes forth in his instruments to gather the kings of the earth, and the whole world, to the great battle of that great day of God almighty (Revelation 16:14), and makes war with the Lamb (Revelation 17:13-14). He is the accuser of the brethren (Revelation 12:10). The king of the bottomless pit, whose name in the Hebrew tongue is Abaddon, but in the Greek tongue has his name Apollyon (Revelation 9:11). He is the Arch-destroyer, and destroys all in relation to the man Christ and his Church; therefore is Christ raised up a Redeemer, a Savior, to revenge the cause of his brethren, and came in the flesh to destroy Satan his kingdom and works, to enter in Satan's house to bind the strong man, and spoil him of his goods (Hebrews 2:14; 1 John 3:8; John 14:30; Matthew 12:29-30; Genesis 3:16; Colossians 2:15-16). And when Christ, by reconciling all things in heaven and earth to God (Colossians 1:20), became the head of Angels and Men (Colossians 2:9; Colossians 1:18; Colossians 2:10), he was seated in a headship over all the tribes of men and Angels, to confirm the good Angels that they should not fall, and to redeem fallen Men; and when all state-solemnities at the coronation of Jesus Christ are performed, and the Father had said (Psalm 2:6; Acts 5:31), Yet I have set my King on my holy hill of Zion, he must, by his office and royal place, reign over the rebels, that are mixed with the willing subjects, and bruise them with a rod of iron, whether they will or no. And as when there is feud and wars between two houses, and blood on either side, there is an heir born of one of the houses to make peace between them, and take order with, and subdue the rebellious, who refuse peace, and to revenge the injuries; so were there wars between the Sovereign Majesty of the Lord our God and both Angel-nature and Mankind. Angels and Men had highly injured the Lord, and wounded his honor; Christ Jesus, a born heir of the seed of David, and of the royal line of heaven, God equal with the Father, comes to the crown, and makes peace between the Lord and Men and so far reconciles the good Angels, that they cannot fall out with God, but stand by the grace of the new heir; and Christ revenges upon the Devils and the world the wrongs done to God, and subdues both under God.

Consideration 3. It is considerable, what wisdom and counsel is here in war: Satan foiled man, and subdued him as his vassal and slave, to the condemnation he himself was under; and man must be king, lord and judge over Devils. Angels who envied man's happiness, and destroyed mankind, must appear personally, be arraigned, sentenced, and condemned before the man Christ. Man was shut out of Paradise by the envy of Angels; now has the man Christ the keys of Paradise, of heaven and hell, and death and the grave. Christ's garments are wet and stained, not with Edom's blood (Isaiah 62), but (to borrow the expression) he goes to heaven in triumph, and his apparel red with Angel-blood, and so leads captivity itself captive. Other warriors take away the life of the living; but he takes away the life of death itself. Others subdue captives; never one, save the man Christ, subdued captivity.

Consideration 4. Victory over Devils, by the man Christ, is more glorious, than if God had interposed absolute sovereignty and power, because mercy, grace, truth, justice, are the sweet ingredients, going out with the blood of God in it, and omnipotence is much seen, in that one little despised man of clay, totally routes and destroys Satan, and many legions, so that though Devils keep the fields, and daily fight; yet they can never make head again against Christ, nor win one battle, or pull one captive out of Christ's hand.

Consideration 5. Heaven is not conquered again, nor Hell and Devils subdued by a sudden surprise, or a stratagem, but in fair wars, and in an open set battle (Colossians 2:15). He on the Cross made a show openly, and triumphed over Devils.

Use 1. If God only knows the heart, and its secrets, and men and angels cannot; we should aim and study sincerity: one witness of integrity here, is more than millions of witnesses; this one witness, the Searcher of hearts, will cast a man, though he had a jury of angels to absolve him, and all the men on earth were on the inquest and Assize, to carry him up above the skies, and the heaven of heavens, as more innocent than all the angels; and if angels, all angels and men were on your jury to condemn you, to be as foul and guilty as the Prince of Devils, yet (Romans 8) if you be in Christ — verse 33: Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies; verse 34: Who is he that condemns? Rest upon the testimony of no man; there be thousands fair and spotless standing before the throne, whom the world condemned to hell, as foul and black; we may instance in Jesus Christ, his apostles, and the martyrs of Christ; and thousands the blind world have written in heaven among the stars, and gods above the clouds, in the choir of angels, as Augustus Caesar and thousands of these whom Jesus Christ did never own, but as enemies. O what is the worth and price of a conscience sprinkled in the blood of the Lamb? And what a precious voice is the testimony of the Spirit? And what a valid pass and a Magna Charta, a noble testimony, is that in heaven and eternity, if Jesus Christ say, Behold, a true Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.

Use 2. What is light, and knowledge, though you had as much as the devils have, who are torches and lamps of hell for knowledge, if all your wisdom be against Christ? It is a black commendation (Jeremiah 4:22): My people are foolish, they have not known me, they are sottish children, and they have no understanding. Yet they are wise as the devil is — they are wise to do evil, but to do good, they have no knowledge. They go for heads of wit, and wise men, who are deep, politic, profound state-atheists, who can with their contrivances, roll about the wheels of two kingdoms, and can stir the helm of Europe, and yet know nothing of God, but all their wit runs in the devil's channel, to plot, brew, and hatch wickedness, lies, subvert the cause of the just, crush the widow, and murder and starve the fatherless, bear down religion, set up a human, earthly, civil structure of government in Christ's kingdom. Let them go for wise men, but they are wise for the devil. Let the Lord speak to such (Jeremiah 8:8): How do you say, we are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us. Verse 9: Lo, they have rejected the law of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them? Can these be wise men and great state-wits, and not rather state-sots, who reject the wisdom of God? It is now counted state-wisdom in Scotland, to patch up a false peace with Amalek, contrary to the covenant of God, though Saul gave the Amalekites and their kings peace, God will give them no peace.

Use 3. If Satan be so understanding and subtle, so active a spirit, then the Familists err, not knowing the Scriptures; for they say, the devil is nothing, indeed, not the creature anything; but God: as (says the Bright-star, chapter 8, pages 68-69) Nothing is but God and his will; page 77: There is nothing in the creature, which is not the Creator himself; and therefore the sun is no sooner hid, but the beams cease to be; so if God hide himself, and withdraw his hand from the creatures, they suddenly return to their nothing. But as the beam and heat, though they contain nothing but sun and fire, yet looked upon essentially, as they are in themselves, they are not sun and fire, but only a certain dependent, or a spark of those: right so the creature, though all it consists of, is God; yet considered in its own proper nature depends upon God, it is consequently somewhat. And that blasphemous piece, called Theologia Germanica, written by a priest in High Dutch, and put into English by Giles Randall, printed at London 1646 by toleration, says, sin and the devil is nothing, but when the creature will challenge any good to itself; as to live, know, briefly to be able to do anything that can be termed good, as though that good thing were appertaining to it, then the creature averts itself from God, and that aversion is sin. And the devil's sin was, that he did arrogate this to himself, that he was something, and would be something, and that something was his, and in his right and power, this arrogance to be I, to myself to be me, and to be mine, was Satan's aversion and fall, and this is still in use. So this author. Hell and the devil cannot devise subtler and vainer blasphemy; for so the creature is not the creature, the devil is not a creature, not a spirit, not a tempter, not the Prince of the air, not a roaring lion, not a liar; and the Holy Ghost in terming the devil an angel created in the truth should sin. It is true, nothing has being of itself, and independently, and as the cause of all being, but only God the cause of causes, and prime fountain of being, goodness, and actions: but from this it cannot follow, that creatures are not true beings, by participation of, and dependence from the first ocean, fountain, and cause of all being, and that goodness and actions, may not be ascribed to them from their derived being they have from God.

2. Christ-man in ascribing to himself that he is man, that he does the will of his Father, that he loved his own to the death, should sin — which is blasphemy.

3. It is false for men or devils, and sinful arrogance to say, they can subsist, or do keep their being, without a dependence on God, the only first essential being; but it is contrary to all truth, that they sin, when they say, they are the creatures of God, and the dependent rays and beams that flow from God, and the good creatures of God (though by created and dependent goodness) they neither lie, nor sin, nor commit any act of arrogance; then should it be sin to say that there were any creatures in the world, which is to belie the Scripture.

4. It is the cursed self-denial of Familists, to say, when they do good or ill, righteousness, or sin; it is not I, but God in me that does all. And so that there is but one Spirit of life that acts, and working in all things in heaven, and in earth, and that is essentially God, and the will of God, which is all one with God.

5. That vain annihilation, and nothinging of ourselves, in being and working, yea to the annihilating of the man Christ, under pretense of extolling God, because God works immediately all good and evil in us (say they) and we but suffer God's will, and when we thus are mere patient, and suffer God to work his will in us, we are God himself, perfect as God, conform to his will, nothing in ourselves, we being no creatures, but the Creator. That God manifested in the flesh, is God manifested in the flesh of all men, that the passion of Christ, in itself is imaginary, but Christ crucified is our pains and tribulation, which we should welcome as Jesus Christ, and so cast all our afflictions into the furnace and flames of Christ's torments. As it is said, Let that mind be in you, that was in Christ. Bright Star, ch. 18, p. 205. This (I say) is the dreadful blasphemy now printed and preached at London, without controlment, for which the judgments of God, sad, and heavy, cannot be far from the land. I crave the reader's pardon, that I named such non-senses and fooleries.

Use 4. By all means, beware of sins against light, such as the Devil's first sin was. 1. To sin with a witness, in the breast, and a witness in heaven, is to laugh at Christ in his face. 2. It is the Devil's back-fall; he by such a sin, fell first from heaven, by staring God on the face, and out-dating light, God, conscience, and actual conviction; the devil, no question, by himself was warned of his sin, and how dear it would cost him, before he sinned. Suppose we, that there is a way in a mountain of ice, where thousands in former times have slid, and fallen, and bruised all their body and [illegible] to powder, would we willingly climb the same rocks, and dream we should escape the same danger? Legions and millions of devils fell and bruised their souls to dust, on sins against light and knowledge, yet do we too daringly climb the same rocks, and sin daily, against the sunlight of the gospel-grace of God, teaching us to deny ungodliness, and worldly lusts, and the warnings of our own conscience; yea, too many go on against supernatural illumination, and we will but leap the damned devils' unhappy leap, we know not that victory over one grain weight of light, leaves behind it pound weights of disposition, and bentness to further provoking of the Lord: a daring boldness to look God in the face, and sin, turns quickly in the very sin, as near, in kin, to the devil's sin, as can be; and renders its devilish [reconstructed: stoop], and fall down before the light of a shining command, as the elect angels do, who receive God's commands with wings, and flee upon obedience as ministering spirits.

Use 4. Harden not your hearts, be not obstinate in evil, that is the plague of devils also, men render themselves devils; with their own hands, they open hell and go in, and lay the devil's chains and fetters on their own will and mind, when they resolutely, and deliberately, resist God, and God in a deep judgment in them binds them, and they cry not; he is deservedly a captive, who twists his own cords and chains about himself. Self-induration is a self-hell, and a self-bondage. How afraid should we be to keep loose watch over the heart, or to give the reins to our own will, to go on against God. For he 1. needs do no more, but loose an army, and a strong armed garrison of sinful thoughts, as so many spirits of hell, that are within the town already, and they can destroy us. 2. The devil is near by to put in our heart all wickedness, he has the command of the outworks; the humors, fancy, disposition, the spies, and posts that go in and out, the [reconstructed: senses], we have need to lay the bands of a covenant on the eye, and if the devil be master of all the forts and sconces [reconstructed: without] the walls, we are in no small danger.

Use 5. From Satan's power, and opposition against us, we want not both motives and encouragements to watch. For 1. Satan is a great party; he is a prince (Ephesians 2). And 2. a prince above us, the prince of the air. 3. He has large territories; the text says, he is the prince of this world. 4. He is not a common prince, he is prince of kings; many of the kings of the earth give their power and strength to him, and so he is a principality. 5. Not that only, but he is a great army, Principalities, Powers, Rulers, Potentates; we have a mighty army of lords and kings to fight against. 6. The more spiritual the enemy be, and the more subtle to come in at closed iron gates, and through strong walls, the more dangerous; Satan, for all your keys and locks, will be at the inner door of the heart, before ever you know of it: you watch, and he is at your elbow, and covenanting with your watches on the walls, to corrupt them. 7. When the enemy is strong, if he be wicked, so much the worse. Now (Ephesians 6:12) we fight against wickedness itself, against spiritual wickedness; the more wicked the enemy is, he has a greater mind to fire, and destroy. 8. The more active, the worse is the enemy; Satan has no office, but to be the butcherer and executioner of justice, and has no distractions to withdraw him, he may attend upon bloods, and soul-murders, and walks in a circle, compassing the earth to and fro, and goes about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. 9. He has friends within us, every saint is a divided party.

2. The quarrel is not money, civil liberties, laws, houses, lands, nor corruptible things, yet we run and strive for pence and pounds, but here peace of conscience, an incorruptible crown (1 Corinthians 9:25), the Lord's glory is the garland at the stake.

3. We have noble witnesses. The Father, the Lord Jesus, the Spirit of glory, the glorious angels, are beholding us.

4. The battle will not last for centuries, nor for many scores of years, the issue will be quickly, death will end the controversy.

5. We have Christ on our side, he has spoiled Principalities and powers; the Lord, the master of the game, has promised us his might, his strength, all his forces, grace, wisdom, power, his angels, that are stronger than ill angels; here angels against angels. God engaged against hell.

6. We fight, but with a broken and overcome devil, both spoiled (Colossians 2:15) and disarmed (Hebrews 2:14; 1 Corinthians 15:55-56).

7. There is little required of us to the victory, but a strong negative; consent not, render not — treat not with the enemy, though he fire, and kill.

8. The loss is the greatest of all, eternal misery, once fully ended, close, and make a covenant with the enemy, and you can hardly ever be able to rebel, or make head against your conqueror, but once a slave, and eternally a slave.

9. The Garland is fair and glorious, The tree of life that is in the midst of the paradise of God (Revelation 2:7). The hidden Manna, the white stone, and the new name (verse 17). Power over the nations, and the morning star (verses 26-28). To be clothed in white, and his name confessed before Christ's Father, and his holy Angels (Revelation 3:5). And he is made a pillar in the house of God, and on him is written the name of Christ's God, and the name of the city of Christ's God, Jerusalem that comes down out of heaven, and Christ's new name (verse 12). And he sits with Christ on a throne, and with the Father of Christ (verse 21).

10. The victory is certain, and ours by promise, all which should arm us with sobriety; a drunken warrior is seldom victorious, worldly pleasures and lusts are above our head and strength; and to put on the whole armor of God, and watch, and pray is wisdom.

Use 6. Let us thankfully acknowledge our obligation to Jesus Christ who has cast out this Prince of this world. What service do we owe to Jesus Christ, who has ransomed us from such an enemy? Surely we are his debtors forever; the captive's whole service is little enough for his ransom-payer.

And 1. we cannot be the servants of the World, if Christ has ransomed us from this present evil world (Galatians 1:4), and from the Prince thereof. It is base to be the vassal of the tyrant, from whose hands we are redeemed; the World is but Satan's vassal.

2. He is a Spirit, who has redeemed us from a cruel Spirit. Christ-God is a Spirit, outside-service cannot please him. When corruption, like poison, strikes into the heart, and the hands are pretty clean, it is most dangerous.

3. Redemption argues not freedom from infirmities, but from such sins as are called the pollutions of the world. There is sin in all, but in the redeemed; sin defiles the actions, not the person because he is washed; in the Hypocrite it blackens both person, and actions.

4. We cannot serve our ransom-payer in the strength of false principles, or natural gifts, but of his own grace.

5. Glorify God, by showing forth his glory, for you can add nothing really to him, and he will really glorify you, and put a weighty Crown on your head, and also pay you home in your own coin, and declaratorily glorify you. I will confess him (says Christ) before my Father, etc.

Verse 32. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to me.

We have spoken of the power of Christ's death, and of his enemies, the World, and Satan. Now Christ speaks of the power of his death on the Elect, in drawing sinners to himself.

The scope of the words is to hold forth the efficacy of Christ's death, in drawing sinners to him. In which we have these considerable points.

1. The drawing itself.

2. The Drawer. I will draw, says Christ. Christ is good, and of excellent dexterity at drawing of men to God.

3. The persons drawn. All men.

4. The person to whom; the terminus ad quem; To me, says Christ.

5. The condition. If I be lifted up from the earth. Which is not a note of doubting, whether he would die for us; as we shall hear, but of a sure condition.

6. The way and manner of his lifting up from the earth is expounded, verse 33. To signify, to the hearers, what sort of death he would die, to wit, the death of the Cross.

Of drawing itself; these are considerable.

1. The expression and Metaphor of drawing.

2. The reasons moving Christ to draw; the fountain, causes, and the disposition and qualifications going before drawing, in the party drawn.

3. The manner of drawing, or the way, and if it be some other thing than justification.

4. The power and efficacy of drawing.

⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩ to draw; as the word ⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩ (Canticles 1:4), "Draw me, we will run after you," is first, a word of violence and strength. (1 Kings 22:34) A certain man drew a bow, ⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩. (Job 41:1) Will you draw Leviathan with your hook? (John 21:11) Simon Peter, ⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩, drew a net to land. (Acts 16:19) They caught Paul and Silas ⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩, and drew them to the market place to the rulers. 2. Drawing is by wiles, and persuasion, or love; (for wiles is covered, or pretended love;) (Judges 4:6) Draw them (by persuasion) to Mount Tabor to battle. (Hosea 11:3) I will draw them ⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩ with cords of man, with bands of love. It is such a drawing as is ascribed to the whore, (though another word) (Proverbs 7:21) the whore, which made the young man to decline, with the softness of her lips, in fair words, forced him. (James 1:14) Every man is tempted, when he is led, or drawn aside, by his own lust, and enticed. This drawing is by wiles, to steal a man off his feet. So (Psalm 10:9) a bird is drawn in the net. It is then a word borrowed from bodily strength, which draws heavy bodies out of one place to another, by strong hand. The sinner is a heavy creature. Grace is a strong thing to pull the man out of his element. There be then in Christ's drawing: 1. Violence. 2. Persuasions of love — strong love runs from the heart, through all the nerves and veins of Christ's right arm, to draw a sinner to God. 3. There is art and wiles, which is nothing but masked love, for wiles cannot work upon the soul to draw it, but by the taking of reason, with apprehension of good; hope is the painted net that draws men to Christ, and the hope of the prey draws the fox to the net, the hope of food, the bird to the snare. The violence that Christ uses is not on the reason, will, or any vital principles of the soul; no principles of life can act as principles of life from external drawings and stirrings — life is an internal thing; the line, and first point of the line, in motions of life, is from within. All the violence is done to the corrupt accidents, and sinful qualities of the soul, as to darkness, and sinful ignorance, to unbelief; perverseness and sourness to Christ, hatred of God, enmity of the carnal mind to the law of God. Put the will once on moving, and set the wheels a stirring toward Christ, (which is all the difficulty) and the principles of life smile on Christ, and move apace; but the corruption of will must be removed first. As suppose, a millstone were kept fast in the air by a strong chain of iron, there is violence required to snap in pieces the iron chain, but none at all to draw the millstone down to the earth — it falls down of its own accord; this is but a comparison. For the will in its motion to Christ must not only be freed from the dominion of the clog of the body of sin, and these natural chains and fetters; but Christ must put new principles, and a new life, and new wings, and new wheels; and with them act, stir, and move the will, and then, he drawing, we run (Canticles 1:4).

He that is drawn to Christ (John 6:44) is not altogether willing; as the fish has no propensity of nature to be hauled out of its own element — all the propensity comes from that which sets the will on work. A child takes medicine, but his propensity is stirred from the sugar, that pleases his taste. He learns, being hired, that which sets him on work is not the good that he sees in the book, nor the beauty that he conceives to be in virtue and learning — it is the apples, the gifts you give him as his hire, that acts him; nor is the will here forced. A hireling carries a heavy burden, not with a forced will, but there is nothing in the burden that does take his heart; but the sweating under the burden comes all from money — he is hired, and therefore does all from the stirrings of his will, that arises from his wages. Men's coming to Christ comes not from their natural liking they bear to Christ, but from some higher principle within, and the discovered excellency, that the Spirit lays open to the soul.