Sermon 14

John 5:40. And you will not come to me that you may have life.

THE great apostle of the Gentiles, after he had set before the Hebrews the great cloud of witnesses of Old Testament believers, exhorts them to look higher, even to Jesus the common Savior, and that not transiently, but earnestly and constantly, in his mediatorial character of humiliation, as enduring unheard of, unparalleled contradiction of sinners against himself; least, says he, you be weary, and faint in your minds. If we had not such an example set before us, and brought to us by the Holy Ghost in a suffering hour, we should never hold out to the end: this was not the contradiction of the openly profane and scandalous, those that were without, so much as from those that were within the pale of the church, even those to whom were committed the lively oracles of God, who had not only the very bible in their own hands, but were set apart to explain it to others. That the words of our text were spoken to them, appears from the preceding verse, in which he bids them search the scriptures; as a person digs for a mine, or searches for some hidden treasure. The word bible, or book which I have in my hand, is well applied to the holy scriptures, because it is the book of God, written by him, that is, by his order, and by those who were inspired by him for that end; and yet, of all writings in the world, these are most neglected! God has condescended to become an author, and yet people will not read his writings. There are very few that ever gave this book of God, the grand charter of salvation, one fair reading through: though we profess to have assented to the truth of scripture, as our Lord said, in them we think we have eternal life, yet most read them as they would a proclamation, a romance, a play, or novels, that help only to bring them to the devil, but choose not to read God's book, which is to be our guide to glory; they are they, says Christ, which testify of me: Lord God convert and change our hearts.

However, this was spoken in reference to the Old Testament, and certainly shows us, that Christ is the treasure hid in that field, yet as there are equal proofs of the divinity of the New Testament, the word Holy Scriptures include both, especially as Christ is the antitype of all the types, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end of all divine revelation: would to God he was your Alpha and Omega too! Now, says Christ, you pretend to reverence the scriptures; you that are set apart as persons learned in the scriptures, you Scribes, you lawyers, such as were mentioned in the gospel today. I fancy some people think, that when we read of lawyers in the scriptures, that we mean such lawyers as ours, who deal only in the civil and common law, but they were those that opened and explained the law to the people; these were the persons who thought and professed, that in them they had eternal life, that they testify of Christ the great prophet that was promised in the scriptures to come into the world; yet says our divine master, to these very professors these masters in Israel, you will not come to me that you may have life: though I am now present with you, though I am now come to explain the scriptures, and fulfil them, am now come to proclaim to you that life, that eternal life, which the scriptures declare were to be published and proclaimed by me, yet you will not come to me that you may have life.

By eternal life we are to understand, all the blessings of a converted state, particularly the pardon of sins, not only before conversion but after. It is impossible but there should be sin every day and every hour in every professing person. My dear hearers, as I shall not have an opportunity for sometime to speak to you, I don't choose, especially when I am about to take my leave of you, to speak any thing that is severe, but I assure you without attempting to offend, with a broken heart I assure you, that this was the treatment Jesus Christ met with of old, and God knows, this is the treatment Jesus Christ meets with now: you will not come to me that you may have eternal life.

If I am not mistaken, and I think I am not, the words suppose, that they and we are all dead in sin, for if we are not, I do not know why we need come to have life; and I mention this, because for want of believing and knowing this, some that pretend to know Christ and to preach him, forget to lay the proper foundation, original sin; and that there is no ability or inclination in the heart of a natural man, so much as to do any thing spiritual; he is stupid and dead. But if we have eyes to see, if we have ears to hear, and if our hearts are not waxed hard, doubtless it would appear as clear to us as the sun shining in its meridian brightness, that man was dead till God breathed into him the breath of life, and then he became a living soul. I know some people believe that the words mean this, that God breathed into man, and he became a natural living soul, like other animals, but then they don't consider what a life God did breathe into the soul, he breathed into it the life of God, a spiritual life was breathed into the soul; it is expressed in the strongest, but at the same time in the most concise terms that is possible, none but God, none but a man inspired by God, could say so much in so few words; it shows great skill in men to say so much in a little; what uninspired man ever wrote so as Moses did? Now Moses when he penned the scriptures said, God made man after his own image, and you know ten thousand volumes could not have said more than that. How long do you think it was that man continued in his original purity? I don't know that I ever yet heard, that any one thought he continued in his blessed state so long as from Saturday to Saturday. Mr. Boston, who, perhaps, is one of the best writers that ever Scotland produced, says, that there is an allusion in one of the Psalms to man's sudden fall, Man being born in honor, continued not; that is, but a night before he fell. O much good may do those that boast of their free-will, that think they can stand by a power of their own, when father Adam, who had no corruption, did not stand a week, perhaps not two days; and how can we pretend to stand, let us have what grace we will, when that grace has so much corruption to oppose it? If Jesus Christ did not take care to secure our standing, we should fall to our ruin. Adam fell, and being our federal head, we fell in him. Why, says a Deist, and too many professors also, pray what business had God Almighty to make our fall or our standing depend on another? You will not object to this you church of England men, will you? Then why have you godfathers and godmothers to promise for you? Why have we members of parliament to be the heads of the people, and what the parliament does, the people do, you have constituted them your heads and representatives, you must stand and fall by them; so if you are bound for a person, you must stand and fall with him, must not you? I remember one of the ministers that preached the morning exercises, when most, if not all the churches in this city, were filled with gospel-preachers, till on Bartholomew-day near 2,500 of them in the whole were turned out, and the other ministers that did not preach the gospel continued till the plague came, and then they ran away, and left the pulpits to those that were turned out, who were willing to go into them, though they expected the plague would seize them in preaching Christ there; one of those ministers says, suppose God had chosen all that were to be created, and to proceed from the loins of Adam, had been present, and that he should have said to them, I have been seven days employed in preparing the whole creation; I have made a garden, and will have one chosen by you to dwell in it, as my vicegerent and your representative here below; here is Adam, the father of you all, whom I have blessed with a partner, that is bone of his bone, and flesh of his flesh, a creature like himself; all that I desire of your head and representative is, that he abstains from yonder tree, of every other tree in the garden he may freely eat except that; this I ordain as a test of his obedience, to see whether it is fulfilled, and you shall all stand or fall by this; who shall be the man? Would they not all say, our first parent to be sure. O there is not a single man but would have chosen Adam to be their representative, they would rather stand and fall by him than by any body else; now pray why should we quarrel with him for acting in the manner we ourselves should have done, had we been in his situation? God, [reconstructed: says] the apostle, included all under sin. What is sin but a breach, that is, a transgression of the law; the wages of sin is death; every transgression of the law incurs damnation. Have we eaten of the forbidden fruit? We must die, we are legally dead; and there is not a little child in the world that is not. It is enough to make the parents pray night and day for their children; there is not a child born but, to use the words of our own church, brings in with it corruption, which renders it liable to the wrath of God forever. Then, say some, it is true what I have heard say of you, that there are little children in hell a span long; I never had such a thought in my life; I never believed that any infants, black or white, were damned in hell. I think a poor child though it is born in a state of original sin, and I have often thought that is the reason why little children are seized with such terrible disorders as often carry them out of the world, with ten times more agony than parents feel: a great proof of man's offense. We see a poor little infant soon after it is born, in two or three months taken with fits, lie screaming and struggling, while the distressed parents are breaking their hearts, and wishing, though they love it dearly, that God would take it out of its pain. Is not this a strong proof that man is fallen from God? Else who can tell what God designs hereby: however, I verily believe that by his grace he fits them for heaven. We have broken God's law, and are liable to eternal condemnation, we are therefore legally dead, every one of us without distinction; we are all upon a level, from the greatest king in the world, who has it in his power to write death or life upon the poor condemned malefactors; bring him to the bar of God's holy law, and it will tell him there, you are the malefactor in the sight of God, you yourself, and thus God is glorified. It is not greatness of station, nor external differences, that make a difference in the internal state of the soul. A nobleman may come with his star and garter to the king's bar, and be tried by his peers at Westminster Hall, and may be attended from the Tower by some of the king's officers, but whether a nobleman be tried at Westminster Hall, or a criminal in rags at the Old Bailey, the law must be executed upon both: this is our state towards God, we have lived in trespasses and sins, are legally dead now; is that all? Doctor Taylor, of Norwich, says, that all the loss we have had by the fall is, that our misery is temporary. Alas! alas! when Arminians talk of the fall, you will find very few of them have courage enough to stab themselves. Conscience makes them cowards; they have lost all by Adam's fall. What death have we suffered, not only legally but spiritually dead; what do I mean by that? Why, that we are deprived of that life of God in which we originally stood. Have you ever seen any body die? I have. Have you ever seen one of your friends die? Have you ever stolen into the room, and looked but once at the dear object of your love, the partner of your life, but wait till the next day, and especially in the summer season, and see how changed! The last object I saw, put me in mind of the fall I saw nature in. O what a change! the glory is departed!

But besides this legal death, there is a spiritual death, and the consequence of that is eternal death; if I die in that state I must die forever; that is, I must be a creature living eternally banished from God: if I be annihilated when I die, then, indeed, temporal death is all; but it is not so, I am to live in another world; the wisest man upon earth tells us, that there is a future state; and therefore by legal and spiritual death, I am liable to death eternal. I have the longer insisted on this, because it is impossible to know, or to value that life that Jesus Christ came into the world to impart to us and procure for us, without considering the nature of the death he delivers us from.

Now let us attend to what our Lord says, you will not come to me that you may have [reconstructed: life]: in the tenth chapter he says, I have come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly: now what life is that? To be sure, the life which a malefactor wants, who is tried by a jury; why, he wants to have the chain taken off; what do you and I want? For we may want to eternity if we plead our innocence; there is not one of us but must plead guilty before God; well, what must I do? Why, if ever I have life, I must be acquitted, something must pronounce me not guilty; my conscience says, guilty; why, then Jesus Christ came that we might have a legal life, that we might be acquitted from all that condemnation which we are under by our breaking his law; so far the remedy answers to the disease; but the remedy would not be extensive enough if that was all; therefore, it was an excellent answer a poor woman made at the Old Bailey, I heard of it twenty years ago: she was brought sick to the bar to receive a pardon; the judge said, Woman, his majesty has given you a pardon: My lord, says she, I thank his majesty for a pardon, and you for pronouncing it, but that is not all I want; what my poor soul wants is, a pardon from Jesus Christ; what signifies a pardon from a judge, if I have a disease in me that will kill me? Whether I am pardoned or not, I must have my disease cured, that the pardon may do me good. I thought it a strange plea of a man, a captain of a ship, that I heard tried some years ago for throwing a poor negro overboard; he asked the surgeon, do you think that the child will die? Sir, said he, it will not live above an hour; then, says he, you may let it down now: O, says the judge, you have murdered the child. I must have a pardon from my God, or I am damned; and if I have lost the divine image, which was the original dignity of man, I shall never get to glory without the restoration of that image I have lost by my sin. Spiritual life in the heart, is that which comes from Jesus Christ, and this is the life of God in the soul of man; it is not a metaphorical but a real thing, a resurrection to life by the power of Christ, who is the resurrection and the life, so there is a connection between a legal and a spiritual life; the type and antitype answers as face answers to face in water: thus as all in Adam have died, so all in Jesus Christ, the second Adam, are made alive. We are apt to think that such a one, and such a one, were sound Christians and gone to heaven, but there is a great deal of false charity in the world; without this life we are all undone.

Now, my brethren, if this is the case, how must I have my life in glory; how must a dead creature be a Christian? how must a sinner that is spiritually dead have divine life? and how must a creature, every moment liable to death eternal, be made eternally alive? can anybody answer that question? will reason tell me? no; will philosophy help me? no; for if the world by wisdom knew not God, surely, the world by wisdom knows not how to turn to God; therefore, you will find the greatest scholars the greatest fools, proudest deists, and most scornful atheists; for knowledge puffs up; and if bare knowledge makes a christian, the devil must be very good, he is the most knowing, and yet the most wicked. The only way to get this life restored, is to come to Jesus Christ; you will not come to me, says our text, that you may have life; implying, that without coming to him they cannot have life: there is no other name given under heaven whereby we can be saved, but that of Jesus Christ. I am the way, the truth, and the life. I am the resurrection and the life, says the Lord. In order to have this life, we must come to Christ for it: I hope you don't think coming to Christ, means coming to see his person, that can never be; for our Lord talks of coming to him when he himself was the preacher, and they were all about him; though so many round him, yet there was but one that touched him. A great many people say, dear, if Christ was here, how would I caress him! I would let him in! when, perhaps, at the same time turn out one of his members. Would you like to see Jesus Christ with a parcel of boys and girls running before him, a parcel of poor fishermen with him, and Mary Magdalen, with a mob of poor people and publicans following him? we have got the same spirit the people had then, we should hoot at him and despise him, as the Pharisees did. A great many people think coming to Christ is to come to the sacrament; you know very well I love that privilege; and one of the greatest afflictions I have is, that my health will not permit me to attend all the ordinances; but thousands come to ordinances that have no view of the God of ordinances in them, therefore you will find, that in all our public places it is as much the fashion to go to public worship about eleven o'clock, as anywhere else. They are not up time enough to their matins; they go and say, we thank God, who has brought us to the beginning of this day, and that when perhaps the clock strikes twelve, and they just up; thus people go to church as to a play, to see and be seen, and as soon as they go out of church, they ask where they are to go to next, and what party? Thousands go to church, or to meeting, and sacrament, and don't come to Christ: come and like this preaching, and numbers who are called fools for following us, eat the fragments that are left, that hear preaching, eat the fish and the loaves, and are only feasting upon shadows and not upon Christ: this would make us extremely careful to examine whether we ever came to Christ or no. A great moral preacher says of our preaching, when all their stock is out, then they cry come, come, come, and that is the burden of their song, say they; and I hope that will be the burden of [reconstructed: our] song till Christ says, Come you blessed of my Father; what would you have us say? O, say you, bid a man do and live, so we will; and in the same sense Christ in the gospel says, you are dead; what shall I do, says the man, to inherit eternal life? you know our Lord said to him, Keep the law. Our Lord always spoke to the people in their own language; that is, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart; he began with morality at the right place, we begin at the fifth commandment. The great morality, says Doctor Young, is beginning with the love of God. You shall love your neighbor as yourself: you have answered right, says he, do this, and you shall live. Whoever loves the Lord God as he ought to do, with all his soul and strength, shall certainly live; but our Lord takes pains to convince him of his ignorance and folly; says he, who is my neighbor? as to the love of God, he had no thought of that. Thus we deceive our own souls, till Jesus Christ opens our eyes. What must we come to Christ for? to be acquitted; come to his blood to be pardoned; you must believe on him, not only with a bare speculative belief, that the devil has, and all the damned in hell, but to have his blood applied and brought home to the soul; we must come to him as the author and finisher of our faith. Did not you just now say, I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life; and the form of baptism is in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; it means, baptize them into the nature of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: and I remember about three or four and thirty years ago, a friend mentioned that word in private conversation to me, we translate it, we believe in God; said he, we should translate it, we believe it in God, for we never do till God has put his faith in us, then we have in our souls a new life in Christ, then we live a life of faith; the life I now live, is by faith in the Son of God. I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me. In order to this I must come to Jesus Christ, and believe on him for life eternal, the earnest of which eternal life I must have in my heart before I can be assured I do believe on him. O, my dear hearers, do we think of this, this is no new doctrine; I set out, blessed be God, with this doctrine. The second sermon I ever made, the second sermon I ever preached, was on these words, He that is in Christ is a new creature: I was then about twenty years and a half old. The next sermon I preached was upon, You are justified; the next sermon, You are glorified; which shows, that though I am near fifty-five years old, yet, I thank my God, I am so far from changing my principles, which I am sure I was taught by God's word and Spirit, that I am more and more confirmed, that if I was to die this moment, I hope I should have strength and courage given me to say, I am more convinced of the efficacy and the power of those truths which I preached when I was twenty years old, when I first preached them.

Now, my dear hearers, what could enter into the heart of any person in the world, to reject such a salvation as this? Can you think that when a king says to a prisoner, let him go, he would refuse it? There are some persons that refuse Christ. I remember when, by the bounty of the people here, we begged for the poor, one man went to the turnpike and said, this is Doctor Whitefield's bread and be damned. Human nature, what is it without Christ, the bread of life! We will not come to him that we may have life, though we may have it for asking; no, not for life eternal, as a free gift: we will not come to Christ and accept it at his hand; we will not: it is not said, we shall not, but we will not. Pray why will not people come to Christ to have life? Because they do not think that they are dead, and do not want it; remember when you say, you are rich and increased in goods, that you know not, says Christ, that you are poor and miserable, and blind and naked. We do not see ourselves fallen creatures, we do not know that; God give you to know and feel, that there is no name given under heaven whereby we can be saved, but Jesus Christ. What says one, must I have inward feeling? What would the polite world do without feeling? Do you think they would go to the play-house and places of public diversion without feeling? If I can feel other things that do not concern religion, how can I come to God till I feel a need of him. We don't choose to come to [illegible] as a free gift; we don't like to come to him as poor and needy. I remember I heard an excellent minister of Christ in Scotland, one Mr. Wallis, of Dundee, preaching upon these words, Behold I stand at the door and knock, says he. Christ comes knocking at the door to come into your houses, but you will not come down to accept of his mercy. When the prodigal said, I will arise and go to my Father, and will say to him, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no more worthy to be called your son, make me as one of your hired servants: now you think that it was very humble in him, he who was a son of the head of the house, to be willing to be a servant. It's true he says, I will go to my father's house, but at the same time he says, I will work for my living, he shall not maintain me for nothing; but when he comes to his father, he is quite brought down, he says, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight; the joyful father clasps him in his withered arms, and takes the poor ragged wanderer home. The lawyers and other Jews thought they were righteous, and therefore they would not come to Jesus Christ. Our Lord spoke of the Pharisees, who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and would not come to him that they might have life; and if we trust in ourselves, neither shall we. Our Lord says, I receive not honor from men. How can you come to him, that receive honor one of another? Honor to whom honor is due. To such as are in power, whether in church or state, respect is due to their outward situation. I am for no levelling principles at all; but, my brethren, at the same time there is a fault, that we love to be applauded. There is no going to heaven, says Mr. Gurnal, without wearing a fool's cap and a fool's coat, and there is no going to heaven without being accounted fools: you see many professors follow the world, they have not courage enough to live in holy non-conformity to the world; and many people are frightened from Christ, because they would not be counted Methodists; the fear of men has damned thousands. You will not come to him, because you cannot trust God, and then we love the world more than Christ. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. If I had the management of people, their shops would be open three or four hours before they are now; I do not want to hinder men's business; those that have most money and most power, if they acted as they ought to do, would be the greatest slaves to their fellow-creatures. When I talk of loving the world, I mean an inordinate love: I may live in the world and not live upon it; my heart may be towards God: the love of the world is to be renounced, and therefore they will not come to Jesus Christ they think, till they are going out of the world. If you are one of those who hate Christ, why you are the man that will not come to him: why, say you, does anybody hate Christ? Pray hold your tongue, for fear of discovering your ignorance: O, say you, God forbid I should hate him. But, my dear soul learn from this time forward, that every one of us by nature hates Jesus Christ: we sent this message to him; we will not have this man to reign over us, we hate him because he is despised, we hate him because of the appearance of the people that are his followers, we hate him because of the narrowness of the way we are to pass in to him, because we must part with our lusts; we hate him because we must be non-conformists: I hate that rag of the whore of Babylon, O that form of prayer, O all that stuff, I thank God I was born a Dissenter, I love to be a Puritan, I don't love rites and ceremonies, no not in the church, and yet, perhaps, are more conformed to the world than numbers of the church, and have nothing but rites and ceremonies about their houses and families. What do we more than others? A churchman should prove himself a churchman, by having his articles, and keeping up the practice of religion; and a Dissenter should prove himself one, not by dissenting from the church, but from the lusts of the flesh, the lusts of the eye, and the pride of life, and then we shall agree very well together, though one went to a place called a church, and another to a place called a meeting: would to God every soul now present would put this question to himself, Am I come to Christ, or am I not? There is a great number of persons here, you have heard of Providence calling me abroad, no doubt curiosity brings many of you here; to hear what the poor babbler says: I tell you what I will say to you, that without you have an interest in the Son of God, you must be damned. Examine yourselves whether you are in the faith, whether your religion reaches any further than the church-door, whether you are the inward court worshippers: conscience, conscience, conscience, you faithful monitor, God help you to give a proper verdict. When I had the honor of opening Lady Huntingdon's chapel, as I turned about I observed over my head were these words, Earth, earth, earth, hear the word of the Lord: O that every earthly soul may hear God's word this day. Don't be angry with me, I am now upon the decline of life, going toward sixty, surely now I may claim leave to speak to you freely; after next Sunday, perhaps, you may never hear me any more, though I do not intend to live abroad, but return if please God, in a proper time, but long before that you may be in hell or heaven. As the Lord lives, in whose name I speak, if you will not come to Christ to have life, you must come to his bar to hear him pronounce you damned to all eternity. If you come to him that you may have life, Come, you blessed, will be the sentence there, but if you refuse now, Depart, you cursed, will be your sentence then from the Lord, for in a little while he that shall come will come, and will not tarry. Hark! hark! don't you hear him, don't you hear him, don't you hear him yonder; hark! methinks I hear him, what does he say? See yonder, don't you see, good people, that yonder sun is darkened, and the moon turned into blood. O, who can abide the day of his coming? O, to think of his coming, may the sinner say, when I know his coming is only to damn my soul! How do the murderers dread the assizes, but pardoned sinners, pardoned criminals, are glad when they hear the high-sheriff coming: O, say they, I long to go to the bar, because I am going there only to plead the king's pardon. Happy, happy, happy you, that have come to this Jesus Christ that you might have life, that you might walk becoming him in your life and conversation. O, Christ will come, and come to you as his children; but God grant this life may be displayed in you and me more and more! If we are helped to know that Christ came that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly, O, pray that others may come, bring your children to Christ. I was pleased one day after I had been preaching on Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness, I think it was in New England, I was taken up into a room to repose myself, there was a mantle-piece, representing the children brought in the arms of their parents to look at the brazen serpent: O may God help you to bring your children and your relations to view Christ. O Lord help my mother, my father, my child, my servant, to come to Jesus Christ that they may have life. The Lord help you to come, come young people. O I was charmed this morning, and every morning I give the sacrament, to see so many young men there crowding to the table; may the Spirit of God keep you near to Jesus Christ; and you young women, may God draw you nearer to Christ. I remember when God touched my heart, and sent me down to see my friends in the country, I prayed God to bless me to those to whom I was called to dance and to play at cards, and, blessed be God, he blessed me to them all before I was twenty years of age, and after that he sent me to a prison, and I there preached to a murderer, and some others, and, blessed be God, they came to Jesus Christ, and one of them went off most triumphantly. A poor creature, eighty years of age, who has made it a practice to go and read to poor people, and to the prisoners, said, "Sir, I began late, but by the help of God, I now work the harder for Jesus Christ." May he incline you to come, O young women and young men. There was a good woman who died sometime ago, whose last word I think was, I now go to my God. Will you come and go too, you old grey-headed sinners, that have one foot in the grave, God help you to go, God remove every obstacle; God grant that every mountain may be brought low, and a highway made into your hearts for Jesus Christ. Don't be angry with me; in a week or two I shall be tossing on the ocean, while you are hearing God's word here; while I am amidst storms and tempests, you will be upon the earth. Paul could stand the whipping, but it is not a whipping, but weeping, that breaks my heart; my greatest trial is, what if this sermon should help to sink these people deeper in the pit, that makes my blood run cold. O that my sermon may never rise in judgment against you, my poor dear souls. I believe you find it hard when any of you are forced to be witnesses against your own children, your own friends, and whoever deals with the word with disinterested spirit, must do it; the only way to prevent it, is to come to Christ; and if you cannot come, if you are sensible of it, God be praised; he will come to you if you cannot come to Christ, he will come and make you willing in the day of his power; that this may be the happy case, God grant to us all, for his name's sake. Amen.