Chapter 4

CHAP. IV.

The necessity of influences of grace. Of the sovereignty of God in dispensing influences.

It is easy to determine that there is a sort of necessity of the Lord's bestowing influences upon all natural causes, of this before.

In so far as willing and nilling are acts of second causes in the same sphere with natural causes, there seems to be no more reason for denying influences to nilling and willing simply, yes or for literal hearing and praying, than for plowing and sowing, except that here God acts in a dreadful way of justice, toward Pharaoh and other reprobates, in leaving them to the actings of their own heart; only it may be said, that God finding his child under deadness, and acting in a dead and literal way, as he has bowels of compassion toward his chosen, under the evil of sin, that are ready to be drowned, he joins his help of influences, seeing his own go about duties with wrestling and pain, since he knows some one way or other they must be over the water, and helped, otherwise they cannot stir.

2. As there are some saving graces from the Mediator, so must there be some mediatory influences bestowed covenant ways upon the chosen of God. But 1. Free goodness, and not natural necessity, made the world; and that same freedom intervenes, in continuing, being and acting in creatures, which act by nature. Fire casts heat, the Sun light and influences, the Sea ebbs and flows by nature; yet there must also be a free new commission sealed from eternity, to every acting of nature; he commands the Sun, and it rises not; forbids the fire to cast out heat, and it obeys (Job 9:7; Hebrews 11:34; Daniel 3:27). And it is an obliging and an endearing of the heart to God, to come daily under new debt, and multiplied free gifts, and it renews acts of love in us, as fresh actings of salvation flow: whether it be new deliverances (Psalm 18:1, 2, 6, 7; Psalm 116:1, 2, 3, 4), or new acts of keeping faith from drying up in the fire (1 Peter 1:3, 4), so as you being tried as gold, verse 8, you love having not seen him. 2. It extracts acts of praying; sense of spiritual slowness seems to pray (Canticles 1:4), Draw me, we will run; and sense of spiritual dulness (Psalm 119:33), Teach me, O Lord, the way of your statutes. 3. Hence comes humble relying upon God, when faith is put to believe that at every stirring of the members, and at every lifting of the foot, for a new step, the head must stir in heaven, and let down new influences of life; and the bottles of heaven, and well of life, must let down new flowings of rain, every moment, upon the withered garden; if as much rain fell in one day, as would suffice the earth for seven years, and a man might eat so much at one meal, as he should neither be hungry nor thirsty for five years, there should not be such daily dependance upon new influences for rain and dew daily, and for our daily bread this day. We can but (4.) hence, but believe the infinite wisdom of the Lord, who well knows how to husband and steward his showers; for in the man Christ they are continual (John 8:29), He that sent me is with me, the Father has not left me alone [illegible] nor dismissed me, for I do always [illegible] the thing that pleases him. Whenever we do what is displeasing to God, the Father of Christ leaves us, out of the depth of his sovereignty of dispensing influences. Christ was never so morally deserted.

As the Lord would have a falling law-Adam, to whom he denied influences, that nature might be nature; so he also would have a standing and never sinning-Adam, that grace might appear to be grace. Upon supposition that the second Adam is God man, it was impossible but the man Christ, in all his actions moral should want influences, or ever sin, or be left alone of the Father, but he must always do the thing that pleaseth the Father; nor is there any murmuring to be against the dispensation of deepest wisdom, why we have not at our pleasure influences of grace, that we should never sin, as the man Christ never sinned. Say we could see no reason, the thing is notire; the Lord acts in the (first) elect Angels, that they never sin; he denied in the first fall influences to the reprobate Angels; and since the Lord has condemned them, and tied them with chains of darkness, that their whole actions, except the acts of intellectual being and living, and the acts of knowing, believing, desiring, fearing, &c. in the substance of the act, should be only moral, and only sin in all the substantial circumstances (John 8:44). Satan was a man-slayer [illegible] and stood not in the truth, being created in the first truth, adhering to God (1 John 3:8). The Devil sinned from the beginning: hence he is called (1 Peter 5) [illegible] the contrary party in law; and [illegible] goes about like a roaring Lion, seeking whom he may drink over. So that though there be in men actions of the fancy, as to claw the head, rub the beard, actions of the vegetative life, to grow to age, to decline in old age; senescere, pubescere, adolescere, that are under no law, and so no sins; yet all Satan's actions are moral, these excepted of which we spoke, and influences to moral actions, granted to reprobate men, as to give alms, to go and hear the word, visit the sick, and imprisoned, are denied to Satan. Some men are also reprobate to good works (Titus 1:16), and cannot believe: and here is sovereignty that God works in some vessels of mercy to will and to do, not in others. As touching the measure of grace, and the degrees of saving influences, the Lord walks in a latitude of freedom, all men have not alike measure of saving grace and faith. His freedom shines in the work of conversion: John Baptist is filled with the Holy Ghost from the womb (Luke 1:15). But the woman of Samaria, Matthew, Zachaeus, Magdalen, Abraham, Saul, go on in a wretched state of nature, for some considerable tract of years, and then are visited with influences of life; and the Thief that was crucified with Christ upon the Cross, in his outgoing is converted, and not till then; except the sovereign liberty of God silence us, no other reason can occur of these things to man's understanding. In the Saints this liberty is clear; fewer falls in Joseph than in David; and so he must be nearer to daily influences to the one, than the other. So the Lord left Hezekiah to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart (2 Chronicles 32:31). Thus much Noah his drunkenness, Lot his incest, David his adultery and murdering of Uriah, Peter his denying of Christ and his Judaizing (Galatians 2), proclaim to us, that though Saints are to believe perseverance, and so that in Christ, there shall be furnished to them outlettings of life from the fountain to bring them to glory, as touching the habitual tract of their journey to Heaven; yet has the Lord reserved a liberty hic & nunc, to let out and withdraw influences; and the faith of believers is to rest upon the promise upon this condition, that they fret not at his dispensation, who by sad falls on Ice and slippery way must correct our sinful rashness, and teach children godly wariness; nor is there any thing in our folly to be seen but his wisdom. And sinful slips in us, and freedom of withdrawing in the Lord, bring us to be the engaged debtors of grace; and this sets the higher price upon our Advocate's intercession; when we sin (1 John 2:1, 2) his withdrawings usher the way to his own outlettings of grace; he knows how to dry us up, that we may, being withered, come under the debt of new watering; more of this hereafter.

There is here no creating of clouds or rain, by King or Husbandman, or Hosts of men; the Husbandman's faith and prayer in extreme drought may fetch rain: but we have, in these actings in which God must join his gracious influence, no real influence upon the Lord's influences; the Rose acts not upon the Sun by influences, but the Sun acts upon the Rose, though we may pray for influences of grace.

Nor can tears and wrestling extort influences, when the Lord is upon an act of declaring his sovereignty in trying us, there is praying, and yet heaviness and dropping away of soul, bids on, and the Petitioner remains like a bottle on the smoke; the glass set must run out so many hours; ere the sea flow again, the seaman weeps and prays, but the storm continues and the wind hears him not, and he that creates the wind suspends his acting. God has not said that the husbandman may pray away winter, while the season be over; nor that the traveller, when the sun is set and darkness come, should pray away the night, while the hours be over; so here God has fixed a time for a winter season of heaviness and trying deadness. The Lord's mind is to pray for the right melting of the metal, and not for the quenching and removing of the fire, he must do his work; its wisdom to know who orders our prayers, and to pray for something about his withdrawing, and not for the removal of the withdrawing itself. Paul three times prays (2 Corinthians 12) for the removal of the messenger of Satan: but prayer stirs not right then in all points; he should have prayed for sufficiency of grace: our gracious Lord laying aside the dross of our prayer, hears us not in granting what we suit, but what we ought to suit in prayer, and in granting what we suit not formally, but what the Spirit suits internally in us. The man in a fever cries for a drink, the physician forbids to give him drink, and yet gives to quench the thirst some other thing than drink; so the sick man's suit is profitably heard. Yet my meaning is not, that the Lord cannot, or will not at all take off an arrestment of desertion, at the praying of his children, the Lord cannot repeal that (Psalm 50:15), "Call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me"; therefore he repeals it not under withdrawings, which are among the greatest of such troubles as put us to call upon God.

Christ under the Lord's withdrawings, in point of comfort and enjoyment of the felt favor of God prayed and was heard (Hebrews 5:7; Matthew 26:38, 39; Luke 22:42, 43), therefore by the like he does hear us in such a case; I fetch the argument a proportion; for Christ in whom Satan finds nothing, is not capable of the withdrawings of God in point of duty. If any say it was Christ's duty always to rejoice in God,

I answer, it was an affirmative precept which did not oblige the man Christ actually in every moment of time; and in radice it did, habitu it did, habitually it did oblige him; for that "rejoice evermore" obliges not ever to actual rejoicing, but to a savory habit of rejoicing; nor did that "pray continually" oblige the man Christ to pray actually and to speak to God, when he was preaching and speaking to men, at one time; nor was actually rejoicing in God physically consistent with actual sorrow in suffering.

The praying to be led of God in his way, not to be led into temptation must include a suit that God would send influences, and not forsake us in the way of his obedience under our defections: therefore there is need of a special submission and a reserve of time to sail when his flowings set the soul afloat. Hence may a child of God submit to his deep sovereignty in withdrawings, and stoop humbly to the Lord's holy decree, (his holy will be done upon clay) and yet also desire presently the removal of sinful deadness, and pray against our sinful omission which necessarily follows upon the Lord's withdrawing, and we are to nill and hate sinning, which results from the withdrawing; therefore both pray and forget that you have prayed, and adore sovereignty. Pray under withdrawing for influences, yet trust not on the act of praying; and though he still withdraw, pray, but without fainting under, and fretting against sovereignty.

The habit being of the nature of a power cannot actuate itself, nor can we actuate and make use of the power of grace; now as the God of nature is he in whom we live, and move, and so we are acted by him in our natural stirrings; so in Christ Redeemer Emanuel in whom is the fullness and fountain of grace we live spiritually. Neither have we the use and exercise of our grace in our own hand, nor can we believe when we will, as a musician can sing when he will.