Chapter 8

CHAP. VIII.

Q. 4. Is there no running except God enlarge the heart? what then can we do?

Assert. 1. Without some enlargement of heart there is no running; the negative is true, none come to Christ except such as the Father draws (John 6:44; John 15:5), and the affirmative is true, all that are drawn, and have heard and learned of the Father, do run and come apace (Cant. 1:4; John 6:44). There is a spiritual riches in heavenly and spiritual suppositions. O for more of Christ to earn his praises with a shout which might waken angels and men, all men in this side and in the other side of the Sun, and that all creatures might hear and put to their seal, and cry Amen to the Psalm.

Assert. 2. The use we are to make of our sinful weakness is not to sit still: he loves death who says, I cannot heal myself; art and skill must only do it, therefore I'll seek no physician; if the Lord will not do it, let me die. The husbandman were mad who would say, my plowing, sowing, early rising, and late labouring can never make the corn to grow except God give the increase, therefore I'll fold my hands and take the other sleep: and if another say, God only creates the wind, therefore I'll never set my foot in a ship; so is it here, what can the dead and the sick sinner do if the physician Christ will neither quicken nor cure? His influences of life are above my reach, therefore I'll never make out to Christ, nor ask for the Gospel; if Christ will not heal us we must pine away in our sins; how then shall we live? This is to tempt Christ, and to bring him under a new miraculous way to heal and save the sinner in his dream, without hearing the Gospel; which is, that God should bring bread and clothing to the sleeping man's bed-side. The contrary is (Phil. 2:13) work because he works. Cant. 1. Draw, and we will run; the Spouse says not, Lord, draw that we may sleep.

2. Our impotency leads us to turn sinful wickedness in mournful confession and godly complaining, as the Saints do (Psalm 51:5; Jer. 14:4; Isa. 64:8, 9; Dan. 9:5, 6, 11; Psalm 116:6, 7).

3. Cain, Pharaoh, Saul, Magus, never complain of themselves: heathens complain of original sin, not as man's sin, but as Socinians and Pelagians complain of it, as man's misery, and the Lord's fault and sin (with reverence to his holiness) in that God and the step-mother nature have dealt worse with man in bringing him into the world naked, weeping, weak, sick, dying, than with bulls, that are born with thick skins, and have horns to defend them. It is a shameful accusing of God to deny original sin to be a transgression of the Law, such as deserves death eternal. Ah, our pride, who dare bark against God when we should weep over our own wolfish and beastly nature.

Assert. 3. We do not so much in the use of means as our lameness does permit. The Lord has drawn a bill in the conscience, that the blind will not so much as open their eye-lids; we may be a law to ourselves (Rom. 1:14, 15), we know God (by nature) and glorify him not as God (Rom. 1:2, 15), we may go many miles farther toward God by nature's light, but we sit still.

2. Yes, we blow out the candle; and here the cripple and lame man breaks his own legs and arms the second time, and complains of the physician Christ that he will not heal him against his will: he who adds to his sickness a poison drink, cannot father his death upon the physician. Ah, we stir not broken legs and arms upon and towards the physician Christ.

3. The cripple may move and creep toward the physician. The motion of such as stepped in the pool immediately after the Angel troubled the water (John 5) was not a motion of perfect nature, nor a perfect motion, but yet a means of health it was; Christ rejects not cripple and sickly motions in using means towards himself.

Assert. 4. The motions of the Spirit (to come to the renewed man's case) serve as legs to bear the cripple-man, but not as eyes; for (Psalm 119:105) your word is a lamp to my feet, and light to my path. Yes, a doubt it is if the motions of the Spirit, as the Spirit without the word, lay an obligation on us to follow these motions, except when the Spirit speaks to Paul and Barnabas to go to Macedonia, not to Bythinia; and then the word of the Spirit becomes formally the word of the Lord, as the word of Christ from his mouth is the word of God: but heed is to be taken in a special manner, when the bastard spirit speaks to Becold, to Hichol, and such wizards; for God speaks like God, and his own know his voice, and the children of the Devil know also their father's voice; learn to go as far as you can in the way to Christ.

1. No violence but from your own heart stands in your way; the birth helps itself in the womb to come out, work with the tide or against it; he who rows with oars in a manner helps the wind; they desire not to sail who will not stir a foot to the ship.

2. Hearing in Lydia, and the Gaoler reading, in the Eunuch diligent taking heed to the word of the Gospel preached by Philip in the Samaritans, the woman of Samaria conferring with Christ, have in them, though they come not up to the nature of a perfect duty, somewhat of the ordinance of Christ, and Christ loves to be in his own ordinances pro tanto; its true, the unrenewed man cannot use the means formally as they are referred to Christ, and for Christ, until his will and intention be renewed, yet he is in the way to Christ, and materially he comes to Christ; nor is walking to the ship on dry land an act of sailing; nor the sick man's journeying to the physician, or his simple receiving of medicine, an act of healing; its good to come to the work-house of the Spirit, the preached Gospel, and to lie under the breathing of the Lord when the word is spoken; lend the letter of the Gospel, lodging in the outer house, the ear and literal understanding; go in to the Potter's house, and stand beside the furnace, and behold what work the Lord has.

3. Upon the wheels towards others, and how many he meets with in the way of his ordinances and frames the new creature in them, and makes a real change in them, that you wonder at them, knowing you were blind, and now they see.

2. As for renewed ones these cases are considerable,

1. When the letter of the Law is granted, there is something, and a great something wanting (Psalm 119:29): remove from me the way of lying, [in non-Latin alphabet] be grace over your Law to me; which is first a suit that deeper and deeper spiritual impressions of God in the Law may be engraven on him, till he be filled with all the fulness of God; and influences may amount to a strong habit, following of hearing, reading, conferring, meditating, with much praying for spiritual teaching from him (as all along through Psalm 119) would make us rich in influences.

2. The natural man never misses life and quickening influences in the word, the spiritual does (Psalm 119:50): This is my comfort in mine affliction, for your word has quickened me. Its not a bad property of the earth to gape and thirst for rain, there is no such gaping and thirsting in the rock; the stone is never parched for want of rain; but this parchedness is a nearest disposition for influences of soap and moisture from the clouds, and though the thirsty man pray not, yet thirst itself calls for watering influences; as the Lord disappoints not nature, so uses he not to frustrate gracious thirst of suitable influences of grace, and these are put together, and both are satisfied (Psalm 145:15, 16, 19). So his way (Matthew 5:6; Luke 1:53): if thirsts for life, and not for the bare condemning letter.

3. There is something which we call fetching of the wind, and casting of a board again to wind to the right harbour, and it is a sort of courting the wind, and that is the case of the soul that would live upon influences, its fit to pant and gape, and carefully wait on for the holy breathings of the Lord; could we wait in the way that the Spirit uses to come, and attend him in ordinances, he must come that way, as Zacheus cast himself in that way of Christ; providence places two blind beggars in Christ's way, and the Lord thereby bestows the Son of David's mercy on them; and providence placed the woman of Samaria at the well of Jacob, and Christ must needs go thorow Samaria, and her way, she looked for water from Jacob's well, and looked not for the Messiah; yet she meets with him, and feels his influences before she goes hence: but we are with ordinances to lie at the tide, and wait for, and seek the flowings of the Spirit; in one and the same work the sounding of the word and the breathing of the Spirit may be attended (Psalm 130:5): I wait for the Lord, my soul does wait. Whether in his real helping and hearing, my crying out of the deeps, or on his saving actings upon the dead heart, and in his word do I hope: there may be a casting of the goods in the sea to help the ship to land. There is failing of the eyes in waiting for God (Psalm 69:3; Psalm 119:8): My soul faints for your salvation. I opened my mouth and panted, for I longed for your salvation; I cannot create breathings. But the man in a pit or dungeon, though he can make no help to himself, yet he can cry and make use of arms and legs when a rope is cast down to him.

4. Blowing of the bellows adds nothing to the fire, yet it removes the ashes, it fans away the earthy part, and rarifies it, and acts upon the smoke, and adds quickening; it's fit to blow upon the habit of grace and heavenly disposition, yes, to blow in a sanctified way, in a gift; so Paul (2 Timothy 1:6): Therefore I put you in remembrance, to stir up the gift of God which is in you by the laying on of my hands. Erasmus says [in non-Latin alphabet] is an elegant metaphor from such as care for the fire, which is as it were buried under ashes, they blow with the bellows, and revive and stir up the fire like to die out; others think it an allusion to the priests' daily watching to cherish and keep in the fire which the Lord sent down from heaven, and to cast new fuel to it. So is that (1 Timothy 4:14): [in non-Latin alphabet], neglect not the gift that is in you; let it not rust: self-sharping and self-impulsion upon the heart, and acting upon the habit, which is in worse case because it lodges in a lazy heart, is required: we may deaden and neglect both our souls and the new habit, whereas that prayer (Lord, increase our faith) teaches that we by diligent acting add to the habit, to the gift, talent and dispensation, and the improving of these are forcible means to draw down fresh influences of life: the Lord of his grace having brought himself (reserving actings of sovereignty and deep wisdom) under a sort of promissory necessity to bestow influences, and to give one talent to him who makes five talents ten; idleness and sleeping then must be no small obstruction to new quickening influences.

5. As the husbandman is a fellow-worker in his way with industry and art, with the Lord and nature, to fit his ridges by plowing and sowing to receive influences of dew and rain, and impression from heaven; and he works with God and nature, who labors the vineyard, purges out brambles, briars, stones, prunes the young vine-trees, that they may receive influences from sun, moon, heavens, and clouds. Yet no husbandman, no vinedresser, can be Lord of the influences of heaven: so has the Lord commanded us to plow up the fallow-ground of our hearts, and not to sow among thorns; to lie under the husbandry of ministers sent of God; to frequent ordinances; to yield up our hearts by willing consent to be acted on by God; to resign them, and put the heart out of our possession, and yield to that suit, My son give me your heart; else we mock God in suiting from him enlargedness of heart, in a sort of compromising that we shall run, if he shall draw and enlarge: But we keep fast possession of our own hearts, and do not resign them to God. Hence a word of wakening to cry to harp and psaltery, to our gift, and to our tongue, and to our sleepy hearts (Psalm 57:8) is requisite; as also 2. that we chide with our unbelieving souls (Psalm 42:5, 11) and command the renewed part to act upon the heart, to accuse, and convince, and rebuke the heart (1 Samuel 24:5; 1 John 3:20).

6. The soul can be in no such dead case, but it's capable of an Evangelick command. Sardis has a name; they are living and yet are dead: then is it useless to speak to Sardis now dead? No (Revelation 3:2): Strengthen that which remains. There fly sparkles of fire from the red hot iron of the smith upon those about, whether they will or no. From that charge, Open to me my sister, my love, &c. there came upon her, whether she would or not, flamings of love, which brought influences on her bowels.