Chapter 2

CHAP. II.

The Lord keeps an order in sending influences. 2. He makes short work on some. 3. There is a confluence of influences at one time, and in one work. 4. Despising of the Word. 5. Refusing of Ordinances. 6. Persecuting of the Prophets. 7. Resisting of the operations of the spirit, do all obstruct influences. 8. Praying and praising promote influences. 9. Hardening of the heart, 10. Not profiting by means. 11. Remaining in nature. 12. Actings in wrath, rancor, malice, bitterness, and inordinate passion, obstruct influences. 13. Keep the oil of the spirit clean, if you would have influences. 14. We are to act morally and physically with the spirit. 15. Prayers obstruct not sovereignty's acting.

The Lord's ordinary way of working is here to be observing; the spirit confers not upon Peter's hearers (Acts 2) influences of faith, and of gladly receiving of the word (v. 41) at the first, before he bestow influences to the pricking of the heart for sin (v. 37), nor does the spirit act upon Saul (Acts 9) and the Jailer (Acts 16) for their rejoicing in the Holy Ghost and believing, and applying Christ and the promises at the first, until first a law-spirit humble and make the proud to tremble. Then the spirit must use divers instruments, and shoot arrows and influences of law and wrath, and wound the heart with arrows of love: as the Artist, the Carpenter uses sundry tools according to the diversity of timber that he works on, and the Lord here accommodates his influences according to the nature of the soil. It's like Christ's spirit made shorter and more expedite work on the hearts of James & John; for when Christ said to them, Follow me (Matthew 4:19, 22), they [⟨in non-Latin alphabet⟩] straightway or immediately leave their nets and their father, and follow him. It's as little time between Christ's word to the man sick of the palsy, Arise, take up your bed and walk, and his walking (Mark 2:12), for immediately [⟨in non-Latin alphabet⟩] he took up his bed, and went forth before them all. It's like Matthew's conversion is of the same nature (Matthew 9:9; Luke 5:27, 28), in which the Lord gives proof, that as some Castles fall at the first shooting of the Canon, so there is no standing out, nor resisting of Christ; for when he adds strength of omnipotency, the work of humiliation, of conviction, of saving faith, or repenting, are all quickly done: as if tilling, sowing, and harvest were all in one day, or one hour.

2. We see also that gracious influences are threaded (as it were) upon gracious influences; every beating of the smith's hammer brings forth at once many sparkles of fire, and a shower of rain is the falling of millions and hosts of drops of rain at once. So in fervent prayer, there must be a cluster of gracious influences; in every sigh and groan there is an acting of the spirit (Romans 8:26). The work of the spirit must be maimed, imperfect: if godly watching, 2. Prayer, 3. Fervent desire, 4. Humble sense of unworthiness, 5. Faith on the promise, 6. Love to our Father, have not every one their several influences of grace. When the seven stars arise above the Horizon, if six ascend, the seventh must also ascend; in all which, the poor sinner is far below the influences of grace, they are sent out as sovereignty thinks fit; and here the Lord rains down showers of grace, and a shower is made up of a multitude of drops. Yet in the general may sinners counter-work and restrain as it were the influences of grace; they may resist the word (Zechariah 7:12). They made their hearts like an Adamant stone, lest they should hear the Law. Now the Lord cannot give influences out with the preached word where men turn away their ears from the Law (Proverbs 28:9), and (Acts 7:57) they stop their ears. Wicked men cannot be avenged on the Spirit in his person, or in his several operations of saving grace; yet they avenge themselves on the message, and break in pieces the chariot that carries the Spirit's operations, and trample upon his word. Be in love with the word to count it your heritage, sweeter than the honey and the honeycomb; and you as David upon suit, shall have influences to be kept from presumptuous sins (Psalm 19:7, 8, 9, compared with v. 13, and Psalm 119:40). Behold, I have longed after your precepts, therefore quicken me in your righteousness.

2. Men can refuse to come and partake of Ordinances and to be Baptized, as the Pharisees do (Luke 7:29, 30), and so reject the counsel of God; and refusing to be among the golden Candlesticks, and the Assembly of his Saints, comes near to trampling on the blood of the Covenant, doing despite to the Spirit of grace (Hebrews 10:25, 26, 29). Rejoice to stand within Jerusalem (Psalm 122), for the Church is his vineyard: love a room in his Church, for it lies near to the Sun, and is under the watering and showers of grace. So Christ speaks to the Spirit (Canticles 4:16): Awake O North-wind, and come you South, blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. So there is a commission given that the Spirit in its efficacy blow upon the plants and flowers that grow there; the Church is also his garden of red wine which he waters every moment (Isaiah 27).

3. (Acts 7:51) You do always resist the holy Ghost, then must they obstruct the gracious actings of the holy Ghost: and this proves it to be true that Steven said, that they resisted the holy Ghost. Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? And they have slain them which showed before of the coming of that just one, of whom you are murderers, (says he) they who cast down the lodging they injure the indweller; the godly prophet is the house and lodging of the holy Ghost. (2 Chronicles 36:12) Zedekiah humbled not himself before Jeremiah the Prophet, (speaking) from the mouth of the Lord. Now the Spirit acted on the Prophets when they spoke (2 Peter 1:12), then esteem the feet of the messengers of God to be pleasant upon the mountains, for they bring glad tidings of peace, and that they only do who have these gifts of the Spirit to pray and believe (Romans 10:14, 15).

The speaking against the manifest operations of the Spirit of the Lord, by which Christ cast out devils, draws so deep as the sin against the Holy Ghost (Matthew 12), and such are deprived of pardon, of faith to lay hold on pardon; and such having done despite to the spirit of grace, must indite war against the Spirit and all his operations. Therefore cherish and obey the Spirit's actings, be willing to be led by him, close with the counsels and breathings of the Spirit; speak to edification, that which ministers grace to the hearers, and that cherishes the sealing of the Spirit (Ephesians 4:29, 30). So singing Psalms and Hymns, and spiritual Songs, with making melody in the heart to the Lord, is a proclaiming that there is some fulness of the Spirit; if the Spirit could speak in the Saints, the two native languages of the Spirit would be praying (for that is the cry of the Spirit, Romans 8:15, 23, 26) and singing praises (Ephesians 5:18, 19, 20). The way to have influences of the Spirit is to pray continually and fervently, and to give thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus (Ephesians 5:20).

A wicked hardening of the heart, is as if you would cast water on a weakly smoking fire of green timber, that cannot be a seat, an office-house to the Spirit and his actings, such are interdicted of the spiritual seeing, and of the Spirit's hearing of the Spirit. Romans 11:8: God has given them the spirit of slumber; eyes that they should not see, and ears that they should not hear to this day. It's dreadful when Prophets preach some stark blind and dead: one of the chief and noble operations of the Spirit, is illumination, and he is a seeing, and an enlightening, and a hearing spirit.

Wink not before the shining beams of the Sun; yield heartily to the convictions of the Spirit (John 16:7); such as waste away the light of conscience and the convictions of the Spirit, are not entrusted again with new actings of the Spirit's enlightening.

Be tender, and stand in awe of smaller sins: it speaks much of the spirit in David, to be smitten with the renting of the lap of Saul's garment.

Some make themselves uncapable of the actings of the Spirit, who seeing great temptations, signs and miracles, have plenty of means, yet remain blind and hard-hearted, and dull of hearing (Deuteronomy 29:2, 3, 4; Hebrews 5:11, 12; John 12:37, 38, 39, 40). If we would improve the actings of the Spirit, and delight in the Lord's way, we should have new influences to walk in his paths (Psalm 119:35), and God teaches David good judgements; for (says he) I have believed your commandments (v. 66). So are they far from new influences who abuse so many plagues and so many deliverances from these plagues, as Pharaoh did, and crush the motions of a trembling conscience, as Felix did; a doubt it may be if ever the like acting of a law-spirit visit such men again.

All such who remain in the state of unrenewed nature are uncapable of the actings of the Spirit: nor does the Spirit lodge in sensual and beastly men (Jude v. 19), nor can the world receive the Spirit of truth (John 14:17), no more than the spirit and breathing of a horse can lodge in a pismire. It's true, John Baptist was full of the Holy Ghost from the womb (Luke 1:15), and the Spirit acts him with joy (v. 41) when Mary saluted her; but John Baptist's sin original was both then pardoned, as touching the damnation thereof, and subdued as touching the dominion of it. Otherwise another spirit acts and works by nature in the sons of disobedience (Ephesians 2:2), and these two strong ones can remain and dwell both in one castle; then seek translation, and to be with Christ, if you would have the Spirit and his influences. Multitudes no more complain of the want of the influences of the Spirit than a dead man's corpse complains of cold, of hunger, of thirst, or of influences of life from the living soul; nor complain they of sickness. Oh, it speaks life to be pained for the want of the Spirit and his influences: what wonder that you cannot persuade a sleeping man that he sleeps?

Some actings of bitterness, wrath, clamour, anger and malice in the Saints may sadden the Spirit of God, darken the evidence of the Spirit's sealing to the day of redemption (Ephesians 4:30, 31). It must be a sort of suffering to the Spirit, and a casting water on the fire, and a deadening to David, as touching vigorous and lively operations, that he acted adultery and murder, which moves him to pray for the restoring to him again the joy of the Lord's salvation, and to be upholden by the Lord's free spirit (Psalm 51:12). Can a King dwell even in a palace when it is burning and smoking about his ears? Therefore holy actings, teaching of sinners, praying, praising (Psalm 51:13, 14, 15), to be kind one to another, and tender-hearted, to forgive one another, as Christ did (Ephesians 4:32), and to act as the Spirit, and to be holy and heavenly in one walk, puts the Spirit in a sweet composed temper to act and breathe abundantly in his flowings of love and grace.

9. It would be observed that influences of the Spirit are contempered with the actings of grace, with which they concur; the spirit of adoption acts in the grammar of prayer, to cry Abba Father; and he comes down to the language of children learning to speak, and to say Abba; and the Spirit helps our infirmities. O, it must be great help that the Spirit yields; it must be creating of new heavens, or removing of mountains, or dividing of the sea, or something like (say some:) no, the Spirit helps us with a groan; his influences come down to sigh and weep, and mourn like a dove in a saint (Romans 8:26; Canticles 2:14; Ezekiel 7:16). And if so, it's no wonder that the Spirit breathes not on our wild fire anger. Well, does the Spirit breathe on Christ's holy anger? He was angry and grieved (Mark 3:5), and was saddened at the offending of God. To be angry at the sin of offenders, and yet so as to compassionate the soul of the offender, this is to fix a fit seat for the influences of the Spirit; nor can we receive the influences of that Spirit who applies and intimates pardon and forgiveness when our anger is such to these who injure us as we cannot forgive them; and if anger lodge and take chamber in the bosom and breast of a fool, can the Spirit breathe supplications in such a breast? When the fountain is troubled and muddy with clay, it gives no representation of the face and image to the beholder. Psalm 119:135: Make your face to shine on your servant: but the soul is a dusty and muddy glass most unfit to receive the irradiations and beams of such a transcendent sun of glory; yes, it's some way fitted, v. 136: rivers of water run down mine eyes, because they keep not your Law. Then a soul mourning for sin is fit to be shined upon by the Lord: when the man Christ's soul is exceeding sorrowful, even to the death (Matthew 26:38), then is his soul fit to receive dartings of the Spirit, to pray most humbly with his face on the ground, v. 39, most believingly, O my Father, O my Father; most fervently with triple praying, v. 44, more earnestly (Luke 22:44), or more bendedly; then cannot a soul filled with hellish and devilish sorrow, such as was the case of wakened Judas, receive influences of the Spirit to see a pierced Lord, and to be in bitterness as one is for his only son (Zechariah 12:10), but must despair, and receive influences of hell for hardness and impenitency.

Obj. But we see the Church lament, v. 3, very unbelievingly quarrelling with God. V. 8: When I shout and cry, he shuts out my prayer. V. 10: He was to me as a Bear lying in wait, and as a Lion in secret places: And v. 18: I said my strength and my hope is perished from the Lord. Yet v. 24: The Lord is my portion, says my soul, therefore will I hope in him: then does not unbelief and sorrow of sad and half despairing, so incapacitate and deaden the soul to receive influences of believing?

Answ. There is a far other consideration of a soul under prevailing corruption, that is either yet not converted, and of a converted man under a strong prevailing temptation: when two contrary champions, the flesh and the Spirit, are standing in battle array in the fields, each one enemy attending the motions of another, as in the former consideration. There is a great difference between green timber and dry and withered fuel, or between dry fire-wood and fuel, though dry, yet soaked some days in water; in this case influences of the Spirit from heaven, and influences of the flesh from hell, do not so quickly exchange lodgings, and go and come to and from divers subjects; neither an unrenewed man, nor a David under prevailing lust, are such fitly disposed fields for showers of influences, as in a moment they can cast off deadness and put on a spiritual disposition to receive influences of grace, though there be an active celerity on the Spirit's part, for he can go and come quickly. And this is to be seen in a soul under spiritual exercise, even now there is a sad complaining, I said in my haste, I am [illegible] out from before your face; and yet with the same breath, nevertheless you heard the voice of my supplication. Then under sense of being cast out of God's favor, there are also influences to pray, and to pray in faith, and when the Christian fainting says, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord (Lamentations 3:18), she also says, The Lord is my portion, says my soul, v. 24. It's clear then that fainting and feeling are near to other, and so influences for the one and for the other are near to other; the quickness and celerity of influences is evident in the sudden ups and downs of the soul, as the shining of the Sun in March and the showering of the clouds are so near to other, he comes in his shinings as a fire-flash in the midst of our sad lowering and dumpish deadness, and when the Lord pleases his visits are speedy and swift.