1 Peter — Chapter 4

Ver. 1.

Since Christ has suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that has suffered in the flesh, has ceased from sin.

The main of a Christian's duty lies in these two, patience in suffering, and avoidance of sin, and they have a natural influence each into the other; although affliction simply does not, yet affliction sweetly and humbly carried does purify and disengage the heart from sin, weans it from the world and the common ways of it. And again, holy and exact walking keeps the soul in a sound healthful temper, and so enables it to patient suffering, to bear things more easily; as a strong body endures fatigue, heat, and cold, and hardship with ease, a small part of which would surcharge a sickly constitution. The conscience of sin, and careless unholy courses, do wonderfully weaken a soul and distemper it: so that it is not able to endure much, every little thing disturbs it. Therefore the Apostle has reason, as to insist on these two points so much in this Epistle, so to interweave so often the one with the other, pressing jointly throughout, the cheerful bearing of all kind of afflictions and the careful forbearing all kind of sin; and out of the one discourse slides into the other: so here.

And as the things agree in their nature, so in their great pattern and principle, Jesus Christ, and the Apostle still draws both from there, that of patience (1 Peter 3:18), that of holiness here, Since Christ has suffered for us, etc.

The chief study of a Christian, and the very thing that makes him to be a Christian, is conformity with Christ. This is the sum of religion (said that wise heathen) to be like him whom you worship. But the example being in itself too sublime, is brought down to our view in Christ, the brightness of God veiled, and veiled in our own flesh, that we may look on it. The inaccessible light of the Deity is so tempered in the humanity of Christ, that we may read our lesson by it in him, and may direct our walk by it, and that truly is our only way; nothing but wandering and perishing in all other ways, darkness and misery out of him, but he that follows me, says he, shall not walk in darkness. And therefore is he set before us in the Gospel in so clear and lively colors, that we may make this our whole endeavor to be like him.

Consider here, 1. the high engagement to this conformity, 2. the nature of it, 3. the actual improvement of it. The engagement lies in this, that he suffered for us. Of this before, only in reference to this, had he come down, as some have mis-imagined it, only to set us this perfect way of obedience, and give us an example of it in our own nature: this had been very much, that the Son of God would descend to teach wretched man, and the great King to descend into man, and dwell in a tabernacle of clay, to set up a school in it, for such ignorant accursed creatures, and did in his own person act the hardest lessons, both in doing and suffering to lead us in both. But the matter goes yet higher than this. Oh! how much higher has he suffered, not simply as our rule, but as our surety, and in our stead. He suffered for us in the flesh. We the more obliged to make his suffering our example, because it was to us more than an example, it was our ransom.

This makes the conformity reasonable in a double respect: 1. It is due that we follow him, who led thus as the captain of our salvation, that we follow in suffering, and in doing, seeing both were so for us; it is strange how some armies have addicted themselves to their head, to be at his call night and day, in summer and winter, to refuse no travel or endurance of hardship for him, and all only to please him, and serve his inclination and ambition, as Caesar's trained bands especially the eldest of them, a wonder what they endured in countermarches and tracing from one country to another. But besides that, our Lord and leader is so great and excellent, and so well deserves following for his own worth; this lays upon us an obligation beyond all conceiving, that he first suffered for us, that he endured such hatred of men, and such wrath of God the Father, and went through death, so vile a death, to procure our life: what can be too bitter to endure? Or too sweet to forsake to follow him? Were this duly considered would we cleave to our lusts, or to our ease, would we not through fire and water, indeed through death itself, indeed were it through many deaths to go after him?

2. Consider as it is due, so it is made easy by that his suffering for us; our burden that pressed us to hell, taken off, is not all as nothing that is left to suffer or do? Our chains that bound us over to eternal death being knocked off, shall we not walk? Shall we not run in his ways? Oh! think what that burden and yoke was he has eased us of, how heavy, how unsufferable it was, and then we shall think what he so truly says, that all he lays on, is sweet, his yoke easy, and his burden light. Oh! the happy change, rescued from the vilest slavery, and called to conformity and fellowship with the Son of God.

2. The nature of this conformity (to show the nearness of it) is expressed in the very same terms as in the pattern; it is not a remote resemblance, but the same thing, even suffering in the flesh. But that we may take it right, what suffering is here meant — it is plainly this: ceasing from sin. So suffering in the flesh here is not the enduring of afflictions, which is a part of a Christian's conformity with his head, Christ (Romans 8). But this is a more inward and spiritual suffering — it is the suffering and the dying of our corruption, the taking away the life of sin by the death of Christ, and that death of his sinless flesh works in the believer the death of sinful flesh, that is the corruption of his nature, which is so usually in Scripture called flesh. Sin makes man base, drowns him in flesh and the lusts of it, makes the very soul become gross and earthly, turns it as it were to flesh: so the Apostle calls the very mind that is unrenewed a carnal mind (Romans 8). And what does the mind of a natural man hunt after and run out into, from one day and year to another — is it not on things of this base world and the concern of his flesh? What would he have, but be accommodated to eat, and drink, and dress, and live at ease — he minds earthly things, savors and relishes them and cares for them. Examine the most of your pains, and time, and your strongest desires, and most serious thoughts, if they go not this way to raise yourselves and yours in your worldly condition. Indeed, the highest projects of the greatest natural spirits are but earth still, in respect of things truly spiritual — all their state designs go not beyond this poor life that perishes in the flesh, and is daily perishing, even while we are busiest, upholding it and providing for it. Present things, and this lodge of clay, this flesh and its interest, take up most of our time and pains — the most, indeed all, till that change be wrought the Apostle speaks of, till Christ be put on (Romans 13): put you on the Lord Jesus Christ, and then the other will easily follow, that follows in the words — make no provision for the flesh to fulfill it in the lusts thereof. Once in Christ, and then your necessary general care for this natural life will be regulated and moderated by the Spirit. And for all unlawful and enormous desires of the flesh, you shall be rid of providing for these — instead of all provision for the life of the flesh in that sense, there is another guest and another life for you now to wait on and furnish for. In them that are in Christ that flesh is dead; they are freed from its drudgery — he that has suffered in the flesh has rested from sin.

Ceased from sin.] He is at rest from it — a godly death, as they that die in the Lord rest from their labors. He that has suffered in the flesh and is dead to it dies indeed in the Lord; he rests from the base turmoil of sin — it is no longer his master. As our sin was the cause of Christ's death, his death is the death of sin in us, and that not simply, as he bore a moral pattern of it, but the real working cause of it — it has an effectual influence on the soul, kills it to sin. I am crucified with Christ, says Saint Paul: faith so looks on the death of Christ that it takes the impression of it, sets it on the heart, kills it to sin. Christ and the believer do not only become one in law, so as his death stands for theirs, but are one in nature, so as his death for sin causes theirs to it (Romans 6:3).

This suffering in the flesh being to death, and such a death — crucifying — has indeed pain in it, but what then: it must be so like his, and the believer like him, in willingly enduring it. All the pain of his suffering in the flesh his love to us digested and went through; so all the pain to our nature in severing and pulling us from our beloved sins, and our dying to them — if his love be planted in our hearts, that will sweeten it and make us delight in it. Love desires nothing more than likeness, and shares willingly in all things with the party loved; and above all love, this divine love is purest and highest, and works most strongly that way — it takes pleasure in that pain, and is a voluntary death. As Plato calls love: it is strong as death, makes the strongest body fall to the ground — so does the love of Christ make the most active and liveliest sinner dead to his sin. And as death severs a man from his dearest and most familiar friends, thus does the love of Christ and his death flowing from it sever the heart from its most beloved sins.

I beseech you, seek to have your hearts set against sin — to hate it, to wound it, and be dying daily to it. Be not satisfied unless you feel an abatement of it and a life within you. Disdain that base service, and being bought at so high a rate, think yourselves too good to be slaves to any base lust — you are called to a more excellent and more honorable service. And of this suffering in the flesh we may safely say what the Apostle speaks of the sufferings with and for Christ: that the partakers of these sufferings are co-heirs of glory with Christ — if we suffer thus with him, we shall also be glorified with him; if we die with him, we shall live with him forever.

3. The actual improvement of this conformity. Arm yourselves with the same mind, or thoughts of this mortification. Death taken naturally in its proper sense, being an entire privation of life, admits not of degrees: but this figurative death, this mortification of the flesh in a Christian, is gradual, in so far as he is renewed, and is animated, and acted by the Spirit of Christ, he is thoroughly mortified; (for this death, and that new life joined with it, and here added, verse 2, go together and grow together) but because he is not totally renewed, and there is in him of that corruption still that is here called flesh, therefore is this great task to be gaining further upon it, and overcoming and mortifying it every day, and to this tend the frequent exhortations of this nature. Mortify your members that are on the earth. So Romans 6, likewise reckon yourselves dead to sin, and let it not reign in your mortal bodies. Thus here. Arm yourselves with the same mind, or with this very thought. Consider and apply that suffering of Christ in the flesh to the end, that you with him suffering in the flesh, may cease from sin. Think it ought to be thus, and seek that it may be thus with you.

Arm yourselves.] There is still fighting, and sin will be molesting you, though wounded to death, yet will it struggle for life, and seek to wound its enemy; will assault the graces that are in you. Do not think if it be once struck, and you have a hit near to the heart by the Sword of the Spirit, that therefore it will stir no more. No, so long as you live in the flesh in these bowels there will be remainders of the life of this flesh, your natural corruption. Therefore you must be armed against it. Sin will not give you rest so long as there is a drop of blood in its vein, one spark of life in it, and that will be so long as you have life here. This old man is stout and will fight himself to death; and at the weakest it will [reconstructed: rouse up itself] and act its dying spirits, as men will do sometimes more eagerly, than when they were not so weak, nor so near death.

This the children of God often find to their grief, that corruptions, which they thought had been cold dead, stir and rise up again, and set upon them. A [reconstructed: Passion] or lust, that after some great stroke lay a long while as dead, stirred not, and therefore they thought to have heard no more of it, though it shall never recover fully again to be lively as before, yet will revive in such a measure as to molest, and possibly to foil them yet again. Therefore is it continually necessary that they live in arms and put them not off to their dying day; till they put off the body and be altogether free of the flesh: you may take the Lord's promise for victory in the [reconstructed: end] that shall not fail, but do not promise yourself ease in the way, for that will not hold: if at sometimes you be at under, give not all for lost, he has often won the day that has been foiled and wounded in the fight, but likewise take not all for won, so as to have no more conflict, when sometimes you have the better, as in particular battles: be not desperate when you lose, nor secure when you gain them; when it is worst with you do not throw away your arms, nor lay them away when you are at best.

Now the way to be armed is this, the same mind, how would my Lord Christ carry himself in this case, and what was his business in all places and companies? Was it not to do the will and advance the glory of his Father? If I be injured and reviled, consider how would he do in this, would he repay one injury with another, one reproach with another reproach? No, being reviled he reviled not again; well through his strength this shall be my way too. Thus ought it to be with the Christian, framing all his ways, and words, and very thoughts upon that model, the mind of Christ, and to study in all things to walk even as he walked. 1. Studying it much, as the reason and rule of mortification. 2. Drawing from it, as the real cause and spring of mortification.

The pious contemplation of his death will most powerfully kill the love of sin in the soul, and kindle an ardent hatred of it. The believer looking on his Jesus crucified for him, and wounded for his transgressions, and taking in deep thoughts of his spotless innocence that deserved no such thing, and of his matchless love that yet endured it all for him, then will he think, shall I be a friend to that which was his deadly enemy? Shall sin be sweet to me, that was so bitter to him, and that for my sake? Shall I ever have a favorable thought or lend it a good look, that shed my Lord's blood? Shall I live in that for which he died, and died to kill it in me. Oh! let it not be.

To the end it may not be, let such really apply that death to work this on the soul, for this is always to be added, and is the main indeed, by holding and fastening that death close to the soul effectually to kill the effects of sin in it, to [reconstructed: stifle] and crush them dead by pressing that death on the heart, looking on it, not only as a most complete model, but as having a most effectual virtue for this effect, and desiring him, entreating our Lord himself, who communicates himself and the virtue of his death to the believer, that he would powerfully cause it to flow to us; and let us feel the virtue of it.

It is then the only thriving and growing life to be much in the lively contemplation and application of Jesus Christ, to be continually studying him, and conversing with him, and drawing from him, receiving of his fullness grace for grace. Would you have much power against sin, and much increase of holiness? Let your eye be much on Christ, set your heart on him; let it dwell in him, and be still with him. When sin is like to prevail in any kind, go to him, tell him of the insurrection of his enemies, and your inability to resist, and desire him to suppress them, and to help you against them, that they may gain nothing by their stirring, but some new wound. If your heart begin to be taken with and move towards sin, lay it before him, the beams of his love shall eat out that fire of these sinful lusts. Would you have your pride, and passions, and love of the world, and self-love killed? Go suit for the virtue of his death and that shall do it: seek his Spirit, the Spirit of meekness, and humility, and divine love. Look on him, and he shall draw your heart heavenwards, and unite it to himself, and make it like himself. And is not that the thing you desire?

Verses 2, 3. Ver. 2. That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh, to the lusts of men: but to the will of God. 3. For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries:

The chains of sin are so strong, and so fastened on our nature, that there is in us no power to break them off, till a mightier and stronger Spirit than our own, come into us. The Spirit of Christ dropped into the soul, makes it able to break through a host, and leap over a wall, as David speaks of himself furnished with the strength of his God (Psalm 18). Men's resolutions fall to nothing, and as a prisoner that offers to escape, and does not, is bound faster, thus usually it is with men, in their self purposes of forsaking sin, they leave out Christ in the work, and so remain in their captivity, indeed it grows upon them, and while we press them to free themselves and show not Christ to them, we put them upon an impossibility, but a look to him makes it feasible and easy. Faith in him, and that love to him, which faith begets, breaks through and surmounts all; it is the powerful love of Christ that kills the love of sin, and kindles the love of holiness in the soul: makes it a willing sharer in his death, and so a happy partaker of his life: for that always follows and must of necessity as here is added, He that has suffered in the flesh, has ceased from sin, is crucified and dead to it, but he loses nothing; indeed it is his great gain the loss of that deadly life of the flesh for a new spiritual life; a life indeed, living to God; that is the end why he so dies, that he may thus live, That he no longer should live, etc. and yet live far better, live to the will of God. He that is one with Christ by believing, he is one throughout in death and life, as Christ rose, so he that is dead to sin with him through the power of his death, rises to that new life with him through the power of his resurrection. And those two are our sanctification, which, whoever do partake of Christ, and are found in him, do certainly draw from him. Thus are they joined (Romans 6:11): Likewise reckon you yourselves dead indeed to sin, but alive to God, and both through Christ Jesus our Lord.

All they that do really come to Jesus Christ, as they come to him as their Savior to be clothed with him and made righteous by him; they come likewise to him as their Sanctifier, to be made new and holy by him, to die and live with him, to follow the Lamb wherever he goes, through the hardest sufferings, and death itself, and this spiritual suffering and dying with him is the universal way of all his followers. They are all martyrs thus in the crucifying of sinful flesh, and so dying for him, and with him; and they may well go cheerfully through, though it bear the unpleasant name of death; yet as the other death is (which makes it so little terrible, indeed often appears so much desirable to them) so is this the way to a far more excellent and happy life, so that they may pass through it gladly both for the company and end of it; it is with Christ they go into his death, as to life in his life. Though a believer might be free upon these terms he would not, no sure: could he be content with that easy life of sin, instead of the divine life of Christ? No, he will do thus and not accept of deliverance, that he may obtain (as the apostle speaks of the martyrs) a better resurrection. Think on it again, you to whom your sins are dear still, and this life sweet, you are yet far from Christ, and his life.

The apostle with intent to press this more home, expresses more at large, the nature of the opposite estates and lives that he speaks of, so sets before his Christian brethren. 1. The dignity of that new life. 2. By a particular reflex upon the former life presses the change. The former life he calls a living, to the lusts of men; this new spiritual life to the will of God.

Such as are common to the corrupt nature of man, such as every man may find in himself, and perceive in others. The Apostle in the third verse more particularly for further clearness specifies these kind of men that were most notorious in these lusts, and those kind of lusts that are most notorious in men. Writing to the dispersed Jews he calls sinful lusts, the will of the Gentiles, as having least control of contrary light in them; yet the Jews walked in the same, though they had the Law as a light and rule for the avoiding of them, and implies, that these lusts were unbecoming even their former condition as Jews; but much more unsuitable to them as now Christians. Some of the grossest of these lusts he names, meaning all the rest, all the ways of sin, and representing their vileness the more lively, not as some take it, when they hear of such heinous sins, that lessen the evil of more civil nature by the comparison, as if freedom from these were a blameless condition, and a change of it needless. No, the Holy Ghost means it just contrary. That we may judge of all sin and of our sinful nature, by our estimate of these sins, that are most discernible and abominable, all sin though not equal in degree, yet is of one nature and originally springing from one root, arising from the same unholy nature of man, and contrary to the same holy nature and will of God.

So then. First, these that walk in these high ways of impiety and yet will have the name of Christians, they are the shame of Christians, and the professed enemies of Jesus Christ, and of all others most hateful to him, that seem to have taken on his name for no other end, but to shame and disgrace it, but he shall vindicate himself, and the blot shall rest upon these impudent persons that dare hold up their faces in the Church of God as parts of it, and are indeed nothing but the dishonour of it, spots and blots; that dare own to worship God as his people and remain unclean, riotous and profane persons. How suits your sitting here before the Lord, and your sitting with vile ungodly company on the Ale-Bench? How agrees the Word, sounds it well, there goes a drunken Christian, unclean, basely covetous, earthly minded Christian, and the naming of these is not besides the text, but the very words of it, for the Apostle warrants us to take it under the name of idolatry, and in that name he reckons it to be mortified by a Christian (Colossians 3:5). Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth, fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry.

Second, but yet men that are some way exempted from the blot of these foul impieties, may still remain slaves to sin, alive to it, and dead to God, living to the lusts of men, and not to the will of God, pleasing others and themselves, displeasing him. And the smoothest, best bred, and most moralized natural man is in this base thralldom. And the more miserable that he dreams of liberty in the midst of his chains, thinks himself well by looking on those that wallow in gross profaneness, takes measure of himself, by the most crooked lives of ungodly men about him, and so thinks himself very straight; but lays not the straight rule of the will of God to his ways and heart, which if he did, he would then discover much crookedness in his ways, and much more in his heart, that now he sees not, but takes it for square and even.

Therefore I advise and desire you to look more narrowly to yourselves in this, and see whether you be not still living to your own lusts and wills instead of God, seeking in all your ways to advance and please yourselves and not him: is not the bent of your hearts set that way, do not your whole desires and endeavours run in that channel, how you and yours may be somebody, and you may have enough to serve the flesh, and to be accounted of, and respected among men? And if we trace it home, all a man's honouring and pleasing of others tends to, and ends in pleasing of himself, it resolves in that, and is it not so meant by him, he pleases men either that he may gain by them, or be respected by them, or something that is still pleasing to himself may be the return of it: so self is the grand idol for which all other heart-idolatries are committed. And indeed in the unrenewed heart there is [illegible] of them. Oh! what multitudes, what heaps, [illegible] the wall were dug through, and the light of God going before us, and leading us in to see them? The natural motion and way of the natural heart is no other, but still seeking out new inventions, a forge of new gods, still either forming them to itself, or worshipping those it has already framed, committing spiritual fornication from God with the creature, and multiplying lovers everywhere as it is tempted: as the Lord complains of his people, upon every hill, and under every green tree.

You will not believe thus much ill of yourselves, will not be convinced of this unpleasant but necessary truth, and this is a part of our self-pleasing, that we please ourselves in this, that we will not see it, not in our callings and ordinary ways, not in our religious exercises, for in these we naturally aim at nothing, but ourselves, either our reputation, or at best our own safety and peace, either to stop the cry of conscience in present, or escape the wrath that is to come, but not in a spiritual regard of the will of God, and out of pure love to himself, for himself, yet thus it should be, and that love the divine fire in all our sacrifices. The carnal mind is in the dark, and sees not its vileness in living to itself, will not confess it to be so; but when God comes into the soul, he lets it see itself, and all its idols and idolatries, and forces it to abhor and loathe itself for all its abominations; and having discovered its filthiness to itself, then purges and cleanses it for himself from all its filthiness, and from all its idols according to his promise, and comes in and takes possession of it for himself, enthrones himself in the heart, and it is never right nor happy till that be done.

But to the Will of God.] We readily take any little slight change for true conversion, but we may see here that we mistake it, it does not barely knock off some obvious apparent enormities; but casts all in a new mold, alters the whole frame of the heart and life, kills a man, and makes him alive again, and this new life contrary to the old: for the change is made with that intent, that he live no longer to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.

He is now indeed a new creature, new judgment and thoughts of things, and so accordingly, new desires and affections, and answerable to those new actions, old things past away, and dead, and all things become new.

Politic men have observed it, that in states, if alterations must be, it is better to alter many things, than a few. And physicians have the same remark for one's habitude and custom for bodily health upon the same ground; because things do so relate one to another, that except they be adapted and suited together in the change, it avails not: indeed, it sometimes proves the worse in the whole, though a few things in particular seem to be bettered. Thus half reformations in a Christian, turn to his prejudice, its only best to be throughout, and to give up with all idols, and not to live one half to himself and the world, and as it were, another half to God; for that is but falsely so, in reality it cannot be: but the way is to make a heap of all, to have all sacrificed together, and to live to no lust, but altogether, and only to God. Thus it must be, there is no monster in the new creation, half a new creature, either all, or not at all. We have to deal with the maker and the searcher of the heart in this turn, and he will have nothing unless he have the heart, and none of that neither, unless he have it all; if you pass over into his kingdom, and become his subject, you must have him for your only sovereign. Loyalty can admit no rivalry, and least of all the highest, and best of all. If Christ be your king, then his laws and scepter must rule all in you, you must now acknowledge no foreign power, that will be treason.

And if he be your husband you must renounce all others? Will you provoke him to jealousy; indeed beware how you give a thought or look of your affection any other way, for he will spy it, and will not endure it. The title of a husband is as strict and tender, as the other of a king.

It's only best to be thus, your great advantage, and happiness to be thus entirely freed from so many tyrannous base lords and now subject only to one, and he so great and withal so gracious and sweet a king, the Prince of Peace; you were hurried before and racked with the very multitude of them, your lusts so many cruel taskmasters over you, they gave you no rest, and the work they set you to, was base and slavish; more than the burdens, and pots, and toiling in the clay of Egypt, held to work in the earth, to pain and to soil and defile yourself with their drudgery.

Now you have but one to serve, and that's a great ease, and it's no slavery, but true honor to serve so excellent a lord and in so high services: for he puts you upon nothing, but what is neat and what is honorable, you are as a vessel of honor in his house for his best employments, now you are not at pain to please this person and others, to vex yourself to gain men, to study their approbation and honors, nor to keep to your own lusts and observe their mind. None but your God to please in all, and so he be pleased, you may disregard who be displeased; his will is not fickle and changing as men's are, and your own; he has told you what he likes and desires, and alters not: so now you know whom you have to do with, and what to do, whom to please, and what will please him, and this cannot but much settle your mind, and put you to ease, and you may say heartily, as rejoicing in the change of so many for one, and such, for such a one, as the church says (Isaiah 26:13), O Lord our God, other lords beside you have had dominion over me, but now by you only will I make mention of your name, now none but yourself, not so much as the name of them any more, away with them, through your grace you only shall be my God. It cannot endure anything be named with you.

Now that it may be thus, that we may wholly live to the will of God, we must know his will what it is: persons grossly ignorant of God and of his will, cannot live to him; we cannot have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, for he is light. This takes off a great many among us that have not so much as a common notion of the will of God; but besides, that knowledge, which is a part, and (I may say) the first part, of the renewed image of God, is not a natural knowledge of spiritual things, merely attained by human teaching or industry; but it's a beam of God's own, issuing from himself, both enlightening and enlivening the whole soul, gains the affection and stirs to action: and so indeed it acts, and increases by acting: for the more we walk according to that of the will of God which we know, the more we shall be advanced to know more: that is the real proving what is his good, and holy, and acceptable will (Romans 12:2). So says Christ, if any will do the will of my Father, he shall know of the doctrine; our lying off from the lively use of known truth, keeps us low in the knowledge of God and communion with him.

2. So then upon that knowledge of God's will, where it is spiritual and from himself, follows the suiting of the heart with it, the affections taking the stamp of it, and agreeing with it, receiving the truth in the love of it, the heart transformed into it, and now not driven to obedience violently, but sweetly moving to it, by love within the heart framed to the love of God, and so of his will.

3. As divine knowledge begets this affection, so this affection will bring forth action, real obedience. For these three are inseparably linked and dependent on the product of another in this way: the affection is not blind but flowing from knowledge, nor actual obedience constrained, but flowing from affection; and the affection is not idle, seeing it brings forth obedience, nor the knowledge dead, seeing it begets affection.

Thus the renewed, the living Christian is all for God, a sacrifice entirely offered up to God, and a living sacrifice lives to God. He takes no more notice of his own carnal will, has renounced that to embrace the holy will of God, and therefore, though there is a contrary law and will in him, yet he does not acknowledge it, but only the law of Christ as now established in him — that law of love, by which he is sweetly and willingly led. Real obedience consults not now in his ways with flesh and blood what will please them, but only inquires what will please his God, and knowing his mind, thus resolves to delay no more, nor to ask consent of any other — that he will do, and it is reason enough to him: my Lord wills it, therefore in his strength I will do it, for now I live to his will; it is my life to study and obey it.

Now we know what is the true character of the redeemed of Christ, that they are freed from the service of themselves and of the world — indeed dead to it, and have no life but for God, as all his.

Let this then be our study and ambition to attain this, and to grow in it, to be daily further freed from all other ways and desires, and more wholly addicted to the will of our God, displeased when we find anything else stir or move within us — but that, that he is the spring of our motion in every work.

1. Because we know his sovereign will, and most justly so, is the glory of his name, therefore not to rest till this be set up in our view as our end in all, and to count all our plausible doings as hateful (as indeed they are) that are not aimed at this end — indeed endeavoring to have it as much frequent and express before us as we can attain, still our eye on the mark, throwing away, indeed undoing our own interest, not seeking ourselves in anything but him in all.

2. As living to his will in the end of all, so in all the way to every step of it. For we cannot attain his end but in his way, nor can we intend it without a resignation of the way to his direction, taking all our directions from him, how we shall honor him in all. The soul that lives to him has enough not only to make anything warrantable but admirable, to seek his will, and not only does it, but delights to do it — that is to live to him, to find it our life; as we speak of a work in which men do most, and with most delight employ themselves. In that such a lust be crucified: is it your will, Lord? then no more advising, no more delay, however dear that was when I lived to it, it is now as hateful — seeing I live to you, who hate it. Will you have me forget an injury though a great one, and love the person that has wronged me? While I lived to myself and my passions this had been hard. But now how sweet is it, seeing I live to you, and am glad to be put upon things most opposite to my corrupt heart, glad to trample upon my own will, to follow yours; and this I daily aspire to and aim at, to have no will of my own, but that yours be in me, that I may live to you, as one with you, and you my rule and delight. Indeed, not to use the very natural comforts of my life but for you, to eat, and drink, and sleep for you, and not to please myself but to be enabled to serve and please you, to make one offering of myself and all my actions to you my Lord.

Oh! it is the only sweet life to be living thus, and daily learning to live more fully thus — it is heaven this, a little portion of it here, and a pledge of whole heaven; this is indeed the life of Christ, not only like his, but one with his; it is his Spirit, his life derived into the soul. And therefore both the most excellent and certainly most permanent, for he dies no more, and therefore this his life cannot be extinguished — hence is the perseverance of the saints: because being one life with Christ, alive to God, one for all forever.

True, the former custom of sin would plead old possession against grace, and this the Apostle implies here — that because formerly we lived to our lusts, they will urge that — but he teaches us to beat it directly back on them, and turn the edge of it as most strong reason against them: true, you had so long a time of us, the more is our sorrow and shame, and the more reason that it be no longer so.

The rest of this time in the flesh — that is, in this body — not to be spent as the foregoing, in living to the flesh, that is the corrupt lusts of it, and the common ways of the world; but as often as he looks back on that to find it as a spur in his side, to be the more earnest and more wholly busied in living much to God, having lived so long contrary to him. In living to the flesh, the past may suffice. There is a litotes in that, meaning much more than he expresses: it is enough — oh, too much — to have lived so long so miserable a life.

Now says the Christian, Oh! corrupt lusts and deluding world! look for no more, I have served you too long, the rest, whatever it is, must be to my Lord, to live to him by whom I live: and ashamed and grieved I am, I was so long in beginning; so much past, it may be the most of my short race past before I took notice of God or looked towards him. Oh! how have I lost, and worse than lost all my by-past days? Now had I the advantages and abilities of many men, and were I to live many ages, all should be to live to my God, and honor him; and what strength I have, and what time I shall have, through his grace, shall be wholly his. And when any Christian has thus resolved, that his intended life being so imperfect, and the time so short, the poorness of the offer would break his heart; were there not an eternity before him, wherein he shall live to his God and in him without blemish and without end.

Spiritual things once being discerned by a spiritual light, the whole soul is carried after them, and the ways of holiness are never truly sweet, till they be thoroughly embraced, and a full renouncement of all that is contrary to them.

All their former ways of wandering from God, are very hateful to a Christian, that is indeed returned, and brought home: and those most of all hateful, wherein they have most wandered and most delighted. A sight of Christ gains the heart, makes it break from all entanglements of its own lusts, and of the profane world about it. And these are the two things the Apostle here aims at, exhorting Christians to the study of newness of life, and showing the necessity of it. That they cannot be Christians without it; he opposes their new estate and engagement to the old customs of their former condition, and to the continuing custom and conceit of the ungodly world, that against both they maintain that rank and dignity to which now they are called, and in a holy disdain of both, walk as the redeemed of the Lord. Their own former custom he speaks to, verses 2 and 3, and to the custom and opinion of the world, verse 4, and both these will set strong upon a man, especially while he is yet weak and newly entered into that new estate.

1. His old acquaintance, his wonted lusts will not fail to bestir themselves to accuse him in their most obliging familiar way, and represent their long continued friendship; but the Christian following the principles of his new being, will not entertain any long discourse with them, but cut them short, tell them that the change he has made, he avows and finds, it so happy, that these former delights may put off hopes of regaining him. No, though they dress themselves in their best array, and put on all their ornaments, and say as that known word of that courtesan, I am the same I was, the Christian will answer as he did, I am not the same I was. And not only thus will he turn off the plea of former acquaintance that sin makes, but turn it back upon it, as in his present thoughts making much against it; the longer I was so deluded, the more reason now that I be wiser, the more time so misspent; the more pressing necessity of redeeming it. Oh! I have too long lived in that vile slavery, all was but husks I fed on; I was laying out my money for that which was no bread, and my labor for that which satisfied not. Now I am on the pursuit of a good that I am sure will satisfy, will fill the largest desires of my soul, and shall I be sparing and slack, or shall anything call me off from it. Let it not be, I that took so much pains early and late to serve and sacrifice to so base a God; shall I not now live more to my new Lord, the living God, and sacrifice my time and strength, and my whole self to him?

And this is still the regret of the sensible Christian, that he cannot attain to that unwearied diligence, and that strong bent of affection in seeking communion with God, and living to him, that sometimes he had for the service of sin, wonders that it should be thus with him, not to equal, that which it were, so reasonable that he should so far exceed.

It is beyond expression, a thing to be lamented, that so small a number of men regard God the author of their being, and live not to him in whom they live; returning that being and life they have, and all their enjoyments as is due to him, from whom they all flow; and then how pitiful is it, that the small number that is thus minded, minds it so remissly and coldly; and is so far outstripped by the children of this world, that they follow painted follies and lies with more eagerness and industry, than the children of wisdom do that certain and solid blessedness that they seek after. Strange that men should do so much violence one to another, and to themselves in body and mind for trifles and chaff: and so little to be found of that allowed and commanded violence for a kingdom, and such a kingdom that cannot be shaken, a word too high for all the monarchies on this side of the sun.

And should not our diligence and violence in this so worthy a design be so much the greater, the later we begin to it. They tell it of Caesar, that when he passed into Spain, meeting there with Alexander's statue it occasioned that he wept, considering that he was up so much more early, having performed so many conquests in those years, wherein he thought he had done nothing, and was but yet a beginning. Truly it will be a sad thought to a really renewed mind to look back on the flower of youth and strength as lost in vanity, if not in gross profaneness, yet in self-serving and self-pleasing, and in ignorance and neglect of God. And perceiving their short day so far spent ere they set out, will account years precious, and make the more haste, and desire with holy David, enlarged hearts to run the way of God's commandments; will study to live much in a little time; having lived all the past time to no purpose, none now to spare upon the lusts and ways of the flesh, and vain societies and visits; indeed, will be rescuing all they can from their very necessary affairs, for that which is more necessary than all other necessities, that one thing needful, to learn the will of our God, and live to it; this is our business, our high calling, the main and excellent of all our employments.

Not that we are to cast off our particular callings, our due diligence in them: for that will prove a snare, and involve a person in things more opposed to godliness. But certainly this living to God requires, 1. A fit measuring of your own ability for affairs, and as far as you can choose, fitting your load to your shoulders, not surcharging yourself with it; an overburden of businesses, either by the greatness or multitude of them, will not fail to entangle you and depress your mind, and will hold it so down that you shall not find it possible to walk upright and look upwards with that freedom and frequency that becomes heirs of Heaven.

2. The measure of your affairs being adapted, look to your affection in them, that it be regulated too; your heart may be engaged in your little business as much, if you watch it not — a man may drown in a little brook or pool as well as in a great river, if he be down and plunge himself into it, and put his head under water. Some care you must have that you may not care; these things that are thorns indeed, you must make a hedge of them, to keep out those temptations that accompany sloth, and extreme want that waits on it: but let them be the hedge; suffer them not to grow within the garden. Though they increase, set not your heart on them, nor them in your heart. That place is due to another; is made to be the garden of your beloved Lord, made for the best plants and flowers: and there they ought to grow — the love of God, and faith, and meekness, and the other fragrant graces of the Spirit. And know that this is no common nor easy matter to keep the heart disengaged in the midst of affairs, that still it be reserved for him whose right it is.

3. Not only labor to keep your mind spiritual in itself, but by it, put a spiritual stamp even upon your temporal employments: and so you shall live to God not only without prejudice of your calling, but even in it, and shall converse with him in your shop, or in the field, or in your journey, doing all in obedience to him and offering all, and yourself withal as a sacrifice to him: you still with him, and he still with you in all. This is to live to the will of God indeed, to follow his direction, and intend his glory in all: thus the wife in the very exercise of her house, and the husband in his affairs abroad, may be living to God — raising their low employments to a high quality this way: Lord, even this mean work I do for you, complying with your will who has put me in this station, and given me this task; your will be done. Lord, I offer up even this work to you; accept of me and of my desire to obey you. In all, and as in their work, so in their refreshments, and rest, all for him — whether you eat or drink, doing all for this reason, because it is his will and for this end, that he may have glory, bending the use of all our strength and all his mercies that way, setting this mark on all our designs and ways: this for the glory of my God, and this further for his glory, so from one thing to another throughout our life. This is the art of keeping the heart spiritual in all affairs, yes, of spiritualizing the affairs themselves in their use, that in themselves are earthly. This is the elixir that turns lower metal into gold, the mean actions of this life in a Christian's hands into obedience and holy offering to God.

And were we acquainted with the way of intermixing holy thoughts, ejaculatory eyings of God, in our ordinary ways, it would keep the heart in a sweet temper all the day long, and have an excellent influence into all our ordinary actions and holy performances, at those times when we apply ourselves solemnly to them; our hearts would be near them, not so far off to seek, and call in, as usually they are through the neglect of this. This were to walk with God indeed, to go all the day long as in our Father's hand, whereas without this our praying morning and evening looks but as a formal visit, not delighting in that constant converse which yet is our happiness, and honor, and makes all estates sweet. This would refresh us in the hardest labor, as they that carry the spices from Arabia are refreshed with the smell of them in their journey, and some observe, that it keeps their strength and frees them from fainting.

If you would then live to God indeed, be not satisfied without the constant regard of him, and whoever has attained most of it, study it yet more to set the Lord always before you, as David professes — and then shall you have that comfort that he adds: He shall be still at your right hand, that you shall not be moved.

And you that are yet to begin to this, think what his patience is, that after you have slighted so many calls, you may yet begin to seek him, and live to him; and then consider if you still despise all this goodness, how soon it may be otherwise, you may be past the reach of this call, and may not begin, but be cut off forever from the hopes of it. Oh, how sad an estate! and the more, by the remembrance of these slighted offers and invitations? Will you then yet return, you that would share in Christ? Let go these lusts to which you have hitherto lived, and embrace him, and in him there is Spirit and Life for you, he shall enable you to live this heavenly life to the will of God, his God, and your God, and his Father, and your Father. Oh! delay no longer this happy change, how soon may that puff of breath that is in your nostrils, that hears this, be extinguished? And are you willing to die in your sins, rather than that they die before you, do you think it a pain to live to the will of God? Sure it will be more pain to lie under his eternal wrath. Oh! you do not know how sweet they find it, that have tried it; or do you think I will afterwards? Who can make you sure either of that afterwards, or of that will, if but afterwards? Why not now presently, without further advisement, have you not served sin long enough, may not the time past in that service serve, is it not too much? Would you only live to God as little time as may be, and think the dregs of your life good enough for him? What ingratitude and gross folly is this; indeed though you were sure of coming in to him, and being accepted, yet if you know him in any measure, you would not think it a privilege to defer it, but willingly choose to be free from the world and your lusts to be immediately his, and would with David, make haste and not delay to keep his righteous judgments. All the time you live without him, what a filthy wretched life is it, if life it can be called that is without him: to live to sin is to live still in a dungeon, but to live to the will of God, is to walk in liberty and light, to walk by light to light, by the beginnings of it to the fullness of it, that is in his presence.

Verses 4, 5. 4. Wherein they think it strange, that you run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you. 5. Who shall give account to him that is ready, to judge the quick and the dead.

Grace until it reach home and end in glory, is still in conflict, a restless party within and without, the whole world against it; it is a stranger here, and is accounted and used so, they think it strange that you run not with them, and they speak evil of you, these wondering thoughts they vent in reproaching words.

In these two verses we have these three things: (1.) The Christian's opposite course to the world. (2.) Their opposite thoughts and speeches of this course. (3.) The supreme and final judgment of both.

1. The opposite course in that, they run to excesses of riot. 2. You run not with them.

[illegible] riot or luxury, though all natural men are not in the grossest kind guilty of this, yet they are all of them some way truly riotous or luxurious, lavishing away themselves, and their days upon the poor perishing delights of sin, each according to his own palate and humor; as all persons that are riotous in the common sense of it, gluttons or drunkards, do not love the same kind of meats or drink, but have several relishes and appetites; yet agree in the nature of the sin, so the notion enlarged after that same manner to the different custom of corrupt nature, takes in all the ways of sin; some glutting in, and continually drunk with pleasures and carnal enjoyments, others with the cares of this life, which our Savior reckons with surfeiting and drunkenness as being a kind of it, and surcharging the heart as they do, as there he expresses it, take heed to yourselves lest at any time your hearts be overcharged with surfeiting and drunkenness, and cares of this life (Luke 21:34). Whatever it is that draws away the heart from God, that, however plausible, does debauch and destroy us; we spend and undo ourselves upon it as the word [illegible] signifies, making havoc of all. And the other word [illegible] profusion and dissolute lavishing, pouring out the affections upon vanity; it is scattered and defiled as water spilt on the ground that cannot be cleansed, nor gathered up again, and it passes all our skill and strength indeed to recover and recollect our hearts for God; only he can do it for himself, he that made it can gather it, and cleanse it, and make it new, and unite it to himself. Oh! what a scattered broken unstable thing is the carnal heart, till it be changed; falling in love with every gay folly it meets with, and running out to rest profusely upon things like its vain self, that suit and agree with it, and serve its lusts, can dream and muse upon these long enough, anything that feeds the earthliness or pride of it, can be prodigal of hours, and let out floods of thoughts where a little is too much, but bounded and pinched where all are too little; has not one fixed thought in a whole day to spare for God.

And truly this running out of the heart is a continual drunkenness and madness, is not capable of reason, will not be stopped in its current by any persuasion; it is mad upon its idols, as the prophet speaks. You may as well speak to a river in its course and bid it stay, as speak to an impenitent sinner in the course of his iniquity; and all the other means you can use, is but as the putting of your finger to a rapid stream to stay it; but there is a hand can both stop and turn the most impetuous torrent of the heart, be it even of a king, that will least endure any other control.

Now as the ungodly world naturally moves to this profusion, with a strong and swift motion runs to it, so it runs together to it, and that makes the current both the stronger and swifter, as a number of brooks, falling into one main channel make a mighty stream; and every man naturally is in his birth and the course of his life, just as a brook, that of itself is carried to that stream of sin that is in the world, and then falling into it, is carried rapidly along with it. And if every sinner, taken apart, be so inconvertible by all created power, how much more harder a task is a public reformation, and turning a land from its course of wickedness; all that is set to dam up their way, does at the best but stay them a little, and they swell, and rise, and run over with a noise more violently than if they had not been stopped; thus we find outward restraints prove, and the very public judgments of God on us may have made a little interruption, but upon the abatement of them, the course of sin in all kinds seems to be now more fierce, as it were to regain the time lost in that constrained forbearance: so that we see the need of much prayer to entreat his powerful hand, that can turn the course of Jordan, that he would work not a temporary, but an abiding change of the course of this land, and cause many souls to look upon Jesus Christ, and flow into him; as the word is (Psalm 34:5).

This is their course, but you run not with them. The godly a small and weak company, and yet run counter to the grand torrent of the world, just against them: and there is a Spirit within them, from where that their contrary motion flows, and a Spirit strong enough to maintain it in them against all the crowd and combined course of the ungodly (1 John 4:4), greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world, as Lot in Sodom, his righteous soul not carried with them, but vexed with their ungodly doings. There is to a believer the example of Christ to set against the example of the world, and the Spirit of Christ against the spirit of the world; and these are by far the more excellent and stronger: faith looking to him and drawing virtue from him, makes the soul surmount all discouragements and oppositions, so (Hebrews 12:2), Looking to Jesus, and not only as an example worthy to oppose to all the world's examples, the saints were so, chapter 11 and chapter 12, but he more than they all. But further, he is the Author and Finisher of our faith, and so we eye him as having endured the cross, and despised the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. Not only that in doing so, we may follow him in that way, to that end as our pattern, but as head from whom we borrow our strength to follow so, the Author and Finisher of our faith. And so (1 John 5), this is our victory by which we overcome the world, even our faith.

The Spirit of God shows the believer clearly both the baseness of the ways of sin, and the wretched measure of their end. That divine light discovers the fading and false blush of the pleasures of sin, that there is nothing under them but true deformity and rottenness, which the deluded gross world does not see, but takes the first appearance of it for true and solid beauty, and is so enamored with a painted strumpet. And as he sees the vileness of that love of sin, he sees the final unhappiness of it, that her ways lead down to the chambers of death. Methinks a believer is as one standing upon a high tower, that sees the way wherein the world runs in a valley, in an unavoidable precipice, a steep edge hanging over the bottomless pit where all that are not reclaimed fall over before they be aware; this they in their low way perceive not, and therefore walk and run on in the smooth pleasures, and ease of it towards their perdition: but he that sees the end will not run with them.

And as he has by that light of the Spirit this clear reason of thinking on and taking another course; so by that Spirit he has a very natural bent to a contrary motion, that he cannot be one with them; that Spirit moves him upwards from where it came, and makes that, in so far as he is renewed, his natural motion; though he has a clog of flesh that cleaves to him, and so breeds him some difficulty, yet in the strength of that new nature he overcomes it and goes on, till he attain his end, where all the difficulty in the way presently is over rewarded and forgotten; that makes amends for every weary step; that every one of these that walk in that way, does appear in Zion before God.

The Christian and the carnal men are each most wonderful to another. The one wonders to see the other walk so strictly, and deny himself to these carnal liberties that the most take, and take for so necessary, that they think they could not live without them. And the Christian thinks it strange that men should be so bewitched, and still remain children in the vanity of their turmoil, wearying and humouring themselves from morning to night, running after stories and fancies, ever busy doing nothing, wonders that the delights of earth and sin can so long entertain and please men, and persuade them to give Jesus Christ so many refuses, to turn from their life and happiness; choose to be miserable, indeed, take much pains to make themselves miserable. He knows the depravedness and blindness of nature in this; knows it by himself that once he was so, and therefore wonders not so much at them as they do at him; yet the unreasonableness and frenzy of that course now appears to him, he cannot but wonder at these woeful mistakes. But the ungodly wonder far more at him, not knowing the inward cause of his different choice and way: the believer, as we said, is upon the hill, he is going up, looks back on them in the valley, and sees their way tending to and ending in death, and calls to them to retire from it as loud as he can, tells them the danger, but either they hear not, nor understand not this language, or will not believe him; finding present ease and delight in their way; will not consider and suspect the end of it; but they judge him the fool that will not share with them, and take that way where such multitudes go, and with such ease, and some of them with their train, and horses, and coaches, and all their pomp: and he and a few straggling poor creatures like him climbing up a craggy steep hill, and will by no means come off from that way, and partake of theirs, not knowing or not believing that at the top of that hill he climbs is that happy glorious city, the new Jerusalem, of which he is a citizen, and to where he is tending, that he knows their end both of their way and his own, and therefore would reclaim them if he could, but will by no means return to them, as the Lord commanded the Prophet.

The world thinks strange that a Christian can spend so much time in secret prayer, not knowing nor being able to esteem the sweetness of communion with God, which he attains that way; indeed, while [reconstructed: he] feels it not, how sweet it is beyond the world's enjoyments to be but seeking after it, and waiting for it. Oh! the delight that is in the bitterest exercise of repentance — the very tears, much more the succeeding harvest of joy. It's strange to a carnal man to see the child of God disdain the pleasures of sin, not knowing the higher and purer delights and pleasures that he is called to, and has it may be some part in present; but however the fullness of them in assured hope.

The strangeness of the world's way to the Christian, and his to it, though that is somewhat unnatural, yet affects them very differently. He looks on the deluded sinners with pity, they on him with hate. Their part, which is here expressed, of wondering, breaks out in reviling, they speak evil of you; and what's their voice? What mean these precise fools, will they readily say: what course is this they take contrary to all the world? Will they make a new religion, and condemn all their honest civil neighbours that are not like them? Ay forsooth, all go to Hell, think you, except you, and those that follow your guise; no more than good-fellowship and liberty, and as for so much reading and praying, these are but brain-sick melancholy conceits, and man may go to Heaven neighbour-like without all this ado. Thus they let fly at their pleasure: But this troubles not the composed Christian's mind at all; while curs snarl and bark about him, the sober traveller goes on his way and regards them not; he that is acquainted with the way of holiness, can endure more than the counter-blasts and airs of scoffs and revilings; he accounts them his glory and his riches: So Moses esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt. And besides many other things to animate this that is here expressed, Oh! how full is it, They shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead. And this in readiness, [illegible] has the day set, and it shall surely come, though you think it far off.

Though the wicked themselves forget them, and the Christian slight them, and let them pass; they pass not so, they are all registered, and the great court-day shall call them to account for all these riots and excesses, and moreover, for all their reproaches of the godly that would not run with them in these ways. Tremble then you despisers and mockers of holiness, though you come not near it. What will you do when these you reviled shall appear glorious in your sight, and their King, the King of saints here much more glorious, and his glory their joy, and all terror to you? Oh! then all faces that could look out disdainfully upon religion and the professors of it, shall gather blackness and be bathed with shame, and the more the despised saints of God shall shout for joy.

You that would rejoice then in the appearing of that holy Lord and Judge of the world, let your way be now in holiness; avoid and hate the common ways of the wicked world: they live in their foolish opinion, and that shall quickly end: But the sentence of that day shall stand for ever.

Verse 6. 6. For, for this cause was the Gospel preached also to them that are dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the Spirit.

It is a thing of prime concernment for a Christian to be rightly informed, and frequently remembered, what is the true estate and nature of a Christian, for this the multitude of those that bear that name, either knows not, or commonly forgets, and so is carried away with the vain fancies and mistakes of the world. The Apostle has characterized Christianity very clearly to us in this place, by that which is the very nature of it, conformity with Christ, and that which is necessarily consequent upon that, disconformity with the world. And as the nature, and natural properties of things hold universally, thus it is in those that in all ages are effectually called by the gospel, are molded and framed thus by it; thus it was, says the Apostle, with your brethren, that are now at rest, as many as received the gospel, and for this end was it preached to them, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the Spirit.

We have first here, the preaching of the gospel, or suitable means to a certain end. 2. The express nature of that end.

1. For this Cause] There is a particular end, and that very important, which the preaching of the gospel is aimed at; this end many consider not, hearing it, as if it were to no end, not propounding a fixed determined end in our hearing. This therefore is to be considered by those that preach this gospel, that they aim right in it at this end and no other, no self end: The legal priests not to be squint eyed, nor evangelical ministers thus squinting to base gain, vain applause; and also that they make it their study to find in themselves this work, this living to God; otherwise they cannot skillfully nor faithfully apply their gifts to this effect on their hearers, and therefore acquaintance with God most necessary.

How sounds it to many of us at the least, but as a well couched story, whose use is to amuse us, and possibly delight us a little, and there is an end, and indeed no end, and turns the most serious and most glorious of all messages to an empty sound; and if we awake and give it hearing it is much, but for any thing further, how few deeply before hand consider, I have a dead heart, therefore will I go to the word of life, that it may be quickened; it is frozen, I will go and lay it before the warm beams of that sun that shines in the gospel; my corruptions mighty and strong, and grace (if any) exceeding weak, there is in the gospel a power to weaken and to kill sin, and to strengthen grace, and this being the intent of my wise God in appointing it, it shall be my desire and purpose in resorting to it, to find it to me according to his gracious intendment, to have faith in my Christ, the fountain of my life, more enabled, and more active in drawing from him; to have my heart more refined and spiritualized, and to have the sluice of repentance opened, and my affections to divine things enlarged, more hatred of sin, and more love of God, and communion with him.

Ask your selves concerning former times, and to take your selves even now, enquire within, why came I here this day? What had I in my eye and desires this morning ere I came forth, and in my way as I was coming? Did I seriously propound an end or no, and what was my end? Nor does the mere custom of mentioning this in prayer satisfy the question; for this, as other such things usually do in our hand, may turn to a lifeless form and have no heat of spiritual affection; none of David's panting and breathing after God in his ordinances: such desires as will not be stilled without a measure of attainment, as the child's desire of the breast; as our Apostle resembles it, chapter 2.

And then again, being returned home, reflect on your hearts, much has been heard, but is there any thing done by it, have I gained my point? It was not to pass a little time simply that I went, or to pass it with delight in hearing, rejoicing in that light as they did in St. John Baptist's, for a season [illegible] as long as the hour lasts, it was not to have my ear pleased, but my heart changed, not to learn some new notions, and carry them cold in my head, but to be quickened and purified and renewed in the spirit of my mind? Is this done? Think I now more esteemingly of Christ, and the life of faith, and the happiness of a Christian? And are such thoughts solid and abiding with me? What sin have I left behind? What grace of the Spirit have I brought home? Or what new degree or at least new desire of it, a living desire that will follow its point? Oh! this were good repetition.

A strange folly of multitudes of us to set our selves no mark, to propound no end in the hearing of the gospel. The merchant sails not only that he may sail, but for traffic, and traffics that he may be rich. The husbandman plows not only to keep himself busy with no further end, but plows that he may sow, and sows that he may reap with advantage, and shall we do the most excellent and fruitful work fruitlessly, hear only to hear, and look no further. This is indeed a great vanity, and a great misery, to lose that labour, and gain nothing by it, which duly used would be of all others most advantageous and gainful, and yet all meetings are full of this.

Now when you come, this is not simply to hear a discourse and relish or dislike it in hearing: But a matter of life and death, of eternal death and eternal life, and the spiritual life, begot and nourished by the word, is the beginning of that eternal life. Follows,

To them that are dead.] By which, I conceive, he intends such as had heard and believed the Gospel, when it came to them, and now were dead. And this, I think, he does to strengthen these brethren to whom he writes, to commend the Gospel to this intent, and not to think the condition and end of it hard. As our Savior mollifies the matter of outward sufferings thus, so persecuted they the Prophets that were before you. And the Apostle afterwards in this chapter uses the same reason in that same subject: so here, that they might not judge the point of mortification he presses, so grievous as naturally men will do, he tells them it is the constant end of the Gospel, and they that have been saved by it, went that same way he points out to them. They that are dead before you, died this way that I press on you, before they died, and the Gospel was preached to them for that very end.

Men pass away and others succeed, but the Gospel is still the same, has the same tenor, and substance, and the same ends. As Solomon speaks of the heavens, and earth, that remain the same while one generation passes and another comes; the Gospel surpasses both in its stability, as our Savior testifies, they shall pass away but not one jot of this Word. And indeed they wear and wax old, as the Apostle teaches us; but the Gospel is from one age to another of most unalterable integrity, has still the same vigor and powerful influence, as at the first.

They that formerly received the Gospel, it was upon these terms; therefore think them not hard: and they are now dead, all the difficulty of that work of dying to sin is now over with them. If they had not died to their sins by the Gospel, they had died in them, after a while, and so died eternally; it is therefore a wise prevention, to have sin judged and put to death in us before we die. If we die in them and with them, we and our sin perish together, if we will not part, but if it die first before us then we live for ever.

And what think you, of your carnal will and all the delights of sin? What is the longest term of its life? Uncertain it is, but most certainly very short: you and these pleasures must be severed and parted within a little time, however you must die and then they die, and you never meet again. Now were it not the wisest course to part a little sooner with them, and let them die before you, that you may inherit eternal life and eternal delights in it, pleasures for evermore. It's the only bargain and let us delay it no longer.

This is our season of enjoying the sweetness of the Gospel, others heard it before us in our rooms that now we fill, and now they are removed, and remove we must shortly, and leave this same room to others, to speak and hear in. It is high time we were considering what we do here, to what end we speak and hear, and to lay hold on that salvation that is held forth to us; and that we lay hold on it, let go our hold of sin, and those perishing things that we hold so firm and cleave so fast to. Do they that are dead who heard and obeyed the Gospel now repent their repentance, and mortifying the flesh, or do they not think ten thousand times more pains, were it for many ages, all too little for a moment of that which now they enjoy and shall enjoy to eternity. And they that are dead who heard the Gospel and slighted it, if such a thing might be, what would they give for one of these opportunities that now we daily have, and daily lose, and have no fruit nor esteem of them. You have lately seen many of you, and you that shifted the sight, have heard of numbers cut off in a little time, whole families swept away by the late stroke of God's hand; many of which did think no other but that they might have still been with you here in this place, and exercise at this time and many years after this. And yet who has laid to heart the lengthening out of their day, and considered it more as an opportunity of that higher and happier life, than as a little protracting of this wretched life which is hastening to an end. Oh! therefore be entreated today, while it is day, not to harden your hearts: though the Pestilence does not now affright you so, yet that standing mortality, and the decay of these earthen lodges, tells us that shortly we shall cease to preach and hear this Gospel. Did we consider, it would excite us to more earnest search after our evidences of that eternal life that is set before us in the Gospel, and we would seek it in the characters of that spiritual life, which is the beginning of it within us, and is wrought by the Gospel in all the heirs of salvation.

Think therefore wisely of these things. (1.) What's the proper end of the Gospel. (2.) Of the approaching end of your days, and let your certainty of this drive you to seek more certainty of the other, that you may partake of it, and then this again will make the thoughts of the other sweet to you. That visage of death, that is so terrible to unchanged sinners, shall be amiable to your eye, having found a Life in the Gospel as happy and lasting as this is miserable and vanishing, and seeing the perfection of that life on the other side of death, will long for the passage.

Be more serious in this matter of daily hearing the Gospel, why it is sent to you, and what it brings, and think, it is too long I have [reconstructed: slighted] its message, and many that have done so, are cut off, and shall hear it no more. I have it once more inviting me, and it may be this may be the last to me, and in these thoughts ere you come, bow your knee to the Father of Spirits, that this one thing may be granted you, that your souls may find at length the lively and mighty power of his Spirit upon yours, in the hearing of this Gospel, that you may be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the Spirit.

Thus is the particular nature of that end expressed and without the noise of various senses, intends, I conceive, no other, but the dying to the world and sin, and living to God, which is the Apostle's main subject, and scope in the foregoing discourse, that death was before called a suffering in the flesh, which is in effect the same: and therefore though the words may be drawn another way, yet it's strange that interpreters have been so far wide of this their genuine and agreeable sense, and almost all of them taken in some other intendment.

To be judged in the flesh] In the present sense is to die to sin, or that sin die in us, and it's thus expressed. 1. Suitably [reconstructed: to] the nature of it, it is to the flesh, a violent death, and it is according to a sentence judicially put against it, that guilty and miserable life of sin is in the Gospel adjudged to death, there that arrest and sentence is clear and full (Romans 6:6, etc.; Romans 8:13). That sin must die, that the soul may live, it must be crucified in us, and we to it, that we may partake of the life of Christ and happiness in him. And this is called to be judged in the flesh, to have this sentence executed. 2. The thing is the rather spoken here under the term of being judged, in counterbalance of that judgment mentioned immediately before, verse 5. The last judgment, of quick and dead, wherein they that would not be thus judged, but mocked and despised those that were, shall fall under a far more terrible judgment, and the sentence of a heavy death, indeed everlasting death: though they think they shall escape and enjoy liberty in living in sin. And that, to be judged according to men; is, I conceive, added, to signify the connaturalness of the life of sin to man's now corrupt nature. That men do judge it a death indeed to be severed and pulled from their sins, and that a cruel death; and the sentence of it in the Gospel a heavy sentence, a hard saying to a carnal heart, that he must give up with all his sinful delights, must die indeed in self-denial, must be separated from himself, which is to die, if he will be joined with Christ, and live in him. Thus men judge that they are judged to a painful death by the sentence of the Gospel, although it is, that they may truly and happily live, yet they understand it not so. They see the death, the parting with sin, and all its pleasures: but the life they see not, nor can any know it till partaking of it; it is known to him in whom it is, it is hid with Christ in God: and therefore the opposition here is very [reconstructed: fitly] thus represented, that the death is according to men in the flesh; but the life is according to God in the Spirit.

As the Christian is adjudged to this death in the flesh by the Gospel, so he is looked on and accounted by carnal men as dead: for that he enjoys not with them what they esteem their life, and think they could not live without it, one that cannot carouse and swear with profane men, is a silly dead creature, good for nothing; and he that can bear wrongs, and love him that injured him, is a poor spiritless fool, has no mettle nor life in him in the world's account, thus is he judged according to men in the flesh, he is as a dead man, but lives according to God in the Spirit, dead to men and alive to God, as verse 2.

Now if this life be in you, it will act: all life is in motion, and is called an act; but most of all active is this most excellent, and, as I may call it, most lively life, it will be moving towards God; often seeking to him, making still towards him as its principle and fountain, holy and affectionate thoughts of him: sometimes on one of his sweet attributes, sometimes on another, as the bee among the flowers. And as it will thus act within, so outwardly laying hold on all occasions: indeed, seeking out ways and opportunities to be serviceable to your Lord, employing all for him, commending and extolling his goodness, doing and suffering cheerfully for him, laying out the strength of desires, and parts, and means in your station to gain him glory. If you be alone, then not alone, but with him; seeking to know more of him, and be made more like him; if in company, then casting about how to bring his name in esteem, and to draw others to a love of religion and holiness by speeches as it may be [reconstructed: fit], and most by the true behavior of your carriage. Tender over the souls of others to do them good to your utmost, thinking each day an hour lost when you are not busy for the honor and advantage of him to whom you now live: thinking in the morning, now what may I do this day for my God? How may I most please and glorify him, and use my strength and wit, and my whole self as not mine but his? And then in the evening, reflecting, O Lord, have I seconded these thoughts in reality? What glory has he had by me this day? Where went my thoughts and endeavors? What busied them most? Have I been much with God? Have I adorned the Gospel in my conversation with others? And if finding anything done this way, to bless and acknowledge him the spring and worker of it. If any step aside, were it but to an appearance of evil, or if any fit season of good has escaped you unprofitably, to check yourself, and to be grieved for your sloth and coldness, and see if more love would not beget more diligence.

Try it by sympathy and antipathy, which follows the nature of things, as we see in some plants and creatures that cannot grow, cannot agree together, and others that do favor and benefit mutually. If your soul has an aversion and reluctance against holiness, this is an evidence of this new nature and life. Your heart rises against wicked ways and speeches, oaths and cursings, and rotten communication; indeed, you cannot endure unworthy discourses wherein most spend their time, find no relish in the unsavory societies of such as know not God, cannot sit with vain persons; but find a delight in those that have the image of God upon them, such as partake of that divine life, and carry the evidences of it in their conduct. David did not disdain the fellowship of the saints, and that was no disparagement to him, he implies in the name he gives them, Psalm 16 — the excellent ones, the Magnificent or Noble; and that word is taken from one that signifies a robe or noble garment, so he thought them nobles and kings as well as he, and had robes royal, and therefore companions of kings. A spiritual eye looks on spiritual dignity, and esteems and loves them that are born of God, however low their natural birth and breeding. The sons of God have of his Spirit in them, and are born to the same inheritance where all shall have enough; and they are tending homewards by the conduct of the same Spirit that is in them, so that there must be among them a real complacency and delight in one another.

And then consider the temper of your heart towards spiritual things, the Word and ordinances of God, if you do esteem highly of them and delight in them; that there is a compliance of your heart with divine truths; something in you that suits and sides with them against your corruptions. That in your affliction you seek not to the puddles of earthly comforts, but have your recourse to the sweet crystal streams of the divine promises, and find refreshment in them. It may be at sometimes in a spiritual distemper, holy exercises and ordinances will not have that present sensible sweetness to a Christian, that he desires, and some will for a long time lie under dryness and deadness this way, yet there is here an evidence of this spiritual life, that you stay by your Lord and rely on him; and will not leave these holy means however sapless to your sense for the present: you find for a long time little sweetness in prayer, yet you pray still; and when you can say nothing yet offer yourself to it, and look towards Christ your life; you do not turn away from these things to seek consolation elsewhere, knowing life is in Christ, and will stay till he refreshes you with new and lively influence — it is not anywhere but in him. As Saint Peter said, Lord, where should we go, you have the words of eternal life.

Consider yourself, if you have any knowledge of the growth or deficiencies of this spiritual life, for it is here but begun and breathes in an air contrary to it, and lodges in a house that often smokes and darkens it. Can you go on in formal performances from one year to another, and no advancement in the inward parts of grace, and rest content with that? — it is no good sign. But are you either gaining victories over sin, and further strength of faith, and love, and other graces, or at least are earnest in seeking these, and bewailing your wants, and disappointments of this kind — then you live. At the worst, would you rather grow this way, be further off from sin and nearer God, than grow in your estate or credit or honors? Do you esteem more of grace than of the whole world? There is life at the root; although you find not that flourishing you desire, yet the desire of it is life in you: and if growing this way, are you content, whatever your outward estate? Can you solace yourself in the love and goodness of your God, though the world frowns on you? Are you not able to take comfort in the smiles of the world when his face is hidden? This tells you that you live, and he is your life.

Although many Christians have not so much sensible joy, yet they account spiritual joy and the light of God's countenance the only true joy, and all other without it madness, and they cry, and sigh, and attend for it; meanwhile not only duty, and hopes of better, but even love to God, makes them to be so, to serve and please and glorify him to their utmost. And this is not a dead resting without God, but it is a stable compliance with his will in the highest point, waiting for him and living by faith, which is most acceptable to him; in a word, whether in sensible comfort or without it, still this is the fixed thought of a believing soul — it is good for me to draw near to God, only good; and it will not live in a willing estrangement from him, whatever way he is pleased to deal with [illegible]

Now for the entertaining and strengthening this life, which is the great business, and care of all that have it, beware of omitting and interrupting these spiritual means, that do provide it and nourish it. Little neglects of that kind will draw on greater, and great neglects will make great abatements of vigor and liveliness. Take heed of using holy things coldly, and lazily without affection; that will make them fruitless and our life will not be advanced by them, unless used in a lively way. Be active in all good within your reach, as this is a sign, so it is a helper and friend to it. A slothful, unstirring life will make a sickly, unhealthful life. Motion purifies and sharpens the spirits, and makes men robust and vigorous.

2. Beware of admitting a correspondence with any sin, indeed do not so much as discourse familiarly with it, or look kindly toward it, for that will undoubtedly cast a damp upon your spirit, and diminish your graces at least, and will obstruct your communion with God; you know (you who have any knowledge of this life) that you cannot go to him with that sweet freedom you were accustomed to, after you have been but tampering or parleying with any of your old loves. Oh! do not make so foolish a bargain as to forfeit the least of your spiritual comfort, for the greatest and longest continued enjoyments of sin, that are base, and but for a season.

But would you grow upwards in this life? Have much recourse to Jesus Christ your head, the spring from whom flow the vital spirits, that quicken your soul. Would you know more of God? He it is that reveals the Father, and reveals him as his Father, and in him your Father, and that is the sweet notion of God. Would you overcome your lusts further? Our victory is in him; apply his conquest: we are more than conquerors, through him that loved us. Would you be more replenished with graces, and spiritual affections? His fullness is for that use open to us, life and more life in him, and for us — this was his business here, he came that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly.

Verse 7. But the end of all things is at hand; be therefore sober, and watch in prayer.

The heart of a real Christian is really taken off from the world and set heavenwards: yet there is still in this flesh, so much of the flesh hanging to it, as will readily poise all downwards, unless it be often wound up, and remembered of these things, that will raise it still to further spiritualness. This the Apostle does in this epistle, and particularly in these words.

In them three things are to be considered. 1. A threefold duty recommended. 2. Their mutual relation, that binds them to one another. 3. The reason here used to bind them upon a Christian.

And of the three the last is evidently the chief, and here so meant, the other being recommended as suiting it, and subserving to it — prayer: therefore I shall speak first of it.

And truly, to speak, and to hear of it often, were our hearts truly and entirely acquainted with it, would have still new sweetness and usefulness in it. Oh! how great were the advantage of that lively knowledge of it, beyond the exactest defining of it, and a discoursing knowledge, and of the heads of doctrine that concern it.

Prayer is not a smooth expression, or a well-contrived form of words, not the product of a ready memory, nor rich invention, acting itself in the performance; these may draw a neat picture of it, but still the life is wanting. The motion of the heart Godwards, holy and divine affection, makes prayer real, and lively, and acceptable to the living God, to whom it is presented; the pouring out of your heart to him that made it, and therefore hears it, and understands what it speaks, and how it is moved and affected in calling on him. It is not the gilded paper, and good writing of a petition that prevails with a man: but the moving sense of it, and to the King that discerns the heart, heart-sense is the sense of all, and that which he alone regards, listens to what that speaks, and takes all as nothing where that is silent. All other excellence in prayer is but the outside and fashion of it; that is the life of it.

Though prayer precisely taken is only petition; yet in its fuller and usual sense, it comprises the vent of our humble sense of vileness and sin, in the sincere confession, and the extolling withal, and praising the holy name of our God; his excellency and goodness, and thankful acknowledgment of received mercies. Of these sweet ingredient perfumes is the incense of prayer composed, and by the divine fire of love ascends to God; the heart, and all with it: and when the hearts of the saints unite in joint prayer, the pillar of sweet smoke goes up the greater and fuller. Thus says that Song of the Spouse, going up from the wilderness, as pillars of smoke perfumed with myrrh and frankincense, and all the powders of the merchant: and as the word there signifies, straight pillars like the tallest, straightest kind of trees. Indeed the sincerity and unfeignedness of prayer makes it go up as a straight pillar, no crookedness in it, tending straight towards heaven, and bowing to no side by the way. Oh! the single and fixed viewing of God, as in other ways it is the thing that makes all holy and sweet, so particularly in this divine work of prayer.

It is true we have to deal with a God, who of himself needs not this our pains either to inform, or excite him; he fully knows our thoughts before we express them, and our wants before we feel them, or think of them. Nor does his affection and gracious bent to do his children good become remiss, or admit the least [reconstructed: abatement] and forgetfulness of them.

But instead of necessity on God's part which cannot be imagined, we shall find that equity, and that singular dignity, and utility of it on our part which cannot be denied.

1. Equity, that thus the creature signifies his homage to, and dependance on his Creator, for his being, and well-being; takes all the good he enjoys, or expects from that sovereign good, declaring himself unworthy, waiting for all upon the terms of free goodness, and acknowledging all from that spring.

2. Dignity: man was made for communion with God his Maker; it is the excellency of his nature to be capable of this end, the happiness of it to be raised to enjoy it. Now in nothing more in this life is this communion actually and highly enjoyed, than in the exercise of prayer; that he may freely impart his affairs, and estate, and wants to God as the most faithful and most powerful friend, the richest and most loving Father, may use the liberty of a child, telling his Father what he stands in need of, and desires; and communing with him with humble confidence, admitted to so frequent presence with so great a King.

3. The utility of it. First, easing the soul in times of distress, when it is pressed with griefs and fears, giving it vent, and that in so advantageous a way, emptying them into the bosom of God. The very vent, were it but into the air, gives ease; or speak it to a statue rather than smother it, much more ease, poured forth into the lap of a confidant, and sympathizing friend, though unable to help; yet much more of one that can, and of all friends our God the surest, and most affectionate, and most powerful. So, Isaiah 63:9, both compassion and effectual salvation are expressed: In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the Angel of his presence saved them in his love, and in his pity he redeemed them, and he bore them, and carried them all the days of old. And so resting on his love, power, and gracious promises, the soul quiets itself in God upon this assurance, that it is not vain to seek him, and that he despises not the sighing of the poor.

2. The soul is more spiritually affected with its own condition by opening it up before the Lord, more deeply sensible of sin; and ashamed in his sight in confessing it before him; more dilated and enlarged to receive the mercies suited for; as the opening wide of the mouth of the soul that it may be filled; more disposed to observe the Lord in answering, and to bless him and trust on him upon the renewed experiences of his regard to their distresses and desires.

3. All the graces of the Spirit in prayer are stirred and acted, and by acting, strengthened and increased. Faith in applying the divine promises, which are the very ground that the soul goes upon to God, and hope looking out to their performance, and love particularly expressing itself, in that sweet converse and delighting in it, as love does in the company of the person loved, thinks all hours too short in speaking with him: Oh how the soul is refreshed with freedom of speech with its beloved Lord; and as it delights in that, so it is continually advanced and grows by each meeting and conference, beholding the excellency of God, and relishing the pure and sublime pleasures that is in near communion with him: looking upon the Father in the face of Christ, and using him as a mediator in prayer, as still it must, is drawn to further admiration of that bottomless love, that found that way of agreement, that new and living way of our access, when all was shut up, and we to have been shut out for ever. And then the affectionate expressions of that reflex love to find that vent in prayer, do kindle higher, as it were [reconstructed: fanned] and blown up, rise to a greater, and higher, and purer flame, and so tend upwards the more strongly. David as he does profess his love to God in prayer in his Psalms, so no doubt it grew in the expressing. I will love you, O Lord, my strength (Psalm 18) and Psalm 116 does raise an incentive of love out of this very consideration of the correspondence of prayers; I love the Lord, because he has heard, and resolves thereafter upon persistence in that course; therefore will I call upon him, as long as I live. And as the graces of the Spirit are advanced in prayer, by their actings; so for this reason further, because prayer sets the soul particularly near to God in Jesus Christ, it is then in his presence; and being much with God in this way, it is powerfully assimilated to him by converse with him; as we readily contract their habitudes with whom we resort much, especially of such as we singularly love and respect; thus the soul is moulded further to the likeness of God, is stamped with fuller characters of him, by being much with him; becomes liker God, more holy and spiritual, and brings back a bright shining from the mount, as Moses.

Fourthly, and not only thus by a natural influence does prayer work this advantage, but even by a federal efficacy; suiting, and upon suit obtaining supplies of grace, as the chief good, and besides all other needful mercies, it is a real means of receiving, whatever you shall ask, that will I do, says our Savior. God having established this intercourse, and engaged his truth and goodness in it, that if they call on him, they shall be heard and answered. If they prepare the heart to call, he will incline his ear to hear; and our Savior has assured us, that we may build upon his goodness, and the affection of a Father in him; that he will give good things to them that ask, says one Evangelist, and the Holy Spirit to them that ask it, says another; as being the good indeed, the highest of gifts, and the sum of all good things, and that which his children are most earnest supplicants for. Prayer for grace does, as it were, set the mouth of the soul to the spring, draws from Jesus Christ, and is replenished out of his fullness, thirsting after it, and drawing from it that way.

And for this reason is it, that our Savior, and from him, and according to his example, the Apostles recommend prayer so much. Watch and pray, says our Savior, and Saint Paul, pray continually. And our Apostle here particularly specifies this, as the grand means of attaining that conformity with Christ, which he presses, this is the high-way to it, be sober, and watch to prayer. He that is much in prayer, shall grow rich in grace; he shall thrive and increase most, that is busiest in this, which is our very traffic with heaven, and fetches the most precious commodities from there, he that sets oftenest out these ships of desire, makes the most voyages to that land of spices and pearls, shall be sure to improve his stock most, and have most of heaven upon earth.

But the true art of this trading is very rare; every trade has something wherein the skill of them lies; but this is deep and supernatural, is not reached by human industry; industry is to be used in it, but we must know it comes from above, the faculty of it, that spirit of prayer; without which learning, and wit, and religious breeding can do nothing. Therefore this to be our prayer often, our great suit for the Spirit of Prayer, that we may speak the language of the sons of God by the Spirit of God, which alone teaches the heart to pronounce aright those things, that the tongue of many hypocrites can articulate well to man's ear; and only the children in that right strain, that takes him, call God their Father, and cry to him as their Father; and therefore many a poor unlettered Christian, so far outstrips your school-rabbis in this faculty, because it is not effectually taught in these lower academies; they must be in God's own school, children of his house, that speak this language, men may give spiritual rules and directions in this, and such as may be useful, drawn from the word, that furnishes us with all needful precepts, but you are still to bring these into the seat of this faculty of prayer, the heart, and stamp them upon it, and so to teach it to pray, without which there is no prayer; this is the prerogative royal of him, that framed the heart of man within him.

But for advancing in this, growing more skillful in it, it is, with continual dependence on the Spirit, to be much used; praying much you shall be blessed with much faculty for it, so then you ask, what shall I do that I may learn to pray? There be things here to be considered, that are expressed as serving this end, but for present this and chiefly this, by praying you shall learn to pray, you shall both obtain more of the Spirit, and find more the cheerful working of it in prayer, when you put it often to that work, for which it is received, and wherein it is delighted; and as both advantaging all graces, and the grace of prayer itself, this frequency and abounding in prayer is here very clearly intended, in that the Apostle makes it as the main of our work that we have to do, and would keep our hearts in a constant aptness for it; be sober and watch; to what end? To prayer.

Be sober and watch.] They that have no better, must make the best they can of carnal delights: it is no wonder they take as large a share of them as they can bear, and sometimes more: But the Christian is called to a more excellent estate, and higher pleasures; so that he may behold men glutting themselves with these base things, and be as little moved to share with them, as men are taken with the pleasure a swine has in wallowing in the mire.

It becomes the heirs of heaven to be far above the love of the earth, and in the necessary use of any thing in it, still to keep both within the due measure of their use, and their heart wholly disengaged from the affection of them. This is the sobriety here exhorted.

It is true, that in the commonest sense of the word, it is very commendable, and it is fit to be so considered by a Christian, that he flee gross intemperance, as a thing most contrary to his condition, and holy calling, and wholly inconsistent with the spiritual temper of a renewed mind, and those exercises to which it is called, and its progress in its way homewards. It is a most unseemly sight to behold one, simply by outward profession a Christian, overtaken with surfeiting and drunkenness, much more, to be given to the vile custom of it: all sensual delights, the filthy lust of uncleanness go under the common name of insobriety, intemperance, and they all degrade and destroy the noble soul; are unworthy of man, much more of a Christian, and the contempt of them preserves the soul, and elevates it.

But the sobriety here recommended, though it takes in that too, yet reaches further than temperance in meat and drink. It is the spiritual temperance of a Christian mind in all earthly things; as our Savior joins these together (Luke 21:34): surfeiting and drunkenness, and cares of this life: and under the cares are all the excessive desires and delights of this life, which cannot be followed, and attended without distempered carefulness.

Many that are sober men, and of temperate diet, yet are spiritually intemperate, drunk with pride, or covetousness, or passion, drunk with self-love, and love of their pleasures and ease, with love of the world, and the things of it, which cannot consist with the love of God, as Saint John tells us: drunk with the inordinate unlawful love even of their lawful calling, and the lawful gain they pursue by it, their hearts going after it, and so reeling to and fro, never fixed on God and heavenly things; but either hurried up and down with unceasing business, or if sometimes at ease, it is, as the ease of a drunken man, not composed to better and wiser thoughts, but falling into a dead sleep, contrary to the watching here joined with sobriety.

Watch.] There is a Christian rule to be observed in the very moderating of bodily sleep, and that particularly for the interest of prayer; but watching, as sobriety here, is chiefly the spiritual circumspectness and vigilance of the mind, in a wary walking posture, that it be not surprised by the assaults or slights of Satan, by the world, nor its nearest and most deceiving enemy, the corruption that dwells within, that being so near, does most readily watch unperceived advantages, and easily circumvents us (Hebrews 12:1). The soul of a Christian being surrounded with enemies of so great, both power and wrath, and so watchful to undo it, should it not be watchful for its own safety, and live in a military vigilance continually, keeping constant watch and sentinel, and suffering nothing to pass that may carry the least suspicion of danger; to be distrustful and jealous of all the motions of his own heart, and the smilings of the world, and in relation to these, it will be a wise course to take that word as a good caveat, be watchful, and remember to mistrust. Under the garment of some harmless pleasure, or some lawful liberties, may be conveyed into your soul some thief or traitor, that will either betray you to the enemy, or at least pilfer, and steal of the most precious things you have. Do we not by experience find, how easily our foolish hearts are seduced and deceived, and so apt to deceive themselves? And by things that seem to have no evil in them, yet are drawn from the height of affection to our highest good; and from our communion with God, and study to please him, which should not be intermitted, for then it will abate, but ought still be growing.

2. Now the relation of these is clear, they are inseparably linked together, each of them assistant and helpful to the other in their nature, as they are here in the words, sobriety the friend of watchfulness, and prayer of both. Intemperance does of necessity draw on sleep; excessive eating or drinking sending up too many, and so gross vapors, surcharge the brain; and when the body is thus deadened, how unfit is it for any active employment? Thus the mind by a surcharge of delights, or desires, or cares of earth, is made so heavy, and dull, that it cannot awake, has not spiritual activeness, and clearness, that spiritual exercises, particularly prayer, do require. Indeed as bodily insobriety, full feeding, and drinking, not only for the time, indisposes to action, but by custom of it, brings the body to so gross and heavy a temper, that the very natural spirits cannot stir to and fro in it with freedom: but are clogged, and stick as the wheels of a coach in a deep miry way. Thus is it with the soul glutted with earthly things, the affections bemired with them, make it resist and inactive in spiritual things, and the motions of the spirit heavy, and obscured in it, grows carnally secure, and sleepy, prayer comes heavily off. But when the affections are soberly acted, and even in lawful things, that they have not liberty, with the reins laid on their necks, to follow the world and carnal projects and delight, when the unavoidable affairs of this life are done with a spiritual mind, a heart kept free and disengaged; then is the soul more nimble for spiritual things, for divine meditation, and prayer, it can watch and continue in these things, and spend itself in that excellent way with more alacrity.

Again, as the sobriety, and the watchful temper attending it, enables for prayer, so prayer preserves these, it winds up the soul from the earth, raises it above these things that intemperance feeds on, acquaints it with the transcending sweetness of divine comforts, the love and the loveliness of Jesus Christ, and these most powerfully wean the soul from these low creeping pleasures, that the world gapes after, and swallows with such greediness. He that is admitted to nearest intimacy with the king, and is called daily to his presence, not only in the view and company of others, but likewise in secret, will he be so mad, as to sit down and drink with the kitchen boys, or the common guards, so far below what he may enjoy? Surely no.

Prayer being our near communion with the great God, certainly it sublimates the soul, and makes it look down upon the base ways of the world with disdain, and despise the truly besotting pleasures of it. Indeed the Lord does sometime fill these souls, that converse much with him, with such beautiful delights, such inebriating sweetness, as I may call it, that it is in a happy manner drunk with those; and the more of this, the more is the soul above base intemperance in the delights of the world: as common drunkenness makes a man less than a man; this makes him more; that throws him below himself, makes him a beast; this raises him above, makes him an angel.

Would you (as sure you ought) have much faculty for prayer, and be frequent in [illegible] and find much the pure sweetness of it, then [illegible] yourselves more the muddy pleasures and sweetness of the world? If you would pray much, and with much advantage, then be sober and watch to prayer. [illegible] your hearts to long so after ease, and wealth [illegible] esteem in the world: these will make your hearts, if they mix with them, become like them, and take [illegible] quality, will make them gross, and earthly, and unable to mount up; will clog the wings of prayer, and you shall find the loss when your soul is heavy and drowsy, and falls off from delighting in God, and your communion with him. Will such things, as those you follow, be able to countervail your damage? Can they speak you peace, and uphold you in a day of darkness and distress, or may it not be such now, as will make them all a burden and vexation to you? But on the other side, the more you abate and let go of these, and come empty and hungry to God in prayer, the more room shall you have for his consolations, and therefore the more plentifully will he pour in of them, and enrich your soul with them the more, the less you take in of the other.

2. Would you have yourselves raised to, and continued and advanced in a spiritual heavenly temper, free from the surfeits of earth, and awake, and active for heaven, be incessant in prayer?

But you will say, I find nothing but heavy indisposedness in it, nothing but roving, and vanity of heart: and so, though I have used it sometime, it is still unprofitable and uncomfortable to me? Although it be so, yet hold on, give it not over; or need I say this to you, though it were referred to yourself? Would you forsake it, and leave off? Then what would you do next, for if no comfort in it, far less any for you, in any other way. If temptation should so far prevail with you, as to try intermission; either you would be forced to return to it presently, or certainly would fall into a more grievous condition, and after horrors and lashings, must at length come back to it again, or perish for ever. Therefore however it go, continue praying, strive to believe that love you cannot see: for where sight is abridged, there it is proper for faith to work: if you can do no more, lie before your Lord and look to him. Lord, here I am, you may quicken and revive me, if you will, and I trust you will, but if I must do it, I will lie at your feet; my life is in your hand, and you are goodness and mercy; while I have breath I will cry, or if I cannot cry, yet I will wait on and look to you.

One thing forget not, that the ready way to rise out of this sad, yet safe estate, is to be much in viewing the Mediator, and interposing him between the Father's view, and your soul. Some that do orthodoxly believe this to be right, yet, as often befalls us in other things of this kind, they do not so consider, and use it in their necessity, as becomes, and therefore fall short of comfort: he has declared it, no man comes to the Father but by me. However vile you may be, put yourself under his robe, and into his hand, and he will lead you into the Father, and present you acceptable and blameless: the Father shall receive you, and declare himself well pleased with you in his well beloved Son, who has covered you with his righteousness and brought you so clothed, and set you before him.

3. The third thing is the reason binding on these, The end of all things is at hand.

This is needful often to be remembered, for even believers too readily forget it, and it is very suitable to the Apostle's foregoing discourse of judgment, and to his present exhortation to sobriety, and watchfulness to prayer, even the general end of all at hand, though since the Apostle wrote this many ages are past. For (1.) the Apostles usually speak of the whole time after the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh as the last time, for that two double Chiliads of years past before it, the one before, the other under the Law, and in this third, it is conceived, shall be the end of all things. And the Apostles seem by divers expressions to have apprehended it in their days not far off. So Saint Paul (1 Thessalonians 4:17): We which are alive, and remain, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds. As not impossible, that it might come in their time, which put him upon some explication of that correction of their mistakes, in his next Epistle to them, wherein notwithstanding he seems not to assert any great tract of time to intervene, but in that time great things were first to come. (2.) However this might always have been said in respect of succeeding eternity, the whole duration of the world is not considerable, and to the eternal Lord that made it, and has appointed its period, a thousand years are as one day. We think a thousand years a great matter in respect of our short life, and more through our short sightedness, that look not through to eternal life: but what is the utmost length of time, were it millions of years to a thought of eternity. We find much room in this earth, but to the vast heavens, it is but as a point. Thus that which is but small to us, a field or little enclosure: a fly, had it skill, would divide it into [reconstructed: provinces], in proportion to itself. (3.) To each man the end of all things, is even after our measure, at hand; for when he dies, the world ends for him. Now this consideration fits the subject, and presses it strongly, seeing all things shall be quickly at an end, even the frame of heaven and earth, why should we, knowing this, and having higher hopes, lay so much out of our desires and endeavors upon these things, that are posting to ruin; it is no hard notion to be sober, and watchful to prayer, to be trading that way, and seeking higher things, very moderate in these, seeing they are of so short a date: and as in themselves and their utmost term, so more to each of us particularly who are so soon cut off, and flee away; why should our hearts cleave to those things from which we shall so quickly part, and if we will not freely part and let go, we shall be pulled away, and pulled with the more pain, the closer we cleave, and faster we are glued to them.

This the Apostle Saint Paul casts in seasonably, though many think it not seasonable at such times, when he is discoursing of a great point of our life, marriage, to work Christian minds to a holy freedom both ways, whether they use it or no, not to view it, nor anything here with the world's spectacles, that make it look so big and so fixed, but to see in the stream of time as passing by, and [reconstructed: not so great a matter], the fashion of this world passes away, as a pageant or show in a street, going through and quickly out of sight: what became of all the marriage solemnities of kings and princes of former ages, that they were so taken up with in their time? When we read of them described in history, they are as a night dream, or a day fancy, that passes through the wind, and vanishes.

Oh! foolish man that hunts such poor things, and will not be called off, till death benight him, and his great work not done, indeed, not begun; no nor seriously thought of, your buildings, your trading, your lands, your matches, and friendships, and projects when they take with you, and your hearts are after them, say, but, for how long all these? Their end is at hand; therefore be sober, and watch to prayer, learn to divide better, more hours for it, and fewer for them; your whole heart for it, and none of it for them; seeing they will fail you so quickly, prevent them, come free, lean not on them till they break, and you fall into the pit.

'Tis reported of one that hearing the 5th chapter of Genesis read, so long lives, and yet the burden still, they died, Enoch lived 905, and he died; Seth 912, and he died; Methuselah 969, and he died; took so deep the thought of death and eternity, that it changed his whole frame, and set him from a voluptuous to a most strict and pious course of life, how small a word will do much, when God sets it into the heart. But sure this one thing would make the soul more calm, and sober in the pursuit of present things; if their term were truly computed and considered. How soon shall youth, and health, and carnal delights be at an end? How soon shall statecraft, and kingcraft, and all the great projects of the highest wits and spirits be laid in the dust? This casts a damp upon all those fine things; but to a soul acquainted with God, and in affection removed hence already, no thought so sweet as this; helps much to carry it cheerfully through wrestlings and difficulties; through better and worse, they see land near, and shall quickly be at home, that's the way. The end of all things is at hand: an end of a few poor delights, and the many vexations of this wretched life; an end of temptations and sins, the worst of all evils; indeed, an end of the imperfect fashion of our best things here, an end of prayer itself, to which succeeds that new song of endless praises.

Verse 8. And above all things have fervent charity among your selves: for charity shall cover the multitude of sins.

The graces of the Spirit are an entire frame making up the new creature, and none of them can be wanting, therefore the doctrine and exhortation of the Apostles, speak of them usually, not only as inseparable, but as one. But there is among them all, none more comprehensive, than this of love: insomuch that Saint Paul calls it the fulfilling of the law; love to God the sum of all relative to him, and so likewise is it towards our brethren. Love to God is that, which makes us live to him, and be wholly his, that which most powerfully weans us from this world, and causes us delight in communion with him, in holy meditation and prayer. Now the Apostle adding here of the duty of Christians to one another, gives this the prime, indeed, the sum of all: Above all have fervent love.

Concerning this, consider, (1.) the nature of it. (2.) the eminent degree of it. (3) the excellent fruit of it.

1. It is a union, therefore called a bond or chain that links things together. 2. 'Tis not a mere external union that holds in customs, or words, or outward carriage, but a union of hearts. 3. 'Tis here not a natural, but a spiritual supernatural union; it is that mutual love of Christians as brethren. There is a common benevolence and good-will due to all; but a more particular uniting affection interchangeably one, among Christians.

The Devil being an apostate spirit, revolted and separated from God, does naturally project and work division. This was his first exploit, and still his grand design and business in the world: he first divided man from God, put them at an enmity by the first sin of our first parents, and the next we read of in their first child, was enmity against his brother, so Satan is called by our Saviour justly, a liar, and a murderer from the beginning; murdered man by lying, and made him a murderer.

And as the Devil's work is division, Christ's work is union; he came to dissolve the works of Satan by a contrary work, he came to make all friends, to recollect and reunite all men to God, and man to man; and both those unions hold in him by virtue of that marvelous union of natures in his person; and that mysterious union of the persons of believers with him as their head, so the word, Ephesians 1:10. To unite all in one head.

Thus his great project in all: this he died and suffered for, and this he prayed for, John 17, and this is strong above all ties, natural or civil, union in Christ; this they have that are indeed Christians, this they pretend to have, if they understood it, that profess themselves Christians. If natural friendship be capable of that expression one spirit in two bodies, Christian union has it much more really and properly: for there is indeed one Spirit more extensive in all the faithful; indeed, so one Spirit that it makes them up into one body more intensive: they are not so much as diverse bodies, only diverse members of one body.

Now this love of our brethren, is not another from the love of God, 'tis but the streaming forth of it, or the reflex of it: Jesus Christ sending in his Spirit into the heart, unites it to God in himself by love, which is all indeed; that loving of God supremely and entirely with all the mind and soul, all the combined strength of the heart, and then that same love, first wholly carried to him, is not divided or impaired by the love of our brethren; 'tis but dilated and derived from the other: he allows, indeed, commands, indeed, causes, that it stream forth, and act itself toward them, remaining still in him, as in its source and center, beginning at him, and returning to him, as the beams that diffuse themselves from the sun, and the light and heat, yet are not divided, or cut off from it, but remain in it; and by emanation issue from it. Loving our brethren in God, and for him, not only because he commands us to love them, and so the law of love to him ties us to it, as his will; but because that love of God does naturally extend itself thus, and acts thus, in loving our brethren after a spiritual Christian manner, we do even in that love our God.

Loving of God makes us one with God, and so gives us an impression of his divine bounty in his Spirit, and his love, the proper work of his Spirit dwelling in the heart, enlarges and dilates it, as self-love contracts and straightens it, so that as self-love is the perfect opposite to the love of God, it is likewise so to brotherly love, shuts out and undoes both; and where the love of God is rekindled, and enters the heart, it destroys and burns up self love, and so carries the affection up to himself, and in him forth to our brethren.

This is that bitter root of all enmity in man against God and among men, against one another, self — man's heart turned from God towards himself; and the very work of renewing grace is to annul and destroy self, to replace God in his right, that the heart and all its affections and motions be at his dispose: so that instead of self-will and self-love that ruled before, now the will of God, and the love of God commands all.

And where it is thus, there this love of our brethren will be sincere. From where is it that wars, and contests, and mutual disgracings and despisings abound so; but that men love themselves, and nothing but themselves, or in relation to themselves, as it pleases or is advantageous to them; that's the standard and rule, all is carried by interest, so from there are strifes and defamings, and bitterness against one another; but the Spirit of Christ coming in, undoes all selfishness. And now according to God, what he wills and loves, that's law, and a powerful law, so written on the heart, this law of love, that it obeys not unpleasantly; but with delight, no constraint but the sweet constraint of love; to forgive a wrong, to love even your enemy for him, is not only feasible now, but delectable, that ere while you thought impossible.

That Spirit of Christ is all sweetness and love, so calms and composes the heart, that peace with God, and that unspeakably blessed correspondence of love with him, does so fill the soul with lovingness and sweetness, that it can breathe nothing else, hates nothing but sin, pities the sinner, and carries to the worst that love of good-will, desiring their return and salvation: but to those, in whom appears the image of their Father, those their heart cleaves to, as brethren indeed. No advantages natural, no birth, no beauty, nor wit draws a Christian's love so much, as the resemblance of Christ, wherever that is found, it is comely, and lovely to a soul that loves him.

Much communion with God sweetens and calms the mind, cures the distempers of passion and pride, that are the avowed enemies of love, particularly prayer and love suit well. (1.) Prayer disposes to this love; he that loves not, knows not God, says the beloved Apostle, for God is love; he that is most conversant with love, the spring of where it's purest and fullest, cannot but have the fullest measure of it, flowing in from there into his heart, and flowing forth from there, to his brethren; if they, that use the society of mild and good men, are insensibly assimilated to them, grow like them, and contract somewhat of their temper; much more does familiar walking with God powerfully transform the soul into his likeness; makes it merciful and loving, and ready to forgive, as he is.

2. This love disposes to prayer, to pray together, hearts must be consorted and tuned together: otherwise how can they sound the same suits harmoniously. How unpleasant in the exquisite ear of God, that made the ear, are the jarring disunited hearts, that often seem to join in the same prayer, and yet are not set together in love: and when you pray alone, your heart embittered and disaffected to your brother, although upon an offence done to you, it's as a mistuned instrument, the strings are not accorded, so are not in tune among themselves, and so the sound is harsh, and offensive; try it well yourself, and you will perceive it; how much more he, to whom you pray when you are stirred, and in passion against your brother, or not on the contrary, lovingly affected towards him; what broken disordered unfastened stuff are your requests, therefore the Lord will have this done first, the heart tuned, go your way, (says he,) leave your gift, and be reconciled to your brother, etc.

Why is this so much recommended by Christ, and so little received by Christians, given by him as the badge of his followers, and of them that pretend to be so, so few that wear it. Oh! little real Christianity were more worth than all that empty profession and discourse, that we think so much of. Hearts receiving the mold and stamp of this rule; these were living copies of the Gospel; you are our epistle, says the Apostle. We come together, and hear, and speak sometimes of one grace, and sometimes of another; and the most never seek to have their hearts enriched with the possession of any of them. We search not to the bottom the perverseness of our nature, and the guiltiness that is upon us in these; or we shift off the conviction, and find a way to forget it when the hour's done.

That accursed root, self-love, that makes man an enemy to God, and men enemies and devourers one of another, who sets to the discovery and the displanting of it, bends the force of holy endeavors and prayer, supplicates the hand of God for the plucking of it up? Some natures are quieter and make less noise, but till the heart be possessed with the love of God, it shall never truly love either men, in that way due to all, or the children of God in their peculiar relation.

Among yourselves, etc.] That is here the point, the peculiar love of the saints as your brethren, glorying and rejoicing in the same Father, the sons of God begotten again to that lively hope of glory: now these as they owe a bountiful disposition to all, they are mutually to love one another as brethren.

You, that hate and reproach the godly, and the more they study to walk as the children of their holy Father, the more you hate them, are glad to find a spot to point at on them, or will dash mire on them where you find none; know, that you are in this, the enemy of God, that the indignity done to them, Jesus Christ will take it, as done to himself: truly we know that we have passed from death to life, because we love the brethren: he that loves not his brother abides in death. So then renounce this word, or else believe that you are yet far from the life of Christ, that so hate it in others. Oh! but they are but a number of hypocrites, will you say. Brethren, if they be so, this declares so much the more your extreme hatred of holiness, that you cannot endure so much as the picture of it, cannot see anything like it, but you must let fly at it, and this argues your deep hatred of God, holiness in a Christian as the image of God, and the hypocrite in the resemblance of it, is the image of a Christian, so you hate the very image of the image of God: for deceive not yourself, it is not the latent evil in hypocrisy, but the apparent good in it that you hate. The profane man thinks himself a great zealot against hypocrisy, he is still crying out of it, but it is only this he is angry at, that all should not be ungodly, wicked enemies of religion, as he is, either dissolute, or merely civil; and the civil man is readily the bitterest enemy of all strictness beyond his own size, as condemning him, and therefore he cries it down, as all of it false and counterfeit wares.

Let me entreat you, if you would not be found fighters against God, let no revilings be heard among you, against any that are or seem to be followers of holiness: if you will not reverence it yourselves, yet reverence it in others, at least do not reproach it. It should be your ambition, else why are you willing to be called Christians: but if you will not pursue holiness, yet persecute it not: if you will not have fervent love to the saints, yet burn not with infernal heat of fervent hatred against them; for truly that is one of the likeliest pledges of these flames, and society with damned spirits; as love to the children of God is, of that inheritance and society with them in glory.

2. You that are brethren and united by that purest and strongest tie; as you are one in your head, in your life derived from him, in your hopes of glory with him; seek to be more one in heart, in fervent love one to another in him. Consider the combinations and concurrences of the wicked against him, and his little flock; and let this provoke you to more united affections. Shall the scales of Leviathan (as one alludes) stick so close together, and shall not the members of Christ be more one and undivided: you that can resent it, stir up yourselves, to bewail the present divisions and fears of more, suit earnestly for that one Spirit to act and work more powerfully in the hearts of his people.

Secondly. The eminent degree of this love. 1. Its eminency among graces above all. 2. The high measure of it required — fervent love, a high bent, or strain of it, that which acts strongly, and carries far.

1. It is eminent, that which indeed among Christians preserves all, and knits all together; therefore called, in Colossians 3, the bond of perfection, all bound up by it. How can they pray together, advance the name of their God, keep in and stir up all grace in one another, unless they be united in love? How can they have access to God, or fellowship with him, who is love, as Saint John speaks: if instead of this sweet temper there be rancors and bitterness among them? So then uncharity and divisions among Christians, does not only hinder their civil good, but their spiritual much more: and that not only lucro cessante (as they speak) interrupting the ways of mutual profiting, but damno emergente, it does really damage them, and brings them to losses; it preys upon their graces, as hot withering winds on herbs and plants: where the heart entertains either bitter malice, or but uncharitable prejudices, there will be a certain decay of spiritualness in the whole soul.

2. Again, for the degree of this love required, it is not a cold indifference, a negative love, as I may call it, or not willing of evil, nor a lukewarm wishing of good, but fervent and active love: for if fervent, it will be active, a fire will not be smothered, it will find way to extend itself.

3. The fruits of this love follow. 1. Covering of evil, in this verse. 2. Doing of good, verse 9, etc.

Covers] This from Solomon, and here as it is represented to be thus done, as a main act of love: so love is commended by it, as a most useful, and laudable act of it, covers sins, and a multitude of sins.

Solomon says, as the opposition clears the sense, hatred stirs strife, aggravates and makes the worst of all, but love covers a multitude of sins; delights not in undue disclosing of brethren's failings, does not eye them rigidly, nor expose them willingly to the eyes of others.

Now this commends charity, in regard of its continual usefulness and necessity this way, considering human frailty; and that in many things (as Saint James speaks) we all offend; so that this is still needful on all hands: what do they think that are still picking at every appearing infirmity of their brethren; know they not that the frailties that cleave to the saints of God while they are here, do stand in need of, and call for this mutual office of love to cover and pass by; who is there that stands not in need of this? If none, why are there any that deny it to others? There can be no society nor entertaining of Christian converse without it, giving as we speak the allowance, reckoning to meet with defects, and weaknesses on all hands, covering the failings one of another, seeing it is needful from each to another.

Again, as the necessity of this commends it, and the love from which it flows; so there is that laudable ingenuity in it, that should draw us to the liking of it; it is the bent of the basest and worthlessest spirits to be busy in the search and discovery of others' failings, passing by all that is commendable and imitable, as base flies readily sitting on any little sore they can find, rather than upon the sound parts: but the more excellent mind of a real Christian loves not unnecessarily to touch, no nor to look upon them, rather turns away, never uncovers their brother's sore, but to cure it; and no more than of necessity must be for that end, would willingly have them hid, that neither they nor others might see them.

This bars not the judicial trial of scandalous offences, nor the reporting of them, and bringing them under due censure: the forbearing of this is not charity, but both iniquity, and cruelty, and this cleaves too much to many of us; they that cannot pass the least touch of a wrong done to themselves, can digest twenty high injuries done to God by profane persons about them, and resent it not, and such may be assured, they are yet destitute of love to God, and of Christian love to their brethren which springs from it.

The uncovering of sin necessary to the curing of it is not only no breach of charity, but is indeed a main point of charity, and the neglect of it the highest kind of cruelty. But further than that goes, certainly this rule teaches the veiling of our brethren's infirmities from the eyes of others, and even from our own, that we look not on them with rigour; no, nor without compassion.

First. Love is witty in finding out the fairest constructions of things doubtful, and this is a great point. Take me the best action that can be named, pride, and malice shall find a way to disgrace it, and put a hard visage on it. Again, what is not undeniably evil, love will turn all the ways of viewing it, till it find the best and most favorable.

2. Where the thing is so a sin, that this way of covering it can have no place, yet then will love consider what may lessen it most, whether a surprise or strength of temptation, or ignorance, as our Savior, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, or natural complexion, or at least will still take in human frailty, to turn all the bitterness of passion into sweet compassion.

3. All private reproofs, and where conscience requires public reporting and censure, even these will be sweetened in that compassion that [reconstructed: flows] from love, if such a sore as must not be let lie covered up, lest it prove deadly: so that it must be uncovered to be lanced, and cut, that it may be cured — this to be done as loving the soul of the brother. Where the rule of conscience urges it not, then you must bury it; and be so far from delighting to divulge such things, that as far as without partaking in it you may, you must veil it from all eyes, and try the way of private admonition, and if the party appear to be humble and willing to be reclaimed, then forget it, cast it quite out of your thoughts, that as much as may you may learn to forget it more. But this, I say, to be done with the tenderest compassion of pity, feeling the cuts you are forced to give in that necessary incision, and use mildness and patience. Thus the Apostle instructs his Timothy. Reprove, rebuke, exhort, but do it with long suffering, with all long suffering (2 Timothy 4:2). And even they that oppose, instruct, says he, with meekness: if God perhaps will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth (chapter 2, verse 25).

4. If you be interested in the offence, even by unfeigned free forgiveness, so far as your concern goes, let it be, as if it had not been. And though you meet with many of these; charity will gain, and grow by such occasions. And the more it has covered, the more it can cover, cover a multitude, says our Apostle, covers all sins, says Solomon: indeed though you be often put to it by the same party, what made you forgive once, well improved, will stretch our Savior's rule to seventy times seven times in one day.

And truly even this, men mistake grossly, that think it is greatness of spirit to resent wrongs, and baseness to forgive them; on the contrary, it is the only excellent spirit scarce to feel a wrong, or feeling, straight to forgive it; it is the greatest, and the best of spirits that enables to this, the Spirit of God, that dove-like spirit, that rested on our Lord Jesus, and from him derived to all that are in him. I pray you think, is it not a token of a tender sickly body, to be altered with every touch from every blast it meets with? And thus is it of a poor weak sickly spirit, to endure nothing, to be distempered at the least air of an injury; indeed with the very fancy of it, where there is none.

Inference 1. Learn then to beware of these evils, that are contrary to this charity, do not dispute with yourselves in rigid remarks and censures, when the matter will bear any better sense.

2. Do not delight in tearing a wound wider, and stretching a real failing to the utmost.

3. In handling of it, study gentleness, and pity, and meekness: these will advance the cure, whereas your flying out into passion against your fallen brother, will prove nothing, but as the putting of your nail into the sore, that will readily rankle it, and make it worse: even sin, may be sinfully reproved, and how do you think, that sin shall redress sin, and reduce the sinner.

There is a great deal of spiritual art, and skill in dealing with another's sin, and requires much spiritualness of mind, and much prudence, and much love, a mind clear from passion, for that blinds the eye, and makes the hand rough, that a man neither rightly sees, nor handles the sore he goes about to cure, and many are lost through the ignorance, and neglect of that due temper to be brought to this work. Men think otherwise, that their rigours are much spiritualness, but they mistake it (Galatians 6:1). Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, considering yourself, lest you be also tempted.

For yourself; as an offense touches you, learn to delight as much in that divine way of forgiveness, as carnal minds do in that base and inhumane way of revenge. It is not, as they judge, a glory to ruffle and swagger for every thing, but the glory of man to pass by a transgression, makes him God-like. And consider often that love that covers all your sins, that blood that was shed to wash off your guilt; needs any more be said to gain all in this, that can be required of you.

Now the other point of doing good is: 1. In one particular, verse 9. Then dilated to a general rule, verse 20.

Verse 9. 9. Use hospitality one to another without grudging.

The particular of hospitality or kindness to strangers, being in those times, and places in much use in travel, and particularly needful often among Christians one to another then, by reason of hot and general persecutions; but under the name of this, are comprised, I conceive, all other supply of the wants of our brethren in outward things.

Now for this, the way and measure indeed must receive its proportion from the estate and ability of persons. But certainly the great straitening of hands in these things is more from the narrowness of hearts than of means: a large heart with a little estate, will do with much cheerfulness, and little noise; while hearts glued to the poor riches they possess, or rather are possessed by, can scarce part with any thing, till they be pulled from all.

Now for supply of our brethren's necessities, one good help is, the retrenching of our own superfluities, turn the stream into that channel where it will refresh your brethren, and enrich yourself; and let it not run into the dead sea. Your vain excessive entertainments, your gaudy variety of dresses, these you do not challenge, thinking it is of your own, but know as follows, you are but steward of it, and this is not faithful laying out, you cannot answer it, indeed it is robbery — you rob your poor brethren that want necessaries, while you lavish thus on unnecessaries; such a feast, such a suit of apparel, direct robbery in the Lord's eye, and the poor may cry, that is mine that you cast away so vainly, by which both I and you might be profited (Proverbs 3:27-28).

Without grudging.] Some look to the actions, but few to the intention and posture of mind in them; and yet that is the main — it is all indeed, even with men so far as they can perceive it, much more with your Lord, who always perceives it to be full. He delights in the good he does his creatures: he would have them so to one another, especially his children to have this trace of his likeness. See then, when you give alms or entertain a stranger, that there be nothing either of inner grumbling, or crooked self-seeking in it. Let the left hand have no hand in it, not so much as know of it, as our Savior directs, not to please men, or to please yourself, or simply out of a natural pity or consideration of your own possible incidence into the like case, which many think very well, if they be so moved: but here a higher principle moving you, love to God, and to your brother, in, and for him; this will make it cheerful, and pleasant to yourself, and well pleasing to him, for whom you do it. We lose much in actions of themselves good, both of piety and charity, through disregard of our hearts in them: and nothing will prevail with us, to be more intent this way, to look more on our hearts, but this, to look more on him, that looks on them, and judges, and accepts all according to them.

Though all the sins of former ages gather, and fall into the latter times, this is pointed out as the grand evil, uncharity. The Apostle Saint Paul (2 Timothy 3:2) tells that in the last days, men shall be covetous, slanderers, lovers of pleasures, more than lovers of God: but how, from where does all this confluence of evils come? The spring of all set first, and that is the direct opposite of Christian love, they shall be [illegible] — lovers of themselves. This is it, that kills the love of God, and the love of our brethren, and kindles that infernal fire of love to please themselves, riches make men voluptuous, and covetous, etc. Truly whatever becomes of men's curious compute of times; this wretched selfishness, and decay of love may save us this labor of much chronological debate in this, and the certain character of them conclude, these to be the latter times, in a very strict sense. All other sins are come down along, and run combined now, but truly uncharity is the main one, as old age is a rendezvous or meeting place of maladies, but especially subject to cold diseases; thus is it, in the old age of the world many sins, but especially coldness of love, as our Savior foretells it, that in the last days the love of many shall grow cold. As the diseases of the youth of the world was the abounding of lust (Genesis 6), so of its age, decay of love, and as that heat called for a total deluge of waters, so this coldness for fire to the kindling of a universal fire, that shall make an end of it, and the world together.

But they are the happy men, and have the advantage of all the world, in whom the world is burnt up before hand, by another fire, that divine fire of the love of God, kindled in their hearts, by which they ascend up to him, and are reflected from him upon their brethren with a benign heat and influence for their good. Oh! be unsatisfied with your selves, and [reconstructed: redress] till you find it thus, your hearts possessed with this excellent grace of love, that you may have it, and use it, and it may grow by using, and acting. I could, methinks, heartily study on this, and weary you with the iterated pressing this one thing, if there were hopes in so wearying you, to weary you out of these evils that are contrary to it, and in pressing this grace, to make any real impression of it upon your hearts: besides all the further good that follows it, there is in this love itself, so much peace, and sweetness, that abundantly pays itself, and all the labour of it; whereas pride, and malice do fill the heart with continual vexations, and disquietness, and eat out the very bowels wherein they breed. Aspire to this to be wholly bent, not only to procure, or desire hurt to none; but to wish, and seek the good of all and for those that are in Christ, sure that will unite your heart to them, and stir you up, according to your opportunities and power to do them good, as parts of Christ, of the same body with yourself.

Verse 10. As every man has received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.

This is the rule concerning the gifts and graces bestowed on men; and we have here. 1. Their difference in their kind and measure. 2. Their concordance in their source and use.

1. Different in their kind, that expressed in the first clause, as every one has received. Then again in the last clause [[in non-Latin alphabet]] various or manifold grace, where [[in non-Latin alphabet]] is all one with the former [[in non-Latin alphabet]] and largely taken in all kind of endowments, and furniture by which men are enabled for mutual good. One man has riches, another authority and command, another wit or eloquence, or learning: and some though eminent in some one, yet have a fuller conjuncture of divers of these. We find not more difference in visages and statures of body, than in qualifications, and abilities of the mind, which are the visage and stature of it, indeed the odds is far greater between man and man in this than it can be in the other.

Now this difference accords well, with the accordance there expressed in their common spring and common use. For the variety of these many gifts suits well with the singular riches and wisdom of their own giver, and with the common advantage and benefit of the many receivers. And in the usefulness of that variety to the receivers, shines forth bounty and wisdom of the giver in so ordering all that diversity, to one excellent end; so this [[in non-Latin alphabet]] here, commends that [[in non-Latin alphabet]] that the Apostle speaks of (Ephesians 3:10).

There is such an admirable beauty in this variety, such a symmetry and contemperature of different, indeed of contrary qualities, that speaks his riches, that so diverse gifts are from the same Spirit. A kind of embroidering of many colors, happily mixed as the word [[in non-Latin alphabet]] signifies; as it is in the frame of the natural body of man as the lesser world, and in the composure of the greater world; thus in the Church of God, the mystical body of Jesus Christ exceeding both, in excellency and beauty.

And as there is such art in this contrivance, and such comeliness in the resulting frame; so it is no less useful, and that commends mainly the thing itself, and the Supreme Wisdom ordering it, that as in the body each part has not only its place for proportion, and order, but each its use; and as in the world, each part is beneficial to another, so here, every man's gift relates, and is fitted to some use for the good of others.

[reconstructed: Inference] 1. The first thing meets us here is very useful to know, that all is received, and received of gift, of most free gift, so the words do carry. Now this would most reasonably check all murmuring in those, that receive least; and insulting in those, that receive most: whatever it is, do not repine, but praise; how little soever it is, for it is a free gift. Again, how much soever it is, be not high minded, but fear, boast not yourself, but humbly bless your Lord: for if you have received it, how can you boast?

2. Every man has received some gift, no man all gifts, and this rightly considered, would keep all in a more even temper; as in nature, nothing altogether useless, so nothing self sufficient; this would keep the meanest from repining, and discontent, that have the lowest rank in most respects: yet something he has received, that is not only a good to himself, but rightly improved, may be so to others likewise. And this will curb the loftiness of the most advantaged, and teach them not only to see some deficiencies in themselves, and some gifts stand lower in far meaner persons, which they want, but besides the simple discovery of this, it will put them upon the use of what is in lower persons, not only to stoop to the acknowledgment; but even withal the participation and benefit of it, not to trample upon all that is below them, but to take up, and use things useful, though lying at their feet; some flowers and herbs that grow very low, are of a very fragrant smell, and healthful use.

You that carry it so high, lose much by it: many a poor Christian that you despise to make use of, may have that in them that might be very useful for you; you overlook it, and tread on it. St. Paul acknowledges he was comforted by the coming of Titus, though far inferior to him; sometimes a very mean unlettered Christian may speak more profitably and comfortably, even to a knowing learned man, than multitudes of his own best thoughts can do; especially in a time of weakness and darkness.

3. As all is received, and with that difference, so the third thing is, that all is received, to minister to each other, and mutual benefit is the true use of all, suiting the mind of him that dispenses all, and the way of his dispensation. You are not proprietary Lord of anything you have, but [reconstructed: a Greek term for steward], a Steward, and therefore ought gladly to be a good Steward, that is, both faithful and prudent in your entrusted gifts, using all you have to the good of the household, and so to the advantage of your Lord and Master. Do you have abilities of estate, or body, or mind, let all be thus employed? Do you think that your wealth, or power, or wit, is yours, to do with them as you will, to engross to yourself, either to retain useless, or to use to hoard and wrap up, or to lavish out according as your humor leads you? No, all is given, as to a Steward, wisely and faithfully to lay up and lay out, not only your outward and common mind gifts, but even saving grace, that seems most interested and appropriated for your private good: yet is not wholly for that, even your graces are for the good of your brethren.

Oh! That we would consider this in all, and look back and mourn on the fruitlessness of all that has been in our hand all our life up to now. If not wholly fruitless, yet far short of that fruit we might have brought forth; any little thing done by us, looks big in our eye, we view it in a multiplying glass; but who may not complain that their means, and health, and opportunities of several kinds of doing for God, and for our brethren, have lain dead upon their hands in a great part. Christians, as defective in other duties of love, so most in that most important, of advancing the spiritual good of each other. Even they that have grace, do not duly use it to mutual edification. I desire none to leap over the bounds of their calling, or rules of Christian prudence in their converse, indeed, this were much to be blamed, but, I fear, lest unwary hands, throwing on water to quench that evil, let some of it fall by upon these sparks, that should be stirred and blown up.

Neither should the disproportion of gifts and graces hinder, nor move the weaker to envy the stronger; nor the stronger to despise the weaker; but each in his place to be serviceable to another, as the Apostle excellently presses it by that most fit resemblance of the parts of the body (1 Corinthians 12). As the foot says not, why am I not the eye, or the head; the head cannot say of the foot I have no need of you. No envy, no despising in the natural; Oh! the pity that so much should be in the mystical; were we more spiritual, this would less be found. In the mean time, Oh! that we were more agreeable to that happy estate we look for, in our present aspect, and carriage one to another. Though all graces are in some measure where there is one, yet all not in a like measure. One Christian more eminent in meekness, another in humility, a third in zeal, etc. Now by their spiritual converse one with another each may be a gainer; and many ways may a private Christian promote the good of others, with whom he lives, by seasonable admonitions, and advice, and reproof sweetened with meekness; but most by holy example, which is the most lively, and most effectual speech.

You that have greater gifts, more is entrusted in your hand, therefore the more engagement to fidelity and diligence. Men in great place and public services to stir themselves up by this thought to singular watchfulness, and zeal; and in private converse one with another, to be doing, and receiving spiritual good: are we not strangers here, and is it not strange, that we so often meet, and part without a word of our home, or the way to it, or our advance towards it? Christians should be trading one with another in spiritual things, and be sure that he who faithfully uses most, receives most, that is under that word; to him that has shall be given, and from him that has not, etc., that uses not. It is he that has actively and usefully. Merchants can feel in their trading a dead time, and complain seriously of it, and Christians in theirs either can suffer it and not see it, or see it and not complain, or possibly complain and yet not be deeply sensible of it.

Certainly it cannot be duly regretted that we are so fruitless in the Lord's work in this kind, that alone we study it not more, and seek it more by prayer, to know the true use of all we receive, and in society to endeavor accordingly. But we trifle out our time and instead of the commerce of grace to our mutual enriching, we trade in vanity, and as it were children exchanging shells and toys together.

This sure will lie heavy when we reflect on it, and shall come near the utter brink of time, looking forwards on eternity, and then looking back to our days, so vainly wasted and worn out to no purpose. Oh! let us awake, awake ourselves and one another, to more fruitfulness and faithfulness, whatever be our received measure, less or more.

Be not discouraged, to have little in the account shall be no prejudice. The approbation runs not, you had much, but in the contrary, you have been faithful in little: great faithfulness in the use of small gifts has great acceptance, and a great and sure reward. Great receipts engage to greater returns, and therefore require the greater diligence; and that not only for the increase of grace within; but the assistance of it in others. Retired contemplation may be more pleasing, but due activeness for God and his Church is more profitable. Rachel, was fair, but she was barren, Leah blear eyed, but fruitful.

Verse 11. If any man speak, let him speak as the Oracles of God, if any man minister let him do it as of the ability which God gives: that God in all things may be glorified, through Jesus Christ, to whom be praise and dominion for ever and ever Amen.

Every part of the body of Christ, as it partakes life with the rest, it imparts service to the rest, but there be some more eminent, and as I may say, organic parts of this body, and these are more eminently useful to the whole body. Therefore the Apostle having enlarged himself into a general precept, adds a word in special to these special parts, the preachers of the Word, and (which here I conceive is meant by deacons or ministers) the other assistant officers of the Church of God.

These are [reconstructed: ordained] by Jesus Christ, as Lord of his own house to be serviceable to him in it, he fits and sanctifies for this great work, all that are called to it by himself. And they are directed for the acquitting of their great work: (1.) By a clear rule of the due manner. (2.) The main end of it.

Particular rules for the preaching of the Word may be many, but this is one most comprehensive, that the Apostle gives, if any speak, let him speak as the Oracles of God. If any speak, that is clear from the rule what speaking is regulated, and for brevity once expressed. If any speak the Oracles of God, let him speak them like themselves, as the Oracles of God.

It is a chief thing in all serious actions to take the nature of them aright, for this mainly regulates them, and directs in their performance. And this especially would be regarded in those things, that are of highest worth, and greatest weight in spiritual employments, wherein it is most dangerous, and yet with us most ordinary, to mistake and miscarry. Were prayer considered, as presence and speech with the great God, the King of Glory, Oh! how would this mould the mind? What a watchful, holy, and humble deportment would it teach? So that truly all directions for prayer might be summed up after this same model in this one, if any man pray, let him speak as speaking with God, just as here for preaching, if any man speak in that way let him do it as speaking from God, that is, as the Oracles of God. Under this all the due qualifications of this holy work are comprised; I shall name but these three which are prime, and others may be easily reduced to these. 1. Faithfully. 2. Holily. 3. Wisely.

In the first it is supposed that a man have competent insight and knowledge in these divine Oracles, that first he learn before he teach, which many of us do not, though we pass through the schools and classes, and through the books too, wherein these things are taught, and bring with us some provision, such as may be had there. He that would faithfully teach of God must be taught of God, be God-learned and this will help to all the rest, to be faithful in delivering the message, as he receives it, not detracting or adding, nor altering; and as in setting forth that in general truths, so in the particular setting them home, declaring to his people their sins, and his judgments following sin, especially in his own people.

2. Holily. With that high esteem, that reverence of the great majesty, whose message he carries, and the divineness of the message itself, those deep mysteries that no created spirits are able to fathom. Oh! this would make us tremble in the dispensing of these Oracles, considering our impurities, and weaknesses, and unspeakable disproportion, to so high a task. He had reason that said I am seized with amazement and horror, or often as I begin to speak of God. And with this humble reverence, is to join ardent love to our Lord, to his truth, to his glory, and his people's souls. These holy affections stand opposite to our blind boldness in rushing on this sublime exercise, as a common work, our dead coldness in speaking things, that our hearts are not warmed with, and so no wonder what we say does seldom reach further than the ear, or at furthest than the understanding, and memory of our hearers; there is a correspondence, it is the heart speaks to the heart; and the understanding and memory the same; and the tongue speaks, but to the ear. Further this holy temper shuts out all private passion in delivering divine truths; it is high profaning of his name, and holy things, to make them speak our private pleas and quarrels, indeed to reprove sin after this manner is a heinous sin, to fly out into invectives that though not expressed so, yet are aimed as blows of self revenge for injuries done to us, or fancied by us; this is to wind and draw the Holy Word of God to serve our unholy distempers, and make it speak not his meaning, but our own. Surely this is not to speak as the Oracles of God, but basely to abuse the Word, as impostors in religion of old did their images, speaking behind them, and through them, what might make for their advantage. True, that the Word is to be particularly applied, to reprove most the particular sins, that most abound among a people: but this to be done, not in anger, but in love.

3. Wisely. By this I mean in the way of delivering it, that it be done gravely and decently; that light expressions, and affected flourishes, and unseemly gestures, be avoided; and that there be a sweet tempering of authority and mildness. But who is sufficient for these things.

Now you that hear would certainly meet and suit in this too. If any hear, let him hear as the Oracles of God, not as a well tuned sound, to help you to sleep an hour, not as a human speech or oration, to displease, or please you an hour, according to the suiting of its strain, and your palate; not as a school lesson, to add somewhat to your stock of knowledge, to tell you somewhat you knew not before, or as a feast of new notions. Thus the most relish a preacher, while till they try his gift, and it is new with them, but a little time disgusts them. But hear as the Oracles of God, the discovery of sin, and death lying on us, and the discovery of a Saviour, that takes these off; the sweet word of reconciliation, God wooing man; the great King entreating for peace with a company of rebels, not that are too strong for him, Oh! no, but on the contrary he could utterly destroy in one moment. These are the things brought you in this word: therefore come to it with suitable reverence, with ardent desires, and hearts open, to receive it, with meekness as the engrafted word, that is able to save your souls. It were well worth one day's pains of speaking and hearing, that we could learn somewhat, at least how to speak, and hear henceforward; to speak and hear [reconstructed: as] the Oracles of God.

The other of ministering as of the ability that God gives: in this. (1.) Ability, and that received from God, for other there is none for any good work, least for the peculiar ministration of his spiritual affairs in this house. (2.) The using of this ability received from him for them.

And this truly is a chief thing for ministers and for each Christian, still to depend on the influence and strength of God, to do all his works in that strength; the humblest Christian how weak soever is the strongest. There is a natural wretched independency in us, that we would be the authors of our own works, and do all without him; without whom indeed we can do nothing. Learn we to go more out of ourselves, and we shall find more strength for our duties, and against our temptations: Faith's great work is, to renounce self power, and to bring in the power of God to be ours. Happy they, that are weakest in themselves, sensibly so. That word of the Apostle is theirs, they know what it means, though a riddle to the world, when I am weak, then am I strong.

Now the end of all is, that in all God may be glorified, etc. All meet in this, if they move in their straight line, here they concenter, not only these two sorts specified in this verse, but all sorts of persons that use aright any gift of God as they are generally comprehended in the former verse, for this end relates to all, as it is expressed universally, That in all, in all persons, and all things, the word bears both, and the thing itself extends to both.

Here we have, like that of the heavens, a circular motion of all sanctified good; it comes forth from God, through Christ to Christians, and moving in them to the mutual good of each other, returns through Christ to God again, and takes them along with it, in whom it was and had its motion.

All persons and things shall pay this tribute, even they that most wickedly seek to withhold it, but this the happiness of the saints, that they move willingly thus, are sweetly drawn not forced or driven. They are gained to seek and desire this, to set in with God in the intention of the same end, to have the same purpose with him, his glory in all. And to prosecute his end by his direction, the means and ways he appoints them.

This is his due, as God; and the declining from this, squinting from this view to self ends, especially in God's own peculiar work, is high treason; yet the base heart of man leads naturally this way, to intend himself in all, to raise his own esteem or advantage in some way.

And thus the heart is so subtle in conveying, that it will deceive the most discerning, if they be not constant in suspecting and watching it. This the great task to overcome in this point. To have self under our feet, and God only in our eye and purpose in all.

It is most reasonable, his due, as God, the being of all, not only of all supervenient good, but even of being itself, seeing all is from him, that all be for him (Romans 11, last verse): For of him, and through him, and to him are all things: to whom be glory for ever Amen.

As it is most just, so it is most sweet, to aim all at this, that God be glorified: the alone worthy and happy design that fills the heart with heavenliness and with a heavenly calmness, sets it above the clouds and storms of these passions that disquiet low-self-seeking minds. He is a miserable unsettled wretch that cleaves to himself and forgets God, is perplexed about his credit, and gain, and base ends, which are often broke; and when he attains, yet they and he shortly perish together; when his estate, or designs, or any comforts fail, how can he look to him, whom he looked so little at before? May not the Lord say; Go to the gods whom you have served, and let them deliver, and comfort you. Seek comfort from yourself, as you did all for yourself? What an appallment will this be? But he that has resigned himself, and is all for God, may say confidently, that the Lord is his portion. This is the Christian's aim, to have nothing in himself, nor in anything, but in this tenure, all for the glory of my God, my estate, family, abilities, my whole self, all I have and am. And as the love of God grows in the heart, this purpose grows; the higher the flame rises, the purer it is, the eye daily the more upon it, it is oftener in mind in all actions, than before, in common things, the very works of our callings, our very refreshments to eat, and drink, and sleep, are all for this end, and with a particular aim at it as much as may be, even the thought of it often renewed throughout the day, and at times generally applied to all our ways and employments. It is that elixir that turns your ordinary works into gold, into sacrifices by touch of it.

Through Jesus Christ.] The Christian in covenant with God receives all this way, and returns all this way, and he possesses and has equal right with the Father to this glory, as he is equally the spring of it with him, as God: but it is conveyed through him as mediator, that obtains all grace we receive, and all glory we return, and all our praise, as our spiritual sacrifice, is put into his hand, as our high priest, to offer up for us, that they may be accepted.

Now the holy ardor of the Apostle's affections taken with the mention of this glory of God, carries him to a doxology, as we term it, a rendering of glory in the middle of his discourse. Thus often we find in Saint Paul likewise. Poor and short-lived the glory and grandeur of men like themselves, a shadow, and nothing: but this solid and lasting, supreme it is, and abides forever. And the Apostles full of divine affections, and admiring nothing but God, do delight in this, and cannot contain from this at any time in their discourse; it is always sweet, and seasonable, and they find it so. And thus are spiritual minds, a word of this nature falls on them as a sparkle on some matter, that readily takes fire, they are straight inflamed with it. But alas! to us how much is it otherwise, the mention of the praises and glory of our God is to our hearts as a sparkle falling either into a puddle of water, and foul water too, or at least as upon green timber, that much fire will not kindle: so much moisture of our humors, and corruptions, that all dies out with us, and we remain cold and dead.

But were not this a high and blessed condition to be in all estates in some willing readiness to bear a part in this song, to acknowledge the greatness and goodness of our God, and to wish him glory in all? What are the angels doing? This is their business, and that endless: and seeing we hope to partake, we would even here, though in a lower key, and not so tunefully neither, yet as we may, begin it; and upon all occasions our hearts be often following in this sweet note, or offering at it. To him be glory, and dominion for ever.

Verses 12, 13. 12. Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial, which is to try you; as though some strange thing happened to you: 13. But rejoice, in as much as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that when his glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy.

This fighting life, when we consider it aright, sure we need not be desired not to love it, but have need to be strengthened with patience to go through, and to fight on with courage and assurance of victory, still combating in a higher strength than our own, against sin within, and troubles without. This is the great scope of this Epistle, and the Apostle often interchanges his advices, and comforts in reference to these two. Against sin he instructs us in the beginning of this chapter, and here again, against suffering, and both in a like way; and us to be armed, armed with the same mind, that was in Christ, against trouble here, after the same manner: in the mortifying of sin, we suffer with him, as there he teaches, verse 1 of this chapter; in the encountering of affliction we suffer with him, as here we have it, and so the same mind in the same sufferings, will bring us to the same issue. Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial, which is to try you, etc. But rejoice in as much as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings; that when his glory shall be revealed, you likewise may be glad with exceeding joy.

The words to the end of the chapter contain grounds of encouragement, and consolation for the children of God in sufferings, especially in suffering for God.

These two verses have these two things. (1.) The close conjuncture of sufferings with the estate of a Christian. (2.) The due composure of a Christian towards suffering.

1. It is no new, and therefore no strange thing, that sufferings, hot sufferings, fiery ones, be the companions of religion, besides the common miseries of human life; there is an accession of troubles and hatreds for that holiness of life, to which the children of God are called.

It was the lot of the Church from her wicked neighbors, and in the Church, the lot of the most holy and peculiar servants of God from the profane multitude. Woe's me, my Mother, (says Jeremiah) you have born me a man of contentions. And of all the prophets, says not our Saviour handling this same argument in his sermon; So persecuted they the prophets that were before you? And after tells them what they might look for, Behold, says he, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. And generally no following of Christ, but with his badge and burden, something to be left, ourselves left; whoever will be my disciple let him deny himself; and what to take; take up his cross and follow me. And does not the Apostle give his scholars this universal lesson, as an infallible truth, all that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution; and look in the close of that roll of believers conquering in suffering, what a cluster of sufferings and torture, you have (Hebrews 11:36-37) etc. Thus in the primitive times the trial and fiery trial, even literally so, continued long: these wicked emperors hating the very innocency of Christians; and the people though they knew their blameless carriage, yet, when any evil came, would pick this quarrel and still cry, Christianos ad Leones.

Now this, if we look to inferior causes, is not strange, the malignant ungodly world hating holiness, the light, yea the very shadow of it, and the more the children of God walk like their Father, and their home, the more unlike must they of necessity become to the world about them; and therefore become the very mark of all their enmities and malice.

And thus indeed the godly, though the sons of peace, are the improper causes, the occasion of much noise and disturbance in the world, as their Lord the Prince of peace avows it openly of himself in that sense, I came not to send peace, but a sword, to set a man at variance with his father, and the daughter against the mother, etc. If a son in a family begin to inquire after God, and withdraw from their profane, or dead way, Oh! what a clamor rises presently, Oh! my son or daughter, or wife, is become a plain fool, etc. And then all done, that may be, to quell and vex them, and make their life grievous to them.

The exact holy walking of a Christian condemns really the world about him, shows the disorder and foulness of their profane ways; and the life of religion set beside dead formality, discovers it to be but a carcass and lifeless appearance; and for this neither grossly wicked, civil, nor formal persons can well digest it. There is in the life of a Christian a convincing light, that shows the deformity of the works of darkness, and a piercing heat, that scorches the ungodly, which stirs and troubles their consciences, and this they cannot endure, and hence rises in them a contrary fire of wicked hatred, and hence the trials, the fiery trials of the godly. If they could get those precise persons removed out of their way think they, then they might have more room and live at more liberty, as it is (Revelation 11:10). A carousing [illegible] — what a dance there about the dead bodies of the two witnesses; the people and nations rejoiced and made merry, and send gifts one to another, because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth. And from the same hearth, I mean the same wickedness of heart in the world, are the fires of persecution kindled against the saints in the world, and the bonfires of joy when they are rid of them.

And as this is an infernal fire of enmity against God, it is blown by that spirit whose element it is: Satan stirs up and blows the coal, and raises the hatred of the ungodly against Christians.

But while he and they, in whom he powerfully works, are thus working for their vile ends in the persecutions of the saints; he that sovereignly orders all is working in the same, his wise and gracious ends, and attains them, and makes the malice of his enemies serve his ends, and undo their own. It is true that by the heat of persecution, many are feared from embracing it, such as love themselves and their present ease; and others that seemed to have embraced it, are driven to let it go and fall from it, but yet all well computed religion is still upon the gaining hand, those that reject it or revolt from it, are such as have no true knowledge of it, nor share in it, nor in that happiness in which it ends; but they, that are indeed united to Jesus Christ, do cleave the closer to him, and seek to have their hearts more fastened, because of these trials, that they are, or likely may be put to. And in their victorious patience appears the invincible power of religion where it has once gained the heart, that it cannot be beaten, nor burnt out, itself is a fire more mighty than all fires kindled against it. The love of Christ conquers and triumphs in the hardest sufferings of life, and in death itself.

And this has been the means of kindling it in other hearts, that were strangers to it, when they beheld the victorious patience of the saints, who conquered dying, as their head did, that wearied their tormenters, and triumphed over their cruelty by a constancy far above it.

Thus these fiery trials, made the luster of faith appear most, as gold shines brightest in the furnace, and if any dross is mixed with it, its refined and purged from it by these trials, and so it remains by the fire purer than before. And both these are in the resemblance here intended, that the fire of sufferings is the advantage of believers, both trying the excellency of faith, giving evidence of it, what it is; purifying it from earth and drossy mixtures, and making it more excellently what it is raising it to a higher pitch of refinedness, and worth. In these fires, as faith is tried, the word on which faith relies, is tried and is found all gold, most precious, no refuse in it, the truth and sweetness of the promises much confirmed in the Christian's heart, upon his experiment of them in his sufferings; his God as good as his word, being with him when he goes through the fire, preserving him that he loses nothing except dross, which is a gainful loss, leaves of his corruption behind him.

Oh! how much worth is it, and how does it endear the heart to God, to have found him sensibly present in the times of trouble, him refreshing the soul with dews of spiritual comfort in the midst of the flames of fiery trial.

One special advantage of these fires, is the purging of a Christian's heart from the love of the world, and present things; its true, at best it is base and despicable, in respect of the high estate and hopes of a believer, yet still there is somewhat within him, that would bend him downwards and draw him to too much complacency in outward things, if they were much to his mind: too kind usage might sometimes make him forget himself, and think himself at home, at least so much, as not to entertain those longings after home, and that ardent progress homewards, that became him; It is good for us certainly to find hardship, and enmities, and contempts here, and to find them frequent, that we may not think them strange, but ourselves strangers, and think it were strange for us to be otherwise entertained. This keeps the affections more clear and disengaged, sets it upward. Thus the Lord makes the world displeasing to his own, that they may turn in to him, and seek all their consolations in himself; Oh! unspeakable advantage.

2. The composure of a Christian in reference to sufferings, is prescribed in these two following, Resolving and Rejoicing. (1.) Resolving for them, reckoning so, think it not strange, [illegible], (2.) Rejoicing in them, [illegible], Be glad in as much, etc.

Be not strangers in it.] Which yet naturally we would be, are willing to hear of peace and ease, and would gladly believe what we extremely desire. It is a thing of prime concern to take at first a right notion of Christianity which many do not, and so either fall off quickly, or walk on slowly and heavily, do not reckon right the charges, take not the duties of doing and suffering; but think to perform some duties, if they may with ease, and have no other foresight; do not consider that self denial, that fighting against a man's self, and vehemently with the world, these trials, fiery trials, which a Christian must encounter with. As they observe of other points, Popery in this, is very compliant with nature, which is a very bad sign in religion; we would be content it were true, that the true church of Christ had rather prosperity and pomp for her badge than the cross, much ease and riches, and few or no crosses, except they were painted and gilded crosses, such as that church has chosen instead of real ones.

Most men would give religion a fair countenance, if it gave them fair weather, and they that do indeed acknowledge Christ the Son of God, as St. Peter did (Matthew 16), yet are naturally as unwilling, as he was, to hear the hard news of suffering; and if their advice might have place would readily be of his mind, Be it far from you Lord. His good confession was not, but this kind advice was from flesh and blood, and from an evil spirit, as the sharp answer tells; get behind me Satan, you are an offense to me.

You know what kind of Messiah the Jews generally dreamt of, and therefore took scandal at the meanness and sufferings of Christ, expecting an earthly King of him, and an outward flourishing state; and the Disciples themselves, after they had been long with him, were still in that same dream, when they were contesting about imaginary places; indeed they were scarcely well out of it, even after his suffering and death; all the noise and trouble of that had not well awaked them (Luke 24), we trusted it had been he, which should have restored Israel.

And after all that we have read, and heard of ancient times, and of Jesus Christ himself, his sufferings in the flesh, and of his Apostles and his saints from one age to another, yet still we have our inclinations to this, of driving troubles far off from our thoughts, till they come upon our backs, and fancying nothing, but rest and ease, till we be shaken rudely out of it.

How have we of late flattered ourselves, many of us one year after another, upon slight appearances. Oh! now it will be peace, and behold still trouble has increased, and these thoughts proved the lying visions of our own hearts, while the Lord has not spoken it. And thus of late, have we thought it at hand. And taken ways of our own to hasten it; that I fear will prove fools haste, as you say.

You that know the Lord seek him earnestly for the averting of further troubles and combustions; which if you look aright, you will find threaten us as much as ever. And withal seek hearts prepared, and fixed for days of trial, fiery trial, indeed though we did obtain some breathing of our outward peace, yet shall not the followers of Christ want their trials from the hatred of the ungodly world, if it persecuted me (says he,) it will also persecute you.

Acquaint therefore your thoughts and hearts with sufferings, that when they come, you and they not being strangers, may agree and comply the better. Do not afflict yourselves with vain fears before hand, of troubles to come, and so make uncertain evils a certain vexation by advance. But thus, forethink the hardest things you may readily be put to, for the name and cause of Christ, and labor for a holy stability of mind for encountering it, if it should come upon you: things certainly fall the lighter on us, when they fall first upon our thoughts. This way indeed of an imagined suffering, the conquest before hand may be but imaginary, and fail in the trial: therefore be still humble, and dependent on the strength of Christ, and seek to be furnished beforehand with much distrust of yourself, and much trust in him, with much denial of yourself, and love to him. And thus the preparing and training of the heart may prove useful, and make it more dexterous, when brought to conflicting: in all, both before hand, and in time of the trial, make your Lord Jesus all your strength; That is our only way in all, to be conquerors, to be more than conquerors, through him that loved us.

Think it not strange, for it is not; sure your thoughts to the experience, and verdict of all times, and to the warnings that the Spirit of God in the Scriptures, and our Savior himself has given us from his own mouth, and example showed in his own person. But the other point goes higher, rejoice, though we think not the sufferings strange, yet may we not well think that rule somewhat strange, to rejoice in them? No, it will be found as reasonable as the other, being duly considered. And upon the same ground it will bear both, in as much as you are partakers of the sufferings of Christ.

If the children of God consider not their trials in their natural bitterness, but in the sweet love from where they spring, and the sweet fruits that spring from them, that we are our Lord's gold, and he tries us in the furnace to purify us (as in the former verse;) this may beget not only patience, but gladness even in the sufferings. But add we this, and truly it completes the reason of this way in our saddest sufferings, that in them we are partakers of the sufferings of Christ.

So then 1. Consider this twofold connected participance of the sufferings of Christ, and of the after glory. 2. The present joy even in sufferings springing from that participance,

I need not tell you, that this communion in sufferings is not in point of expiation, or satisfaction to divine justice, which was the peculiar end of the sufferings of Christ personal, not of the common sufferings of Christ mystical, he bore our sin on his own body on the tree, and in bearing them, took them away; we bear his sufferings, as his body united to him by his Spirit. Those sufferings that were his personal burden, we partake the sweet fruits of, they are accounted ours, and we acquitted by them, but the endurance of them was his high and incommunicable task, in which none at all were with him, our communion in these, as fully completed by himself in his natural body, is the ground of our comfort, and joy in these sufferings that are completed in his mystical body, the Church.

This is indeed our joy, that we have so light a burden, so sweet an exchange, the weight of sin quite taken off our backs, and only all bound on his cross, and our crosses badges of our conformity, laid on our shoulders, and the great weight of them likewise held up by his hand, that they overpress us not. These fires of our trial may be corrective, and purgative of the remaining power of sin, and they are so intended; but Jesus Christ alone in the sufferings of his own cross, was the burnt offering, the propitiation for our sins.

Now although he has perfectly satisfied for us and saved us by his sufferings; yet this conformity with him in way of suffering, is most reasonable. As our holiness does not stand in point of law, nor come in at all in the matter of justifying us, yet we are called and appointed to holiness in Christ, as suiting us with him our glorious head, and we do really receive it from him, that we may be like him, so these our sufferings bear a very congruous likeness with him; though no way as accession to his in expiation, yet as a part of his: and therefore the Apostle says, even in this respect, that we are predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son; were it fit that we should not follow, where our Captain led, and went first, but that he should lead through ragged thorny ways, and we pass about to get away through flowery meadows: as his natural body shared with his head in his sufferings, so ought his mystical with him, as its head. The buffetings and spitings on his face, and thorny crown on his head, a pierced side, nailed hands and feet, and if we be parts of him, think we that a body finding nothing but ease and bathing in delights were agreeable to a head so tormented. I remember what that pious Duke said at Jerusalem when they offered to crown him King there; No crown of gold, where Christ Jesus was crowned with thorns.

This is the way we must follow, or else resolve to leave him; the way of the Cross is the royal way to the Crown. He said it, and remembered them of it again, that they might take the deep impression of it, remember what I said to you, the Servant is not greater than the Lord: if they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you: if they have kept my saying, they will keep yours also. And particularly in point of reproaches; if they called the Master, Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household? A bitter [reconstructed: scoff], an evil name, reproaches for Christ, why does this fret you, it is a part of your Lord's entertainment while he was here, you are even in this a partaker of his sufferings, and in this way is he bringing you forward to the partaking of his Glory: That is the other thing, when his Glory shall be revealed.

Now he is hid, little of his Glory seen; it was hid while he was on earth, and now it is hid up in Heaven, where he is, and for his body here, his Church, no pompous dress, nor outward splendor; and the particular parts of it, the Saints, poor despised creatures, the very refuse of men in outward respects and common esteem, so he himself is not seen, and his followers, the more they are seen and looked on by the world's eye, the more meanness appears; true, that as in the days of humiliation some rays were breaking forth through the vail of his flesh, and cloud of his low despicable condition; thus is it with his followers sometimes a glance of his image strikes the very eye of the world, and forces some acknowledgment and a kind of reverence in the ungodly: But commonly Christ and his followers are covered with all the disgraces and ignominies the world can put on them. But there is a day wherein he will appear, and it is at hand; and then he shall be glorious even in his despised Saints, and admired in them that believe: how much more in the matchless brightness of his own glorious person.

In the meantime he is hid, and they hid in him; our life is hid with Christ in God. The world sees here nothing of his Glory and beauty, and his own not much, have but a little glimmering of him, and their own happiness in him: know little of their own high condition, and what they are born to. But in that bright day he shall shine forth in his royal dignity, and all eyes shall see him, and be overcome with his splendor, terrible shall it be to those that formerly despised him, and his Saints: but to them the gladdest day that ever arose upon them, and that shall never set or be benighted. The day they so much longed and looked out for, the full accomplishment of all their hopes and desires. Oh! how dark were all our days without the hope of this day.

Then says the Apostle, you shall rejoice with exceeding joy, and to the end you may not fall short of that joy in the participation of Glory, fall not back from a cheerful progress in the communion of these sufferings, that are so close linked with it, and will so sure lead to it and end it. For in this the Apostle's expression; this Glory and Joy is set before them as the great matter of their desires, and hopes, and the certain end of their present sufferings.

Now upon these grounds the motion will appear reasonable, and not too great a demand, to rejoice even in the sufferings.

It is true that passage in the Epistle to the Hebrews opposes present affliction to joy. But first, if you mark, it is but in the appearance or outward visage, it seems not to be matter of joy but of grief — to look to it, it has not a smiling countenance, yet joy may be under it.

(2.) And though to the flesh, it is, what it seems, grief, and not joy, yet there may be under it spiritual joy, yea the affliction itself may help and advance that joy. (3.) Through the natural sense of it there will be some allay or mixture of grief, so that the joy cannot be pure and complete, but yet there may be joy even in it. Thus the Apostle here clearly gives, rejoice now in suffering that you may rejoice exceedingly after it, [illegible], leaping for joy: doubtless this joy at present is but a little parcel, a drop of that sea of joy. Now it is joy, but more reserved, then they shall leap. Yet

In present rejoice even in trial, yea in fiery trial. This may be; the children of God are not called to so sad a life as the world imagines, besides what is laid up, they have even here their rejoicings and songs in their distresses, as those prisoners had their Psalms even at midnight after their stripes in their chains, before they knew of a sudden deliverance, true there may be a darkness within, clouding all the matter of their joy; but even that darkness is the sowing time of after joy, and light is sown in that darkness, and shall spring up, and not only shall they have a rich crop at full harvest, but even some first fruits of it here, in pledge of the harvest.

And this they ought to expect, and seek after with humble submissive minds, for the measure and time of it, that they may be partakers of spiritual joy, and may by it be enabled to go patiently, yea cheerfully through the tribulations and temptations that be in their way homeward; and for this, endeavor after a more clear discerning of their interest in Christ, that they may know they partake of him, and so in suffering, are partakers of his sufferings, and shall be partakers of his Glory.

Many afflictions will not cloud and obstruct this so much, as one sin, therefore if you would walk cheerfully be most careful to walk holily. All the winds about make not an earthquake, but that within.

Now this joy is grounded on this Communion. (1.) Sufferings; then 2. In Glory 1. In suffering even in themselves, it is a sweet joyful thing to be a sharer with Christ in anything, all enjoyments wherein he is not, are bitter to a soul that loves him, and all sufferings with him sweet. The worst things of Christ more [reconstructed: truly] delightful, than the best things of the World, his afflictions sweeter than their pleasures, his reproaches more glorious than their honors, and more rich than their treasures, as Moses accounted them (Hebrews 11). Love delights in likeness and Communion, not only in things otherwise pleasant, but in the hardest and harshest things, that have not anything in them desirable but only that likeness; so that this is very sweet to a heart possessed with this love; what does the World in hatreds, and persecutions, and revilings for Christ, but make me more like him, give me a greater share with him, in that which he did so willingly undergo for me. When he was sought to be a King, he escaped; but when he was sought to the Cross, he freely yielded himself. And shall I shrink and creep back from what he calls me to for his sake; indeed even all my other troubles and sufferings I will desire to have stamped thus, with this conformity to the sufferings of Christ, in the humble, obedient, cheerful endurance of them, and giving up my will to my Father's.

The following of Christ makes any way pleasant, his faithful followers refuse no march after him, be it through deserts, and mountains, and storms, and hazards that will affright self-pleasing easy spirits: hearts kindled and acted with the Spirit of Christ will follow him wherever he goes.

As he speaks it for warnings, if they persecuted me, they will persecute you, so he speaks it for comforting them, and it is sufficiently so, if they hate you, they hated me before you.

2. Then add the other, see whether it tends, he shall be revealed in his Glory, and you shall be filled even over with joy in the partaking of that Glory. Therefore rejoice now in the midst of all your sufferings; stand upon the advanced ground of the promises and covenant of grace, and by faith overlook this moment, and all that is in it, to that day wherein everlasting joy shall be upon your heads, a Crown of it, and sorrow and mourning shall fly away, believe this day, and the victory is won. Oh! that blessed hope well fixed and acted, would give other manner of spirits; what zeal for God? what invincible courage against all encounters? How soon will this pageant of the World vanish, that men are gazing on, these pictures and fancies of false styled pleasures, and honors, and give place to the real glory of the Sons of God, this blessed Son that is God appearing in full Majesty, and all his Brethren in glory with him; all clothed in their robes. And if you ask who are they? why these are they that came out of great tribulation, and washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb.

Verses 14, 15, 16. 14. If you be reproached for the name of Christ happy are you, for the Spirit of Glory and of God rests upon you, on their part he is evil spoken of, but on your part he is glorified. 15. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evildoer, or as a busybody in other men's matters. 16. Yet if any man suffer as a Christian let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God on this behalf.

The Word is the Christian's magazine both of instructions, and encouragements for doing, or suffering, and this Epistle is rich in both: here what the Apostle said in suffering, he specifies in particular, suffering of reproaches, but this seems not to come up to the height of that expression he has used; he spoke of fiery trial, but that of reproach seems rather fit to be called an airy trial, the blast of vanishing words. Yet upon trial, it will be found to be, as here it is accounted, a very sharp, a fiery trial, first then of this particular kind of suffering. 2. Of the comfort and advice furnished against it.

If we consider both the nature of the thing, and the strain of the Scriptures we will find, that reproaches, are among the sharpest sort of sufferings, and are indeed fiery trials, the tongue is a fire, says St. James, and reproaches are the flashes of that fire, they are a subtle kind of flame, like that lightning, that they say crushes the bones, and yet breaks not the flesh, they wound not the body, as tortures and whips: but through a whole skin, they reach the spirit of a man, and cut it. So (Psalm 42:10). The fire of reproaches preys upon, and dries up the precious ointment of a good name, as Solomon compares it. A good name is in itself a good, a prime outward good, and take us according to our natural temper and apprehensions (according to which we feel things) most men are, and some more excessively, too tender and delicate in it. Although truly I take this rather to be a weakness than true greatness of spirit, as they fancy it, to depend much on the opinion of others, and feel it deep, yet I say, considering it to be commonly thus with men, and the remains of this, as other frailties in the Children of God, it cannot well be, but reproaches will ordinarily much afflict men, and to some kind of spirits possibly, be more grievous than some bodily pain or suffering.

And as they are thus, the Scripture accounts them so, and very usually reckons them among sufferings, and readily names them more than any other kind of suffering, and that [reconstructed: with] good reason, not only for their piercing nature (as it's [reconstructed: said]) but withal for their frequency, and multitude, and some things we suffer, do (as flies) more trouble by their number than by their weight.

Now there is no [reconstructed: other] kind of suffering of such constancy, and commonness, and abundance as reproaches are. When other persecutions cease, yet those continue when all other martyr fires are put out, these burn still; in all times and places the malignant World ready to revile Religion, not only avowed enemies of it, but the greatest part even of those that make a vulgar profession of it, they that outwardly receive the form of Religion, yet are many of them inwardly haters of the power of it; and Christians so called will scorn and reproach these that are so indeed.

And this is done with such ease by every one, that these arrows fly thick; every one that has a tongue can shoot them, even base abjects (Psalm 35). And the drunkards make songs, as Jeremiah complains, the meanest sort can reach this point of persecution, and be active in it against the children of God; they that cannot, or dare not offer them any other injury, will not fear, nor spare to let fly a taunt, or bitter word, so that whereas other sufferings are rarer, these meet them daily (Psalm 42:10). While they say daily to me where is your God.

We see how justly reproaches are often mentioned among, and beyond other trials; and accounted persecution (Matthew 5:10-11). Blessed are you when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake (Galatians 4:29). But as then he that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit, even so is it now. And in the history all we find is, he mocked him. And thus are they among the sufferings of Christ in the Gospel, and not as the least, the railings and mockings darted at him, fixed to the cross, more than the very nails that fixed him. And (Hebrews 12:2) the shame of the cross though he was above it and despised it, yet that shame of it, was much of the burden, so verse 3, contradiction of sinners.

Now the other thing is, that this is the lot of Christians, as it was of Christ, and why should they look for more kindness, and better usage, and think to find acclamations, and applauses from the world, that so vilified their Lord. Oh no; the vain heart must be weaned from these to follow Christ, if we will indeed follow him; it must be tamed to share with him in this point of suffering, not only mistakes and misconstructions, but bitter scoffings, and reproaches. Why should not our minds ply and fold to this upon that very reason, he so reasonably presses again and again, on his disciples. The servant is not greater than his master, and in this very thing, if they called the Master Beelzebub, how much more will they speak so of the servants.

Instruction 1. Seeing it is thus, I shall first press upon the followers of Christ, the Apostle's rule here, to keep their sufferings spotless, that it may not be comfortless, resolve for it, but that it be innocent suffering; suffer not as evil doers, verse 15. Besides that ways of wickedness are most unsuiting our holy calling, look to the enmity about you, and gain even out of that evil this great good, of the more circumspect and holy walking, know who you are, and where you are, your own weakness, and the world's wickedness. This our Savior represents, and upon it gives that suitable rule: Behold I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves, be therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. Know you not what exact eyes of others are upon you; will you not from there learn exactly to eye yourselves, and all your ways, and seek of God with David, to be led in righteousness, because of your enemies, your observers.

This is the rule here verse 16. [reconstructed: Suffer] as Christians holily, and blamelessly, that the enemy may not know where to fasten his hold; as the wrestlers anointed their bodies, that the hands of their party might not fasten thus truly they that walk, and suffer as Christians anointed with the Spirit of Christ, their enemies cannot well fasten hold.

I recommend therefore to you that love the Lord Jesus, this especially, to be careful, that all your reproaches may be indeed for Christ, and not for anything in you unlike to Christ, that there be nothing save the matter of your rod; keep the quarrel as clean and unmixed as you can, and this will advantage you much both within, and without, in the peace and firmness of your minds, and in the refute of your enemies. This will make you as a brazen wall, as the Lord speaks to the Prophet, they shall fight against you, but shall not prevail.

Keep far off from all impure unholy ways; suffer not as evil doers, no nor as busybodies, be much at home, setting things at rights within your own breast, where there is so much work, and such daily need of diligence, and then you will be free from unnecessary idle pryings into the ways and affairs of others, and further than your calling and the rules of Christian charity engage you, you will not interpose in any matters without you, nor be found proud and censorious as they are ready to call you.

2. Shun the appearances of evil; walk warily and prudently in all things; be not headstrong nor self-willed, no not in the best thing; walk not upon the utter brink and hedge of your liberty, for then you shall readily overpass it; things that are lawful may be inexpedient and in case our fear of scandal ought either to be wholly spared, or used with much prudence and circumspection. Oh! study in all to adorn the Gospel, and in sense of your own unskillfulness and folly, beg wisdom from above, that anointing, that will teach you all things, much of that Holy Spirit, that will lead you in the way of all truth; and then in that way, whatever be, suffer it, and however undignified and reproached, happy are you, for the spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.

Inference 2. But if to be thus reproached be happy, then certainly their reproachers are no less unhappy, if on those rest the spirit of glory and of God; what spirit in those, but the Spirit of Satan, and of shame, and vileness. Who is the basest, most contemptible kind of person in the world? Truly, I think, an avowed contemner and mocker of holiness. Shall any such be found among us?

I charge all you in this name of Christ, that you do not entertain godless prejudices against the people of God. Let not your ears be open to, nor your hearts close with the calumnies and lies, that may be flying abroad of them and their practices, much less open your mouths against them, or let any disgraceful word be heard from you: and when you meet with undeniable real frailties, know the law of love and practice it. Think this is blameworthy, yet let me not turn it to the reproach of those persons, who notwithstanding may be sincere, much less to the reproach of other persons professing religion, and then cast it upon religion itself.

My Brethren, beware of sharing with the ungodly in this tongue persecution of Christians. There is a Day at hand wherein the Lord will make inquiry after those things, if we shall be made accountable for idle words (as we are warned) how much more for bitter malicious words uttered against any, especially against the Saints of God, whom however the World reckon, he esteems his precious ones, his treasure. You that now can look on them with a scornful eye, which way shall you look when they shall be beautiful and glorious, and all the ungodly clothed with shame? Oh! do not reproach them, but rather come in and share with them in the way of holiness, and in all the sufferings and reproaches that follow it: for if you partake of their disgraces with them, you shall share of glory with them, in the Day of their Lord's appearing.

The words have two things. The evil of these reproaches supposed, and the good expressed. The evil supposed, that they are trials and hot trials: of this already. The good expressed: you are happy, even in present, in the very midst of them; they do not trouble your happy estate; indeed they advance it.

Thus solid indeed is the happiness of the Saints that in the lowest condition, it remains the same: disgraces, caves, prisons, and chains, cast them where you will, still happy: a Diamond in the mire fouled and trampled on yet still retains its own worth.

But this is more, that the very things that seem to make them miserable, do not only not do that, but on the contrary do make them the more happy they are gainers by their losses, and attain more liberty by their thralldoms, and more honour by their disgraces, and more peace by their troubles: the World and all their enemies are exceedingly befooled in striving with them, not only can they not undo them, but by all their enmity and practices, they do them pleasure, and raise them higher; with what weapons shall they fight? How shall they set upon a Christian, that are his enemy? Where shall they hit them, seeing all the wrongs they do him, do indeed enrich and ennoble him; and the more he is depressed, he flourishes the more: certainly the blessedness of a Christian is matchless and invincible.

But how holds this, Happy in reproaches and by them, it is not through their nature and virtue, for they are evil, so Matthew 5:20. But (1.) By reason of the Cause. (2.) Of the accompanying and consequent Comfort.

First the Cause. Negatively, we have it verse 15. Positively verse 14, 16. Not as an evildoer, that stains your holy profession, and damps your comfort, and clouds your happiness, disadvantages you and dishonors your Lord.

But for the name of Christ, and what is there so rough, that that will not make pleasant, to suffer with Christ and for Christ, who suffered so much and so willingly for you? Has he not gone through all before you, and made all easy and lovely? Has he not sweetened poverty, and persecutions, and hatred, and disgraces, and death itself? [Reconstructed: Perfumed] the grave, and turned it from a pit of horror into a sweet resting bed? And thus love of Christ judges, thinks all lovely that is for him, is glad to meet with difficulties, and ambitious of suffering for him: scorn and contempt a thing of hard digestion; but much inward heat of love digests it easily, reproaches bitter, but the reproaches of Christ sweet. Take their true value (Hebrews 11): The reproaches of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, his very worst things, better than the best of the World. A touch of Christ turns all into gold; his reproaches riches, as there, and honor, as here: Happy not only afterwards, you shall be happy, but happy in present, and that not only in apprehension of that after happiness, as sure and as already present, which Faith does; but even for that they possess the presence and comforts of the Spirit.

For the Spirit of Glory.] This accompanies disgraces for him; his Spirit, the Spirit of Glory and of God; with your suffering goes the name of Christ, and the Spirit of Christ: take them thus, when reproaches are cast upon you for his name, and you bear them by his Spirit, and his Spirit most fit to support you under them, indeed to raise you above them; they are ignominious and inglorious, he is the Spirit of glory; they are human reproaches, he the Divine Spirit, the Spirit of Glory and of God, that is, the glorious Spirit of God.

And this is the advantage, the less the Christian finds esteem and acceptance in the World, the more he turns inward to see what's there, and there he finds a down weight counterpoise of excellency and glory, even in this present condition, as the pledge of the glory before him. The reproaches be fiery, but the Spirit of glory rests upon you, does not give you a passing visit, but stays within you, and is indeed yours. And in this he can take comfort, and let the foul weather blow over, let all the scoffs, and contempts abroad pass as they come, having a glorious Spirit within, such a guest honoring him with his presence, and abode, and sweet fellowship, and is indeed one with him. So that rich miser could say; when they scorned him in the streets, he went home to his bags and hugs himself there at that sight, say they what they would. How much more reasonably may the Christian say, let them revile and bark, I have riches, and honor enough, that they see not. And this is it makes the World, as they are a malicious party, so to be an incompetent judge of the Christians' estate; they see the rugged unpleasant outside only, the right inside, their eye cannot reach. We were miserable indeed, were our comforts such as they could see.

And as this is the constant estate of a Christian, it is usually most manifested to him in the time of his greatest sufferings, then (as we said) he readily turns inward and sees it most, and accordingly finds it most. God making this happy supplement and compensation, that when they have least of the World, they have most of himself, when they are most covered with the World's disfavor, this favor shines brightest to them, as Moses in the Cloud, in nearest access and speech with God; when the Christian is most clouded with distresses and disgraces, then does the Lord often show himself most clearly to him.

If you are indeed Christians, you will not be so much thinking at any time, how you may be free from all sufferings and despisings; but rather how you may go strongly and cheerfully through them; so here is the way, seek real and firm interest in Christ, and participation of Christ's Spirit, and then a look to him will make all easy and delightful. You will be ashamed within yourself to start back, or give one foot at the encounter of a taunt, or reproach for him; you will think for whom is it, is it not for him who for my sake hid not his face from shame and spitting? And further he died; now how would I meet death for him, that shrink at the blast of a scornful word?

If you would know whether this his Spirit is and rests in you, it cannot be better known than by that very love, ardent love to him, and high esteem of him; and from there a willingness, indeed a gladness to suffer anything for him. 2. This Spirit of Glory sets the heart on glory; true glory makes heavenly things excellent in our thoughts, and sets the world, the better and worse, the honor and dishonor of it, at a low rate.

The Spirit of the World is a base ignoble spirit, even the highest pitch of it, those that are projecting for kingdoms, these are poor designs to that of the Christian, which ascend above all things under the sun, and above the sun itself, and therefore he is not shaken with threats, nor taken with offers in these things. Excellent is that answer Saint Basil gives in the person of those martyrs to that emperor, as making them (as he thought) great offers to draw them off, why, say they, do you bid us so low as pieces of the world, we have learned to despise it all. This is not stupid, nor an affected stoutness of spirit, but a humble sublimeness, that the natural spirit of a man cannot reach to.

But will you say still, this stops me, I do not find this Spirit in me, if I did, then I think I could be willing to suffer anything. To this for present no more but this, [reconstructed: do] you find desire that Christ may be glorified, and [reconstructed: could you] be content it were by your suffering in any kind for him as called to it? Are you willing to give up your own interest, and study and follow Christ's, and that you might sacrifice your own credit, and name, to advance his? Are you unwilling to do anything that might dishonor him, nor unwilling to suffer anything might honor him, or would you be thus? Then be not disputing, but up and walk on in his strength.

Now if any say, but his name is dishonored by these reproaches; true, says the Apostle, on their part it is so, but not on yours. They that reproach you do their best to make it reflect on Christ and his cause, but thus it is only on their part: you are sufferers for his name, and so you glorify it: your faith, and patience, and victory by these do declare the divine power of grace, and the Gospel working; they have made torturers ashamed, and induced some beholders to share with them. Thus though the profane world intend it as far as they could reach to dishonor the profession of Christ; yet it [reconstructed: sticks] not, but on the contrary he is glorified by your constancy.

And as the ignominy fastens not, but the glory from the endurance; so they are obliged and certainly are ready according to the Apostle's zeal, verse 16. To glorify God on this behalf, that as he is glorified in them, so we may glorify and bless him, that he has dignified us so, that whereas we might have been left to a sad sinking task, to have suffered for various guilts our God has changed the tenure and nature of our sufferings, and make them to be for the name of Christ.

Thus does not a spiritual mind swell on a conceit of constancy and courage, which is the readiest way of self undoing; but acknowledge all gift, even suffering, to you it is given not only to believe, but to suffer, and so to bless him on that behalf. Oh! this [illegible] grows in suffering, so Acts 5:41. They went away rejoicing, that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.

Consider, it is but a short while, and the wicked, and their scoffs shall vanish, they shall not be, this shame will presently be done, and this disgrace is of short date, but the glory and Spirit of glory eternal, what though you should be poor, and defamed, and despised, and be the common mark of scorn, and all injuries, yet it is hard at the end. This is now your part, the scene shall be changed. Kings here, real ones, are in deepest reality but strange kings, but when you come to alter the person now you bear, here is the difference, you were as a fool in appearance for a moment, and shall be truly a king forever.

Verse 17. 17. For the time is come, that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the Gospel.

There is not only perfect equity, but withal a comely proportion and beauty in all the ways of God, had we opened eyes to discern particularly in this point of the sufferings and afflictions of the Church. The Apostle here sets it before his brethren, for the time is come, etc.

Where is first a parallel of the Lord's dealing with his own and with the wicked, verses 17-18. (2.) A persuasion of due compliance and confidence in his own upon that consideration.

The parallel is in the order, and the measure of punishing; and it is so, that for the order, it begins at the house of God, ends upon the ungodly, and that carries in it the great difference in the measure, that it passes from the one on whom it begins, and rests on the other on whom it ends; the full weight of it lies on forever. It is so expressed, What shall be the end, etc. Which imports not only, that judgment shall overtake them in the end, but that it shall be their end, they shall end in it, and it shall be endless upon them.

The time is.] Indeed the whole time of this present life is so, it's the time of suffering and purging for the church, compassed with enemies that will afflict her, and subject to these impurities that need affliction. The children of God are in their under age here, all their time they are children, and have their frailties and childish follies; and therefore though they are not always under the stroke of the rod, for that they were not able to endure, yet they are under the discipline and use of the rod, all their time: and whereas the wicked escape, till their day of full payment, the children of God are in this life chastised with frequent afflictions, and so the time [illegible] may here be taken according as the Apostle Paul uses the same word, Romans 8:18 [illegible]. The sufferings of this present time,

But withal it is true, and appears to be here implied, that there be particular set times, that the Lord chooses for the correcting of his church, he has the days prefixed and written in his Ephemerides, has his days of correcting, wherein he goes round, from one church to another, we thought it would never come to us, but we have now found the smart of it.

And here the Apostle may likely mean, the times of these hot persecutions that were begun and continued, though with some intervals, for two or three ages. Thus Revelation 6, after the white horse, immediately follows at his heels the red, and the black, and the pale horse. And as it was upon the first publishing of the gospel, so usually upon the restoring of it, or upon remarkable reforms of the church, and revivings of religion, follow sharp and searching trials. As the lower cause of this is the rage, and malice of Satan, and the ungodly world, acted and stirred by him, against the purity and prevalency of religion, so it is from a higher hand for better ends. The Lord will discover the multitudes of hypocrites, and empty professors, that will at such a time readily abound when religion is upon an advancing way, and the stream of it runs strong. Now by the counter current of troubles, such fall back and are carried away. And the truth of grace in the hearts of believers is advantaged by these hazards, and sufferings, they are put to fasten their hold the better on Christ, to seek more experience of the real and sweet consolations of the gospel, that may uphold them against the counterblasts of suffering. Thus is religion made a more real and solid thing in the hearts of true believers; they are entered to that way of receiving Christ, and his cross together, that they may see their bargain, and not think it a surprise.

Judgment.] Though all sufferings are not such, yet commonly there is that unsuitable and unwary walking among Christians, that even their sufferings for the cause of God, though unjust from men, yet are from God just punishments of their miscarriages towards him, in their former ways, their self-pleasing and earthliness, taking too much relish in the delights of this world, forgetting their inheritance and home, and conforming themselves to the world, walking too like it.

Begin.] The church of God punished, while the wicked are free and flourish in the world, possibly all their days, or if judgment here reach them, yet it is later; it begins at the house of God. (1.) This holds in them that profess his name, and are of the visible church, compared with them that are without the pale of it, and are its avowed enemies. (2.) Those that profess a desire of more religious, and holy course of life within the church compared with the profane multitude. (3.) They that are indeed more spiritual, and holy, and come nearer to God, compared with others that fall short of that measure, in all it holds that the Lord does more readily exercise them with afflictions, and correct their wanderings than any other.

And this truly is most reasonable, and the reason lies in the very name given the church, the house of God.

1. The sins of the church have their peculiar aggravations, that fall not upon others, that, which is simply a sin in strangers to God, is in his people the breach of a known and received law, and a law daily unfolded, and set before them, indeed it's against their oath of allegiance, 'tis perfidy and breach of covenant, committed both against the clearest light, and strictest bonds, and highest mercies, and still the more particular profession of his name, and testimonies of his love, make sin the more sinful, and the punishment of it the more reasonable. The sins of the church are all twice dipped Dibapha (Isaiah 1), have a double dye, they are once breach of the law, and they are again, ungrateful and disloyal breach of promise.

2. As there is unquestionable equity, so there is an evident congruity in it. God is ruler of all the world, but particularly of his church, therefore here called his house, wherein he has a special residence and presence. And therefore most suitable, that there he be specially observed and obeyed, and if disobeyed that he take notice of it and punish it, that he suffer not himself to be dishonored to his face by those of his own house; and therefore whoever escape, his own shall not (Amos 3:2). You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore will I punish you for all your iniquities. He that righteously judges and rules all nations, it is fit he make his justice most evident and exemplary in his own house, where it may best be remarked, and where it will best appear how impartial he is in punishing sin; so a king, as the Psalmist (Psalm 101), that he may rule the land well, makes his own house exemplary. It is you know one special qualification of a bishop and pastor (1 Timothy 3:4), one that rules well his own house, having his children in subjection. For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God? Now this therefore more eminently appears in the Supreme Lord of the church, as his own house; and therefore when he finds disobedience there, he will first punish that: so he clears himself; and the wicked world being afterward punished, their mouths are stopped with the preceding punishment of the church; he will not spare his own; indeed, they shall be first scourged — what then shall be the end, etc.

And indeed the purity of his nature, if it be everywhere contrary to all sinful impurity, it cannot but most appear in his peculiar dwelling house, that he will have neat and clean. If he hate sin all the world over, where its nearest him he hates it most, and testifies his hatred of it; will not endure it in his presence: as cleanly neat persons, cannot well look upon any thing that is nasty, much less will they suffer it come near them, or touch them, and to continue in their presence in the house where they dwell; the Lord that is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, will not abide it within his own doors; and the nearer any comes to him, the less can he endure any unholiness or sinful pollution in them, he will be sanctified in all that come nigh him (Leviticus 10). So in his ministers; Oh! how pure ought they to be, and how provoking and hateful to him are their impurities: therefore in that commission to the destroyers (Ezekiel 9:20), to which place the Apostle may here have some eye; Go, says he, slay the old and young, and begin at my sanctuary. They were they that had polluted his worship, and there the first stroke lighted. And in a spiritual sense, because all his people are his only elect priesthood, and should be holiness to the Lord; and when they are not really so; do not sanctify him in their walking; he sanctifies himself, declares his holiness in his judgments on them.

3. Mercy, in this, even under the habit of judgment, love walks secretly and works; so loving and so wise a Father will not undo his children by sparing the rod; but because he loves, rebukes and chastens (Hebrews 12; Proverbs 3:11; Revelation 3). His Church, his house, therefore that he may delight in it, and take pleasure to dwell in it, and make it happy with his presence, he will have it often washed, and made clean, and the filth and rubbish scoured and purged out of it: this argues his gracious purpose of abiding in it.

And as he does it, that he may delight in his people, so that they may delight in him, and in him alone, embitters the world's breast to wean them; makes the world hate them, that they may the more easily hate it; suffers them not to settle upon it, and fall into a complacency with it; makes it unpleasant to them by many and sharp afflictions, that they with the more willingness may come off, and be united; and that they may remember home the more, and seek their comforts above, finding so little below, may turn in to him, and delight themselves in communion with him. That their prayers may ascend the more thick, that sweet incense, he kindles these fires of trial to them; for though it should not be so, yet so it is, that in times of ease they would grow readily remiss and formal that way.

He is gracious and wise, knows what he does with them, and the thoughts he thinks towards them is all for their advantage, purging their iniquities (Isaiah 27), purges out impatience, and earthliness, and self-will, and carnal security, and thus refines them for vessels of honor; we see in a jeweler's shop, that as there are pearls and diamonds, and other precious stones; there are files, cutting instruments, and many sharp tools for their polishing: and while they are in the workhouse they are continual neighbors to them, and come often under them. The Church is God's jewelry, his workhouse, where his jewels are a polishing for his palace, and house, and those he especially esteems and means to make most resplendent, he has oftenest his tools upon them.

Thus observe it, as the Church to other societies, so in it a congregation or family, one more diligently seeking after God than the rest, they shall readily meet with more trials, and be oftener under affliction than any of the company; either under contempt and scorn, or poverty and sickness, or some one pressure or other, outward or inward, and those inward trials are the nearest and sharpest that the world sees least, and yet the soul feels most: And yet all these both outward and inward have love, unspeakable love in them all, to purge and polish them by increasing of grace to fit them for glory.

Inf. 1. We will not be so foolish as to promise ourselves impunity by our relation to God, as his Church in covenant with him; if once we thought so, sure our experience has undeceived us, and let not what we have suffered harden us, as if the worst were past, we may rather fear it's but a pledge and beginning of sharper judgment? Why do we not consider our unhumbled and unpurged condition, and tremble before the Lord? Would we save him a labor, he would take it well, purge our souls, that he may not be put to further purging by new judgments; were we busy reading our present condition, we would see very legible foresigns of further judgments, the Lord taking away his eminent and worthy servants, that are as the very pillars of the public peace and welfare, and taking away counsel, and courage, and union from the rest; forsaking us in our meetings, and leaving us in the dark to grope and to rush one upon another.

2. The dissensions and jarrings in the state and Church are likely upon imagination to bring it to a reality; these unnatural burnings threaten new fires of public judgments to be kindled among us.

3. That general despising of the Gospel, and abounding of profaneness throughout the land, not yet purged, but our great sin remaining in us, calls for more fire and more boiling.

4. The general coldness and deadness of spirit, want of that zeal for God, that communion of saints; that mutual stirring up one another to holiness, and which is to all, the restoring of prayer, that frozen benumbedness in that so necessary work; that preventer of judgments; that binder of the hands of God from punishments, and opener of them to them, pouring forth of mercies; Oh! this is a sad condition in itself, though it portended no further judgment, the Lord hiding himself, and the Spirit of Zeal and prayer withdrawn, and scarce any lamenting it, or so much as perceiving it: where our days either of solemn prayer or praises, as if cause of neither, and yet clear cause of both. Truly M. B. we have need if ever to bestir ourselves; are not the kingdoms at this present brought to the extreme point of their highest hazard, and yet who lays it to heart.

Inference 2. Learn to give God right construction in all his dealings with his Church, and with your soul; for his Church, there may be a time wherein you shall see it not only tossed; but, to your thinking, covered and swallowed up with tears; but wait a little it shall arrive safe. This common stumbling stone, walk by the light of the Word, and the eye of faith looking on it, and you shall pass by, and not stumble at it, the Church mourns, and Babylon sings, sits as a queen, but for how long; she shall come down and sit in the dust, and Zion shall be glorious, and put on her beautiful garments, and Babylon shall not look for another revelation to raise her again, no, she shall never rise. The angel took up a stone like a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying, Thus with violence shall the great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all.

Be not sudden, take God's work together, do not judge of it by parcels; it is indeed all wisdom and righteousness; but we shall best discern the beauty of it when we look on it in the frame, and when it shall be fully completed and finished, and our eyes enlightened to take a fuller and clearer view of it, than we can have here; Oh! what wonder? What endless wondering will it command?

We read of Joseph hated, and sold, and imprisoned, and almost unjustly; but because within a leaf or two, we find him freed and exalted, and his brothers coming as supplicants to him, we are satisfied: but the things that are for the present cloudy and dark, our short hasty spirits cannot learn to wait a little till we see the other side, and what end the Lord makes; we see judgment beginning at the house of God, and this perplexes us, while we consider not the rest, what shall be the end of them that obey not the Gospel? God begins the judgment on his Church for a little time, that it may end and rest upon his enemies forever. And indeed he leaves the wicked last in the punishment; so as he makes use of them for the punishing of his Church, they are his rod (Isaiah 10). But then when he has done that work with them, they are broken and burnt (verse 16), and that when they are at the height of insolency and boasting, not knowing what hand moves them, and smites his people with them for a while, till the [reconstructed: day] of their consuming come (verse 24-25). Let the vile enemy that has shed our blood, and insulted over us rejoice in their present sparing, and in men's procuring of it, and pleading for it; there is another hand from where we may look for justice, and though it may be the judgment begun at us, is not yet ended, and that we may yet further (and that justly) find them our scourge, yet certainly we may, and ought to look beyond that to the end of the Lord's work, which shall be the ruin of his enemies, and the peace of his people, and the glory of his name.

Of them that obey not the Gospel: The end of all the ungodly is terrible; but especially of such as heard the Gospel, and have not received and obeyed it.

The word has in it both unbelief and disobedience, and these are inseparable, unbelief is the grand point of disobedience in itself, and the spring of all other disobedience: and the pity is, men will not believe it to be thus.

They think it an easy, and a common thing to believe, who does not believe? Oh! but rather, who does? Who has believed our report? Were our own misery and the happiness that is in Christ believed, were the riches of Christ, and the love of Christ believed, would not this persuade men to forsake their sins, and the world to embrace him?

But men run away with an extraordinary fancy of believing, and do not deeply consider what news the Gospel brings, and how much it concerns them: sometimes it may be they have a sudden thought of it, and they think, I will think on it better at some other time; but when comes that time; one business steps in after another and shuffles it out: men are not at leisure to be saved.

The Gospel of God: his embassy of peace to men, the riches of his mercy and free love opened up and set forth, not simply to be looked on, but laid hold on. The glorious holy God declaring his mind of agreement with man in his own Son; his blood streaming forth in it to wash away uncleanness, and yet this Gospel not obeyed. Sure the conditions of it are very hard, and the commands must be grievous, that they are not listened to; why, judge you if they be. The great command is that, to receive that salvation; and the other is this, to love that Savior, and there is no more; perfect obedience is not now the thing, and the obedience that is required, that love makes it sweet and easy to us, and acceptable to him. This is proclaimed to all that hear the Gospel, and the greatest part refuse it, they love themselves, and their lusts, and this present world, and will not change, and so they perish.

They perish? What's that? What is their end? I will answer that but as the Apostle does, and that is even asking the question over again, what shall be their end?

There is no speaking of it — a curtain drawn; silent wonder expresses it best, telling it cannot be expressed; how then shall it be endured? It is true, that there be resemblances used in Scripture, giving us some glance of it; we hear of a burning lake, a fire that goes not out, and a worm that dies not; but these are but shadows to the real misery of them that obey not the Gospel; Oh! to be filled with the wrath of God, the ever-living God forever. What words or thoughts can reach it? Oh! Eternity, Eternity; Oh! that we did believe it.

This same parallel is continued in the following verse in other terms, for the clearer expression, and deeper impression of it.

Verse 18. And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and sinner appear?

It is true then, that they are scarce saved, even they that endeavor to walk uprightly in the ways of God, that's the righteous; here they are scarcely saved. That imports not any uncertainty or hazard in the thing itself to the end, in respect of the purpose, and performance of God: but only the great difficulties, and hard encounters in the way, that they go through so many tribulations and temptations, so many fightings without, and fears within: the Christian so simple and weak, and his enemies so crafty, and powerful.

The oppositions of the wicked world, their hatreds, and scorns, and molestations, the flights and violence of Satan, and the worst of all, the strength of their own corruptions. And by reason of abounding corruption, such frequent, almost continual need of purging by afflictions and trials; to be still under physic; to be of necessity at sometimes drained and brought so low, till there is scarce strength or life remaining in them.

And truly all outward difficulties would be but matter of ease, would be as nothing, were it not the incumbrance of lusts, and corruptions within; were a man to meet disgraces and sufferings for Christ, how easily would he go through them, indeed, and rejoice in them, were he rid of the fretting impatience, the pride, and self-love of his own carnal heart; these clog and trouble worst, and he cannot shake them off, nor prevail against them without much pains, many prayers and tears; and many times after much wrestling, scarce finds that he has gained any ground; indeed, sometimes is foiled and thrown by them.

And so in all other duties such a fighting and continual combat with a revolting backsliding heart; the flesh pulling, and dragging downwards, when he would mount up, finds himself as a bird with a stone tied to its foot, has wings that flutter to be upwards, but is pressed down with the weight fastened to him; what struggling with wanderings and deadness in hearing, and reading, and prayer: and that which is most grievous, that by their unwary walking, and the prevailing of some corruption, they sadden the Spirit of God and provoke him to hide his face, and withdraw his comforts. How much pain to attain anything, any particular grace of humility, or meekness, or self-denial; and if anything attained, how hard to keep and maintain it against the contrary party; how often driven back to their old point? If they do but cease from striving a little, they are carried back by the stream: and what returns of doubtings and unbelief, after they thought they were got somewhat above them; in so much that sometimes they are at the point of giving over, and thinking it will never be for them: and yet through all those are they brought safe home, there is another strength that bears them up, and brings them through: but yet these things, and many more of this nature argue the difficulty of their course, and that it is not so easy a thing to come to Heaven as most imagine it.

Inference. You that find so little stop, and conflict in it, go your round of eternal duties, and all is well; are no more troubled; you have need to inquire after a long time spent in that way, am I right? Am I not yet to begin? Sure this looks not like the way to Heaven, as it is described in the Scripture; it is too smooth and easy to be right.

And if the way of the righteous be so hard, then how hard shall be the end of the ungodly and sinner that walks in sin with delight; it were strange if they should be at such pains, and with great difficulty attain their end: and he should come in among them in the end, they were fools indeed; true, if it were so; but what if it be not so, then the wicked is the fool, and shall find he is, when he shall not be able to stand in judgment, where shall he appear; when to the end he might not appear, he would be glad to be smothered under the weight of the hills, and mountains, if they could shelter him, from appearing.

And what is the aim of all this that we have spoken, or can speak in this subject, but that you may be moved to take into deeper thoughts the concern of your immortal souls. Oh! that you would be persuaded. Oh! that you would make your way to Jesus Christ and seek salvation in him; seek to be covered with his righteousness, and to be led by his Spirit in the ways of righteousness. That will seal to you the happy certainty of the end, and overcome for you all the difficulties of the way: what is the Gospel of Christ preached for? What was the blood of Christ shed for? Was it not, that by receiving him, we might escape condemnation; in fact this drew him from heaven, he came that we might have life, and might have it more abundantly.

Verse 19. Therefore let them that suffer according to the will of God, commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as to a faithful creator.

Nothing does so establish the mind in the rollings, and turbulency of present things, as both a look above them, and a look beyond them; above them, to the steady and good hand by which they are ruled, and beyond them to the sweet and beautiful end, to which by that hand, they shall be brought. This the Apostle lays here as the foundation of that patience, and peace in troubles, with which he would have his brethren furnished. And thus he closes this in these words: Therefore let them that suffer according to the will of God, commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as to a faithful creator.

The words contain the true principle of Christian patience, and tranquility of mind in the sufferings of this life, expressing both wherein it consists, and what are the grounds of it.

1. It lies in this committing the soul to God, the word [illegible] added is a true qualification of this, that it be in well doing, according to the preceding doctrine which the Apostle gives clearly and largely (verses 15-16). If they would have inward peace amidst outward trouble, they must walk by the rule of peace, and keep strictly to it; if you would commit your soul to the keeping of God, know he is a holy God; and an unholy soul that walks in any way of wickedness known, or secret, is no fit commodity to put into his pure hand to keep. Therefore as you would have this confidence to give your holy God the keeping of your soul, and that he accept of it, and take it off your hand, beware of willing pollutions and unholy ways; walk so as you discredit not your protector and move him to be ashamed of you, and disclaim you. Shall it be said you live under his shelter and walk inordinately? As this cannot well be, you cannot well believe it to be: loose ways will loosen your hold of him and confidence in him; you will be driven to question your interest, and to think, sure I do but delude myself; can I be under his safeguard, and yet follow the course of the world, and my corrupt heart, certainly be it who will, he will not be a guardian and patron of wickedness. No, he is not a God that has pleasure in iniquity, nor shall evil dwell with him. If you give your soul to him to keep upon terms of liberty to sin, he will turn it out of his doors, and remit it back to you to look to, as you will yourself; indeed, in the ways of sin, you do indeed steal it back and carry it out from him; you put yourself out of the compass of his defense; go without the trenches, and are at your own hazard, exposed to armies of mischiefs and miseries.

Inference. This then is primarily to be looked to, you that would have safety in God in evil times, beware of evil ways: for in these it cannot be: if you will be safe in him, you must stay with him, and in all your ways keep within him, as your fortress; now in the ways of sin you run out from him.

Hence it is we have so little established confidence in God in times of trial, we take ways of our own, and will be gadding, and so we are surprised and taken, as they that are often venturing out into the enemy's reach, and cannot stay within the walls; it is no idle repetition, (Psalm 91:1) He that dwells in the secret place of the most high, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. He that wanders not out but stays there, shall find himself there hid from danger. They that rove out from God in their ways, are disquieted and tossed with fears; this is the fruit of their own ways; but the soul that is indeed given to him to keep, keeps near him.

Study pure and holy walking, if you would have your confidence firm, and have boldness and joy in God: you will find it, that a little sin will shake your trust, and disturb your peace more than the greatest sufferings, indeed in those your assurance and joy in God will grow and abound most, if sin be kept out, that's the trouble feast, that disquiets the conscience, which while it continues good, is a continual feast, so much sin as gets in, so much peace will go out; afflictions cannot break in upon it to break it, but sin does. All the winds that blow about the earth from all points stir it not; only that within the bowels of it makes the earthquake.

I do not mean that for infirmities a Christian ought to be discouraged; but take heed of walking in any way of sin: for that will unsettle your confidence: innocence and holy walking makes the soul of a sound constitution, that the counter blasts of affliction wear not out, nor alter it; sin makes it sickly, and feeble, that it can endure nothing; therefore study to keep your consciences pure, and they shall be peaceable, indeed in the worst times readily most peaceable and best furnished with spiritual confidence and comfort.

Commit the keeping of their souls.] The Lord is an entire protector, he keeps the bodies, indeed all that belongs to the believer, and as much as is good for him; makes all safe, keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken; indeed says our Saviour the very hairs of your head are numbered. But that which is in the believer's account, and in God's account, so certainly in itself most precious, is principally committed and received into keeping, their souls.

They would most gladly be secured in that here, that shall be safe in the midst of all hazards. That whatever be lost, that may not, that's the jewel, therefore the prime care of that, if it be safe all is well, it is riches enough? What shall it profit a man though he gain the whole world, says our Saviour, and lose his soul? And so what shall it disprofit a man, though he lose the whole world, if he gain his soul. Nothing at all.

When times of trial come, oh! what a bustle to hide this and that, to fly, and carry away, and make safe that which is but trash and rubbish to the precious soul, but how few thoughts of that? Were we in our wits, that would be all at all times, not only in trouble, but in days of peace. Oh! how shall I make sure about my soul; let all go as it may, can I be secured and persuaded in that point, I desire no more.

Now the way is this, commit them to God, this many say, but few do, give them into his hand, lay them up there; so the word is, and they are safe and may be quiet and composed.

In patience possess your souls, says our Saviour; impatient fretting souls are out of themselves, their owners do not possess them. Now the way to possess them ourselves in patience, is thus, to commit them to him in confidence, then we only possess them, when he keeps them. They are easily disquieted and shaken in pieces while they are in our hands; but in his hand they are above the reach of dangers and fears.

Inference. Now this is the proper act of faith, rolls the soul over on God, ventures it in his hand, and rests satisfied concerning it, being there. And there is no way but this, to be quiet within, to be impregnable, and unmoveable in all assaults and changes fixed, believing on free love; therefore be persuaded to resolve in that, not doubting and disputing, whether shall I believe or no; shall I think he will suffer me to lay my soul upon him to keep? So unworthy, so guilty a soul, were it not presumption; Oh! what do you say? Why do you thus dishonor him, and disquiet yourself; if you have a purpose to walk in any way of wickedness, indeed you are not for him; indeed, you come not near him to give him your soul; but would you have it delivered from sin, rather than from trouble, indeed rather than from hell; is that the chief safety you seek, to be kept from iniquity, from your iniquity, your beloved sins; do you desire to dwell in him and walk with him, then whatever is your guiltiness, and unworthiness come forward, and give him your soul to keep; if he should seem to refuse it press it on him; if he stretch not forth his hand lay it down at his foot, and leave it there, and resolve not to take it back; say, Lord you have made us those souls, you call for them again to be committed to you, here is one, it is unworthy, but what soul is not so? It is most unworthy, but therein will the riches of your grace appear most in receiving it, and leave it with him; and know he will make you a good account of it. Now lose goods, or credit, or friends, or life itself, it matters not; the main is sure if so be your soul be out of hazard; I suffer these things for the Gospel, says the Apostle, nevertheless I am not ashamed; why? For I know whom I have trusted, and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I have committed to him against that day (2 Timothy 1:12).

Now the ground of this confidence is in these two, in him whom we trust, ability, and fidelity. There is much in persuasion of the power of God, though few think they question that, there is in us secret undiscovered unbelief, even in that point. Therefore the Lord so often makes mention of it in the Prophets (Isaiah 50:3, etc.). And in this point the Apostle particularly expresses, I am persuaded that he is able to keep, etc. So this Apostle, (1 Peter 1:5). Kept by the power of God through faith to salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. This very needful to be considered in regard of the many and great oppositions and dangers, the powerful enemies that seek after our souls; He is able to keep them, for he is stronger than all, and none can pluck them out of his hand, says our Savior. This the Apostle here has in that word (Creator,) if he was able to give them being, sure he is able to keep them from perishing. This relation of a Creator implies likewise a benign propension and good will to the works of his hands; if he gave them us at first, when once they were not, forming them of nothing, will he not give us them again, being put into his hand for safety.

And as he is powerful, he is no less faithful, a faithful Creator — Truth itself. They that believe on him he never deceives nor disappoints. Well might Saint Paul say, I know whom I have trusted; Oh! the advantage of faith. It engages the truth and power of God, his royal Word and honor lies upon it to preserve the soul, that faith gives him in keeping, if he remain able and faithful to perform his Word, that soul shall not perish.

There be in the words other two grounds of quietness of spirit in sufferings. (1.) It is according to the will of God. The believing soul subjected and leveled to that complying with his good pleasure in all, cannot have a more powerful persuasive than this, that all is ordered by his will. This settled in the heart would settle it much, and make it even in all things not only to know, but wisely and deeply to consider, that it is thus; That all is measured in Heaven; every dram of your troubles weighed by that skillful hand, that does all in weight, number, and measure.

And then consider him as your God, and father, who has taken special charge of you, and your soul you have given it to him, and he has received it.

And upon this consideration study to follow his will in all, to have no will but his. This is your duty and your wisdom, nothing gained by spurning and struggling but to hurt and vex yourself; but by complying all is gained, sweet peace; it is the very secret, the mystery of solid peace within, to resign to his will, to be disposed of at his pleasure without the least contrary thought. And thus as two faced pictures, those sufferings, and troubles, and whatever else to look to it on the one side as painful to the flesh, has an unpleasant visage, yet go about a little, and look upon it as your father's will, and then it is smiling, and beautiful, and lovely. This I would recommend to you not only for temporal things as easier there, but in spiritual things, your comforts and sensible enlargements, to love all he does; it is the sum of Christianity, your will crucified and the will of your Lord your alone desire, joy or sorrow, sickness or health, life or death, in all, in all your will be done.

The other ground is in the first word, reflecting on the foregoing discourse Therefore; what? Seeing your reproaches and sufferings are not endless; indeed they are short, they shall end, and quickly end, and end in glory, be not troubled about them, overlook them, the eye of faith will do it, a moment, what are they? This is the great cause of our disquietness in present troubles and griefs, we forget their end, we are affected with our condition of this present life, as if it were all, and it is nothing. Oh! how quickly shall all the enjoyments, and all the sufferings of this life pass away, and be, as if they had not been.

The End of the Fourth Chapter.