Sermon 4: The Woman Was a Greek, a Syrophenician by Nation

Much woe is denounced by the prophets against Tyre and Sidon: yet sweet Jesus draws by the curtain, and opens a window of the partition, and saves this woman. Behold here Christ planting in the wilderness, the Cedar, the Shittah tree, the Myrtle, the oil tree (Isaiah 41:19), and here (Isaiah 55:13) is fulfilled: And instead of the thorn (what better are Sidonians than thorns?) shall come up the Fir tree, and instead of the Briar shall come up the Myrtle tree; and no praise to the ground, but to the good husbandman. And it shall be to the Lord for a name, for an everlasting sign, that shall not be cut off. Christ then can make and frame a fair Heaven out of an ugly Hell, and out of the knottiest timber he can make vessels of mercy for service in the high Palace of glory. 1. What are they all, who are now glorified? The fairest face that stands before the throne of redeemed ones was once inked and blacked with sin; you should not know Paul now with a crown of a king on his head; he looks not now like a blasphemer, a persecutor, an injurious person. The woman that had once seven devils in her, is a Mary Magdalen far changed; and grace made the change. 2. Grace is a new world (Hebrews 2:5). The land of grace has two summers in one year (Isaiah 33:24). The inhabitant shall not say, I am sick, the people that dwell therein, shall be forgiven their iniquity. Whoever lives and believes in me, shall never die (John 11:26). They are not mortal men that are in grace, there's neither sickness nor death in that land. 3. We say of such a physician, he has cured diseases that never man could, he cured stark death; then you may commit your body to him, he is a tried physician (1 Timothy 1:16). Christ has made a rare copy, a curious sampler of mercy of the Apostle Paul. For in him he has shown all long-suffering, for a pattern to them that should hereafter believe in him to life eternal: Heaven is a house full of miracles; indeed, of spectacles and images of free grace; you may entrust your soul with all its diseases to Christ, he has given many rare proofs of his tried art of grace, he has made many black limbs of Hell, fair saints in Heaven; such a man, such an artificer threw down an old dungeon of clay and made it up a fair palace of gold.

Obj. But what am I? a lump of unrepenting guiltiness and sin, to such a vessel of mercy as holy Paul, and repenting Mary Magdalen? Ans. Grace as it's in God, and fitness to receive grace in us, is just alike to all. There was no more reason why Paul should obtain mercy, than why you, or any other sinner like you, should obtain mercy; there's alike reason for me to have noble and broad thoughts of the rich grace of Christ; as for Abraham, Moses, David, all the prophets, and apostles, to believe: There was no greater ransom given by Christ to buy faith and free grace for Noah, Job, and Daniel, to Moses and Samuel, than to poor and sinful me; it's one cause, one ransom, one free love. If there had a nobler and worthier Redeemer died for Moses and Paul than for you and me: And another Heaven and a freer grace purchased to them, than to me; I should have been discouraged, grace is grace to you as to meek Moses, Christ is Christ to you as to believing Abraham: And further, The same grace that is here, is in Heaven; 1. As faith that is freely given us is the conquest of the new heir Jesus Christ (John 6:44; Philippians 1:29; Ephesians 1:3), so are all Christ's bracelets about our neck in Heaven, and the garland of glory, the free grace of God; it's the same daylight when the Sun breaks forth out of the east, and at noon-day in the highest meridian; though we change places when we die, we change not [reconstructed: husbands]. 2. We stand here by [reconstructed: free grace] (Romans 5:2). Repentance and remission of sins are freely given here to Israel by the exalted Prince Christ Jesus (Acts 5:31). Our tears are bought with that common ransom; so the high Inns of the Royal Court of Heaven, is a free and open house, and no bill put upon the inhabitants; neither fine, nor stent, nor excise, nor assessment, nor taxation, all is upon the Royal charges of the Prince of the Kings of the earth; there's no more hire, merit, wages, or fees there than here, the income of glory for eternity, and the life-rent of ages of blessedness, is all the good will of him which sits on the Throne. Every apple of the tree of life is grace, every sip, every drop of the Sea and River of life, is the purchase of the blood of the Lamb that is in the midst of them. 3. They are as poor without Christ who are there, as we are, Glory is Grace, and their dependency for ages of ages, is that (Revelation 7:17), That the Lamb which is in the midst of the Throne, does feed them, and lead them to living fountains of waters, and God wipes all tears away from their eyes: Then they cannot walk there alone, but as the Lamb leads them; and if Christ were not there, or if he should take grace, glory, and all his own jewels and ornaments from Moses, and Enoch, there should remain no more there but poor nature: As good angels do therefore not fall, because in Christ the head of angels they are confirmed; and if they lacked this confirming grace they might yet fall, and become apostate devils; so the glorified in Heaven, do therefore stand, and are confirmed in the inheritance, not by free will there, more than here, but by immediate dependence of grace on the Lamb, whom they follow wherever he goes: Grace then for kind, is as good as Heaven: Glory, glory to our ransom-payer.

3. Her little daughter was vexed (she says) ⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩ she is exceedingly devilled, or grievously tormented with a devil: Then observe that common punishments of sin and sad afflictions do follow justified persons, as well as the wicked; for it was a sad burden to the mother, that the devil had such a dominion over her daughter; yet the text shows clearly that she was a justified person, as her instancy of praying, adoring, and great faith, even prevailing over Christ, under sad trials, do manifestly evidence; and we see the reasons that the Scripture alleges: 1. That the gold of precious faith, and the upright metal therein, may be seen (1 Peter 1:7). Afflictions are the servants and pursuivants of the accusing law, sent out to cause us lay hold by faith on peace made, and pardon purchased in Christ: The hot furnace is the work-house of Christ, in that fire he takes away the scum, the dross, the refuse of the true metal, that faith may be found to praise, and honor, and glory, at the appearance of Jesus Christ: 2. Afflictions drive us to seek God, they being God's firemen, and his hired laborers, sent to break the clods, and to plow Christ's land, that he may sow heaven there, but Christ must bring new earth to the soil: In prosperity we come to God, but in a common way, as the grave man came to the theater, only that he might go out again; but in trouble the saints do more than come, they make a friendly visit when they come: also the prayers of the saints in prosperity, are but summer prayers, slow, lazy, and alas, too formal; in trouble they rain out prayers, or cast them out in connatural violence; as a fountain does cast out waters, both these are in one well expressed, by the prophet (Isaiah 26:16). Lord in trouble they have visited you, they pour out a prayer, when your chastening hand is on them; Vatablus expounds ⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩ Malmad, A murmuring or prayer which trouble pours out: the Chaldean Paraphrase turns it silentium, silence, because the conscience weakened is silent; it is a prophecy, what God's fire does effectuate, which you have (Hosea 5:15). In their affliction they will seek me early. 3. We must be made like Christ, in the cross, and the crown (2 Timothy 2:12), and conform to him (Romans 8:29). Christ the corner stone, though there was no sin in him, yet before he was made the chief corner stone, he was by death hammered (Acts 4:10-12). And much more, the strokes and smiting of the cross must knock down all the superfluity of naughtiness, and every height, till by smoothing and chipping, the child of God be made a stone in breadth, length, proportion, smoothness, some way conforming to the first copy, and to Christ the sampler-stone. There is a fourth reason, but it is a controverted one, the justified person may be afflicted for sin, some teach that this is Popery to affirm, that the justified bear the punishment of their sin, because Christ only was wounded for our iniquity, and did bear in his own body our sins on the tree, therefore (say they) respect seems to be had (as one speaks) to sin, not principally, but secondarily and occasionally, not as it offends God (who by that one sacrifice is forever pacified (Hebrews 10:14), (Matthew 3)), but as it offends and diseases the minds of the faithful; not that afflictions simply, properly, and immediately do ease, quiet, and cure the conscience (for their natural effect is to deject and terrify, as appendixes of the law) but that they awaken and stir up our dullness to a lively apprehension of Christ's Righteousness, and so while God as a Father corrects for sin, sin has not properly with God the nature of sin, which is an offense of divine justice; but is considered as a disease troubling his child, which in love, and in pity he seeks to make riddance of, in manner aforesaid, and not in anger and displeasure.

It is true, Papists hold, that when God forgives sin in David, he forgives not the punishment; for David is punished with the sword on his house for that same sin; but it is known that this doctrine is a toefall and pillar to underprop the chamber in hell, which they call Purgatory; and that their meaning is, that punishment inflicted on a justified person, is a punishment satisfactory to the justice of God; that so they may make the merits of the saints' suffering to ride up as a collateral sharer with the high and noble blood of the killed Lamb of God, who only satisfactorily takes away the sins of the world: This we disclaim. But on the other hand, we hold that there is another justice in God, than that legal, and sin-revenging justice, which Christ's sufferings have expiated and fully satisfied, both in regard of God's acceptation, and of the intrinsic worth of the death of him, who was God the Prince of life: And this other justice, is also the justice of an offended Father correcting though in mercy (and so it is a mixed justice) the sins of the saints as sins: 1. Because the sins of the saints are not only the offending of divine revenging justice, but also a wrong done against this mixed justice, and against the mercy and kindness of God (2 Samuel 12:7-9), (Exodus 20:1-2), (Psalm 81:6-7, 10-11), (Psalm 78:11-13, 42, 53-56), (Deuteronomy 32:11-18), (Amos 3:2). And therefore God does punish, in his own, sins as sins.

2. (1 Corinthians 11) Those who are not to perish with the world are for this cause (because they eat and drink unworthily) sick and punished with death (verses 30, 32, 33). It is clear against the text, that Mr. Towne says, that a justified person having the least measure of faith, cannot eat and drink unworthily, the smallest faith makes them worthy, and so those who in that text did eat unworthily, did but dally with the Gospel, and never actually put on Christ. But faith does no more hinder a justified person to receive the Lord's Supper unworthily, than it does hinder him to commit adultery, or incest, or to kill; and whoever should come to the Lord's Table, under these sins, without repenting, should eat and drink unworthily, and such a sin may a believer according to God's heart (as David was) commit; and there is great odds between being unworthy, and eating unworthily, all believers of themselves are unworthy of Christ and salvation, but being in Christ by faith, they are counted worthy, and yet they may eat and drink unworthily; but Mr. Towne's sense seems to carry, that a justified person cannot sin, nor eat and drink unworthily, because faith makes him worthy; and if so, the way of grace is a wanton merry way; the justified are freed from the law, and from any danger of sinning.

3. Nothing more evident than that David was punished according to the rule of that mixed and fatherly justice, which keeps a due proportion between the sin, and the punishment: his sin was to cut off Uriah's house out of Israel, God sends the sword against his house all his days, he took another man's wife secretly, and did commit filthiness with her, the Lord took his wives before the sun, and gave them to Absalom, who defiled his bed: Here's justice (though I grant mixed with mercy) sword for sword, bed for bed (2 Samuel 12). Eli honored his sons more than God, suffered them to profane the priesthood and sacrifices; justice rooted out his sons from the priesthood and sacrifices: Hezekiah out of his pride showed all his treasures, and all that was in his house to the king of Babylon's messengers; and justice measured out the like to him, all that was in his house, and all his treasures were carried away as a spoil to Babylon.

4. (Ezekiel 9:6) Slay old and young — begin at my sanctuary, (Luke 1:20) And behold you shall be dumb — because you believe not my word. The Church of God in so many words says as much (Lamentations 1:18): The Lord is righteous, for I have rebelled against his commandment: (Lamentations 1:14) The yoke of my transgression is bound by his hand: they are wreathed, and come up upon my neck. (Lamentations 3:39) Therefore does a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sin. (Lamentations 3:40) Let us search and try our ways, and turn again to the Lord (Isaiah 42:24): Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers? Did not the Lord against whom we have sinned? (Micah 7:9) I will bear the indignation of the Lord because I have sinned. (2 Kings 24:20) For through the anger of the Lord it came to pass in Jerusalem and Judah, until he had cast them out from his presence, that Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. It is not of weight that is brought to take off the force of these pregnant Scriptures: The church consisting of mixed persons, good and bad, elect, and reprobate (say they) is according to the wicked party punished in justice, but not the believing party: But I answer, all Judah good and ill, Jeremiah, Daniel, and all the holy seed were involved with the perverse and obstinate idolaters, in the same common calamity of a sad captivity, and it was not the ill figs, and stiff-necked idolaters, that did confess the Lord's righteousness, and their own rebellion against the Lord, nor did the wicked party enter in a trial of their ways, and acknowledge that the unregenerate man only suffers for his sins, nor did any of that side, with patience, hope, and silence, bear the indignation of the Lord, it was the true church, God's Jacob, the meek of the earth, that did thus stoop to God's correction, and yet these same were punished for their sins, as they acknowledge (Lamentations 1:18; Micah 7:9).

5. This is also against the covenant and threatenings thereof (Leviticus 26:21): And if you walk contrary to me, and will not hearken to me, I will bring seven times more plagues on you, to verse 41: If then (in their heavy afflictions) their uncircumcised hearts be humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity. (Leviticus 26:42) Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob (Psalm 89:30): If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments, etc. (Psalm 89:32) Then will I visit their transgressions with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. (Psalm 89:33) Nevertheless, my loving kindness will I not utterly take from him, etc. Nothing more evident, than that these that are in the covenant of grace, from whom God cannot remove the sure mercies of David, are visited for their iniquities with temporal rods.

6. It is against God's anger and displeasure at the sins of his own children, for God is really angry at his own children's sins, and why then does he not punish them for their sins? (Exodus 4:14) The anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses. (Deuteronomy 1:37) Also the Lord was angry with me for your sake: And the story shows, because Moses sanctified not the Lord at the waters of Meribah, God would not suffer him to set his foot in the holy land. (2 Chronicles 11:9) God was angry with Solomon. (Deuteronomy 1:20) The Lord was very angry with Aaron. (2 Chronicles 19:2) The prophet Jehu said to Jehoshaphat that good king, There is wrath upon you from the Lord. (Isaiah 60:10) For in my wrath I struck you, but in my favor, I have had mercy on you.

7. The contrary error is founded upon two other errors, that all afflictions are subservient officers and sergeants to the law, and so they are signs of God's wrath, as is the law, and as believers are freed from the ruling power of the law, so also from the rod. But this is false, for God's rod of itself is neither a sign of revenging justice, nor of free mercy; but it takes its nature and specification from the intention and mind of God; all these externals fall alike to elect and reprobate: the repenting thief, and the blaspheming thief are under the same rod of God, both die a violent death: wicked Ahab, and good Josiah are both killed in war: the botches and agues threatened in the law (Deuteronomy 28:60) are upon Job (Job 2:7). What makes then the same rod to be a work of revenging justice in the reprobate, and of justice mixed and tempered with mercy and fatherly kindness in the other? Certainly, God's pleasure and wise intention, punishing for different ends, varies the nature of the rods, so as an intention to take satisfactory vengeance on the reprobate, specifies his rod, and makes it punishment of black wrath, of salt, and unmixed justice on him, and this intention is an essential ingredient in satisfactory punishment. God writes and engraves upon the toothache of a reprobate, a parcel of hell; and he stamps upon burning-quick, racking, and torturing, the engraving of heaven, of mercy, and loving kindness in the believer: bastard crosses, and lawfully begotten afflictions have the same father, but not the same mother. 2. If the patrons of this error could make God's rod as arbitrary as they fancy the duties of the teaching and ruling law of God to be, they should cry down all crosses, and send all the justified persons to heaven, with a pass, securing them from all affliction in the way to heaven, and so Christ should bring his many children to glory with dry faces, and whole skins; whereas Christ himself passed to heaven with the tear in his eye, and a bruised soul. The other error is, that Christ has made a full atonement for sin, and fully satisfied justice for all that are justified in his blood, and therefore they cannot be punished for sin themselves. But 1. there is more in the conclusion than in the premises: Therefore, the justified cannot suffer satisfactory punishment for sin, either in whole, or part; this is most true, no man's garments were ever dyed with one drop of red satisfactory vengeance for sin, Christ has alone trod this vine-press, and of all the nations, there was none with him: but yet it in no way follows, that the regenerate does not suffer punishment for sin, according to the rule of another mixed and tempered justice. 2. If this argument from Christ's suffering has nerves, it shall conclude, that the elect before they are justified, are never punished for sin, more than believing saints are; indeed that God is not displeased with Abraham's idolatry before his conversion, nor with Manasseh's blood, nor with Saul's persecution, because Christ paid justice for sins of elect persons committed before justification, as for sins committed after justification.

We can fetch no conclusion of a bad condition from affliction. It's a part of tenderness of conscience in the regenerate to be too applicatory of the law and of wrath: I am afflicted above all others, therefore God is angry with me, and I am cast off by God. It's a bad consequence. There are some rules to be observed in affliction. 1. We are not either to over-argue, or to under-argue, neither to faint, nor despise (Hebrews 12). Conscience is too quick-sighted after illumination, and too dull-sighted before. The reasons why we argue from afflictions to God's hatred are: 1. There's a conscience of a conscience in the believer, that is, even in an enlightened conscience; there is some ill conscience, to deem ill of God (Psalm 31:22). 'For I said in my haste, I am cut off from before your eyes.' This is a hasty conscience, as we say, such a one is a hasty man, and soon saddled, easily provoked to anger; this is a conscience soon provoked to anger. 2. We have not that love and charity to God, that we have to some friend; we have such a love to some dear friend, that all his blacks are white, his seeming injuries to us, do not provoke us; we say (I can believe no evil of such a man) and we overshoot ourselves in an over-charge and surfeit of charity, which proceeds from a surplus and dominion of love to a creature. We are in the other extremity to God and Jesus Christ: sense of affliction cools our love, and we cannot extend charity so far to our Lord, as when we see he deals hardly with us, to keep the other ear without prejudice, free from the report that affliction, and the sense of affliction makes. 3. The flesh joins with affliction against God, affliction whispers wrath, justice, sin; and the flesh says, that is very true: for flesh hates God, and so must slander his dispensation. Ahab could not but slander Micaiah, he never prophesies good (says he) to me. Is not God's truth good? Surely, every word of prophecy is like gold seven times tried. The reason of the slander is given by himself: I hate him. The other extremity is, that we under-argue in affliction. As 1. we say, it's not the Lord: the Philistines doubted whether God had sent the hemorrhoids on them, for keeping the ark captive, or if chance had done it: it's grace to father the cross rightly. 2. We look seldom spiritually on the cross; a carnal eye upon a cross is a plague (Isaiah 42:23). 'God's anger set him on fire round about, and he knew not, and it burned him, and he laid it not to heart.' It's strange that God's fire should burn a man, and yet he neither sees nor feels fire. Why? There's something of God in the cross that the carnal eye cannot see: because, as Zophar says (Job 20:26), a fire not blown shall consume him. Some make it (and not without reason) a fire that has no noise of bellows or wind to make it take fire, and to flame up. Some are burnt, and they neither hear nor see; there's a white powder that burns and makes no noise or sound. A dumb rod is twice a rod. We scarce see what God is doing in this war; we are smitten of God in the dark; and so wicked men never do come lawfully out of affliction, they see not God, nor sin, and for that come not out of prison by the king's keys, but they break the jail, and leap out at a window. The land is to see all the circumstances of this bloody war in these three kingdoms.

We are to put a difference between God's afflicting one man, and a whole Church: Now, God has his fire in our Zion, and we wonder that wars have lain on Germany twenty-six years, and that for various years the sword has been on us in these kingdoms. 1. There are many vessels to be melted, a fire for an afternoon, or a war for a morning, of a day, or a week, cannot do it. Seven days' sickness of a dying child, puts David to go softly and in sackcloth: years are little enough to humble proud Scotland, and England. God humbled Israel 400 years and above in Egypt, and kept them forty years in the Wilderness, and Judah must lie smoking in the furnace seventy years. 2. One temple was forty-six years a building, God has taken eighty years to Reform England, and many years to Reform Scotland, and the temple is not built yet; give to our Lord time, hope, and wait on. 3. Babylon is a great cedar that cannot fall at the first stroke, it is not a work of one day or a year, to bring that Princess, the Lady of Nations from her throne of glory, to sit in the dust, and take the millstones and grind meal.