Sermon 21: Then Jesus Answered and Said to Her, O Woman, Great Is Your Faith

This is the last passage of the text, containing a commendation of the woman, given to her by Christ in her face. 2. An answer according to her desire. 3. The effect of her praying with instancy and pressing importunity of faith: The Devil is cast out of her daughter.

Christ acknowledges here: That instancy of praying in faith, will overcome God, and Satan and all the saddest temptations that can befall the child of God. Hence observe what acts of efficacious power instant and earnest prayer puts forth upon God, and how the clay-creature does work upon, and prevail with the great potter and former of all things.

1. Prayer is a messenger and a swift and winged post dispatched up to court (Psalm 5:3). David sent away this post early in the morning, with morning wings: My voice shall you hear in the morning: The post is himself, for the word is, [in non-Latin alphabet] I will address my person as in battle array (Job 33:5). Set yourself in order before me, (and) stand up, says Elihu to Job. Or, I will address my words (Job 32:14). Now he has not directed his words against me: the Seventy render it [in non-Latin alphabet], and David sent himself to heaven, not only as a post, but (as the word [in non-Latin alphabet] Asappeh sounds) I will look up, or, spy, as one that keeps watch and ward, waiting for an answer from God, as the word is (Habakkuk 2:1) and (Psalm 18:6). In my distress I called upon the Lord, — and my cry came before him, even into his ears.

2. Prayer puts a challenge upon God, for his covenants sake and his promise; that is, greater boldness than to speak to God and wait on (Isaiah 63:18). Our adversaries have trodden down your sanctuary (verse 19). We are yours, you never bore rule over them, they were not called by your name (Lamentations 2:20). Behold, O Lord, and consider, to whom you have done this (Isaiah 63:17). O Lord, why have you made us to err from your ways? And hardened our heart from your fear? Return for your servants' sake, the tribes of your inheritance. Hence there is a holy chiding with God (Psalm 22:2). O my God, I cry in the day time, and you hear not, and in the night season, and am not silent (Psalm 13:1). How long will you forget me, (O Lord) for ever? How long will you hide your face from me?

3. It puts God to great straights, and suffering even to the moving of his soul (Jeremiah 31), when God hears Ephraim bemoaning himself in prayer: it puts God to a sort of pinch and condolency (verse 20). Is Ephraim my dear son? Is he my pleasant child? For since I spoke against him, I do earnestly remember him still, therefore my bowels are troubled for him. Isaac an earthly father moved, and his heart went and torn with the weeping and tears of Esau his son, so as he must confer some blessing upon him; far more must the bowels of our Father infinite in mercy be turned within him, at the weeping and tears of a praying and crying Church.

4. When God seems to sleep, in regard that his work and the wheels of his providence are at a stand, prayer awakens God, and puts him on action (Psalm 7:6). Arise O Lord in your anger, lift up yourself because of the rage of my enemies; awake for the judgment you have commanded (Psalm 44:23). Awake, Why do you sleep O Lord? Arise, cast us not off for ever. Both the words [in non-Latin alphabet] Gnurah, and [in non-Latin alphabet] Hakitsa, signify to awake out of sleep: So prayer puts God on noble acts of omnipotence, as to bow the heavens and come down (Isaiah 64:1). To shake, and put on work all creatures in heaven and earth, for the saving of one poor man (Psalm 18). As when the sick child cries for pain, all the sons and servants, indeed, the father of the house and mother, are set on work, and put to business for his health. Hence when David prayed (Psalm 18, verses 6, 7), the earth shook, the foundations of the hills were moved, for the Lord was angry, smoke and fiery coals went out of his mouth, he bowed the heavens and came down, he rode upon a Cherub, and did fly upon the wings of the wind. So it did put the LORD to divide the Red Sea, to break the prison doors and iron chains to deliver Peter, Paul and Silas.

5. It acts so upon God, that it puts the crown upon Christ's head, and heightens the footstool of his throne; so much does that prayer (Your Kingdom come) hold forth, and that last prayer of the Church (Revelation 22), which the Spirit and the Bride utters; Even so come Lord Jesus, is a hastening of that glorious marriage day, when the Bride, the Lamb's wife, shall be married on Jesus Christ and a ripening of the glory of God, and of Christ the King and head mystical of his body the Church. The glory of infinite justice, and saving grace in the redemption of men, is like a fair rose, but enclosed within its green leaves in this life: But when Christ shall appear, this rose shall be opened and cast out in breadth, its fair and beautiful leaves to be seen and smelled openly by men and angels. In very deed, this prayer (Even so, come Lord Jesus) is summons for the last judgment, for the full manifestation of the highest glory of Christ in the final and consummate illustration of free grace, and mercy in the complete redemption of all the prisoners of hope, only for the declaration of the supreme judge's glory, who shall then do execution on Satan, his angels, Antichrist, and all slaves of hell; so that though prayer made not the world; yet it may unmake it, and set up a new heaven and a new earth.

6. Prayer is a binding of God, that he cannot depart, and lays chains on his hands, and builds a wall or a hedge of thorns in his way that he cannot destroy his people (Isaiah 64:7). And there is none that calls upon your name, and stirs up himself to take hold of you [in non-Latin alphabet] — there is none to lay hands on you (Ezekiel 22:30). And I sought for a man among them that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap (or in the rupture made by war) before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none. If a Moses or a Samuel should intercede by prayer that the Lord would spare the land, his prayer should be a hedge or a wall to stand in the way of justice, to hinder the Lord from destroying his people.

7. Prayer is a heavenly violence to God, expressed in diverse powerful expressions, as, 1. (Isaiah 62:6-7) The faithful watchmen pray and cry to God so hard, that they give the Lord no rest, no silence, while he establish Jerusalem. 2. Praying is a sort of striving with the Lord (Romans 15:30): I beseech you — strive with me, in prayers to God for me. 3. Jacob by prayer wrestled with the Lord; and the Lord, as if he had been constrained, says (Genesis 32) [illegible] Send me away, dismiss me. And Jacob said, I will not dismiss you until you bless me: Which is well expounded by Hosea (Hosea 12:4). Jacob had a princely power over the Angel, and prevailed, he wept, and made supplication to him, [illegible] Is a Prince, or as many render it, Rectus fuit cum Deo, or, Directus fuit, vel prosperum successum habuit, Which may note either a princedom in prayer over God, which is the true reason of the name Israel; or as others think, he stood right up, and his prayer did not bow nor was broken, when a temptation lay on him as heavy as a millstone, even when the Lord said he would depart from him, yet he prevailed under that weight. So (Exodus 32:10), When Moses was praying for the people: The Lord said to Moses, Let me alone, that I may destroy them. The Chaldean translation reads, Leave off your prayer before me. All which tends to this, That prayer is a Prince, and a mighty wrestling prevailing King, that has strong bones, and strong arms to be victorious with God. We know the parable of the widow (Luke 18), Who by importunity obtained of the unjust Judge, that he should avenge her of her adversary. The scope of which parable is, that prayers without fainting, puts such a labor and a trouble upon God, that he must hear and answer the desires of his children. So does the Lord resemble himself to a master of a family gone to bed with his children, who yet being wearied by the knocking of his neighbor, cannot choose but rise in the night, and lend him bread to strangers come to his house.

8. Some also say that prayer commands God, as (Isaiah 45:11), Ask me of things to come concerning my sons, and concerning the work of my hand command you me: which place though it may well bear another interpretation, yet is this not beside the scope of the text; for sure it is, that God has laid a sort of law on himself in regard of his binding promise, to hear the prayers of his children: And that he comes down from the throne of his sovereignty to submit himself to his own promise of hearing prayers (Psalm 34:15, Psalm 65:2, Psalm 145:18-19, Matthew 7:7-8, John 14:13-14).

Use 1. If prayer prevail over God and Christ, even to the overcoming of the Devil: then much more will a praying people prevail over Hell, and malignants; it were wisdom then for malignants to yield and strike sail to these, who can by prayer set omnipotence on work, and engage the strength of Israel against them. Amalek had omnipotency against them, and a harder party than spears, and bows, and armed men; in that praying Moses was against them. The third Psalm was a strong piece against Absalom and Ahithophel, and all that conspired against David. Christ's prayers for the perfecting of his own Body, and gathering in his firstborn, include in them a curse upon all those that hinder the gathering in of his flock. Woe to the enemies then against whom our intercessor prays curses. The prayers of Christ against his enemies, shall blast them and their counsels, and all their war undertakings.

Use 2. Some are discouraged, they can neither fight for Christ, nor do anything to promote this cause, as wanting strength of body, and means. In fact, if you can pray you do set the whole wheels of omnipotence on work, for the building of the Lord's house, in which regard the prayer of a sick and poor man shall do more in war for the cause of God, than twenty thousand men. It was not Ahasuerus, nor the grace that Esther found in the eyes of the King, that saved the whole Church of the Jews from destruction, but the prayers of Esther and her maids. It is true, an Angel brought Peter out of Prison (Acts 12), But what stirred that wheel in Heaven (verse 5)? Here is the cause: Prayer was made without ceasing to God for Peter by the Church. Quod est causa causae est etiam causa causati: Prayer, prayer can put a reeling and tottering on King and Court, Pope, Prelate, and Babylon; we are to pray the King of the bottomless pit, the man of sin, the graven images of apostate Rome out of the world. Prayer can yoke all the swords in Europe against the Whore: every one who has the Spirit of adoption, though poor and rejected of men, by prayer have powerful influence on all the nations of the earth, on all Europe, on the ends of the earth, on the hearts of the Jews, on Turks and Indians. Prayer can reach as far as omnipotence, accompanied by the wise decree of our Lord. And the poorest girl or maid that can pray, does lend a strong lift to heighten the footstool of Christ's Royal Throne; children and poor maids by prayer, may put the Crown on Christ's head, and hold up his Throne, and may store and increase heaven by praying, Your Kingdom come, and enlarge Hell, and fill the pits with the dead bodies of Christ's enemies, and may by prayer bind Kings in fetters, chain up and confine devils, subdue kingdoms.

Great is your faith.] For the clearing of these words; we are to consider three points: 1. What faith is: 2. What a great faith is: 3. Why he says your faith, appropriating it to the woman. Now of faith, I shall speak, 1. A word of preparations for faith: 2. Of the grounds and necessary motives to faith: 3. Of the ingredients of faith: 4. Of the sinners' warrants to believe: 5. Of diverse sorts of false, and ill-rooted faiths.

1. There are some preparations which go before faith: 1. Faith is a seed of heaven, it is not sown by the good husbandman in unplowed, and in fallow ground, Christ sows not among thorns? We are built on the faith, stones are hewn, rubbish removed before one stone be laid: 2. Every act of grace in God, is an act of Omnipotence, and so requires not time or succession; God might have set up the frame of the world in all its fullness, with less than one thought, or act of his will put forth by Omnipotence: yet did our Lord subject the acts of creating the first world to the rule of time, and to a circle of evening and morning, nights and days, so does the Lord set up a new world of faith, in a soul void of faith by degrees: There's a time when there's neither perfect night, nor perfect day: but the twilight of the morning, and God notwithstanding created the morning no less than the noonday sun? There's a half summer, and a half spring in the close of the spring which God made. The embryo, or birth not yet animated, is neither seed only, nor a man-child only; so is a convert in his first framing, neither perfectly untamed corruption, because there's a crack and a throw in the iron sinew of the neck; nor is he a thorough child of light, but as we say, in the dead-throw, in the place of breaking forth of children, as Hosea speaks: A child with his head come forth of the womb and no more, and so half born only; so is the convert while he is in the making, not taken off Christ's wheels; half in the borders of hell, and looking far off at the suburbs of heaven, not far from the kingdom of heaven.

But 2. This bridge over the water between the kingdom of darkness, and the state of saving grace, has no necessary connection with that kingdom of the Son of God's love, but such as it has from the sole and mere decree of the free Election of Grace, and therefore many reprobates may enter the bridge, and never go along to the other bank of the river: God breaks the bridge, this being the very division and parting of these two unsearchable ways of Election and Reprobation, yet so as the sin in cutting the bridge is the guilt of the reprobate man: As many births die in the breaking forth out of the womb, various roses in the bud are blasted and never see harvest, through the fault of the seed, not of the sun.

3. It is true, the new creation and life of God, is virtually Seminaliter in these preparations, as the seed is a tree in hope, the blossom an apple, the foundation a palace in its beginning; so half a desire in the non-converted is love sickness for Christ in the seed, legal humiliation is in hope evangelical repentance and mortification: But as the seed and the growing tree differ not gradually only, but in nature and specifically; as a thing without life is not of that same nature and essence with a creature that has a vegetative life and grows, so the preparatory good affections of desire, hunger sorrow, humiliation going before conversion, differ specifically from those renewed affections which follow after: The former being acts of grace, but not of saving grace, which goes along with the decree of Election of Grace, and of like latitude with it, the latter being the native and connatural fruits of the Spirit, of which the Apostle speaks (Galatians 5:22-23). In which regard no man is morally and in regard of a divine promise such as this (Do this, and this, and God shall bestow on you the grace of conversion) fitter and in a nearer disposition to conversion than another. 1. Because, we read not of any such promise in the Gospel. 2. Because, among things void of life, all are equally void of life, and there are here no degrees of more or less life, no intention, no remission or flacking of the degrees of life; for even as an ape or a horse, are as equally no men, as stones and dead earth are no men, though an ape or a horse have life common to them with men, which stones and earth have not; yet they are equally as destitute of reason and an intellectual life which is the only life of a man as a man, as stones and earth are. So Saul only humbled by the terrors of the Law, and sick of half raw desires of Christ, is no less yet a creature void of the life of God, than when he was in the highest pitch of obstinacy, spitting out blood and murders on the face of that Lord Jesus whom he persecuted; and in this regard, conversion is no less pure grace every way free to Saul humbled, and so having only half a thirst and desire of Christ, than if he were yet in the fever of his highest blasphemy, thirsting after the blood of the saints.

4. Yet are the saints thus prepared and humbled, but not converted materially, physically, or as it were passively nearer Christ, and in relation to God's eternal Election of Grace, who makes this a step relative to his eternal love, they are under the reach of Christ's love, and at the elbow of the right arm of the Father, who draws souls to the Son (John 6:44). And in the gospel-bounds and fields or lists of free grace, as the height and rage of a fever, is near a cool and a return to health, and yet most contrary to health, and the utmost flowing of the sea, when it is at the remotest score of the coast, is a disposition to an ebbing, though most contrary to a low ebb; so are the humbled souls, who have some lame and maimed estimative power of light, to put half a price on Christ, and finds apprehended sin, the mouth, throat, and outer entrance of hell in that case most contrary to Christ. A fish within that circle of the water that the net casts, is no less living in its own element of water, than if it were in the bosom of the ocean, some hundred miles distant from fisher or net, yet is it in a near disposition to be caught.

For grounds of Faith to lead us on to believing: Consider, 1. two words (Colossians 1:27) spoken of the object of Faith. 1. It is named, The riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles. 2. Which is (says Paul) Christ in you the hope of glory. Now Faith leads us to a Mystery that none knows, but such as are the intimate friends of Christ, and are put upon all Christ's secret Cabinet-Counsels. 2. Glory is so taking a lover, that it will deprive a natural man of his sleep; but the glory of a Kingdom revealed in the Gospel, is the flower, marrow and spirits of all glory imaginable. 3. What is riches of glory (Ephesians 3:8)? That I should preach, [illegible], the gold mine of the riches of the glory of Christ, so deep that none can find them out, and so large, that when they are found out, men and angels shall not find their bottom. O what foldings and turnings, and inextricable windings of glory are lapped up in Christ? Indeed, treasures, all treasures, are in him (Colossians 2:3). So it is called (2 Corinthians 4:17) [illegible], a weight of glory. But 2. a weight eternal, a weight aged, and full of ages of glory. 3. An exceeding great weight, and not that only. But 4. a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; no orator in the Greek tongue has any so superlative expression, [illegible]. Do but weigh how weighty precious Jesus Christ is, how heavy and how massive and ponderous the Crown is, and what millions of diamonds, rubies, sapphires, and precious stones do shine, and cast out rays and beams of pure and unmixed glory out of his Crown? What smiles and kisses breathing out glory, on your now sinful face, shall come out of Christ. Now the light of Faith even as a lantern or a day-star, in a cloudy dawning, leads you up to this. 2. Christ in you the hope of glory. How in them? By Faith (Ephesians 3:17). Christ the hope of glory, is Christ the glory hoped for, by a figure; that is, Faith puts Christ and Heaven in you by hope. So in the believer there is Christ, the Lamb, the Throne, the glorified angels, and sinless and blessed musicians, that stand in a circle about the Throne, praising him that lives for ever. All these are in the believer by Faith, and in him is Heaven, the Tree of Life, the higher Paradise, the river of water of life; to all these Faith entitles the soul, and they be all nothing to Christ the hope of glory. Even the only begotten Son and Heir of a King, is called the hope of his house, the only hope of his house, but in regard the heirs of mortal kings are mortal, the house is weak, and stands but upon one foot, when he has but one mortal heir. Now it is the infinite perfection of God, that he can have but one Son who is infinite, and the same eternal and immortal God with the Father, and that he cannot die. So Christ stands the only hope of the house of Heaven; a King by hope, the King of hope; and all hope of the captives and sons of hope; and all the glory of his Father's house hangs upon him. Christ has all the heirs upon his shoulder, and Faith invests the believer to all this power and glory. 2. Faith must be so much the more precious, that it lays hold for its possession on God, and on the garland, marrow (if any comparison here can stand) and flower of all God's attributes, the Righteousness of Christ. 2. The free grace of God, the most taking, heart-ravishing attribute in God, and most suitable to our sinful condition. 3. The high and deep love of God, and love which dwells in, and with, the noble and excellent blood that satisfies infinite justice; there is no such glory by any act of obedience tendered to God by Adam in his innocent condition; or by angels which never sinned. 3. There is as great a necessity of Faith, as of Life; for the justified man must live by faith: there is no grace so Catholic, it being of necessity interwoven in all our actions, as they fall under moral consideration; not only in supernatural actions, but also in all our natural and civil actions, in so far as they must be spiritualized in relation to God's honor (1 Corinthians 10:31). So as Joshua, Baruch, Samson, David, did fight battles, kill men, subdue kingdoms by Faith (Hebrews 11:32-33). So must the soldier now fight, by that same Faith, and so are the saints, to eat, drink, sleep, journey, buy, sell, by Faith. We are not to put on Faith as a cloak, or an upper garment when we go to the streets, fields, or church, and then lay it aside in the house, at table, or in bed. Indeed, the renewed man is not to eat and sleep, because the light of reason and the law of nature teaches him so to do, or the convenience of a calling; for then all those actions shall be resolved in the same principles and formal reason of moral performance of them, in the believer, as in the carnal man, in whom a natural spirit is steersman; and then we do but in these actions, walk in the light of our own fire, and the sparks that we ourselves have kindled, and shall not see to go to bed, but lie down in sorrow (Isaiah 50:11). But we are to set Faith as the plumb line and line to regulate these actions to do them. 1. Because he who has bought us with a price, commands us by the light of nature. 2. And the light of Faith is to moderate us in eating, drinking, sleeping, according to Christian sobriety, in the measure of the action. 3. Faith teaches us not to eat, that we may eat, or for a natural or civil end. Grace heightens the natural intention, to a supernatural end, and to do all these for God and his service (1 Corinthians 10:31). And whatever we do (though but civil service as servants to earthly masters in a civil calling, in trading in arts) we are to do all as to the Lord, not to men (Colossians 3:23). Then Christ acting and moving by the light of Faith, is the formal reason and principle in which lastly and formally (ultimately) all our actions are resolved. 2. Look of how much worth and price your soul is; of as great necessity is Faith, except you would look for the Gospel-vengeance, the day or the ages of eternal vengeance at Christ's appearance (2 Thessalonians 1:8; Isaiah 61:2; John 3:18, 36; John 8:24). But if it be so that Faith is required in all that I do, the business of salvation (may some say) is hard and difficult work: where shall I have Faith for every stirring of my foot? I answer, as all our actions, except where imagination is principle of the act, must be deliberate, and so the actions of a rational man, so must they be moral; now there is no morality in a man, who is a citizen of the Church, but the morality of faith, for it is a duty laid upon every one within the visible Church that all his moral actions be watered and lustered with Faith. And the truth is, the work of our salvation being compared to sailing (Hebrews 6:19) and to fighting (2 Timothy 4:7; 2 Timothy 2:3-4), it is very like a ship, which requires many hands and much attentive carefulness in the owner and sailors. Now the mast is hurt, then something wanting in the deck, now the helm is faulty, then the cords are to be repaired, or the anchor is broken, or she takes in underwater, or the sail is torn, or the motion slow. There are charges to the owner, and much work to all hands, and how many things are required to a huge body of an army? So many thousand men must be liable to so many thousand wants: some are sick, some wounded, some a dying, some hungry, some naked, some fall off the army, and are caught by the enemy, some be faint, some too bold, and precipitate. Indeed, armor, houses, bread, drink, fire, tents, physicians, workmen, mattocks, spades, bridges, ladders, horses, engines of war, art and skill, medicine, counsel, courage, intelligence, and a thousand things of this kind are requisite. And seldom is an army, but there be some one inconvenience or other in this needy and cumbersome huge body. And when is the business of salvation not at a stand, one way or other? Is there not either one piece or other, the shield of Faith, or the anchor of hope, or the breastplate of righteousness, or some the like, broken or faulty? Is not our guide, who has seven eyes, ten times a day cumbered with us? Must not Christ solder our broken weapons? Sew our torn sails? Repair one breach or other in us? In a thousand the like, Faith is to improve the free grace, the omnipotence, the unchangeable love of Christ, to promote his own work, and to work in us to will, and to do, according to his good pleasure (Philippians 2:13).

Now for the ingredients of Faith: First, there are in us (2 Corinthians 10:5) [illegible] great forts raised against the light of Faith. These natural discourses in the mind are great works and heights, strongholds built against Christ. The prime faculty, reason — the discursive power [illegible] — thinks she has wit enough against Christ, and to keep the man out of all danger of eternal salvation; it overtops and outgrows all Gospel truths. Christ must overpower carnal, fate, rank, and headstrong soldiers, called thoughts — every thought [illegible] — and so kill some that will not be taken, and lead captive other thoughts to the obedience of Faith. Reason is a predominant power in itself: the carnal mind neither will nor can keep rank as an obedient soldier under the law of God (Romans 8:7). It is much for fine, silken, and golden reason to say to Christ (Proverbs 30:2), "There is more of a beast in me than of a man; I have not the understanding of a man." The learned, the schoolmen seldom believe; except gray-haired wit turns a child, and goes to school again to learn from Christ the new art of believing; for there was never an act of unbelief in any, but it grew out of this proud and rank stalk of a lofty wit. Therefore Christ breaks out a new window in the soul, and brings in a new sun that flesh and blood never saw nor heard of before (Matthew 16:17). Second, Faith has low and creeping affections toward the creature; but when the affections are big with child of the creature, as follows. First, they are strained and swelled in their acts; Faith is no faith but a delusion. The rich man speaks with all his heart, and with good will of his full barns, and it is clear he had neither Faith nor Hope toward eternity (Luke 12:19-20). For every word being, as we say, of the length of a cubit, a foot and a half (Luke 12:18), he casts forth words of pulling down, building greater houses, and scraping in all. His goods are [illegible] — my goods, all my births and bowels, and all my good things — for he had no other good things, and there is no apostrophe in the words; he speaks them with their full sound, and we speak with good will these things that we tell to our soul. Faith has but half words and half affections touching the world, half acts or broken acts in [illegible] affections, closing with the creature. [illegible] a Faith with child of eternity. To make the excellence of the creature a matter of mere opinion, to reckon the world's witchcrafts of lust, gain, and glory as but uncertain and topic arguments to conclude a Godhead and a golden heaven in the creature — this is the height of the wisdom of Faith. So Paul (Galatians 2:20): "I am crucified with Christ." Then, one may say, "Paul, you are a dead man." He says no. "Nevertheless I live, but I live the life of Faith, for Christ lives in me." All his motions toward the creature were half dead, like the vital motions of a crucified man half out of the world, and his acts of Faith were lively and vital, and high-tuned, like the highest note in the music song. Faith cannot break and violently rend asunder the two sides of the affections with too violent and intense acts of love, joy, fear, desire, and sorrow, as these are directed upon the creature. It is true, Faith clips nothing from the utmost and most superlative pitch of the love of God, of desire, fear, sorrow, and joy, as they act upon God, but adds wind to the sails in that flow of the soul's way toward God. But Faith moderates and lessens all these in relation to the creature, so the Faith which has its direct aspect toward eternity, and looks on the shortness of sliding-away time, and the transient wheeling away of the poor figure of this world (1 Corinthians 7:29-31), turns all these acts into but half a face on the creature, and into leisurely and leaden motions, or to half non-acts, as if made up of heavenly contradictions (verses 29-31): Having wives, having no wives; weeping, no weeping; rejoicing, no rejoicing; buying, no possessing; using the world, not using the world. When the saints throng through the press and crowd of the creatures — for the world is a bushy and rank wood — thorns take hold of their garments and retard them in their way. Faith loosens their garments and rids them of such thorny friends as are too kind to them in their journey. Who digs for iron and tin in the earth with mattocks of gold? What wise man would make a web of cloth of gold a net to catch fish? Expenses should outgrow gains. There is much of the metal of heaven in the soul: Faith would forbid us to wear out the threads of this immortal spirit — such as love, joy, fear, and sorrow — upon pieces of corruptible clay. Alas, is it Faith's light that sets men to work, to make the soul a golden needle, and the precious powers and affections thereof threads of silver to sew together pieces of sackcloth and old rotten rags? What better, I ask you, is the finest of the web in the whole system of creation? Certainly the heavens must be a thread of better wool than the clay-earth, yet if you should break your immortal spirit, and bend all the acts to the highest extent of your affections, to conquer thousands of acres of ground in the heavens, and entitle your soul to that inheritance as your only patrimony without Christ — Faith's daylight should discover to you that this finest part of that web of creation, with which you desire to clothe your precious soul, is but base wool and rotten thread, and though beautiful and well dyed to the eye, yet (Psalm 102:26): "The heavens, even all of them, shall grow old like a garment." And the wisdom of Faith knows a shop where there is a more excellent suit of clothes for the soul (2 Corinthians 5:1-2), and a more precious piece of heaven to dwell in — even a house which is from heaven, with which you shall be clothed — when life shall eat up death and mortality.

The creatures are below the affections of the believer, and his affections conquer them, as having the vantage of the mount above all the creatures. So Paul makes an elegant contrariety (Philippians 3:19-20), between those, whose heart, senses, mind, finds neither smell, taste, nor wisdom, but in earthly things; (for [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉] to mind things of the earth, imports all these) and those who by faith look to Heaven and dwell there: And the temporary's heart is below the world, and the creatures are up in the mount above him. So (Matthew 13:7, 22), the thorns or cares of riches have the fore-start of the earth, and sap above faith, or the good seed: For the seed was cast in the earth, when the thorns had been there before, and had the vantage of the season, and the soil both. The first love is often strongest. The Martyrs (Hebrews 11:35) had poor and weak thoughts of this life, and would not accept and welcome life and deliverance from death; but had strong acts of faith and love toward a better resurrection. It's a soul's strong faith that brings him to nil admirari; and to wonder at nothing. Never to love much, nor fear much, nor sorrow much, nor joy much, nor weep much, nor laugh much, nor hope much, nor despair much, when the creature is the object of all these acts; there is nothing great, not the world's all things (or their [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉]) to him who is possessed with that Righteousness which is of God, by faith (Philippians 3:8-9). Men that talk with good will, and all their heart, of their learning, books, of their own acts, good works, wisdom, court, honor, valor in war, flocks, lands, gold, moneys, children, friends, travels, are to examine, if faith be not a chaste thing, and that acts of whoredom with the creature and of believing in Christ, are scarce consistent. Let your affections move toward the creature, without sound of feet.

There must be self-forsaking in believing. 1. An affirming, and an (ay) to grace, is a negation and denial to itself (1 Corinthians 15:10). I labored more abundantly than they all; yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me: To deny that you are Christ's, or that you have any grace, (if Christ have anything of his in you) is not self-denial, but grace denial, and God-denial, deny the work of the Spirit, and deny himself. It's a saying of humility (Song of Solomon 1:5), I am black, and of faith, but comely as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon. And (Song of Solomon 5:1), I slept, but my heart waked. It's faith to hold fast your state of adoption: Lord, I am yours. 2. When our self makes a suit to self, and puts in a bill to the flesh. O pity yourself. Rejoice, O young man in your youth. It's self-renouncing to deny this request to the flesh: And faith only can give an answer to self-declining the cross. He that denies me before men, him will I deny before my Father and his holy Angels (says Christ.) And another answer faith gives (Romans 8:12), I am not debtor to you, O flesh. I owe you nothing. And it's faith's word of answer (Ecclesiastes 11:9), But know you, that for all these things God will bring you to judgment. 3. Faith puts the soul in that condition, that self may be plucked from self, without great violence, as an apple full of the tree, and of harvest-sap, is with a small motion plucked off the stalk (Acts 21:13). I am ready [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉], I have myself in readiness, not only to be bound, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus. Certainly faith saw here more in Jesus of excellency and sweetness, than there could be of bitterness in bonds and death to self.

There's a denial of the creature, and a bill of defiance sent to all the lovers of the world, when Ephraim is brought to this act of believing (Hosea 14:3), For in you the fatherless finds mercy. Then it's said, Ashur shall not save us: We will not ride upon horses. That creature that we trust on, we ride upon it, as Israel did upon the horses of Assyria and Egypt. But in this regard, faith dismounts the believer, and abases him to walk on foot. All the creatures are ships to the believer without a bottom: They are empty and weak: David forbids us to ride on a prince (Psalm 146:3-4), For that horse shall faint, and fall to clay. God allows Scotland to help England, but will not have the souls of his children in England to ride upon an army of another nation, and to trust in them for salvation. To make fire, is not so proper to fire, to give light, not so kindly to the Sun, as salvation is God's only due, and therefore let England in this walk on foot, and trust in the Lord.

5. The fifth ingredient also in faith is that it is bottomed upon the sense and pain of a lost condition. Poverty is the nearest capacity of believing. This is faith's method: be condemned, and be saved. Be hanged, and be pardoned. Be sick, and be healed (Matthew 9:13; James 4:7-8; Matthew 11:28; Luke 19:10). Faith is a floor of Christ's only planting, yet it grows out of no soil, but out of the margin and bank of the lake of fire and brimstone, in regard there be none so fit for Christ and Heaven, as those who are self-sick, and self-condemned to Hell. This is a foundation to Christ, that because the man is broken, and has not bread; therefore he must be sold, and Christ must buy him, and take him home to his fireside, and clothe him, and feed him. The chased man, pursued upon death and life, who has not a way for life, but one nick of a rock; if he misses that, he is a dead man, had he a hundred lives. So is the believer pursued for blood, there is but one city of refuge in Heaven, or out of Heaven; this is only, only Jesus Christ the great rock. And it is true, it is in a manner forced faith, and forced love cast upon Christ upon a great venture; yet we may make necessity here the greatest virtue, or the highest grace, and that is to come to Christ. Satan does but ride upon the weakness of many, proving, that they are not worthy of Christ, which is the way of a sophist, to prove an evident truth that cannot be denied. But there's no greater vantage can be had against sin and Satan than this; because I am unworthy of Christ, and out of measure sinful, and I find it is so, (Satan and conscience teaching me that truth, to bring me on a false conclusion) therefore ought I, therefore must I come to Christ unworthy as I am. For free grace is moved from within itself from God's good will, only without any motion or action from sin, to put itself forth upon the sinner; to the end, that sin being exceeding sinful, grace may be abundantly grace; and no thanks to Satan for suggesting a true principle (you are unworthy of Christ) to promote a false conclusion, (therefore you are not to come to Christ) for the contrary arguing is Gospel-logic. Satan's reasoning should be good, if there were no way but the law to give life. But because there is a Savior, a Gospel, and a new and living way to Heaven: the contrary arguing is the sinner's life and happiness.

6. The sixth ingredient in faith is, that the sinner can lay hold on the promise. 1. Not simply, but with relation to the precept; for presumptuous souls plunge their foul souls in fair and precious promises, and this is the faith of Antinomians, for the promise is not held forth to sinners as sinners, but as to such sinners, for we make faith to be an act of a sinner humbled, wearied, laden, poor, self-condemned; now these are not all sinners, but only some kind of sinners. Antinomians make faith an act of a lofty Pharisee, of one vile person, applying with an immediate touch, immediato contactu, his hot boiling and smoking lusts to Christ's wounds, blood, merits, without any conscience of a precedent commandment, that the person thus believing, should be humbled, wearied, laden, grieved for sin. I confess this is hasty hot work, and makes faith a stride, or one single step; but it is a wanton, fleshly, and a presumptuous immediate work to lay hold on the promises of mercy and be saved. This is the absolute and loose faith, that Papists and Arminians slander our doctrine with, because we reject all foregoing merits, good works, congruous dispositions, preparations moving God to convert this man, because he has such preparations; and to reject and to leave another man to his own hardness of heart, because he has no such payment in hand, by which he may redeem and buy conversion, and the grace of effectual calling; especially, they building all upon a Babel of their own brick and clay, that free will in all acts of obedience before or after conversion, is absolutely indifferent to do, or not do; to obey, or not obey; to choose heaven and life, hell or death, as it pleases, as being free and loosed from all predetermination, and foregoing motion, acting or bowing of the will, coming either from God's natural or his efficacious or supernatural providence. And so the Papist and Arminian on the one extremity, enthrones nature, and extols proud merit, and abases Christ and free grace: the Familist, Libertine, and Antinomian, on a contrary extremity and opposition, turn man into a block, and make him a mere patient in the way to heaven; and under pretense of exalting Christ and free grace, set up the flesh, liberty, license, looseness on the throne, and make the way to heaven on the other extremity as broad, as to comply with all presumptuous proud fleshly men, walking after their lusts, and yet (as they dream) believing in Christ. 2. The soul sees Christ in all his beauty, excellency, treasures of free grace lapped up with the curtain of many precious promises; now the natural man knowing the literal meaning and sense of the promises, sees in them but words of gold, and things afar off; and in truth, takes heaven to be a beautiful and golden fancy; and the gospel promises, a shower of precious rubies, sapphires, diamonds, fallen out of the clouds only in a night dream; and therefore jeers and scoffs at the day of judgment and at heaven and hell (2 Peter 3:1-3). For can every capacity smell and taste the unsearchable riches of Christ, the fullness of God in the womb of the promises, by meditating on them, and sending them, in their sweetness and heavenly excellency, down to the affections to embrace them? No, it cannot be, that words and sounds, and syllables, can so work upon a natural spirit: if you show not to a buyer precious and rare commodities, and bring them not before the sun, he shall never be taken so with things hidden in your coffers, as to be in love with them, and to sell all he has and buy them. Preachers cannot, indeed, it is not in their power to make the natural spirit see the beauty of Christ; Paul preaches it, but the gospel is hidden from the blinded man (2 Corinthians 4:3). If I cannot communicate light, far less can I infuse love in the soul of a lost man. 3. Literal knowledge of Christ, is not in the power of natural men; but laying down this ground, that a Pharisee lend eyes and ears to Christ and his miracles; the light of the gospel works as a natural agent; for make open windows in a house, whether the indweller will or he will not, the sun shall dart in daylight upon the house (John 7:28). Then Jesus cried in the temple, as he taught, saying, "You both know me, and you know where I am from." And there is a covering upon the spiritual senses and faculties of the soul of natural men, that though eyes, and ears, and mind, and soul be opened; yet it is as impossible for the natural spirit, or the preacher to remove that covering, as to remove a mountain, it being as heavy as a mountain. And therefore there are three bad signs in a natural spirit. 1. His light, which is but literal, is a burden to him, it but vexes him to know Christ, and if a beam of light falls in on the apple of the eye of a natural conscience, it is a thorn between the bone and the flesh, the man shall not sleep, and yet he is not sick. I doubt if either Achitophel, or Judas wakened with their light could sleep. 2. Though a promise should dispute and argue Christ in at the door of the natural man's soul, as the gospel by way of arguing may do much (John 7:28; John 12:37; Hebrews 11:1), the word of the gospel being a rational, convincing syllogism, as Christ says (John 15:24): "But now they have both seen, and hated both me and my Father." Yet men may see the principles and the conclusion, and hate and practically suspend the assent from the conclusion. 3. Conversion is feared as a great danger by natural men, lest the promises put them on the pain and the main mill of godliness. For men flee nothing but that which they apprehend as evil, dangerous, and so the true object of fear. Now when Felix and Agrippa were both upon the wheels, I cannot say that conversion formally was begun; yet materially it was, the one trembled, and so was afraid, and fled, and did put Paul away till another time; then he saw the danger of grace (Acts 24:25-26). The other says, he was half a Christian; (but it was the poorest half) and he arose and went aside (Acts 26:28, 30-31). The natural spirit may be convinced by the promises, and have the pap in his mouth, but dare not milk out the sap and sweetness of the promises (Matthew 13:15): "Their eyes they have closed, lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them." So is it also (Isaiah 6:10), in which words conversion is feared as an evil, as is clear. So one wretch said, he was once in danger to be caught, when a Puritan preacher (as he said) was preaching with divine power and evidence of the spirit of God. 4. The true believer's soul has influence on the promises, to act upon them, to draw comfort out of them (Psalm 119:92): "Unless your law had been my delight, I should have perished in my affliction" (verse 81): "My soul faints for your salvation: but I hope in your word." And there is a reciprocation of actions here; the word acts upon the soul again (Psalm 119:50): "This is my comfort in my affliction, for your word has quickened me." A dead faith is like a dead hand, a living hand may lay hold on a dead hand: but there is no reciprocation of actions here, the dead hand cannot lay hold on the living hand. So the living wife may kiss, and embrace the dead husband, but there can come no reciprocal act of life from the dead husband to her, nor can he kiss and embrace her. The promise may act upon the natural spirit, to move and affect him, but he can put forth no vital act upon the promise to embrace it, or lay hold upon the promise. But the promise acts upon the believer to quicken him, and he again puts forth an act of life to embrace the promise, and puts forth on it, some act of vital heat, to adhere and cleave to, and with warmness of heart to love it; and here the case is as when the living hand lays hold on the living hand, they warm one another mutually, according to that which Paul says (Philippians 3:12): "But I follow after, if that I may apprehend that for which also I am apprehended of Christ Jesus." Here are two living things, Christ, and believing Paul acting mutually one upon another, there is a heart and a life upon each side.

5. Faith under fainting and great straits can so improve the promise as to put a holy and modest challenge upon God, so (Psalm 119:49) afflicted David says, Remember the word to your servant, upon which you have caused me to hope, and the Church, (Jeremiah 14:21) Do not abhor us for your name's sake, do not disgrace the throne of your glory: remember, break not your covenant with us; and the Lord commands that this challenge be put on him, (Isaiah 43:26) Put me in remembrance, let us plead together; then he gives faith leave to plead on the contrary with God; natural spirits faint, and cannot so far own the promise, as to plead with God by their right and just claim to the promise. Now the fourth point concerning faith, is what grounds and warrants the sinner has to believe.

4. It is an ordinary challenge made by Satan, conscience, and the Arminian, since Christ died not for all and every one of mankind; and all are not chosen to life eternal, but only those, on whom the Lord is pleased, according to the free decree of election to confer the grace of believing. What warrant can the unworthy sinner have to believe, and to own the merits of Christ? For he knows nothing of the election, or reprobation that are hidden in God's eternal mind: for answer,

1. It is no presumption in me to believe in Christ before I know whether I be chosen to salvation or not, for nothing can hinder me in this case to believe, save only presumption as the adversaries say, but it is not presumption, because presumption is when the soul is lifted up, and towered like a high building, as the word is, (Habakkuk 2:4) And therefore the lifted up man, [⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩] Gnophel, is he that hides himself in a high castle; as every unbelieving presumptuous soul has his own castle, the unbeliever has either one Ophel, or high tower or other, either the king, friends, riches or his own wisdom, for his God on which he rests, beside the God that the Scripture recommends to us as our only rock and soul confidence. All men on earth live, and do all moral actions, even when they go on in a wicked life, as slaves of hell, to work all uncleanness with greediness, upon some ground of faith, though a most false and counterfeit faith, that they shall prosper by evil doing, and that sin shall make them happy, so (Psalm 10:3) the wicked man, [⟨ in non-Latin alphabet ⟩] praises the wicked man, then he must believe that wickedness makes men praiseworthy, and this belief is but presumptuous confiding, and resting on a tower of his own building. Now to believe in Christ, though the decree of election be not revealed to me, is no presumption; for I am not obliged, before I believe, to know that I am elected to glory. It being one of God's secrets not revealed in the word, but made manifest to me, after I believe, and am sealed to the day of redemption: and therefore in a humble resting on Christ, though the soul knows not his election, which is not revealed in the word in that condition there can be no pride nor presumption; for he is self-wise, and presumptuous, who intrudes into those things that he has not seen, (Colossians 2:18) knows not that which God has revealed, and so which he ought to know. Now the believer ought not to know, that he is elected to glory; he yet being an unbeliever, so his knowledge cannot deviate from a rule which does not oblige to conformity therewith as with a rule; the portrait of Caesar does not err from the sampler, because it is not like a bull or a horse, because neither a bull nor a horse is the due sampler.

2. To warrant an unworthy humble sinner to believe there is no need of a positive warrant, or of a voice to say (you are elected to glory, therefore believe) the word is near you in your mouth; indeed there is a commandment laid upon the humbled sinner (Come, O weary and laden sinner to Christ, and be eased). Now when the wind blows sweetly and fair upon a humbled sinner, who is elected to glory, there goes the Spirit of the Gospel along with this commandment; and the word of commandment, and the spirit united in one, acts and works so upon the soul, that the humbled sinner cannot be deluded and led on a rock of presumption; for this spirit joins and closes with his spirit, and he as one of Christ's sheep, knows this to be the voice of Christ. I grant when the same command of faith comes to the ears of a Reprobate, he may upon a false ground believe, or rather presume: he neither being rightly humbled, and fitted for Christ, nor can the Reprobate know and discern the wind of the spirit, breathing with the command, and acting upon his spirit, because that wind neither can, nor does breathe upon any Reprobate, and there is no need of any positive warrant to ascertain a child of God to believe, beside the commandment of faith in lived and quickened with the spirit going along with it, for that command so quickened does put such a real stamp of an evident testimony, that he has claim to Christ, on whom the spirit and the command does so act, that he seeks no more any other evidence to prove his claim to Christ, than the lamb needs any evidence to prove, that of ten hundred sheep, this only that offers to it her paps and milk must be its dam or mother, and none of the rest of the flock. But how do I know that it is the spirit that goes along with the commandment of believing? It may be a delusion. Answer. Beside that, a deluding spirit for the most part, does not go every way along with the word: If this spirit keep God's order, to work upon the humbled and self-despairing sinner, who is willing to receive Christ upon his own condition, it is not like to a deluding spirit; for if the word of commandment to believe, and the spirit agree in one, it cannot be a delusion, fancy leads no man to faith. 2. When objects of life work upon life, they cannot deceive, especially all the senses, hearing, seeing, tasting, feeling, smelling: the excellency and sweetness of Christ, going along with the word, cannot be delusion; a man may imagine that he sees and hears, and yet his senses may be deceived: but that all the senses, especially all the spiritual senses, and that a man imagines that he lives a natural life and is dead, is rare.

3. Faith can stand upon one foot, even on a general word; hence this is a Gospel word in the Prophets which requires faith: Turn to the Lord for he is merciful (Jeremiah 3:12; Joel 2:13; Jonah 4:2). And because a general promise received with heart-adherence and confidence gives glory to God: and if it be held forth to a humbled soul who is now within the lists and bounds of grace, and for anything that the person thus laden with sin knows on the contrary (for the secrets of election and reprobation belong to the Lord) Christ intends to him salvation, therefore he is to believe.

4. This would be considered, that unbelief breaks with Christ first, before Christ breaks with the unbeliever; and the elect of God finds no more, nor any higher favor in the kind of external means, to open the Lamb's Book of life, which is sealed and closed with God's own hand, than the commandment of believing. Now when our Lord makes offer of the kingdom of sons to slaves, and casts his jewel of Christ offered in the Gospel in the lap and bosom of a bastard, whatever be the Lord's secret decree and purpose in so doing; the bastard is to take God at his word, and to catch the opportunity of God's love in so far, and if he does it not, the Gospel-offer to the reprobate being a treaty of peace, then the treaty breaks off first upon his side; for Christ comes within a mile of mercy to meet the sinner, and the sinner comes not the fourth part of a mile, indeed, not half a step of love and thankful obedience to meet Christ, and so Christ kills the unbeliever with the sweetness of the preventing courtesy of offered mercy.

5. But if the sinner be wearied, and laden, and sees, though through a cloud only, Christ only must help and save, if not, he is utterly and eternally lost: What is there upon Christ's part to hinder you to believe? O guilty wretch! O (says he) I fear Christ only offers himself to me, but he intends no salvation to me? Answer. Is not this to raise an evil report and slander on the Holy One of Israel? For Christ's offer is really an offer, and in so far, it is real love, though it cannot imply the love of election to glory; yet the total denial of this offer opens up the black seal of reprobation to heathens without the Church; and therefore it is love to you, if you are humbled for sin. 2. And have half an eye to the unsearchable riches of Gospel mercy. 3. And be self-condemned. 4. And have half a desire of Christ; you may expound love by love, and lay hold on the promise and be saved: An error of humble love to Christ is no error.

That which is next, is a word of the Essential principle of true Faith, and that is a proportionable measure of grace (Philippians 1:29) required in Faith: men naturally imagine that faith is a work of nature; hence that speech of a multitude of Atheists (I believe all my days, I believe night and day) But they never believe at all, who think and say, they believe always. The Jews asserted that they believed Moses always, and so oppose themselves to the man altogether, born in sin (John 9:28-29, compared with John 9:34). But Christ told them, they neither believed the Messiah, nor Moses (John 5:35-37). Nature works always alike, and without intermission or freedom. The floods always move, the fountain always casts out streams, the fire always burns, the lamb always flees from the wolf; but the wind of the Spirit does not always enact the soul to believe; they are not in an ill case who wrestle with unbelief, and find the heart and take it, in the ways of doubting and terrors, as feeling that believing is a motion up the mount, and somewhat violent; facile and connatural acts cannot be supernatural acts of Faith: It is no bad sign to complain of a low ebb sea, and of neither moonlight, nor starlight. 2. It is impossible they can submit to give the glory of believing to God, in whose heart there is a rotten principle destructive of Faith, and that is an ambitious humor of seeking glory from men (John 5:44). Little faith there is in kings' courts, faith dwells not in a high spirit. 3. Such as take religion by the hand upon false and illegitimate motives, as the summer of the Gospel, and fame, ease, gain, honor, cannot believe: A thorny faith is no faith (Matthew 13:22). A carnal man's faith must be true to its own principles, and must lie level with externals, so as court, ease, the world and its sweet adjuncts, are a measuring line to a rotten-rooted faith, neither longer nor broader than time, it goes not one span length within the lists of eternity. 4. Fancy cannot be faith; such as have not Gospel knowledge of Christ, cannot believe; but must do as the traveler, who unaware sets his foot on a serpent in the way, and suddenly starts backward, six steps for one, [illegible] (John 6:66). So do they that fancy all the Gospel to be a carnal or a moral discourse. 5. Those cannot have faith, in whose heart the Gospel lies above ground, devils and sin having made the heart hard like the summer streets (Matthew 13:19) with daily treading and walking on them. A stony faith, or a faith that grows out of a stone, cannot be a saving faith: There is a heart that is a daily walk, in which the Devil (as it were) airs himself. 6. If Christ has given the last knock at the door, and all in-passages be closed up, and heart-inspirations gone, there can be no more any sort of faith there (Ephesians 4:19; 2 Timothy 4:2). The heart is like a dried up arm in some, all the oil in the bones are spent. 7. Loose walking with greediness, argues that hell has taken fire on the out-works of the soul. Hell in the hands and tongue as in the out-wheels, must argue hell and unbelief in the heart and the in-wheels. 1. Loose believers go to heaven by miracles, I dare go to hell for a man if such a one goes to heaven, who lives profanely, and says, he has a good heart within. 2. The going in ways of blood, extortion, covetousness, idolatry, belies the decree of election to glory. Grace leads no man to the east, with his face and motion close to the west. 3. This way of working by contraries, is not God's way: God can work by contraries, but he will not have us to work by contraries. There is some heaven of holiness in the court-gate to the heaven of happiness. 8. Faith overlooks time (Hebrews 11:10). Abraham looked for another city. Faith in Moses was great with child of heaven (Hebrews 11:25). He had an eye to the recompense of reward. Eternity of glory, is the birth of faith. Oh! we look not to the declining of our sun, it is high afternoon, of our piece of day, eleven hours is gone, and the twelfth hour is on the wheels, and I see not my own gray hairs; it is upon the margin and borders of night, and I know not where to lodge. We are like the man, swimming through broad waters, and he knows not what is before him, he swims through deeper and deeper parts of the river, and at length, a cramp and a stitch comes on arms and legs, and he sinks to the bottom and drowns: We swim through days, weeks, months, years, winters, and are daily deeper in time; while at length death bereaves us of strength of legs and arms, and we [reconstructed: sink] over head and ears in Eternity. Oh! who like the sleepy man, is losing his clothes, and putting off the garments of darkness, and would gladly sleep with Christ? Men are close buttoned, and like day-men, when it is dark night. It is fearful to lie down with our day clothes (Job 20:11). Sin is a sad winding sheet: Oh! what believer says, I would have a suit of clothes for the high court and throne to be an essay, to see how a suit of glory would become me? Thus much for faith.