Sermon 25

"Be it to you as you will." [in non-Latin alphabet] It is a word of omnipotency, to create being — it is spoken of Satan, and to Satan (Mark 9:25; Luke 4:35). 2. None can speak to leprosy but Christ (Matthew 8:3; Luke 4:39): Be clean. 3. Christ can speak to stark death (John 11:43; John 5:28): Jesus cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth. 4. He can speak to life in abstracto (Ezekiel 37:9): Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. 5. God can speak to Mother-nothing, as if Nothing had ears and reason and could hear (Romans 4:17): He calls things that are not, as though they were — He did but nod upon Nothing, and out of Nothing there appeared before him the great Host of heaven and earth, and all things in them (Psalm 33:9). 6. There is a language of Providence by which every being, as being, has a power-obediential to hear what God says and do it (Jonah 2:10): The Lord spoke to the fish, and it vomited out Jonah on the dry land. (Mark 4:39): And he arose, and rebuked the wind, [in non-Latin alphabet] and said to the sea, Peace, be still; and the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. What wise man can boast to the sea? What ears has the senseless and lifeless waters? Yet they hear Christ's language; they speak: Yonder stands our Creator boasting us, and therefore we will obey (Isaiah 50:2). Hear himself speak: Behold, at my rebuke, I dry up the sea (Psalm 114). There is a question put upon the creatures, that they can well answer: verse 5, What ails you, O sea, that you fled? You Jordan, that you were driven backward? Verse 6: What ailed you, you mountains, that you skipped like rams, and you little hills like lambs? Good reason, says the Spirit: verse 7, Tremble, you earth, at the presence of the Lord — at the presence of the God of Jacob. This obediential power is not any quality created in the creature different from their being, for God may use any creature to infinite effects of omnipotency, and so there should be infinite created qualities in every finite creature. 2. This obediential power was in that Mother-nothing, out of which God by an omnipotent act of creation extracted all the hosts of creatures that now are; and it is in that other Mother-nothing, yet submitted to omnipotency, according to which God may create infinite more worlds than now are, if it pleases him — it is then nothing but a non-repugnancy to hear and obey God in these particulars. As, 1. The omnipotency of strong grace can speak to sin, which none can do but God (Ezekiel 16:6): I said to you, when you were in your blood, live. This mandate of omnipotent grace is spoken to Jerusalem, as hardened and cold dead in sin (Ephesians 5:14): Therefore he says, Awake, you that sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light. This is a commandment of omnipotency, given out of sinful rebellion: If omnipotence says, See, you blind; hear, you deaf — grace is a king over sin, and omnipotency a mighty conqueror. Rebellion cannot stand before the grace of God; could we resign rebellious and dead hearts to God, he would change them, though we are most unable to master them. 2. Mere-nothing is a servant to omnipotency: he sends his mandate, or statute of heaven, to mere-nothing, and Darkness, as the sergeant and pursuivant of GOD, must send out light by virtue of a creating mandate (2 Corinthians 4:6). 3. Every creature is under the awe of omnipotency, and dare not — without, as it were, a written and signed ordinance and statute of the Almighty — exercise their natural operations: as the Lord sends an awful mandate to the sea, and God says, Do not ebb and flow, and the sea is dried up at his rebuke (Psalm 77:16): The waters saw you, O God, the waters saw you, they were afraid. So he says: Winds, blow not; seas, rage not; fire, burn not; lions, devour not; sun, move not; clouds, rain not; devils, hurt not; waters, overwhelm not; sword, destroy not — and they all obey. 4. There is a power obediential in creatures to be instruments that can be elevated above and contrary to their nature to miracles, as clay to be a plaster to blind eyes to make them see, whereas clay can put out seeing eyes — by this, iron can swim, Peter walk in the sea; yes, devils and men crossing God's moral will fulfill his eternal counsel; according to that (Psalm 119:91): All are your servants — Hell, devils, Cavaliers, Malignants, Papists are God's servants. 5. By this power, whereas nature must have time and hours to work, yet nature follows the swift pace of omnipotency: the fever departs from Peter's mother-in-law in an instant. 6. By this power, creatures creep into nothing when God commands them so to do: God puts his arm to the heaven and shakes it, and the hangings, pillars, walls, and furnishings of the house of heaven and earth [in non-Latin alphabet] are all dissolved — all the old tenants of the world, the heavens which have sat in God's house 5,000 years, at the first warning of their Almighty Landlord must remove and retire into nothing, if God so commands them.

Use 1. It is comfort to the believer — all things are possible; faith has omnipotency at its service, the sword and wars are gone, the enemies of the Lord broken, the temple built, Babylon plagued at the nod of faith, devils cannot stand when Christ's mandate charges them to fall.

Use 2. It is but little that we can do, let us have hosts of men, we cannot have the victory: let man be swift, yet the race is not to the swift; let him be strong, yet the battle is not to the strong; let him be wise and learned, neither is bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding (Ecclesiastes 9:11). The word of the Almighty is his deed also (Psalm 33:9). He spoke, and it was done, he commanded, and it stood fast; [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉] For he himself spoke, and it was: the Lord's word gives being to things, by the contrary; men's deeds are nothing but words; so the lives, being, and actions of the Kings of Israel and Judah, are called Dibre hajamim, words of days: they are the acts and deeds of men living and dying, and compassed with days; for the deeds and acts of men are but words, they live and speak a little on earth and die, their acts are of as little worth, and reality as the airing out, and breathing forth of words: the greatest Prince makes a sound for a time, as one that speaks words, and then he is gone, and lies silent in the grave; Solomon did many acts, but they are called words only (1 Kings 11:41). And the rest of the acts of Solomon; Hebrew, The rest of the words of Solomon, Are written in the Books of the Acts; Hebrew, Of the words of Solomon (2 Kings 21:25). And the rest of the words which Amon did, are written in the Book of the words of the days of the Kings of Judah. We use not properly to do, or act words, but to speak words; but the holy Language makes man and all his noble acts but words, and would express that he is a creature of no great action, and can say more, than he can do: strong and mighty man is but a creature of words, he is a speaking body of clay, and can do but little. We boast much that this, and this we shall do, God has a lock and a chain of iron on all the creatures; armies are not to be feared, the Lord smites the horse and the rider, and makes war to cease to the end of the earth, he breaks the bow, and cuts the spear in sunder; he burns the chariot in the fire (Psalm 46:9). Be not afraid of clay (Isaiah 51:12).

Use 3. If the Lord's word creates the being of things, then are we to conceive of him as of an independent Sovereign; we forget this, and worship a dependent God: If I suffer the people to go to worship at Jerusalem (says Jeroboam) I shall lose both life and Kingdom; God had promised the contrary to establish him and his Kingdom, so he would do what is right in the sight of the Lord (1 Kings 11:37-38). But he believed that God in the fulfilling of his promise must depend upon the Calves set up at Dan and Bethel: so the Jews will have God in the preserving of their Kingdom and place (John 11:48) to depend upon the sinful murdering of the Lord of Glory; yes, we imagine that God cannot carry on the work of Reformation, except we comply with some sort of Antichristian Prelate: the King thinks he cannot be a Monarch except he have a Prerogative to play the Tyrant, and his Throne must fall, except the Antichrist and blood, and unlawful peace with the bloody Irish murderers, and destroying of the Lord's redeemed flock in both Kingdoms, be the bloody Pillars of his Throne and Royal power: so God cannot save us, if France, Denmark, Spain and Ireland come against these Kingdoms; we are so wasted, except we make a peace dishonorable to Jesus Christ and his prerogative Royal; all this is to place God in a state of dependency, we are too wickedly careful how God shall acquit himself in his office of governing the world; before you or I were born, the Lord governed the world, and his Church without a miscarry (the Church's Heaven cannot be marred in Christ's hand) and when we are rotten in the dust, he shall carry on all in righteousness and wisdom, but we take it ill, if we cannot have a providence as fair and eye-sweet, as white paper, though indeed there be not one spot in God's ways; so Martha (John 11:21) Lord if you had been here, my brother had not died. But Christ-God in preserving lives, depends not on his own bodily presence here or there: another complains God has forgotten me, he is not my God. Why? Because I walk in darkness and have no light, nor any sense of his love. It is the black and dead hour of midnight with me. So the Church argues (Isaiah 49:14-15; Psalm 77:3-9). But his unchangeable love depends not on the ebbing and flowing of your transient and up and down sense: in this, you worship a dependent God. There is no rule without God to regulate him, or yet to straighten him in his walking; we are not to misplace God, for though the God of Hosts has purposed to stain [〈 in non-Latin alphabet 〉] Lechallel, to cast a blot on, and profane the pride of all glory (Isaiah 23:9) and suffer Parliaments, Assemblies, Armies, Councils of War, Statesmen, the godly, the Princes, Judges, Pastors, men of wisdom, learning, eloquence, parts, to miscarry in this great service against Babylon: it is to cry down the creatures' garland, and the rose of their eminency, that when all spots of sacrilege and idol-confidence in men are washed off the work, the Lord only may be exalted. It is our wisdom to suffer God to be wise for us: yes, Antinomians will have Christ no independent Redeemer, but to them his grace shall not be perfect in pardoning, except all sin in root and branch be removed from the justified, and they made as sinless as Adam before his fall, and the elect Angels: yes, how many connections of Providence do we spin and twist out of our own head? As how happy had we been, if the King had remained with the Parliament to countenance it? Yes, but rather how unhappy, for our Reformation had been as an untimely birth, if so it had been: how blessed should I have been says another, if I had been rich and learned? Yes, rather you should have dishonored God in that condition. The Catholic and mother sin is, God must be dependent, we independent.

4. Use. All of us have need of a devil, one or other, to exercise and humble us: but we go wrong to work when we think to make good our party against the devil by our own strength. This woman yoked Christ and the devil together, and would not yoke with him her alone, and the success is blessed: we go to dispute with temptations ourselves by reason, you shall not dispute Satan to hell with all your logic, nor can policy, and state-wit calm the Prince of the bottomless pit, who is let loose now in these three kingdoms to kill with the sword. The horseman upon the red and bloody horse, and his footman Death are posting through the kingdoms, more wrestling by prayer, the putting of Satan in Christ's grip, by faith effectual by love, and sincere humiliation should create peace, for peace is a work of creation: there's but one only can create, I mean God, by, or at the exercise of these graces should create peace: we lie bleeding and dying under our lusts, because Christ was not entrusted with mortification: if we gave in a bill of complaint against our devils, as this woman did, Christ should loosen Satan's works and help us.

Be it to you] Faith obtains the most excellent favors, refined mercies, and these are immediate favors, acts of immediate Omnipotency: Christ sent an immediate post to the devil, though in a remote place, (it's an act of immediate creation) and Satan must be gone, no creature here intervenes; it's Christ's [illegible], his Omnipotent (be it so) that does the turn; it's not Faith, it's not a good angel, expelling an evil one, nor one devil beating another, nor the disciples helping the woman, though they also did cast out devils. The more immediate mercies be, the more love-expressions of God in them; the first roses, the first trees and plants that God's own immediate art produced, and in which nature could not share, are the most perfect creatures, the rest of the creatures after the fall, come not near in goodness and beauty to God's first sample, which are (as it were) the first essays of Omnipotency: the greatest mercies are most immediate, these be sweet favors that come (as it were) hot and new, immediately from God himself. See it in all the excellent things that God gives us, especially in these four: 1. In Christ: 2. Grace: 3. Glory: 4. Comfort. Christ is God's highest love gift: Now Christ the Mediator, was given without any medium, or any intervening Mediator. God out of the mere bottom of free love gives Christ: The Lord Christ was not given by so much as request, or counsel of men or angels. Christ, (Hebrews 1:3) by himself purged our sins, (1 Timothy 2:6) He gave himself a ransom for all; (1 Peter 2:24) Who his own self bore our sins, in his own body on the tree: he satisfied and paid in his own person: it was not a deputed work. God the Lord of life in proper person redeemed us: Christ's love to us was not deputy love, he loved us not by a vicar. Christ is given freely, as a Redeemer is more essentially a gift of free grace (to speak so) than the grace of faith which is given to those who hear and are humbled for sin. And Christ given to die for sinners, is a more immediate and pure gift of grace than remission of sins and eternal life, which are given to us upon condition of faith, whereas a Redeemer is given to die for us without any condition, thought, desire, any sweating or endeavor in man or angel. 2. So is grace given out of grace, saving grace is made out of nothing, not out of the potency of the matter. The new heart is a creation, and as it's grace, is framed without tools, agents, art, or service; grace issues immediately out of Christ's heart, he has no hire, no payment for it: non-payment, no money is grace's hire. 3. And heaven is given, not by art, not by merit, not for sweating; But how? (Luke 12:32) It's the Father's will. And (Revelation 21:4) God shall wipe all tears from their eyes. It's the sweeter, that no napkin but his own immediate hand shall wipe my sinful face.

In heaven the vision of him that sits upon the Throne is immediate, the mirror or looking-glass of Word and Sacraments being removed, there is (1 Corinthians 13:12) but a vision of God, face to face. Revelation 21:22: And I saw no Temple therein. If any should ask tidings, and say, John, what did you see in that new City — was there any Temple, any Priest, any Prophets, any Candlesticks there? He should answer, O you know not what you speak: I saw no temple there; I saw a more glorious sight than all the temples of the earth; I saw the Lamb the King, in the midst of them; I saw Christ the fountain of Heaven, and though you should know Moses, David, Paul, in glory, you shall be so taken with beholding the face of the Lamb forevermore in an immediate vision, that you find no [reconstructed: leisure] to look over your shoulder to Moses or any other. For the Lord God Almighty, and the Lamb are the Temple of it; it must be sweeter, when the sweet immediate hand of Jesus Christ shall pluck the soul-delighting Roses of the high Garden, and hold them to your senses, with an immediate touch, so as you shall see, behold, smell and touch his hand with the rose, and when he shall put immediately in your mouth, the Apples of the Tree of life, and the King himself shall make himself (as it were) your cup-bearer, for there shall be neither need of Pastor, Prophet, or of any Christian brother, but only Christ himself, to hold to your head a cup of the water of life (Revelation 22:1-2). And he showed me a pure River of water of life, clear as Crystal, proceeding out of the Throne of God and of the Lamb. He showed me — which He? The Lord God Almighty and the Lamb (Revelation 21:22). He that talked with me, who had a golden reed to measure the City (v. 15 and v. 10). He who carried me away in the Spirit to a great and high mountain, and showed me the great City, the holy Jerusalem descending out of Heaven from God. No created Angel could show to John the Bride, the Lamb's Wife. And what is that? He showed me; He made me see. Is that but a naked cast of the eye, or a speculation? No, it is more. He himself who only reveals all the secrets of God, and measures the Temple with a golden Reed — He only gave me a drink of the water of life immediately; for to see in the holy language is to enjoy (Hebrews 12:14; Revelation 22:4; Jeremiah 17:6; Psalm 34:12; Job 19:26). And then 'he showed me' must be this in good sense: He — He the uncreated King himself — made me, or caused me to enjoy. Messengers carry love-letters now; there is no need of love-letters between the Lord Jesus and the Bride the Lamb's wife in this condition. Certain it is, a draught of such water at the well-head must be sweetest. Then immediate comforts in a heavy condition must be sweetest also; as in heavy desertions, Word, Ministry, Pastors, Prayer, and Ordinances cannot raise up the Spirit. What does the Lord else speak in this? No less than that mediation of means is but mediation of means; and Christ is Christ, not means, in a soul-sickness. Yes, Apostles, Angels, Watchmen fail. But Christ himself with his immediate action fails not (Song of Solomon 3:1-4; John 20:8-17). Christ himself immediately by himself will do in a moment, that which all means, all Ordinances, all sweatings, all endeavors cannot do. I do not now cry down means, and extol immediate inspirations; the latter I deny not in some cases, but I only compare means and Christ. And is not this an experience of some who are brought to the margin and black borders of Hell and despairing, all creature comforts having failed them, and they having received the sentence of the second death: yet Christ comes with an immediate glimpse, like a fire flash in the air, which lets the lost and bewildered Traveler in an extreme dark night see a lodging at hand, whereas otherwise he should have fallen in a pit and lost himself? And in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, the Lord having rebuked the winds and the stormy Tempests in the soul, there is a calm, and peace (Psalm 31:22; Jonah 2:4). Christ is speedy, and swift as a roe, his leap is but a stride over a whole mountain at once, over many mountains and hills (Song of Solomon 2:8). Especially in his immediates, when he comforts by himself, he then makes no use of a deputy-Sun to shine, or of borrowed light — the Sun himself rises with his own immediate salvation, and his own immediate wings. And we see it was Christ's immediate love, yes, comfort, because immediate carries with it the heat and smell of Christ's own hand; it has the immediate warmness of Christ's bosom-consolation, it was an act of tender mercy that came hot and smoking from the heart of Christ, the immediate coal of love smelling of the perfume of the hearth it came last from, and that was heaven, and the bowels of Christ. Waters carried from a precious fountain in a vessel many hundred miles are not so sweet as at the well-head, because they are separated from the fountain; they lose much of their virtue. Sometimes, it is so long since the Rose was plucked, that the color and smell which it had, while it grew on its own stalk, is quite gone. Look how inferior Art (which is but medicine for sick nature) is to nature in its beauty and strength (as painted medicine can neither purge nor cure), so far are all means and Ordinances (being but the deputies of Christ) below Christ himself. What is Paul? What is Apollo? Put all the Prophets, all the Apostles, all the Patriarchs, all the chiefest of Saints in one floor — I confess they should cast forth an excellent smell, like the outer borders of the garden of the high Paradise, but all their excellency should be mediate excellency, and but somewhat of Christ, but alas, as low, as very nothing to Christ, as the smallest drop of dew that sense can apprehend, to ten thousand worlds of seas, fountains and floods. We defraud our spirits of much sweetness, because we go no further in our desires than to creature-excellency; we rest on mediate comforts, because they are mediate. Painted things do work but objectively; only a painted meadow casts no smell, a painted tree brings forth no Apples. The comforts and sweetness of the creatures have somewhat of paintry in them in comparison of Jesus Christ; all reality and truth of excellency is in him. And we know God mars the borrowed influence of means. Armies, Parliaments, Learning, and all miscarry. Therefore there was never a Reformation, nor a great work wrought on earth, but Omnipotency put forth many immediate Acts in it. The Lord would not be beholden to Moses — he himself divided the Red Sea. He would not engage himself to fountains and vine trees, but he gave them water out of the Rock. He would not borrow from the earth, and sowing, reaping, and plowing, bread for his people's food — he would give them the bread of Angels from heaven immediately. He would have no engines at the taking of Jericho; the blowing of rams' horns was a sign, not a cause — God immediately cast down the walls. He would not have a sword drawn, nor a drop of blood shed in the people's return from Babylon, but the Lord puts an immediate impulse upon the Spirit of Cyrus, as if he had been in a dead sleep, and he being awakened by God only, sends the people away, and the Temple must be built again. But how? Neither by King, nor Parliament, nor Armies, for (Zechariah 4:6): Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord. When Babylon is to be destroyed (as the work is even now on the wheels in Britain) (Revelation 18:21): A mighty Angel took up the great millstone, and threw it in the sea. Though it be a vision by comparison, yet it holds forth an immediate work of God in the ruin of Babylon. And Angels pour their vials on the Sea, on the Sun, on the River Euphrates, to make for the destruction of Babylon. And in delivering of Lot, Angels did work. God himself spoke to Noah for making an Ark. Although Angels be creatures, yet the Lord's action by them is more immediate than when he works by natural causes. When the Judges scourge and imprison the Apostles, no man will speak for them — the immediate power of God does it, the chains fall off legs and arms, immediate providence is a key also to open the prison doors, and they are saved. There is a bloody war at the taking of the Ark, and thirty thousand footmen of Israel killed (1 Samuel 4:10-11). But there is not a sword drawn when it is rescued. The Ark comes home; it is alone God's immediate providence that drives and acts upon two milk cows to bring it home again (1 Samuel 6:12-14). Who knows but when our strength of two Kingdoms has failed us, the Lord shall make cows to bring home his Kingdom and Reformation to our doors? Were it possible that creatures could work salvation for us, and freedom from the sword, and sure peace in Scotland, England and Ireland, without God, or any subordination to him, let it be a deliverance from the creature only — it should be no deliverance, but a curse. That which makes salvation to be salvation is that God has a finger of power, and an influence of free grace in it. O but this puts the luster, sweetness and smell of Heaven on it, that it is the salvation of the Lord (Exodus 14:13). In regard of irresistible efficacy and success, causes under God, though chained to the influence of God, are but idol-causes; they lie as ciphers, and do nothing, no more than a lame arm can master a sword. The Lord works all our works for us; and he is daily marring, and shall further mar our Armies, Parliaments, Counsels, undertakings, to the end that more of Christ may appear in these wars than in other wars. Some immediate power must close and crown this glorious work in Britain; God must be his alone, and appear his alone, and only Jehovah must be visible in the Mount, to the end that bleeding England, long afflicted Scotland, and wasted Ireland, may with one shout cry, Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name be the glory. This discovers the deceit of our confidence, for when the Lord and the creature work together for our good, Asa, though his heart was perfect, possibly sees not whether he trusts on the Lord, or on the physician. And yet the Scripture says, when he was diseased in his feet, there was a worse disease about his heart. For because he sought to the physicians, he is blamed — yet to seek to physicians is lawful, but the Spirit of God blames his seeking to the physicians. And says (2 Chronicles 16:12): He sought not the Lord in his sickness; and the reason is given [non-Latin text] because he was in the physicians. So the Hebrew reads it: he is said not to seek the Lord, not because he sought to the physicians, for that had not been a sin, but because he was wholly — the whole man, soul and all — in, or on the physicians. [non-Latin text] His care, pains and heart, was all on the physicians. So also the Greek expresses great care and diligence by the like phrase (1 Timothy 4:15): [non-Latin text] Give yourself to these things. Seldom do we seek to God and trust in him, when God and the creature are yoked together in a work that we are much bent upon, as in Wars, in a Reformation, yes, in a journey that the spirit is intent upon. But in trusting on God we interpose a folding and a ply of the creature between our soul-confidence and the Lord, just as a pillow is put between the man's shoulder and a pressing burden, for fear the burden crush a bone. We are afraid we give God too much to do, or more than he is able to bear. When we sail, we seem to entrust ourselves to the Lord and the Sea; but the truth is, often we trust more to the strong Ship than to the Sea or the Lord. Our confidence shifts itself from under the Lord, on upon the creature and the arm of flesh, so we walk often in the strength of the Lord, as some walk upon ice — they walk softly and timorously upon it, fearing it should break under them, they put no faith upon cracking and weak ice. We are not daring and venturous in casting ourselves and our burdens on the Lord.

So in judgments, David's choice fell upon the pestilence rather than the sword. Why? God's hand is sweeter and softer than the devil's, than the Malignants' hard hand. Samuel is one of the best children, because he is given of God, and is a child of many prayers. Isaac the joyful child — why? No thanks to nature, or to Sarah's dead womb for him — he is the son of an immediate promise. Free-grace is rather Isaac's Father and Mother than Abraham and Sarah. In ordinances a man speaks, but if Christ himself would speak — O his Spikenard! O his own perfume! O his own lips drop honey! O his own Lebanon-like countenance! Alas, we think Christ is not Christ, except the King help him; religion is not religion, except worldly thrones bear it up. The Gospel is a very immediate thing: the lily among the thorns is Christ's lily. The Church stands more immediately by Christ than any worldly thing does. God makes the earth to bud and bring forth her fruits: but the sun, the soil, the season of the year, and nature, are his under-servants. God waters the earth but by clouds. Kings are indigent and very mediate and dependent creatures: they need armies, multitudes, navies, prelates, Babylon, Ireland, France, Spain, Denmark, Holland, moneys, friends, parliaments. But grace and the Gospel are more immediate, and less needy: the Gospel can live without all these.