Part 2 - The Armour We Use Against Satan Must be Divine by Constitution

 Now try whether your weapons be mighty or weak; what can you do or suffer more for God than an hypocrite that is clad in fleshly armour?  I will tell you what the world saith, and if you be Christians, clear yourselves, and wipe off that dirt which they throw upon your glittering armour.  They say, These professors indeed have God more in their talk than we; but when they come down into their shops, re­lations and worldly employment, then the best of them all is but like one of us.  They can throw the tables of God's commandments out of their hands as well as we; [can] come from a sermon, and be as covetous and gripping, as peevish and passionate, as the worst.  They show as little love to Christ as others, when it is matter of cost, as to relieve a poor saint or maintain the gospel; you may get more from a stranger, an enemy, than from a professing brother. O Christians, either vindicate the name of Christ, whose ensign you seem to march after, or throw away your seeming armour, by which you have drawn the eyes of the world upon you.  If you will not, Christ himself will cashier you, and that with shame enough ere long.  Never call that the armour of God which defends thee not against the power of Satan.

             Take, therefore, the several pieces of your armour and try them, as the soldier before he fights will set his helmet or head-piece as a mark, at which he lets fly a brace of bullets, and as he finds them so will wear them or leave them.  But be sure thou shootest scripture-bullets.  Thou boastest of a breastplate of righteousness.  Ask thy soul, Didst thou ever in thy life perform a duty to please God, and not to accommodate thyself?  Thou hast prayed often against thy sin, a great noise of the pieces have been heard coming from thee by others, as if there were some hot fight between thee and thy corruption, but canst thou indeed show one sin thou hast slain by all thy praying?  Joseph was alive, though his coat was brought bloody to Jacob; and so may thy sin be, for all thy mortified look in duty, and outcry thou makest against them.  If thou wouldst thus try every piece, thy credulous heart would not so easily be cheated with Satan's false ware.

             Objection.  But is all armour that is of God thus mighty?  We read of weak grace, little faith; how can this then be a trial of our armour whether of God or not?

             Answer.  I answer, the weakness of grace is in respect of stronger grace, but the weak grace is strong and mighty in comparison of counterfeit grace.  Now, I do not bid thee try the truth of thy grace by such a power as is peculiar to stronger grace, but by that power which will distinguish it from false.  True grace, when weakest, is stronger than false when strongest.  There is a principle of divine life in it which the other hath not.  Now life, as it gives excel­lency—a flea or a fly by reason of its life, is more excellent than the sun in all his glory—so it give strength.  The slow motion of a living man, though so feeble that he cannot go a furlong in a single day, yet coming from life, imports more strength than is in a ship, which though it sails swiftly, hath its motion from without.  Thus possibly an hypocrite may ex­ceed the true Christian in the bulk and outside of a duty, yet because his strength is not from life, but from some wind and tide abroad that carries him, and the Christian's is from an inward principle, therefore the Christian's weakness is stronger than the hypocrite in his greatest enlargements.  I shall name but two acts of grace whereby the Christian, when weakest, exceeds the hypocrite in all his best array.  You will say, then grace is a weak stay indeed, when the Christian is persuaded to commit a sin, a great sin, such a one as possibly a carnal person would not have it said of him for a great matter.  So low may the tide of grace fall, yet true grace at such an ebb will appear of greater strength and force than the other.

1. This principle of grace will never leave till the soul weeps bitterly with Peter, that it hath offended so good a God.  Speak, O ye hypocrites can ye show one tear that ever you shed in earnest for a wrong done to God?  Possibly you may weep to see the bed of sorrow which your sins are making for you in hell, but ye never loved God so well as to mourn for the injury ye have done the name of God.  It is a good gloss Augustine hath upon Esau's tears Heb. 12:16, 17.  —Flevet quòd perdidit, non quòd vendidit —he wept that he lost the blessing, not that he sold it.  Thus we see an excellency of the saint's sorrow above the hypocrite's.  The Christian by his sorrow shows him­self a conqueror of that sin which even now overcame him; while the hypocrite by his pride shows himself a slave to a worse lust than that he resists.  While the Christian commits a sin he hates; whereas the other loves it while he forbears it.
2. When true grace is under the foot of a temptation, yet then it will stir up in the heart a vehement desire of revenge.  [It is] like a prisoner in his enemies' hand, who is thinking and plotting how to get out, and what he will do when out, waiting and longing every minute for his delivery, that he again may take up arms.  ‘O Lord God, remember me,’ saith Samson, ‘I pray thee, and strengthen me, I pray thee, only this once, that I may be at once avenged of the Philistines for my two eyes.  Jud. 16:28.  Thus prays the gracious soul, that God would but spare him a little, and strengthen him but once before he dies, that he may be avenged on his pride, unbelief, and those sins whereby he hath most dishonoured God. But a false heart is so far from studying revenge, that he rather swells like the sea against the law which banks his lust in, and is angry with God who hath made sin such a leap, that he must hazard his soul if he will have it.