Use or Application

           [A word of exhortation to all.] The application of this shall be only in a word of exhortation to all; especially you who bear the name of Christ by a more eminent profession of him.  O beware of this soul-infection, this leprosy of the head.  I hope you do not think it needless, for it is the disease of the times. This plague is begun, yea, spreads apace.  [There is] not a flock, [not] a congregation hardly, that hath not this scab among them.  Paul was a preacher the best of us all may write after, and he presseth this home upon the saints, yea, in the constant course of his preaching  it made a piece of his sermon.  He sets us preacher also upon this work; ‘Take heed therefore unto yourselves, and to all the flock;—for I know this, that after my departure shall grievous wolves enter;—also of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things,’ Acts 20:28-30; therefore watch.  And then he presents his own example, that he hardly made a sermon for several years, but this was part of it, to warn every one night and day with tears.  We need not prophesy what impostors may come upon the stage when we go off.  There are too many at present above-board of this gang drawing disciples after them.  And if it be our duty to warn you of them, surely it is yours to watch, lest you by any of them be led into temptation in this hour thereof, wherein Satan is let loose in so great a measure to deceive the nation.  May you not as easily be soured with this leaven, as the disciples whom Christ bids beware?  Are you privileged above those famous churches of Galatia and Corinth, many of which were bewitched with false teachers, and in a manner turned to another gospel?  Is Satan grown orthodox, or have his instruments lost their cunning, who hunt for souls?  In a word, is there not a sym­pathy between thy corrupt heart and error?  Hast thou not a disposition, which, like the fomes of the earth, makes it natural for these weeds to grow in thy soil?  Seest thou not many prostrated by this enemy, who sat upon the mountain of their faith, and thought it should never have been removed?  Surely they would have taken it ill to have been told, ‘you are the men and women that will decry Sabbaths, which now ye count holy; you will turn Pelagians, who now defy the name; you will despise prophecy itself, who now seem so much to honour the proph­ets; you will throw family duties out of doors, who dare not now go out of doors till you have prayed there.’  Yet these, and more than these, are come to pass; and doth it not behove thee, Christian, to take heed lest thou fallest also?  And that thou mayest not,

1. Exhortation.  Make it thy chief care to get a thorough change of thy heart.  If once the root of the matter be in thee, and thou beest bottomed by a lively faith on Christ, thou art then safe, I do not say wholly free from all error; but this I am sure, free from engulfing thy soul in damning error.  ‘They went out from us,’ saith St. John, ‘but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would no doubt have continued with us,’ I John 2:19.  As if he had said, They had some outward profes­sion, and common work of the Spirit with us, which they have either lost or carried over to the devil’s quarters, but they never had the unction of the sanctifying Spirit.  By this, ver. 20, he distinguisheth them, and comforts the sincere ones, who possibly might fear their own fall by their departure: ‘But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.’  It is one thing to know a truth, and another thing to know it by unction.  An hypocrite may do the former, the saint only the latter. It is this unction which gives the soul the savour of the knowledge of Christ; those are the fit prey for impostors, who are enlightened, but not enlivened. O, it is good to have the heart established with grace! This, as an anchor, will keep us from being set adrift, and carried about with divers and strange doctrines, as the apostle teacheth us, Heb. 13:9.
2. Exhortation.  Ply the work of mortification.  Crucify the flesh daily.  Heresy, though a spiritual sin, [is] yet by the apostle reckoned among the deeds of the flesh, Gal. 5:20, because it is occasioned by fleshly motives, and nourished by carnal food and fleshly fuel.  Never [have] any turned heretic, but flesh was at the bottom; either they served their belly or a lust of pride—it was the way to court, or secured their estates and saved their lives, as sometimes the reward of truth is fire and fagot.  Some pad or other is in the straw when least seen; and therefore it is no wonder that heresies should end in the flesh, which in a manner sprang from it.  The rheum in the head as­cends in fumes from the stomach, and returns thither, or unto the lungs, which at last fret and ulcerate. Carnal affections first send up their fumes to the un­derstanding, clouding that, yea, bribing it to receive such and such principles for truths; which [when] embraced, fall down into the life, corrupting that with the ulcer of profaneness.  So that, Christian, if once thou canst take off thy engagements to the flesh, and become a free man, so as not to give thy vote to gratify thy carnal fears or hopes, thou wilt then be a sure friend to truth.
3. Exhortation.  Wait conscionably on the minis­try of the word.  Satan commonly stops the ear from hearing sound doctrine, before he opens it to embrace corrupt.  This is the method of souls [in] apostatizing from truth: ‘They shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables,’ II Tim. 4:3,4. Satan, like a cunning thief, draws the soul out of the road into some lane or corner, and there robs him of the truth.  By rejecting of one ordinance, we deprive ourselves of the blessing of all others.  Say not that thou prayest to be led into truth; God will not hear thy prayer if thou turnest thine ear from hearing the law.  He that loves his child, when he sees him play the truant, will whip him to school.  If God loves a soul, he will bring him back to the word with shame and sorrow.
4. Exhortation.  When thou hearest any unusual doctrine, though never so pleasing, make not up the match hastily with it.  Have some better testimony of it, before you open your heart to it.  The apostle indeed bids us entertain strangers, for some have entertained angels unawares Heb. 13:2; but he would not have us carried about with strange doctrine, ver. 9, [though] by this I am sure some have entertained devils.  I confess, it is not enough to reject a doctrine, because strange to us, but ground we have, to wait and inquire.  Paul marvelled that the Galatians were so soon removed from him, who had called them unto the grace of Christ, unto another gospel.  They might sure have stayed till they had acquainted Paul with it, and asked his judgement.  What, no sooner an impostor come into the country, and open his pack, but buy all his ware at first sight!  O friends, were it not more wisdom to pray such new notions over and over again, to search the Word, and our hearts by it, yea, not to trust our own hearts, but [to] call in counsel from others?  If your minister have not such credit with you, get the most holy, humble, and established Christians you can find.  Error is like fish, which must be eaten new or it will stink.  When those dangerous errors sprung up first in New Eng­land, O how unsettled were the churches! what an outcry was made, as if some mine of gold had been discovered!  But in a while, when those error came to their complexion, and it was perceived whither they were bound—to destroy churches, ordinances, and power of godliness—then such as feared God, who had stepped aside, returned back with shame and sorrow.