Ten Directions to Guide Those Who Desire to Maintain the Power of Holiness 3/7

Third. Use not the true rule partially.  To be partial in practicing is as bad as to be partial in hand­ling of the law; this made the priests contemptible, Mal. 2:9, and so will that the professor, to God and man.  Square the whole frame of thy life by rule, or all is to no purpose.  ‘Divers measures, are an abomina­tion to the Lord,’ Prov. 20:10.  He is the honest man in his dealings with men that hath but one measure, and that according to law, which he useth in his trade. And he is the holy man that useth but one rule for all his actions, and that no other than the word of God. O how fulsome was the Jews' hypocrisy to God that durst not go into the judgment hall, for fear of render­ing themselves unclean, John 18, but made no scruple of embruing their hands in Christ’s blood! and the Pharisees, who observed the rule of the law strictly in ‘tithing anise and cummin,’ but dispensed with them­selves in ‘the weightier matters of the law!’  O beware of this, as thou lovest thy soul's life!  You would not thank that customer, who comes into your shop, and buys a pennyworth of you, but steals from you what is worth a pound; or him that is very punctual in paying a small debt he owes, only that he may get deeper into your book, and at last cheat you of a greater sum. This is horrid wickedness, to comply with the word in little matters, on a design that you may more covertly wrong God in greater.

Third Direction.  Be sure to propound a right end to thyself in thy righteous holy walking, and here be sure thou standest clear off a legal end.  Do not think, by thy righteousness, to purchase anything at God's hand.  Heaven stands not upon sale to any. ‘The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord,’ Rom. 6:23. What God sold to Christ he gives to us.  Christ was the purchaser, believers are but heirs to what he hath bought, and must claim nothing but in his right.  By claiming anything of God for our righteousness, we shut ourselves out from having anything of his.  We cannot be in two places at the same time.  If we be found leaning on our own house, we cannot also be found in Christ.  Paul knew this, and therefore re­nounceth the one, that he may be entitled to the other, Php. 3:8, 9.  It is Satan’s policy to crack the breastplate of thy own righteousness, by beating it out further than the metal will bear.  Indeed, by trusting in it, thou destroyest the very nature of it—thy righ­teousness becomes unrighteousness, and thy holiness degenerates into wickedness.  What greater impiety than pride?—such a pride as rants it over Christ, and alters the method which God himself hath set for saving souls!  O soul! if thou wouldst be holy, learn to be humble.  They are clasped together, ‘What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?’ Micah 6:8. And how that he that trusts in his own holiness should be said to walk humbly, it cannot enter into our heart to conceive.  God does not set thee to earn heaven by thy holiness; but thereby, to show thy love and thankfulness to Christ that hath earned it for thee.  Hence the great argument Christ useth to pro­voke his disciples to holiness, is love: 

‘If ye love me, keep my commandments,’ John 14:15.  As if he had said, ‘You know what I came into the world, and am now going out of the world for.  I do both upon your service, for whom I lay down my life, and take it up again, that I may live in heaven, to intercede for you. If these, then, and the blessed fruits you reap from these, be valued by you, love me, and if you love me, testify it in keeping my commandments.’  That is gos­pel holiness which is bred and fed by this love, when all the Christian doth is by him offered up as a thanksgiving sacrifice to Christ, ‘that loved us unto death.’  Thus the spouse to Christ, ‘I will give thee my loves,’ Song 7:12.  What she means by her loves she expresseth, ‘All manner of pleasant fruits, new and old, which I have laid up for thee, O my beloved,’ ver. 13.  In verse 18 she had professed her faith on Christ, and drunk deep of his love; and now to rebound his love in thankfulness, she bestirs herself to entertain him with the pleasant fruits of his own graces, as gathered from a holy conversa­tion, which she doth not lay up to feed her pride and self‑confi­dence with, but reserves for her Beloved, that he may have the entire praise of them.