Exhortations To Those Already at Peace With God 3/4

           Fourth.  Art thou at peace with God?  O show then no discontent at any cross or affliction that God visiteth thee withal!  If he hath visited thee first with his mercy, thou hast reason to bid him kindly wel­come when he comes to visit thee with his rod.  Thou hast sugar by thee now to sweeten thy bitter cup. When the Prophet Samuel came to Bethlehem, it is said, ‘The elders of the town trembled at his coming, and said, Comest thou peaceably?  And he said, Peaceably!’ I Sam. 16:4, 5.  Thus when God comes with some heavy affliction to us, it may make us tremble till we know what it comes for, whether peaceable or no.  Now, if thou beest at peace with God the fear is over, it cannot but come peaceably; thou mayest con­clude it comes on mercy’s errand.

           What condition canst thou, O pardoned soul, be in, that should part thee and the joy of thy peace with God?  Is it the wrath of man thou fearest?  Possibly thou hast many enemies, and those great ones, and their wrath as great as such can express.  Let it be so. Is God among them or no?  Doth God let out their wrath in his wrath against thee?  If not, thou exceed­ingly wrongest God, if overmuch troubled, and thyself also.  Thou wrongest God by not sanctifying his name in thy heart, whose mercy, I hope, is able to secure thee from their wrath: ‘If God be for us, who can be against us?’ Rom. 8:31.  Thou needest not fear them though an army of them were about thee—no more than if they were so many wisps of straw.  And thou wrongest thyself also: for how, indeed, can we wrong God and not ourselves?  So long as thou art under the power of such a fear from man's wrath, thou canst never have the taste of God’s love in its true sweetness.

           Again, art thou sick, poor, and what not beside? May not God reasonably expect that reconciling mer­cy should stop thy mouth from whispering any word of discontent against him, and prevent all envious glances of thy eye at the prosperity of the wicked? Re­member, man, that thou canst say one great word which they cannot, in the midst of all their pomp and worldly glory.  ‘Though I lie here poor and sick, yet I am, through mercy, at peace with God.’  This, well thought on, would soon change both your notes—the joy of the prosperous sinner into bitter mourning, and thy sorrow, Christian, into joy.  The Lady Elizabeth —afterwards England’s gracious queen—hearing a simple milk-maid sing merrily in the field, when the poor princess, being then a sorrowful prisoner, had more mind to sigh than sing, though served at the same time in state as a princess, said, ‘That poor maid was happier than herself.’  And so would the sinner, how great and high soever in the world, think the poorest Christian, with his rags and penury, a better man, and happier in his liberty, and peace with God, than himself in all his grandeur and worldly gaieties, did he but consider that in the midst of all these he is a prisoner, not to man, but God, out of whose hands there is no escaping.

           Fifth.  Comfort thyself with this, that thou, who art at peace with God now on earth, shalt feast with God ere long in heaven.  ‘And whom he justified, them he also glorified,’ Rom. 8:30.  And do not think this news to be too good or great to be true.  Here is a word for it, you see.  Heaven's number of glorified saint’s is made up of justified sinners.  Neither more nor less of the one than of the other.  Art thou justified by faith, by which thou hast peace with God? Then, lose not thy privilege, but rejoice with thy fellow-saints, ‘in hope of the glory of God.’  It is be­fore thee.  Every day brings thee nearer to it, and nothing can hinder thee of it at last.  Not thy sins themselves, and I know thou fearest them most.  He that paid thy great score at thy conversion will find mercy enough in his heart, surely, to pass by thy drib­bling debts, which thy own infirmity, and Satan’s subtlety, have run thee into.  Thou wert an enemy when God thought of doing the first, but now thou art a friend; and this will oblige him to do the second, that he may not lose his disbursement in the first; yea, provision is made by God in this method of our salvation for the one, as strongly as for the other. Christ died to make us, of enemies to God, friends with him, and he lives now to bring God and us, being thus made friends, to meet in one heaven together. Yea, the apostle gives the advantage to this of the two for our faith to triumph in.  ‘For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life,’ Rom. 5:10.  As if the apostle had said, ‘Can you believe that God hath taken you that were bloody enemies, into a state of peace and favour with himself?  Surely, then, you must needs find it easier for your faith to argue from reconciliation to salvation, than from hostility to enmity to pardon and peace.  Could Christ procure the one by his death, when he was weakest, as I may so say, and at the lowest descent of his humiliation; how much more shall he, in the height of his court-favour in heaven —when he hath all power given him, and in particular ‘the keys of the hell and death’ to open and shut as he pleaseth—to be able to save those whom he hath reconciled?’ Rev. 1:18.