The Pre-Eminence Of Faith Above Other Graces

The exhortation—‘Above all, taking the shield of faith’  (Eph. 6:16).

           Of all graces faith is the chief, and is chiefly to be laboured for.  There is a precedency or pre-eminence peculiar to this above all other.  It is among graces, as the sun is among the planets, or as Solomon’s ‘virtuous woman among the daughters,’ Prov. 31:29.  Though every grace had done virtuously, yet thou, O faith, excellest them all.  The apostle indeed give the precedency to love, and sets faith on the lower hand.  ‘And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity,’  I Cor. 13:13.  Yet, you may observe, that this prelation of it before faith hath a particular respect to the saints’s blissful state in heaven, where love remains, and faith ceaseth.  In that regard love indeed is the greater, because it is the end of our faith.  We apprehend by faith that we may enjoy by love.  But, if we consider the Christian’s present state, while militant on earth, in this respect love must give place to faith.  It is true, love is the grace that shall triumph in heaven.  But it is faith, not love, which is the conquering grace on earth.  ‘This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith,’ I John 5:4.  Love indeed hath its place in the battle, and doth excellent service, but is under faith its leader.  ‘Faith which worketh by love,’ Gal. 5:6.  Even as the captain fighteth by his soldiers whom he leads on, so faith works by love which it excites.  Love, it is true, is the grace that at last possesseth the inheritance, but it is faith that gives the Christian right unto it.  Without this he should never have enjoyed it, John 1:12.  In a word, it is love that unites God and glorified saints together in heaven; but it was faith that first united them to Christ while they were on earth—‘That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith,’ Eph. 3:17. And if Christ had dwelt in them by faith on earth, they should never have dwelt with God in heaven.

The Import of The Expression ABOVE ALL

  

Fourth Inquiry. What doth this , ‘above all,’ import?

           There is variety among interpreters about it.  Jerome reads it, in omnibus, sumentes scutum fidei —in all things taking the shield of faith, i.e. in all duties, enterprises, temptations, or afflictions—in whatever you are called to do or suffer, take faith. Indeed, faith to the Christian is like fire to the chem­ist; nothing can be done without it christianly.  ‘But without faith it is impossible to please God,’ Heb. 11:6.  And how can the Christian please himself in that wherein he doth not please his God?  Others read it, ‘Over all take the shield of faith,’ i.e. take it over all your graces, as that which will cover them.  All other graces have their safety from faith; they lie secure under the shadow of faith, as an army lies safe under the protection and command of a strong castle planted round with cannon.  But we shall follow our translation, as being most comprehensive, and that which will take these within its compass.  ‘Above all, take,’ &c., that is, among all the pieces of armour which you are to provide and wear for your defence, let this have the pre-eminence of your care to get; and having got, to keep it.  Now, that the apostle meant to give a preeminency to faith above the other graces appears,

           First. By the piece of armour he compares it to —the shield.  This, of old, was prized above all other pieces by soldiers.  They counted it greater shame to lose their shield, than to lose the field, and therefore when under the very foot of their enemy, they would not part with it, but esteemed it an honour to die with their shield in their hand.  It was the charge that one laid upon her son, going into the wars, when she gave him a shield, ‘that he should either bring his shield home with him, or be brought home upon his shield.’  She had rather see him dead with it, than come home alive without it.

           Second. By the noble effect which is here ascribed to faith—‘by which ye shall quench all the fiery darts of the wicked.’  The other pieces are nakedly commended, ‘take the girdle of truth, breast-plate of righteousness,’ and so the rest; but there is nothing singly ascribed to any of them, what they can do, yet, when he speaks of faith, he ascribes the whole victory to it.  This quencheth ‘all the fiery darts of the wicked.’  And why thus?  Are the other graces of no use, and doth faith do all?  What need then the Christian load himself with more than this one piece? I answer, every piece hath its necessary use in the Christian's warfare: not any one part of the whole suit can be spared in the day of battle.  But the reason, I humbly conceive, why no particular effect is annexed severally to each of these, but all ascribed to faith, is, to let us know that all these graces—their efficacy and our benefit from them—is in conjunction with faith, and the influence they receive from faith; so that this is plainly the design of the Spirit of God to give faith the precedency in our care above the rest.  Only, take heed that you do not fancy any indifferency or negligence to be allowed you in your endeavours after the other graces, because you are more strongly provoked and excited up to the getting and keeping this.  The apostle would intend your care here, but not remit it there.  Cannot we bid a soldier above all parts of his body to beware of a wound at his heart, but he must needs think presently he need take no care to guard his head?  Truly, such a one would deserve a cracked crown to cure him of his folly.  The word thus op ened, we shall content ourselves with one general observation from them; and it is this.

WHY Faith is Compared To a SHIELD

Third Inquiry. Why is faith compared to a shield?

           It is so, because of a double resemblance that is between this grace and that piece of armour.

           First Resemblance.  This shield is not for the de­fence of any particular part of the body—as almost all the other pieces are—the helmet fitted for the head, the plate designed for the breast, and so others having their several parts which they are fastened to—but is intended for the defence of the whole body.  It was used therefore to be made very large, for its broadness called  of {from}", a gate or door, because so long and large as in a manner to cover the whole body.  To this that place alludes, ‘For thou, Lord, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield,’ Ps. 5:12.  And if the shield were not large enough at once to cover every part, yet, being a movable piece of armour, the skilful soldier might turn it this way or that way, to latch the blow or arrow from lighting on any part they were directed to.  And this indeed doth excellently well set forth the universal use that faith is of to the Christian. It defends the whole man; every part of the Christian by it preserved.  Sometimes the temptation is levelled at the head.  Satan, he will be disputing against this truth and that, to make the Christian, if he can, call them into question, merely because his reason and understanding cannot comprehend them; and he pre­vails with some that do not think themselves the un­wisest in the world, upon this very account, to blot the deity of Christ, with other mysterious truths of the gospel, quite out of their creed.  Now faith inter­poseth between the Christian and this arrow.  It comes into the relief of the Christian’s weak under­standing as seasonably as Zeruiah did to David, when the giant Ishbi-benob thought to have slain him.  I will trust the word of God, saith the believer, rather than my own purblind reason.  ‘Abraham not being weak in faith, he considered not his own body now dead,’ Rom. 4:19.  If sense should have had the hearing of that business, yea, if that holy man had put it to a reference between sense and reason also, what resolution his thoughts should come to concerning this strange message that was brought him, he would have been in danger of calling the truth of it in question, though God himself was the messenger; but faith brought him honourably off.

           Again, Is it conscience that the tempter assaults? —and it is not seldom that he is shooting his fiery darts of horror and terror at his mark.  Faith receives the shock, and saves the creature harmless: ‘I had fainted, unless I had believed,’ saith David, Ps. 27:13. He means when false witnesses rose up against him, and such as breathed out cruelty, as appears, ver. 12.  Faith was his best fence against man's charge; and so it is against Satan’s and conscience's also.  Never was a man in a sadder condition than the poor jailer, Acts 16.  Much ado he had to keep his own hands from offering violence to himself.  Who that had seen him fall trembling at the feet of Paul and Silas, with that sad question in his mouth, ‘Sirs, what must I do to be saved?’ ver. 30, could have thought this deep wound that was now given his conscience, would so soon have been closed and cured as we find it, ver. 34.  The earthquake of horror that did so dreadfully shake his conscience is gone, and his trembling turned into rejoicing.  Now mark what made this blessed calm. ‘Believe,’ saith Paul, ‘on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,’ ver. 31; and ver. 34, it is said, he ‘rejoiced, believing in God with all his house.’  It is faith stills the storm which sin had raised—faith that changed his doleful note into joy and gladness.  Hap­py man he was, that had such skilful chirurgeons so near him, who could direct him the nearest way to a cure.

           Again, Is it the will that the temptation is laid to catch?  Some commands of God cannot be obeyed without much self-denial, because they cross us in that which our own wills are carried forth very strong­ly to desire; so that we must deny our will before we can do the will of God.  Now a temptation comes very forcible, when it runs with the tide of our own wills. ‘What,’ saith Satan, ‘wilt thou serve a God that thus thwarts thee in everything?’  If thou lovest anything more than another, presently he must have that from thee.  No lamb in all the flock will serve for a sacrifice, but Isaac, Abraham’s only child, he must be offered up.  No place will content God, that Abraham should serve him in, but where he must live in ban­ishment from his dear relations and acquaintance. ‘Wilt thou,’ saith Satan, ‘yield to such hard terms as these?’  Now faith is the grace that doth the soul ad­mirable service at such a pinch as this.  It is able to appease the tumult which such a temptation may raise in the soul, and dismiss the rout of all mutinous thoughts, yea, to keep the King of heaven's peace so sweetly in the Christian’s bosom, that such a temptation, if it comes, shall find few or none to declare for it, ‘By faith,’ it saith, ‘Abraham obeyed; and he went out, not knowing whither,’ Heb. 11:8.  And we do not read of one fond look that his heart cast back upon his dear native country, as he went from it, so well pleased had faith made him with his journey.  It was hard work for Moses to strip himself of the magistrate’s robes, and put his hands on his servants head; hard to leave another to enter upon his labours, and reap the honour of lodging the Israelites' colours in Canaan, after it had cost him so many a weary step to bring them within sight of it.  Yet, faith made him willing; he saw better robes, that he should put on in heaven, than those he was called on to put off on earth.  The lowest place in glory is, beyond all compare, greater preferment than the highest place of honour here below; to stand before the throne there, and minister to God in immediate service, than to sit in a throne on earth and have all the world waiting at his foot. 

           Second Resemblance.  The shield doth not only defend the whole body, but is a defence of the soldier's armour also.  It keeps the arrow from the hel­met as well as head, from the breast and breast-plate also.  Thus faith it is armour upon armour, a grace that preserves all the other graces.  But of this more hereafter.

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  (1.) He must inquire for a promise to bear his faith out, and warrant him to expect such a mercy at God’s hand.

           (2.) Again, when he hath found a promise, and observed the terms well on which it runs, the Chris­tian is not to stay for any further encouragement, but upon the credit of the naked promise to set his faith on work.

           (a) He is to inquire out a promise, and observe well the terms on which it runs.  Indeed upon the point it comes all to one; to believe without a promise, or to believe on a promise, but not observe the terms of it. Both are presumptuous, and speed alike. A prince hath as much reason to be angry with him that doth not keep close to his commission, as with another that acts without any commission. O how little considered is this by many who make bold of God’s arm to lean on for pardon and salvation, but never think that the promise, which presents Christ to leaned on as a Saviour, presents him at the same time to be chosen as a Lord and Prince!  Such were the rebellious Israelites, who durst make God and his promise a leaning-stock for their foul elbows to rest on.  ‘They call themselves of the holy city, and stay themselves upon the God of Israel; The Lord of hosts is his name,’ Isa. 48:2; but they were more bold than welcome.  God rejected their confidence and loathed their sauciness.  Though a prince would not disdain to let a poor wounded man, faint with bleeding, and unable to go alone, upon his humble request, make use of his arm, rather than he should perish in the streets; yet he would, with indignation, reject the same motion from a filthy drunkard that is be­smeared with his vomit, if he should desire leave to lean on him because he cannot go alone.  I am sure, how welcome soever the poor humble soul—that lies bleeding for his sins at the very mouth of hell in his own thoughts—is to God when he comes upon the encouragement of the promise to lean on Christ, yet the profane wretch that emboldens himself to come to Christ, shall be kicked away with infinite disdain and abhorrency by a holy God for abusing his   promise.

           (b) When a poor sinner hath found a promise, and observes the terms with a heart willing to embrace them, now he is to put forth an act of faith upon the credit of the naked promise, without staying for any other encouragement elsewhere.  Faith is a right pilgrim-grace; it travels with us to heaven, and when it sees us safe got within our Father’s doors —heaven I mean—it takes leave of us.  Now, the promise is this pilgrim’s staff with which it sets forth, though, like Jacob on his way to Padan-aram, it hath nothing else with it.  ‘Remember the word unto thy servant,’ saith David, ‘upon which thou hast caused me to hope,’ Ps. 119:49.  The word of promise was all he had to show, and he counts that enough to set his faith on work.  But alas! some make comfort the ground of faith, and experience their warrant to believe.  They will believe when God manifests him­self to them, and sends in some sensible demonstra­tion of his love to their souls; but, till this be done, the promise hath little authority to silence their unbe­lieving cavils, and quiet their misgiving hearts into a waiting on God for the performance of what there is spoken from God's own mouth.  It is like old Jacob, who gave no credit to his children when they told him Joseph was yet alive and governor over all the land of Egypt.  This news was too good and great to enter into his belief, who had given him {up} for dead {for} so long; it is said, ‘his heart fainted, for he believed them not,’ Gen. 45:26.  But when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him thither, then it is said, ‘the spirit of Jacob revived,’ ver. 27. Truly thus, though the promise tells the poor humbled sinner Christ is alive, governor of heaven itself, with all power there and on earth put into his hand, that he may give eternal life unto all that believe on him, and he be therefore exhorted to rest upon Christ in the promise, yet his heart faints and believes not. It is the wagons he would fain see—some sensible expressions of God’s love that he listens after—if he did but know that he was an elect person, or were one that God did love, then he would believe.  But God hath little reason to thank him in the meantime for suspending his faith till these come.  This is, as I may so say, to believe for spiritual loves, and is rather sense than faith.

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3. The act of faith upon this object, and that is resting on Christ crucified for pardon and life.I know there are many acts of the soul antecedent to this, without which the creature can never truly exer­cise this.  As knowledge, especially of God and Christ, upon whose authority and testimony it relies: ‘I know whom I have believed,’ II Tim. 1:12.  None will readily trust a stranger that he is wholly unacquainted with. Abraham indeed went he knew not whither, but he did not go with he knew not whom.  The greatest thing God laboured to instruct Abraham in, and satisfy him with, was—

           (1.) The knowledge of his own glorious self —who he was—that he might take his word and rely on it, how harsh and improbable, soever it might sound in sense or reason’s ear, ‘I am Almighty God, walk before me, and be thou perfect.’

           (2.) Assent to the truth of the word of God.  If this foundation-stone be not laid, faith's building cannot go on.  Who will trust him that he dares not think speaks true?

           (3.) A sense of our own vileness and emptiness. By the one he means us see our demerit, what we deserve, hell and damnation; by the other, our own impotency, how little we can contribute—yea, just nothing, to our own reconciliation.  I join them together, because the one ariseth out of the other. Sense of this emptiness comes from the deep apprehensions a soul hath of the other’s fulness in him. You never knew a man full of self-confidence and self-abasement together.  The con­science cannot abound with the sense of sin and the heart with self-conceit at the same time.  ‘When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died,’ Rom. 7:9—that is, when the commandment came, in the accusations of it, to his conscience, sin, like a sleepy lion had lain still, and he secure and confident by it, when that began to roar in his conscience, then he died—that is, his vain-confidence of himself gave up the ghost.  Both these are necessary to faith—sense of sin, like the smart of a wound, to make the creature think of a plaster to cure it; and sense of emptiness and insufficiency in himself or any creature to do the cure necessary to make him go out to Christ for cure.  We do not go abroad to beg what we have of our own within doors. These, with some other, are necessary to faith.  But the receiving of Christ, and resting on Christ, is that act of faith to which justification is promised.  ‘He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God,’ John 3:18.  Now every one that assents to the truth of what the Scripture saith of Christ, doth not believe on Christ.  No; This believing on Christ im­plies an union of the soul to Christ and fiduciary re­cumbency on Christ.  Therefore we are bid to take hold of Christ, Isa. 27:5, who is there called God’s ‘strength,’ as elsewhere his arm—‘that we may make peace with God, and we shall make peace with him.’ It is not the sight of a man's arm stretched out to a man in the water will save him from drowning, but the taking hold of it.  Christ is a stone.  Faith builds upon Christ for salvation.  And how? but by laying its whole weight and expectation of mercy on him.  What Paul, II Tim. 1:12, calls ‘believing’ in the former part of the verse, he calls in the latter part a ‘committing to him to be kept against that day.’

           (4.) The fourth and last branch in the description, is the warrant and security that faith goes upon in this act.  And this it takes from the promise.  In­deed, there is no way how God can be conceived to contract a debt to his creature but by promise.  There are ways for men to become debtors one to another, though never any promise passed from them. The fa­ther is a debtor to his child, and owes him love, provi­sion, and nurture.  The child is a debtor to his parent, and owes him honour and obedience, though neither of them promised this to each other.  Much more doth the creature stand deep in God’s debt-book, and owes himself with all he hath to God his Maker, though he hath not the grace voluntarily to make these over to God by promise and covenant.  But the great God is so absolute a Sovereign, that none can make a law to bind him but himself.  Till he be pleased to pass an act of grace, of his own good-will, to give this or do that good thing to and for his poor creatures, no claim can be laid to the least mercy at his hands.  There are two things therefore that are greatly to be heeded by the soul that would believe.

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Second. I shall answer affirmatively, what justi­fying faith is, and in the description of it I shall con­sider it solely as justifying.  And so take it in these few words—It is the act of the soul whereby it rests on Christ crucified for pardon and life, and that upon the warrant of the promise.  In the description observe,

1. The subject where faith is seated, not any single faculty, but the soul.  2. The object of faith as justifying—Christ crucified.  3. The act of faith upon this object, and that is resting on Christ crucified for pardon and life.  4. The warrant and security that faith goes upon in this act.
2. The subject where faith is seated,not any sin­gle faculty, but the soul.  Of this I have spoken some­thing before, and so pass on to the second point.
3. Here is the object of faith as justifying,and that is Christ crucified.  The whole truth of God is the object of justifying faith.  It trades with the whole word of God, and doth firmly assent unto it; but, in its justifying act, it singles out Christ crucified for its object.  (1.) The person of Christ is the object of faith as justifying.  (2.) Christ as crucified.

           (1.) The person of Christ.  Not any axiom or proposition in the word.  This is the object of assurance, not of faith.  Assurance saith ‘I believe my sins are pardoned through Christ.’  Faith’s language is, ‘I believe on Christ for the pardon of them.’  The word of God doth direct our faith to Christ, and terminates it upon him; called therefore, a ‘coming to Christ,’ Matt. 11:28, a ‘receiving of him,’ John 1:12, a ‘believing on him,’ John 17:20.  The promise is but the dish in which Christ, the true food of the soul, is served up; and, if faith’s hand be on the promise, it is but as one that draws the dish to him, that he may come at the dainties in it.  The promise is the marriage-ring on the hand of faith.  Now we are not married to the ring, but with it unto Christ.  ‘All the promises,’ saith the apostle, ‘are yea and amen in him.’  They have their excellency from him, and efficacy in him—I mean in a soul’s union to him.  To run away with a promise, and not to close with Christ, and by faith become one in him, is as if a man should rend a branch from a tree, and lay it up in his chest, expecting it to bear fruit there.  Promises are dead branches severed from Christ.  But when a soul by faith becomes united to Christ, then he partakes of all his fatness; not a promise but yields sweetness to it.

           (2.) As Christ is the primary object of faith, so Christ as crucified.  Not Christ in his personal ex­cellencies—so he is the object rather of our love than faith—but as bleeding, and that to death, under the hand of divine justice for to make an atonement by God’s own appointment for the sins of the world.  As the handmaid’s eye is to her mistress’s hand for direc­tion, so faith’s eye is on God revealing himself in his word; which way God by it points the soul, thither it goes.  Now there faith finds God, intending to save poor sinners, pitched on Christ, and Christ alone, for the transacting and effecting of it, and him whom God chooseth to trust with the work—him and him alone—will faith choose to lay the burden of her confidence on.

           Again, faith observes how Christ performed this great work, and accordingly how the promise holds him forth to be applied for pardon and salvation. Now faith finds that then Christ made the full payment to the jus­tice of God for sin, when he poured out his blood to death upon the cross.  All the prece­daneous acts of his humiliation were but preparatory to this.  He was born to die; he was sent into the world as a lamb bound with the bonds of an irreversible decree for a sacrifice.  Christ himself when he came into the world understood this to be the errand he was sent on, Heb. 10:5.  ‘Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me;’ i.e. to be an expiatory sacrifice.  Without this, all he had done would have been labour undone. No redemption but by his blood, ‘In whom we have re­demption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins,’ Eph. 1:7.  No church without his blood, ‘The church of God, which he hath purchased with his own blood,’ Acts 20:28.  E latere Christi morientis exstitit ecclesia— the church is taken out of dying Jesus’ side, as Eve out of sleeping Adam’s.  Christ did not redeem and save poor souls by sitting in majesty on his heavenly throne, but by hanging on the shameful cross, under the tormenting hand of man’s fury and God’s just wrath.  And therefore the poor soul, that would have pardon of sin, is directed to place his faith not only on Christ, but on bleeding Christ, Rom. 3:25: ‘Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood.’

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2. Justifying faith is not assurance.  If it were, St. John might have spared his pains, who wrote to them that ‘believed on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life,’ I John 5:13.  They might then have said ‘We do this already.  What else is our faith, but a believing that we are such as through Christ are pardoned, and shall through him be saved?’ But this cannot be so.  If faith were assurance, then a man’s sins would be pardoned before he believes, for he must necessarily be pardoned before he can know he is pardoned.  The candle must be lighted before I can see it is lighted.  The child must be born before I can be assured it is born.  The object must be before the act.  Assurance rather is the fruit of faith.  It is in faith as the flower is in the root.  Faith, in time, after much communion with God, ac­quaintance with the word, and experience of his deal­ings with the soul, may flourish into assurance.  But, as the root truly lives before the flower appears, and continues when that hath shed its beautiful leaves, and gone again; so doth true justifying faith live before assurance comes, and after it disappears.  As­surance is, as it were, the cream of faith.  Now you know there is milk before there is cream, this riseth not but after some time standing, and there remains milk after it is fleted off.  How many, alas! of the precious saints of God must we shut out from being believers, if there is no faith but what amounts to assurance?  We must needs offend against the generation of God’s children, among whom some are babes, not yet come to the use of their reflex act of faith, so as to own the graces of God in them to be true, upon the review that they take of their own actings.  And, must not the child be allowed to be a child, till he can speak for himself, and say he is so? 

Others there are in Christ's family, who are of higher stature and great­er experience in the ways of God, yet have lost those apprehensions of pardoning mercy, which once they were, through the goodness of God, able to have shown—shall we say their faith went away in the de­parture of their assurance?  How oft then in a year may a believer be no believer? even as oft as God withdraws and leaves the creature in the dark.  Assur­ance is like the sun-flower, which opens with the day and shuts with the night.  It follows the motion of God’s face.  If that looks smilingly on the soul, it lives; if that frowns or hides itself, it dies.  But faith is a plant that can grow in the shade, a grace that can find the way to heaven in a dark night.  It can ‘walk in darkness,’ and yet ‘trust in the name of the Lord,’ Isa. 50:10.  In a word, by making the essence of faith to lie in assurance, we should not only offend against the generation of God's children, but against the God and Father of these children; for at one clap we turn the greater number of those children he hath here on earth out of doors.  Yes, we are cruel to those he is most tender of, and make sad the hearts of those that he would have chiefly comforted.  Indeed if this were true, a great part of gospel provision laid up in the promises is of little use.  We read of promises to those that mourn, ‘they shall be comforted,’ to the contrite, ‘they shall be revived,’ to him that ‘walks in darkness,’ and the like.  These belong to believers, and none else.  Surely then there are some believers that are in the dark, under the hatches of sorrow, wounded and broken with their sins, and temptation for them.  But they are not such as are assured of the love of God; their water is turned into joy, their night into light, their sighs and sobs into joy and praise.

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Second Inquiry.  What is this justifying faith as to its nature?

           I shall answer this, First. Negatively.  Second. Af­firmatively.

           First. Negatively, in two particulars.

1. Justifying faith is not a naked assent to the truths of the gospel.This justifying faith doth give; but this doth not make it justifying faith.  A dogmat­ical faith, or historical, is comprehended in justifying faith.  But dogmatical faith doth not infer justifying faith.  Justifying faith cannot be without a dogmatical; it implies it, as the rational soul in man doth the sen­sitive.  But, the dogmatical may be without the justi­fying, as the sensitive soul in the beast without the ra­tional.  Judas knew the Scriptures, and without doubt did assent to the truth of them, when he was so zeal­ous a preacher of the gospel; but he never had so much as one dram of jus­tifying faith in his soul.  ‘But there are some of you that believe not.  For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him,’ John 6:64.  Yea, Ju­das’ master, the devil himself—one far enough, I sup­pose, from justifying faith—yet he assents to the truth of the word.  He goes against his conscience who denies them.  When he tempted Christ he did not dispute against the Scripture, but from the Scripture, drawing his arrows out of this quiver, Matt. 4:6. And at another time, he makes as full a confession of Christ, for the matter, as Peter himself did, Matt. 8:29, compared with Matt. 16:17.  Assent to the truth of the word is but an act of the understanding, which reprobates and devils may exercise; but justifying faith is a compounded habit, and hath its seat both in the under­standing and will; and therefore [it is] called a ‘believing with the heart,’ Rom. 10:10; yea, a ‘believing with all the heart,’ Acts 8:37.  ‘Philip said, If thou be­lievest with all thine heart, thou mayest.’  It takes all the powers of the soul.  There is a double object in the promise—one proper to the understanding, to move that; another proper to the will, to excite and work upon that.  As the promise is true, so it calls for an act of assent from the understanding; and as it is good as well as true, so it calls for an act of the will to embrace and receive it.  Therefore, he which only no­tionally knows the promise, and speculatively assents to the truth of it, without clinging to it, and embracing of it, doth not believe savingly, and can have no more benefit from the promise, than nourishment from the food he sees and acknowledgeth to be wholesome, but eats none of.

The Kind of Faith Here Meant

           First Inquiry.  What faith is it that here is commended?  This will soon be known, if we consider the use and end for which it is commended to the Christian, and that is to enable him to ‘quench all the fiery darts of the wicked;’ i.e. of the wicked one, the devil.  Now, look upon the several kinds of faith, and that among them must be the faith of this place which enables the creature to quench Satan’s fiery darts, yea, all his fiery darts.  Historical faith cannot do this, and therefore is not it.  This is so far from quenching Satan’s fiery darts, that the devil himself, that shoots them, hath this faith.  ‘The devils believe,’ James 2:19.  Temporary faith cannot do it.  This is so far from quenching Satan’s fiery darts, that itself is quenched by them.  It makes a goodly blaze of profession, and ‘endures for a while,’ Matt. 13:21, but soon disappears.  Miraculous faith, this falls as short as the former.  Judas’ miraculous faith, which he had with other of the apostles—for aught that we can read —enabling him to cast devils out of others, left himself possessed of the devil of covetousness, hypoc­risy, and treason; yea, a whole legion of lusts, that hurried him down the hill of despair into the bottomless pit of perdition.  There is only one kind of faith remains, which is it the apostle means in this place, and that is justifying faith.  

This indeed is the grace that makes him, whoever hath it, the devil’s match.  Satan hath not so much advantage of the Christian by the transcendency of his natural abilities, as he hath of Satan in this cause and this his weapon.  The apostle is confident to give the day to the Christian before the fight is fully over: ‘Ye have overcome the wicked one,’ I John 2:13, that is, ye are as sure to do it as if you were now mounted on your triumphant chariot in heaven.  The knight shall overcome the giant; the saint, Satan; and the same apostle tells us what gets him the day. ‘This is the victory that over­cometh the world, even our faith,’ I John 5:4.

APPLICATION of The Influences and Privileges of the Gospel Peace

  Use First. The preceding doctrine informs our judg­ments in two particulars.  1. What to judge of their patience in affliction that have no interest in the gospel’s peace.  2. What to think of their peace who, in affliction, have no patience at all.

1. What we are to judge of their patience in af­fliction who have no interest in the gospel’s peace. Some you shall see very still and quiet in affliction, yet mere strangers to this peace, ignorant of Christ the Peace-maker, walking in opposition to the terms God offers peace in the gospel upon, and yet very calm in affliction.  Certainly all is not right with this poor creature.  If he had any sense how it is with him, he would have little patience to see himself under the hand of God, and not know but it may leave him in hell before it hath done with him.  When I see one run over the stones and hard ways barefoot and not complain, I do not admire his patience, but pity the poor creature that hath benumbed his feet, and, as it were, soled them with a brawny, dead kind of flesh, so as to lose his feeling.  But, save your pity much more for those whose consciences are so benumbed and hearts petrified into a senseless stupidity, that they feel their misery no more than the stone doth the ma­son’s saw which cuts it asunder.  Of all men out of hell, none [is] more to be pitied than he that hangs over the mouth of it, and yet is fearless of his danger, while thus the poor wretch is incapable of all means for his good.  What good does physic put into a dead man’s mouth?  If he cannot be chased to some sense of his condition, all applications are in vain.  And if afflictions—which are the strongest physic—leave the creature senseless, there is little hope left that any other will work upon him.
2. What are we to think of their peace who, in affliction, have no patience at all—those that are great pretend­ers to gospel peace, yet cannot think with any patience of suffering from God or for God. Certainly, so far as the creature is acquainted with this peace, and hath the true sense of God's love in Christ lying warm at his heart, he cannot but find pro­portionably his heart stand ready to submit to any suffering that God lays out for him.  And therefore it behooves us well to try our peace and comfort.  If thou hast no heart to suffer for God, but choosest a sin to escape a cross, thy peace is false.  If thou hast but little patience under ordinary afflictions, to com­pose thy spirit from murmuring, and sustain thy heart from sinking, thy faith on the promise is weak.  ‘If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small,’ Prov. 24:10.

           Use Second. Let this doctrine stir thee up, Christian, to be very tender and chary of thy peace with God and thy own conscience.   Keep this peace clear and unbroken, and it will keep thy heart whole, when the whole world breaks about thee.  So long as this peace of God rules in your hearts, you are safe from fear or danger, though in a prison or at a stake. But if thou sufferest it to be wounded, then thy ene­mies will come upon thee as Simeon and Levi on the men of Shechem when sore, and be too hard for thee. O it is sad, friends—you will find it so—to go with sore and smarting consciences into a suffering condition.  A thorn in the foot will make any way uneasy to the traveller; and guilt in the conscience any condition uncomfortable to the Christian, but most of all a suffering one.  Now, if you will keep your peace unbroken, you must bestow some attendance on it, and set as it were a life-guard about it.  The choicest flowers need most looking to.  The richer the treasure the safer we lay it.  This peace is thy treasure; look well where thou layest it.  Two ways our Saviour tells us that worldly treasure, such as silver and gold is, may be lost—by thieves that break in and carry it away, and by rust that eats and corrupts it, Matt. 6:19.  There are two ways something like these, wherein the Christian may go by the loss in this his heavenly treasure of inward peace and comfort.

1. Presumptuous sins, these are the thieves that ‘break through and steal’ the saint’s comfort away.  When the Christian comes to look into his soul after such a bold act, and thinks to entertain himself, as formerly, with the comforts of his pardoned state, in­terest in Christ, and hopes of heaven through him, alas! he finds a sad change.  There is no promise that will give out its consolations to him—the cellar-door is locked, Christ withdrawn, and the keys carried away with him.  He may even cry out with a sad com­plaint, as Mary when she found not Christ’s body in the sepulchre, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.’  Thus the Christian may, with aching heart, bemoan his folly, ‘My pride, my uncleanness, my earthly-mindedness, they have taken away my treasure, robbed me of my comfort.  I could never have a comfortable sight of God’s face in any duty or promise since I fell into that foul sin.’  And therefore, Christian, have a care of such robbers of thy peace as this.  ‘The spirit of man’ is called ‘the candle of the Lord,’ Prov. 20:27. Hath God lighted thy candle, Christian—cheered thy spirit, I mean, with the sense of his love?  Take heed of presumptuous sins.  If such a thief be suffered in this thy candle, thy comfort will soon sweal out.  Hast thou fallen into the hands of any such presumptuous sins as have stolen thy peace from thee?  Send speedily thy hue and cry after them—I mean, take thy sad moan to God, renew thy repentance out of hand, and raise heaven upon them by a spirit of prayer.  This is no time to delay.  The farther thou lettest these sins go without repentance, the harder thou wilt find it to recover thy lost peace and joy out of their hands.  And for thy encouragement know, God is ready, upon thy serious and solemn return, to restore thee ‘the joy of his salvation,’ and do justice upon these enemies of thy soul for thee by his mortifying grace, if thou wilt prosecute the law upon them closely and vigorously, without relenting towards them, or being bribed with the pleasure or carnal advantage that they will not spare to offer, so their lives may be spared.
2. Again, as presumptuous sins are the ‘thieves’ that with a high hand rob the Christian of his comfort; so sloth and negligence are as the ‘rust,’ that in time will fret into his comfort and eat out the heart and strength of it.It is impossible that the Christian who is careless and secure in his walking, infrequent and negligent in his communion with God, should long be owner of much peace or comfort that is true. What if thou dost not pour water of presumptuous sins into the lap of thy joy to quench it?  It is enough if thou dost not pour oil of duty to feed and maintain it.  Thou art murderer to thy comfort by starving it, as well as by stabbing of it.

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 (2.) The sense of this peace will enable the Christian to deny himself in his carnal enjoyments.  And these the Chris­tian finds his great pull-backs from suffering.  As the heart burns in the hot fit of love to the pleasures and profits of this world when he abounds with them, in that degree will his shaking fit of fear and grief be when Christ calls him to part with them.  What the sweet wines and dainty fare of Capua was to Hannibal’s soldiers, that we shall find any intemperance of heart to the creature will be to us.  It will enervate our spirits, and so effeminate us, that we shall have little mind to endure hardship when drawn into the field to look an enemy in the face.  Now the sense of this gospel peace will deaden the heart to the creature, and facilitate the work of self-denial as to the greatest enjoyments the world hath.  ‘God forbid,’ saith Paul, ‘that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world,’ Gal. 6:14.  Paul’s heart is dead to the world.  Now mark what gave the death's wound to his carnal affections. ‘By whom,’ saith he, ‘the world is crucified to me, and I unto it;’ that is, Christ and his cross.  There was a time, indeed, that Paul loved the world as well who most.  But, since he hath been acquainted with Christ, and the mercy of God in him to his soul —pardoning his sins and receiving him into favour and fellowship with himself—he is of another mind. He leaves the world, as Saul his seeking of the asses, at the news of a kingdom; his haunt lies another way now.  Let the Zibas of the world take the world, and all they can make of it with their best husbandry.  He will not grudge them their happiness, forasmuch as his heavenly Lord and King is come in peace to his soul.  None can part with the comfort of the creature so cheerfully as he who hath his mouth at the fountain-head, the love of God himself.  Parents are near, and friends are dear, yet a loving wife can forget her father's house, and leave her old friends’ company, to go with her husband though it be to a prison. How much more will a gracious soul bid adieu to these, yea life itself, to go to Christ, especially when he hath sent the Comforter into his bosom, to cheer him in the solitariness of the way with his sweet company?

4. Influence. This peace, where it is felt, promotes the suffering grace of patience.  Affliction and suffering to a patient soul are not grievous.  Patience is, as one calls it, BXR4H J0H RLP0H—the concoctive faculty of the soul —that grace which digests all things, and turns them into good nourishment.  Meats of hard digestion will not do well with squeamish weak stomachs, and therefore they are dainty and nice in their diets; whereas men of strong stom­achs, they refuse no meat that is set before them; all fare is alike to them.  Truly thus there are some things which are of very hard digestion to the spirits of men.  The peevish, passionate, short-spirited pro­fessor will never concoct reproaches, prison, and death itself,  but rather quarrel with his profession, if such fare as these attend the gospel.  ‘When tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended,’ Matt. 13:21.  This will not stay in his stomach, but makes him cast up even that which else he could have kept—a profession of Christ—might he have had it with a quiet life and a whole skin.  But now the patient soul, he makes his meal of what God in his providence sets before him. If peace and prosperity be served up with the gospel, he is thankful, and enjoys the sweetness of the mercy while it lasts.  If God takes these away, and instead of them, will have him eat the gospel feast with sour herbs of affliction and persecution, it shall not make him sick of his cheer.  It is but eating more largely of the comforts of the gospel with them, and they go down very well wrapped up in them.  Indeed the Christian is beholden to those consolations which flow from the peace of the gospel for his patience.  It were impossible for the people of God to endure with what sometimes they meet with from men and devils also, as they do, had they not sweet help from the sense of God’s love in Christ, that lies glowing at their hearts in inward peace and joy.  The apostle resolves all the saints' patience, experience, and hope, yea, glorying in their tribulations, into this, as the cause of all, ‘Because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us,’ Rom. 5:5.  Sin makes suffering intolerable.  When that [sin, viz.] is gone, the worst part of the trouble is removed. A light cart goes through that slough easily, where the cart deeply laden is set fast.  Guilt loads the soul, and bemires it in any suffering.  Take that away, and let God speak peace to his soul, and he that raged before like a madman under the cross, shall carry it without whinching and whining.  ‘The peace of God shall keep your hearts and minds,’ Php. 4:7.  Now what is patience but the keeping of the heart and mind composed and serene in all troubles that befall us? But a word or two for application.

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3. Influence. This peace enjoyed in the Christian’s bosom hath a sweet influence into his self-denial—as grace so necessary to suffering, that Christ lays the cross, as I may so say, upon the back of it.  ‘Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me,’ Mark 8:34. Another, with Simon of Cyrene, may be compelled to carry Christ's cross after him a little way.  But, it is the self-denying soul that will stoop willingly, and down on his knees, to have this burden laid on him at Christ's hand.  Now the sense of a soul’s peace with God will enable the creature in a twofold self-denial, and by both, sweetly dispose him for any suffering from or for Christ.

           (1.) The sense of this peace will enable the Christian to deny himself in his sinful self.  Sin may well be called ourself; it cleaves so close to us, even as members to our body.  [It is] as hard to mortify a lust as to cut off a joint.  Some sins too are more ourself than others, as our life is more bound up in some members than others.  Well, let them be what they will, there is a good day, in which, if Christ asks the head of the proudest lust among them all, he shall have it with less regret than Herodias obtained the Baptist’s at Herod’s hands.  And what is that gaudy day, in which the Christian can so freely deny his sin, and deliver it up to justice, but when Christ is feasting him with this ‘hidden manna’ of pardon and peace? A true friend will rather deny himself than one he loves dearly, if it be in his power to grant his request. But, least of all can he deny him, when his friend is doing him a greater kindness at the same time that he asks a less.  No such picklock to open the heart as love.  When love comes a begging, and that at a time when it is showing itself in some eminent expression of kindness to him at whose door she knocks, there is little fear but to speed.  Esther chose that time to engage Ahasuerus' heart against Haman her enemy, when she expressed her love most to Ahasuerus, viz. at a banquet.  When doth God give, or indeed when can he give, the like demonstration of his love to a poor soul, as when he entertains it at this gospel banquet?  Now sure, if ever, God may prevail with his child to send the cursed Amalekite to the gallows, his lust to the gibbet.  Do you think that Mary Magdalene, when that blessed news dropped from Christ into her mournful heart, that her ‘sins, which were many, were all forgiven her,’ could now have been persuaded to have opened the door to any of her for­mer lovers, and gone out of these embraces of  Christ’s love to have played the whore again?  No, I doubt not but she would sooner have chosen the flames of martyrdom than of lust.  Indeed, that which can make the creature deny a lust, can make the creature it shall not deny a cross.

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 Second.  Gospel peace prepares the heart for suffering, as it is influential unto the saint’s graces and affections, exciting them, and making them act to such a height, as lifts him above the fear of trouble and suffering.

1. Influence. This peace where it is felt, makes the Christian unconquerable in his faith.  Nothing is too hard for such a one to believe, that carries a par­don in his con­science, that hath his peace with God sealed to him.  Moses was to meet with many difficulties in that great work of conducting Israel out of Egypt towards Canaan.  Therefore, to make them all a more easy conquest to his faith, when he should be assaulted with them, God gives him at his very first entering upon his charge an experiment of his mighty power in some miracles—as the turning {of} his rod into a serpent, and that again into a rod, making his hand leprous, and then restoring it again to be as sound as before—that he might never think anything too hard for that God to do towards their salvation and deliverance, even when things seem most desperate.  And how unconquerable Moses was after these in his faith, we see.  Truly, when God speaks to a poor soul, he gives such a testimony of his almighty power and love, that, so long as the sweet sense of this lasts in the soul, the creature's faith cannot be posed.  What doth God in his pardoning mercy, but turn the serpent of the law—with all its threatenings, from which the sinner fled, as that which would sting him to death—into the blossoming rod of the gospel, that brings forth the sweet fruit of peace and life?  And which is the greater miracle of the two, think you?—the leprous hand of Moses made clean and sound, or a poor sinner's heart, leprous with sin, made clean and pure by washing in the blood of Christ?  Certainly this miracle of mercy, where it is strongly believed to be done, will make it easy for that soul to trust God in a sea of temporal sufferings, and cheerfully follow him through a whole wilderness of troubles in this life.  When David hath comfortable apprehensions of God's pardoning mercy, then his faith is up, and can strongly act on God for tem­poral deliverance.  We find him, Ps. 32:5, under the sweet sense of his peace with God, able to vouch God as reconciled to him.  ‘I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the Lord; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin.’  And now see, ver. 7, to what a height his faith acts on God as to outward troubles.  ‘Thou art my hiding place; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance.’  He spells this, which is the less, from the other, that is incomparably the greater mercy.

           2. Influence. This peace with God, where it is felt, fills the heart with love to Christ.  The Chris­tian’s love to Christ takes fire at Christ’s love to him.  And the hotter Christ’s love lies on the soul, the stronger reflection doth the creature make of love to him again, ‘she loved much,’ to whom much was ‘forgiven,’ Luke 7:47.  And the more love, the less fear there will be of suffering.  We will venture far for a dear friend.  When Christ told his disciples Lazarus was dead, Thomas would needs go and die with him for company, John 11:16.  So powerful is love, even as strong as death.  ‘For a good man,’ saith the apostle, ‘some would even dare to die’—that is, a merciful kind man, whose had endeared him to them.  How much more daring will a gracious soul be to sacrifice his life for a good God?  ‘Thy name,’ saith the spouse of Christ, ‘is as ointment poured forth, therefore do the virgins love thee,’ Song 1:3.  Then Christ’s name is poured forth, when the love of God through him is shed abroad in the soul.  Let this precious box be but broke, and the sweet savour of it diffused in the heart, and it will take away the unsavoury scent of the most stinking prison in the world.  This heavenly fire of Christ’s love, beaming powerfully on the soul, will not only put out the kitchen fire of creature love; but also the hell fire, as I may call it, of slavish fear.  What makes us so aghast at the thoughts of death, especially if it comes towards us in a bloody dress, and hath some circumstances of persecutors' cruelty, to put a further grimness on its unpleasing counte­nance?  Surely this comes from guilt, and  unac­quaintance with Christ, and what he hath done for us; who came partly on this very errand into the world, ‘To deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage,’ Heb. 2:15.  And how hath he done it, but by reconciling us to God, and so reconciling us to the thoughts of death itself, as that which only can do us this kind office—bring us and Christ, that hath done all this for us, together

How Gospel Peace Prepares The Soul For Suffering BY ITS PRIVILEGES

 First. Gospel peace prepares the heart for suf­fering, as it brings along with it, and possesseth the soul where it comes, with such glorious privileges as lift it above all danger from any sufferings whatever, from God man, or devils.  If a man could be assured he might walk as safely on the waves of the sea, or in the flames of fire, as he doth in his garden, he would be no more afraid of the one than he is to do the other.  Or, if a man had some coat of mail secretly about him, that would undoubtedly resist all blows and quench all shot that are sent against him, it would be no such scareful thing for him to stand in the midst of swords and guns.  Now, the soul that is indeed at peace with God, is invested with such privi­leges as do set it above all hurt and damage from suf­ferings.  ‘The peace of God’ is said ‘to garrison the believer’s heart and mind,’ Php. 4:7.  He is surrounded with such blessed privileges, that he is as safe as one in an impregnable castle.

1. Privilege. A person at peace with God becomes then a child of God.  And when once the Christian comes to know his relation, and the dear love of his heavenly Father to him, afflictions for or sufferings from him, dread him not, because he knows it is inconsistent with the love of a father, either to hurt his child himself, or to suffer him to be hurt by another, if he can help it.  I have often wondered at Isaac’s patience to submit to be bound for a sacrifice, and see the knife so near his throat, without any hideous outcries or strugglings that we read of. He was old enough to be apprehensive of death, and the horror of it, being conceived by some to be above twenty years of age.  That he was of good growth is out of doubt by the wood which Abraham caused him to carry for the sacrifice.  But, such was the authority Abraham had over his son, and the con­fidence that Isaac had in his father, that he durst put his knife into his hands; which, had the knife been in any other hand, he would hardly have done.  Whoever may be the instrument of any trouble to a saint, the rod or sword is at God's disposure.  Christ saw the cup in his Father’s hand, and that made him take it willingly.
2. Privilege. Every soul at peace with God is heir to God.  This follows his relation.  ‘If children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ,’ Rom. 8:17.  This is such a transcendent privilege, that the soul to whom the joyful news of it comes is lift up above the amazing and affrightening fears of any suf­fering.  The apostle having, in the forenamed place, but a little sweetened his thoughts with a few meditations on this soul-ravishing subject, see how his blessed soul is raised into a holy slighting of all the troubles of this life: ‘I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us,’ Rom. 8:18.  He will not allow his own soul, or any that hath the hope of this inheritance, so far to undervalue the glory thereof, or the love of God that settled it on them, as to mention the greatness of their sufferings in any way of pitying themselves for them.  As if he had said, ‘Hath God made us his heirs, and bestowed heaven upon us in reversion, and shall we be so poor-spirited to sit down and bemoan ourselves for our present sor­rows, that are no more to be compared with the glory that we are going to, than the little point of time, into which our short life with all our sufferings are contracted, is to be compared with the vast circumference of that eternity which we are to spend in endless bliss and happiness?’  He is a poor man, we say, that one or two petty losses quite undoes; and he is a poor Christian that cries out he is undone by any cross in this life.  We may safely conclude such a one either is heir to nothing in the other world, or hath little or no evidence for what he hath here.

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           The Israelites when ready to take their march out of Egypt into a desolate wilderness, where they should be put to many plunges, and their faith tried to purpose; to prepare them the more for these, he entertains them at a gospel supper before they go forth—I mean the passover, which pointed to Christ. And no doubt the sweetness of this feast made some gracious souls among them, that tasted Christ in it, endure the hardship and hunger of the wilderness the more cheerfully.  And the same care and love did our Lord Jesus observe in the institution of his supper, choosing that for the time of erecting this sweet or­dinance when his disciples’ feet stood at the brink of a sea of sorrows and troubles, which his death and the consequences of it would inevitably bring upon them. Now the pardon of their sins, sealed to their souls in the ordinance must needs be welcome, and enable them to wade through their sufferings the more comfortably.  Indeed, the great care which Christ took for his disciples, when he left the world, was not to leave them a quiet world to live in, but to arm them against a troublesome world.  And to do this, he labours to satisfy their poor hearts with his love to them, and his father’s love to them for his sake; he bequeaths unto them his peace, and empties it in the sweet consolations of it into their bosoms; for which end he tells them, as soon as he got to heaven, he would pray his Father to send the Comforter to them with all speed, and sends them to Jerusalem, there to stay privately, and not go into the field, or openly contest with the angry world, till they received the strength and succour which the Spirit in his comforts should bring with him.  By all which it doth abundantly appear how powerful this gospel peace is to en­able the soul for suffering.

           Now I proceed to show how this peace doth prepare the heart for all sufferings.  And that it doth these two ways.  First. As it brings along with it, and possesseth the soul where it comes, with such glorious privileges as lift it above all danger and damage from any sufferings whatever from God, man, or devils.  Second. As it is influential unto the saint’s graces and affections, exciting them, and making them act to such a height, as lifts the Christian above the fear of trouble and suffering

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The peace which the gospel brings and speaks to the heart, will make the creature ready to wade through any trial or trouble that meets him in his Christian course.  He who enjoys in his bosom the peace of the gospel, is the person and the only person, that stands shod for all ways, prepared for all troubles and trials.  None can make a shoe to the creature’s foot, so as he shall go easy on a hard way, but Christ.  He can do it to the creature’s full content.  And how doth he {do} it?  Truly by no other way that by underlaying it, or, if you will, lining it, with the peace of the gospel.  What though the way be set with sharp stones? if this shoe go between the Christian’s foot and them, they cannot much be felt.  Solomon tells us that ways of wisdom,—that is, Christ—‘are ways of pleasantness.’  But how so, when some of them are ways of suffering?  The next words resolve it; ‘and all her paths are peace,’ Prov. 3:17.  Where there is peace—such peace as peace with God and conscience—there can want no pleasure.  David goes merry to bed when he hath nothing to supper but the gladness that God by this puts into his heart, and promiseth himself a better night’s rest than any of them all that are feasted with the world's cheer; ‘Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased.  I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep,’ Ps. 4:7, 8.  This same peace with God enjoyed in the conscience, redounds to the comfort of the body.  Now David can sleep sweetly when he lies on a hard bed.  What here he saith he would do, he saith he had done: ‘I laid me down and slept; I awaked; for the Lord sustained me,’ Ps. 3:5.  The title of the psalm tells us when David had this sweet night’s rest, not when he lay on his bed of downs in his stately palace at Jerusalem, but when he fled for his life from his unnatural son Absalom, and possibly was forced to lie in the open field under the canopy of heaven.  Truly it must be a soft pillow indeed that could make him forget his danger, who then had such a disloyal army at his back hunting of him.  Yea, so transcendent is the sweet in­fluence of this peace, that it can make the creature lie down as cheerfully to sleep in the grave as on the softest bed.  You shall say that child is willing that calls to be put to bed.  Some of the saints have de­sired God to lay them at rest in their beds of dust; and that not in a pet and discontent with their present trouble, as Job did, but from a sweet sense of this peace in their bosoms.  ‘Now let thy servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation,’ was the swan-like song of old Simeon.  He speaks like a mer­chant that had got all his goods on shipboard, and now desires the master of the ship to hoist sail and be gone homewards.  Indeed what should a Christian, that is but a foreigner here, desire to stay any longer for in the world, but to get this full lading in for heaven?  And when hath he that, if not when he is assured of his peace with God?  This peace of the gos­pel, and sense of the love of God in the soul, doth so admirably conduce to the enabling of a person in all difficulties, and temptations, and troubles, that ordin­arily before he calls his saints to any hard service or hot work, he gives them a draught of this cordial wine next their hearts, to cheer them up, and embolden them in the conflict.  God calls Abram out of his native country, Gen 12:1, and what so fit as a promise of Christ to bring his heart to God’s foot? ver. 2, 3.  A sad errand it was that sent Jacob to Padan-aram.  He fled from an angry wrathful brother, that had murdered him already in his thoughts, to an unkind, de­ceitful, uncle, under whom he should endure much hardship.  Now God comes in a sweet gospel vision to comfort this poor pilgrim; for by that ‘ladder, whose foot stood on earth, and top reached heaven,’ Christ was signified to his faith, in whom heaven and earth meet, God and man are reconciled; and, by the ‘moving up and down of the angels on the ladder,’ the ministry of the angels, which Christ by his death and intercession procures for his saints, that they shall tend on them, as servants on their master’s children. So that the sum of all is as much as God had said, ‘Jacob, thy brother Esau hates thee, but in Christ I am reconciled to thee, thy uncle Laban, he will wrong thee, and deal hardly by thee, but fear him not.  As I am in Christ at peace with thee so through him thou shalt have my especial care over thee, and the guardianship of the holy angels about thee, to defend thee wherever thou goest.’

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2. Consider that he doth not, indeed cannot, bid thee deny so much for him as he hath done for thee.Is reproach for Christ so intolerable, that thy proud spirit cannot brook it?  Why, who art thou? what great house comest thou from?  See One that had more honour to lay at stake than I hope thou darest pretend to—Jesus Christ—who ‘thought it not rob­bery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation,’ Php. 2:6, 7.  Is it pain and torment thou art afraid of?  O look up to the cross where the Lord of life hung for thy sins! and thou wilt take up thy own cross more willingly, and thank God too, that he hath made thine so light and easy, when he provided one so heavy and tormenting for his beloved Son.
3. Consider, whatever God calls thee to deny for his truth, it is not more than he can recompense.Moses saw this, and that made him leap out of his honours and riches into the reproach of Christ, ‘for he had respect unto the recompence of the reward,’ Heb. 11:26.  It is much that a man will deny himself in for something his heart strongly desires in this life.  If a man be greedy of gain, he will deny himself half of a night’s sleep to plot in his bed, or rise early from it to be at his work; he will eat homely fare, go in vile raiment, dwell in a smoky hole, as we see in London, for the conveniency of a shop.  How men of quality will crowd themselves up into a little corner, though to the prejudice of their healths, and hazard sometimes of their lives! yet, hope of gain recompenseth all.  And now, put their gains into the scale with thine Christian, that are sure to come in by denying thyself for Christ, which theirs are not, and ask thy soul whether it blush not to see them so freely deny themselves of the comfort of their lives for an imaginary, uncertain, at best a short advantage, while thou hucklest so with Christ for a few outward enjoyments, which shall be paid thee over a hundred-fold here, and beyond what thou canst now conceive when thou comest to heaven's glory!

           Sixth Direction. Labour to carry on the work of mortification every day to further degrees than other. It is the sap in the wood that makes it hard to burn, and corruption unmortified that makes the Christian loath to suffer.  Dried wood will not kindle sooner, than a heart dried and mortified to the lusts of the world will endure anything for Christ.  The apostle speaks of some that were ‘tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrec­tion,’ Heb. 11:35.  They did not like the world so well, as being so far on their journey to heaven—though in hard way —to be willing to come back to live in it any longer.  Take heed, Christian, of leaving any worldly lust unmortified in thy soul.  This will never consent thou shouldest endure much for Christ.  Few ships sink at sea; they are the rocks and shelves that split them.  Couldst thou get off the rocks of pride and unbelief, and escape knocking on the sands of fear of man, love of the world, thou wouldst do well enough in the greatest storm that can overtake thee in the sea of this world.  ‘If a man purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, and meet for his Master's use, and prepared unto every good work,’ II Tim. 2:21.  O that we knew the heaven that is in a mortified soul! one that is crucified to the world and lusts of it.  He hath the advantage of any other in doing or suffering for Christ, and enjoying Christ in both.  A mortified soul lives out of all noise and disturbance from those carnal passions, which put all out of quiet where they come.  When the mortified soul goes to duty there are not those rude and unmannerly intrusions of impertinent, carnal, yea sinful thoughts, between him and his God.  Is he to go to prison?  Here is not such weeping and taking on; no lust to hang about his legs, and break his heart with its insinuations; no self-love to entreat him that he would pity himself.  His heart is free, got out of the acquaintance of these troublers of his peace; and a prison to him, if he may go upon so honourable an errand as testifying to the truth, O how welcome to him!  Whereas a unmortified heart is wedged in with so great acquaintance and kindred, as I may so say, which his heart hath in the world, that it is impossible to get out of their embraces into any willingness to suffer.  A man that comes into an inn in a strange place, he may rise at what time he pleaseth, and be gone as early as he pleaseth in the morning.  There are none {to} entreat him to stay.  But it is hard to get out of a friend's house; these, like the Levite’s father‑in‑law, will be desiring him to stay one day, and then one more, and another after that.  The mortified soul is the stranger.  He meets with no dis­turbance—I mean comparatively—in his journey to heaven; while the unmortified one is linked in fast enough for getting on his journey in haste, especially so long as the flesh hath so fair an excuse as the foul­ness of the way or weather, any hardship likely to be endured for his profession.  I have read of one of the Catos, that, in his old age, he withdrew himself from Rome to his country-house, that he might spend his elder years free from care and trouble.  And all the Romans, as they ride by his house, used to say, iste solus scit vivere—this man alone knows how to live.  I know not what art Cato had to dis­burden himself, by his retiring, of the world’s cares.  I am sure, a man may go into the country and yet not leave the city be­hind him.  His mind may be in a crowd while his body is in the solitude of a wilderness.  Alas! poor man, he was a stranger to the gospel.  Had he been but acquainted with this, it could have shown him a way out of the world’s crowd in the midst of Rome itself, and that is, by mortifying his heart to the world, both in the pleasures and troubles of it; and then that high commendation might have been given him with­out any hyperbole.  For, to speak truth, he only knows aright how to live in the world that hath learned to die to the world.  And so much for the first point; which, we may remind you, was, that the Chris­tian is to stand ready for all trials and troubles that may befall him.  The second follows.

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 Third Direction. Be much in the meditation of a suffering state.  He will say his lesson best, when his master calls him forth, that is oftenest conning it over beforehand to himself.  Do by the troubles thou mayest meet with, as porters used to do with their burdens—they will lift them again and again, before they take them on their back.  Thus do thou.  Be often lifting up in thy meditations those evils that may befall thee for Christ and his truth; and try how thou couldst fadge [agree] with them, if called to en­dure them.  Set poverty, prison, banishment, fire, and fagot, before thee, on the one hand; and the precious truths of Christ on the other, with the sweet promises made to those that shall hold fast the word of patience held forth in such an hour of temptation. Suppose it were now thy very case, and thou wert put to thy choice which hand thou wouldst take, study the question seriously, till thou determinest it clearly in thy conscience.  And do this often, so that the arguments which flesh and blood will then be sure to use for thy pitying thyself, may not be new and unanswered, nor the encouragements and strong consolations which the word affords be strange and under any suspicion in thy thoughts, when thou art to ven­ture thy life upon their credit and truth.  That of Augustine we shall find most true, non facile inven­iuntur præsidia in adversitate, quæ non fuerint in pace quæsita—the garrisons are not easily found in adversity which were not sought for and known dur­ing peace.  The promises are our garrison and fastness at such a time; and we shall not find it easy to run to them in a strait, except we were acquainted with them in a time of peace.  A stranger that flies to a house for refuge in the dark night, he fumbles about the door, and knows not how to find the latch—his enemy, if nigh, may kill him before he can open the door.  But one that lives in the house, or is well ac­quainted with it, is not long a getting in.  ‘Come, my people,’ saith God, ‘enter thou into thy chambers,’ Isa. 26:20.  He is showing them their lodgings in his at­tributes and promises, before it is night and their suf­ferings be come, that they may readily find the way to them in the dark.

           Fourth Direction. Make a daily resignation of thyself up to the will of God.  Indeed this should be, as it were, the lock of the night and the key of the morning.  We should open and shut our eyes with this recommending of ourselves into the hands of God.  This, if daily performed—not for­mally, as all duties frequently repeated, without the more care, are like to be; but solemnly—would sweetly dispose the soul for a welcoming of any trial that can befall him. The awkness of our hearts to suffer comes much from distrust.  An unbelieving soul treads upon the promise as a man upon ice—at the first going upon it, it is full of fears and tumultuous thoughts lest it should crack.  Now this daily resignation of thy heart, as it will give thee an occasion of conversing more with the thoughts of God's power, faithfulness, and other of his attributes—for want of familiarity with which, jealousies arise in our hearts when put to any great plunge—so also it will furnish thee with many experi­ences of the reality both of his attributes and promises; which, though they need not any testimony from sense to gain them any credit with us, yet, so much are we made of sense, so childish and weak is our faith, that we find our hearts much helped by those experiences we have had, to rely on him for the fu­ture.  Look therefore carefully to this; every morning leave thyself and ways in God’s hand, as the phrase is, Ps 10:14.  And at night, look again, how well God hath looked to his trust, and sleep not till thou hast affected thy heart with his faithfulness, and laid a stronger charge on thy heart to trust itself again in God’s keeping in the night.  And when any breach is made, and seeming loss befall thee in any enjoyment, which thou hast by faith insured of thy God, observe how God fills up that breach, and makes up that loss to thee; and rest not till thou hast fully vindicated the good name of God to thy own heart.  Be sure thou lettest no discontent or dissatisfaction lie upon thy spirit at God's dealings; but chide thy heart for it, as David did his, Ps. 42.  And thus doing, with God’s blessing, thou shalt keep thy faith in breath for a longer race, when called to run it.

           Fifth Direction. Make self-denial appear as ra­tional and reasonable as thou canst to thy soul.  The stronger the understanding is able to reason for the equity and rationality of any work or duty, the more readily and cheerfully it is done, if the heart is honest and sincere.  Suppose, Chris­tian, thy God should call for thy estate, liberty, yea, life and all; can it seem un­reasonable to thee? especially,

1. If thou considerest that he bids thee deliver his own, not thy own.He lent thee these, but he nev­er gave away the propriety of them from himself. Dost thou wrong thy neighbour to call for that money thou lentest him a year or two past?  No sure, thou think­est he hath reason to thank thee for lending it to him, but none to complain for calling it from him.

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The great question I expect now to fall from thy mouth, Christian, is not how mayest thou escape these troubles and trials which, as the evil genius of the gospel, do always attend it? but rather, how thou mayest get this shoe on, thy heart ready for a march to go and meet them when they come, and cheerfully wade through them, whatever they be, or how long so­ever they stay with thee?  This is a question well be­coming a Christian soldier, to ask for armour wherewith he may fight; whereas the coward throws away his armour, and asks whether he may flee.  I shall therefore give the best counsel I can, in these few particulars.

           First Direction.  Look carefully to the ground of thy active obedience, that it be sound and sincere. The same right principles whereby the sincere soul acts for Christ, will carry him to suffer for Christ, when a call from God comes with such an errand, ‘The children of Ephraim, being armed, and carrying bows, turned back in the day of battle,’ Ps. 78:9.  Why? what is the matter? so well armed, and yet so cowardly?  This seems strange.  Read the precedent verse, and you will cease wondering.  They are called there ‘a generation that set not their heart aright, and whose spirit was not stedfast with God.’  Let the ar­mour be what it will, yea, if soldiers were in a castle whose foundation were a rock, and its walls brass, yet, if their hearts be not right to their prince an easy storm will drive them from the walls, and a little scare open their gate, which hath not this bolt of sincerity on it to hold it fast.  In our late wars we have seen that honest hearts within thin and weak works have held the town, when no walls would defend treachery from betraying trust.  O labour for sincerity in the engaging at first for God and his gospel!  Be oft asking thy own soul for whom thou prayest, hearest, reform­est this practice and that.  If thou canst get a satisfactory answer from thy soul here, thou mayest hope well.  If faith’s working hand be sincere, then its fighting hand will be valiant.  That place is observable, Heb. 11:33 ‘Who through faith subdued kingdoms, wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire,’ and with other great things, that faith enabled them to endure, as you may read in vv. 34-36.  There note, I pray, how the power of faith enabling the Christian to ‘work righteousness’—that is, live holily and righteously—is reckoned among the wonders of sufferings which it strengthened them to endure.  In­deed had it not done this, it would never have endured these.

           Second Direction. Pray for a suffering spirit.  This is not a common gift, which every carnal gospel­ler and slighty professor hath.  No; it is a peculiar gift, and bestowed on a few sincere souls.  ‘Unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake,’ Php. 1:29.  All the parts and common gifts that a man hath will never enable him to drink deep of this cup for Christ.  Such is the pride of man's heart.  He had rather suffer any way than this; rather from himself, and for himself, than from Christ or for Christ.  You would wonder to see sometimes, how much a child will endure at his play, and never cry for it—this fall, and that knock, and no great matter is made of it, because got in a way that is pleasing to him.  But, let his father whip him, though it puts him not to half the smart, yet he roars and takes on, that there is no quieting of him. Thus, men can bring trouble on themselves, and bite in their complaints.  They can, one play away his es­tate at cards and dice, and another whore away his health, or cut off many years from his life by beastly drunkenness; and all is endured patiently.  Yea, if they had their money and strength again, they should go the same way.  They do not repent of what their lusts have cost them, but mourn they have no more to bestow upon them.  Their lusts shall have all they have, to a morsel of bread in their cupboard and drop of blood in their veins; yea, they are not afraid of burning in hell, as their sins' martyrs.  But come, and ask these that are so free of their purse, flesh, soul, and all, in lust's service, to lay their estate or life for a few moments at stake in Christ's cause and his truth’s, and you shall see that God is not so much beholden them.  And therefore pray and pray again for a suffering spirit in Christ's cause.  Yea, saints themselves need earnestly to plead with God for this. Alas! they do not find suffering work follow their hand so easily.  The flesh loves to be cockered, not crucified.  Many a groan it costs the Christian before he can learn to love this work.  Now prayer, if any means, will be helpful to thee in this particular.  He that can wrestle with God, need not fear the face of death and danger.  Prayer engageth God’s strength and wisdom for our help.  And what is there too hard for the creature, that hath God at his back for his help, to do or suffer?  We are bid to ‘count it all joy, when we fall into divers temptations,’ James 1:2—not temptations to sin, but for righteousness.  He means troubles for Christ and his gospel.  Ah! but might the poor Christian say, it were cause of more joy to be able to stand under these temptations, than to fall into them.  Little joy would it be to have the tempta­tion, and not the grace to endure temptation.  True indeed; but, for thy comfort, Christian, he that leads thee into this temptation stands ready to help thee through it.  Therefore, ver. 5, there is a gracious si quis —if any one—set up; ‘If any of you’—i.e. you suffers chiefly—‘lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.’  This, methinks, should not much strain our faith to believe.  There are not many mas­ters so disingenuous to be found, that would twit and upbraid their servant for asking humbly their counsel in a work of peril and difficulty, which they cheerfully undertake out of love to their persons and obedience to their command.  How much less then needest thou fear such dealing from thy God?  If thou hast so much faith and love as to venture at his command upon the sea of suffering, he will, without doubt, find so much mercy as to keep thee from drowning, if, feeling thyself begin to sink, thou criest earnestly as Peter did to him, ‘Lord, save me.’  Wert thou even under water, prayer would buoy thee up again.  The proverb indeed is, ‘He that would learn to pray, let him go to sea.’  But I think it were better thus, ‘He that would go to sea—this I mean of suffering—let him learn to pray before he comes there.’  But, if thou beest not a man of prayer before suffering work come, thou wilt be able to do little at that weapon then.