Use Second. Is faith the chief of graces? Let this make us the more curious and careful that we be not cheated in our faith. There are some things of so inconsiderable worth, that they will not pay us for the pains and care we take about them; and there to be choice and scrupulous is folly; to be negligent and incurious is wisdom. But there are other things of such worth and weighty consequence, that none but he that means to call his wisdom in question can be willing to be mistaken and cozened in them. Who that is wise would pay as for a precious stone, and have a pebble, or at best a Bristol-stone, put upon him for his money? Who, when his life is at stake, and knows no way to save it but by getting some one rich drug which is very scarce, but to be had, would not be very careful to have the right? O my dear friends, doth it not infinitely more concern you to be careful in your merchandise for this pearl of precious faith? Can you be willing to take the devil's false sophisticated ware off his hand? a mock faith which he would cheat you with, rather than obtain the ‘faith unfeigned,’ which God hath to give unto his children —called therefore the 'faith of God’s elect?’ Will the devil’s drugs, that are sure to kill thee, serve thy turn, when thou art offered by God himself a rich drug that will cure thee? When thou goest to buy a garment, thou askest for the best piece of stuff of cloth in the shop. In the market thou wouldst have the best meat for thy belly; when with the lawyer the best counsel for thy estate; and of the physician the best directions for thy health. Art thou for the best in all but for thy soul? Wouldst thou not have a faith of the best kind also? If a man receives false money, who doth he wrong but himself? and if thou beest gulled with a false faith, the loss is thy own, and that no small one. Thyself will think so when thou comest to the bar, and God shall bid thee either pay the debt thou owest him, or go to rot and roar in hell’s prison. Then how wilt thou be confounded! When thou producest thy faith and hopest to save thyself with this—that thou believest on the Lord Jesus—but shalt have thy confidence rejected, and God tell thee to thy teeth it is not faith but a lie in thy right hand that thou hast got, and therefore he will not accept the payment, though it be Christ himself that offerest to lay down; nay, that he will give thee up into the tormentor’s hand, and that not only for believing, but also for counterfeiting the King of heaven’s coin, and setting his name on thy false money; which thou dost by pretending to faith, when it is a false one thou hast in thy bosom. This were enough to awaken your care in the trial of your faith, but to give some further weight to the exhortation we shall cast in these three conditions.
- Reason. Consider that as thy faith is, so are all thy other graces. As a man's marriage is so are all his children, legitimate, or illegitimate. Thus, as our marriage is to Christ, so all our graces are. Now, it is faith by which we are married to Christ. ‘I have espoused you to one husband,’ saith Paul to the Corinthians, II Cor. 11:2. How, but by their faith? It is faith whereby the soul gives its consent to take Christ for her husband. Now, if our faith be false, then our marriage to Christ is feigned; and if that be feigned, then all our pretended graces are base-born. How goodly soever an outside they have—as a bastard may have a fair face—they are all illegitimate; our humility, patience, temperance—all bastards. And, you know, ‘a bastard was not to enter into the congregation,’ Deut. 23:2. No more shall any bastard grace enter into the congregation of the just in heaven. He that hath children of his own will not make another’s bastard his heir. God hath children of his own to inherit heaven’s glory, in whose hearts he hath by his own Spirit begotten those heavenly graces which do truly resemble his own holy nature; surely he will never settle it upon strangers, counterfeit believers, that are the devil's brats and by-blows.
No comments:
Post a Comment