THE CONCATENATION OF GRACES in their birth growth and decay 2/2

     But, may be, thy love to Christ is also lodged in a cloud.  Well, then, see whether thou canst spy no evangelical repentance, loathing thee with the sight of thy sins, as also enfiring thee with revenge against them, as those enemies which drew thee into rebel­lion against God, yea, were the bloody weapon with which thou hast so oft wounded the name and mur­dered the Son of God.  Behold, the grace thou look­est for stands before thee.  What is love to God, if zeal against sin as God’s enemy be not?  Did not Abi­shai love David, when his heart boiled so over with rage against Shimei for cursing David, that he could not contain, but breaks out into a passion, saying, ‘Why should this dead dog curse my lord the king? let me go over, I pray thee, and take off his head?’ II Sam. 16:9.  And by thy own acknowledgment it troubles thee as much to hear thy lusts bark against God, and thy will is as good to be the death of them, if God would but say his fiat to it, as ever Abishai’s was to strike that traitor's head off his shoulders; and yet art thou in doubt whether thou lovest God or no?  Truly then thou canst not see fire for flame, love for zeal. Thus, as by taking hold of one link you may draw up the rest of the chain that lies under water, so by discovering one grace, thou mayest bring all to sight. Joseph and Mary were indeed deceived, when they supposed their son to be in the company of their kin­dred, Luke 2:44.  But so canst thou not here.  For this holy kindred of graces go ever together, they are knit, as members of the body, one to another.  Though you see only the face of a man, yet you doubt not but the whole man is there.

2. Use.  As it may relieve the sincere Christian, so it will help to uncase and put the hypocrite to shame, who makes great pretensions to some one grace when he hates another at the same time—a certain note of a false heart.  He never had any grace that loves not all graces.  Moses would not out of Egypt with half his company, Ex. 10.  Either all must go or none shall stir.  Neither will the Spirit of God come into a soul with half of his sanctifying graces, but with all his train.  If therefore thy heart be set against any one grace, it proves thou art a stranger to the rest; and though thou mayest seem a great ad­mirer and lover of one grace, yet the defiance thou standest in to others washeth off the paint of this fair cover.  Love and hatred are of the whole kind; he that loves or hates one saint as such, doth the same by ev­ery saint; so he that cordially closeth with one grace, will find every grace endeared to him upon the same account; for they are as like one to another, as one beam of the sun is to another beam.

           Second Connection.  Sanctifying graces are con­nected in their growth and decay.  Increase one grace, and you strengthen all; impair one, and you will be a loser in all; and the reason is, because they are recip­rocally helpful each to other.  So that when one grace is wounded, the assistance it should and would, if in temper, contribute to the Christian’s common stock, is either wholly detained or much lessened.  When love cools, obedience slacks and drives heavily, be­cause it wants the oil on its wheel that love used to drop.  Obedience faltering, faith weakens apace. How can there be great faith when there is little faithful­ness?  Faith weakening, hope presently wavers; for it is the credit of faith’s report, that hope goes on to ex­pect good from God.  And hope wavering, patience breaks, and can keep shop windows open no longer, because it trades with the stock hope lends it.  In the body you observe there are many members, yet all make but one body; and every member so useful, that the others are beholden to it.  So in the Christian there are many graces, but one new creature.  And the eye of knowledge cannot say to the hand of faith, ‘I have no need of thee,’ nor the hand of faith to the foot of obedience, but all are preserved by the mutual care they have of one another.  For, as ruin to the whole city may enter at a breach in one part of its wall, and the soul run out through a wound in a par­ticular member of the body; so the ruin of all the graces may, yea must needs, follow on the ruin of any one.  There is indeed a stronger bond of necessity between graces of our souls than there is between the members of our body.  It is possible, yea ordinary, for some member to be cut off from the body without the death of the whole, because all the members of the body are not vital parts.  But every grace is a vital part in the new creature, and so essential to its very being that its absence cannot be supplied per vicarium—by substitution.  In the body one eye can make a shift to do the office of it fellow which is put out; and one hand do the other's work that is cut off, though may not be so exactly; but faith cannot do the office of love, nor love the work of obedience.  The lack of one wheel spoils the motion of the whole clock.  And if one grace should be wanting, the end would not be attained for which this rare piece of workmanship is set up in the saint’s heart.