APPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE CHRISTIAN HELMET, ALIKE TO THOSE WHO HAVE, AND TO THOSE WHO HAVE IT NOT 1/2

        SECOND POINT OF IMPROVEMENT.  Exhortation to those who have this helmet of hope.   For exhortation of you, believers, who upon trial are found to have this helmet of hope.  Several duties are to be pressed upon you as such.  First. Be thankful for this unspeakable gift.  Second. Live up to your hopes.

Duties which possession of the helmet of hope involves.   First Duty.  Be thankful for this unspeakable gift.  I will not believe thou hast it if thy heart be not abundantly let out in thankfulness for it.  Blessed Peter cannot speak of this but in a doxology.  ‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which hath begotten us again unto a lively hope,...to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away,’ I Peter 1:3, 4.  The usual proem to Paul’s epistles is of this strain, Col. 1:5; Eph. 1:3.  Hast thou hope in heaven?  It is more than if thou hadst the whole world in hand.  The greatest monarch the earth hath will be glad, in a dying hour, to change his crown for thy helmet.  His crown will not procure him this helmet, but thy helmet will bring thee to a crown, when he shall have none to wear—a crown, not of gold, but of glory, which once on shall never be taken off, as his is sure to be.  O remember, Christian, what but a while since thou wert—so far from having any hope of heaven, that thou wert under a fearful expec­tation of hell and damnation.  And are those chains of guilt with which thy trembling conscience was weighed down unto despair, taken off, and thy head lift up to look for such high preferment in the celes­tial court of that God whose wrath thou hadst, by thy horrid treasons, most justly incensed against thee? Certainly, of all the men in the world, thou art deep­est in debt to the mercy of God.  If he will be thanked for a crust, he looks, sure, thou shouldst give him more for a crown.  If food and raiment, though coarse and mean—suppose but roots and rags—be gratefully to be acknowledged; O with what ravishment of love and thankfulness are you to think and speak of those rarities and robes with which you hope to be fed and clad in this heavenly kingdom! especially if you cast your eye aside, and behold those that were once your fellow-prisoners—in what a sad and dismal condition they continue—while all this happiness has befallen you!  It could not, sure, but affect his heart into ad­miration of his prince's mercy and undeserved favour to him, who is saved from the gibbet only by his gra­cious pardon, if, as he is riding in a coach towards his prince's court—there to live in wealth and honour —he should meet some of his fellow‑traitors on sleds, as they are dragging full of shame and horror to exe­cution for the same treason in which they had as deep a hand as any of them all.  And dost thou not see, Christian, many of thy poor neighbours, with whom haply thou hast had a partnership in sin, pinioned with impenitency and unbelief, driving apace to hell and destruction, while thou, by the free distinguishing mercy of God, art on thy way for heaven and glory? O down on thy knees, and cry out, ‘Lord, why wilt thou show thyself to me, and not to these?’  How easy had it been, and righteous for God, to have directed the pardon to them, and the warrant for damnation unto thee!  When thou hast spent thy own breath and spir­its in praising God, thou hadst need beg a collection of praises of all thy friends that have a heart to contribute to such charitable work, that they would help thee in paying this debt; and get all this, with what in heaven thou shalt disburse thyself to all eternity, in better coin than can be expected from thee here—where thy soul is embased with sinful mix­tures—it must be accounted rather an acknowledg­ment of what thou owest to thy God, than any pay­ment of the least part of the debt.