SIX DIRECTIONS how we may strengthen our hope 1/7

           First Direction.  If thou meanest thy hope of salvation should rise to any strength and solidness, study the word of God diligently.  The Christian is bred by the word, and he must be fed by it also, or else his grace will die.  That is the growing child that lies libbing oftenest at the breast.  Now as God hath provided food in his word to nourish every grace, so in the composition of the Scriptures he had a particu­lar respect to the welfare and growth of the saint’s hope, as one principal end of their writing.  ‘That we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope,’ Rom. 15:4.  The devil knows this so well, that his great labour is spent to deprive the Christian of the help which the word is stored with; and indeed therein he is not mistaken, for so long as this river is unblocked up which makes glad the City of God, with the succours which are brought in to them on the stream of its precious promises, he can never besiege them round or put them to any great straits.  Some, therefore, he deprives of their relief by mere sloth and laziness.  They make a few fruitless complaints of their doubts and fears, like sluggards crying out of their wants and poverty as they lie in bed, but are loath to rise and take any pains to be resolved of them by searching of the word for their satisfaction; and these sell their comfort of all others the cheapest. Who will pity him, though he should starve to death, that hath bread before him, but loath to put his hand out of his bosom to carry it to his mouth!  Others he abuseth by false applications of the word to their souls, partly through their weak understandings, and troubled spirits also, which discolour the truths of God and misrepresent them to their judgments, whereby they come to be beaten with their own staff —even those promises which a skilful hand would knock down Satan’s temptations withal.  The devil is a great student in divinity, and makes no other use of his Scripture-knowledge than may serve his turn by sophistry to do the Christian a mischief, either by drawing him to sin, or into despair for sinning; like some wrangling barrister, who gets what skill he can in the law merely to make him the more able to put honest men to trouble by his vexatious suit.  Well, if Satan be so conversant in the word to weaken thy hope, and deprive thee of thy inheritance, what rea­son hast thou then to furnish thyself with a holy skill to maintain thy right and defend thy hope?  Now, in thy study of the word, propound these two ends, and closely pursue them till thou hast obtained them.

1. End.  Labour to clear up thy understanding from the word, what are the conditions required by God of every soul that hath his grant and warrant to hope assuredly for life and salvation in the other world.  Some conditions there are required to be found in all such is without all doubt, or else it were free for all, be they what they will, and live how they list, actually to lay claim to a right in heaven and sal­vation.  If God had set no bounds at Sinai, and said nothing who should come up the mount, and who not, it had been no more presumption in any of the company to have gone up than in Moses; and if God requires no conditions in the person that is to hope, then heaven is a common for one as well as other to crowd into; then the beastly sinner may touch God’s holy mount as well as the saint, and fear no stoning for his bold adventure.  But this sure is too fulsome doctrine for any judicious conscience to digest.  Well, having satisfied thyself that if ever thou hast true hope thou must also have the conditions, inquire what they are.  Now the word holds forth two sorts of conditions according to the two different covenants.